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MY DEAR FATHER NEWMAN,I DEDICATE to yon this work, so far as ithas gone, upon the Formation of Christendom, for adouble reason. The first is, because it arose out ofmy nomination to be Header on the Philosophy ofHistory in the Catholic University of Ireland, whichwas made when you were its first Rector. Thenomination, indeed, led to no more than the deliveryof the Inaugural Lecture in your presence as Rectorbefore the University. For though the work whichhas followed was originally intended to be deliveredin like manner, I ascertained, on the completion ofthe first series, that no " need had been felt for Lectureson the Philosophy of History, and my connection withthe University practically terminated with your Rectorship.I am therefore offering you the fruit of anappointment peculiarly your own, since it ceased withyou. And I may add that your counsels were notwanting to me in the first choice and handling of thesubject. My second reason is, that now in matureage I wish to give utterance to the profound gratitudewhich I have never ceased to feel towards vou for theaid which your writings gave me to discern the lightof the Catholic Faith, y and the force which vour */example added to follow that light into the know-V

VIDEDICATIONledge, peace, and liberty of the Catholic Communion.If anything could heighten that gratitude it wouldbe my sense of the value of those subsequent worksby which you, who were once the Hector of a doomedTroy, have become in your day and country theAchilles of the City of God; that power which inour own as in every preceding age advances to victoryout of defeat, is justified through the calumnies ofopponents, and often converts the lance which aimsat its life into the sword of a champion.I am, my dear Father Newman,Yours affectionately,T. W. ALLIES.February 21, 1875.

COIJLEG!CONTENTSTHE CHRISTIAN CHURCH AND THE. GREEK PHILOSOPHYLECTUKEXVTHE FOUNDATION OF THE ROMAN CHURCH, THE TYPE AND FORM5 * ^ T *OF EVERY PARTICULAR CHURCH ; ITS CONTRAST WITH PHILO-SOPHY, AND ITS DEVELOPMENT OF THE JUDAIC EMBRYO.PAGEMoral apathy and unbelief of the generations precedingClaudius " ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^IThis period unexampled in its material prosperity . . 2Which is attributed by Philo to the concentration of powerin the emperor's handsUnfruitfulness as yet of the long contact between theHellenic ^ and the Jewish mind ..... 8Condition of things at the first publication of the GospelKingdomIIFoundation of the Roman Church, A.D. 42 . . ... 12Recorded by 4/ St. Irenseus, / St. Clement of Rome, andSt. Dionysius of Corinth13Alluded to by Suetonius, A.D. 4715Testimony of St. Paul to its growth, A.D. 53 . .16Of Tacitus, to its spread among the nobility, A.D. 58 . . 17And as to the first persecution, A.D. 64 . . 18Nature of the work thus accomplished . . . ,. 19Fulfilment of St. Peter's vision seen in the variety mfof itssubjectsIts intrinsic contrast with Philosophy in the union ofdogma, morality, and worship . . . . 3What Pythagoras attemptedThe work of Plato " ....1 "Vll202526

viiiCONTENTSPAGEThe work of Aristotle27The work of Zeno 28The common effect reached by these four . . . .29Contrast of St. Peter's work30The power of " Follow Me "32This work of Peter as represented in the catacombs andmonuments of Rome35Parallel between Judaism and Christianity37Moses, as striking the rock, and as the type of Peter . . 37The three powers of dogma, morality, and worship, ascontinued from Moses in Judaism .... 39United and exalted in Christ ...... 40Transfused from His Person to the Apostles, and especiallyto Peter41The catacombs, the sarcophagi, and St. Leo, bearing witnessof these to each other42These powers weakened and disjointed in Greek philosophy 44LECTUREXVINEOSTOICISM AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCHI. Programme of the subject; gradual leavening of heathenphilosophy with Christian sentiments ...47The political and social sphere of the empire in whichPhilosophy was working ......49The great Latin writers, from Cicero to Tacitus, withoutany fixed belief in their own religion . . 51The Stoic philosophy alone in force in the reigns ofClaudius and Nero54Summary of its Kosmology, Theology, and Ethics . 55he four chief Stoics formed on these principles . . 57Seneca, his life and circumstancesHis view of the task and function of Philosophy .His conception of God? the world, cause and matter,corporeality of good60His conception of the human soul64Great advance on previous doctrine of his teaching onbeneficence, anger, revenge, placability ... 66How modified by his view of man's duty to himself . 68His doctrine on slaveryInconsistency between Seneca's life and writings . . 7157

CONTENTSIXHis superiority to all his predecessors in certain points,a case without parallelHis principles purely natural and pagan, his expres-PAGEsions almost Christian74What is the solution of this problem ? . . -75Musonius ; general sketch of his teaching . . .77Epictetus ; what function he assigned to Philosophy .What he believes of God and Providence ... 80The human mind and its kindred with God . .817379No personal subsistence after death. Suicide . . 82The bearing of his philosophy towards the gods ofpolytheismMarcus Aurelius ; outline of his philosophy . . 84Extinction of the human personality at death . . 86Points common to Seneca, Musonius, Epictetus, andMarcus Anrelius 88II. Points "*""*"Nstoicism and the Christian faith . . , 90-110i. The Stoic d _&*d in a human'body 902. Virtue, which is reason in action, the only)O( I . " * * " ft + 9 923. Subordination of all science to the end ofg934 he publicd 945. The culmination of this in the Stoic cosmopolitanism. . 956. The evidence of design and final causes inthe world's arraneremf all tinners in th^h^design to the good of mane mass of men sinners against the law ofreason and so against nature . . .100o. H -*»from 1-510. dof the world9899102106. ir. Contrast between the Stoic and the Christianends of man . . . 109Result of Stoicism from the accession of Claudius tothe death of Marcus Anrelius . . . .no

xCONTENTSLECTUREXVIITHE FIRST RESURRECTION OF CULTURED HEATHENISM INTHE NEOPYTHAGOREAN SCHOOLPAGEExtinction of the Pythagorean School in the time of Ciceroand of Seneca ........ ii IThree positions of Greek philosophy in reference to religion 114The society in which it started possessed a worship consistingof Prayer, Sacrifice, Oracles, and Mysteries . * 115How Philosophy had dealt with these118Its result in Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics a negation . 120Continuing belief of the mass in the polytheistic worship . 122Rise of a believing movement in Philosophy . . -123Philo ; his connection with it * 123Date and circumstances of his life ..... 124He attempts to marry the Greek science with the Hebrewrevelation . . . . . . fc 127The position which he gives to these two in regard to eachotherWhat Philo had in common with Greek philosophy, whathe borrowed from it, what he contributed to it . . 129The principle of revelation and the principle of holiness . 130His conception of God derm < I from Scripture and Tradi-LlOU"*""*"»*Metaphysical attributesAttributes relative to man ......132Human holiness a transcript of the divine . . . -133Philo's doctrine of human weakness and divine grace . 134Subordination of human sciences to theology . . 135By which self-knowledge being gained leads us through asense of our weakness to GodThe opposition of these principles to the previous course ofGreek philosophy down to Seneca . . . . 137Plutarch ; time and circumstances of his life . . .141First remaining representative of the NeopytbagoreanSCIlOOl "*».-..»..», 142His theodicea; the Supreme God . . . . . 142Constructor, not Creator of the world . . . .143The visible gods and the demonsTriple Providence128132145

CONTENTSXIPAGEarch's piety, and the place it takes in his system . 146main differences between Plutarch and his predecessors 147Points wherein Philo deflected from Jewish bhim . 150h mav V have dI. The doctrine of obtaining knowledge by immediaterevelation ........ 1522. The doctrine of intermediate powers between Godand the world* * '» » "* 5*3Employed by Plutarch to reduce Iris polytheism to unity . 153Review of the interval between Philo and Plutarch, A.D.40-90154Change from the old Roman world of Cicero . . . 157Probable cause of this change " "» » " * * 57LECTUREXVIIISTANDING-GROUND OF PHILOSOPHY FROM THE ACCESSION OFNERVA TO THAT OF SEVERUSAltered position of Philosophy in regard to the vulgarreligion from the time of Nerva160And in regard to the imperial government . . .161Alliance between the empire, philosophy^ and the polytheisticworship162Change of temper in the educated class generally , .162Religion of Epictetus compared with that of Plutarch . 164What it tended to166Contrast i Plutarch 167Dio Chrysostomus168His conception of the universe and the power ruling it .168Man's intuition of God .169Its fourfold expressionDio's Supreme God a Demiurge .170171Man's kinship with God, and the humanitarian doctrine asthe result172Plato's Demiurge, was he the prototype of Dio's ? . . 173The former distinguished from Zeus, the latter identifiedwith him173Contrast between the Greek and Eoman mind in contemporariesof this date175

xiCONTENTSTacitus, Pliny the Younger, Suetonius . . . .176The Stoic philosophy and the old belief united in Juvenal 177Hatred of Christianity in Tacitus, Pliny, and Trajan . 179The philosophic standing-point from Trajan's time . -179Conception of God and Providence common to Epictetus,Plutarch, and DioThe ideal teacher of EpictetusA messenger sent by God to teach man what is good and183184what evil ......... 186His office a bishopric which must be without distraction ofdomestic ties and duties186He must be inaccessible to all fear of men . . . .187The ideal of Epictetus had only been realised in theChristian Church189The sole open reference of Epictetus to Christians a witnessto tlu»ir heroism189Epictetus a heathen in his grounds of action . . .191But a heathen who has seen Christian teachers . . .192Position of philosophers in the Roman empire . . 194Function of Philosophy, as described ]>y Plutarch . . 195The supervision of the whole life exercised by philosophersSeneca and Attains195Persius and Cornutus-Taurus and his scholars , . .19?The house and court philosopher, the public teacher, thestrolling Cynic198Philosophical standing-point of Maximal Tyrius . . 201Apuleius of Madaara ........202Celsus-his conception of the one Supreme God . . . 203The common standing-ground of the cultured class in thesecond and third centuries hence deduced . . . 20LECTUREXIXTHE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHIC HEATHENISMThe sense in which a Supreme God was acknowledged byGreek philosophy in the time of Severus . . . 207Life of Apollonius of Tyana the embodiment of this con-ception208Date and circumstances of its composition ....209

CONTENTS . xinPAGEThe Life itself a romance devoid of historical truth . . 210Apollonius the typical disciple of Pythagoras . . .211His birth, youth, and education212He assumes the Pythagorean life ; its asceticism . .213His arrangement of his day and general conduct . .214He determines to travel in the pursuit of wisdom . .216Visits Babylon and the Indian king . . . . .217The Indian Brahmans 218Their doctrine of the soul219Their account of the constitution of the world . . . 220How this fits into the life and philosophy of Apollonius . 222After full comparison of his wisdom with the Indian wis-dom he returns to Ionia224His subsequent life as a public teacher .... 224His acts at Ephesus, where he stones the plague in theperson of an old beggar225He discourses at Athens and casts out a demon . . . 226Visits Corinth and delivers a young man from a ghoul . 227Braves Nero at Rome and raises a Roman bride to life . 228Visits Spain, Sicily, and G229H230^Ethiop230Whom he finds inferior to tl231Returns and advises the Em232Summarv of his activity as *232Transition to the suffering life of Apollonius . . . 233He is cited to Rome under the persecution of Domitian . 233His life at RomeHis conduct when tried bv ^^ DomDisappears from the Court and appears to Damis andmHis triumphant life in Gfm>f Trophonius and brings out of it the bin233234235236236237most reputed account of his d238ds of the life thus described ....238reference to Christ or to the Christian religion in thbook, while the time and the places are those in windthat religion first appeared . 240intended to be made an entirely independenfigure243

xiv . CONTENTSPAGEThe character given to him in its chief features . . 244i. Miraculous birtl 2442. His life dedicated to the knowledge of the divinity 2443. He has a knowledge of absent and future things . 2454. His power of working miracles . . . .2455. He is as great in doing as in teaching . . . 2466. He is the friend of 2467. He encounters suffering without fear . . . 247His miraculous departure f247Double imitation here practised by Philostratus . . 248Contrast on the other hand with the life of Christ . . 249i. Relationship of the human soul with the divinity . 249The task of Philosophy to restore the Kman3. Opposition to tyranny takes the place of oppositionto sin4. Suffering is either excluded or unreal . . .2545. The soul escaping from the body as from a prison . 255Attitude of Philostratus towards the Christian religion . 256Identical with that of the Emperor Alexander Severus . 257Results which we gain from the book of Philostratus . 258Seneca, Plutarch, Philostratus, three stages in heathenprogress259The work, not itself historical as regards its subject, containsimportant matter for history ..... 261250LECTUREXXTHE NEOPLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND EPOCHI. Positive side of the doctrine of Philostratus . . . 263Its relative side turned to Christianity ....264Identity as to the former with Neoplatonism . . 265Ammonias Sakkas and Plotinus, their time and place . 265Plotinus in some respects a real Apollonius . . . 267His system brought out whuii Christianity was contestingthe world with heathenism268Analysis of the universe according to Plotinus . . 268I. His Primal Being, the Infinite, the One and Good,and the Cause ......269

CONTENTSxvThe procession of all things from it necessary . . 273And has no separate substantial existence . .274The Second God or divine Mind .... 274The Third God, the Soul2752, The procession of the visible world from the soul . 276Connection with matter the cause of evil . .277Contradiction in the system hence arising . . 278The human soul in its three states-before, during,and after this life278Defect of conception of personality in the threestatesPAGE2823. Elevation of the mind above the world of sense . 283Happiness, life in accordance with nature . . 284Moral good and evil284Good, detachment from the body . . . .285Its highest point the doctrine of Ecstasy . . 286Attitude of the system to the polytheistic creed andworship287Plotinus, like Philostratus, ignores Christianity . 289Porphyrius arranger and explainer of the Plotinicsystem . . . . * " » " " 291lamblichus292The system of the last production and outcome ofHellenism *..... 293A complete antagonism with Christianity . . 294And the heathen analogon of it . . . H. 294II. Three great oppositions between the Neoplatonicsystem and the Christian Creed . . . 295I. The Primal Being-how reached by Plotinus . . 296Original start of Greek philosophy from a conceptionof physical unity296Conception of one mind by Anaxagoras . . . 298The point reached by Plato and Aristotle . .298Identity of the human Logos with the divine Logosa general doctrine-so stated by Cicero .This doctrine not altered in the interval betweenCicero and Plotinus. 299Effort to reconcile polytheism with this philosophicunity3012. Rejection of the doctrine of Creation by Plotinus . 303The philosophic substitute for it . . . 304VOL. III.300

xvi . CONTENTSPAGEThe Church's belief :i. In one God 52. In the Trinity of Personal Relations . . 3053. In the doctrine of C 3064. In the absolute abyss between the Being ofGod and the Being of creatures . . 3073. The relation between "the Divine," TO 0etor, anhuman nature in Xeoplatonism .308Practical scope of human life for the individual andthe commonwealth, as set forth in the Pythagorasof lamblichus. 309The Neoplatonic theory of immortality312The culminating point of the system .313The brotherhood rested on a fiction . 3*3The opposing Christian truth ; results of Personal!pon the relation between God and man . 314i. Man the creature of God2. The notion of evil and sin ....3. The freedom of the will . . . . .1 34. Redemption and Sunctification . . .35. Eternal life of the personal being . . .36. The assumption of a human body by theDivine Word7. The unity of the Spirit 3208. God the Creator as against the AbsoluteUnity321Note to pp. 296, 297.Connection of ancient with modern Pantheism . . 323-535LECTUREXXITHE RESPECTIVE POWER OP THE GREEK PHILOSOPHY AND THECHRISTIAN CHURCH TO CONSTRUCT A SOCIETYff the ground hitherto travelled over . . . 326power of philosophy in this period327fwas a triple union of belief, action, and worship. . 328Sacrifice, prayer, and priesthood universally established 329li

CONTENTSxvilPAGEhd with worshipurbance of the triple union by the denial of331divine unity332losophy amid this corruption . -334Traces of original revelation in Greek belief . . 334Double aspect presented by the heathen world . . 336II. i. Dissolution of the original union between belief anaction on the one hand and worship on the other 3382. Philosophy accepted by the higguid340f agreement in the teaching of philosophers 342Split between inward conviction and outwardworship342Scandals of the pretenders to philosophy344The separation of human conduct from belief andfrom worship in the best philosophic teachers . 3453. Disregard by phil Pd the labouring3464. Historical result of philosophy as to forming asociety, from Claudius to Constantino347I. The spectacle which met the eyes of Constantine 349The work of Peter at Rome repeated in each city cthe empire35°he triple teaching, pastoral, and sacerdotal office . 351finch runs out in its bearers into three gradations,but is exercised by all simultaneously353I. The manifestation to the world of the truth,mainly by word of mouth, under the twodivisions of preaching and catechising «, 354Specimen of its operation by St. Paul in...... 357Force of the catechistic instruction . . 3622. Union of the sacramental life with the truthas taught by the Church .3623. And with the offering of the ChristianSacrifice to the one God in all lands . 364Joint action of these three powers in formingthe Christian society . . . . 365In this joint action consists the definite establishmentof the Christian kingdom . 366Which is based upon the Person of Christ . 368

xviiiCONTENTSLECTUREXXIITHE CHURCH RECONSTRUCTING THE NATURAL ORDER BYTHESUPERNATURALPACKd Philosophy the battle of three hundred years 371Jerome's statement of the result .372lure of Philosophy to implant a doctrine373i. How the Church re-established the beliefPersonal God .3752. How the Church re-established belief in 1tinuance of the human personality after death . 379Correction of a grave philosophic error . . . 382orrection of an intense moral corruption . . 384How the Church re-established the doctrine ofin4. How the Church re-established the basis of moralityin the relation of man to his fellow-man . . 3905. How the Church established the proper relationbetween the individual and the commonwealth 3976. How the Church carried in her bosom a law ofnations " . . . .407Summary and conclusion 4°9

5741THEFORMATIONOF CHRISTENDOMTHE CHRISTIAN CHURCH AND THEGREEKPHILOSOPHYLECTUREXVTHE FOUNDATION OF THE ROMAN CHURCH, THE TYPEAND FORM OF EVERY PARTICULAR CHURCH; ITSCONTRAST WITH PHILOSOPHY, AND ITS DEVELOP-MENT OF THE JUDAIC EMBRYO.THE last word of Greek philosophy had been spoken,and it consisted in imagining the world to be a cityof gods and men, ruled by right reason, but of whiche denizen man could hope for no future personalife. The work which Pythagoras conceived andAttempted, of a religious society bearing in its bosoma divine philosophy, had never in the course of fivehundred years been accomplished. Again, the attemptof Plato and of Aristotle to found an universal philo-phy had broken down under a race of sceptics andeclectics. The fusion which had resulted from aselection of tenets based on no principle, had broughtwith it slackness, apathy, and disbelief of all divinetruths in the philosophic mind. Cicero, the spokesmanVOL, III. A

2 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMof such a mental state, and the voice of the wholecentury in which he lived, and well-nigh of thatwhich succeeded him, fluctuated between contendingsystems whose variety and inconsistency were to himan argument against the existence of any absolutetruth. The society of all this period in its intensemoral corruption attested the bad effect of this philosophicalcollapse on the higher thinking minds. Theeighty years succeeding Cicero's death form a periodwhich, far either from, improving the philosophicalstanding-point or arresting the dissolution of manners,was conspicuous for its barrenness in the realm ofabstract thought, and its descent into the lowestabysses of sensuality.The greater part of this period was also conspicuousfor its unexampled prosperity. We have an unimpeachableeye-witness of this in a contemporary.Since he was a man of leisure and wealth, occupyinga very high position in the second city of the empire,and was moreover a provincial, and one of the subjectraces, and at the same time a man of great piety andlarge capacity, he furnishes the most unsuspicious andtelling testimony which we could have on such apoint. It was just severity years after the battle ofActiurn when Philo described his legation to theEmperor Caius ; he reckoned himself at this time anelderly man, and was probably sixty years of age.Thus he would have been born just as that pacificationtook effect with which Augustus had closed the periodof the civil wars. And he speaks of it with a sort oftransport as a time like none that had been seenbefore. His past life fell entirely under the two reignsof Augustus and Tiberius. Of the first he says: 11 Legation to Caius, sec. 21.

FOUNDATION OF THE ROMAN" This is Csesar who calmed the storms wh*" Pl*1swept down from every side ; who healed the commdiseases of Greeks and barbarians, bursting out asthey did from east and south, from north and west,and filling land and sea with miseries. This is theman who did not merely relax but unbind the fetterswith which the world was oppressed^^^» ; who cleared thesea of pirates while he filled it with merchantThis is he who gave freedom to every city, whreduced disorder to harmony, who civilised and madobedient nations before unsociable and brutal. Thisis he who multiplied Greece many times over, whilehe Hellenised the barbarous land in its more importantdivisions; the guardian of peace ; the distributorto every man of his due share; who conferredboundless favours on the general mass; who neveronce in his whole life concealed or reserved for himselfany good or excellent thing." . Of Tiberius he speaksas one who enjoyed the supreme power for three-antwenty years, and never allowed any seed of war tsmoulder or raise its head either in Greece or inbarbarian territory, but bestowed peace and its blessingsto the end of his life with rich and unsparinghand and mind ; who was inferior to none in race,to none in accomplishments; for who among thosethat nourished in his day was better endowed withunderstanding, or more able to give it utterance ?What king or emperor lived to more prosperous oldage than he, who for his shrewdness even when youngwas called an elder ?And it is specifically to the imperial power thatPhilo attributes this state of things,1 saying ofAugustus that if ever there was a Fman to whom1 Legation to Caius, sec. 22.LIBRARY Si. MARY'S COLLEGE

4 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMnew and unprecedented honours should be voted, itwas he, both as the beginning of the imperial race,and as the first and greatest and universal benefactor,in that instead of the multitude of governors whoexisted before he entrusted the common vessel of theState to himself as one pilot of admirable skill in thescience of government to steer it.1 For the imperialauthority was, it is true, irresponsible, but its concentrationin one hand gave it so great a power forgood that since its establishment misfortune like avenomous reptile could lurk indeed in corners, butcould not attack any large district. That power had discoveredand brought to light everything that was good,and banished evils to the extremity of the earth.2On the accession of Caius in A.D. 3/,3 Philo describeshim as assuming the supreme power overevery land and sea, which were free from all sedition,and ruled by admirable laws. East and west, north andsouth, harmonised together, Greek with barbarian,soldier with citizen, in the enjoyment of one commonpeace. This was an extraordinary fortune addedto his ready-made inheritance of all good things, avast treasury, well-provided forces by land and sea,a revenue flowing as from an exhaustless fountain,and a territory stretching over three continents,the inhabitants of which admired him as theyhad never admired any emperor before, not as those1 Thus the view taken by Philo of Roman affairs may be consideredthe exact contradictory of that on which Tacitus composed his history,whose object, says Merivale (vol. viii. p. 84), was "to show that thesupremacy of Rome, the final cause of her existence, depends on thepre-eminence of an oligarchy."2 Sec. 5 and 7. The words which Philo puts into the mouth ofMacro, as exhorting Caius, may well be supposed to represent his ownopinion. See, again, the letter of Agrippa to Caius, sec. 39.3 Sec. 2.

FOUNDATION OF THE ROMAN CHURCH 5who expected to have the possession and enjoyment ofall good things, but as those who felt that they actuallyhad a very superabundance of prosperity. Nothingcould be seen from city to city but altars, sacrifices,votaries in white garments and crowned with garlands,festivals, assemblies, musical contests, horse races,revels and feasts, delights for every sense. The richwere not better off than the poor, the masters thanthe slaves, since the occasion gave equal ^ privileges toall, so that the age of Saturn, sung by poets, no longerseemed a fiction, on account of the universal prosperityand happiness.This judgment of a provincial and an eye-witnessmay surely be set against and contrasted with thejudgment of Tacitus, as expressed sixty years afterwardsfrom the standing-point of an old Eoman aristocrat.No doubt in the time of the latter, not merelythe passing madness of Caius, but the long experienceof cruelty under Nero and Domitian, had thrown furtherlight upon the nature of the imperial power, and givenmatter enough for the most gloomy portraiture of irresponsibleauthority lodged in unworthy hands. Butin his own time Philo compared it with what had precededit, the heathen domination, that very " regnum,"in fact, which the Romans themselves so abhorred,that for the mere suspicion of its name they had slainJulius; and with this, whether as seen in such rulersas Herod and Cleopatra, the Seleucidse and the Ptolemies,their predecessors, or in the proconsuls andpropraetors_-of the later republic, who left Eome asruined men, to gorge themselves with the spoils ofprostrate kingdoms. Now in this comparison, whichthe practical sense of the moment as well as reflectionon the past seemed equally to justify, the emperor

6 THU FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMappeared to Philo a ruler, not a despot ; one whosepower was based on law and wielded temperately forthe ood of the whole mass of nations over whomthority was placed in his single hands in order thatry part of so vast and composite an empire mighteno tranquillity, live in amity, and develop its albut boundless resources. That such was the effectduring the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius, Philodeclares with a profusion of statement, which, as wehave cited him, has been somewhat curtailed. Asone of the subject races, and as one whose moralcharacter and judgment stand far higher than that ofTacitus, how can his testimony to what he saw of thebenefits which during all his life he, and his people,and all the other peoples had enjoyed from the imperialpower, be rejected ? If in estimating the work ofAugustus we compare it tacitly in our minds withlimited monarchy, as developed in Christian nationsunder the slow education of principles growing intothe fibre of the individual and the community, we areguilty not merely of an anachronism, but of a greatinjustice. The Grajco-Roman world being what itwas, could anything better than the rule devised byAugustus have been set up in order to pacify, tame,and educate it ?It may then be said that no previous time hadshown anything like the prosperous tranquillity of thetwo generations following the battle of Actium. Norwas it a prosperity merely material, but arising fromwise laws, fairly administered.1 Not only order reigned,but justice ; and peace flowed from both. As to self-government indeed, the nations subject to the emperordid not possess A that of which thev *r had shown them-evvo/Jiia in Philo.

FOUNDATION OF THE ROMAN CHURCH 7selves to be incapable. The Komans through abusehad lost it. For good government, however, both enjoyedsuch a degree of it as they had rarely attainedbefore.1 If the senate trembled at the rumour of conspiracy,Alexandria as well as Jerusalem were profoundlythankful for a consideration which the profligatedaughter of the Ptolemies, or the Idumean heirof the Maccabees, hadInever shown them, while forthe rest might it not be as well to live under oneCaesar,2 as to be liable to a senate such as Cicerodescribes in his letters, to a Verres, or a Clodius, or aDolabella, or even a Pompey ?3Viewed in connection with its moral corruption andits religious apathy, this singular prosperity of theGraeco-Roman world at the time specified by Philo isthe more remarkable. Far from there being anylonging after divine things, any unsatisfied yearningsafter truth and certitude, or any strong conviction asto a future state, no age appears to us more destituteof these than the age of Virgil, Horace, Livy, andOvid, no period less, illumined with high and noblethought than the reign of Tiberius, as pictured for usby Tacitus. And yet at this time the Greek mind hadbeen brought during three centuries into close contactwith the Jewish. By the founding of Alexandria,and by the policy of the Ptolemies, when they, therepresentatives of Hellenic culture, took possession of1 Von Reumont, i. 347. " So war doch unter Augustus und TiberiusH -_*- -"und gerechter als jemals die der Konige der gestiirzten Reiche gewesenwar."2 "Neque provinciae ilium rerum statum abnuebant, suspecto senatuspopulique imperio, ob certamina potentium et avaritiam magistratuum ;invalido m legum auxilio, quse vi, ambitu, postremo pecunia * turbabantur,"Tacit. Ann. i, 2.M"

8 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMthe throne of the Pharaohs, a large colony of Jewswas drawn to their new capital, a quarter assigned tothem, ample privileges granted, and almost a Jewishnationality gradually established in Egypt. Thitherthe richly-endowed university drew the most learnedGreeks, and beside them grew up a school of Judaicphilosophy, which, using as its own the language ofGreece, and appropriating its culture, strove to penetratethe heathen wisdom with the divine wisdom ofMoses. The sacred books had long been translatedinto that language which was used in cultivated societythroughout the East. Moreover, Jews in no smallnumber were settled for commercial purposes in allthe great cities of the West; Agrippa speaks to theEmperor Caius of his city Jerusalem as the metropolisof innumerable colonies in every region of the habitableworld, in Europe, in Asia, so far as the Satrapiesbeyond the Euphrates, and in Africa.1 We may besure that they were generally among the most prosperousof the population, and that they commonlyunited learning and refined taste with their commercialpursuits. One of such men was Philo ; and he possessesfor us an unique interest in his still existingworks as a representative of Jewish knowledge, penetratedwith Greek culture, who had attained ripe manhood,say fifty years, at the time of our Lord's teaching.The prosperity which he describes belonged preciselyto that time in which the Three Years' Ministry tookplace, and the infant Church arose. His prodigioussuperiority in every moral point of view to the contemporarypagan authors is at once apparent to any1 Legation to Caius, sec. 36. Compare Acts ii. 5, 9-11 : theenumerations in the two cases bear a marked resemblance to eachother.

FOUNDATION OF THE ROMAN CHURCH 9one who will read one of his remaining treatises.msidering what he was, and the large disseminationJews, such more or less as himself, through thewhole Roman Empire, considering their wealth, learning,activity, and their comparatively pure life, it is apoint very much to be noted how little effect on theGraeco-Roman mind up to the time of Claudius thislong contact with what has been called the orientalmind had produced. We cannot trace anv effectiveinfluence exercised by them on heathen society,thought, i and manners, in Greek and Latin writersbefore Philo's time. We might fairly have expectedthat nobler ideas as to the being and personality ofGod, as to moral purity, perhaps as to social duties,would have permeated society and laid hold of thinkingminds among the heathen from this source. If thloss of self-government by the subject nations, if thsense of their helplessness under Roman power, ofnational degradation, of human culture in its nationsform losing its characteristic stamp, of the supports ttward and inward life giving way amid natdecline, would of themselves produce a lively feelingof needs craving to be supplied, of our earthly being'swants and failures, of man's moral and spiritual imper-?ctions, of the frailty and worthlessness of all externathings, of the endless chasm between the world andGod, between nature and spirit, then all these causeswere in full operation for generations before the timf the Emperor Claudius, and yet no indicat1 It is exactly thus that Zeller supposes Christianity and Neo-platonism to have drawn their joint origin from the needs of theirtime : he first makes Christianity contemporaneous with Neoplatonism,which it preceded by at least two hundred years ; and then makes itto arise out of yearnings which itself created. Philosophic der Gfriechen,vol. v. pp. 391, 392.

10 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMh a temper appear in the surviving literatues in the history of that period, All these fese subsequently, but the contact of the GreelJewish mind for two full centuries had not pduced them. They were biding their time to becomefruitful, when a higher power, which had not yetappeared, should impregnate the nations, satisfying thewants which it had taught the human heart to feel.It is quite another state of mind which Philo portrayso us in his picture of the nations at the accession ofCaius, an intense enjoyment of the goods of life, andan exultation in the peace and tranquillity which thestrong hand of the Emperor had established over threecontinents. Men were absorbed in outward thingsrather than pining for inward sources of strength.The settlement of Jews in the great cities of the worldbefore our Lord's coming must be viewed as a mostimportant disposition of Providence, but to appreciateit fully we must contrast the sterility of the effectproduced before with the fruitfulness which ensuedafter His coming. Up to the time of Claudius, inspite of a large number of Jews settled at Rome, andoying Roman citizenship, Isis and Anubis hadinfluenced Roman society quite as much as the religionof Moses. They were the favourite gods whichthe great Roman ladies worshipped with calamitousresults.If then we would rightly appreciate the externaland internal condition of the times in which the first1 Dubois-Cuchan, vol. i. 382, says, '* Le Judaisme resta commeenfoui dans un coin de Torient, et n'en sortit que par la transformationchretienne. Jusque lit ce ne fut qu'un germe cache, qu'une sortede cbrysalide religieuse, et ce ivest qu'en brisant sa vieille enveloppeque 1'esprit qu'il renfermait put planer, sur la terre." See alsoFriedlaender, SittcnyescMchte Roms, iii. p. 505, who gives good reasonsfor this.

FOUNDATION OF THE ROMAN CHURCH I Ipublication of the Gospel-kingdom took place, wemust bear in mind the great temporal prosperity, that" immense majesty of the Koman peace " which a worldstrained to the utmost by the jealous armaments ofrival nations ought at least to admire. Not less shouldwe note that profound corruption of manners whichmade the domestic lives of even the greatest men, suchas Augustus, sinks of pollution, not adequately to bedescribed without contamination. It was a corruptionof manners both represented and authorised by thedolatrous polytheism which was in full possession aswell of public as of private life, dissolving the marriedlife in nations yet possessing the institution cmonogamy. These two things as to the general massmoreover, in the realm of thought that lassitude andathy of the Hellenic mind betokened by the eclecticfusion and faltering accents of its philosophy, andreflected in its Eoman scholars. Nor must we forgetthat cultivated Greeks and Jews had been broughtogether not only at Alexandria but in all the citiesf the empire, without the higher knowledge andurer life of the Jew communicating themselves inay appreciable degree to the Gentile.The beginning of quite a different state of thingsis full of interest, and it takes place in the reign ofClaudius. Instead now of Jews seated to the numberof many thousands at Rome, and invested more or lesswith the privileges of Roman citizenship, while theyremained not indeed without occasional proselytes, butwith all their Jewish feelings and convictions isolatedamid foreign customs and corrupt worship, we shalltrace the foundation of a community absorbing graduallythe Gentiles into its bosom, and imparting tothem the worship of one God, while it ceased to be

12 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMJewish itself. Here, if anywhere in history, we hdefinite result springing from a definite cause. Fromthis time forth the publication of a certain great factconducted by Jewish preachers affected Greeks andomans as they never were affected before.Twelve years had passed after the Ascension, duringhich, according to the precept1 which they had receivedfrom their Lord, the Apostles had preached onlyto the Jews. These years accomplished, the ChiefApostle had been chosen by Divine Providence to showthat the end of this restriction was at hand, and tdmit the Gentile Cornelius into the bosom of thChurch. By this event a new horizon was openedto the Apostles. At once the great cities of theRoman Empire were marked out to them as centresfrom which the Gospel-kingdom was to spread; butfirst and most of all the imperial city itself. Assoon as it was clear that the gift of " repentance untolife"2 had been bestowed on the Gentiles, Romewas indicated as the great field for such a work.The very name of Cornelius, " a centurion of theItalian band," pointed Homewards. It was in exactaccordance with Peter's position as the bearer of thekeys that he should first open the house of God tothe Gentiles: and it was no less in accordance with itthat he should found the chief and principal Churchin the very heart of heathendom. And this wasrought about by events seemingly the most unlikelyto have such an issue. Towards the conclusionthe thirteenth year, he had been seized by HerodAgrippa, and was on the point of being put to deaF^JV WWVVWt *^J T */ 5Sanguined, p. 1972 Acts xi. 18.

FOUNDATION OF THE ROMAN CHURCH 13when delivered miraculously from prison, upon wli»it is said he " departed and went into another pThat the kingdom in which Herod ruled would hencerth,so long as Herod was its ruler, be unsafe forhim, is plain. But, moreover, that other place, ofwhich, for certain reasons,2 the Evangelist did notdisclose the name, is known by the unanimous testimancient writers 3 to have been the cit ofRome, where in the second year of the EmpClaudius Peter laid the foundation and organisedthe construction of the Roman Church. The doubleterm used of this event by ancient writers is oneof great significance and pregnant meaning. As ahouse is not a chance collection of stones and mortar,but is constructed on a definite plan for a preconceiveduse, so when they say that Peter founded and constructedthe Roman Church, they mean that heinstituted a society with the principle of life in itself,exerting definite action on its members, and possessinga definite government. Nothing can be more distinctthan this statement of * St. Irenaeus, nor more unim-peachable than his authority. But, further, exactlywhat he had expressed by metaphor had been saidin direct words by a contemporary and successor of1 Acts xii. 17.2 Hagemann, Die Romische Kirche, pp. 661-663, suggests thedanger of mentioning the beginning of the Roman Church when St.Paul was on his trial before Nero at Rome,3 Eusebius, Hist. ii. 14; Orosius, vii. 6; St. Leo, Serrn. 82, cap. 4,where the two presences of St. Peter at Rome, the first in the reign ofClaudius, and the second in that of Nero, are alluded to. " Neeinundi dominam times Romam, qui in Caiaphse domo expaverassacerdotis ancillam. Num quid aut judicio Pilati aut sasvitiaJudasorum minor erat vel in Claudio potestas, vel in Nerone erudelitas."See Sanguineti, p. 194, De Sede Romana B. Petri.4 St. Irenaeus. iii. 3. Oe/xeXicocra^res o5*> Kal 6iKQ8o/jLri

14 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMSt. Peter in his office, who. writing to the CChurch in the same generation as the martyrdomthe two Apostles Peter and Paul, observes that1i great multitude of the elect were drawn togetherd associated by them in a holy polity." He addsthat " by the endurance of many sufferings and ttures they became among us," that is, at IImost honourable example." This term, polity.in itself all which has been above indicated, for justas the Principate of the empire -^^ was a polity whsubjects were governed by it civilly, so what theApostles set up was a holy polity for the governmentf souls. Nor must we omit to remark a pidentity in St. Clement's expression with that ofTacitus. Those whom the third Pope after St. Petermentions as associated in a divine polity with the twoApostles, and by their admirable endurance of sufferingsbecoming in Rome a great example, and thosewhom the heathen historian mentions as victims ofNero's persecution, are " a great multitude."2 It isy another image of the word polity, when Diony 3Bishop of Corinth, writing to the Romans about thyear 170, calls them "the plantation of Peter andPaul."It appears then that Peter came to Rome to doexactly that which the Roman law most expresslyforbade, since it looked with the utmost jealousy uponany college or fellowship of men bound together byrules of its own, and not recognised by the senate.1 St. Clemens, Epist. ad Corint. cap. 6.>2 TTO\V TrXrjOos £K\¬KT£V> 6'irti>e$ TroXXds di/ctas KCU /Saadyous Sid'i)\ov TraOovres, farodftyfM /odXXtoroz/ eywovro iv TJ/JUV. " Qpoems affecit-prime correpti qui fatebantur, deinde judicio eorummultitudo ingens-convict! suut."8 Quoted by Eusebius, ii, 25. rr\v dro llerpov Kal IlduXou (fivreiavv PajMcucov re KO.I KopwOiwv

FOUNDATION OF THE KOMAN CHURCH I 5is suggests a sufficient reason i why the Ewriting, while Peter was still alive, what would fallto the hands of foes as well as friends, passedover in silence both the sphere of his action and allwhich he accomplished in it. Again, the narrativeof St. Luke ends with the appearance of St. Paul atome to justify his conduct before the Emperor Nero,hich would supply a further adequate reason fassing over all mention of the founding a Churchat Rome. But it is a fact that St. Luke is silentabout St. Peter's acts for a period of several yearsafter his delivery from prison, and this period exactlycorresponds with the historical statement of theRoman Church's foundation. It is only after St.Peter had been driven out of Rome by the edict of theEmperor Claudius 2 banishing the Jews, who had raisedtumults concerning Christ, that St. Luke makes himreappear at the Council of Jerusalem. The mentionof this tumult, and of the emperor's decree arising outof it by his heathen biographer, gives us anotherassurance that at this time the Christian faith had" ^^^ jbeen planted in Rome. His words point evidentlyto the stir created among the Jewish residents atRome by that event, which broke them up into antagonisticparties, some accepting, some rejecting theMessiah declared to them. Hence would follow naturallythe expulsion of foreign Jews from Rome, whowould be represented as the cause of the "tumult."Again, in the year 53, at the end of eleven years from1 See Aberle's treatise, Theologische Quartcdschrift, 1868, p. 3, wholays down the important rule, that the writings of the New Testamentare the literary productions of a persecuted community, which wasforming itself under the pressure of persecution.2 Sanguineti, p. 199, makes the expulsion of St. Peter from Romein virtue of this decree to occur in the year 47. Suet. Claudius, 25." Judaeos impulsore Christo assidue tumultuantes Roma expulit."

16 THK FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMthe first preaching of St. Peter, we have a very strikingtestimony to the work which he had done in thecapital of the Roman Empire, and the chief seat of idolworship. St. Paul, writing to the Roman Christiansat that time, renders thanks to God for their " faithbeing spoken of throughout the whole world," andthat " their obedience had reached all men," termswhich carry with them the meaning of a completelyconstituted and very flourishing Church. He callsthem besides, " full of goodness and all knowledge,and able to admonish others," and " desires much tosee them that he might impart some gratuitous spiritualgift to confirm them, that is, to console himselfand them with their mutual faith," language againwhich implies the complete formation of a Church.1But he, moreover, alleges a very remarkable reasonwhy he had not hitherto visited them. He statesthat it had been his object, while labouring at thepublication of the Gospel-kingdom from Jerusalem allround in a circle to Illyricum, and there plantingChurches, not to build on another man's foundation.2Here he uses exactly the two words applied by ancientwriters to Peter's work at Rome, that is, founding andbuilding: and he adds, " For this reason I have beenmany times prevented coming to you," that is, becauseyou were already founded and built by another. Butwhen St. Paul uses such language, it is evident thatthis other must be at least of equal rank with himself.Nor did he indeed avoid simple preaching where otherApostles preached, for this he had done in Judaea ;he avoided founding a Chnrch on another's foundation.1 Rom. i. 8; xvi. 19; xv. 14; i. n.r ^5 See above.St

FOUNDATION OF THE ROMAN CHUHe adds that he will take the opportunitygoing into Spain to visit them, words again implyingthat they did not need his work as an Apostle to foundtheir Church, because it had already been done byanother. And, in fact, five years later his own appeal toCeesar led him as it were incidentally t/ to Rome, wherehe was destined to do a great work, to be associated inlabour and in martyrdom with Peter, and so, notwithstandinghis own words, to have his authority from ageto age appealed to, as deposited in the superior Princi-pate of the Roman Church. If, however, we putthese several expressions of his letter together, theyintimate not only that the Roman Church had beenalready founded and built, that is, organised, butthat it had attained so great a distinction that itsfaith and obedience were spoken of among Christiansall over the world.The next incident we are told concerning it comesfrom a pagan source, and assures us that in the year58, the very year of St. Paul's first visit to Rome, thehighest Roman nobility had been brought under theinfluence of the Faith. In that year Tacitus mentionsthat Pomponia Grsecina, wife of Plautius, theconqueror of Britain, who was charged as an adherentof a " foreign superstition," was committed to the judgmentof her husband.2 It was a charge involvingboth life and reputation, but the husband acquittedhis wife, who continued, says Tacitus, to an advancedage, to indulge her sorrowful mode of existence andsad spirit, words which all commentators had inter-1 See Sanguineti, pp. 140-143.2 " Isque prisco institute, propinquis coram, de capite famaque con-jugis cognovit, et insontem nuntiavit. Longa huic . . . setas et con-tin uatristitia fuit. . . , Per quadraginta annos non cultu nisi lugubri,non animo nisi msesto esrit." oVOL.III.

I 8 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMpreted as intimating the Christian profession. But inthese days when the catacombs are revealing theirsecrets to the sagacity and rare learning of one whomay be called almost their first true explorer, thename of Pomponius Gnecinus, the near relative of thelady named above, has been found in the inscriptions ofthe cemetery of Callistus, and it is rendered most highlyprobable that she is the very Lucina known in the timesof the Apostles for her devotion to the martyrs, andher burying their relics in her own sepulchre.Thus when Seneca and Burrus were the confidentialministers of Nero, and when St. Paul was brought aprisoner to Home by his appeal to Cassar, and as suchwas placed in the custody of this very Burrus, as praetorianprefect, one of the noblest Roman ladies wastried on an accusation of having received the hatefulforeign superstition. It is of the highest probability boththat she was well known to Seneca, and that he waspresent at the examinations which St. Paul underwentbefore the emperor. Thus the philosopher and theFaith were at least brought into the closest contact.Six years later, in the year 64, we have the unimpeachablewitness of Tacitus to the greatness ofthe work accomplished by St. Peter and St. Paul inthe twenty-two years which had elapsed since thefirst coming of the former to Rome. When thepersecution of Nero broke out, he records that a"vast multitude" gave the testimony of martyrdomto their belief.1 We may thus compute what hadbeen the growth of a community, which so few yearsafter its first origin was strong enough to render sucha proof of its faith. We may note at the same timehow in the centre of heathenism, under the eyes of1 Anna!, 15, 44

FOUNDATION OF THE ROMAN CHURCH 19Nero, arnid a society eaten out with the most profligatecorruption, a work had been accomplishedunheard of upon the earth before. It was not merelyamong Jews, prepared by the knowledge of the onetrue God, and by the expectation of a Messiah, butout of Gentiles in their worst stage of moral decline,that a spiritual community had been founded, whichd pass through such a shock, and far f ^^&^B-Dtransmit its life onwards with a yet more vigorousgrowth. Such a result supposes a vast work of previouscharity, the work of converting soul by soul, ofinstructing, catechising, baptizing, holding assembliesfor preaching and for worship within the precincts cprivate houses, which alone were in a measure safiunder the protection of domestic liberty. In thismanner the whole sacramental life had to be transfusedby the daily operation of its powers into a massof converts, partly Jewish, partly heathen, and withregard to all these latter it was requisite to implantthe new principle of obedience to foreign teacherswithout public warrant, and to make the new principleof faith in the unseen the spring of every action. Wesee, then, that the Church, which in its eleventh yearwas already renowned among all Christians for sucha faith and such an obedience, was after another elevenyears, and before the episcopate of its founder hadterminated, the first to incur persecution from theemperor. In that persecution its witnesses, enduringevery extreme of mockery and cruelty, amounted toa vast multitude, as attested by one who denouncedtheir belief as a pernicious superstition, and declaredtheir crimes to merit the severest punishment.1 Now,1 " Repressa in prsesens exitiabilis superstitio . . . sontes et novis-sima exempla meritos." It is the contemporary and admirer of Trajan,

20 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMbeside the pressure of continued unlawfulness, with allits individual sufferings, history has noted ten distinctattacks of the emperors on the Christian people in thefirst three centuries. It was fitting1 that the first ofthese, the augury and anticipation of the rest, shouldfall as the token and crown of its eminence upon thatChurch which possessed the superior principate. Butwhere in human things would it be possible to imaginea greater contrast than between the Rome which livedfrom Cicero to Claudius, in all pride and sensuality,and breathes to us still in the pages of its greatwriters, and the Home which produced its witnessesclad in the skins' of beasts and the garments of pitchat the games of Nero. While his " golden house "occupied three of the seven hills, Christian Romeburied its founders, when their victory was won, inthe chamber beside the Ostian Road, and in thesepulchral vault of the Vatican, that first hall ofassembly of a more than royal line ?lBut that we may appreciate the work of Peter, itrequires to be more accurately described.The conversion of the centurion Cornelius, the first-and the friend of Pliny, who speaks, and his words cast a light upontheir conduct in the persecution of Bithynia and the judgment of St.Ignatius.1 De Rossi, Roma Sott< r. ii. 370, notes the sedulous care of theChurches, especially the Apostolical, " dei sepolcri del lovo vescovi,come testimoni della successione e della fede derivate dagli apostoli."Thus from St. Peter to Pope Victor in 197, the Popes were buried inCrypta Vaticana : there the successors of St. Peter were ranged inburial round him, as at Alexandria those of St. Mark beside him(toin. i. 31). In the time of Pope Zephyrinus, " Caio publicamentecitava in Roma gli eretici a riconoscere nei trofei del Vaticano e dellavia Ostiense i pegni dell' apostoiica origine della chiesa Romana, edella sua fede " (ii. 370). e-yw 5e rd rpoTraia. r&v 'ATrocrroXwi'^ai. eav yap BeXr/vys d/ceX#eti' f?ri rb ^OLTLKOLVOV, ?} eVl rrjv odbv TT)VTO. r pir 'cuaSee Euseb. ii. 25, who states that their tombs bore the names of theApostles.

FOUNDATION OF THE ROMAN CHURCH 21fruit of the Gentiles, was accompanied by a visibledescent of the Holy Ghost which recalled to mind inits chief circumstances the day of Pentecost itself.Indeed it betokened no less an event than theactual extension of the kingdom of God from Jewishconverts to the whole world of the Gentiles. It hadbeen preluded by a vision in which Peter, praying atnoonday on the top of the house of Simon at Joppa,had seen " the heaven open, and a vessel like a greatsheet descending upon him, bound at its four corners,and let down upon the earth, in which were all four-footed creatures of the earth, wild beasts, reptiles, andbirds, and a voice was heard saying, Arise, Peter, killand eat." Such was the divine intimation of whatwas presently to be. There followed immediatelyu^on this vision the conversion of Cornelius, hiskinsmen and particular friends. But the Apostlesat Jerusalem recognised in this act the opening upof the whole Gentile world to their preaching. Peter'simprisonment by Herod, and miraculous delivery bythe angel, happened shortly afterwards, upon whichhe forthwith " departed into another place." And inthis other place it was that the vision in all itsexactness was accomplished. In Rome, the seat ofpower, the capital of all the subject provinces, whithercongregated all that was rich, ambitious, distinguished,but likewise the central slave-market of the world, thesink of the nations, whither drained all that was vileand suffering - in Rome Peter was to find the four-footed creatures of the earth, its wild beasts, reptiles,and birds, whom he should spiritually kill and ethat is, amalgamate into one community. Whatimage could more clearly represent the variety ofPeter's Gentile converts ? here and there a senat

22 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMsuch as Cornelius Pudens, here and there a highbornlady, such as Pomponia Grascina, but manyfreedmen and slaves from the household of Narcissus,from the imperial palace itself, from hundreds ofother houses, whose domestics were like a nation,women of all ranks, the unlearned and the poor.Add to these the foreigners of all nations and allreligions, of all climates and of every temperamentfrom the extreme of Eastern superstition to that ofWestern barbarism, who were to be found at Rome,and from whom the preaching of the Apostle wouldselect the recipients of divine grace. The populationof Rome at this time represented all the diversitiesof human nature, and all the various trials which thevitality of the Gospel-seed was to experience in futuretimes and distant regions were collected here, so thatits Church would be an epitome of the Church in thewhole world. These were they who had been all intheir natural condition "common and unclean," sunkin the impurities of heathenism, though diverse intheir qualities, but whom the mouth of Peter was tocleanse by the word and the power following on thatword, and then to offer up in mystical sacrifice toGod. Then the Holy Ghost came down visibly tosignify and begin a work which had had noparallel since the beginning of the world. Thehighest effort of philosophy had been to lay hold ofchoice minds: it never dreamed of admitting themultitude into its lecture-rooms, of associating theslave with the free-born, of setting down the richand poor to feed at one table, of raising women tothe utmost height of its precepts. The hetsera indeedwas at times seen at an Epicurean feast, but withoutputting off the reproach of her life. It is only in the

FOUNDATION OF THE ROMAN CHURCH 23Gospel that she wiped the Master's feet with her hair,and i entering a sinner came forth a saint : only in theChurch that Mary Magdalen becomes the first exampleand the type of a whole class which washes to thewhitest purity robes that have been soiled in thedeepest pollution. In short, philosophy never essayedto erect a discipline tender enough to receive theweakest, and strong enough to enable women andchildren to die, not as an exit from evils, but inwitness of truth. The attempt to unite in a moralband men and women of all nations, all ranks, allvarieties of mind, education, and outward circumstances,was entirely new in its conception. Thiswas what Peter did for the first time, in the greatestand most dissolute city of the empire, at its worstperiod, when a Claudius and a Nero ruled its men,when Agrippina and Poppsea swayed its female society.The first point in which his work stands in thedeepest contrast with any previous philosophy, is thevariety of the subjects on whom it was exercised.More remarkable yet is the contrast which in itsinmost nature it exhibits.Peter appeared at Home as one sent by another.Himself a messenger, an ambassador, he called onmen to accept as Redeemer, Prophet, Priest, and King,a Person who a few years before had appeared onearth as man in all these characters. Further, hecalled on men to discard the thousand gods ofheathendom for the one God whose Son this Persond to be : and moreover to follow a course oflife which should be after the pattern of His; andto join in a worship the beginning and end of whichcentred in Him. The existing pagan religions hadherited a worship from which morality had long

24 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMbeen severed. The existing philosophies had cultivatedmorality, and Stoicism at least had grounded iton dogma, but no one of them had any worship ofits own. Now, in this new teaching the dogmas offaith, the rules of morality, and the practices ofworship had a common root in the Person whosekingdom was proclaimed, and all these, again, wereunited in visible symbols, sanctioned by Him, andderiving from Him their power to hold together avisible society. The beginning is laid by the livingword : nothing short of the fulness, the persuasiveness,the pliability, the force of such an instrument ashuman speech would suffice to declare the message,on the acceptance of which all depends, no attractionbut that of soul upon soul sufficed to render it acceptable.As this double power had been used to theutmost by Him who spoke as never man spake, andfrom whom virtue went forth, so was it used by allthose who spoke in His name. The vocal presence,the living person, is the indispensable basis of thework of conversion to a new faith. But when thishas done its first task, when men have listened andbelieved, the marks of the King are set upon thosewho receive Him, and they become His by powerof another kind. The illumination which the livingword of the vocal presence had prepared was completedin Baptism, by which the name of the triuneGod was confessed and accepted, and a sacred characterimpressed on the recipient: aud provision wasmade for daily worship and for daily life in a sacrificewherein this King and Redeemer communicated Himselfto the soul. But in these acts were stored upat once the highest doctrine and the ground of allmorality to the Christian. By his baptism he became

FOUNDATION OF THE ROMAN CHURCH 25the consecrated creature of God : by his sharing inthe eucharistic sacrifice, the consecration was maintained,deepened, and extended in him. These tworites were to him a revelation of God, and no less didthe acts and all the duties of daily life flow outthem. In precisely the same manner the otherfive great rites, which make up all that is wanted fothe life of a community or of the individuals whobelong to it, were derivations of divine power, at oncecontaining doctrine, enforcing morality, and practisiworship. Thus the kingdom which took its rise inthe fulness and attraction of vocal teaching had itscompactness, completeness, and cohesion in the sacramentalsystem, which joined its subjects in one belief,practice, and adoration, being itself the transfusion ofChrist into His people, their generation from HisPerson. This was the nature of the society whichPeter set up at Home, in which nature its contrastwith every preceding philosophy was yet more strikingthan in the variety of its subjects.To make this clearer, let us take the four mostillustrious names of Greek Philosophy and comparee work which they achieved with that of Peter.And here what was the most remarkable and originalidea in that Philosophy appears nearly at itsrise. We know only little with certainty of whatPythagoras taught, but every authority concurs inattributing to him the conception of a society of menbound together by a moral discipline and commonbelief. The name itself, the study of wisdom, he issaid to have invented, observing that while somemen are the slaves of glory, and others of money,there are a few who, counting all things else as dross,1 Cicero, Tus. Dis. v. 3.

26 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMgive themselves up to the study of the nature ofthings. O But though O himself a man with an extremethirst for knowledge, and trusting much to his ownself-inquiry for the attainment of knowledge, he seemsto have attributed the highest importance rather to apractical life grounded upon unity of belief than tomere science, which he subordinated to a moral end.Simplicity of food, daily self-examination, purity ofmorals, were required of his disciples. And he trustedhis teaching only to the living body of men, for,writing nothing, he actually formed a society whichcarried on his doctrine. It obtained a considerablesuccess, grew and flourished in Crotona, until thefear it called forth as a political union broughton persecution, which finally broke up the society,though all through Grecian history we find individuals,and those the most distinguished of their day,imbued with so-called Pvthagorean O tenets.In this conception of Pythagoras there was tosome extent a sort of natural anticipation of theChristian Church. And his great personal qualities,combined with a noble religious purpose, produced aresult, which, however, was frustrated and dissolvedby the first attack of violence. That which heattempted, a political society based upon moral andreligious principles, was never repeated with thesame definiteness in Greek history again. His successorsadmired his idea, entertained it in theirthoughts, but never ventured to carry it out.Plato, himself in a measure a Pythagorean, conceivedphilosophy as a system of teaching to beconveyed orally by the master to his disciples, thatis, to the few who can be found fitted for suchpursuits by natural gifts, and prepared by moral dis.

FOUNDATION OF THE ROMAN CHURCH 27cipline and by earnestness of purpose. The injunction,1" Take care that these things do not ever fallinto the hands of unprepared and uninstructed men,"may be called his keynote. In a school so selected,so laboriously trained, and in which the gifts ofnature should be ripened by the finest art, the mostcareful study, he looked, if anywhere, for that immortalline of living men which was to continue on his ownwork. But at this point he stopped. He composedindeed an ideal republic, and he modified in anotherreatise his ideal views for the actual needs of what,if not the best in itself, should be the best that waspracticable: but to the formation of an actual society,such as Pythagoras both conceived and attempted, hedid not aspire. The fate of Socrates as well as thresult of Pythagoras were before his eyes, and hy founded a school, which went through fimodifications. We know him now entirely by thwritings which he would not himself allow to rept his whole mind, inasmuch as he thoughtimpossible for any -fixed type to convey the fullsystem of any art, much less the secrets of philosophy.Aristotle, in his conception of philosophy, stoodvery much on the same standing-ground as his masterPlato. With prodigious industry, curiosity, and learning,with a most subtle, penetrating, and accurateintellect, he set himself to obtain truth bv the forceof the human reason in logic, ethics, and physics. Noone man, perhaps, by the power of his own reasonever effected so much. He may be termed the fatherof literature, being: the first to collect books, and the1 Epist. 2, p. 314. I follow the original Alexandrine editors andMr. Grote in believing the authenticity of this epistle against thesuspicions of some Germans.

28 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMgreat Alexandrine library, representing, as it were,the beginning of literature, owed its first origin tothat zeal for knowledge which the great master communicatedto his royal pupil, and which that pupil'ssuccessors carried out in their famous foundation.He, with Plato, and still more than Plato, is therepresentative through all time of human culture.Like Plato he limited himself to the formation of aschool, and with all his love for books subordinatedthe written to the spoken word. His writings havebeen considered the note-books of his lectures. Aristotlecreated two sciences, logic and ethics, but hemade no society of men. He conceived and describedall polities, but he too shrunk from the attempt tocreate that noblest one which should rest on the preceptsand practices of philosophy.In Zeno we find a considerable modification of themental standing-ground occupied by Plato and Aristotle.No longer aspiring to universal knowledge inand for itself, it was pre-eminently a practical system.to found which he limited his efforts. In him thestudy of logic, ethics, and physics, the whole force ofhis reason was directed to afford an inner support toman amid the troubles of life. Those studies werepursued indeed, but not as a part simply of humanculture, which had its end in itself. They were subordinatedto a moral purpose. Philosophy became theinstructress of humanity, and of a humanity felt tobe sick in almost all its members. Man, as a spark ofthe universal reason which ruled the world, was todirect his life in conformity with that reason, representedin the laws of nature, and to live according tothose laws was the conception of virtue. Philosophythus took up at least in part the standing-ground

FOUNDATION OF THE ROMAN CHURCH 29proper to religion, and Zeno, passing at a bound thelimits of states and nations, conceived the race of manas a flock in one pasture feeding on a common law,the law of reason. If we go on from the conceptionto its realisation, we find that Zeno too established aschool: and as the many were foolish, and the fewonly in progress towards wisdom, his school was to becomposed of such proficients. Now, although theStoic was sometimes driven to confess that a wiseman had never yet been found, as a matter of fact thestrongest and most earnest natures among the Greeksand Romans during the three centuries which followedhis teaching down to the time of Claudius were attractedby that elaborate system of duty-the subordinationof the individual to the universal reason-drawn out in Stoic morality.What then is the common effect of philosophy asseen in these four examples of Pythagoras, Plato,Aristotle, and Zeno, and their several systems ? Certainlythe powers of the human mind cannot beexpected to rise higher than in the three formerinstances, nor the steadfastness of human purpose toexceed the fourth. What had been the result uponhuman society ? So much as this. A few mindshere and there out of the mass had been affected.Such minds accepted and professed certain tenets : itcan hardly be said that they conformed their lives andactions to the tenets. Pythagoras, indeed, attemptedto form a body of men so acting, but his society wasdissolved. The Stoics afterwards approached nearestin their system to the attainment of a practical end,but, not to say that the profession was severed fromthe practice, the professors of Stoicism remained singleand isolated. No such thing as a Platonic, Peripatetic,

30 THE FORMATION F CHRISTENDOMor Stoic city, town, village, or even family existed.Cato of Utica was a Stoic, but he ruled his householdas a Roman slaveholder, and when, in accordance withStoic rule, he put an end to his own life, his hand wasstill swelling from the effects of a blow given to aslave. Where were the men, women, and children,the fathers, mothers, husbands and wives, brothers andsisters, living a Pythagorean, Platonic, Peripatetic, orStoic life together ? Philosophy, then, constructedno social building : its professors remained singlestones. This was one defect betokening its impotence.And another was that it carefully abstained fromttacking in practice that system of worship whts teaching tended to den. It had indeed from thtime of Zeno taken up, so far as concerned the formationof the interior life, the standing-ground of religion,and claimed to be the instructress of humannature and the guide of human actions. It had professed,as in Zeno's sect, the belief in one powerruling all things with an inexorable chain of caused effect, but the whole world around was leftfull possession of polytheism. The altars in countlesstemples smoked as before with sacrifices to Jupiter,and a crowd of conflicting deities, while the Stoicphilosopher was seen, like the rest, taking part in hiscountry's worship. He had no tangible sacrifice tooffer to the universal reason, which he professed tobelieve, but hecatombs to gods and goddesses whomin his heart he despised.Now measure what Peter did at Eome during theprincipates of Claudius and Nero with wbat thesegreat men and their followers had all failed to do.During about the same number of years as those inwhich Pythagoras is said to have formed at Croton a

FOUNDATION OF THF, ROMAN CHURCH 31society of the most distinguished inhabitants, Peterhad formed at Rome a society including the highestand lowest, the young and the old, in one bond. Inthe former case the brilliant circle of educated menformed by Pythagoras was scattered by a persecutorand never was restored again. In like manner tharm of Nero came down upon Peter's society, whic'he had drawn out of the four-footed creatures of theearth, the wild beasts and reptiles, and birds of theprophetic vision, and a " great multitude " died. Butthe society lived ; it lived to meet many such anotherstorm in successive generations; to yield up againand again a great multitude to the same sufferingIt lived on in the self-same city: after eighteehundred years it lives still, and in the self-same chairin which Peter ^ taught, his two hundred and fifty-eighthsuccessor teaches still.*The disciplines of Plato, of Aristotle, and of Zeuoafford us absolutely nothing to compare as a societywith that of Peter. They produce individual anddiverging specimens of certain schools of thought,but a community ruled by such thought they have notto show. It is not that they did not wish to createsuch a community ; they had the wish, but were farfrom having the power. It is expressed exactly inZeno's conception of the human polity, which Plutarchspeaks of as so much admired ; expressed, but neverrealised. This impotence of philosophy runningthrough eight centuries from the time of Pythagoras,was shown two hundred years after Peter, in the caseof the most fervent, most consistent, most elaborate,and the last of Grecian systems. Plotinus besoughtthe Emperor Gallienus to grant the philosophers acity wherein a system of life could be carried out

THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMafter Plato's model. It was to be called Platonopolis,and be situated in Campania. But the emperor didnot assent, and Neoplatonism, like its predecessors,went without its city. Before that time, in the twocenturies preceding the lectures of Plotinus at Rome,a divine city had been built up in the teeth of imperialpersecution, there and in every centre of human intercourseand thought throughout the empire. St. Laurencecould have shown Plotinus the treasures of thatcity in a multitude of the poor and destitute such asphilosophy had never fed. Furthermore, St. Laurence'sown life and death might have imparted to him thesecret how Peter, who was carried from the Mamertineprison to execution, founded under Nero's eyes, and inhis despite, a permanent Christian polity, whilst imperialfavour was solicited in vain to grant a singlecity for the trial of a philosophic experiment.Such is the nature of Peter's work as contrastedwith the work of philosophy.But in calling it Peter's work, we must not forgetthat it was the work of Another, administered byPeter. As the impotence of philosophy lay preciselyin this, that it had no one to follow, so the power ofthe new faith lay in those two words, " Follow Me."The contrast here with the ancient philosophers ismost striking. Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle,Zeno, Cleanthes, Plotinus also, Porphyrius, and threst would have liked to form a society after theirown principles, but it never __B entered into theirthoughts to say, " Follow me." The ancient wisdomhad indeed said, " Follow God."l It remained forHim alone when He appeared on earth to say, " FollowMe." The words in the mouth of a mere man are1 See Cicero, De Fin. iii. 21.."

FOUNDATION OF THE ROMANU&KGIabsurd. They had disciples, but no one oftured to set up himself as the germ of a polity, tnT)they did conceive a polity, as the medium of teachinga doctrine. Not one of them thought of associatingtruth with his own person, or imagined that union ofthe truth with the life of a single man transfused intoa body of men, which is the idea of the Church. Theonly faint resemblance of this is the fact, if it be one,that the Stoics framed their doctrine of the Wise Manft 1 1 character of S I tdeed.th tions after Christ had comh Neopyth dealised h pthe p phic life first in the person of Pyan ,h th; Apollonius. With the pictCh th f< Gospels before them, and hn ^ f t of the Church gt of th del undheir eyes, they bethought tl t aheath Christ, and t > attrib h gble. and t in m nature as they con-d t o dead m O these had livedseven hundred years before, leaving behind him agreat name but scarcely any authentic documents asto the details of his life and teaching-; O the other hadbeen contemporaneous with the Author of Christianity,but his life had passed almost unnoticed by any oneof his own time, and without any effect on the world.Thus, after the lapse of a hundred years, the legendof Apollonius, like that of Pythagoras, lent itself toevery embellishment of fiction. Far otherwise in thecase of Him whom they feebly attempted to copy." Follow Me " was as creative as " Let there be lisrht." OUttered by the side of the Lake of Galilee, those wordsaggregated Apostles to Him who spoke them : utteredby those Apostles afterwards, they built up the Church.VOL. m. cLIBRARY ST. MARY'S COLLEGE

34 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMOn Peter's mind especially they had been impressed asthose words which conveyed the greatness of his office,and his resemblance therein to his Lord, his supremepastoral power, and his crucifixion.1 But they containedlikewise the whole structure of the Church, asthe great " Following of Christ," the society whichcarried His truth in them, and with His truth Hispower. As then the philosophers were the theologiansof heathenism, so the propagation of philosophy whichthey contemplated was by means of the society whichthe teacher instituted. In this the Academy, theLyceum, the Portico, and the Garden were at one :and, indeed, no other propagation was at that timepossible. There was philosophy long before therewere libraries, and libraries again for ages before eventhe notion could arise of substituting a book for asociety, which, indeed, before the invention of printingwas inconceivable. The school was a collection ofliving men, and the idea of philosophy was bound upwith this. But the Christian Church actually carriedout what each philosopher attempted with so littlesuccess, and that because it was the school of Christ.Our Lord taught not as the Scribes and Pharisees,that is, commenting on a law, but as one havingauthority, that is, as being Himself the fulfilment ofthe law, that to which it pointed, and for whosecoming it was instituted. He is the Lawgiver comein person, who delivers the law to His disciples, perpetuatingHis presence among them by His Spirit,by means of whom they carry on and propagate Hislaw. Thus as with regard to the Jew, the synagoguewas the embryo, which remained in the womb of the1 See John i. 44, where these words stand at the very beginning ofour Lord's ministry, and xxi. 19, where they occur at the end of it.

FOUNDATION OF THE ROMAN CHURCH 35Jewish nation until the Person of Christ should putlife into it, and bring it to the birth, so with regard tothe Gentile, philosophy with human power attemptedto form an order of teaching, which changed andso to say evaporated with every teacher, rebegin-ning an ever unachieved work. The Teacher, whoalone could say, " Follow Me," established not a schoolbut a kingdom, whose law was the truth, Himself,whose power was grace, Himself. The Kingdom bypersonal agency communicated both grace and truthfrom Himself, and in His " Following" consisted theperfection of individual character and the fulness ofcorporate strength. " Follow Me " was said alike toApostles and to others at their first call, as the foundationand watchword of Christian life. It was repeatedemphatically to all the disciples, as being that inwhich their whole profession consisted : it was said alsoin a special manner to the Universal Primate, as thetoken of his divine vicariate.1 Thus it formed theentire system between these two extremities. Thepoint of union for dogma, morality, and worship layin this " Follow Me," by which worship was no longersevered from dogma and without truth; nor moralitywithout faith, and without authority to rest on. Thetemple had found its God, man his Lawgiver, truth itsAuthor: and the school had passed beyond the limitsof a nation into a kingdom, world-wide and eternal.This work of Peter in the midst of the heathenworld, and especially at Rome, its centre and capital1 (i) To Apostles and others of their calling, e.g. to Peter andAndrew, Matt. iv. 19 ; to Philip, John i. 44 ; to Matthew, Matt. ix. 9,Mark ii. 14, Luke v. 29 ; to another disciple, Matt. viii. 8, Luke ix. 59 ;to the rich young man, Matt. xix. 21, Mark x. 21, Luke xviii. 22.(2) To all, Matt. xvi. 24, Mark viii. 34, Luke ix. 23, John xii. 26.(3) To St. Peter, with regard to his Primacy and Crucifixion, Johnxxi. 22.

36 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMwas represented to Christian eyes in the ancient paintingsof the catacombs and in the sculptures of sarcophagiunder a symbol which cannot be mistaken.There often recurs the image of Closes striking therock with the rod of power, from which the streamsof salvation issue. The rock, according to the Apostle'sinterpretation, signifies Christ; the stream that onefountain of grace on which the Christian life depends,and which accordingly the sheep are represented asdrinking. The allusion to the Old Testament narrativeis plain, but usually no name is given to the manstriking the rock. In two instances, however, of theancient glasses the name of Peter is written above thisimage, to signify that in the new Israel of God heoccupies the place which Moses occupied in the old.^^^^__ Furthermore, this scene of Moses striking the rockis found constantly in juxtaposition with anotherscene of Peter taken captive by the satellites of Herod,and the features of the captive Peter and the manstriking the rock are frequently made with a studiedsimilarity to each other. ' For the re] fition of thesescenes close to each other no reason can be assignedbut that Peter's imprisonment and miraculous deliveranceimmediately preceded that " going forth intoanother place" in which he founded the RomanChurch, the most signal instance wherein he appearedas the Moses of the new covenant, causing the streamof grace to flow from the rock of Christ in the verycentre and high place of pagan idolatry. The exhibitionof such paintings on the walls of Iloman catacombsand of such sculptures on Iloman sarcophagi,conveyed a whole history to the beholder's mind.There was the local tradition of the Roman Church,and the universal tradition of the whole Church

FOUNDATION OF THE ROMAN CHURCH 37embodied in colour or in stone as to the part whichPeter had taken in founding the great See wherein hewould deposit his jurisdiction: but that jurisdictionitself is indicated in the rod, the symbol of divinepower, given in these paintings and sculptures tothree persons alone, the Incarnate God Himself, Moseswho prefigured Him, and Peter who followed Him.And the work accomplished is conveyed under theimage of Moses striking the rock with a fulness and pregnancyof meaning such as reminds us of our Lord's ownparables, for it would require a great space adequatelyto develop the thoughts suggested by the representationof Peter discharging to the new people of God functionswhich corresponded to those discharged by Moses whenhe led the typical nation through the desert.At least we may fitly exhibit some of the truth conveyedby this speaking symbol, and so elucidate theidea which the Christian artists of the third, fourth,and fifth centuries intended to portray. It is theeasier because in their delineation of Scripturalscenes "they did not treat them either accurately asfacts of history, or freely as subjects of the imagination,but strictly with a view to their spiritual meaning."2 The transit of the Jewish people from theirslavery in Egypt through the wilderness to theirpromised possession is the type of the Christian peoplei See Roma Sotterrancce (Northcote and Brownlow), pp. 286-289,and also pp. 302, 303, for a description of the remarkable sarcophagusin the Lateran Museum, wherein to three groups above representingour Lord with the rod of power changing the water into wine,multiplying the loaves, and raising Lazarus from the dead, thereappear three answering groups below, of Peter bearing the rodapprehended by Herod's soldiers, and striking the rock. The sameauthors remark that the parallel event in the life of St. Paul, hisimprisonment and deliverance at Philippi, is nowhere representedin early Christian art (p. 288).2 Northcote and Brownlow, p. 240.

38 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMdelivered from their darker slavery, and led through ,the desert of the world to their divine inheritance.ut in that transit Moses was the leader and lawgiverof his people. As their mediator with God hereceived from God and gave to them a revelation ofdoctrine and a code of morals. Into his people as areceptacle he poured the knowledge of one personalGod, the Creator and rewarder of men, and as adeduction from that truth he gave them a code ofduties in which the first table contained all their relationsto God, and the second all their relations to eachother. Thus in the person of Moses were combinedthe two great powers of the Prophet or Teacher, andof the Lawgiver or King, both as the deputy ofAnother, with whom he communed on the mount.And in the same character, as the deputy of thaOther, the Revealer of truth, the Source of authorityand the Object likewise of worship, he instituted thethird great power, the priesthood, not however in hisown person, but in his brother Aaron and Aaron'sons. It is in this triple mediation, as the instrument through whom a revelation was conveyed and jlaw promulgated, and a priesthood together with itworship instituted, that the pre-eminence of Mosesconsisted. He thus made a complete society, feedinghis people with truth, governing them with law, andtifying them with sacrifice and prayer. In thunion of the three he educated them for thpromised possession, and constituted them a nation.For their nationality was to consist in the continuedjoint possession of these three things, by maintainingwhich they were to be distinguished from all othernations down to the coming of the great Chief whomthey expected. Thus it is to be observed that in the

FOUNDATION OF THE ROMAN CHURCH 39work of Moses, doctrine, morals, and worship all dependedupon a close personal relation between thepeople and their God. " Hear, 0 Israel, the Lordthy God is one God." " Be ye holy, for I am holy."This was to be the sanction of * doctrine and ofmorality : and the perpetual sacrifices were to deliverthe chosen people from the guilt of disobeying Onewho expressed His absolute sovereignty by the often-repeated word, " I am the Lord." The whole life ofthe Jew, then, and of the Jewish people, as conceivedand set forth by Moses, consisted in the maintenanceand discharge of a personal relation in belief, in conduct,and in worship to One whose own personalitywas conveyed in that most significant expression, " Iam the jealous God," of whom " Israel was the firstborn* son."But the three powers which were thus united inthe mediation of Moses, while they were continuedin the nation which he moulded, were not depositedin the same hands. We need not enter here intothe various manners in which during the course offifteen hundred years they were exercised. It isenough for the present purpose to note that in thenation as ultimately constituted we find the synagogue,the temple, and the throne of David,2 thatis, the teaching office which communicates doctrine,the priesthood which celebrates worship, the royaltywhich is the guardian and the transmitter of thekingdom promised to David. As Moses left thesethree powers in the Jewish community, so after allthe changes through which it had passed they werefound at the time of Christ still existing. The greatExod. iv. 22.2 Dollinger, Christenthum und Kirche, p. 228.

40 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMCouncil of Jerusalem sat in the seat of Moses,1 guardingand applying the double code of revelation andof morals which was contained in the law and theprophets; the high-priest occupied the place ofAaron, and Herod filled the throne of David. TheProphet, the Priest, and the King, three rays of thedivine sovereignty, made up " the polity of Israel," 2but they were separate and distinct in their holdersuntil He came unto whom each of them pointed.The priesthood, with all the elaborate arrangementof sacrifices connected with it, was instituted only tomark out the office and prepare the way for the greatHigh-priest. The prophet who had established thelaw both as the disclosure of divine truth and therule of life, gave it as the image of that prophetlike unto him who was to be raised up among hisbrethren. Th ) throne had only been consecrated inDavid's person as the typical seat of the EternalKing. The whole polity which contained these threepowers had been prepared during so many ages to betaken up and transfigured by Him who should uniteall these ollices in His own Person.ut these ollices, upon their being received byHim, acquired an augmentation of dignity propor-tionate to His Person. The bearer of them beingdivine, tho things borne rose to His height. TheIncarnate God willed that the law should prefigureHis truth, the priesthood His atonement, the seat ofDavid His royal power: that thus there should becontinuity between the Jewish type and Christianantitype, but continuity attended by an inimeasurableexaltation. First He joined together in himself thesepowers which make the perfect kingdom. Then He1 Matt, xxiii. 2. - Ephcs. ii. 12.

FOUNDATION OF THE ROMAN CHURCH 41imparted them so joined to the Apostolate which Hecreated, and especially to Peter, whom alone He madethe Rock, the Foundation, and the Door-keeper, theConfirmer of his brethren, the Shepherd and theRuler of the Fold. He extended that which hadbeen confined within the limits of a nation to thewhole race of man. He detached the carnal coveringwhich veiled the promises, and disclosed them intheir full spiritual light. For the priesthood offeringthe sacrifices of bulls and sheep, He instituted thepriesthood which offered at His own table the sacrificeoffered by Himself, and w He made it a royal priest-hood, ordering that its possessors should sit upontwelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.So should they become . perpetual guardians andmaintainers of the law of truth and charity which Heleft in that new Israel. Thus He disposed to themthe kingdom which had been disposed to Him. Inthis manner the covenant, the legislation, the worship,the adoption, the glory, and the promises, which madeaccording to St. Paul the distinction of the JewishChurch, passed over to the Christian, which became ina higher sense than the former, in the words of St.Peter, " a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation,a purchased people." Moses, Aaron, and Davidhaving been gathered up into the one Christ, therace of Abraham became the race of the God-Man.Now, what Moses did in the type, Peter did in theantitype. As Moses drew out the life of the Jewishpeople as a personal relation to God in what theybelieved, in what they worshipped, and in what they^1 Luke xxii. 29, 30, in which passage, as Dollinyer notes, whilecreating the royal priesthood in the Apostolate, He marks that thereshould be one that is greater amons them.

42 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMdid, which made up the adoption of sons, so thChristian life which Peter set up at Home was thestablishment of the same relation to Christ in doctrine, worship, and morals. Obedience to him inthese three things O formed his kingdom. O The wholedomain of truth was guaranteed to the Christian asthe illumination given by the one Prophet. Hisworship was the perpetual recognition of the Redeemerin the very act of His sacrifice. His moralitywas summed up in charity, the filial spirit, whichraised the cardinal virtues to the level of divine gifts,and was thus " the fulfilment of the law " as perfectedby Christ. The painter in the catacombs of thesecond and third centuries, the sculptor on the monumentsof the fourth and fifth, conveyed all this wlthey represented Peter on the very scene of hspiritual triumph, the centre of the world's power, andthe seat of idolatry, striking that Rock which isChrist. He alone had received the rod of divinepower from the hands of his Lord. Thus he drewforth the one stream of salvation, the grace whichworks in the great Christian priesthood, and conveysto the sheep the faith and the sacraments, the wholesupernatural life. In their eyes as but one Moseswas the mediator of the old covenant, so but onePeter was the master-builder of the Church, the de-river of the stream to the sheep. They anticipated incolour and on stone what St. Leo, at the same spot,has set forth so powerfully and distinctly in language.The living mind of the Church in their day, as seenin their works and in his words, is the same. Thishe declares to his brethren, the bishops of Italy :" Whatever we do rightly and discern clearly is of hisown working and his merit, whose power lives and

FOUNDATION OF THE ROMAN CHURCH 43whose authority is pre-eminent in his own See - forthrouhout the whole Church Peter is daily saying,' Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God,' andevery tongue confessing the Lord is imbued with theteaching of that word of His." For. f " out of thewhole world Peter alone is chosen to preside overthe calling of all the nations, over the whole numberof the Apostles, and all " the Fathers of the Church : sothat though there be in the people of God manypriests and many shepherds, yet Peter rules allwith ordinary whom Christ rules with sovereignpower."1Now, from the time of Zeno onwards the Greekphilosophy had, in a certain sense and degree, takenup the standing-ground of religion. It essayed tosatisfy the human mind in its aspirations after truth,to afford man a security for a happy life, independentof outward circumstances, to supply him with acompensation for the loss of political freedom by itsintrinsic principles, to teach him, if not how to die,at least how to live. Such is the part assigned toit in the name of all who went before them by Ciceroand by Seneca. Such was notoriously the Stoicboast. We are, then; entitled to ask how it stoodas to these three powers, doctrine, morals, and worship,in the intimate connection of which the perfection ofsociety consists.As to the first, its primary object was to attaintruth with respect to the universe and man its occupant.If we abstract that portion of its teachingwhich was the continuation of the original traditiondescending to the Greeks as to all other men fromthe patriarchal religion, only by the force of the human1 St. Leo, Serm. iii. 3, iv. 2.

44 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMreason acting in conjunction with the natural consciencecould it reach truth. It did not claim topossess any such gift as the Jew recognised in Mosesand the prophets, and the Christian found in theApostolic teaching. And so in it we find its physicalscience and its tholo made identical.Again, as to its morality, that likewise was theproduce of human reason. No doubt, indeed, in thiscase as in that of doctrine, the most self-reliant philosopherwas still influenced, and much more, perhaps,than he was conscious of, by precepts which hadcome down from the ancient religion. These coalescedin his mind with the judgments of the natural conscience.But so far forth as each philosophic systemhad a distinctive morality, it was formed by a processof reason working upon that supposed truth whichthe intellect had attained. Thus the three virtues ofPlato, prudence, fortitude, and temperance, were deducedfrom his triple division of the human being'sconstituents, and represented the three parts \\hich hederived severally from the divine mind, the world-soul,and matter. In a more remarkable instance therebe no doubt that Stoicism, whichb tli t as a in ked out itmorality as a strict deduction from it eption concerning God or Nature on the one hand and man onth th It involved th bject f t parttobut likewise an identitywitl it And f its moral it tintrinsic dignity of man as a rational being, not theacknowledgment that he was a creature. It seemsthen that the grand modern invention of independentmorality was entirely anticipated ^ by the Greek philo-sopher, not, however, as a thing desirable in itself,

FOUNDATION OF THE ROMAN CHURCH 45but as that to which he was reduced by the necessity "of his position. This will be more apparent when weconsider the third great constituent of society, worship.Now of this Philosophy was entirely destitute. It hadnone of its own, and it fell throughout its course andin all its sects into the fatal weakness of consentingto take at least an external part in an ancestralworship to which its inmost belief was opposed. Thusin the most important act of human life the philosopherwas a hypocrite. He joined in rites the efficiencyof which he disbelieved, and which were offeredo powers whose existence he denied. This is true oPlato and of Aristotle as well as of Zeno and Epicurusof Cicero and of Cato, of Seneca too and of MarcuAntoninus. The result was that in philosophy thtwo forces of doctrine and morals were entirely dtached from that other great force which raises mbove himself, and exalts him in proportion to thidea which he has conceived of the Being who ruleshim. In fact, the personal relation, which ran allthrough Jewish life, binding together worship, doctrine,and morals, was exalted to its highest expressionby the mystery of the Incarnation, and from itformed and impregnated the whole Christian lifethis was wanting to Philosophy.1 And it was far mwanting to the philosopher than to the ordinheathen, in whom the natural conscience still left afeeling or imperfect conviction that he was a creatureunder dependence and rale.In the disruption of these three forces we see thepermanent and universal cause of that weakness andpowerlessness to persuade, which marks the Greekphilosophy in all its sects, and of that inability to form1 See Kleutgen. Phil, der Vorzeit, ii. 830.

46 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMa society after its tenets which runs through all itshistory. And this will be found no less true ofPhilosophy, with the example of the Christian Churchbefore it, than of its previous efforts to find the truthand improve human life.

LECTUREXVINEC-STOICISM AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCHIWE have hitherto considered what Philosophy, workingo in the most intellectual of human races, f had doneup to the time of our Lord's teaching. Then, in orderto illustrate the grounds of its insufficiency we tracedthe foundation of the greatest and most celebratedChurch, the special work of the chief Apostle, to whomthe keys of the kingdom of heaven were given, in theprincipates of Claudius and Nero. It remains to considerin the same manner what Philosophy was ableto do during the period in which the teaching of ourLord was being embodied before its eyes in a visibleinstitution by His disciples. The first study gave usthe measure of what human reason was able to do,mainly by its own power, in solving the mysteries ofhuman life, while the nations were covered with darkness.The second will unfold to us a scene not lessinteresting. We shall see the same human reasonpursuing in the main its old course and resting on thesame fundamental principles, but gradually awakeningto the sense of a great rival power arising in the worlof thought which it had claimed for its own. Andit is acted upon, more and more, whether consciouslyor unconsciously, by this power. It remains uncon-ted by it, but not unaffected. Its greater thheathen still, but of a very different stamp fromthe heathen of the republic. Already Seneca, th47

48 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMtutor and minister of Nero, whether he conferred withSt. Paul, as he might most easily and naturally havedone, or not, spoke as no Greek or Ixoman ever spokebefore him, of mercy, brotherly kindness, humanity toslaves, and compassion with the weak and suffering.He has a moral standard not only immeasurably abovehis own practice, but equally above the moral standardof such men as Aristotle and Plato, far exceeding himin genius. If we go OH another fifty years, Epic-tetus and Plutarch seem to belong to quite a differentworld from that in which Cicero lived and moved, andMarcus Aurelius is no less distant from Julius Crcsaror Augustus. As we advance the contrast deepens.Philostratus and Plotiuus are far from being productionsof the Christian Faith which they opposed, buttheir works are a powerful testimony to what thatFaith was doing in the world. The ideal characterwhich the one tries to exhibit, and the philosophywhich the other attempts to restore, show the divineexample which had flashed on the mind of the onewithout converting him, and the conception of divinethings which the other had witnessed, admired, andendeavoured to convert to the behoof of heathenwisdom. Before the end of the third century, everythoughtful heathen mind had undergone a revolution.Porphyrius teems with Christian sentiments whicl istud his invectives against Christianity. Thus theperiod which ends with the conversion of Constantinehas, besides its other wonderful attractions, a pecialinterest as the battlefield between the heathen philosophyand the Christian Church. It is true that thebattle continued afterwards, and an emperor evenbecame its champion out of the very family of theimperial convert, but the contest was practically de-

NEOSTOICISM AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 49cided, and the Church both as a doctrine and aninstitution had gained the victory, when the edict oftoleration was published.We have already seen how poor and meagre a partPhilosophy ^fc- W played between the death of Julius Csesaiand the accession of Claudius. The political andsocial sphere in which it moved may be thus epitomised.Augustus reduced to peace the warring elementsof Roman political life. From the battlefieldof Actium, A.U.C. 723, which placed in his singlehands the destiny of the Roman world, to his deathin 767, a period of forty-four years, he watched overand maintained the equilibrium which he had created.Tiberius received from him the republic at the matureage of 55, and governed it in tranquillity for nearlytwenty-three years. The short madness of Caius succeeded,and when he was swept away in the year 794,Claudius inherited the supreme power over the vastconfederacy of nations subject to Rome, which nowfor seventy years had been welded into an imperialrepublic enjoying the benefits of a common civilisation.If, outside the walls of Rome, and beyond the interestsof the Roman nobility, we compare the state and conditionof all these nations as to the enjoyment of suchbenefits, during these seventy years, with their stateand condition during the century preceding the battleof Actium, it will be impossible to deny that they hadgreatly gained by the establishment of the imperialgovernment. In spite of individual abuses of power,the provinces as a rule were no longer used up as theprivate spoils of profligate nobles. They possessedinstead laws administered with equity, could developtheir commerce, and be secure of their wealth. IfAugustus could only have ensured successors like him-VOL. III. D

50 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMself, wielding with the modesty of a senator, who wasbut the princeps of his order, that vast central powerwhich so great a mass required to hold it in cohesion,the gain would have been as permanent as it wasgreat. That was the empire which Virgil and Horacesaw and celebrated with a heartiness and a sinceritywhich their own previous sufferings, and that of allmen under the republic, might justify. If those inwhom an exclusive Eoman patriotism was strong mightfeel thus, was not the whole world of the subject provincesready to cry out with them,"0 Meliboce, Deus nobis hcec otia fecit" ?That, no less, was the empire which, fifty years later,Philo praised in glowing colours as the reign of law,and described as the voluptuous enjoyment of civilisationwithout a rival and without an enemy. But thedark side of the picture remained to be filled in, andwhen another seventy years had passed after the deathof Tiberius, Tacitus drew this portrait with a master'shand. Mental apathy, disregard of high thought, andintense corruption of morals make up the Eome whichhe describes. And certainly the whole surviving literatureof that time bears out his censure. Writerswhose undying grace of form and language havesecured the admiration of all posterity, if judged accordingto a moral standard, betray a state of societywhich seemed to value only the material goodsof civilisation, peace, plenty, bread, and games. Philosophygives scarcely a sign of life during this period.From Cicero to Seneca it is almost silent: during thismost important century when the world-empire wasforming, it can show only the honourable but unin-fluential school of the Sextii. That city of gods and"

NEOSTOICISM AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 5 Imen ruled by reason as the common inheritance ofall, the standard of their progress and the bond oftheir union, which Cicero had so grandly imaged out,clothing his Stoic teachers in the stately toga of theRoman tongue, found little favour in the eyes of thoseto whom the dominion of the world was only preciousfor the abundance of peace and the refinements ofscientific vice. Such was the temper which rose toits utmost height in the twenty-seven years duringwhich Claudius and Nero ruled, when the utter corruptionof human society filled the few who thoughtwith blank despair.1 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^B^^^^^^^^^^^^^^H^^IYet precisely this people andtheir rulers were chosen by the Divine Providence tobe the scene of that work of Peter within the wallsof Rome, which has shown itself to us as alike withouta parallel in the ages before it, and without, as itseemed, any aptitude for accepting it in the populationwhere it was carried on.For the work of Peter was pre-eminently a work offaith in the unseen, a disregard of the temporal for thesake of the eternal. But if we take the line of writersfrom Cicero to Tacitus, which includes all the greatnames of Latin literature, this is precisely that whichis wanting to them. From the first to the last theyspeak as men without faith in the popular religionwhich they had inherited; and likewise without anyfirm mental grasp of a power superior to man rulingthe world with wisdom and justice; and equally withoutany clear assurance of a personal subsistence of-theindividual man after death. Their uncertainty aboutGod and Providence draws with it an equal uncertaintyabout their own destiny. They were citizens of anempire holding the fairest regions of the earth, formed1 Dollinger, Heid. und Jud. p. 576.LIBRARY ST. MARY'S COLLEGE

THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMof the finest races of men, enjoying the accumulatedfruits of learning and thought which many past ageshad laid up for them. Moreover, during the latterpart of this period, they dwelt in the midst of themost majestic material peace which the world has seen.This was the condition of outward things during thereigns C of Augustus, C J * Tiberius, * Cains, * and Claudius.ut when we look on the inward life of the soul,when we try to realise what such men as Julius Caosar,Cicero, Catullus, Virgil, Horace, Livy, Ovid, thoughtconcerning those problems which most engage ourown minds, we find au utter uncertainty and a hopelessnesswhich moves us to the deepest commiseration.What expectation had the imperial spirit of Juliusformed concerning his own future when he enteredthe senate on those ides of March, to fall before thestatue of Pompey ? What did the great orator, whoin his unwilling moments of forced leisure ransackedthe treasures of Greek philosophy, anticipate for himselfwhen he stretched out his neck from his litter andfixed his eyes on his assassin ? What did the poetwho has embodied- in majestic verse the house of^Eneas, and the Capitol's immovable rock and theempire of the Roman Father, think of his own individualdestiny when he laid down his life at Par-thenope ? What did the haunter of the Sabine hills,the skilled painter of Roman society, look forwardto, when eleven lustres of his life were over, whenthe time of flowers and fugitive loves was past, andMaecenas left him with but half of his soul remaining ?What consolation, when banished from that scene ofbrilliant corruption which his verses paint with sofatal a skill, could Ovid find on his Scythian shore inany hope of his own spirit having power to replace

NEOSTOICISM AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 5 3the goods of outward life which he had lost ? Caesarand Cato agreed in the senate that death ended allthings, and that there was neither joy nor sorrowbeyond it, and the tragedian bearing Seneca's namecries: " After death is nothing, and death itself isnothing: then thou wilt be where the unborn are."There is profoundest pathos in the last words of theman whose great genius made him the second andfounder of this prodigious empire. Augustthroned in uncontested power, had complacentlyreviewed, on tablets of brass, as in presence of thhuman race, his acts during more than forty yearsting the pacific victories of a long prosperityAnd his dying comment on all these things whe turned to those who should presently close hyes, " Have I played my part well ? Vos valete etindite. All the world's a stage. Clap me as Imake my exit."In the midst of a people, emperor, senators, knights,jedmen, and slaves, who thought and acted just asthese leaders of thought and action had done, tha" great multitude' of whom the Roman historiaispeaks, died under the persecution of Nero for theifaith in an unseen world, and in a never-ending lif

54 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMGod is become, the first and most pressing of questions,and next to it the question how the humansoul may approach that God. But nothing can befurther from the spirit of the Latin world, as all itsextant writings show, than these questions in the timeof Claudius, when Peter first appeared at Rome.The only form of Philosophy which existed in anyforce at this time was the Stoic. Now this was asystem penetrated with unbelief. The never-endingand never-broken series of cause and effect, the icychain of physical and material necessity applied unrelentinglyto mind also, this being indeed the only Goda God of its own creation-which the Stoic philosophyadmitted, had dethroned the Platonic God, apure spiritual essence. It treated the popular gods ofthe current mythology as mere manifestations of thissupreme power, and viewed as such it found no contradictionin their number, and no embarrassment intheir various functions. They had ceased to be personsand become mere agencies. As we are about to considerparticular tenets of the four chief Stoics afterChristianity was preached, of Seneca, Musonius, Epic-tetus, and Marcus Aurelius, let us endeavour to obtaina clear and succinct view of the general system ofthought, to which Cato and many others of the nobleRomans had addicted themselves. It reappeared inthe senate of Nero, inspiring Thrasea, as afterwardsHelvidius and Rusticus, and was alone, it may be said,standing on its feet when St. Peter began to preachat Rome. It may be viewed, in fact, as the outcomeof the Greek wisdom respecting God, Providence, andman, his present and his future, when the Epistle tothe Romans was written.That our picture may be perfectly unbiassed I

NEOSTOICISM AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH5 5it from an accurate modern compendium ofphilosophy.The term Physics embraces with the Stoics notonly Kosmology but also Theology.1 Everythingactual with them is held to be corporeal. Matterand Force are the two superior principles. Matter isin itself without motion or form, but capable of takingevery motion and form. Force is the active, moving,and forming principle. It is inseparably bound upwith matter. The working force in the whole massof the world is the Deity. The world is limited andspherical. It has a permeating unity together withthe greatest multiplicity of particular shapes. Thebeauty and design of the world can only spring froma thinking mind, and therefore demonstrate the beingof the Deity. As further the world has consciousparts, the universe which must be more perfect thaneach individual part cannot be without consciousness.But the consciousness in the Universe is the Deity.This permeates the world as an all-pervading Breath,as an artistically-shaping Fire, as Soul and Reason ofthe Whole. It contains in itself the particular germsand seeds of reason.2 The divine original Firechanges itself in constructing the world into air andwater: the water becomes in part earth, in partremains water, in part evaporates in air, whenceagain fire is enkindled. The two grosser elements,earth and water, are chiefly passive; the two finer,air and fire, chiefly active. After the lapse of artain world-period the Deity takes back all thingto itself, since all passes by the burning up of thworld into fire. Out of this divine fire the world thgain and again comes forth anew. In the arising1 TJeberweg, pp. 195, 198.2 \6yot o-tr

56 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMand passing away of the world there rules an absolutenecessity, which is identical with the regularity ofnature and with the divine reason. This necessity isFate, and likewise Providence,1 which rules everything.The human soul is a portion or eilluence ofthe Deity, and stands in reciprocal action with it.It is the breath of heat in us. It overlasts the body,but yet is transient, and endures at the utmost onlyto the burning of the world. Its parts are the fivesenses, the faculty of speech, the power of reproduction,and the ruling power, which has its seat in theheart, and to which notions," desires, and understand-g belongThe supreme end of life or the highest good isvirtue, that is, life in accordance with nature, theharmony of human conduct with the all-ruling law ofture, or of the human will with the divine will.Man's highest task lies in action, not inplation. But action refers to human society. Aelse is come into existence for the sake of gods andmen, but man for the sake of society. Virtue isfficient for happiness. It alone is good in the fullsense of the word. All which is not virtue or vice islikewise neither good nor evil, but something between.And in this between there is something that is to bepreferred, something that is to be avoided, somethingtoo that is entirely indifferent. Pleasure is somethingsuperadded to activity, and it should not be the endof our endeavours. The cardinal virtues are prudence,fortitude, temperance, and justice. He only whounites all virtues in himself can truly possess themsingly. The perfect fulfilling of duty3 is the doing, irp6voia. '- TO ijyffJiovtKov, (pavracria3TO Ka.T6pdufJ.a.

NEOSTOICISM AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 57right ^^ -L.J. U with 1 *. VJ *-» a W right *-"*-^*. intention, such as the wise manpossesses. Right conduct, as such, abstracting fromthe intention, is the suitable.1 Only the wise manperforms the perfect fulfilling of duty. The wiseman is without passion, though not without feeling:he exercises justice, not indulgence, towards himselfand others. He alone is free. He is king and lord,and is inferior in inward worth to no other reasonablebeing, not even to Jupiter. He is likewise master ofhis own life, and may end it according to his own freedetermination. The later Stoics admitted that noone perfectly answered the ideal of the wise man, butthat in fact there only existed the distinction betweenools and those in progress towards wisdom.There are four illustrious productions of this philo-ophy, who happen singularly enough to represent thefour chief constituent parts of the Roman commwealth. Seneca gives us an instance of the Sitor; Musonius of the Stoic knight; Epictetushe Stoic slave; Marcus Aurelius of the Stoicmperor. All are formed, whatever may be thsrences of individual character, out of the commontissue of these principles, and to understand theirlanguage aright we must interpret it by this generalcharter of Stoic thought.Seneca, from the time and circumstances of hislife and the large amount of writings which he hasleft, is full of interest and instruction as a specimenof the wealthy, cultured, and philosophic Roman ofthat day. We may count his years with those of thChristian era. Born at Corduba, of knightly parentage, he was early brought to Rome. The years ohis youth, he says, were passed under the principat1TO Kadr/Kov. ' 2 Zeller, iv. 616.

THE FORMATION OP CHRISTENDOMof Tiberius. Though of delicate constitution, he gavehimself up with zeal to study, especially to philosophy,in which Sotion of Alexandria, the pupil of Sextius,and Attains the Stoic, instructed him. He subsequentlybecame a lawyer, married, and was rich andfortunate in his condition. After being threatenedby Caligula, he was banished to Corsica, underClaudius, at the instigation of Messalina. Here heremained about eight years, and only upon her fallwas recalled by the influence of Agrippina in the year49. He was then made prastor, and for five yearsconducted the education of Nero. On Nero's accessionhe became with Burrhus the chief minister ofthat emperor, and to these two men the famous quinquenniumof Nero is probably due. ut with thedeath of Burrhus Seneca's influence came to an end.Afte r a * per iod during which he was treated with. . . -r».jealousy and suspicion, the conspiracy of Piso in theyear 65 gave Nero an opportunity to get rid of onewhom he feared probably as well as hated, and thephilosopher with courage and equanimity put himselfto death at the command of Nero.Now as it would require a large space to draw outthe doctrine of Seneca, let us dip into the strata of hismind on three principal points. The first shall bethe office which he assigns to philosophy ; the second,his conception of God; the third, his conception ofm an.As to the function of philosophy he says, " Themind is made perfect by one only thing, a fixedunchanging knowledge of goods and evils, and thisbelongs to philosophy alone. . . . One study only isthere truly liberal, which makes man free, the studyof wisdom, source of sublimity, fortitude, and mag-

NEOSTOICISM AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 59nanimity. . . . Wisdom is the perfect good of thehuman mind, and philosophy is the loving and thelaying hold of wisdom. . . . It is the art of life, andits law. . . . Philosophy teaches to do, not to say,and requires every one to live according to its law,that the life may not disagree with the language. . . .It is the chiefest duty at once and sign of wisdomthat words and actions should^ agree, and the manB everywhere like himself. . . . Why does no onemfess his own vices ? Because thev still masterhim. The man awake tells his dream, and the confessionof one's vices shows one's convalescence.Awake we then, that we may have power to refuteour own errors. But philosophy will be our sole,kener; she alone will shake off our deep sleepDedicate thyself entirely to her. Thou art worthy>f her and she of thee; embrace each other. Denihyself firmly, avowedly, to every other: thou canstphilosophise by fits and starts. . . . Philosophyhas her kingdom ; she gives her own times, does,ccept yours, is not a thing of leisure moments; shelaims the whole, is mistress, is beside you, andCommands. A certain city offered Alexander half itsterritory and its property. He replied, ' When I camto Asia, it was not that I should accept what y3red, but that you should keep what I left you.' Sosays philosophy to all: 'I shall not accept your superfluoustime, but you shall have what I assign to you/Give your whole mind to her, sit by her, reverenceher. There will be a huge interval between you andother men. You will surpass all men in your life;not much will the gods surpass you. What wthe difference between vou and them ? Thelast longer. But in very truth it shows a g

60 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMmaster of craft to enclose a whole in a small space.As wide is his own age to the wise man as all age isto God. There is a point ^ in which the wise man

NEOSTOICISM AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH6 Iwithout tripping, and unfolds its acts. Will youentitle him Nature ? You will not err. He it is ofwhom all things are sprung, by whose spirit we live.Will you call him World ? You are not deceived, forhe is this whole which you see, infused into the partsof himself, and supporting himself and his."ut further. "Our Stoics say that there are twothings in universal nature out of which all comes,Cause and Matter. Matter lies inert, prepared forevery change, idle if no one moves it. But Cause,that is Reason, forms Matter, and turns it whitherso-ever it will, produces out of it various works. Thusthere must I be that out of which something comes, andthen that by which it comes. This is Cause, that isMatter. . . . We are now inquiring after the primeand general Cause. This must be simple. ForMatter too is simple. We are inquiring what isCause, that is, Reason as agent, that is, God. ... Infact, all things consist of Matter and of God. Godtempers them and they being circumfused follow theirruler and leader. But that which acts, which is God, ismore powerful and more precious than the Matter, whichis passive of God. The place in this world which Godholds, the mind holds in man. What there is Matter,in us is body. Let the inferior, therefore, serve thesuperior."But this God is corporal. " We are agreed thatwhat is good, is a body, because what is good is anagent: whatever is an agent, is a body. What isgood, profits, but it must be an agent of something inorder to profit: if it is an agent, it is a body. . . .This, therefore, which you call being wise, is it anagent or a patient of wisdom ? Whether it be anagent or a patient, in both ways it is a body. For

62 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMboth that on which the action takes effect and thatwhich is an agent, is a body.1 If it is a body, it isgood." . . . For " we are of opinion that there is nogood which consists of separated things. For the onegood must be contained and ruled by one spirit: theprinciple of this one good must be one. . . . Andwhy should you not think that something divineexists in him who is part of God ? This whole, inwhich we are contained, is both one and God. Weare both his fellows and his members. Such is ourmind's capacity. »To make the above expressions clear, we must havepresent to us the absolute Stoic conception of God.It is this.3 The opposition between God and Matteris only secondary. If we take in the conception ofthe Godhead in its full meaning, it must be describedas the Primal Matter as well as the Primal Force. Thecollective mass of the Actual is nothing else but theDivine Breath which moves forth out of itself and backinto itself. The Godhead itself is the Primal Firewhich bears within itself in germ God and Matter,is the world in its primal state of spirit, the UniversalSubstance, which changes itself into particularconcretions, and restores itself back from them again.Considered, therefore, in its pure form, or as God,it embraces at one time the All, at another timeonly a portion of the Actual. Thus Origen speaks ofthe Stoics as introducing a corruptible God, as terminghis substance a body, subject to change, conversion,and transformation, as at some particular perioddestroying all things, and reducing God to solitariness.1 " Nam et quod fit et quod facit corpus est."8 Nat. Quasi. Pro}. 13 ; Ibid. ii. 45 ; Epist. Ixv. 2, 12, 23 ; cxvii.2, 10; cii. 7 ; xcii. 30. 3 Zeller, iv. 133.

NEOSTOICISM AND THE CHRISTIAN CHAnd again he says, that the Stoic God, beingsometimes possesses his whole substance in a condof ruling, at the time, that is, of the burning eworld; sometimes is embodied ii portion of it, whthe world is arranged in its ord Th tatemf Origen are justified by Seneca, when he asks, " Whatbe th f f the wise man, if he be cast intprison, and left without friend or b destitute amidm g nation, or kept on a long voyage, ortossed out upon a desert coast ?" And replies, " It willbe such as th fi f Jupiter, wh ft the fusingup of the w Id d th P b f the godsdt cess f tare, he rest hf. delivered over to his own thought iIt is by the aboi tatement t must tpre the beautiful p f Seneca preserved f usby Lactant " Dost thor >t understand the authth majesty of th d -h ruler thearth, and the God of heaven and of all gods, fromm those deities whom w y adore andhip are suspended H it 3. who. whe hc t the first foundat f this most beautif ,tture, and traced the b o f th w hich grandeurd in good ,ture cannot pass, in rder thaty part might have its proper commander, althoughhe h tretched himself throughout h hole bodyyet begot gods to be the ministers of his kingdom n 2Let us mplete S P f God bypassing t ) his con pt f th hum tgence.1 Origen, Contra Celsum, Hi. 75, iv. 14, quoted by Zeller; Seneca,Epist. ix. 16.2 " Quamvis ipse per totum se corpus intenderat," an expression ofexact Stoicism, the r6i>os which they so often repeat. Lactantius,Divin. Instit. 1. 5.

64 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOM" Good is an agent,'for it profits. That which isan agent is a body. Good moves, and in a senseorrns and contains the mind, which are properties ofa body. The goods of the body are bodies ; thereforethose of the mind also, for it too is a body. The goodof man must be a body, he being himself bodily. . . .A flame cannot be grasped, for it evades pressure.Neither is air hurt by a stroke, nor even divided. So thmind, consisting of that which is thinnest, cannot belaid hold of, nor pressed within the body, but by helpof its own subtilty escapes through what would bindit. As lightning, however widely it may have struckand shone, can come back through the finest aperture,so the mind, which is thinner even than fire, canescape through every body. . . . Heat draws outcurved beams, and their natural growth is shaped twhat our need requires. How much more easily doethe mind, being flexible and more pliant than acliquid, accept a shape. For what else is the mind buta breath under certain condition ? But you see thabreath is more shapable than any other material, asit "j_ is ' thinner. j_1 * »And the human mind or soul, so conceived, is apart of God. " You do what is very good and savingto you, if, as you write, you persevere in going to agood mind, which it is foolish to wish for, when youcan get it of yourself. There is no need to raisehands to heaven, nor to beseech the sacristan to letus in to whisper at the ear of the statue, as if wecould be better heard. God is near thee, with thee,within thee. So it is, Lucilius. A sacred spirit isseated within us, the observer and the watch over ouri^ood and our bad. As he is treated b us, so hetreats us himself. But no one is a good man without

NEOSTOICISM AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 65God. Can any one rise above the strokes of fortuneexcept by His assistance ? He gives great and loftycounsels. In every one of good men a god theredwells, though it be uncertain what god. . . . Praisein the man that which can neither be taken away norgiven : that which belongs to the man himself. Askyou what it is ? The mind, and perfect reason in themind. For man -is a rational animal. And so hisod is consummate if it fulfil that for which it isborn. But what does this reason require of him ? Amost easy thing, to live according to his own nature.. . What then is reason ? The imitation of nature.What is man's supreme good ? To bear himself acdingto nat "Again : " He had a perfect mind, as being raised this own highest, above which there is nothing but themind of God, from whom a part has flowed down intothis mortal breast. And this is never more divinethan when it thinks of its own mortality, and knowsthat man was born for this, to pass through life : thatthis body is not a home but a hospice, and a shortone too, which has to be left when you find yourselftroublesome to the hospitaller. My dear Lucilius, itis the greatest proof of a mind coming from a higherdwelling, if it deems its present occupations low andnarrow, if it fears not to go forth. For he who rememberswhence he is come knows whither he is going."And " the gods are not fastidious nor envious ; theyreceive those who come up and lend them a hand.Do you wonder that a man should go to the gods ?God comes to men ; nay, rather, which is nearer, comesinto men. There is no good mind without God. Divineseeds are scattered in human bodies : if a good gar-dener cultivates them, they come up like their origin,VOL. III. E

66 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMand equal what they spring from : if a bad, it is justas when a barren and marshy soil kills them, andthen makes refuse instead of a harvest." 1The divine assistance thus spoken of must be understoodin the sense of the system : it is nothing supernatural,but identical with the use of our reason, andits natural powers. God's stretching out the handmeans that an eHluence of the Deity, which is man'sintellectual nature, connects itself, as the seminalintelligence, with a human body.'2So far as this Seneca stands on the old Stoic foundation.From Zeno's time philosophy was made toassume the exact function of religion as the moralteacher and physician of man. And in this materialview of God and the soul, and in the kinship withGod which he assigns to the soul, as part of the onedivine seminal intelligence, a kinship belonging equallyto the whole race of man, he is likewise true to hissect. But now in the conclusion which he draws fromthis view of the divine and the human, and which runsthrough and colours all his writings, and more especiallythe writings of the last period of his life duringhis disgrace and retirement from Court, the letters toLucilius, he goes far beyond all who preceded him.From this dignity of human nature, as part of theGodhead, he proceeds directly to the equality of menas such among each other, and the duty of mutualkindness. Now 3 the Stoic school had indeed summedup its whole moral teaching as concerning the relations1 See Epistles, cvi. 4; Ivii. 8; 1. 6; xli. i, 8; Ixvi. 39; cxx. 14;Ixxiii. 15.2 This is Zeller's inference, iv. 649.3 See a paper on " The Humanitarian Doctrines of HeathenPhilosophy about the time of Christ," by Dr. Ott, in the TilbingerQuartalschrift for 1870, pp. 355-402, of which I have availed myself invarious places in what follows.

NEOSTOICISM AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH67f men to each other, in the two duties of JusticeandHumanity, so that there was a side of severity and aside of mildness in their teaching, but then the side ofseverity had greatly predominated. Justice had beenso urged that it assumed an aspect of inhuman hardness.Humanity and kindness had quite receded intothe background. In Seneca, on the contrary, all thvirtues which belong to kindliness are set forth witha warmth, a detail, an inspiring sympathy which beforehim had no example. In this respect he far surpassesall classical antiquity, including therein Socrates andPlato as well as Cicero.It would require a treatise of considerable lengthto bring out with adequate force how far his doctrineon certain subjects not merely * goes beyond, but isopposed to that of the greatest intellects and the besthearts of the heathen world preceding him. Thus hislanguage on the duty of beneficence to all men, on theunseemliness of anger, in censure of revenge, and inpraise of placability, is without precedent, if we take itin its fulness, and as part of a system of thought.For instance, through the whole line of Greek andLatin writers down to his time the principle prevailsthat hatred of enemies and revenge are not onlyupright, but an indispensable duty for a man ofworth. Even among the Greeks, with all their kindli-ness of disposition, no doctrine was so often expressed,and in ways so various, as that a proper revenge wassomething good and honourable. A kindlier Greciangentleman than Xenophon is not to be found, and heputs in the mouth of Astyages the hope respectinghis grandson, the elder Cyrus, that he may grow upto be a man able to help his friends and punish hisenemies. Of his favourite the younger Cyrus he

68 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMhas not forgotten to praise the wish that he mightlive long enough to surpass those who did him goodand who did him evil, in the one respect and in theother. In spite of slight indications on the otherside, such as the saying ascribed to Pittacus, thatpardon is better than revenge, or an expression in theGeorgias of Plato, that if the choice be offered betweengiving or suffering offence, it were better tochoose the latter, there was a general and overwhelmingprejudice the other way. Now in Seneca,on the contrary, the idea of reconciliation groundedupon a distinct view concerning mankind is main-tained as a part of a whole system of humane principles.It is remarkable that the love of enemieshas no part in this system. Seneca stops short ofwhat without a thorough reception of the Christianspirit would be impossible.1But also against this fair view of man's dutiestowards others must be set a much less attractive viewof man's duties towards himself. If we were to takeby themselves and put together all the passages ofSeneca which speak of beneficence, kindliness to others,forbearance, avoiding anger and revenge, they wouldexpress to us a very different character from what isrevealed when man is considered with regard to hisduty towards himself. Thus the ground upon whichSeneca denounces revenge is based in fact upon asubtle egotism, which runs up from this forced exaltationof human nature into three degrees. Firstly,the wise man holds himself * free from anger o andrevenge in order t maintain the even calm of' hisown m ind. Insult must make no impression on him.Should it succeed in doing that he would not be with-1 See Ott, pp. 361-368.

NEOSTOICISM AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH69out care : but freedom * from care is his proper goodSecondly, the wise man exercises no revenge becausehe has overcome "«. all impulse to revenge by the sense chis own moral dignity, of which he ceases not to beconscious. Thirdly, the wise man revenges no offencesecause he despises them as not touching his real being.The most contemptuous manner of revenge is when oneis not thought worthy of it. The extreme feeling ohis own moral dignity will likewise prevent his descending to pardon. And in the same manner he is nocompassionate, because compassion involves passion.But he will take no notice of injuries, as if he pardoned,and he will show all the acts of compassion, such asharbouring the destitute, and giving to the needy, asif he were compassionate. Thus so far is Seneca as amoralist from being able to grapple with the egotismwhich is at the bottom of human nature in its actualcondition, that in his view of the wise man the actsof seeming virtue proceed from it while they disguiseit.It is most of all upon the question of slavery 2 andthe treatment of slaves that the doctrine * of Senecagoes beyond the greatest thinkers of antiquity whopreceded him. From the joint possession of reason byall men and the kindred thence subsisting between thedivine and the human, he deduces not only the dignityof man in general but his universal brotherhood, whetherlloman or barbarian, rich or poor, bond or free : and theduty therefore of the fraternal treatment of slaves.such being the origin and the nature of man, the onlydifference which he allows between men is that of moralqualities. These each man gives to himself, virtue isshut out to none, admits all, invites all, gently born,1 See Ott, pp. 375-379- 2 MM. pp. 368-375-

70 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMfreedmen, slaves, kings, exiles. It chooses not the houseor the rent-roll, but is contented with the bare man.The world is the single parent of all: to this the firstorigin of every one is carried, whether through a splendidor sordid lineage. What is a Roman knight, freedman,or slave ? Names which are sprung out of ambition orinjustice. From the meanest corner you may rise toheaven ; only spring up, and make yourself worthy ofGod.1 It is thus that from a purely natural standpointSeneca by scientific reasoning makes out for the slavea position worthy of human nature. And he does thisat a moment when the internal economy of the countryin which he wrote was based upon slavery, and a slaveryof such a character that its victims were abused, notas if they were men, but as if they were beasts. Indescribing vividly as an eye-witness these very abuses,he exclaims, " They are slaves, nay, men ; I say, they areslaves, nay, comrades. They are slaves, nay, humblefriends: they are slaves, nay, fellow-slaves, if you considerthat fortune has as much power over you as overthem." And he writes thus in a city where shortlybefore he had seen four hundred slaves of a single household2 led to execution because their master had beenslain by one of them. " The sum of my rule," he adds," is this : To live with your inferior as you would wishyour superior to live with you. As often as you thinkof your power over your slave, think of your lord'shaving as great power over you. 'But,' you object, 'Ihave no lord.' You are young and may have one, as1 Epist. xlvii. 15 ; DC Bcnef. iii. 18 : Epist. xxxi. II.2 The death of Pedanius Secundus and the execution of his wholehousehold took place in the year 62. Seneca died in 65. The lettersto Lucilius are supposed to have been written in his last years when hewas in disgrace at Court, and retired from it. He just survived tosee the Christian persecution in the year 64.

NEOSTOICISM AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCHHecuba, and Croesus, and Plato, and Diogenes. Livewith your slave forbearingly, nay, kindly; talk withhim, advise with him, sit at table with him."Now, to estimate the advance which Seneca hadhere made, consider what the greatest men had saidon the subject before .him. Slavery is to Aristotlean institution inseparably bound up with social order.It is necessary, because a true family cannot subsistwithout slaves. It is lawful, because it rests upon adirection of nature; since by nature one portion ofmankind is formed to rule, and the other to serve andobey. These are those who are in a state of intellectualpupilage, the barbarians, who have only so much reasonas to know that it exists, not enough to possess it fortheir own independence. *These are the born slaves, ofuse only to understand and execute commands, boundto their master as the tool to the artist and the bodyto the soul. And yet more instructive, perhaps, is thelanguage of Cicero, who lived only a hundred yearsbefore Seneca. He stands on the ground of Aristotle,whose reasons in justification of this institution heexactly reproduces. Seneca, it is true, does not attackslavery as a legal institution, but he endeavours so tosoften the actual condition of the slave as to make itsomething quite different from what it had hitherto beenin theory and practice. And, moreover, in his moralconscience it is so shaken as an institution that he canscarcely suppress a confession of its unlawfulness.-It was natural that, in the case of a man who morethan any other in the heathen world assumes the toneof a preacher, his life should be compared with hisdoctrine. And here the inconsistency is striking.Seneca sets forth the equal dignity of all men byi Epist. xlvii.

72 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMnature, in virtue of the divine quality of reason, andin spite of all variety in wealth, birth, rank, and outwardfortune, proclaiming aloud that the only standardwhereby men should be measured is the use whichthey make of this divine quality within them, andthat as it affects their actions. He recognises there-Ofore the standard of moral worth as his only criterion.And he preaches this as tutor, minister, and favouriteof Nero, as the possessor of numerous palaces, sumptuouslyfurnished, in the fairest spots of the earth.Again, all countries are the same to the wise man,whose origin is from heaven, and whose home is theworld, declares the man, who, when banished to Corsica,though without the loss of his wealth, found notone of complaint abject enough to express his misery.He enjoins firmness and consistency in our moraljudgments, having exceeded all men in fawning flatteryof the living prince as the model of justice and wisegovernment, and in contemptuous abuse of the sameprince when dead as a worthless and besotted despot.The man who holds human life as sacred in themeanest slave, is minister by Nero's side when Britan-nicus, the young and innocent brother, is swept outof his way, and when Agrippina, the dangerous andguilty woman, but the mother still, perishes by herson's command. If we grant upon the testimony ofTacitus that Seneca was esteemed as one of the bestRomans of his day, and that his own life in the midstof boundless wealth was simple, and his example as ahusband especially without reproach, still these areheavv drawbacks in the character of a moralist sosevere in his judgment of others, and who mesall men and all things by the standard of reason.That a man's doctrine should be far above h

NEOSTOICISM AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 7 3practice is nothing rare in human life. But what isso rare as to be perhaps without a single other exampleof it, is that such a man's moral standard of judgmentshould rise in a whole system of teaching on certainpoints of great importance far above the standard ofall who had preceded him, however great their genius,and however consistent their life was with their pre- "cepts. Yet Seneca in proceeding from the joint possessionof reason by all men to the conclusion thatthere is an universal brotherhood of all men, who,whatever their nation and their outward condition,have a right to be treated with kindliness, sympathy,and forbearance, was far outstripping his predecessors.Again, when, with the severest exercise of slaverybefore his eyes, and when slavery formed the indispensablecondition of the empire's existence, he termedthe meanest slave fellow-man, friend, and even fellow-slave, and denounced cruelty inflicted on such an oneas a wrong to humanity, he was using a languagehitherto unknown. In all this he was doing whathad never been done by Socrates, or Plato, or Aristotle,or Cicero, or any other Greek or Eoman writer beforehim : what neither the Plinies nor Tacitus reachedafter him. If it be said that this is but a deductionfrom Zeno's fundamental view about men, it is a deductionwhich the Stoics for more than three hundredyears had not made. . He presents with the maturityof a consistent system doctrine of which a scatteredseed may be found here and there in preceding writers.In fact his whole temper of mind and his whole bodyof teaching on the above entire range of subjects havea softness, a tenderness even about them, equallyalien from what had hitherto been the temper of Stoicphilosophy and from the Roman character at all times.

74 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMIn the principles nevertheless which lie at thebasis of his teaching he is undeniably Stoic. Suchare his conception of God, of the human mind orsoul, of reason. The participation of the divineby the human, on which the whole of the prevailingdoctrine is grounded, is entirely naturaland pagan, Stoic in an eminent degree. If weadd that he is a praiser of suicide, and a disbelieverof personal existence after death, we must admit thatSeneca is far enough from holding Christian principleson the most important problems of human life andduty. And yet, this being so, his expressions are oftensurprisingly Christian. Fifty passages at least in hiswritings have been quoted so remarkably similar topassages of Scripture, especially in the New Testament,as to suggest that he had seen what we are so familiarwith. Now let us add to the above an unquestionablefact. During the last twenty-three years of Seneca'slife, a Christian community had been formed in Home,and to that community one person, at least, of thehighest nobility, Pomponia Grsecina, the wife ofPlautius, is known to have belonged. Many moreKoman nobles are, with good reason, believed to havebeen converted. Seneca lived long enough to witnessthe immolation of that vast multitude by Nero'scruelty, which furnished to Roman eyes the first instanceof men dying for a faith. We have preservedfor us, in his own words, a description of the goodman which would at least vividly express the sufferingsundergone by the Christians in the gardens of Nero.1" This," says he, " is the man of worth, who, when he1 Passages relating to sufferings strangely akin to those inflicted onthe Christian martyrs are Epist. xiv. p. 29, Ixxviii. p. 199, Ixxxv.p. 231.

NEOSTOICISM AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 75sees death near, is not disturbed, as at the sight of anew thing. Whether he has to undergo tortures inevery part of his body, or draw in the flame with hismouth, or stretch out his hands on the gibbet, he askshimself not what he has to suffer, but how well." Theletters to Lucilius, written in the last years of Seneca'slife, when he had withdrawn in great part from theCourt of Nero, and was in disfavour, contain the mostremarkable passages of his humanitarian doctrine.Now the easiest solution of the problem presented tous by this doctrine is that the philosopher, who allhis life long had foraged everywhere for information,and borrowed from every store, and is the largest retailerof the views and opinions of others, had becomeacquainted with some of the teachers of the sect whichhad planted itself at Kome under his eyes. If, asChristian antiquity believed, he met and conversedwith St. Paul, he would find in the author of theEpistle to the Ephesians, and to Philemon, one withwhose doctrine he could in many points sympathise.St. Paul, indeed, taught that men were to be treatedwith fraternal kindness, even if they were slaves, notonly because God had made all nations of one blood,as he declared to the philosophers themselves in themain seat of their doctrine, but because He had redeemedall by the blood of the Son of God. Thisfolly of the Cross may have been too great for " anillustrious senator of the Roman people "* to accept,while he was touched with the beauty of the teachingwhich derived its inspiration from the Cross. Maynot Seneca have been one of the first to do what somany have done after him; may he not have admiredthe morality of the Gospel without accepting its con-1 St. Aug. De Civ. Dei, vi. 10.

76 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMditions; have remained a Stoic in his principles andpractice, while he appropriated what pleased him, andso far as it would agree with these principles, out ofthe Apostle's love of man ? However this may be, itis certain that the doctrine of human brotherhood inits practical application to all men, even to the slave,was not set forth at Rome and by Roman writers untilHe who had become man's brother had stretched outHis hands to embrace all nations on the gibbet ofCalvary. And it is no less certain that all which ismost attractive in Seneca's writings as to kindliness,forbearance, and brotherly affection, while it appears inhis teaching as a mere work of fancy, a mere decorationof rhetoric, h;id been practised in the city wherehe wrote, and under his eyes, as part of a coherentdoctrine, by a number of men at the cost of their life.For the difference of the guise in which the doctrineappeared on the one side and the other must be notedas a material part of the fact. One of the richest ofthe Romans, in the midst of a sumptuous retirement,out of a palace sparkling with luxury, writes letters toa friend upon the equality of men, the right of slavesto compassion, the duty of brotherly kindness. Alreadywhile he wrote, all that he suggested and much morehad been done. . A spiritual bond had connected togethersome of the noblest Romans and the meanestof slaves in the common hope of an eternal life, wasleading them to run counter to the general tendenciesof the age in which they lived, to face danger and distressand death in the direst form. How far removedwas the talk of the Stoic, which incurred no dangerami cost no sacrifice, from the life of the Christian,which might end in the Mamertine prison, or the fierytorment of the Vatican gardens ! ,

NEOSTOICISM AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 77, No less the influence which the Stoic teaching andthe Christian respectively exercised upon the world wasin proportion " to this difference between the teachers.The noble whose millions were lent on usury while hepreached forbearance, and extolled the mind of thesage immovable amid poverty and suffering, was readby the rich and leisurely, but did not convert them ;the Christians who acted and suffered propagated theirdoctrine and formed an universal people upon its preceptsthrough the course of eighteen centuries.Stoicism in its further course pursued the like directionwith that given to it by Seneca : the features onlyin which he differed from his school's original characterbecame still more marked. We have a most distin-guished representative of it in Musonius Kufus, aRoman knight, younger by about twenty-five yearsthan Seneca, the friend of Thrasea, Rubellius Plautus,Soranus. He has the great advantage over Senecathat his life was in harmony throughout with histeaching. More decidedly yet than Seneca he restrictsphilosophy to its moral purpose. Men in the morapoint of view are to be dealt with as patients whd for their cure a constant medicinal treatmentPhilosophy alone can supply this. It is the only roadto virtue, and therefore every one, the female sex included,must have to do with it. On the other hand,virtue is the sole object and matter of philosophy,which is nothing else but the consistent study of alife in accordance with duty. Philosopher and uprightman are equivalent terms. Virtue is much morematter of practice than of learning, since vicious habits1 I have drawn the following notice of Musonius from the accountof Zeller, iv, 651-660, which is carefully'put together from the fragmentspreserved of him.i

78 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMcan only be overcome by habits which are opposite.The disposition to virtue, the germ of it, is planted inall men by nature. Mtisonius directed his instructionentirely to this practical end. The teacher of philosophyis to produce not assent but improvement. Hemust give his hearers the moral medicine which theyneed, and if he do so rightly, they will not have timeto wonder at his discourse, but will be entirely employedwith themselves and their conscience, and filledwith emotions of shame and repentance, and so willbe improved. His scope being so entirely practical,it is not new thoughts, or the accurate carrying outof a system, which can be expected from him. Hegenerally applies the well-known Stoic principles.His leading thought is man's inward freedom, whichis attached to two conditions, the right handling ofthat which is in our own power, and the giving ourselvesup to what is not in our power. In our poweris the use we make of the notions which our mindforms of things, and on it rest all virtue and happiness.All the rest is not in our power. That wemust leave to the course of the world ; throw in ourvote with God's, and give up contentedly children, orcountry, or body, or anything else. For instance, wemust court banishment as no evil, but feel at home inall the world; must not seek death, nor yet shrinkfrom it. It is the great praise of this man that, whenbanished by Nero at the time that Seneca was put todeath, he carried out in practice exactly what he hadtaught. He is supposed to have lived down to theend of Domitiau's reign, and seems fairly a specimenof what a good heathen might be in the worst times.The most illustrious of the Neostoics, the manwhose writings have had most weight with those who

NEOSTOICISM AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 79came after him, is Epictetus. A slave of Epaphro-ditus, a freedman of Nero, weak in body and lame, hebecame. while still a slave a disciple of Musonius.He must, later in life, have obtained his freedom.Under Domitian he had to quit Rome with the otherphilosophers. He was probably born about 50, andlived to about 120. His view of philosophy is thatit consists pretty much in what is to be desired andwhat is to be avoided. Its foundation is the consciousnessof one's own weakness and helplessness." Hast thou the wish to be good ? believe that thouart bad." " The philosopher's school is a physician'shouse. You ought to leave it not in pleasure, butin pain. For you come as patients, one with hisshoulder put out, another with his head aching, athird with an ulcer, and so on. And am I to takemy seat and address you with fine sentences andstriking thoughts for you to break out into praise ofme, and then for you to go away each of you with hisshoulder or his head or his ulcer just as he broughtthem ? Is it for this that young men take longjourneys, leave parents, friends, relations, and theirproperty too, that they may cry * Bravo!' at my witticisms? Did Socrates, or Zeno, or Cleanthes, so ?"The really important thing is to speak to their consciences,to bring them to the feeling of their miseryand ignorance, to call forth in them the earnestresolution to improve, to make them philosophers, notin their opinion but in their conduct. " Show me,"says Epictetus, " a Stoic, if not one formed, yet onein process of forming. Show me, one of you, thespirit of a man purposing to be of one mind withGod, never hereafter to blame God r or man, * to bedisappointed in nothing, to be hurt by nothing, not

80 TKE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMto be angry, envious, or jealous, in a word, desirousfrom man to become God, and in this narrow bodyof mortality to have communion with Jupiter. ' Showme one. There is none such. And now, I am yourteacher and you my disciples, and it is my purposeto deliver you from hindrance, compulsion, impediment,to make you free, prosperous, happy, looking toGod in everything great and small." lFor Epictetus2 is filled with the thought of theGodhead, who knows our words and our thoughts,and originates all good. The philosopher stands inhis service, awaits his commission in order to act,and must have him ever before his eyes. Epictetusproves the government of Providence from tthe order, and the connection of the universe. Hepraises God's fatherly provision for men, and themoral perfection which makes Him our model. Herecognises in the world the work of the Godheadwhich directs everything for the best, has formed thwhole faultless and perfect, all its parts correspondinto the need of the whole. He intends all menhappiness and has provided them with its conditions.In the spirit of his school he celebrates the designwhich is apparent in the regulation of the world,which meets us so momentarily at every step, thatour whole life should be a perpetual song of praise tothe Godhead ; nor does He disdain to show this designin the smallest and most outward things. Noris he disturbed in his belief by the apparent evils andinjustices in the world, since he has learnt from thePorch to unite these also with the perfection of Godand His works. This belief in Providence is accord-1 Frag. 3 ; Diss. iii. 23, ii. 19.2 I take this short summary from Zeller, iv, 665.

NEOSTOICISM AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 8 Iing to the genuine Stoic sense, always referred byEpictetus to the universe as a whole, and to the individualonly so far as it is determined by its connectionwith the whole. If he exhorts to devotion to the willof God, that in his meaning falls in with the requirementthat man should suit himself to the order ofnature.Now to estimate all this language at its right value,we must ever remember what sort of a God it is towhom the Stoic shall so look up. And as to this,for Epictetus as for all his school, God and the worldare one and the same thing. Thus he says : " Allthings obey and serve the universe; earth and seaand sun and stars and plants and animals ; our bodyalso, in its sickness and its health, in its youth andin its age, and in its transition through all othhanges. It is reasonable then not to set that whichis in our power, the judgment, to struggle aloneagainst the universe. For this is strong, and superior,and better minded towards us, ruling us together withthe whole." " For such the nature of the world bothwas and is and shall be, and it is not possible forwhat takes place to be otherwise than as it is. Andin this change and succession not men only share,but all other living things upon earth, nay, and divinethings too." 2 In God and in Providence thus understood,Epictetus is a firm believer. How should henot feel the highest interest in that of which he isa portion and an effluence. Man must be consciousof his own higher nature: from this thought hedraws the sense of his dignity and moral obligation,and independence of all outward things. He resignshimself absolutely to that of which he is a part.1 Zeller, iv. 666, 4. 2 Frag. 136, 134.VOL. III. FIJBRARY ST. MARY'S COLLEGE

82 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOM" See you not how small a portion you are in comparisonof the whole ? That is in body ; for as tothe reason you are neither worse nor smaller thanthe gods. For the greatness of reason is judged notby length or by height, but by its decrees. Beingthen in something equal to the gods, are you notwilling to place your good in that something ?"Andhe says elsewhere, " A man who has realised thegreatness, the glory, the extent of this universe, thesystem of men and God, from which the seeds havefallen . . . upon all things generated and producedon earth, and eminently on the things possessingreason, for these alone by this connection of reasonhave a natural communion with God, why does notsuch an one call himself not by the name of any particularcountry, as an Athenian, or a Corinthian, but aworld-denizen ? Why not son of God ? Relationshipwith the emperor or any magnate at Rome givessecurity of life, but to have God for maker, father,and carer of us, shall it not deliver us from all painsand fears ?"He imagines his disciples coming to himand saying, " Epictetus, we can no longer endure togo on in the bondage of this wretched body, givingit food and drink, resting it and cleaning it. Weare kinsmen of God ; thence we came, thither let usgo. Free us from these chains which hang on us andbear us down." To which he will reply : " 0 men, waitfor God ; when lie gives the signal and releases youfrom this service, then depart to him." But that wemay not be misled by this language, he says elsewhere: " When God no longer gives you what isneedful, he sounds the recall, he opens the door, andbids you come! Whither ? To nothing dreadful.To that from which thou earnest, to the friendly, and

NEOSTOICISM AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH83the connate, ^ . f to the elements. What was in tfire departs to fire; what was in thee of earth, t*th;what of breath, to breath ; what of water, toter.1 There is no Hades, or Acheron, no river ofwail, or fire. But all things are full of gods andgenii." And again, " As the harvest is reaped andhe stalk of wheat perishes, yet not the world. As thleaves drop, as nature is full of these minor changso death is a greater change, not from that whichnow existing O into the non-existent, 7 but into the nonexistentas it is now. Shall I then no longer be ?Thou shalt be, but as something else, of which theworld has now no need."2 That is, by this changeof death, greater only than the changes which passunder our eyes in nature, yet not different in kind1 This philosophy is in fact the Anaxagorean view of immortality,which is found distinctly formulated in Euripides. Thus in Helen,v. 1013, he says - ^^^^Br" Mind in the dead lives not indeed, but yetPlunged in the deathless ether has a knowledgeUndying."And in a fragment from Chrysippus" The earth in all her greatness, and the etherOf Jove; ether the sire of gods and men ;Earth in her bosom fecund rains receiving,Bears mortals, and their food, and kinds of beasts :Whence is she justly called, Mother of all.What springs from earth goes back to earth again ;What from ethereal germ has flowered, returnsTo that same bourne of heaven whence it came:What has been ceases not to be, but eachFrom each distinct bears then its own impress."Niigelsbach, who in his Nachhomerische Theologie, p. 461, quotes these,comments on them thus: " The mind of the individual, after loss ofthe personality which was linked to the life, merges in the universalmind, and has part in its immortal consciousness, without any moreanimating a single being ; and death is the sundering of the productioninto its elements, by which each of them assumes again its properform."2 Diss. i. 12; i. 9; iii. 43; iii. 24.

THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMm m, thou passest from embodied to disembodiedmind, and rejoinest that from which tl mestut th dividual m who h joyed d sor-w d. he d and feared, done well id doi , willt no long Such is the end of the self-sufficientf God ; the extinction of p ,1 bsistAnd thus it 1 h the St P hcism takup the popular Polytheism into itself. The derivedgods are to be distinguished from the primal divinebeing. Here, Athene, Apollo, and the rest do notoutlast the burning of the world, but are resolved intothe original primal force.l And this reason of man,thus extolled and prized, is so resolved, when the bodyof death, which he bears about with him, is broken up.Thus the belief in God and Providence, in the dignityof man by virtue of his reason, and his kinsmanshipwith God, is united with the doctrine of the " opendoor," that is, suicide. It exists with the restriction ofman's personal subsistence to this life, and with theadmission of a countless multitude of gods, whosenumber and " variety do not matter, since they areemanations of the one primal force, into which theyfall back again, as does the human soul, but somewhatlater.Epictetus the slave, as Musonius the knight, wasfaithful to his principles throughout his life. Let usproceed to another great Stoic, who in the highest ofall ranks showed a similar fidelity to his philosophy,the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus.This disciple of Epictetus, born just as his masterwas leaving the world, reproduces exactly the views ofthat master as to the function which he assigns tophilosophy, as to the nature of the power ruling the1 Zeller, iv. 666.

NEOSTOICISM AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH85world, and as to the human soul's relationship to it. 1The centre of his philosophy lies in the moral life ofman, and this also makes his greatest resemblance toEpictetus. The main points on which he dwells arethe drawing back of man into himself, devotion to thewill of God, and the unvarying duty of humanity toothers. He calls out to man, Why trouble thyselfwitli what is external ? draw back into thyself. Thoucanst find rest and well-being only within. Busythyself with thyself. Cherish the divine genius withinthee. Sever thy true self from all which hangs aboutthee. Bethink thyself that nothing outside can touchthy soul: that it is but thine own notions of thingswhich weigh on thee; that nothing hurts thee unlessthou think that it hurts thee. " Consider that all ischangeable and worthless; that only within thee anunfailing source of happiness springs; that pless reason is the only fortress in which man musttake refuge, if he would be unconquerable. His actionas a reasonable being is the only thing in which abeing possessed of reason V has to seek his happinessand his good. All the rest, which has no connectionwith man's moral constitution, is neither good norevil. He who limits himself to his inward being, andhas cut himself free from all without, has extinguishedy wish and every desire. At each moment he is;ented with the present. He suits himself withmreserved assent to the world's course, he believesihat nothing happens but the will of the Godheadthat what is ood for the whole and lies in itnature, is likewise the best for himself; that nothhappen to man which he may not make material1 This summary is drawn by Zeller, iv. 682-684, from a greatnumber of passages of M. Aurelius.

86 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMfor his action as a reasonable being. Besides, hrecognises for himself no higher task than that offollowing the law of the whole, of honouring by strictmorality the God within his breast, of fulfilling hisplace each moment as man and as lloman, of advancingtowards the end of his life, whether it comesooner or later, with the tranquil serenity which contentsitself simply with the thought of what is inaccordance with nature. But how can a man feelhimself to be a portion of the world, and subordinatehimself to the law of the world, without at the sametime treating himself as a member of humanity,without finding his worthiest task in working forhumanity ? And how can he do this without givingto his country, in the more restricted sense, all theattention which his position requires of him. Nordoes Antoninus exclude from his affection even theunworthy members of human society. He remindsus that it befits man to love even those who stumble,to help the thankless and the unkindly. He bids usremember that all men are our relations; that theself-same divine spirit lives in all; that a man maynot expect to find no wickedness in the world ; thatthe erring only fail against their will, and only becausethey do not recognise their real good ; that hewho does wrong only harms himself, whilst our ownbeing can suffer no harm through the action of another.He therefore requires that we do not suffer anythingto lead us astray in doing good, that we either instructmen or endure them, and instead of being angry orastonished at their faults only compassionate and pardonthem.From a number of passages we gather the belief ofM. Aurelius that the human personality ceases at death.

NEOSTOICISM AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 87It is true that no part of man perishes, neither theportion of matter, nor the portion of mind, whichmake up the human conglomerate. The matter passesinto an endless round of change; the mind rejoinsthe seminal intelligence. But the man himself isnowhere asain. He calls to mind men of old, andespecially the Csesars preceding him, and then ask" Where then are those men ? Nowhere, or ncknows where. For thus continuously thou wilt lookat human beings as smoke, and nothing at all, especiallyif thou renectest at the same time that what hasonce changed will never exist again in the infiniteduration of time." " I am composed of whatand of what is material: neither of these will perishinto non-existence, as neither come to subsistence outof non-existence." As buried bodies last a time, andthen corrupt, " so the souls which are removed into theair, after subsisting for some time, are transmuted anddiffused, and enkindled by being received into theseminal intelligence of the universe, and in this waymake room for the fresh souls who come to dwellthere." And if a charge be brought against theDivine Justice " that some men, and very good men,and men who, as we may say, have had most communionwith the Divinity, and through pious acts andreligious observances have been most intimate with it,should be completely extinguished when they die," heanswers," not that it is not so, but " if this is so, beassured, that if it ought to have been otherwise, thegods would have done it." And " consider that beforelong thou wilt be nobody and nowhere, nor will anyof the things exist which thou now seest, nor any ofthose that are now living. For all things are formedby nature to change and to be turned and to perish,

88 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMin order that other things in continuous successionmay exist."Looking at these four together, Seneca, Musonius,Epictetus, and M. Aurelius, we find them coincide inthe following points. Philosophy as the rule of lifetakes the place of religion, and its office is to restorea sick humanity. It has the means to accomplishthis purpose by enjoining and practising a life accordingto nature, or reason. For the dignity of manconsists in possessing reason, which is an effluence, ora portion, of " the divine." And, therefore, the earth isa city common to gods and men, who are all of them,and they alone, in possession of reason. And in consequenceof this, men possess equal rights, and differfrom each other in moral worth and real value onlyaccording to the degree in which they live in correspondencewith reason. And the universe, beingthis great city of gods and men, which is ruled by aninflexible reason, the absolute submission of the partto the whole, of the individual man to the course ofthe world, is the first duty, encompassing human lifeth a never-ceasing pressure. Moreover, from tjoint possession of reason by men the duty of beneficenceand humanity in its widest extent is deduced:and it is chiefly in the enforcing this duty, in the kindlinessand even tenderness of tone which they assumeherein, that these writers differ so widely both fromtheir own school before them, and all preceding philosophers.While, however, the expansion of their viewin this respect is remarkable, for it is indeed the culminatingpoint of Greek intelligence as to the social1 M. Aurelius, Medit. x. 31 ; v. 13 ; iv. 21 ; xii. 5 ; xii. 21. Otherpassages referring to man's state after death are, ii. 17 ; v. 33 ; viii. 18;ix. 32; x. 7; xi. 3; xii. i, 31, 32.

NEOSTOICISM AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH89character of man, and applies to the whole race thenoblest and most touching thought of the dramatist," Homo sum, human! nihil a me alienum puto,"the contraction, or rather, an unnatural severance oftheir view on another side is equally remarkable. Itis as though thay had gathered the countless myriadsf individual human destinies into one great channelf waters only to conduct it to a precipice whshall fall into an abyss, and be dissipated for ever.3r the existence of man after death, if continued soT as his intelligence is concerned, about which theirlanguage is confused and uncertain, is not the existenceof a personal agent rewarded or punishedat he has done. His intelligence, reunited to thdivine intelligence of which it was originally a pibecome universal, but the man who did well or ill,is extinct. Out of the city of gods and men, thcitizen has perished. A system of future reward andpunishment forms no part of Stoic morality ; entersther into their fears nor their hopes. They aret to fear or to hope about it. It accords withhis, that suicide, the open door, is for adequatcauses justified and commended, these causes beingwhen providence, that is, the course of the world,indicates to man by withdrawing from him themeans of living according to nature that it has nofurther need of him here. And finally this systemsumes an attitude of neutrality, or even of support,wards the established religion of Polytheism bydering its gods, how numerous soever, as magencies of the one divine force which rules theworld, as evolved from it, and to be reduced bacto it at each burning of the world. And so M

90 THK FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMAurelius, a rigid believer of the Stoic divine unity,can be a zealous defender of the ten thousand godsof Koine.IILet us now consider the system of those writersfrom a somewhat different point of view, that, namely,which presents certain points of analogy, contact, orcontrast between it and the Christian Faith.I. The generative principle of Stoicism, and thekey, therefore, to its whole doctrine, is the relationshipof the human intelligence to the divine. " As light,says Posidonius,1 " is perceived by the vision which isakin to light, and sound by the hearing which is akinto air, so the universal nature must be perceived byits kindred reason." Thus Seneca : " God is near thee,with thee, within thee. A sacred spirit is withinus-in every one of good men a god dwells, uncertainthough it be who that god is." " Reason isnothing else but a part of the divine spirit plungedin a human body." And Epictetus : " Our souls arebound into God, are in contact with him, as beingportions and fragments of him." "Thou art a fragmentof God; thou hast in thyself a portion of him:how knowest thou not thine own nobility ? Whydost thou not recognise whence thou art come ?Carriest thou God about with thee, and knowest itnot?" And Marcus Aurelius: "Every man's intelligenceis God, and an efflux of the Deity." " Theunderstanding and reason of every one is the divinespirit whom Zeus has given to him for guardian andguide, a portion of himself." And as all souls areportions of the divine intelligence, so all together1 Quoted by Zeller, iv. 70, 3.

NEOSTOICISM AND THE CHRISTIAN UHUKCH 9 I*may be considered as one soul or reason." This one light of the sun, though it is Distributed owalls, mountains, and other things infinite. T.his one common substance, though it is distributedamong countless bodies, which have their severalqualities. There is one soul, though it is distributedamong infinite natures and individuals : one intelligentsoul, though it seems to be divided." l And tocomplete this view it must be remembered that thehuman soul is not merely, like all other living forces,a portion and effluence of the universal living force,but by its rationality stands in a peculiar relationshiptThus the basis of Stoicism was the physical * v idtity of the human soul with what they called " thedivine " :3 and as, they had not the conception ofimmateriality, it was an identity as well in quantityas in quality. To use their own expression, the souwas a part torn off from " the divine." * It is thiural identity which would stand in oppositionthe supernatural relationship of son bestowed on mding to the Christian faith, by the IA kinship founded in nature, belonging to the whrace, and so incapable of being lost, formed a strongcontrast with that filiation which is a pure gift,merited for the whole race by the Divine Redeemer,but finally bestowed only on the elect, and as threward of a battle won. When this contrast isstated, a sufficient ground is given for the deep-1 Seneca, Epist. xii. 66; Epictetus, Diss. i. 14, ii. 8; M/Aureliusxii. 26; v. 27 ; xii. 30.2 Zeller, iv. 184.3 r6 Q¬LQV. No translation conveys the force of this neuter andabstract term in the original. It is of very constant recurrence inGreek philosophical writers, and strongly suggestive of Pantheism.r* ^r

92 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMseated antagonism which the Stoics showed to theChristian Faith.2. It is impossible to overrate the importance ofthis doctrine in the Stoic system. Let us considersome deductions from it. First of all is the conceptionof virtue. Now it follows from the soul being aportion of the divine reason that the rational activityof the soul is virtue, which is the only good. Andthis conception of virtue rules the whole domain ofStoic morality. Seneca thus exhibits it: " Humanvirtues are included in one only rule, for right andsimple reason is one only. In the divine and celestialthere are no degrees of comparison. Mortal thingsare subject to diminution, extinction, deterioration andgrowth, exhaustion and increase. Therefore, in so uncertaina lot they suffer inequality. But there is oneonly nature of divine things. Now reason is nothingbut a part of the divine spirit plunged in a humanbody. If reason is divine, and no good without reason,all good is divine. Moreover, there is no differencebetween divine things; therefore not between goods.Tranquillity, simplicity, liberality, fortitude, equanimity,endurance, are equal to each other, for one single virtueunderlies all these, which preserves the mind uprightand unswerving." lThus the Stoic doctrine is a most absolute form ofnaturalism. And as there is a physical identity betweentlie particular and universal soul, so the virtueof the particular soul is to act according to its nature,and its nature consists in being rational. Reason thenbeing divine invests with its own divinity all the actionsof its subject. Thus reason in the Stoic system isa sort of natural anticipation of grace in the Christiani Epist. Ixvi.

NEOSTOICISM AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 93system. Now charity in theology is the representativeof grace. And so Seneca's expression, " One singlevirtue underlies all other virtues," is in very exactanalogy with St. Paul's, " Let all your works be donein charity ;" and, (< If I have all knowledge, and allfaith, and bestow my goods on the poor, and give mybody to be burned, and have not charity, it profitethme nothing."3. But inasmuch as the rational activity of themind is virtue, which is the only good, it follows thatthe pursuit of knowledge, and the attainment of it,which is science, are subordinate to virtue. It is tobe pursued, not for its own sake, but for the sake ofvirtue. All knowledge of the laws of the world isvaluable, because it will serve i to establish the solesupremacy of virtue. " Not knowledge as such, butthe obedient following of the divine order of nature,is our supreme duty." l Thus a moral purpose runsthrough the logic, the physics, and the metaphysicsof the Stoic, and binds them together. As it is thepurpose of the Stoic to live according to the laws ofnature, it is of great importance to him to know them.Hence his study of them, which has a moral originand a moral determination. He has no other meansof knowing them but by studying them. He cantherefore give himself up to earnest study both in thefield of matter, of abstract thought, and of mentalscience, but throughout he will have a moral purpose.It was Zeno's guiding thought to attempt to found thesupremacy of virtue on the scientific knowledge of theworld's laws.2 And in the last age of Stoicism thispurpose comes out most strongly. Seneca, Musonius,Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius disregard any logical,1 Ueberweg, p. 200. 2 Zeller, iv. 326.

94 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMphysical, or metaphysical studies which are not conductedfor this end. In this point of view it is thatStoici sm is rather a religion than a philosoph. Itshistorical importance consists in this position. In thissubordination of all science to the end of making manvirtuous, which springs, as we have seen, out of itsvery conception of virtue, the Stoic doctrine presentsa^ain o an analogy ev with the Christian. As the obedientfollowing of the divine order of nature in the one case,so in the other the knowing and loving God, and theimitation of Him by loving Him, is the end whichgives its value to all knowledge.4. Hence follows what is no less a marked featureof the whole Stoic line, a preference of the philosophicallife, as thus conceived, to the public or politicallife. For the cultivation of that virtue, " whichalone the Stoic recognised, to which he subordinatedall study, and for which he exercised all action, belongedto the interior life, the life of the mind. Toprocure tranquillity within the domain of the mind,to be independent of the iluctuations which assaultthe outer life, attend all forms of government, andrun into all human occupations, was the very effortwhich gave rise to the philosophy. And it remainedon the whole faithful to this principle throughout itscourse. If the Stoic became soldier, lawyer, or statesman,this according to his sect's doctrine, though anecessary, was an inferior sphere of action. Epictetus iexpresses this: " You inquire whether a man is toembrace political life ? Do you then ask for a greaterpolity than that which he administers ? He has toconverse with all men, whether it be at Athens, atCorinth, or Kome, not about ways and means, nor1 Diss. iii. 22.

NEOSTOICISM AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 95,bont peace and war, but about happiness or misery,ood or evil fortune, servitude or freedom. Andwhen a man lives in such a polity, do you ask me if heis to embrace political life ? Do you ask me if he isto take office ? Foolish man, I retort, what office isgreater than that in which he bears rule ?" TheStoic herein took precisely the ground of all truereligion. He was repeating after his fashion and onhis natural basis, " The kingdom of God is withinyou." This is, within the limits of the law of nature,the very counterpart of that spirit which Tertulliangives as the characteristic of Christians in his time.Before his time it caused Christians to be denouncedas men" of the most contemptible inertness," becausethey drew back from the Roman magistracy and thecares of public life. It was this same spirit which aprofound observer of our own times * has so deeplyregretted as forming a note of Catholics in his owna y5. But this culminated in what may be called theglory of Stoic doctrine, the sense, that is, that men asmen had a common life, interest, and cause, and belongedto each other, and in each other to the Divineeing. " When," says Seneca, " we have given to thewise man a commonwealth worthy of himself, that is,the world, he is not outside of this commonwealth,though he withdraw into retirement; nay, rather, ifhe leave a corner of it. he advances into larsrer andampler regions." And again, " Our thoughts embracetwo commonwealths, the one vast and truly public,containing both gods and men, in which we regardnot this or that corner, but measure by the sun thelimits of our state; the other that to which the con-1 Tocqueville.

96 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMdition of our birth has attached us. This may beAthens, or Carthage, or any other city, belonging notto all, but to certain men. Some men at the sametime labour for both these commonwealths, the greaterand the smaller, some for the smaller only, some forthe greater only. Still we can be servants to thisgreater commonwealth in retirement, and perhapsbetter there, as in the inquiry, what is virtue, one ormany ? What does a man engaged in these contemplationsdo for God ? He prevents works so greatbeing without a witness."1 Marcus Aurelius especiallyhas set forth this view in striking language." My nature is rational and social, and my city andcountry, so far as I am Antoninus, is Rome, but sofar as I am a man, it is the world. The things thenwhich are useful to these cities are alone useful tome." And again, " If our intellectual part is common,the reason also, in respect of which we are rationalbeings, is common. If this is so, common also is thereason which commands us what to do and what notto do. If this is so, there is a common law also: ifthis is so, we are fellow-citizens: if this is so, we aremembers of some political community: if this is so,the world is in a manner a State. For of what otherpolitical community will any one say that the wholehuman race are members ? " And so he calls man acitizen of the highest city, of which all other cities arelike families, and such a world is a body, of which eachman is not a portion only, but a member.2In like manner, f then, * as for the individual the innerlife is the Stoic's kingdom, so further he exalts thewhole race of man, as possessing reason in common1 Seneca, Epist. Ixvii- M. Aurelius, vi. 44 ; member, /xAos.

NEOSTOICISM AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 97th the one divine power which goes through allhings, into an ideal city or republic. The outkingdom is a transcript of the inner, the single wiseman leads on to a community of the wise. And asin the former so in the latter case the analogy withhe Christian Faith is striking. And it is we!bserve how far the heathen philosophy could go, ando acknowledge its remarkable merit in going sothis conception as to a community of humting in the joint possession of reason,was reached by the force of that reason alone. Thkey to it, that is, the descent of all men from Adamhad been lost. Notwithstanding this the Stoic, overleapingall differences of race, all varieties of condition,as between conqueror and conquered, civilisedand barbarous, freeman and slave, white and black,ronounced boldly and absolutely that all men bybirth were equal ; that all had a divine quality withinthem, and as partaking it were members of an universalcitv. conterminous with the earth, associated with" the divine." Man and all men belonged to this ;man and man only, for every class of beast was aliento it. Rationality was its token, pledge, and posses-sion. Marcus Anrelius and Tertullian use parallelpressions about the great republic of men. Thatthe former is rooted in this community of rationahuman nature: that of the latter gathers up thsame human nature, derived of old from one headfallen in him, and propagated from him, in a newhead, the incarnate God. from whom proceeds a n< wy of mankind. The joint possession of grace,storing and exalting the rational nature, is the tokend pledge of this unity, as rationality was of the"mer. Thus, as the one virtue of the Stoic, rulingVOL. III.

98 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMthe whole inner man, his living in accordance withnature or reason, was analogous to the Christian doingall his works in charity, so the one rational nature ofmankind, uniting the whole race in one with itself,and with " the divine," was analogous to the ChristianCity of God. In it Our Lord, the Second Head ofhe race, unites as companions with Himself andbrethren all who preserve the divine gift of grace,which He has merited for them and bestowed on them6. It was part of the Stoic conception of the universalreason governing the world to lay the greateststress upon the evidences of design which every partof nature supplies. They studied physics with aview to final causes. A chain of cause and effectnever broken in any single instance through allthe multitudinous processes of mind and matter theycalled Providence. That this Providence acted everwith perfect intelligence was part of their conception.The proofs of design and purpose which they saw allaround them in the visible course of nature, in thechanges of the seasons, in the orderly arrangement ofthe heavenly bodies, in the structure of animals, infact, in everything without and within them, theyconsidered an irrefragable assurance of this Providence.The Stoic argument on this head may be seen exhibitedwith a skill and a detail which a Christianmoralist might admire in Cicero's treatise of thenature of the gods. This doctrine was part of theSocratic legacy, and came to them besides throughPlato and Aristotle. But as set forth bv them itbore their own special impress upon it. The evolutionof cause and effect, revealing to them the boundlessintellect of the universe, was also a necessaryprocess. It admitted of no single break; it could be

NEOSTOICISM AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 99no otherwise than it was. It is made up of pand wisdom, but there is no indication of Will.is not a blind power in nature certainly, for no menever drew more peremptorily than the Stoics the conclusion," He that made the eye, shall He not see ?"except that they expressed it in the neuter, and said," That which made the eye, shall it not see ?" In thisthey departed from their master, Socrates, who ex-pressed, with almost evangelical tenderness, his beliefin a personal Providence. But still their recognitionof final causes is so specific and continual, that it seemso stimulate even Christian language. And theironception of the world as a whole ruled by infinitewisdom and intelligence stood out in the strongestcontrast with the Epicurean doctrine of chance, andfurnishes a point of contact with Christian doctrine.7. Still more is this the case when that wisdom andintelligence are viewed as ruling all things for thegood of man. This too was part of the Socratic view,and inherited by the Stoics. But to this also theygave their own impress. For as man alone sharedreason with " the divine/' all the effects produced by" the divine" were for the sake of itself, of which manwas the representative among living animals. Thusman is the centre from which they regard natThe order and arrangement which they saw everywhere in the processes of nature were for the good oman. The supreme reason acknowledges and work)r its kindred, which is in man. Not onlv then tinStoic conception of Providence, but in that Providthe subordination of all things to man, the ruling, ftinstance, the seasons of the year, the growth of plantthe production of animals, the whole economy of visibnature, for his advantage, coincided so far with th

100 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMChristian Faith. It wanted but one element, theconception of Will in the ruling power, to make itChristian. But as the motive supplied by the Stoicdoctrine for this special care of man was his possessionof rationality, which belonged to him in virtue of aphysical, which was also a necessary union with thedivine power in the universe, so the motive suppliedby the Christian Faith was the special love of God forman, as shown forth in the work of his redemption.And here in that element of Will, in which the Stoicconception of " the divine " was so deficient, the Christianon the contrary superabounded. For only in achoice of the Divine Being, the fountain-head of whichis concealed from man in the abysses of the divinenature, could the cause of such an act as the Redemptionbe sought. And so the Christian God is preeminentlyone who chooses, one who wills. And asHe willed to create, so He willed to redeem.8. From their fundamental principle, that virtue isthe only good, and consists in living according toreason, the divine part of man, or according to nature,the Stoics could not but divide men into two classesthe wise, or those who followed reason; the foolish, orthose who disregarded it. Their morality mainly consistedin maintaining that this difference was the onlyreal and essential one among men : all other differences,arising from the portion of external goods whichmight fall to the lot of each, were superficial. Butonce judging men by this test, neither could they failto see and to affirm that the vast majority of men wereunwise. And this statement, characteristic of themfrom the beginning, was made with still greater emphasisby Seneca and those who followed him. Hiswords may serve to speak for all. " We shall always

NEOSTOICISM AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH I O Ihave to say the same thing of ourselves: bad we are,bad we have been, I am sorrv to add, bad we shallbe. ... Of this our forefathers complained, of thourselves complain now, and our descendants will her

102 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMbeen remarked. But their differing standing-pointsbeing on the one hand bare reason, and on the otherreason penetrated with grace, the analogy betweenthe natural and the supernatural standard is to beexpected. In all this view, which the later Stoics,Seneca, M. Aurelius, Epictetus, present with suchdetail, reiteration, and pathos, the law of nature, accordingto which they spoke, would carry them up tothe very threshold of the Christian Faith. St. Paul,in expressing the struggle of the regenerate managainst sin, falls almost upon the words of the heathenpoet: but as his standard is far higher, and his scalemore minute, and his vision of sin more clear andterrible, so his language exceeds in intensity. " Isee and approve the better and follow the worse,"says the one; " 0 wretched man that I am, says theother, " who shall deliver me from the body of thisdeath ? "The Stoic then made the mass of men as muchsinners against the law of nature, as the Christianmakes them against the law of God.9. The points hitherto noted belong to Stoicismfrom its beginning, though the last one, the generalcorruption of mankind, is enforced by Seneca with anintensity unexampled before, and the great humanrepublic, in its full and practical development, appearsonly in him and his successors.1 But we nowFriedlaender, Sittcngcschichte Roms,\i\. 610, observes, " In fact anunprejudiced consideration must reach the conclusion that Stoicismand Cynicism raised themselves at this time by their own strength toa height and purity in the moral conception of human rights andhuman duties which had not been reached in an earlier antiquity.It was the Stoics of this time who first carried out in its whole rangeand to its last consequences the Stoic principle of all men belonging toeach other, who, according to the expression of Epictetus, have allGod for their Father, and so are brethren." The admission that theStoics of this time were the first to do this I take to be much more

NEOSTOICISM AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 103proceed to a certainly legitimate deduction from Stoi

104 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMIt is thus Cicero i set forth the Stoic doctrine:" Compassion and envy belong to the same subject,he who grieves over another's adversity, likewisegrieves over another's prosperity. But just as compassionis a sickness arising from another's adversityso envy is a sickness arising from his prosperityThus he who is liable to compassion is liable to envyThe wise man is not liable to the latter: therefonnot to the former." And Zeller sums it up, saying:" He can feel no compassion, and exercise no indulgence,since what he would esteem in his own case asno evil, he cannot compassionate others for: he canas little for their sake as for his own give himself upto an unhealthy emotion, and if justice demandpunishment, his feeling will not mislead him intoorgiving." If Cicero, following Panrctius, mentionsjustice and benignity as the two component parts ofthat virtue by which human society is held togethhe stops in depicting the latter very far short indeedof the part which Seneca gives to it. And Cicero,as an exponent of Stoic doctrine, probably gave aslarge a share to this virtue as was to be found intheir teaching up to his time. A hundred years lateranother spirit, whencesoever it came, had breathedupon Seneca. Eemaining entirely on the Stoicding-ground, he drew from the cardinal doctf the sect conclusions which for three hundred ynone had drawn before him. In this respect tlfollowing portrait exactly describes him. " Thproper crown of his moral teaching lies in thuniversal love for man, the purely human sympathywhich shows itself to all without distinction, even th1 Tiisc. Difsp. iii. JO. 2 iv. 216.3 Zfller, iv. 647.

NEOSTOICISM AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 105most insignificant and despised, which even in theslave forgets not the man; in that mildness of senti-ment to which nothing is more opposed than angerand hatred, violence and cruelty, and nothing appearsmore in accordance with nature, and worthier of man,than indulgent kindness, than unselfish benevolence,bestowing happiness in secret, imitating the divinegoodness towards good and evil ; which bearing inmind human weakness, rather spares than punishes,does not exclude even enemies from its goodwill, andrefuses to return injury for injury."All this, which was truly a revelation in Greek andRoman heathendom, appears suddenly in Seneca, andin it he is followed in different degrees by Musonius,Epictetus, and M. Aurelius. These sentiments oftensimulate Christian charity with a nearness of expressionwhich is surprising, which suggests contact.They are based, however, purely on a natural ground,on the fact that man, of whatever clime, or race, orcondition, has within him the same reason, that " particleof divine breath," which makes all the world akin.It may be well to compare and contrast the philosophicand the Christian treatment in the radical case of theslave. Epictetus,1 urging on the master forbearanceto his servant, says: " 0 slave, will you not bear withour own brother, who has Jove for his ancestor, whois a son from the same seed, of the same descent fromon high." How definite and absolute is the Apostle'sexhortation. For master and for servant alike hetouches the unhallowed relationship of slavery withthe doctrine of the Incarnation, and transfigures it bythe touch. On the one hand he puts the Christian'sLord in the person of the master, bidding the slave1 Diss. i. 13.

106 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMobey him with fear and trembling, not with eye-serviceas a man-pleaser, but from the heart with goodwill, asdoing the will of God in that very service, and knowingthat whatever good he does he shall receive itback from the Lord. On the other hand he turnsthe same great doctrine's light and heat upon themaster, and with equal force bids him to act in thesame spirit to his slave, using no threat, and knowingthat he too has a Lord in heaven with whom is norespect of persons. Thus the Christian dogma seversfrom the heathen the pantheistic alloy, and exalts therational creature to an infinitely higher participationof the divine nature by grace than the Stoic imaginedby reason. The brotherhood with Jove was vagueand distant: that with Christ touched every fibre ofthe Christian's heart. Still the Stoic doctrine hereinmaintains, as in the former instances, a striking naturalanalogy with the Christian.10. But in no point is the resemblance and at thesame time the contrast between the Stoic and theChristian conception more remarkable than in thedoctrine of the submission of man to the order ofithe world. " The Stoic picture of the wise mis completed by his resignation to his lot. Withthis come repose and happiness of mind, mildnessand philanthropy, the fulfilling of all duties, thaharmonv of life in which virtue according to thStoic definition consists. As morality begins wit"- lition of the general law, so it concludes iditional submission to its arrangements." ThiSeneca says : " Good men labour, they spend andpent, and that willingly; they are not dragged bytune. . . . How does the good man act ? H1 Zeller, iv. 283.

NEOSTOICISM AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 107himself up to fate. . . . Follow God, but what madness is it rather to be dragged by him than to followhim. . . . Whatever has by the constitution of theuniverse to be suffered, receive with a great mindTo this oath we are enrolled, to bear the condition;dying things. . . . We are born in a kingdombey God is freedom. ... I do not obey butassent to God. I follow him cordially, not becauseit is necessary." And Epictetus: " Dare to look upto God and say, ' Use me for the future for what thouwilt. I am of the same mind with thee. I amthine. I repine at none of thy decrees. Lead wherethou wilt.' " " This is the way which leads to liberty :this alone is escape from servitude." And MarcusAurelius: " To the reasonable living being alone isgiven to follow voluntarily events: to follow themsimply is a necessity for all."1In all this, nowhere does the expression come nearerthe Christian, and nowhere is the sentiment reallygreater distance. What is this god, or fate, or natuor providence, or eternal law, or common reason ?Zeller will reply for us. " Man is considered merelyas an instrument of the universal law. The Stoicmorality leaves him as little freedom of action, inice of duty, as the Stoic physical system leaves himreedom of will over against the course of the worldIt recognises only the general moral obligation ; thight of the particular man to act in accordance withhis peculiar state, and to develop himself, is for it asgood as non-existent." And in this he says that itallowed the intrinsic necessity of the system. " Forf every particular thing in the world is only a sequel1 Seneca, Prorid. v. 4; Vita leata, xv.5; Epist. xcvii. 2; EpictetusDiss. ii. 16, iv. I ; M. Aurelius, x. 28, quoted by Zeller.

IOS THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMof the universal enchainment of causes and effects,only the completion of the universal law, what remainsfor us in relation to this absolute necessity but unconditionalsubmission ?" l All here depends on the natureof the God to whom submission is required. Submissionto the unfree, impersonal, unbroken, everlastingsequence of cause and effect, is as terrible adoom as submission to a free, loving, remuneratingCreator is " to reign." But the pantheistic conceptionof God rules every part of Stoic doctrine,and interpenetrates the whole mass with a rigorousnaturalism. " The real ground of Stoic fatalism isexpressed in the statement that nothing can happenwithout sufficient cause, or under given circumstancescan fall out otherwise than it actually falls out. Forthis, as the Stoics believe, is as impossible as thatanything should come out of nothing, and if it werepossible it would destroy the unity of the universe,which consists exactly in this fast-closed chain ofall causes, in the unbroken necessity of all thingsand all their changes. This is the immediate consequenceof its Pantheism. The divine force whichrules the world could not be the one absolute causeof all things if there were anything which in anyrelation were independent of it; if an unchangeableconnection of causes did not embrace everything." 2The fiction has been imagined of a prisoner confinedin an iron room, the walls of which he at lengthperceived to be daily contracting upon him, until atno great length of time they would join and crushhim. Such is the treatment which man, as a personalbeing, having affections and conscience, as well asreason, experiences at the hands of the Stoical god.1 /filer, iv. 339; iv. 282. 2 Ib'ut. iv. 149.

NEOSTOICISM AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH109The common reason, which runs through all things,pervading the minutest point of matter and the wholeuniverse, crushes every sentient and intellectual naturein its grasp, eternally destroying and reproducingthem. Is it any wonder that a spirit such as M.Aurelius, in presence of such a conception, should beshrouded as it were in the blackness of despair, stifledwith the " bitter smoke " of its own imaginings ?Thus the Stoic and the Christian both proclaim, andalmost in identical terms, that the sum of life is tofollow God and to do His will: but the Stoic god isthe absolute contradiction of the Christian, to whomthe soul cries, " Thou God seest me," and "is pacified,comforted, and exalted.II. And this last thought leads directly to thecontrast which the Stoic and the Christian ends ofman present.Stoicism is mainly a system of morality founded uponthe intrinsic dignity of each individual man as possessingin his intelligence that which is akin to the onedivine intelligence. To live in accordance with this,or with nature, is the whole Stoic rule, under whichall individual duties are ranged. And this deificationof man, whose duties depend on his sense of his owndignity, and are a realising of the god within him,comes to an end at his death. This " Son of Jove "terminates in non-existence, as a personal being. Andso a relationship with " the divine " which is foundedin boundless pride finishes in absolute nothingness.The Christian rule of life on the other hand s-' l"om an act of infinite humiliation by which the Sonof God becomes man, and as man a sufferer above allHis fellow-men. Thus humiliation and suffering corne1 See Philip, ii. 5, 13.

I 10 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMbefore man as personal acts of God, and likewise asthe price of the sonship bestowed on him. Christianmorality, having a divine model for its rule, is itself animitation of these acts: Christian life is based uponthem. The sonship itself is the working of God inthe human will, and the human action, and the twocomprehend the reason deified by the Stoic. Butdeath, which ends all to the Stoic, puts the Christianin possession of the infinite good, which consists in thepersonal enjoyment of a personal god.Reviewing Stoicism in its course from the beginningof the reign of Claudius to the end of that ofMarcus Aurelius, we may note that at the first periodit is that system of philosophic thought which hasmost possession of cultured Latin society. In thecourse of these one hundred and forty years it losesthis ascendency. Another movement of the Greekmind, which we shall next have to trace, and whichstarts from about the beginning of this time, is preferredto it.If we try to measure its results in this period, theywill seem to be that it produced three such men asMusonius, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius; and fewand far between such senators as Thrasea and Rusti-cus. Lucan was its poet. Whatever of dignity andopposition to tyranny existed in the Senate of Nero,whatever in Persius and Juvenal we find concerning amoral end of life, the value of man, and his dearnessthe gods, with the emptiness of human things, isdrawn from this source. The elder and youngePliny, and Tacitus, belong more or less to this schoolBut we can only trace its effect on individuals. Themost notable intellectual work which Neostoicism canshow are the sayings of Epictetus, collected aud handed

NEOSTOICISM AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH I I Idown to posterity by his disciple Arrian. Besidetheir intrinsic value they had whatever weight theconsistent life of their author could give to them.From youth to age he appears to have practised thetenets which are here preserved to us under his name.He had the reputation of an honest man and a realphilosopher. But he does not seem to have createdany living school of philosophy. What effect hadeither his life or his writings upon his age ? It isin this respect that we ought to note the contrastbetween the action of the Christian Church and theimpotence of that philosophy which, when it began toteach in Rome, it found in vogue, with the credit ofhaving been in that and the preceding age professedby many noble Romans. During these five generationsof men the Church formed in every city of theRoman Empire a society swayed by its principles, asociety strong enough to produce in the capital duringthe reigns of Claudius and Nero, a vast multitudeof martyrs: strong enough to produce after anothergeneration a like sort of harvest in the reign ofDomitian, and to exhibit under Trajan and Hadrian,and still more under Marcus Aurelius, fruits of thesame kind. During the same five generations Neostoi-cism gradually decreases in influence. One indeed ofthe school mounts the throne, but he is the last considerableperson who belongs to it. Now, Stoicismin its original growth, and without that colouring ofhumanitarian sentiment given to it by its latest pro-fessors, when the Christian Church was already in theworld, showed more than any other system the forceof the purely heathen thinking mind. It had nearlydethroned all other competitors. Its god was not arestoration of the original father of gods and men, but

I I 2 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMa force created by its own thought, and its moralitywas the result of this creation. It claimed to makeman independent in this life and without any life tocome. Such it was when it lifted its head once moreamid the deep corruption of Nero's reign. But whileit has worked itself out by the time that its imperialvotary dies, with such results as we have seen, theChristian Church was performing in an ever-increasingdegree the wonderful work of gathering to itself outof the bosom of a corrupt society men who should acton new principles of life, and confirm their belief, ifneed were, with their blood. In this interval theproudest and most self-reliant of philosophic schoolsproduces here and there an able writer, and morerarely a disciple whose life was in accordance with itsdoctrines, but in the work of putting together a societywhich shall enforce its principles fails so absolutelythat we can discern no trace of any such attempt.Yet it is not from want of will to oppose the ChristianChurch that it fails to imitate it in this its highestwork. So bitter is the antagonism between the Stoicand the Christian mind, that the imperial philosopherwhose rule in all other respects is a model of moderation,clemency, kindness, and generosity, departs inthe case of Christians, and of these alone, from allthese attributes. Marcus Aurelius, as he spoke ofChristians scornfully, so he persecuted them bitterly.The patient endurance of death, which would havecalled forth his highest admiration in one of his ownsect, moved him only to sarcasm in them, a sarcasmthe more savage because some of their noblest martyrsobtained their crown in consequence of orders directlytransmitted from himself. But while those whom hethus treated were spreading more and more through

NEOSTOICISM AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCevery city and town of his empire, his own book othoughts, the most interesting study of a pagan mindwhich we possess, exhibits a deep discouragement, ahopelessness about himself and human affairs, whichindicate how little his philosophy satisfied either hismind or his heart. Removed by about two centuriesfrom Cicero on the one side and St. Augustine on theother, his meditations hold a sort of middle groundbetween the outwardness of the one and the intenseintrospection of the other. They bear witness to thenew thoughts about life and death, man's work anddestiny, stirred up by the teaching of the ChristianChurch. There is in them a yearning unfulfilled, ablackness of despair quite unknown to the earliertime. Perhaps it may be said that the greatest resultof the Stoic school was one which Stoics never intendedor foresaw. Their argument, deriving theunity of the human race from its joint possession ofreason, which was akin to the one divine intelligence,carried with it a most rigid doctrine of the divineunity. That unity, as conceived by them, beingwithout personality, which the human heart bears witnessto and yearns after, raised a longing which itcould not satisfy, and so prepared the way for thereception - of a personal God, when He should comebefore men with the attraction of the Christian revelation,as the God who not only creates but redeems.VOL.III.

LECTUREXVIITHE FIRST RESURRECTION OF CULTURED HEATHENISMIN THE NEOPYTHAGOREAN SCHOOLCiCERO, in a philosophic treatise written towards theend of his life, about fifty years before the Christianera, remarks that the Pythagorean philosophy mightbe said in his day to be extinct. Seneca, writing asit would seem in the year 64, the last before hisdeath, and that in which the great fire at Romeoccurred, followed by the first persecution of theChristians, expresses himself thus: " Who regardsphilosophy or any liberal study except when the gamesare interrupted, or a rainy day makes amusementnecessary ? Thus it is that so many philosophic familiesfail for want of an heir. The old and the youngAcademies have left no representative. Who is thereto communicate Pyrrho's tenets ? The Pythagoreanchool, disdainful of the multitude, finds no teacher.The new line of the Sextii, full of Roman vigour,after beginning with great force, was presently extinguished."Whatever allowance we make for the usual exaggerationof Seneca's language, heightened, as it mightbe conceived in this case, by his excessive regard forphilosophy, there is nothing remaining to show thatthis was not an accurate estimate of its condition, and1 Cicero, Timaus, i. ; Seneca. Nut. Quasi, vii. 32.114

RESURRECTION OF CULTURED HEATHENISM I I 5f the little power it had exercised in the worldduring the century preceding the time at which hwrote. This is a point on which I have dwelt ipreceding chapters, and therefore need not pursue hereI would note the three periods which have bee]assigned to Greek philosophy, and the three corresponding attitudes in which it stood to the nationsreligion. It was originally identical - with theology,but this position lasted only a 'short time. Assoonl as Thales, and from him downwards, men philosophisedno longer on the basis of the popular belief.From his time philosophy, dividing itself therefrom,sought for an independent solution of the highestroblems of life, and worked itself out in oppositito popular belief, which it tended to break up. Thperiod lasted for several hundred years, and its endcoincides with the first preaching of the Christianreligion. Its third period and its third attitude waswhen, in proportion to the advance of that religion tohe conquest of the Graeco-Boman world, it took upthe defence of the ancient worship of the gods, withall its rites and customs.Before proceeding to the third period of the Greekphilosophy, let us note the course which it had takenduring the long second period. After reaching itsculminating point in Plato and Aristotle, it had followedthree main directions, the Stoic, the Epicurean,and the Sceptic. The proper movement of Greek andLatin heathenism had completed itself in these three.But what sort of a thing was the heathen society inthe midst of which philosophy started on its course ?The people among whom Thales and Pythagoras,1 See Lasaulx, Ueber den EntwicJclungsgang des griechischen undromischcn Lelens, p. 55.

Il6 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMXenophanes and Heracleitus, Anaxagoras and Demo-critus, Socrates and the schools which sprung from hisdisciples, arose, had been from time immemorial possessedof a certain belief and worship. This may besaid to have comprehended in its completeness fourgreat parts, which are prayer, sacrifice, Coracles, andmysteries. Let us look at these in the idea whichlay at the bottom of each. Prayer is founded uponthe belief of man's continual dependence on a higherand invisible power, supporting human life, a powerwhich has sympathy with man, and will answer hissupplication with protection. Sacrifice, viewed as aninstitution, is the expression of man's belief that heneeds an expiation in the sight of this higher invisiblepower. It was the general belief of the ancient worldthat the freely-offered life of the innocent had powerto save the forfeited life of the guilty. The bloodysacrifice of animals, with all its accompanying rites, sowonderfully significant of the victim's supposed freewillas to his own offering, and of the transference ofguilt to him, accomplished in the shedding of hisblood, wherein lay his life, rested on the basis of thisbelief. And these acts of sacrifice, accompanied withprayer, encompassed the whole daily domestic as wellas political life of the people. Thirdly, the recurrenceto the knowledge of this superior invisible power inthe frequenting of oracles testified in respect to thedarkened knowledge of man the same sense of dependenceand need of aid which sacrifice testified in respectto moral guilt.2 If men fell into trouble, public orprivate, if they were perplexed as to how they shouldact, they came to ask the higher power, and their1 See Lasaulx, Die Siihnopfer dcr Qriechen und Homer, p. 277.2 Stiefelhagen, Thedogie des Hcidcnthums, p. 134.

RESURRECTION OF CULTURED HEATHENISM I I?coming to do so was a perpetual testimony to the needwhich they felt of enlightenment, and to their assurancethat it would be given. Fourthly, in the mysteries ofthe heathen lay the notion of pacification and communionwith this higher invisible power. These, it istrue, were connected with prayer and with sacrifice sofar as man's preparation went, but so far as the act ofthe higher power was concerned, the communicationof these came in the mysteries. As knowledge wasconveyed to man by the oracle, so his will was curedby the rites of initiation. And the sense of the needof this curing of the will is manifested in the universalexistence of such rites of initiation and purification inthe mysteries of the heathen world.1 The corruptionof such rites and their passing over into superstitioususages and customs, such as magic, enchantment, andall the dark arts belonging to them, testify in theirvery deepest debasement to the need from which theyspring "If we view this fourfold worship in its mass, howeverit had been overladen with corruption, to whateverextent prayer had been misdirected in the persons towhom it was addressed, and the requests which it madeto them, however much the meaning of sacrifice hadbeen obscured, whatever trickery and falsehood hadbeen mixed up with oracles, and whatever the debasementof mysteries, still the whole covered a beliefin the divine providence ruling the world in justice,rewarding man and punishing him, and, thoughmore obscurely, guiding him in a way of probation.As we look back upon it, it is not difficult to trace theoriginal revelation from which it sprung. And theexistence ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^H of its parts in many various nations of anti-1 Stiefelhagen, Theologie des Heidentliums, pp. 147, 162.LIBRARY ST. MARY'S COLLEGE

I I 8 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMquity points back to this original revelation with acertitude like that which the comparative grammar ofthe various Aryan nations creates in the mind as tothe original Indo-Germanic language. The identityof the verb To Be, of the numerals, and of the wordsbetokening the primary relations of life, in Sanscrit,Greek, Latin, Teutonic, and the other members of thfamily, proves that in a far back antiquity the hearthexisted at which they all sat as brethren. In the sameway the existence of this fourfold system in the timepreceding the Christian faith in Greece and Rome andother heathen nations, proves the voice which communicatedit to man, and the hand which impressed it onhim. That voice indeed spoke, and that hand wasimpressed with such force in the institution of thebloody sacrifices of animals, that man carried on fromage to age an arrangement of peculiar and intricaterites based upon one notion so specific that manyvarious nations could not have hit upon it separately,and so singular that reason could not have devised itfor itself.When the pursuit of wisdom arose among a peoplewhose life had been moulded by institutions such asthese, what should we expect its proper work to be ?Was it not to disengage the truth from its corruption,to purify and strengthen the positive beliefwhich formed the ore, to detach and reject thescoria which had adhered to it. And indicationsof such a course in the early Greek philosophy arevisible. Thus at its very rise in the sixth centurybefore Christ, Xenophanes leaped at once by the conclusionsof his own reasoning to a conception of thedeity which formed the strongest contrast with thepopular Polytheism. Looking upon the heaven, he

RESURRECTION OF CULTURED HEATHENISM I 19laimed," God is unity. If there be what is supremin power, he must be one; for, were there two orm )re, he could not be mightiest and best* One Godhere is, the greatest among gods and men, like tmortals neither in shape nor understanding. Withouttoil by his mind he rules the universe. He is ally ,11 mind, all ear. Homer and Hesiod htfributed to the gods whatever is vile and blamefulmong men, theft, and adultery, and mutual deceit.ortals conceive as if the gods were born and hadclothes as we, and our voice and shape. So if oxen,lions, and horses had hands to construct works cart like men, they would make their gods such asthemselves: just as the ^Ethiopians make them bd flat-nosed, the Thracians ruddy and blue-eyedd each people after its own likeness. But it isan equal impiety to say that gods are born or thathey die, for in both cases they once were not." Andwhen his country people asked him if they shouldsacrifice to Leucothea, and if they should mourn forher, he replied, " If she be a goddess, do not mournfor her: if she be human, do not sacrifice to her;Thus clearly spoke reason as to the unity and spiritthe Godhead at the very rise of Greekphilosophy, and as clearly condemned the worshipse srods with which it was surrounded. So inthe next century Anaxagoras, the teacher of Periclesand Euripides, recognised no other God than themind which orders the universe. So Plato believedthat the causes of apparent things are the eternalIdeas, which may be referred back to three, the Ideaof the Good, of the Beautiful, and of the True, butthe highest cause and the unity of these three is God.And when reason had reached after and found such

120 TUB FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMa God, to whose presence conscience would bear witnessin the secret heart of every man, both wouldunite to enjoin that prayer be made and sacrificeoffered to such an one alone: that from him alonesitting in the midst of the earth as a fatherly councillorin his oracles instruction and advice should besought; from him alone purification and healing ofthe will be asked for in mysteries. For he, in Plato'swords, " according to the ancient tradition holdingthe beginning, the end, and the middle of all thingsby his own nature while lie encompasses them, directsthem aright, and upon him follows justice, the avengerof those who desert the divine law." lHere then is ample proof that reason and conscience,not to speak of that ancient tradition towhich riato appeals, were strong enough both tosee the truth as to the one God, and condemn theerror which had divided His worship and corruptedit in the division. But now what we have to noteis that such had not been the prevailing course ofphilosophy up to the first preaching of the Christianfaith. It had been hostile indeed in the main to theestablished religion, and had discredited its rites, towhich yet every philosopher in his time had accommodatedhimself, for one and all, like their masterSocrates, sacrifice a cock to Esculapius. These nobleconclusions of Xenophanes, Anaxagoras, and Platohad not purified that religion, and brought out thebasis on which it rested, a belief in the divineprovidence, the witness of prayer, in man's need ofexpiation, the witness of sacrifice, in the ignorance ofhis mind looking for continual instruction from above,in the perversion of his will, demanding union with1 Plato, Laws, iv. 354.

RESURRECTION OF CULTURED HEATHENISM 121God, though these two latter needs lay hidden in thefrequentation of oracles and mysteries. On the contrarythe outcome of the three centuries and a halfwhich intervene between the death of Aristotleandthe publication of the Christian Faith was that philosophicthought had thrown itself into three channels.Each of them terminated in negation of these primarytruths to which even the polytheistic worship scornedby the philosopher bore witness. For the Stoicism,which we have seen described in the pages of Seneca,admitted indeed one only power as ruling the universe.It was a force impervious to prayer and sacrifice, aninterminable series of cause and effect, in which thelaws of necessity belonging to matter were applied - tomind, nay, the very distinction of mind and matterwas done away with. In it providence was the courseof the world, and God was nature, and man a particleof nature. If the nobler and firmer minds amongthe Romans were attracted to this philosophy by itstheory of duty, and of man's dignity as possessingreason, a much larger number, it is believed, werecontented with the Epicurean view of things, that is,with the conclusion that there were no gods who concernedthemselves with the course of human actions,no providence in short, no judge, rewarder or punisherof man. They were famous, it is said, for thecultivation of friendship with each other. They werecomposed chiefly of the wealthy class, and the kernelof their philosophy consisted in making the most ofthe goods of life, and the least of its evils. In factwe should probably do them no wrong if we said thatthe only thing they worshipped was the civilisation ofthe day. The other tendency which existed in thethinking world at this time was that of the Sceptics.

122 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMIf they had no teacher to set forth their principles inSeneca's day, as we have heard him assert, there isevery reason to believe that there were many whoseonly conclusion about the most important problems ofhuman life was that there is no such thing as certitude.Perhaps these cut at the root of worship andall that belongs to it at least as deeply as either Stoicsor Epicureans.From the point of view in which we are nowregarding them these three philosophies are merelybranches growing on one stem. The denying spiritpervades them all. Far from developing, they hadnot discerned the good still existing in that complexsystem of rites and the belief embedded in them, outof which the ritual sprung. Far from purifying religionof its corruptions, they had extinguished itsessence, the sacred fire of piety in the human heart, thehuman person's recognition of the Creator and Fatherof all. They had not merely degenerated from Socratesin his tender acknowledgment of an all-wise overrulingprovidence: they were far behind Homer, who proclaimeda father of gods and men, the judge andre warder of human actions.But at the same time that the cultured classes hadassumed this attitude of coldness, unbelief, or evendirect hostility to the established worship, which thename of Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics conveys, andwhich the still existing literature reflects, it must notbe forgotten that this worship was in full possessionof the mass of society.1 The poor and the rich, thecultured and the uncultured, formed then as now,and much more than now, two worlds. If a portionof the rich and cultured then exhibited only an out-1 This is shown by Friedlaender, Sittcnyeschichtc Roms, vol. iii. ch. 4.

RESURRECTION OF CULTURED HEATHENISM 123ward compliance with rites and ceremonies which theyinwardly disbelieved, yet a vastly larger number, ruledby habit, custom, and ancestral belief, frequented themstill with undiminished faith. It would seem that theevidence of remaining inscriptions and votive tabletsbears as decisive a testimony to this temper of mindin the mass, as the spirit of the literature bears to aprevailing unbelief in that far smaller class to whichit is addressed.It was not until after the time of Seneca, and onlywhen the Christian Church had been spreading itselfduring forty or fifty years in the Roman Empire, thatwhat may be called a believing movement in culturedheathenism can be traced. This constitutes the thirdperiod of Greek philosophy, when, over against theextending influence of Christianity, it took upon itselfthe explanation and defence of the worship of thegods. Its characteristics are on the one hand areligious feeling of piety, on the other an endeavourto give a logical and doctrinal foundation to heathenism,and so to reconcile together popular belief withphilosophic thought.1All existing evidence points to Alexandria as theplace at which this school arose, and those who studiedthere, whether Greeks or Jews, 4 as taking part in themovement, among whom the learned Helleniser, Philo,was conspicuous. It is difficult to trace the exacttime at which it appeared; in Philo, at any rate, itfirst reached importance. If before him a number ofwriters under the assumed names of old Pythagoreanshad composed works which pretended to be the1 See this state of mind set forth by Mohler, Geschichte, i. 208, 262 ;Dollinger, Ifeidenthum, p. 598. Lasaulx, Studicn des Hassischcn Alter-thums, recognises the motive I have given to it.

124 TJIK FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMiauthentic utterances of the Samian philosophy, yet sofar as can be inferred from the fragments of themstill remaining, a good judge pronounces that theethical and political -^^» remarks were only -^f a colourlessand weak repetition of well-known propositions fromthe Academic and Peripatetic and, in a smaller degree,from the Stoic system of morals.2 In all of them therewas nothing peculiar to distinguish them from opinionsgenerally prevailing in that day. But we find stronglymarked in the Alexandrine Judaism of that time certainpeculiarities of the Pythagorean and Platonic revival ofwhich we are about to speak. And in the Jewish speculationof rhilo, the common direction taken by theJewish and Grecian schools, both of which had their rootin Alexandria about the same time, is developed morerapidly and powerfully than in the whole Hellenic sciencedown to Plotinus.3 It does not seem an unfair inferencefrom such a fact that his writings may havebeen the means of disseminating this tone of thoughtin the Gentile world.Philo is in every way worthy of our attention, bothfrom his time, his position, and from the effect whichwe are justified in attributing to his writings. Hebelonged to n rich and distinguished Jewish family atAlexandria. Of this great capital his people mainlyoccupied two quarters out of five, while they formeda million out of the seven or eight at which the thenpopulation of Egypt is computed. His brother's sonwas the Alabareh or chief-magistrate of the Jews.He was born about twenty-five years before our era;he lived, it is supposed, far into the reign of Claudius.This date makes him, considering that he is a writer1 See a list of these enumerated by Zeller, v. 85, n. 2.2 Ibid. v. 123. :{ This is asserted by Zeller, v. 62.

RESURRECTION OF CULTURED HEATHENISMI 2 5ho has left large remains, an object of the highestnterest with respect at once to the Roman Empire,he Jewish people, and the Christian Church. Aboutfive years before his birth Egypt had passed fromCleopatra, the last of the Ptolemies, under the dominionf Rome. His manhood up to the age of fifty ywitnessed the consolidation of the monarchy undAugustus and Tiberius. When he reached that agethe preaching of our Lord began. We cannot indeedtell whether he himself went up to Jerusalem duringany of the four passovers over which that preachingextended. Neither can we think that a person so wellformed of all matters concerning his people remainedin ignorance of the stir which the events ofour Lord's life created. Thus his writings were composedat the very last period of the Jewish peoplebefore the appearance of the Christian Church. Therecould not be a matter of greater interest than to knowhow a Jew at once zealous for the religion of his ownpeople and learned in the literature and philosophy ofthe Greeks would speak at such a moment. For manygenerations there had been a large colony of his peoplein Alexandria. During all that time the greatnued to be the central point of meeting for thek and the Oriental mind, and the world's martfor intellectual speculation no less than for commercialexchange. When it fell under Roman dominion, ittook rank at once as the second city of the empire,being however far superior in the beauty* of its buildingsand in the regularity and stateliness of its structureas a city to what Rome was up to the end of thereign of Augustus, or rather to the fire of Nero. Atthe same time it was perhaps even more cosmopolitan,at least in the cultured part of its population, than

126 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMRome itself, for there was no institution at Rome likethe University of the Ptolemies which would collecttogether by honourable salaries and the attraction oferudite society, the learned of many races and religions.From this time forth it became the point at whichthe Western as well as the Greek and the Easternminds were brought into contact and collision. Thusthe Greek writings of an Alexandrian at the time ofPhilo would either directly or indirectly affect thewhole cultured society of the Roman Empire, of whichGreek was more the language than Latin. All thoseespecially who were interested in philosophy wouldbecome acquainted with any view or doctrine ofimportance set forth in any school of Alexandria.When Philo thus in his learned leisure looked outupon the world, he would find it ruled by Romanpower and Greek mind. As a practical man he couldnot but appreciate what was pre-eminently the Romanart, the art of government. As a thinker, he couldnot but be drawn towards the people who for fivehundred years had been engaged in solving with theinstrument of an almost matchless language, and inthe main by efforts of reason, the most importantproblems which concerned man whether singly or insociety. Thirdly, as a Jew he believed with all hisheart that his own nation was in possession of truthsyearned after but imperfectly reached by the thinkerswhom he most admired. Quite different in the circumstancesof his life from a Jew of Palestine, hewould be exposed to the full force of the Greek civilisationin the midst of which he was placed, and hewould be inclined to look with favour on that Romanpower which secured for his people a second countrywherein they throve and were honoured. And yet

RESURRECTION OF CULTURED HEATHENISM I 27while he speaks of the government of Augustus and ofTiberius almost with veneration, and while he callsPlato not only great but holy, he believes that thesole rule of life was delivered by Moses to his people.He believes that Moses was the legislator and divinelytaught sage from whom truth not only shone infull lustre to the Jews, but streamed over to theGentiles.It was under such circumstances no wonder that aman of high intellectual gifts, who was profoundlypenetrated with the truth and goodness of the Hebrewrevelation, yet by education and learning was a Greek,should wish to join together in a sort of marriage thetwo parts of his own being. He would in fact espousethe fair Grecian captive, whose beauty had delightedhis senses, with the Hebrew husband whose dignityand authority were paramount over his soul. And tothis end, according to the precepts of his law, hewould prepare her for the ennoblement she was tomeet. The myths which disfigured her worship wereto be explained and purified by a moral interpretation,just as on the other side revelation itself in condescensionto human weakness had veiled high spiritualtruths under a homely literal expression. But herewe must note that while on the Hebrew side the alle-ory simply draws the truth out of its image, on theGreek side the interpretation employed removes fromyth the falsehood which had debased it. ThushPhilo, the human gifts whicl)rmed the dowry of the bride, that is to say, thecircle of sciences, which the philosophic subtlety ofthe Greek mind had produced, were to be carried tothe home of the husband, who had for his divine ption the knowledge of God and the goodness of virt

128 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMIn the mind of Philo, philosophy, as such, was thehandmaid of theology. In the mixed religious andphilosophical system which he was attempting to construct,he was exalting her to the rank of a wife, butshe was still to be subordinate to the husband. Theform of Greek thought i was to be fused with the sub-stance of Jewish belief. This was his intent andpurpose, which he supposed himself to have carriedout, and to which he was never consciously untrue.In this attempted union of Jewish revelation withGreek science, the position of Philo is, that the HolyScriptures of his own people contained the sum of allknowledge; that they were given by a divine inspirationwhich excluded all error and imperfection. Herecognises no other source of wisdom. The expositionof the sacred books is to him the proper philosophy ofhis people: Moses the greatest of all prophets andof all men. On the other hand a practical limit is setto his belief in authority, by his recognition of a truewisdom outside of his own nation and religion. Thuslie speaks of the holy community of Pythagoras, andof the godlike men, Pannenides, Empedocles, i-^"- Zeno,and Cleanthes, and admits that Greece is distinguishedas the cradle of science and a truly human civilisationabove all other lands in the world. Further,his veneration for Greek philosophy is shown morestrongly than any particular expressions can exhibit,by the wide use which he has made of Pythagorean,Platonic, Peripatetic, and Stoic doctrines, and by theinfluence which he has allowed these to have upon hisown view of things. The central point of all wisdomto him is theology, in which, as is natural, he followshis Jewish doctrinal system. But philosophy and1 Dollinger, Hcidcnthum, p. 837 ; Zeller, v. 295.

COLLEGERESURRECTION OF CULTURED HEATHENIS . Geven the encyclical sciences are in his opinion anindispensable help to this theology. Now thesesciences could be found on]y among the Greeks. Thelegislator of his people is exalted far above Greekphilosophers, but the relation which he conceives ofthe Greek philosophy to the Jewish religion is yet theessential similarity of their contents. The Jewishlaw contains the purest and most perfect wisdom, butphilosophy contains the same wisdom less purely andless perfectly. The difficulty which a Jew would feelin allowing this was softened to him by the beliefthat the Greek wisdom itself was derived from theJewish revelation. 1The chief interest of Philo to us in the presentinquiry lies in three particulars. These are, first, thetendencies which he had in common with the Greekphilosophy of his day ; secondly, what he borrowedfrom it; thirdly, what he contributed to it. On thefirst and second points we will say only a word, dwellingmore largely on the last.Now as to the eclectic connection of diverse doctrineswhich gave the name to his school, that was a tendencywhich had been a considerable time at work: so likewisethe neglect of logical and physical studies, andthe devotion to religious and ethical questions, andagain the representation of philosophy as a religion.These things had been seen in Antiochus, Cicero, andthose who followed, and are marked enough in theStoicism of Seneca. So far Philo's Alexandrine speculationpresupposes L what had been up to his daythe course taken by Greek philosophy. Again, whichwas our second point, from it he borrows scientificform and method, and a number of particular concep-1 See Zeller, v. 295-297, 300.VOL. III. I

130 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMtions and propositions derived from Plato, Aristotle,the Stoics, and others.1ut now we proceed to a much more importantpoint, to consider, that is, what Philo's own contributionto Greek philosophy may have been. As to thiswe note that the distinguishing peculiarity of theNeopythagorean school lay in the attempt to attain,by means of a divine revelation, to a knowledge andto a happiness which no effort of mind by a processof reason and science could acquire. Secondly, inorder that the individual might obtain this revelation,it was considered necessary that he should stand in asimilar relation to the Godhead with that in whichthose stood to whom such a revelation was originallymade.2 These two things may bo termed in a wordthe principle of revelation and the principle of holiness.Now both of them had been strange to Greek philosophydown to Philo's time. Any assumption of supernaturalrevelation, any requirement of contact withthe Divine other than what might be produced by theeffect of thought itself, was either entirely unknownto Plato, Aristotle, and their descendants, down to therise of the Neopythagorean school, or remained withoutany real significance to them.3 The Greek principlealways had been scientific thought, and this, twentyyears after Philo's time, continued to be the principleof Seneca, as it had been of Cicero, and all their predecessors.The introduction into philosophy of twosuch principles as the need of revelation in orderto acquire true knowledge of God and of the greatproblems which concern human life, and the need ofholiness in man in order practically to avail himself'1 Zeller, v. 63.2 See Zoller, v. 56.3 See this avowal made by Zeller. v. 58.

RESURRECTION OF CULTURED HEATHENISM I 3 Iof such knowledge, amounted in fact to a revolution.This has been virtually admitted by those who datefrom this time a third, which forms the last period ofGreek philosophy.Now the whole mind of Philo was filled withthe thought that a complete revelation had been givento his people, and that this was the only well-springof true knowledge. Not less earnestly did he holdthat the participation in such knowledge depended onthe religious O and moral state of the man.Let us turn to that which rules the whole religiousand philosophical system of Philo, his conception of God.And first it is derived to him from the theology ofthe Old Testament; it comes to him as a gift fromabove, not as an elaboration of his own mind. Almostall his treatises are comments on the sacred writings,and it is in so commenting that he draws out his conceptionof God. The effect is remarkable. If Plato 1had declared that the Maker and Father of this universewas hard to find, and when found impossible toutter to all, Philo's mind on the contrary ran overwith the thought of God, and disclosed His attributeswithout stint, from the ground of that tradition whichhe inherited as a Jew. Moreover, the sense of Godwas wrought into his inmost being by the specialrelation in which God stood to his own people. Thecontrast between this strong conception of Philo andthe abstract relationless impersonal neuter which theGreek philosophy up to his time called "The Divine," *is most striking. It is expressed most vividly byPhilo's own often-repeated name, " the living God,"for truly, in comparison with it, that philosophicalabstraction is a dead thing.1 Tirnaus, sec. Q.

132 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMThe God thus conceived by Philo is one, simple,eternal, unoriginated; He is self-existent and absolutelydistinct from the world, which is His work.Whoever holds the world itself for the Lord God, isfallen into error and wickedness. God is in His ownbeing incomprehensible ; we can only know that He is,not what He is. We can only predicate of Him thatHe is " He who is." He is most pure and absolutemind, better than virtue and better than knowledge,better than the idea of goodness and the idea ofbeauty. " He is His own place, and full of Himself,and sufficient for Himself, filling up and embracing11 that is deficient, or empty, but Himself embracedby nothing, as being Himself one person, and yeteverything." iFurthermore as lie is the Maker and Father of the1, so is He likewise its p >r, governor, re-warder, and punisher. inisher. " Those wh would make theworld to be unoriginated, cut away, without beingf it. the most usef d necessary of all the constitents of piety, t t th belief i Providence.P that what h gin is cared for byts father and mak For a father is anxious f< thlife of his children, and a workman aims at theduration of his works, and employs every deviceimaginable to ward off everything that is perniciousor injurious, and is desirous by every means in hispower to provide everything which is useful or profitablefor them. But with regard to what has had noorigin, there is no feeling of interest, as if it were hisown, n the breast of him who has not made it. Itis a worthless and pernicious doctrine to establish inthe world what would be anarchy in a city to have no1are etj /ecu TO irav avrbs &v. Legis AUcyor. I, xiv. p. 52.

RESURRECTION OF CULTURED HEATHENISM I 3 3superintendent, regulator, or judge, by whom everythingmust be distributed and governed."1To God accordingly, as Maker, Philo ascribes theabsolute knowledge of everything which He has made,and especially as the moral governor of man, theknowledge of His most secret thoughts. " To God, asdwelling in pure light, all things are visible, for He,penetrating into the very recesses of the soul, is ableto see transparently what is invisible to others, andby means of prescience and providence, His ownpeculiar excellencies, allows nothing to abuse itsliberty or exceed the range of His comprehension.For indeed there is with Him no uncertainty evenin the future; for there is nothing uncertain andnothing future to God. It is plain then h that theproducer must have knowledge of all that he hasproduced, the artificer of all that he has constructed,the governor of all that he governs. Now Father,Artificer, and Governor He is in truth of all thingsin heaven and the world. And whereas future thingsare overshadowed by the succession of time, longer orshorter, God is the maker of time also. . . . For theworld by its motion has made time, but He madethe world, and so with God there is nothing future,who has the very foundations of time subject to Him.For their life is not time, but the archetype and modelof time, eternity, and in eternity nothing is past, andnothing is future, but there is the present only."His goodness is as perfect as His power and Hiswisdom. His holiness is the pattern of all holiness." It is God who sows and plants all virtue upon earthin the mortal race, being an imitation and image of1 DC Mundi Opificio, sec. 2.2 " Quod Deus sit imiiiutabilis." Sec. 6, p. 72.

134 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMthe heavenly." »1 Thus commenting on the four riversf Paradise, he says, " The greatest river from whichthe four branches flow off is generic virtue, that is,dness, and the four branches are so many virtdence, temperance, fortitude, and justice. Now-generic virtue derives its source from Eden, whthe wisdom of God, and it rejoices and exalts andtriumphs, having its glory and its beauty only ints Father, God. The four particular virtues arebranches from the generic, which serves as a river twater the perfections of each in an abundant streamof good actions."Not only is God the archetype of all holiness, andnot only is the origin of all human virtue in God, butman in the weakness of his sensual nature, and in thesinfulness which springs from it, can only look to Godfor help. Man 3 is bound to free himself from theinfluence of sensuousness, but as a sensuous beinghe cannot do this. "What remains for him but tobetake himself to a higher power, and receive fromit as a loan that strength for good which fails inhimself? Hence Philo teaches that all virtue springsfrom the divine wisdom. To God alone it belongs toplant virtues in the soul, and it would only be a self-seeking delusion if we were to ascribe them to ourselves.The powerful drawing of God alone makesit possible for us to rise above the senses, and graceoften so entirely prevents our own desire that it1 Leyi* All eg. i. 14, p. 52, and 19, p. 56.2ra KaTop6&/J.a.Ta iKaar-r)?. This is a fair instance of Philo's unionof philosophic morality with Scriptural revelation. The four cardinalvirtues are Stoic, and Kar6p6a)fj.a is the special Stoic word for thegood intention carried into a good act.3 I take the following account of man's weakness and his need of"^j. ^ ^ ^rf ^*- W ~-*" -^rf^ i*-f- i l-*r*- ^Bb ^5, 357-6o. Hsupports it by many references to Philo's works.' »" "" i 9 'I

RESURRECTION OF CULTURED HEATHENISM135chooses out its instruments before every good deed,nay, before birth itself. So perseverance in good-willcan only be attained by one who is under the divineprotection. From this point of view the task of mannaturally would be not merely to exhibit humanreason in life and action, but the most necessarything for him is to put himself in relation to God,and take the motives of his conduct from this relation.True morality is imitation of God. Whoever followsonly his own conviction of good and duty, howeverright and pure this conviction may be, does not yetpossess right virtue, which belongs to him who deverything only out of regard to God. If then Phagrees with the Greek philosophers in founding virupon wisdom or knowledge, still this wisdom isanother kind from theirs. True science has in hismeaning one only object, the Godhead. The unfailingground of wisdom, nay, true wisdom itself, is only faith.Thus the negative description of virtue, according towhich it would consist in deliverance from sensuality,receives its positive completion. It lies however notin human nature and action as such, but only in theirrelation to the Godhead.Knowledge itself has only value so far as it bearson the moral and religious state of man. Not onlythe encyclical sciences, mathematics, grammar, andthe rest, but many philosophical inquiries have onlya subordinate importance for Philo. They are onlya preparation for wisdom, not wisdom itself : onlymilk-food for children, Chaldean arts, attendantsupon true science. Perfect virtue is Sara, encyclicalknowledge Hagar. If a man must first be versed inthis, and if even the friend of wisdom must embraceHagar before he can have children by Sara, and asST.

136 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMAbram pursue Chaldaic astronomy before as Abrahamhe reaches on to theology, yet so soon as the maidattempts to put herself in the place of the mistressshe is thrust out. When the sciences, which serveas an introduction, seek to be the highest and finalobject, they become perverted and ruinous. But itis no better with philosophy itself, if it does not seekits end in the knowledge of God and in moral self-knowledge. It is true, Philosophy is the highest giftof the Godhead. In it knowledge is matured andperfected. Other sciences are occupied with particularparts of the world: Philosophy searches out theessence of things itself. Everything actual is itssubject. Nevertheless its proper aim lies only in manand his salvation. The philosopher is a physicianwho is called in to heal the sicknesses of human life,to make the inward man sound. The self-knowledge,which is its chief task, goes beyond itself. The deeperwe penetrate into ourselves, the more shall we mistrustourselves, the plainer recognise our nothingness.We shall see that God alone is wise, but the humanmind far too weak to comprehend the nature of things.We shall remember how often our senses deceive us:how feelings and judgments change with persons andcircumstances: how relative are our notions; howuneven and dependent on their convictions even themoral conceptions of men are; how little we knoweven the essence of our soul; how even philosophersare at issue with each other on the weightiest questions; and we shall renounce all claims to knowledgeof our own. Thus only can we hope to attain totruth. He who will know God must give up himself: must turn away his sense from everythingperishable. He who gives up himself, knows Him

RESURRECTION OF CULTURED HEATHENISM 137who is.1 No created being can of itself know anythingO of Him ;' if we would see Him, ' He must revealHimself to us.The attitude of Philo's mind to God may bemmed up in his own words. " Do thou therefore,0 my soul, hasten to become the house of God, Hisholy temple, to become strong from having been mostweak, powerful from having been powerless, wise fromhaving been foolish, and very reasonable from havingbeen doting and childless." Man's taste is to imitateGod: to follow God: " His supreme happiness tostand firm and unswerving in God alone."Union with God, as satisfying the mind of man,which nothing on earth, neither intellect nor sense, cansatisfy, is the ultimate point of Philo's system. Thisunion, like everything perfect in human nature, is animmediate gift of God. On the one hand vividlyconscious of human weakness, of our moral and intellectualhelplessness, Philo yearns after communion withthe infinite God.3 On the other hand he is convincedthat the needs which neither our own strength nor thefinite world will satisfy, will meet their full satisfactionin a power beyond the world, beyond man's heartand intellect. But the inseparable condition of attainingsuch a state is holiness on the part of man producedby grace on the part of God.Now Philo's conception of God is to be noted.Drawn from revelation, this God is one and infinite,yet personal. He is absolutely distinct from the world,yet its constructor. He is the maker, father, governorof mac, the very archetype of holiness himself, and the1 6 yap \iav KaTaXafl&v tavrbv \lav aireyvwKe rr\v tv Tracrt rov yevyrovxtDs irpoXap&v avdfreiav* 6 d'dTroyvws eavrbv, ywwcrxet rbv 6vra. DeSomniis, i. 10, p. 629.2 Ibid.) De Somniis, i. 23. 3 Zeller, v. 365.

138 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMgiver of it to man by grace, union with whom is theend of man's life. He is a God who is to be reachednot by the effort of a scientific knowledge on the partof man, but by His own gift, dependent on a moraland spiritual state in man, which likewise springs fromGod. All this is completely unlike the course of Greekphilosophy up to Philo's time. We cannot assure ourselvesbetter of this fact than by comparing him inthese respects with Seneca. Philo was older thanSeneca by about twenty years. When he visitedRome in the beginning of the reign of Claudius, hewas already a grey-haired man. He is supposed to havedied a few years later, but twenty-five years after thisvisit of his, Seneca was the representative of suchphilosophy as then existed at Borne. Now in certainpoints these writers show a similarity of tendencies.If Seneca exalted philosophy into a sort of religion,assigning to it the solution of the most importantproblems of human life, and requiring submission toit as the guide and teacher of man, Philo, on the otherhand, sought to penetrate his theology with philosophicthought, and scrupled not to select Platonic, Peripatetic,and Stoic doctrines, which he attempted to reconcilewith the doctrine of Moses. In this processhe was unconscious of being in any point untrue tothe supremacy which he accorded without doubting tothat doctrine. Nevertheless in picking and choosingfrom the Greek schools he was an eclecticlike Seneca.Again, in their ascetic doctrine of subduing the fleshto the reason, in their view of the antagonism betweenmind and matter, there was much in common. Philoalso agrees with the Stoic in declarin that the wiseman knows himself to be as a citizen of the world notconfined to any particular country, but feels himself to

RESURRECTION OF CULTURED HEATHENISM139be a member of the whole race of man, and a portionof the world. And in his treatment of slavery herequires it to be considered as an external lot whichdoes not derogate from the regard due to the commonhuman nature * in the slave.1 This, ' it will be remembered,was one of the points in which Seneca is so farsuperior to his predecessors, and in this he had beenpreceded by Philo. If we could suppose him tohave been familiar with Philo's works it would solve aportion of the difficult problem respecting the sourcefrom which he derived a moral tone so little borneout by his own life. But while there is in the above-mentioned points an agreement in the two thinkers,there is in the mental attitude and spirit of the mena total dissimilarity. Philo's view of everything inman's life is dependent on his conception of God. Hehas an -intense regard and affection for Him as hisown God, a person for a person. He annihilateshimself before God's holiness, and admits that he isnothing without God's grace, and yearns for His communion.These sentiments are absolutely strangeto Seneca, and to the whole course of Greek philosophy2 down to his time. And this is the more remarkablein Seneca, because, as he tells us himself,3he had imbibed a love for Pythagoras and a regard forsome portions of Pythagorean doctrine, such as theabstaining from animal food and the transmigrationof souls, from his teacher Sotion, an Alexandrian,who must have been just of the same age as Philo.1 Zeller, v. 353.2 As Zeller admits, v. 360. "Durch diese Satze, welche mit seinerganzen Denkart so eng verwachsen sind, trennt sich Philo's religiosePhilosophic ganz entschieden von der reinen, in sich befriedigtenWissenschaft des hellenischen Alterthums."3 Epist. cviii. sec. 17-22.

140 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMBut there is no trace of any such doctrine respectingGod or man's relation to God having been received byhim. On the contrary, there is not a particle of pietyin all the writings of Seneca. How should there be,since his God is a primal force dwelling in the wholebody of the universe, and how should man worshipforce, or pray to an unbroken series of cause andeffects ? Then, as to the relation between God andman, Seneca would reach knowledge and virtue by theexercise of his own reason, which is the principle ofscientific thought, and had been the animating principleof Greek philosophy down to his time. Philowould reach them by the gift of God, bestowed throughHis grace, to which man must correspond, though thefirst movement comes from God. And Philo dwellsthose moral relations of God, as maker, provid(rn lor, judge, which had well-nigh disappeared fr

RESURRECTION OF CULTURED HEATHENISM 141this aid, to make him capable of it. It is almostthe same thing to say there is no clear conception ofmoral character in God or of man's personal relationto Him.But thirty years after Seneca's time there appearedin Greek literature an author of great name andwide influence, who may almost be termed a heathencounterpart of Philo. For Plutarch and Philo intheir view of the relation of philosophy to religion,in the general identity of their philosophical tenets,and in the attitude of their minds to religion, hold,the one being a Greek and the other a Jew, an analogousposition to each other. The time and outwardcircumstances of Plutarch's life were these. He wasorn at Chasronea in Boaotia about the year 50. Atthe time of Nero's visit to Greece he is found studyingphilosophy at Athens under Ammonius of Alexandria.He is known to have visited Egypt. He was morethan once at Home, and seems to have given lecturesthere in the time of Domitian, which were largelyfrequented by persons of consideration. He formedfriendships with noble Romans, and dedicated worksto them. In later years he is said to have been heldin high esteem by the Emperors Trajan and Hadrian,and he is supposed to have died in the reign oflatter, about the year. 125. During this long life hwas devoted to philosophy and literature, and stillmore to the religion of his country. On these subjectshe was probably acquainted with every movementof thought in the cultured world of the Roman Empire.Thus from the beginning of Domitian's reign to themiddle of Hadrian's, his works mav be taken as anudex of the philosophic mind then prevailing. Hepeaks as a priest of Apollo in his ancestral religion,

142 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMas the friend of Trajan and Hadrian in the Romavernment while in literature he is the exact contemporaryof Tacitus and the younger Plin, as wellas of Epictetus. He was a young man when St. Petedied, and the sphere of his mental activity extendedthe Pontificates of six successors to the Primacy,St. Linus, St. Anacletus, St. Clement, St. EvaristSt. Alexander and St Sistus. About the time whhe was lecturing at Home Domitian was pthe Church, and he outlived by many years the martydom of St. Ignatius.He is the first representative we have remthe Neopythagorean or Platonising tone of thought.He fully and exactly reflects it and his whole view ofthe world is framed upon it. It is this. At thehead of the universe as its author and orderer is themind and will of the Supreme God. Under him therulers and administrators of human affairs in generalare the heavenly and visible gods, as the sun, moon,stars, planets, with which are identified the gods ofthe Greek mythology. Subordinate to these are the" demons," as " watchers and inspectors " of things inparticular, and lower yet, but superior to men, thesouls of heroes.Let us specifiy these somewhat more exactly.First, as to the Supreme God, Plutarch expresseshimself thus : l " What is that which really is ? Thatwhich is everlasting, unproduced, and incorrupt, towhich time brings no change. For time is somethingsubject to motion, and forming itself into the appearancesof matter in motion, always in a flux and neverholding in its contents, like a vessel of corruption andproduction ; in which the very terms c before ' and1 Tlepl roi^Ei tv AeX^ots. 19, 20.

RESURRECTION OF CULTURED HEATHENISM 143fter,' c shall be ' and ' has been/ confess that tlno real being. . . . Now of God we must say, He is,and is in no time, but in a motionless, timeless, unin-clined eternity, in whom there is neither before norafter, neither future nor past, neither older nor younger.Being One lie fills eternity with one now.1 Andhat alone is which in such wise truly is, neither pnor future, nor beginning, nor ending. So oughthippers to salute and address it, or indeed assome of the ancients, saying, e Thou art one/ For thedeity is not many things, as each of us, a heterogene-mixed collection, made up of countless differenceswhich spring from being subject to passion. Butthat which is must be One, as that which is One,must be."To the God so conceived every moral perfection isattributed, " Being2 perfectly good, he wants notue, least of all justice and friendship;" and " thblessedness of the eternal life which God posseconsists in his knowledge never failing by the suesion of things, for if knowledge and wisdom were taaway, immortality would not be life, but mere time."Yet this God, though the orderer and arranger andin this sense the maker of things, is not their creator.Outside of him and independent of him he foundmatter, and something moreover within matter whichhe could not entirely tame and reduce to his will. Thisprinciple is called by the most different names, by thePersians Ahrimanes, by the Egyptians Typho, by theGreek mythology Hades and Ares, by EmpedoclesConflict, by the Pythagoreans the Second, by AristotlePrivation, by Plato the Other, and, which is best of all,1 dXX' els (iv evl ry vvv TO det2 On the failure o/ Oracles, 24 ; On Isis, I.

144 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMthe evil World-soul. Thus in fact Plutarch admitsof three principles: the first, the Godhead or good ;the second, the unordered World-soul, which is theorigin of everything that is evil; and the third, Matter,the substratum, itself without quality. Being receptiveof opposites this matter is moved and determinedby the powers which act upon it.1Thus, then, the universe came into being by theaction of God upon Matter, in which He reduced toorder the irregular soul, and so made the Soul of theWorld. The ordered movement of the world is time,before which there was no time nor any world. Thusthe world had a distinct beginning, and its constructoronly found in existence its original parts, Matterwithout quality, and Soul without reason. The restis all His work. He is to the world not merely as theartificer is to his work, for the builder, when he hasbuilt his house, has done his work, but its father, inasmuchas the power of the generator is infused intothe child, and holds nature together as being a portionof Himself. The soul of the world is not merely awork. It is a portion of God, and is not only made byHim but of Him and from Him. But in it the inferiorelement exists by the side of the superior. It is composedof the divine reason which has poured itself outupon matter, and of that disorderly power which wetermed the evil soul, of the principle of unity and itsopposite. Hence in all parts of the world there isevil beside good, disorder beside order, change besidepermanence.2 " The generation and constitution ofthis world is mixed out of opposite yet not equivalentforces. The better has the superiority, but it is impossiblefor the bad to be exterminated, since with greatZeller, v. 152. 2 Ibid. v. 154, 155.

RESURRECTION OF CULTURED HEATHENISM 145abundance is it seated in the body and in the soul ofthe whole, and ever fights a battle with the better."The Supreme God communicates himself to theworld, and first of all to the heavenly gods,2 the sun,and the stars, and planets, with whom the gods of theGreek mythology are identified. The sun is the chiefof these, and is the visible image of the Supreme God.Far below these are ranged the " demons," intermediatebeings, greatly surpassing men in knowledge andpower, but in the construction of their soul and bodysubject to sensuousness. They are capable of pleasureand pain, they are of a changeable, and in a certainsense even mortal nature, for though very long-lived,they are not absolutely free from death or a changecorresponding to death. Further, they are exceedinglydiverse in moral qualities. Bad gods are never spokenof, but there are bad demons. It is possible for ademon to turn himself to evil by his free-will; and asnot only men can become heroes, and even demons,but demons also can become gods, so on the other sidethe case may occur that demons are drawn down intohuman bodies through sensual inclination. The godsare too far from the human world to interfere themselvesin its course, but they take part in this throughtheir servants the demons, to whom is entrusted therovidence over particular things.In accordance with this hierarchy of intelligencessuperior to man, Plutarch recognises a tripledence. This in its primary ground and origin isnothing else but the thought and will of the SupremeGod. This will is fulfilled in a triple manner. Thedisposition of the universe and its general laws proceedimmediately from the maker of the world. The origin1 Onlsis, sec. 49. 2 See Ztller, v. 157.VOL. III. K

146 THK FORMATION OK CHRISTENDOMand maintenance of mortal beings are effected by thevisible gods, the sun, planets, and stars, in the mannerprescribed by those laws. The actions and the fortunesof particular men stand under the protectionand guidance of the demons.In connection with his belief in providence is hisbelief in the continuance of the human intelligenceafter death. He declares that these two beliefs standor fall together. This continuance applies only to thedivine part in man, which springs from the divinereason, not to the body or to the sensuou soul. Andit seems to rest on three things in his mind, the kinshipof the ha man spirit with the divine, the necessityof a future retribution and recompense for the evils oflife, ' and the consolation l which the thought O of a futureexistence and recognition bestows.This doctrine of providence is of great importancein Plutarch's conception of the world, and in defendingit he vehemently attacks two sorts of opponents.First, the Epicureans, who were willing to admit that" all things were full of gods." l These gods, however,did not trouble themselves with human affairs, so thatthose of this sect denied entirely the doctrine of providence.Secondly, the Stoics, whose fatalism destroyed,as he averred, the conception of possibility, and thefreedom of the will, and made error and wickednessinto something necessary, and the godhead the causeof evil.2Plutarch's view of all moral obligation runs up intoreligion. Piety is the attitude of his mind. Inlegislation the first and the greatest thing is theopinion entertained of the gods. It is the bondwhich holds together all communion and making of1 Zeller, v. 164. 8 Ibid., v. 159.

RESURRECTION OF CULTURED HEATHENISM 147laws. A city could subsist without its foundeasily as without belief in the gods, without oaths,vows, divinations, sacrifices. No time is spent morejoyously than in the temples. No sights, no actionsconvey more delight than what we see and do for thegods, by presence at their rites and sacrifices. Theground of this joy is the good hope and belief thatGod is present propitiously, and receives ghat is done. All things belong to the gods, and thpossessions of friends are in common, and the goodfriends of the gods. That a friend of God should)t be happy, or the temperate and just man not bfriend of God, is impossible. What is done by th)ds we should expect to be erood : but that thesthings are done by the gods is a source of great delighand boundless confidence.1iAt the head of the universe he placed one God.Now the conception of which doubtless he felt theneed, which he yearned after, like other Platonics ofthe later school, was that of a God who should beliving, superior to nature, external to the world, aGod who has intelligence and who has will.2 In fact,Plutarch's God is the author of the universe, yet atNow in this view of the world and man wherein*does Plutarch differ from his Greek and Latin predecessorsan immeasurable distance above and beyond it. Somewherein that distance, but far below him, are placedthe visible heavenly gods, the gods to whom Plutarch'speople offered worship. In this system they arereduced to be ministering powers under the Supreme1 These various passages from Plutarch's works are referred to byZeller, v. 170.8 Dollinger, Heidenthum, p.

148 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMGod, yet not creatures, inasmuch as the spirit whichis in them is a portion of the one divine spirit. Thesegods rule the destinies of men, yet not immediately,but by the demons under them, and in obedience tothe will of the Supreme God over them. And lastly,there are the souls of heroes and the souls of men.And as the heavenly gods participate in the dnature as spirits, so in an inferior degree do demons,heroes, and men, in their several order. And allhese intelliences are not mere forces the arepersonal beings. Herein lies the great contrast of thissystem with that of Stoicism. For the Stoics also hadreduced the universe to unity, and to a unity whichwas not without intelligence, for it was rigidly ruledby the " common reason "; but it was without will,the solid adamant of an eternal machine. NowPlutarch's conception of personality is not complete,just as his conception of God falls short of reachingthat which he yearned after, a being entirely superiorto nature and outside of the world. Still his God issufficiently personal to be very different from that ofthe Stoics, and to give quite another spirit to thesystem of which he stands at the head.Secondly, this philosophic system appears as thefriend and supporter of the polytheistic worship, whichat the same time it strives to purify and reduce toperfect order. Now Stoics and Epicureans both toleratedthat worship, and both adapted themselves to it,whilst the spirit which ruled them was adverse to allworship. Epicureans, who denied a divine providence,certainly could not really favour prayer and sacrifice.But the rigid fatalism of the Stoics also struck at theroot of these. Necessity knows not prayer or sacrifice.Stoicism had likewise attempted by its physical inter-

RESURRECTION OF CULTURED HEATHENISM149pretation of myths to get rid of all the incoherencies,all the unseemly and immoral elements, all the corruptingtales, which attached to the vulgar worship.In reducing all these to the abstract operations ofone force, termed indifferently God, nature, fate, orprovidence, it had banished personality from the universe.Now all worship is between persons, andtherefore whatever aspect of conformity to this vulgarworship Stoicism could assume, it was in its essenceprofoundly impious. In Plutarch, on the contrary,was a system which strove to give a logical foundationto the existing worship. It conceived both a personalGod, and a hierarchy of personal intelligencesunder him, which took delight in acts of worship.It preserved the names and the rites of the existinggods, and strove to make acts of homage paid to them,as servants and ministers of the Supreme God, to bepart of a worship due to him. Finally, it fatheredupon demons, who had given way to sensuous attractions,all stories unworthy of the heavenly gods.Thus in Plutarch for the first time in Greek andRoman heathenism the bewildering world of Polytheismseems in process of reduction to order underan ever-mastering sense of the divine unity, in which,however, all the beings who take part and subserve ithave personal relations. Here was an attempt tomake a true and inward reconciliation between philosophyand the popular religion. The gods of thepopular religion, however debased in certain moraects the conception of them might be, were alwayspersonal beings. It was an attempt to give a reasonablebasis to that religion, which would lead naturallyto a pious observance of its rites. From his standiroint Plutarch could really believe that he who denied

150 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMworship to his god Apollo was impious; and couldhimself venerate all the rites of his country's worshipas parts of a worship at the head of which stood theSupreme God. Philosophy in his hands did at leastin some degree endeavour to bring back the componentparts of that worship, prayer and sacrifice, oracles andmysteries, to the positive meaning which lay beneaththem, to detach the corruption and draw out thetruth.In so doing Plutarch's spirit of piety is in strikingcontrast not merely with Seneca, not merely with thefrivolous love of infidel negation, which breathesthrough the poets and historians of Augustan literature,but with Cicero, with Aristotle, and even withPlato, from whom he assumes to derive his notion cGod. There is in him an intimacy of relation betweenman and God as his author, ruler, and provider, suchas had been strange for ages at least to those mindswhich can be said to have been formed or influencedby Greek philosophy, and have come down to posterityin their works.And here I would recur to Philo in order to notecertain very important points in which his love ofGreek philosophy had led him, as it seems unconsciously,to desert the divine tradition of Moses andthe orthodox Jewish belief. Thus God to Philo isnot, strictly speaking, the world's Creator, but only itsconstructor or builder, for Philo asserts the independentexistence of matter, which God found in a chaoticstate at the beginning, and moulded by His divinepower the universe out of it. In like manner headmitted the Stoic doctrine of the human soul beinga fragment or derivation of the divine spirit; andafter thus conceiving the origin both of matter and

RESURRECTION OF CULTURED HEATHENISM I 5 Ispirit, lie places the origin of evil in the conflictof these two. From1 God only what is good andperfect can derive only life and order. The imperfectionof the finite, the strife and opposition betweenthings, the necessity of nature, the lifelessness ofmaterial things, the evil in the world, can be tracedback only to a source distinct from the divine operation.Accordingly the body is an absolute contradictionto the mind, and as such the source of all evils.The earthly shell is a prison out of which the spiritlongs to be set free, a carcase which the soul dragsabout with it. Thus it is the conflict between the fleshand spirit, rather than the abuse of free-will, which ismade the source of evil. Philo is further notoriousfor his extravagant use of allegory, both in the interpretationof Scripture on the one side, and in givinga moral sense to the Greek myths on the other.Now in all these four points, the conception of theSupreme God as the builder of the world, not as itsCreator, of matter as existing originally and beforethe divine operation, of the human soul as aneffluence of the divine, and of the conflict betweenmatter and spirit viewed as the cause of evil, the doctrineof Plutarch is the same as that of Philo. Tosay the least, Plutarch vies with Philo in the extravagancewith which he uses allegory in order to draw ameaning in accordance with his system out of theGreek mythology. But in all this it is Philo whoGrecises, not Plutarch who Judaises. In anotherdoctrine, however, which in Philo forms the crowningpoint of union between God and man, Plutarch1 Zeller, v. 336, who observes that this train of thought in Philo iclearly seen not only in particular passages, but from all his statementsrespecting Matter. See also p. 349.

152 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMapproaches him nearly, and this is the more remarkablebecause it is a doctrine quite foreign to the naturalgenius and previous course of Greek philosophy. Thisis the attainment of knowledge by an immediate giftof the Godhead rather than by the natural exercise ofhuman faculties. Whence, he argues, could knowledgeof the Godhead come to us unless the Godheaditself communicated to us this its most proper possession,as it does all good. But if it rests upon acommunication of the Godhead, the less we mix in itof our own the more perfect it will be. The higherrevelation is a passivity of the soul, wherein it hasbecome an instrument of the Godhead. It is a stateof divine possession. The soul will never succeed, solong as it is encompassed with the body, in surrenderingitself pure and undisturbed to the higher operation.Therefore every revelation is to be considered as theresult of two movements, one natural and one divine,and in every one the divine operation is to be distinguishedfrom the human ingredients. Nevertheless,it still remains our task to repress, as much aspossible, all activity on our own part, and to bring tomeet the divine spirit an apprehension as far aspossible undisturbed and virginal.Once more. Philo, out of a mixture of Platonicand Stoic notions with his Jewish belief, constructedthe following theory as to the intermediate beingsbetween God and the world. When 2 God would makethe world, He knew that every work presupposes anintellectual archetype, and for this purpose He framedfirst the supersensuous world of ideas. The ideas1 From Zeller, v. 173, who refers to De Pyth, Orac. sec. 21-23 ;Amator, sec. 16 ; Defect. Orac. sec. 48 and 40.2 Zeller, v. 314, 315.

RESURRECTION OF CULTURED HEATHENISM 153are not simply patterns. They are at the same timeefficient causes, powers, which reduce to order the asyet unarranged elements, and impress on everythingtheir qualities. Thus it can also be said that thearchetypal world consists of the invisible powers whichas a train surround the Godhead. It is through theseinvisible powers that God is active in the world, andworks in it what on account of His exalted majesty Hecannot produce immediately. They are the servantsand deputies of the Supreme God, the messengersthrough whom He communicates His will to men,the agents mediating between God and finite things,portions of the universal reason, which forming andordering bear sway in the world. They are theindissoluble bands wherewith God has encompassed theuniverse, the pillars which He has set under it. Hencethey can be also descried as the ministering spirits andinstruments of the divine will. They are those puresouls which are called by the Greeks demons, by Mosesangels, and thus they come to be invoked by man.If a Greek philosopher, who desired above all thingsto restore the doctrine of the divine unity, yet tomaintain the rites and worship of his ancestral gods,and to reconcile the one with the other, met withsuch a theory set forth in his own language, whatcould be more likely than that he would avail himselfof it to present to his countrymen such a view of theworld as that above drawn from the works of Plutarch ?He would strip off from it everything which had aspecial relation to the Jewish people, and he would besilent as to the source from which it was derived.The angelic messengers enjoying a celestial life andpresiding over nations and individuals in Philo mightwell suggest a place for the national gods and heroes

154 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMof Greece, nor of Greece only, but of all other nations,and the view would come out as we actually find it inPlutarch, who thus attempts to reduce all religions toone." God is not a lifeless thing subject to men, asthose who confounded the gifts with the giver, winewith Bacchus and wheat with Ceres, were prone toimagine. We deem them to be gods because theybestow their gifts upon us in an abundant and neverfailing stream. Nor are they different according toplace, nor barbarous and Grecian, nor of the northo the south. The sun and the moon and theheaven and the earth are common to all though theyhave different names. So there is one reason whicharranges and one providence which controls the world,and ministering powers set over every part, to whomdivers honours and appellations are assigned by thelaws in different places, and symbols are used, sometimesobscure and sometimes clear, guiding the thoughtsto divine things not without peril. " lNow let us look back for a moment to the spacewe have traversed since Philo bore part in a legationto Rome in the last year of Caligula. The ChristianChurch had not then begun to preach to the Gentiles.It is probable that most of Philo's works had then beencomposed, but we have no means of judging whetherthey were as yet known in the West. Philo himselfis supposed to have been by no means the first of hisschool, that is, the first who attempted at Alexandriato unite Jewish belief with an eclectic Greek philosophy,and who used as an instrument for that purposethe allegorical interpretation of the Old TestamentScriptures on the one hand, and the moral or physicalinterpretation of Grecian myths on the other. Fori DC hide, 67.

RESURRECTION OF CULTURED HEATHENISM I 5 5three centuries at least Greeks and Orientals had beenthrown together under one government and in onef study. And Jews had been settled in allthe cities of the Roman Empire, and far beyond it inthe East, and probably in every place some male, andstill more some female proselytes were attracted eithero a complete or to a partial observance of their religion.Of Home in particular we know that since Pompey'conquest of Jerusalem Jews were in large numberthere, and reference to their peculiar rites is noinfrequent in Roman authors. Moreover, whatevereasons existed in the conditionof the -provinces subject to Rome for the rise of a philosophy which iscalled a revival of the Pythagorean or Platonic modeof thinking, had existed equally for several generationsof men, and this still more notably since the pacificationbrought about by the battle of Actium, and theestablishment of one empire embracing so many racesand religions. Now though certain philosophic tendenciesof Philo-doctrines which he imbibed fromPlatonic, Peripatetic, or Stoic sources-were in theair around him, and may be considered as the resultof the education which he received in the midst ofHellenic life, yet up to the time of Philo's visit toRome nothing comparable to his religious systemcould be found in the heathen life of Greeks orRomans. The Jews were bodily in every place, butheir nation and their religion kept them apart inipirit. They were looked upon with antipathy andtempt, and their bearing towards Polytheism wasthat of strong abhorrence and exclusion, not ofaggression. Their position was one of defence, not ofuest, and so they were allowed the open exercisef their worship throughout the empire. Wh

156 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMthe reason may be, all the mixture of Greeks or Romanswith Jews had very little affected any but proselytes.It had not touched literature or philosophy amongthe heathen so as to introduce into their mindsthat in which the Jews were so superior, the beliefwhich Tacitus in Trajan's reign amid his caricatureof Jewish history ^^ and manners recognised, -^^^"- the belief.. in one only God who is spiritual, supreme, eternal,unchangeable, imperishable."This up to the time of Philo.Let us pass on fifty years when Plutarch is amiddle-aged man, and is lecturing to an admiringaudience in the later years of Domitian at Eome.What do we find ? The tone and temper of heathenphilosophy are completely changed. It is becomepious instead of impious, worshipful instead of unbelieving.It invites men to prayer and frequentsacrifices, whereas Seneca had told them that prayerwas useless, and that the only God which they shouldworship was the God which they had within themselves.But let us note the altered position of philosophy,as seen in Plutarch, with regard to two points:the first, its conception of God, and the second, itsbearing towards the polytheistic worship. As to thefirst, instead of the lifeless, hard, metallic unity offatalism, it speaks only of one God, who is spiritual,not material, who is likewise the pattern of everyvirtue, who exerts an universal providence over theworld and man. As to the second, instead of underminingall religious rules and observances by itsdoctrine, while it bestowed at rare intervals an outwardattendance on them, it has eagerly taken up thedefence of the actual worship, ranging all the nationalgods as the ministers and agents of the Supreme God,

RESURRECTION OF CULTURED HEATHENISMI 5 7and supplementing them with a host of demons whofill up the gap between them and men.What can be more unlike the old Roman world ofCicero, and his bearing towards the immortal godswhom he parades, and the smile which he attributesto the augurs when they meet each other ? Whatcan be more unlike the stage religion or thinly-veiledO O vunbelief of Julius, Augustus, Tiberius, Strabo, Diodorus,Horace, Virgil, and Ovid ? But the contrast is broughthome to us because the successors of these men arestill to be found in some of Plutarch's exact contemporaries,in Tacitus and his friend Pliny. Thesestand very much upon the ground of Cicero still.Tacitus thinks the facts which he records as historianto be the severest comment upon the notion of a divineprovidence extending over the fortunes of men. Hemaintains the ancestral worship as a thing of customand as connected with the dominion of Rome. Butit is an outward, hesitating, sceptical maintenance,more of the politician than the man. Both he andPliny are utter strangers to Plutarch's heartiness ofbelief and spirit of piety.Now had anything happened between the accessionof Claudius and that of Trajan which would throwlight upon this change ? Certainly something hadhappened quite unknown to the history of philosophysince it arose with Thales six hundred years before.Men had gone throughout the whole empire preachingthe divine unity, spirituality, holiness, providence,and personality. Jews, and going forth from Judea,they had first approached the synagogues of theirown countrymen which were to be found in everycity, and strove within them to form a nucleus ofbelievers in the new doctrine. Next they proceeded

153 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMto associate therein the inhabitants of the empire, towhatever race, sect, or religion they might belong.These things were not done in a corner, but spokenin the market-place, discussed in the Areopagus.Whatever philosophy had in the course of these sixcenturies divined about the unity "^^B- of the Godhead hadbeen imparted in dark and doubtful intimations tocongenial breasts : whereas a ringleader of this newsect said openly to Stoics and Epicureans in the placeof their power concerning that unknown God, " whomyou worship without knowing Him, the same declareI unto you." Philosophy, up to the time these wordswere spoken, had acted as a dissolvent of the popularbelief, but had never announced a positive doctrinewhich could take visible form and produce effects inthe practical world. This was one novelty, and therewas another as important involved in it. In thedeclaration of this one God an attack was madeupon the whole polytheistic worship. For He wasan exclusive God, a God so entirely jealous of givingHis glory to another, that the proclaiming of Himmust be the overthrow of the rest. This was anttack totally dissimilar to the previous hostilityphilosophy, as shown in the three chief sects, St

RESURRECTION OF CULTURED HEATHENISM 159f the One God, who would not give His glory toanother, was like an assault from a foreign power,which aims at overthrowing and thoroughly subjectingwhat it attacks. It* the attack is strongenough, it is wont to unite against itself those rivalparties for civil pre-eminence which betoken a statef internal security. Foreign invasion brings aboutdomestic union. Was not something like this ap-arent in that complete change of front which inthe time of Trajan philosophy had made? At allevents, the change corresponds exactly to the twopoints of attack by the foreign invader. Pluthas a doctrine of the divine unity, and at the samtime he is the warmest friend of the polytheistiworship. And the civil power has no objection aall to such a statement of monotheism as that ofPlutarch. It is compatible with the full maintenanceof the established religion; indeed, it is made by apriest of Apollo, who is most assiduous in the dueperformance of his rites. Accordingly Trajan promotesto a post of honour Plutarch, who believes, aswe have seen, in one God, and states his belief, whileas soon as St. Ignatius avowed that he carried theone God in his bosom, Trajan ordered him to bethrown to the wild beasts.

LECTUREXVIIITHE STANDING-GROUND OF PHILOSOPHY FROM THEACCESSION OF NERVA TO THAT OF SEVERUSTHE Greek philosophy, whether as seen in the pre-Socratic schools, in the Sophists, or in the Platonic,the Peripatetic, the Epicurean and the Stoic sects,or again in the Eclectics, who made a mixture ofthem all, having acted without a break from thetime of Thales to the preaching of the Gospel inthe reign of Nero as a dissolving agent of polytheism,takes up in the later years of Domitian, and from thetime of Nerva onwards, another position. It putsunder its protection the assaulted fabric of paganbelief and worship. It strives to introduce reasonand order into the Olympian heaven of deities; torestore the shaken supremacy of Jupiter, and to putit on a larger and firmer basis. It aims to defendscientifically that whole system of worship, the objectsof which it had so often exposed to ridicule, withbitter censure of its scandals and exposure of itsendless incongruities. We have seen that it had nottaken up this new position even in the last writingsof Seneca, which reach to the year 64. Indeed,the Stoicism of Seneca, however eclectic and mixed,however tinged with peculiarities not before seen, certainlydid not point to a restoration of the ancientreligion, but to a substitution for it of the god withinus, that is, human reason. It set up a system of160

THE STANDING-GROUND OF PHILOSOPHY l6lduty disjoined from worship altogether, which derivedall its sanction from the possession of this reason,and so, at the bottom, from man himself.Another thing also is to be remarked, that thephilosophy then in vogue was connected with oppositionto the government or imperial rule. For thisit was persecuted by Nero and even by Vespasian,as afterwards bv Domitian. Seneca and Lucan,VThrasea, Helvidius, and Rusticus were put to death,and many more were banished, at three distinct intervals,by these emperors, for their political, whichwere connected with their philosophical, opinions.But from the accession of Nerva another state ofthings begins. Philosophy accepts frankly the imperialgovernment, and as frankly the polytheisticworship. It swears by the genius of the emperor,and offers its cordial vows to the Capitoline Jupiter.Note also that this double alliance is not brokendown to the time of Constantine. We must viewthe second and third centuries of the Christian erander this aspect; and it is full of instruction. Itoints unquestionably to the working of influenceswhich Roman historians dissembled as long as theycould and Grecian philosophers carefully ignored.We- shall find that Tacitus, Plutarch, and Epictetuspass them over in silence, thoi gh we are not therefto conclude that they knew nothing about them.Ignoring is often the most convenient mode of dealingwith a peculiarly obnoxious adversary.From the accession of Nerva the empire answeredthe altered temper of philosophy with a differentmode of treatment. From that time forth it favouredits studies and promoted its teachers. The youngerPliny in his panegyric praises Trajan for encouragingVOL. in. L

I 62 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMthose studies which the vices of a former ruler hadviewed with fear, and the studies specified are rhetoricand philosophy. Dio of Prusa, self-banished underDomitian, returned joyously under Trajan, and wasdistinguished by him. Hadrian sought intercoursewith philosophers as well as with learned men ingeneral, and is supposed to have been the first whoappointed public teachers of philosophy in Rome.Antoninus Pius established them in all the provinces.The salaries of the learned who were drawn to theUniversity of Alexandria continued on, and publicprofessors of the four chief schools were named atAthens with ample appointments by Marcus Aurelius.Janius Rusticus, probably the grandson of the Rusticuswhom Domitian had put to death, was the bosomfriend of the last-named emperor, and as governor ofRome gave the crown of martyrdom to Justin Martyr,who had tried the various sects of philosophy, andfinding satisfaction in none had taken refuge in theChristian faith. It was a crime worthy of the mostignominious death in the eyes of a descendant of aStoic who had perished for his political and philosophicalopinions.The second century, then, and the third, are theage of a triple alliance between the empire, philosophy,and polytheism as seen in belief and worship.The enem of imperial rule in Nero's time hadbecome a friend in that of Trajan, just as thed sacrifices which Seneca slighted had been encouragedby Plutarch's warmest devotion. Theward and outward revolution is complete, whatemay have been the causes leading to it. That vvh iensued from this time was not a mere natsequence or unfolding of the previous civilisation,

THE STANDING-GROUND OF PHILOSOPHY 16but a change of front betokening the approach of anew enemy. Plutarch and Epictetus are not whollylegitimate successors of Cicero. A light has arisenin the East, the reflection of which is seen on theirfaces, though their hearts refused to receive thewarmth of its beams.But th Itered t f those who professed dtaugtr ilosophy is itself a the hangwhich ,k P th f« f the wholed class. During the civil wars, which bh Caesar's passage of the Eubicon, and ended with,h establish f monarchy by th Jt fActium. indiffi religion on had b h Pvailin P h times. So it had dduring the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius. Thm f th I d turnin^-Doint liehe reign of Nero. Already in that great breakp which followed his death, and which ppedflames h Cap while it d with desttion th 1 fab th nip h widelyit temper found to prevail. M cesare t toward h E E rites u re-ligions are inInstead of indifference toreligion there is a longing for satisfaction in it. Bythe end of the first century after Christ this currenthas set in with force, and it continues to the timeof Constantine. Religiousness in a thousand differentshapes, with a strong leaning to Egyptian and Syriandeiti es, running in its excess into magical rites andtheurgy, takes the place of that apathy which is somarked a feature of the classic times of Romanliterature. Horace, that " spare and infrequent wor-shipper of the gods," who too often verifies his own"confession that he was a porker of the sty of

164 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMEpicurus," is the type of the former frame of mind :Plutarch, who finds the hours spent in their servicea delight, of the latter. Here, however, we are mettwo contrasts: the Stoic and the Platonic characteron the one hand, the Greek and the Latin mindon the other.There are two men of this period, exact contemporaries,both Greeks, one a writer who has had greatinfluence, the other a man whose sayings as collectedby a disciple are among the most noteworthy utterancesof heathenism. Both are remarkably religions,if compared with Cicero or any man of the Augustanor Tiberian time. But the character of their religionis quite different. Epictetus is a rigid mouotheist inso far as this that the only God whom he worshipsis the reason which is in every man, and is part ofthe one divine being. Upon this single ground heestimates every action, and divides his day into itsseveral duties as a Christian might. All externalgoods, rank, wealth, beauty, talent, health, are viewedby him with regard to this one standard. A manis fulfilling his duty as man, not in proportion ashe possesses these, but as possessing more or less ofthem. Not having it in his power at all to determinethe degree in which he has them, he uses whathe has of them according to the dictates of reason.And all other men, since they possess this divineattribute, as he does himself, are by nature brethren,common children, he even calls them, of one God.In reality they are rather parts of one God, and goback to him, or more properly to it, with no consciousexistence after death. If piety be possible tosuch a frame of mind, Epictetus is pious. But it isplain that he does not aim at a restoration of heathen

THE STANDING-GROUND OF PHILOSOPHY165polytheism. His whole system is a most completedethronement of " the immortal gods." He substitutesfor Jupiter and all his Olympian assessors of pantheisticDeism that tremendous form of necessity, out of whichheaven and earth, gods and heroes, men and animalsare formed in endless evolution, and return back againinto its exhaustless bosom. Epictetus has been admiredand copied in every jage by those who, born andnurtured in Christianity, »/ ^ have been unable to sustainthe weight of the Cross and the glory of a consciouseternity, or have loved and fostered the pride of anindependent human nature rather than embrace theshame of a suffering God. He is the parent of modernDeism.The old rugged temper of Stoicism is wonderfullysoftened in Epictetus. Humanity and kindlinessbreathe in his precepts. You feel the slave who hasgone through all the trials to which man's life is subject, and learnt by his own sufferings to sympathisewith the sufferings of others. He is supposed to havibeen born in A.D. 45. .Thus he would be twenty yearof age in the year 65, and was a young man at Kom

166 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMin following His precepts, in imitating His life, andtually practising that b ?rly love which Epic-tetus rnly mm ends ? e cannot answer thisquest 'ith tainty. Epictetus lived t > the df Trajan's reig d bv that time t i a Chtian g y great t H mindP ) he subject of religion, and spformed, and since he would turally examine everyrm f belief day exist th Pw ;an by no means conclude from his gb t Christians that they were unknown < "b v dby him. Moreover, if there are resemblances in himto Christian tones of thought which no Greek he* thhowed him. t i to say th tfair that we see in these resemblances a working ofthat leaven which touched numberless bosoms amongthe heathen, in whom desertion of the heathen standing-ground did not follow.T ystem f Epictet d have transformedthe existing heathen worship, but could never htored it It h d the niytholgod t th t as P f phc w he It is convenient to Epictetus t ve hpt t usu al P Th h.tinually entGod, Zeus. In thissense his ) i t ed a reconciliationbet philosophy i g Yet h thep re 111 Cod nor the subordinate, gods w Psonai beings at all in the mind of Epictet S ateach d not b y i p th massof m kind Could have rooted itself mminds, the worship and its deities must have droppedaway, silently absorbed in the all-embracing and all-consuming whole of which they had been partial and

THE STANDING-GROUND OF PHILOSOPHY167temporary manifestations. But the character of Plutarch'spiety was essentially different, for he attemptedto range all souls of men, heroes, demons, stellar orheavenly gods under the headship of one supremeGod, and all these were to him real beings, as the lastand highest was real. His conception of personalityno doubt imperfect, as was that of his master Plato ;id on his mind, as on that of Plato, the eternity anddependence of matter impinged as a hostile powerwhich he could not subdue. Nevertheless, souls fromthe highest to the lowest have in his conceptionnot only intelligence but will. Thus worship to himwas a reality, and his attitude to his country's godswas that of a religious mind. He would undo thework of mythology, disengage from the fables of thepoets the truths which lay beneath them, and so restorethe divine monarchv. The reconciliation here betweenphilosophy and religion was genuine. The philosophy,if it prevailed, did not tend to transform the characterof the religion, but to purify and renovate it. Howevermuch the Neostoic and Neoplatonic school, underthe influences surrounding them, inclined to agreetogether in certain humanitarian doctrines, which arevery marked both in Epictetus and in Plutarch, suchas the recognition of man's dignity in the slave, theenforcement of men's universal brotherhood, the in-junction of kindness to all and sympathy with all,there is this essential divergence between them. TheStoic is simply a pantheist ; the Platonist acknowledgesa God independent of matter, though unablefully to subdue it, whose will corresponds to hisintelligence.Epictetus and Plutarch were the most distinguishedof their own time, the former as a teacher, the latter

168 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMas a writer: as well as those who have'had by far thegreatest influence on the generations which have succeededthem. They represent the Stoic and Platonicmind in the r>hase which it assumed at the befrinninpof the second century. Let us add to them anothGreek who is likewise of the same epoch, Dio of Prussurnamed for his eloquence the golden tongue, themost successful Rhetor, or as we should now call himLecturer, of the day. Dio's occupation was to go fromcity to city of the great empire, and deliver addressesto the cultured class of society. Eclectic in his creed,that is, serving up such a mixture of Stoic and Platonicviews as would please the palate of his hearers,and only partially a philosopher, he yet professed tobe a physician of souls. He was born about A.D. 50,and he lived at least to the end of Trajan's reign, sayto 120. When Domitian made his raid upon thephilosophers he was expelled from Rome, and wanderedfor some time among the barbarians on thebanks of the Danube. But with Nerva's accession anew time opened for him, which was one of unbrokenprosperity until his death. His lectures procured himfame, while they increased his already large patrimonialwealth, and he enjoyed the special favour of theEmperor Trajan. Thus he was acceptable both to theclass which he addressed, and to the ruling sovereign,and we can be sure that what he put forth fairly exhibitedthe prevailing spirit of the time. Now two ofhis extant orations, the twelfth and thirty-sixth, giveus in considerable detail his conception of the universeand of the power ruling it. Thus he considers theonly strong and indissoluble principle of communionand justice to be the conjunction of the human race1 Orat. xxxvi. p. 46. Edit. Morel.

THE STANDING-GROUND OF PHILOSOPHY 169with the divine in the common possession of reason.According to this the universe may be well called acity nc under the dominion of indifferent orrulers or tyrants, or democracies, or oligarchies, notsevered into seditions and parties through all time bysuch-like diseases, but arranged as the best and wisestkingdoms, whose law is a law of harmony andfriendship. For a supreme legislator, who is the ablute lord of all being, enjoins the same thing upmortals and immortals, and gives as a sample his owngovernment. Divine poets learned from the muses tocall him Father 01 gods and men. For1 this wholeuniverse, when it came forth completed by the wisestart, fresh from its Maker's hands, brilliant and lucidin all its parts, knew no infancy or weakness, after thefashion of human and mortal nature. It was from thebeginning in its prime, and its maker and father beholdingit, took not pleasure, for this is a mean andlow expression, but rejoiced and exulted to see thegods present before him. . . . For2 he is the commonking and ruler and judge and father of men and gods,the dispenser also of peace and war, if only we be ableto chant his nature and his power in few words fallingfar beneath his worth.Now3 the opinion and conception concerning thenature of the gods in general, and especially respectingthe ruler of them all, is first of all common to thewhole race of man, Greek and barbarian alike, beingnecessary and innate in every one who has reasonwithout mortal teacher and initiator. Thus it isinfallible, both because of the kinship existing, andthe many evidences of the truth which do not admit of1 Orat. xxxvi. p. 454. a Orat. xii. p. 199.3 Ibid. p. 201.

I/O THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMdulness or neglect. For the divine wonders of heavenand the stars, of the sun and moon, of day and night,the many-voiced sounds of winds and forests andrvers an nd s ea, of tame and wild beasts, and thehuman voice itself so full of sweetness and of beauty,having power to give a name to every object of theintellect, these are the things in the midst of whichmen live, not far off nor outside " the Divine," so thatthey could not remain without understanding. Howthen could they be ignorant or have no conception oftheir own Sower and Planter, Preserver and Nourisher,filled as they were with the divine nature seengand hearing and every sense, living on the earth, buthaving light from heaven and food in abundance bythe gift and provision of their first father, God :This innate conception of God finds further a fourfoldexpression, in the poet, in the legislator, in theartist, and last of all, perhaps the truest and most perfect,in the philosopher. And 1 here we must excusethe necessity "/ under which the artist lies of expressing L Oby the human shape that intelligence and wisdomwhich neither painter nor sculptor can render as theyare in themselves. Thus the human body is put upon" the Divine " as a shape to express that reason whichhas no embodiment to the sight and no form in theconception. It is a symbol better than those forms ofanimals used, as is said, by some barbarians to expressthe Divine." It is better to have such a symbolthan to be without any visible representation, becauseof that strong love which is in all men to honour andworship, to touch " the Divine " : just as little children,torn away from father and mother, have an inexpressibleyearning in their dreams to stretch forth their1 Orat. xii. pp. 207-211.

THE STANDING-GROUND OF PHILOSOPHY I/Ihands to them. Thus it is that men justly loving thegods for their benefactions and cheir relationship areeager in every way to be with them and to conversewith them.Now i this first and immortal parent, this giver oflife and all good things, this common Father andSaviour and Guardian of men, is none other than allwho are of Greek lineage terra their ancestral Zeus,and he is represented by Phidias as watching overserene and peaceful Greece, so far as it was possiblefor mortal conception to imitate the divine and unattainablenature.This Father of gods and men is the architect andarranger of the whole universe, which he administersfor the general good of all. . He has impressed perfectorder and harmony on it from the beginning, so thatit had no infancy, no weakness. He maintains thatorder and harmony in it. The relation between himand the other gods is not defined further than thathe is called generally their father and leader. Arethey parts of him, or ministers? This question isleft unsolved. It seems as if it were unasked. Heis the sovereign reason, and they are immortal, andshare that reason, as men who are mortal share it,b :leg that the wh race o oclsd men form together " that wh h reason. 2Yet whi h iprem e God thi h jet of thuniverse, d so ex hibited th 1 h pomp c flanguage whic Dio can d. th notion c fcreation is absent. H dom is imp Pmatter, and the resul h finite variety of mmbined with purpose which the world presents, buth quest how m m th to be ( perated1 Orat. xii. pp. 205, 215. TO \oyiKov.

1/2 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMupon is avoided. "Fori this first and most perfectarchitect took for that in which his art should workthe universal matter of the whole." All power, wisdom,and jroodness, which can be assigned to a Godho is not a Creator, are assigned to him by DAgain, the kinship between God and man-thesharing, that is, of the divine reason, which distinguishesthe divine and the human race, and italone-is strongly dwelt upon, and that on its twodes; on the side of the deity as a reason for theunfailing divine solicitude about all men, on the sideof man as a reason for reciprocal philanthropy betweenall men without regard to national distinctions. Forthe contracted view of nationalism is entirely over-leapt by Dio. The divine2 polity is a communion ofods and men sharing law and citizenship betweenall who possess reason and prudence, and Zeus presidesover hospitality by his name Xenios, becausewe must esteem no man strange to us, and he drawstogether all men and wills them to be friends to eachother, 7 and no one an enemy. d In short, * the wholehumanitarian doctrine is as completely the possessionof Dio as of Epictetus and Plutarch. It is a pointhich the Stoic, the Platonist. and the Eclectttogether of one mind, and which forms a basis ofO *Now whence did Dio derive the conception of thispreme architect of the universe who put the worldether by His moulding art out of universal matter,d who rules it with equity and unfailing care ? Heeges that all men by an intuitive judgment accept1OUTOJ yap drj Tr/xDros /octi reXfioraros drj/j.iorp'yos \opTyybv\afiuv TT?Seai-roi' rvT}^ . . . TT]V Trdcrav TOV iravTos v\r)i'. Orat. xii. p. 217.- Orat. xxxvi. p. 448 ; xii. p. 216.

THE STANDING-GROUND OF PHILOSOPHY 1/3such a God; that the legislator, the poet, the artist,and last of all the philosopher, merely exert theirseveral powers to give expression, as each best may,to this intuitive judgment. But was he in this likewisea Platonist ? Had Plato preceded him by nearlyfive hundred years in setting forth such a God ? Inthe Timceus we certainly find delineated an agent conceivedas preceding the world, a divine constructor orartist who puts together the universe, which is a mixedgeneration of mind and necessity. This agent, so faras mind, or intelligent force, can persuade matter,which it finds pre-existing, and in which resides an" erratic,1 irregular, random causality," to yield to itssway, produces what is best under the circumstances.The Kosmos, the orderlv W arrangementIwhich extendsthrough all nature, is the result of his skill. " ThisKosmos, having received its complement of animals,mortal and immortal, has become greatest, best, mostbeautiful and most perfect, a visible animal comprehendingall things visible, a perceivable God, the imageof the cogitable God: this Uranus, one and only-begotten."So far as this Dio's Demiurge is the reproductionof Plato's. But now we come to an important variationbetween them. The Demiurge of Plato is entirelydistinct from the generated gods. First he makes theKosmos, which has both a soul to itself implanted byhim, and a body of the primordial matter, and so isitself a god, though with many separate gods residentwithin it, or attached to it. Such are the sun, themoon, the planets, the stars, which are generated orconstructed by the Demiurge as portions or members1 Grote, who (Plato iii. 293) translates, as follows, the last wordsof the

174 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMof the Kosmos, their bodies out of fire and otherelements, their souls of the Forms called Identityand Diversity. Here, then, Plato supposes thephysical construction of a complete world by hisDemiurge. But after such a construction, what ishe to do with the mythological gods believed in bythe people among whom he lived ? The account whichhe had given of the formation of the world, or, as heterms it,1 " what we have said of the nature of thevisible and generated gods," was plainly quite incompatiblewith the existence of these others. He dismissesthem in the following words : " To speak ofthe other deities and to know their generation isbeyond our faculties, but we must trust to whatthose of old have said, for they were, as they said,descendants of the gods, and surely knew their ownancestors. It is impossible, then, to disbelieve thechildren of gods, although what they say is destituteboth of probable and necessary proof; but as theyassert that they are recounting family matters, wemust obey the laws and credit them. Now accordingto them the generation of these gods was thus:Oceanus and Tethys were children of Earth andHeaven, and Phorcys, Kronos, and Rhea and therest were children of these ; but children of Kronosand Rhea were Zeus and Hera, and all that we knoware called their brethren, and others still who weretheir progeny." Thus all the traditional gods ofGreece, including Zeus, are practically got rid of byPlato, while his Demiurge stands at an immeasurableheight above the gods whom he has generated. ForPlato next supposes the Demiurge to call togetherboth all those who revolve around us visibly, being1 Timrcus, sec. 15. 2 Timceus, sec. 16.

THE ST \NDING-GROUND OF PHILOSOPHY 175.he physical gods fi es bed. and those wh howhem h hey please, being h traditionalds whom he had just shunted aside, and to addthem thus : Y« gods of gods, of whom I m heconstructor d ,ther, all things med by m arein virtue of iy will indissolub Whatever, indeedhas been ;n C( composed is dissoluble, but to desire t dhat is beautifully harmonised and well di: dwould be a mark of evil. Now inasmuch y aretedt immortal nor absolutely indble, yet you shall never be dissolved, nor be subjtt( the lot of death t f my will, wh 11 is aS t m powerful bond th in wha t vourgeneration bound yoiT the I );3Mjiurg Plato h mblance tth Z f G d wh h hhand. D preme God mply the ancestral Z,lted by ,h butes of power, wisdom dgoodness which can be given to a constructin tgence until he becomes the Demiurge of Plato; this, Dio has un d himself with that mythology whichPlato put asid He has invested the form of thof ronos h a cert d iy, so t thgods i d godd h w f ecm lin dlike p< h himself recede into something like hminist They would be simply his ministers, if tlnotion of creat had tered t D mind Aspecies of monotheism tries to arrange itself with thmanifold m f the Greek polytheism. It I is talliance < of philosophy h h tablished w hipder the empire, who d is h god P hh b he whole civil power, but lik hble image of the Capitoline Jupow these th Epictebus, Plutarch, and D

THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMChrysostomus represent very sufficiently all the phasesof the Greek mind of their time. In one we have theStoic, in another the Platonist, in the third the popularsemi-philosopher and lecturer, who combined the Stoicdoctrine of reason with the Platonic view of the divineunity. All profess a strong belief in the divine providence,and are never weary of extolling the wisdom ofits rule. Again, all three are thoroughly penetratedwith the doctrine of the universal brotherhood of men.d draw as a conclusion from it the reciurucal dutf kindness and friendship. They are not so muchitizeus of Rome as preachers of a human race.But now, turning from these varieties of the Greekmind, let us compare them with four distinguishedwriters and an emperor, who were all Latins and justof the same time. How do thev stand in reference toTacitus, the younger Pliny, Suetonius, Juvenal, andTrajan ? Tacitus is neither a Stoic nor a Platonicrnonotheist: he seems to accept the gods of hiscountry, to acknowledge their power and their inter-ference in the affairs of men, yet he is full of painfuldoubts as to the fact of a divine providence. The lotof men is dark to him altogether. He would fainhope that at least the more deserving have someexistence after death. He may be said to acknowledgeo and defend the Olympian"/ y assembly "/ as part i ofthe Roman constitution. He is indefinitely nearer toCicero's world than his Greek contemporaries. Forphilosophy altogether he had somewhat of the oldRoman scorn. Thus he quotes his friend and father-in-law Agricola as saving »/ of himself that in early Vyouth he would have pursued the study of philosophymore keenly than a Roman and a senator should, butfor his mother's prudent tempering of that burning

THE STANDING-GROUND OF PHILOSOPHYCOIlove f knowledg S h makes Helvid us Prian P the majority, inasmuch he didP S philosophy as a cover r a f flazy inactivity, but to find it a d pirit f rh dang f t dutie i Th Id ofTacitus, in short, is not a world for Greek thinkbut fi Roman workers. Trajan fulfils his ideal ofP d the t dier wh d y gp h easelei la governm h r 1 sby and with his senate, is as a light which shbef T h beginning of that most blessedThe principate, b by him, almost redeemedb y maint ^^f o berty while it cl socie hdlong servitude" of Rome under Tiberius, themad f C pidity of Claud us. thefiddling, the debauchery, and the cruelty of Nthe ispic: y f D Tl m isthe titud f h s friend h y p w hbui temp' as well as inaugurated sch Dr hispoc ghb S a ni dddbeliever than either in the gods according to thepop belief Th same tone and temp ir may bebserved in J L b h h Idb dded thathim some of the noblest precep d principles ofSt are d togeth h belief hgod Th h own town of Aquinum h dedjd an offering > Ceres ii fulfilment of : vow. Itf the gods co tively th he expresses his beliefP d ence wering i .n's prayers b bter thant ppliant himself would know how to answer1 I b d th he record f clsical Greek literature do not produce a sentiment sofavourable to the heathen gods as that contained in1 Tacitus, Agricola, 4; Hist. iv. 5 ; Agricola, 3.VOL. III.MLIBRARYCOLLEGE

THE FOKMATION OF CHRISTENDOMhis famous verse, " More dear to them than to himselfis man." This sedulous worshipper of the old godshas likewise blent together the best parts of Platonicand Stoic theory in a passage which represents thedivine unity, the gift of reason proceeding from thecommon nature of man, and the reciprocal duties ofmen to each other derived from this common origin." This marks our birth,The great distinction from the beasts of earth.And therefore gifted with superior powersAnd capable of things divine, 'trs oursTo learn and practise every useful art,And from high heaven deduce that better part,That nu>ral sense, denied to creatures proneAnd downward bent, and found with man alone.For he who gave this vast machine to rollreathed life in them, in us a reasoning soul,That kindred feelings might our state improve,And mutual wants conduct to mutual love." 1Here Juvenal in one of his happier moments breathesa sense of the dignity of man's destiny which is farabove the moral tone of his three contemporaries, forthey may be said to be heathen of the old block. Thecurrents which have reached the Greek mind haveslightly touched them. Not that even Trajan,the unliterary soldier, and much less the philosophichistorian and the well-read man of letters, were ignorantof the theories which we find in Epictetus andPlutarch and Dio. They knew of them doubtless : thelistened to them. They would themselves be auditorsof many philosophic lectures at Rome, or Athens, orAlexandria: but they reckoned philosophy a Greekscience, just as before and after them even Romanswho philosophised wrote in Greek. Such were Cor-1 Sat. xv. 142-150. Gifford's translation.

THE STANDING-GROUND OF PHILOSOPHY 179nutus, Musonius Rufus, Favorinus, Marcus Aurelius,while the vast majority of philosophical teachersthroughout the empire, in the western as well asthe eastern parts, were Greeks. But the life ofthese five, who may be said to represent very fairlythe senate, the bar, and the literature of Rome intheir day, was on the old Roman standing-ground ofAugustus, though they would have claimed to beRoman gentlemen of a more advanced civilisation,which began o already */ to concern itself with the educa-tion of the poor, and even with orphanages. Further,in considering this latter tendency it should not beforgotten that Tacitus in his language and Pliny andTrajan in their acts showed a very complete hatred ofChristianity. Trajan in his rescripts to Pliny appealsto his age as having a standard of humanity superiorto the preceding time ; and it was he who establishedon a firm basis the condemnation of Christianity as anillicit religion. Again, the learned and elegant lawyerwho appears in his letters with all the refined tastesand pursuits of an English gentleman in the nineteenthcentury, dismisses to summary execution menand women against whom nothing could be allegedbut meeting together to address worship to Christ asGod. Thus the heavy sentence which concludes theacts of martyrdom of St. Ignatius receives the fullestverisimilitude from the official proceedings of Pliny, asdescribed by his own pen to his master Trajan, whoreplies to him with affectionate commendation. Theemperor who sentences the martyr corresponds exactlyto the emperor who instructs the prefect.Taking these seven men, Epictetus, Plutarch, andDio on the one hand, Juvenal, Tacitus, Pliny, andSuetonius on the other, they offer no inadequate

iSo THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMspecimen of that compound society which the greatEmperor Trajan ruled. The contrast in them betweenthe Greek and Latin mind is striking. CertainlyTacitus is the ablest and most original of the seven :but his religious and philosophic standing-ground isperhaps the most obscure. Indeed, religion and philosophyfor him belong to the policy of the empireThey have no deep place in his heart. It is not thedestiny of man but the destiny of Rome which moveshim. And if he does ever make a remark upon providenceor human life in general, doubt and gloom seemto invade his clear practical intellect, and despondencyto quench his feeling as a patriot. Pliny is the carefuladministrator, the polished man of letters, who isready for any philosophic discussion with his friends,and worships his country's gods without hesitation.These are the Latin friends and servants of the emperor,while in Trajan himself we see the embodimentof the valour, the statesmanship, the practical governingqualities which sustained the Roman world, andwhich met with entire homage O from such men asTacitusPand Plinv.»But it is to the Greeks that wemust look for any theory as to the deeper problemswhich surround human life. It was the provincialswho thought for the humanity which Rome governed.Now Epictetus, Dio, and Plutarch were likewise valuedand honoured by Trajan. They represent the learningand intellectual activity of the Greek portionof his empire. In them we find a very definitestanding-ground taken up as to the relation betweenphilosophy and the existing belief and worship. Fromtheir time we may say that philosophy, as disseminatedby Greek teachers to the cultured classes, containedtwo main elements. The first is the entertainment of

THE STANDING-GROUND OF PHILOSOPHY l8lan exoteric mind much after Plutarch's pattern withregard to a supreme God, of whom all the mythologicalor elemental gods are parts or ministers ; andthe second is the maintenance in. practical life of allthe worship sanctioned by the laws. This means thatthe Greek thinkers were attempting to give a scientificbasis to the belief in the heathen gods which wasexpressed in their worship, and on this basis toreconcile philosophy with religion. Such a reconciliationhad never been thought of up to the timesAugustus O and Tiberius, * for its need had not beenfelt. Philosophy under various forms had been psistent in one thing, its enmity to the existing religworship. By it the thinking and cultured classes vd from that worship, and the alienation wasqually complete whether the Stoic, the Epor the Sceptic form of thought was preferred. Butthen the worship from which the bias of culturedthought led men away had during all this timeencountered no external enemy of its own kind. Ipass over the attraction of individual minds in the timeof the empire to Syrian or Egyptian gods as notcounting on a large scale. Viewed as a whole, noother worship had competed with it. It was in nodanger of falling by those various forms of philosophy,which, as a whole, consisted mainly in negation. Prayerand sacrifice supply an universal need in man whichcannot be satisfied by denying that it exists. So inthe times we have mentioned philosophic unbeliefwent on to a certain extent in the few minds whichform the cultured classes, while the great mass stillfound support in frequenting the established rites.Further also, the philosopher in practice did notsever himself from that worship as a custom and habit

I 82 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMflif ut this new reconciliation between p phand religion, by which it was attempted to resta t th d t d t d dliarmoD h t multip f heat dindicated in new pow had whichwas preparin t meet. Why did Epictet peakof man as b o Cf th of God Iin histure a dignity universal and indefeasible, whis P all grad f fictit k dpi; th b -' wh realises at dignity n iboveth peror h y proud f th r Whydid Plutarch and Dio bring forth again Plato's Demt "^^r -half concealed threcesses of philosophic thought " hard to find outd mpossib t describe to all " ? Why did tht ly invest him with 1 pt creat Pwisdom, and - dness, but further identify himth Ze f Greek myth I e yst fth St t t as w find it delineated inCicero, the universe had become a ci a kingdomdered with supreme wisdom and friendship towardman by the best of legislators and fathers, when soit pleased t to present, as in th hvmnCleanthes, th creat h r bstract reasoning,the terribl rm f necessit ow, wever thewd of Olympian deities, the peers of J who inth pop belief held over th an definedprimacy, appeared his obedient satellit in t he fer-t exaltation of his th which Plutarch nd Diocelebrated. Something more powerful than philosophyhad set the heathen worship on its defence, when philosophy,deserting its old ground, applied itself to buildup the temple and to justify the rite, and to defendthe gods to whom the temple was built and the rite

THE STANDING-GROUND OF PHILOSOPHY133fife red Yet this is what we see from the beginningf 's reign, and that standing-ground thus takenp is never again relinquished I t to bthe basis of operation on which the heathen defendersof Olympus stand, until the termination of the conflictwith the Christian Church.Whatever appears in common in three such teachersas Epictetus, Plutarch, and Dio Cbrysostomus may besecurely predicated of the whole Greek mind whichthey represent. Now such is the notion of God andProvidence which is of perpetual recurrence in them.The universe is most wisely governed according tothem by one maker, that is composer and arranger,and for the good of man, who is distinguished fromall other animals by the possession of reason, whichhe has in common with this God. When speaking ofGod and Providence in this general relation they arerigid monotheists, but then, whenever it suits theirturn, they are as completely polytheists, using thegods, like men, as parts of the divine intelligence.By this sort of legerdemain two results are accomplished.On the one hand, for the philosophic mindthey approve the unity, wisdom, and power of theuniverse; on the other hand, for the popular mindthey defend and justify all the existing worship of allthe established deities. Moreover, the God whomthey so exalt as the maker and maintainer of theuniverse is called by the name of the national god ofthe Roman Empire, Zeus or Jupiter. As they thusexalt him, every other power seems to sink into insignificancebefore him, so that passages may be takenfrom them which seem to convey almost a Christianconception of God. Then immediately other passagesmay be cited in which the deities are mentioned

I 84THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMcollectively, or any particular deity is specified, andpiety to them is inculcated on the common ground ofpiety to him, and the worship paid to them is exactlyidentical with the worship paid to him as for instancein the O s^reat and most significantCD rite of sacrificenor is their relation to him anywhere distinctlystated. So far, indeed, as the passing from thesingular to the plural appellation, and the reverse,so that the monotheistic and polytheistic expressionis interchanged, as if equivalent, this is found in theclassical age of Greek literature, in Thucydides, Xeno-phon, Pindar, /Eschylus, and the poets generally. Ifthis were all, Epictetus and Plutarch would in thisonly be instances of a common and ancient interchange,^^or as it were unconscious indifference in theuse of one or many when speaking of " the Divine."What distinguishes them is the force and explicitnesswith which they bring out the conception of a divinemonarchy, leaving as it seems no place for any otherruling D power r than that one which thev "> have soexalted.These three conspicuous specimens of Greek thoughtsupply ground for the conclusion that a moral forcewas acting on the thinking part of the heathen worldso strong as to alter the bearing of philosophy towardsreligion. Let us examine more closely one of theseteachers and see whether he does not offer specificimitations of the power in question, which he studiouslykeeps out of sight. Epictetus gives us, under the nameof the Cynic, his ideal character of the teacherwho is to propagate the philosophy which is likewisehis religion. It is well worthv » of berny- considered.1 See Nagelabach, Naehhftmtrisehe Thco?oy!e, ch. ii. sec. 22, pp. 139,14"), for some remarkable instances of this.

THE STANDING-GROUND OF PHILOSOPHY185The occasion l is this. One of his disciples, who hadan inclination to be a Cynic, asked him to give hisconception of that work. " Well," said he, " let us considerit at leisure. S> much I may say at once, thatwhoever sets his hand to such a work without God isheaven-struck, and will only disgrace himself publicly.For no one enters into a well-ordered house and says,{I am to be steward.' Or else its lord turning uponhim and seeing him ruling with insolence takes himand cuts him in two. So, too, it happens in thisgreat city, for here also there is a master2 of thehouse, who arranges everything in due order. Thouart a sun : thou canst make the year and the seasonsby thy revolutions, increase and nourish the fruits,raise and lay the winds, and warm sufficiently thebodies of men. Go : make thy M revolution, and movethings from the highest to the lowest. . . . Thou arta calf: when the lion shows himself, get out of hiswav, f * or thou wilt fare ill. . . . Thou art a bull :go and fight, for this is thy part and tbou canstdo it. Thou canst lead the army against Trov: bthou Agamemnon. . . . Thou canst fight a duel withHector : be thou Achilles. . . . But if Thersites hadcome up and claimed the command, either he wouldnot have got it, or he would have made an ignominiousfailure before manv witnesses. So therefore thou :_take good counsel: know thyself: examine thy conscience; attempt it not without God. First of all1 Epictetus, iii. 22, pp. 443-472. Upton's Edit.2 oiKoSecrTroTTjs, the word which occurs so often in the parables. Itis curious to compare this passage with Luke xii. 39-48. In boththere is the oiKodecrTroTTjs and the oiicovdfjLos. In the one the masterseeing the steward behaving himself in an unseemly manner, egreer In the other, 5i%oro,u?7

I 86 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMmake that which rules thee pure and clear. Consciencealone can give thee this power. Now youmust know that the teacher is a messenger sent fromJupiter to men concerning what is good and evil, toshow them that thev 9f are in error, * and seek the essenceof good and evil where it is not, but lay not to heartwhere it is. ... Tell us then, sir messenger andwatchman, where good is. ' 0 men/ he says, ' whithergo ye ? What do ye ? You seek happiness and thatwhich should rule you where it is not, and believenot when another shows it you. Why do you seekit I'-ifJioi't ? Is it in the body or in wealth ? Seethose who are now rich, of what sorrow their life isfull. Is it in holdin office ? Not so, or those whohave been twice or thrice consul would be happy, butthey are not. It is where you think not, and whereyou will not seek it. For had you willed, you wouldhave found it in yourselves.' . . . And remember, theteacher must be entirely in the service of God withoutdistraction, able to visit men, not bound to his privatebusiness, nor embarrassed with relations, which if hedisregard he will lose his character for integrity, whileif he maintain them he will destroy the messenger,the watchman and the herald of the gods. For think,if he has got O to provide JT for a father-in-law or theother relations of a wife, or a wife herself, or childrenand their needs. Where, I pray you, would be thatking who provides for the common good, to whompeoples are committed and who has so many cares,who has to be l bishop over others, over the married,over those who have children, to see who treats hiswife well, and who ill, who quarrels, what house isl 8v Set roi/s dXXouj (TriffKOTreiv, p. 462, and 61 eiriaKotrovvTes ira/caret, dri'dfjuv #/>u>7roi'S, p. 463.

THE STANDING-GROUND OP PHILOSOPHY187well and what ill managed; who must make hisrounds like a physician, and feel pulses. To onepatient he says, c You have a fever;' to another, ' Youhave headache ;' to another, 'You have the gout, Yon,sir, must take exercise; You, sir, must eat; Youmust avoid the bath ; You must have an operation ;You must be cauterised.' How can one who is bounddomestic duties find leisure for this ? Must henot find clothes for his children, send them to schoolwith satchel ? . . . Considering, then, the presentdistress,1 we think not marriage good for the teacher.But then, say you, how will he maintain society ?Good heavens, is it a greater benefit to men to bringtwo or three ill-conditioned children among them,than to be a bishop over them, to see what they do,how they live, what they take care of and what theyneglect? Which did greater good to the Thebans,they who left them children, or Epaminondas, whodied childless ? Who contributed most to society ?Priam, Danaus, ^Bolus, with their wretched broodsof fifty, or Homer ? Shall military or civil commanddebar from marriage and family life, and the teacher'sroyalty not be deemed an equivalent ? Do not wefail to see his greatness ? For, my friend, he hasmade all " men his children :/the men he counts forsons, the women for daughters. Thus he approachesall; thus he cares for all. Do you suppose that itis as a busybody that he censures ? Nay, it is asfather, as brother, as servant of the common father,Zeus. . . . Kings and tyrants have guards with armsin their hands, and so they can punish, but it is con-1 TOLdtiTTjs oftrT/s /raracrrds, ota vvv ¬

iSS THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMscience only which gives the teacher a power whichmakes up to him for the want of armed force.When it is seen that he has kept vigil and labouredfor men ; has gone pure to bed and risen purer still ;when all his thoughts are those of a friend to thegods, of their minister, of one who shares the governmentof Jupiter; why should he not speak freely tohis own brethren, to his own children, his own kinsmen? Therefore he is no busybody or meddler,when he acts the bishop over human things, forthey are his own. Or else call the general a busybody,when he inspects and reviews and punishes hissoldiers. . . . What to him is emperor, or proconsul,or any one, save he who sent him, and whom heserves, Jupiter. Whatever he suffers from themhe knows that he is tried and examined by Jupiter.And how is it possible for one who possesses nothing,who is naked, houseless, hearthless, squalid, a servant,citiless, to lead a tranquil life ? Behold, God hassent one to us to show by facts that it is possible.Behold me, that I am citiless, houseless, without possessionor servant. I sleep on the ground. I haveno wife, no children, no reception-room, only theearth and sky and one mat. And what is wantingto me ? Am I not without pain ? Am I not withoutfear ? Am I not free ? "Let us realise by whom these words are said to bepoken. They were collected some time after hisdeath, not earlier certainly than the year 130, by thedisciple of a heathen philosopher, who was a man ofmiddle age at the death of the last surviving Apostle,St. John. What is remarkable about them is that nosuch conception of the teacher as they give had everbeen carried out by any one in the heathen world of

THE STANDING-GROUND OF PHILOSOPHY189whom word has come down to us before the time whenEpictetus is supposed to have spoken them. A singleStoic in the lifetime of Epictetns, by name Demetrius,had indeed won universal respect by the independenceand freedom of his life. Yet neither he, nor Diogenes,to whom Epictetus refers, represents the other featuresof this character, which are stamped with a divinemessenger's solicitude for his fellow-men, a sacredcharge committed to him from above which he mustexecute, an abnegation of self, and a sacrifice forothers of the dearest family relations. But on theother hand the Roman world for sixty years beforethese words are said to be uttered, for ninety yearsbefore they are published, had been sown by suchteachers, who carried their lives in their hands, fearingneither emperor nor consul ; who proclaimed themselvesto be messengers, to be stewards, to be heraldsof God ; who claimed to inspect the lives and thoughtsof those whom they taught, to treat the men as brethren,the women as daughters, who abstained from marriage,because " no man being a soldier to God entanglethhimself with secular business." Two of such menEpictetus in his youth, when a slave in the house ofEpaphroditus, had known to have disregarded all theterrors of a tyrant, had known them to have been theone crucified, the other beheaded, at Rome for theirteaching, and to have encountered this death simplyfor carrying out to the very life the portrait of ateacher which he has here drawn. Now it is singularthat the only passage in which Epictetus refers byname to Christians informs us that he was acquaintedwith this their heroism. "What,"1 he says, "makesthe tyrant terrible ? His guards and their swords.1 Epictetus, iv. 7.

190 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMIf a child then feels no fear in approaching tguards, is it because he has no perception of thesthings ? Suppose then a man to perceive these guardand their swords, but to approach the tyrant for tlvery purpose of seeking death, will he fear the guardsHe seeks the very thing for which they are terriblSuppose, then, one caring neither whether he lives ordies approach him, may he not do so fearlesslyJust as this man is minded in regard to his body, letanother be minded in regard to possessing property,or children, and wife, and in a word through somemadness or want of sense be so disposed as to carenothing for having or not having these things. Oragain, as children play with oyster-shells, caringthing about the shells but much about the glet this supposed man care nothing about the sub-t-matter, but everything about the game and hisconduct therein, what tyrant, what guards or theirswords will cause him fear ? Well then, can a manbe so disposed towards these things by madness, andtin' Galileaiis, because it is their wont, and can no oneforce of reason and proof learn that God has madeall things in the world, and the whole world itselfeffecting its purpose and being its end in itself,nd its parts for the use of the whole ?"Epictetusthen was well aware that the Galileans, " because itwas their wont," had resolution to confront death andsuffer the loss of all things. He knew that there wassomething O in their life which enabled them to reachthe utmost height of heroism which he imagines forhis ideal teacher. He portrays that teacher in colourswhich irresistibly remind one of St. Peter and St.Paul, and all that race of Apostolic missionaries ofwhich they were the leaders. His own heathenism

THE STANDING-GROUND OF PHILOSOPHY 191supplies him with no original for a portrait, which atleast had been exhibited during his lifetime in a greatnumber of instances by these Galileans : one point ofwhich, the most striking and the rarest, he himself inanother place of his sayings attributes to them asspecially characteristic of them. Taking into accountthe time and the places at which Epictetus lived, andthe studies on which his mind was engrossed, is thereany sufficient reason to think that he was so ignorantabout Christians in general, their doctrine and theirmode of life, as his silence with respect to them hasled some to conclude ? If he who drew the characterof the teacher above cited was not acquainted withChristians, how came he to put together a very originaland marked portraiture such as in its entirety hadnever been seen among Greeks or Eomans, though ithad been presented again and again in his own timeby the first teachers of the Church ? Where was theStoic ever seen who had treated all men of whatevernation or race or quality of rank as his brethren, allwomen as his daughters, who had watched over themwith solicitude, and with utter disregard of self, whohad resigned all domestic affections, not out of apathy,but in order to bestow himself, his life, and its laboursupon others ? Myriads of Christian teachers havedone this. No philosopher has ever done it. Nowwhence did Epictetus draw the conception of doinit ? If Stoicism from its origin contained within itselfthe germ of such a flower, why did it never produce aspecimen until the Roman world had been filled withhe fragrance of the Christian fot but what Epictetus is entirely heathen in thground which he assigns for his teacher's fearlessnessTo him the body and the soul do not make the on

I 92 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMipersonality of man. " This poor body is nothing tome : its parts are nothing to me. Death, let it comewhen it will, in whole or in part. . . . For if deathbe any evil it is equally an evil, whether in companywith others or alone. Will it be anything morethan the separation of this poor body and the soul ?Nothing." And he proceeds to mention that there isalways in case of need the option of suicide. " Is thedoor shut ? May you not die ? You may."The fair conclusion is that Epictetus having hadthe sufferings of Christians brought vividly before himin his youth, and acknowledging their heroism, wasmore or less acquainted with their doctrine, and thathe was not unaffected by the two things, but neverthelesspreferred his old heathen standing-ground.Many since in the full blaze of Christian light anthe full knowledge of Christian practice during hundredsof years before them, have done as he did.But it results that the heathenism of Epictetus, asthat of Plutarch and Dio Chrysostomus, is not thatof Cicero or Augustus. A new light has shoneupon their moral world, a new order of ideas haspassed before their minds. A very learned writerobserves that " their doctrines concerning the relationof the individual to humanity in general breathe asstrongly a Christian spirit as they bear witness to themost decided break with what had been, specifically,the ancient views of the world." " Stoicism andCynicism raised themselves in this time to a heightand a purity in their moral grasp of human rightsand human duties which had not been reached inearlier antiquity.""The Stoic principle that all men1 Epictetus, iii. 22, p. 447.- Friedlaender, Sittengcschichte Roms, iii. 609, 610.

THE STANDING-GROUND OF PHILOSOPHY 193belong to each other, who, as Epictetus expresses it,all have God for their father, and therefore arebrethren, was first followed out by the Stoics of thisage to its full range, and to its last consequence."This very important and pregnant fact is not onlystated by this writer, but admitted by the most ablehistorians of Greek philosophy. Some who admitit maintain that this consequence lay in the conceptionof Stoicism from its beginning, and was producedby its own power. They have to show whya philosophy which existed for three hundred yearsbefore our Lord came, never produced these fruitsuntil after these doctrines had been preached by Hisdisciples on the ground of His example, and at thecost of their lives, through the length and breadthof the empire. They have to show why Cicero, withall the stores of Grecian thought before him, andregarding philosophy as the guide of life, never producedsuch a view of * the teacher as we have justquoted from Epictetus. They should further showwhy his view of slavery is the hard cold view of Platoand Aristotle, without a glimpse of the tendernessfor the rights of human nature, which appears inSeneca and Epictetus, and the subsequent school. Itis a fact that in the interval the great sacrifice onCalvary had taken place, and the Creator of man haddied upon the cross the death of a Roman slave.Before the slave Epictetus obtained honour as a philosopher,the slave Onesimus had become a bishop inthe Church. efore the character of the teacher hadbeen sketched by the Stoic, all its fine and exaltedpoints had been exhibited during two generationsin the settled order of the Church's missionaries.The reasoned unbelief of modern infidels - who layVOL. III. N

194 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMipecial claim to science-is strangely regardless cihronology.We must now mention the position occupied byphilosophers in the Roman Empire from the accessionof JSTervat the end of the first century until far intothe third. Scanty as are the notices which we possessof the intellectual condition of those times, there isenough to warrant the belief that during this periodthere was in the higher classes of Roman society alively and a wide-spread interest in philosophy. Philosophicallectures formed a regular part of Roman life,not only in the capital, but in the other great intellectualcentres, such as Athens, Alexandria, Marseilles,Tarsus, Rhodes. The great majority of the teachers,whether in the West or East, were Greeks. Oppositionthere had been to philosophy in the naturalcharacter of the Romans. Suspicion was entertainedagainst it as an unpractical study, leading men awafrom the duties of active life. Its professors, who onlysought in it the means of enriching themselves, andwhose own life was a scandal to the precepts ^" ^» whthey enjoined on others, were disliked. Yet undoubtedlymuch the larger portion of the cultured classeven in Rome and the western parts of the empire wasfully convinced that philosophy was the best guide tothe highest morality.1 As such it laid claim to the educationof youth, and for the greater part the yphilosophical study began after the conclusion of thgrammatical and rhetorical course. The ordinary nilwas that with the assumption of the toga young meentered upon that discipline which was to introduce arjguide them into an upright and well-regulated manhoodPhilosophy properly comprehended three divisionsi Friedlaender, iii. 572, 580.

THE STANDING-GROUND OF PHILOSOPHY 195Logic, Physics, and Ethics, but the former two of theseretreated so far into the background that Ethicsappeared to be the essential if not the only subjecttreated. It was1 especially the education of youthin moral virtue which was expected of philosophy. " Asgymnastics and medical science provide for the healthand strength of the body," says Plutarch in his treatiseon education, " so philosophy alone heals the weaknessand sickness of the soul. By it and with it we learnwhat is noble and what base, what right and whatwrong, what to strive after and what to avoid : howwe have to behave towards the gods, our parents, oldage, the laws, strangers, our rulers, our friends, women,children, and men. It teaches us that we should fearthe gods, honour parents, reverence age, obey laws,comply with rulers, love friends, be modest withwomen, treat children with tenderness, and slaveswithout insolence. Especially do we learn from itthat we be neither thrown off our balance in prosperitynor cast down by adversity, that we neither allowourselves to be overcome by pleasure, nor becomepassionate and brutal in our anger. This I hold forthe chiefest of all the goods which we gain throughphilosophy." In another place he says: " Foolishparents who have neglected to give a good educationto their children generally begin to pay for thisneglect when their sons approach manhood, and insteadof leading an orderly and reasonable life plungethemselves into extravagances and low pleasures, drawaround them parasites and other ruiners of youth, fallinto loose living, gluttony, gambling, commit adulteriesand other excesses, by which they risk their lives forpleasure. Had they enjoyed the instruction of a philo-1 I take the following from Friedlaender, iii. 586.

196 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMsopher, they would not have given themselves up tosuch courses. As the gardener plucks the weed fromthe field, so the philosopher plucks the bad impulsesof envy, avarice, concupiscence out of the youthful soul,though it must be done sometimes with deep cutswhich leave wounds behind. In other cases he workscautiously, as the pruner trims the vine, in order notto cut out the noble together v^J with the base." lFrom these expressions of Plutarch and from Epic-tetus it is apparent that in their time philosophy hadcompletely assumed that function of forming the inwardlife which we assign to religion. Cicero indeedrecognised it as the guide of life. Seneca is neverweary of extolling it as such. Further also, thephilosopher2 being esteemed not merely as a giver oflessons but as an educator, as one really charged witha cure of souls, necessarily considered it his duty toadvance by every means in his power the moral growthof his scholar outside the ordinary time of instruction.By consequence he assumed a right of supervisionover the whole conduct which was exercised by givingcounsel and exhortation, warning and reproof.We have some remarkable instances of this preservedto us. Thus Seneca described himself in his youth,in the reign of Tiberius, as the first to attend theschool of Attalus, and the last to leave it. Andfurthermore: he followed Attalus with questions inhis walks, where he found him not only ready, butanxious for learners. And he quotes him as sayingthat the teacher and the taught should have the samepurpose before them, the one to impart, the other toreceive, good. He adds that one who frequents a1 Plutarch, De Ednc. Pucr. cap. x. 7 ; DC Vitioso Pudorc, cap. ii2 Friedlaender, iii. 587.

THE STANDING-GROUND OF PHILOSOPHY 197philosopher should every day carry off somethinggood with him, for philosophy exercises a good influence,not merely in the process of study, but by livingintercourse, as the sun's light tints one who comeswithin it, though he came not for that purpose.1Thus thirty years later, in the reign of Nero, Persiusreminds Cornutus, " the dear friend who was so greata part of his own soul," how when, trembling in theliberty of opening manhood, he was free to cast hiseyes on the seductions of Rome, he had fled for refugeto his guidance:" Nor did you, gentle sage, the charge decline ;Then, dext'rous to beguile, your steady lineReclaimed, I know not by what winning force,My morals, warped from virtue's straighter course;While reason pressed incumbent on my soul,That struggled to receive the strong control,And took, like wax tempered by plastic skill,The form your hand imposed : and bears it still. " 2A hundred years later, in the reign of Antoninus Pius,about the middle of the second century, we have apicture of the relations which the Platonic philosopherTaurus maintained with his scholars. He allowedthem not only to ask him questions after the day'sinstruction, but constantly invited those who wished tobe more intimate with him to a frugal supper, inwhich a dish of Egyptian lentils and a salad made thechief repast. Here they were expected to proposequestions and problems which the philosopher resolved.Again, when they were sick he was wont tovisit them. Whatever displeased him in their mannerof life he could freely censure. " So," says Gellius,1 Seneca, Epist. cviii.2 Persius, v. 30-40. Gifford's translation.

198 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOM" Taurus used every sort of exhortation to lead hisscholars to what was right and good."It appears that there was no concern of life tooimportant to be beyond the reach of the philosopher'sinspection, none too minute to be beneath it. ThusEpictetus gives particular directions as to the dressand the personal habits of those who frequent him,such as the wearing a beard, the arrangement of thehair. In all scruples of conscience, in all difficultpositions of life, the philosophers were consulted.When Gellius, who had been appointed a judge at theage of twenty-five, found himself unable to determinea suit, he suspended the sitting and betook himselfimmediately to the philosopher Favorinus, of whom hebegged a decision for this particular case, as well asinstruction generally in the office of judge. It wouldseem that philosophers had to complain rather thatthey were consulted too much than too little. Epictetussays men came to him as to a greengrocer or ashoemaker, to get articles ready made, and say theyhad conversed with him, as if he were a statue, withoutgiving themselves the trouble to learn the moralprinciples on which particular decisions should befounded.1The function of philosophy and the supervisionexercised by philosophers over the life of their adherentsbeing in general such as have been described,there were three sorts of relation in which it wasexercised. First, there was the house-philosopher.In many great Roman families it had become theusage to have such an appendage. Such a manwould serve not only as the educator of the children,but as the counsellor and guide of the elders. Especi-1 Epictetus, iii. 9. I take the above examples from Friedlaender.

THE STANDING-GROUND OF PHILOSOPHY 199ally they were considered to prepare people for deathand so in the Caesarean history the victim not unfrequently spends his last moments in a conversatior" with his own philosopher." " Thus 1 Julius Kanuscondemned by Caligula, did not cease to searcthe truth in his very end. ' Why are you so sorry ?he said to his friends. ' You ask whether souls areimmortal: that I shall presently know.' His philosopherwas following him, and now they were nearingthat hill on which daily offerings were made to ourod, Caesar. ' What are you thinking of now, Kanus ? 'iid he. i I intend,' replied Kanus, c to observe whethert that most rapid moment the soul has a sense of itgoing forth.' " In like manner Rubellius Plautwas encouraged by Musonius to prefer death to anuncertain life; and the messenger of death foundThrasea in conversation with the Cynic, Demetrius." It might be judged," says Tacitus, " by theearnestness of his face and some words more loudlyspoken than the rest, that he was inquiring as tothe nature of the soul and the separation of body and" "j »spirit.Another species of the house-philosopher was thecourt-philosopher. Such are mentioned at the courtsof Augustus, Nero, Trajan, Hadrian, the Empress JuliaDomna. Plutarch defends such a position on thund that philosophers who give themselves up tform the moral life of private persons deliver onindividuals from weaknesses and passions : but hewho ennobles the character of a ruler advances andimproves thereby the whole State.For such advan-1 Seneca, De TranquilL 14. "Prosequebatuv ilium philosophusSUU8.2 Tacitus, Ann. 16, 34.

200 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMtages he must bear the imputation of courtiership andservility.1Secondly, a greater and more honourable positionfor the philosopher was that of holding one of thepublic chairs in a great city. At central points, likeRome or Athens, the influence of a teacher mightextend over the flower of the youth drawn from allthe provinces of the empire. A large salary was likewiseattached to such a place. This undoubtedly wasthe greatest field for the dissemination of its doctrinewhich was open to philosophy.But, thirdly, while even these public schools werelimited in their influence to those who attended them,it is said that a class of philosophers, who gave themselvesout as general teachers of morality to the wholehuman race, were to be found passing from place toplace through the empire. These were Cynics, and,though most of them bore a very evil name, now andthen men were to be found among them who renouncedfor the sake of this office the goods and conveniencesof life, and gained thereby, like Demonax who livedchiefly at Athens, general consideration * and honour.Still the character of Demonax, whom Lucian has sogreatly extolled, though full of independence andrugged honesty, was totally wanting in that tenderregard for the good of others with which Epictetushas invested his teacher. Demonax, who, feeling theweakness of age approaching, put himself to death byfasting when nearly a hundred years old, is supposedto have 2 lived between 50 and 150, or perhaps tenyears later.Plutarch's mode of thought is continued on by his1 Plutarch, on philosophising with princes, ch. ii., quoted by Fried-laender, iii. 595. 2 Zeller, iv. 691.

THE STANDING-GROUND OF PHILOSOPHY 2OIsuccessors in the Platonic school. Three of these maybe mentioned whose lives extend from about the timeof Plutarch's death to the end of the second century.They are Maximus of Tyre, Apuleius of Madaura, andCelsus. These survive in part to tell us what wasprobably the teaching of the philosophers whose positionin the empire we have been sketching at least asconcerns the important points which most interest us.Maximus of Tyre lived under the Antonines: he washalf philosopher, half lecturer, that is a Rhetor.Forty-one of the compositions thus delivered remainto us. This then is what a fashionable Platonist wouldy to his audience at Rome in the time of MAurelius : " God, as the highest spirit and the highestgood, is one only, exalted above time and nature, in-ble, ineffable, to be known only by pure reason.He is the architect and ruler of the world, whosenever-resting providence embraces and maintainseverything, from whom good only comes, withoutwhom no one can be virtuous. Matter serves him asstuff for the forming of the world, and out of this inthe last resort all evils spring, the physical immediately,the moral mediately, inasmuch as free-will failsto control the sensual appetites. Between the supremegodhead and the world there are besides innumerablevisible gods, demons as middle beings, inferior godsof immortal but passible nature, who dwell on theborders of the heavenly and earthly world, servants ofthe gods and inspectors of men, various in perfection,temper, and occupation, assigned to the good as per-sonal guardian spirits/' Maximus considers thesemiddle beings as the connecting link between the1 This analysis is drawn by Zeller, v. 186-188, from a number ofpassages in the dissertations of Maximus.

202 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMsensuous and supersensuous world. He is so stronglyconvinced of their existence that he not only creditsthe simplest stories of demon apparitions, but canhimself tell of such apparitions, which he has had ina waking state. The human soul likewise is of divineessence, but is imprisoned in the body during itsearthly life, and experiences a sort of dream-state, outof which it only incompletely wakes to the remembranceof its true being. It is only in the future lifethat it may hope for a purer knowledge of the truth,and an immediate intuition of " the divine." Maximussees in the many kinds of divination a proof of thedivine care for man, / uniting f^j it as he does with thefreedom of the will by the assumption that only whatis necessary is foretold unconditionally. Sensuousrepresentations of the godhead by images and mythsare defended as helps which most men need, and poetsare praised on this ground as being the most ancientphilosophers. The particular form of the image isin itself indifferent, but Maximus finds his people'sartistic preference of the human form the worthiest.Syria was the mother of Maximus, and Africa producedin Apuleius of Mad aura one very similar to himin philosophical character. Hel names as the firstgrounds of being the Godhead, Matter, and Ideas.The Godhead, the perfect Spirit, is ineffable and immense,exalted not only above all passion, but alsoabove all activity. Ideas are simple and eternal forms,the incorporeal patterns of things. Next to God andthe Ideas, he calls Eeason, or Mind, and the Soul, abeing of higher nature, though we are not to seek inhim for a definite gradation of divine forces. LikeMaximus he places gods and demons between the1 This analysis is from Zeller, v. 190.

THE STANDING-GROUND OF PHILOSOPHY 203highest God and the world. He reckons among thesegods not only the visible deities, or stars, but (likewiseinvisible beings as the twelve Olympian gods, who asscions of the highest God are described as everlastingpnre spirits, raised above all contact with the corporealworld. Yet as the gods enter into no immediateintercourse with men, demons are required to form alink between them, and Apuleius enters with greatdetail into their nature, occupations, and classes. Hemaintains guardian spirits, supposing that Socratesnot only heard but saw his demon. Apuleius alsowith others refers to demons the sacrifices, consecrationsand religious usages, the images and temples of thegods. He derives from them divination and the otherdisclosures of the future which * he readily credits.The human soul is also reckoned to belong to the raceof demons, as well during its earthly life as especiallyafter its delivery from the body. But it is onlydemons of a lower order which enter into a body.Celsus possesses for us a higher interest than eitherof the foregoing, for he is, so far as we know, the firstheathen who set himself to oppose the advancingChristian faith with the arms of the intellect. Nothingmore definite is known of his age than that he isbelieved to have flourished in the later half of thed century. He may be supposed to hwritten in the reign of Marcus Aurelius. WhenOrigen had reached the fulness of age and maturityof mind, he was besought by his friend Ambrosiusto write an answer to a work entitled " The Wordof Truth," which had great credit among the heathen.His refutation of that work supplies us with manyfragments of it; and from these we can gather whwas the philosophical standing-point of its auth

204 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMThus he 1 declares there to be one supreme God, theabsolute Being, who is. He distinguishes betweenthis highest original Being and the Universe, as thesecond god and son of the most high God, declaringitself by its generation. The stars are divine beings,animated by superior intelligences, visible gods, asdistinguished from the invisible deities, who do notshow themselves. There are subordinate deities whopreside over particular parts of the earth, nationalgods, to whom different portions of the earth aresubject, and to whom therefore fitting venerationmust be paid. He recognises the divine origin ofthe human spirit, the power of matter, which asresisting the divine and formative principle is thecause of all evil. From this are derived the forces,or evil spirits, which resist " the divine," that is,God, who is the Ueason of all things that are.can give a high conception of God. Thus he say 2" That which is, is the subject of the intellect; thatwhich becomes, P of the senses. To the one belontruth; to the other, error. Science is about truthopinion, about error. Intelligence belongs to thintelligible, as sight to the visible; mind knowthe iutelligible, as the eye the visible. The sun, bem

THE STANDING-GROUND OF PHILOSOPHY 205things intelligible, to Very Truth and to Very Being,that they are. Being beyond all he is by some ineffablepower the object of the intellect." This onthe one side, while on the other the whole heathenworld of divine things, demigods, heroes, sacrifices,oracles, finds in his system convenient space and roomenough. Then as for the idol worship, " if* any paythem not honour, because the stone or wood or brassor gold which any particular artist has wrought cannotbe a god, that is a pitiful wisdom. For who that isnot a mere simpleton thinks these things to be gods,and not rather things offered to them and representingthem ? "The work of Celsus is generally aggressive, butI am not " now concerned with his attacks on theChristian Faith ; I speak here of his own positivestanding-ground. It will be seen to coincide exactlywith that of Plutarch at the beginning of the century.And I think we may fairly conclude that it was theground which every man of cultivated mind amongthe heathen attempted to take, and that from thelast years of St. John, during the whole second andthird centuries, when any Christian argued againstthe multiplicity of gods, the idolatrous worship paidto them, and the impure and monstrous tales of theheathen mythology, the instructed class would meet himwith thia counter-belief in one supreme God. Thisbelief was shared, as we have seen, and most distinctlyexpressed by Epictetus, Plutarch, Dio of Prusa,Maxim us, Apuleius, Celsus, under whom the mythologicalgods would be ranged as parts or members ofthe " race possessing reason," while the offensive myths,imputing crimes to the deities, would partly be re-1 Origen, Contra Cels. vii. 62. -

206 E FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMpudiated as the invention of poets, partly interpretedin a physical or moral sense, partly again attributedto an inferior and intermediate class of deities, demonsas w jre called. Tl tered wd in thmeantime, that is, the vai t majority of mankind, heldto their ancestral belief in its crudity hipped Jupiterd Venus in the temples and by imitating heir con-duct, and were re dy to tear pieci th atheists."who denied them Meanwhile Traj d HadAnt P nd Marcus A B patronised anddedEpictetus and Plutarch, and Diod M ttended th r lect d dmiredtheir concept of " the dh being PontifexM mus of the State religion, zealoush DractisinL' anddefending its rights.dance with that religthey put to death on d t hers of tlUnity of God as St. Ignatius of Antioch, St. Symph d li th ph ph Justin, andthi martyr bishops, against whom the theat fSmy th crowd cried out, " Away withth e t "P

LECTUREXIXTHE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHIC HEATHENISMIN the last two lectures we have been tracing areformation of heathenism in the Neopythagorean andPlatonistic school of thought, of which Plutarch hasremained to posterity as the chief representative. Thisschool, dead as we have seen in Cicero's time, anddead in Seneca's time, by the time of Domitian badd. Drevailed more and more, and in less thhundred years became the foremost if not the soleampion of Grecian thought. In the reign of Sep-mius Severus the whole philosophy of the Greeks hadcome to the acknowledgment of one supreme God,and that a God not distinct from but embracing thedeities of the popular mythology. When the Christiansattacked the polytheism of the established religion,it replied, " We grant what you teach. We also knowhat there is one Lord over all; but we maintain thahe gods likewise whom we honour are gods. Athere is one Caesar who has many servants. Crefects, Tribunes, Centurions, Decurions, so there isone God under whom are ranged the other gods, whorule the affairs of men."2 We now come to a very1 In this chapter I have followed the original life by Philostratusthroughout. I have likewise had specially before me the work ofBaur, Apollonius und Christies, and Kellner's chapter, Flavinsstratus, der Neo^ythagoraer, as well as Zeller, v. pp. 131-144; butwhile availing myself of all these writers, I have endeavoured to formmy own opinion.3 Tzschirner, Fall des Heidenthums, p, 556.207

208 THK FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMremarkable work, which sets forth this idea in thedetail of what pretends to be the veracious biographyof a Neopythagorean philosopher. In this we shallfind that what Plutarch, Dio, Maximus, Celsus also,and many others had taught in bits, is exhibited fulllength and clothed in flesh and blood as the birth, education,discipline, travels, labours, sufferings, triumph,and death of an actual man. The reformation of theheathen religion which we have hitherto followed infragmentary "* disclosures is embodied in an exampleand illustrated by a hero.Such was the thought of that great patroness ofliterature and philosophers, the Empress Julia Domna,the wife of Septimius Severus, at the beginning of thethird century. She commissioned Philostratus, one ofthe ornaments of her learned Court, to carry it out,and the life of Apollonius of Tyana which we nowpossess is the result. The occasion of writing thiswork is told us by its author. " There was/' he says,a certain man named Damis, who was well readin philosophy, a citizen of the ancient Ninus, whobecame one of the disciples of Apollonius, and wrotethe account of his travels, wherein he set down hisopinions, discourses, and predictions. A person nearlyallied to Damis introduced the Empress Julia to aknowledge of his memoirs, which till then were notknown, and as I was a part ^B of her circle, for sheencouraged all literary works, she commanded me totranscribe these commentaries, and pay particularattention to the style and language, for the narrativeof the Ninevite was plain but not eloquent. Toassist me in the work I was fortunate in procuringthe book of Maximus, the ^Egean, which contained allthe actions of Apollonius at ^Egas, and a transcript of

THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHIC HEATHENISM209his will, from which it appeared how much his philosophywas under the influence of a sacred enthusiasm.For credit should not be given to Mseragenes, whohas written four books about Apollonius, but wasignorant of many things concerning him. I have nowexplained the manner of my collecting my materials,and the care taken in their compilation. I trust thework may do honour to the man who is the subject ofit, and be of use to the lovers of literature, inasmuchas it will introduce them to the knowledge of thingswith which they were before unacquainted." 1Now as the work thus undertaken at the biddingof the Empress Julia came out not dedicated to her,it is believed to have appeared only after her death,which took place by her own hand j in the year 217,in the troubles which ensued upon the death of herson, Caracalla. As Elagabalus succeeded the next yearafter the short usurpation of Macrinus, we may concludethat it was published in his reign, which coincidedwith the pontificate of Pope Callistus. At thistime the Christian religion was enjoying the longestperiod of tranquillity which occurs in the first threecenturies. It extends from the cessation of the persecutionof Septimius Severus at the beginning ofthe century, interrupted only by the short interval ofthe reign of Maximianus, to the outbreak of the persecutionunder Decius in the year 250. Origen andTertullian were in the midst of their career, andChristianity a well-known religion, and a force whichwas stirring society to its depths. First we mustnote that the Apollonius, of whom Damis is here saidto have written memoirs, had been already dead about1 Life of Apollonius. By Philostratus. Berwick's translation corrected,lib. i. ch. 3.VOL. III. 0

210 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMone hundred and twenty years. The work of Damis,which Philostratus states not to have been known whenit was thus presented to the Empress Julia, is onlyknown to us now by the reference to it throughoutthis work of Philostratus. The work of Maerageneshas perished, but we learn from Origen that he heldApollonius to be a magician, and stated that certainphilosophers were deceived by him through this art ofhis. What we know of Apollonius from other sourcesthan Philostratus is that he lived in the first centuryand died in old age in Nerva's reign. Origen callshim both magician and philosopher. Lucian classeshim with Alexander of Abonoteichos, his model of anunprincipled impostor. ] )io Cassius terms him a skilfulwizard and magician. With reference to the remainingcircumstances of his life there is silence. Thuslearned men, considering that there is no guaranteewhatever for the incidents assigned by Philostratus toApollonius, are unanimously agreed that this pretendedlife is a romance. Taking up the person of a manwho had really lived in the first century with thereputation of a Pythagorean philosopher and a magician,it puts together, four generations after his death,an ideal picture of one who should carry out what thewriter meant to be taken for the ancient philosophyof Pythagoras, and what was really the Neopythagoreanphilosophy as it had been constructed by a certainschool in his own time. Thus of the real Apolloniushardly anything is known ; little notice was taken ofhim in his day. The representation of him by Philostratushas no claim whatever to historic truth. Ifreal facts are mentioned in it, no one can distinguishthem from the fictions with which they are surrounded,so that in nothing can it be trusted. The whole interest

THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHIC HEATHENISM 2 I Ilies in the picture thus given us of the Neopytha-gorean doctrine and discipline, which at the beginningof the third century was devised by the Greek mindas the only efficient means for the moral and religiouselevation of man, the restoration of his intercoursewith the gods, nay, even a deification of human life.1Accordingly, for what concerns the person and adventuresof Apollonius, this biography is worthless; but itis of great importance for what concerns the thoughtsof learned Greeks bent upon the defence of heathenismsome twenty years after Tertullian had cried out ofthe Christians, " We are of yesterday, and yet wehave filled every place belonging to you, cities, islands,castles, towns, assemblies, your very camp, your tribes,companies, palaces, forum."- It conveys to us a measureof the effect which the Christian Church had producedon the Greek and Roman world six generations afterit had been first introduced at Rome.The biographer begins with a commendation ofPythagoras, for throughout his work Apollonius isrepresented as embodying in his life the precepts ofthat sage, who had conversed with the gods and hadlearnt from them what conduct in men pleased andwhat, again, grieved them. Now whatever was taughtby Pythagoras was observed as a law by his disciples,who reverenced him as a man come from Jove, andsilence respecting " the divinity " was enjoined uponthem, for many divine and unspeakable things theyheard which they could not retain and comprehendwithout having first learnt that " silence is understanding."Apollonius then devoted himself to thepursuit of wisdom with even a diviner impulse thanPythagoras: he vanquished tyrannies, and he lived in1 Zeller, v. 135. * vwtp TOV detovy i. I.

212 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMtimes neither remote nor modern, and yet he is notrecognised by men for that true wisdom which hecultivated. Some have admired this or that actionof his, but others, knowing that he conversed withthe Magi of Babylon, the Indian Brahmaris, and theEgyptian Gymnosophists, impute to him the practiceof magic. This they did not do in the case of Empe-docles, or Pythagoras, or Democritus, nor again in thecase of Plato, much as he borrowed from Egyptianpriests, arraying it in his own artistic colours. Nordid men impute magic to Socrates or Anaxagoras onaccount of their foreknowledge. " I am then determined,"says Philostratus, " to give accurately the historyof the man, and the sort of wisdom in virtue of whichhe reached to being considered not only as one led bya good genius but as divine." He was born in Tyana of Cappadocia, of an ancientfamily, aboriginally Greek, with considerable fortune.Of the manner of his birth no one should be ignorant.As his mother was near the time of her delivery, shewas warned in a dream to go ami gather flowers in ameadow. When she came there, while her maidenswere dispersed up and down amusing themselves withthe flowers, she fell asleep on the grass. Then a flockof swans, which was feeding in the meadow, formed achorus round her, and clapping their wings, as theircustom is, sung in unison, while all the time the airwas filled with a gentle zephyr. The singing of thebirds caused her to start out of sleep, and at thatmoment she was delivered of a son. The natives ofthe place affirm that at the instant of her delivery athunderbolt which seemed ready to fall on the groundrose aloft and suddenly disappeared. By this thegods prefigured, I think, the splendour of the child, his

THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHIC HEATHENISM 2 I 3superiority over earthly beings, his nearness to themselves,and the deeds which he was to do." When he grew up and was capable of instructionhe showed great strength of memory and perseveringapplication. He used the Attic dialect, and neversuffered his speech to be corrupted by the place ofhis birth. The eyes of all were attracted by hisbeauty. At fourteen years of age his father carriedhim to Tarsus, and committed him to the care ofEuthydemus the Phoenician, a celebrated rhetorician.But though he liked his master he disapproved ofthe manners of the city, and obtained his father'spermission to retire with his master to ^Egse, a neighbouringtown, where he found a tranquillity moreadapted to science, and studies more suitable to hisyears, as well as a temple of ^Esculapius, who sometimesshowed himself to his votaries. Here he studiedphilosophy with the disciples of Plato, Chrysippus,and Aristotle. He heard also and did not rejectthe tenets of Epicurus, but those of Phythagoras heembraced with ineffable zeal : and at sixteen, impelledby some superior power, he gave himself up to thePythagorean life. For his sister he obtained from histher a house with a garden and fountains belongingto it. ' Here,' said he, ' live you in what manner youplease, but I shall live after the manner of Pythagoras.'In accordance with this he declined to eat anythingwhich had life, as being impure, and making dull theunderstanding. He lived on fruit and vegetables,esteeming the productions of the earth alone to bepure. Wine, as a beverage produced from a treegood for men, he allowed to be pure, but thought itdverse to a settled state of mind, as disturbing thhereal nature of the soul. Having thus purified

214 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMthe appetite, he went barefoot and clothed himself inlinen, and rejected the use of all garments madefrom living creatures. He let his hair grow, andlived in the temple, all the officers of which wereastonished at his conduct, and ^Esculapius himselfonce said to the priest how he had pleasure in performingcures of the sick before such a witness asApollonius. Thus his fame spread far and wide." In his twentieth year he lost his father, and hastenedto Tyana to bury him beside his mother withhis own hands. He divided a splendid inheritancewith his brother, and being still under age went backto ^Eg?e, where he made the temple a shrine of thePlatonic and Peripatetic philosophy. When he cameof full age he returned to Tyana, and ceded the halfof his patrimonial portion to his brother, in the hopeof reforming him, in which he succeeded. Most ofthe rest of his property he gave to other relations whoneeded it, ' reserving CD but little for himself. The famoussaying of Pythagoras, that a man should be strictlyfaithful to his wife, was intended, he observed, forthers ; for himself, he would never marry, nor indulgea the delights of love. And he practised the preceptf silence for five whole years, though it was a glabour to him, having things to say which he refrainedfrom saying, often provoked to anger, whiche might not indulge, often wishing to censure, whichhe forbore." After he had fulfilled the law of silence he visitedAntioch the Great and the temple of Apollo at Daphnaethere. And his mode of life in general is thus described: At sunrise he performed apart from all certainrites which he communicated only to such as hadbeen prepared by a four years' silence. After this, if

THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHIC HEATHENISM215it was a Greek city, and its worship known to him, hewould call together the priests, and philosophise aboutthe gods, and correct them if in anything they departed>m the lawful rites. If the worship was foreignd peculiar, he would inquire who had established it,and for what purpose. Then having learnt how it wasobserved, and suggested anything which might appearto him an improvement, he would go to his followers,and bid them ask him any questions which they wishedo put. For it was his saying that they who practisedwisdom as he did should at dawn converse with thegods, as day advanced converse about them, and spendthe following time in things that regarded men.When he had answered all the questions proposed byhis friends, and satisfied his intercourse with them, hewould address the general multitude, but not beforenoon. Then he would be anointed and rubbed, andtake a cold bath, for he denounced hot baths as theold age of men. His language was neither swollennor affectedly refined. He did not use elaborate divisionsof discourse; he was never * ironical or magnilo-quent: but he spoke as with absolute truth, in shortand serried sentences, in proper terms, and his wordshad x a sound as if they came from a sceptre of royalty.Once a subtle disputant asked him why he did not takea side in a question. ' So I did/ he replied, ' whenI was a youth: but now, I do not investigate,rather I teach the result of my investigation.' Andwhen the other rejoined, ' How will the wise manconverse ?'l 'As a legislator,' he replied ; ' for thelegislator will enjoin the multitude to do what he isconvinced ought to be done/ And thus at Antioch1 Compare " He spoke as one having authority, and not as theScribes and Pharisees."

2l6 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMhe converted to him people who were strangers to allknowledge." 1Such in brief is the birth, education, and mannerof life which Philostratus assigns to Apollonius, whomhe has thus conducted to the age of full manhood.He is in all this represented as the pure offspring ofthe Greek mind, having shown qualities such as Em-pedocles, Democritus, Plato, and Anaxagoras had shownin ages long past, but especially he is as it were aresurrection of Pythagoras. In short, he is one whoseculture and wisdom, as his language, are eminentlyand indigenously Hellenic, while he has the advantageof living exactly at the opening of the Christian era ;for it is curious that his birth coincides as nearly aspossible in time with that of Christ. " At this point ofhis life," says Philostratus, " Apollonius determined thata young man should travel, and go beyond the boundariesof his own land. The object which he set beforehimself was to visit the Indian wise men called Brah-mans, and on his way to see likewise the Magians whoinhabited Babylon and Susa. This he proposed to hisseven companions, but when they attempted to diverthim from his purpose, he told them, ' I have consultedthe gods and declared to you their will, to make triayour courage, whether you have strength for whaI undertake. Now since you have not the resolution tgo, I bid you farewell and desire you to study phsophy. I must go where wisdom and my good geniuslead me.' And so saving */ O he set out from Antiochwith two servants of his family, one remarkable for thepeed, the other for the beauty, of his writingm^fto through the Syrian city of Ninus he met with1 I have drawn the preceding account from the "Life of Philostratus,"Book i. 1-16.

THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHIC HEATHENISM 2 I 7Damis, who offered to accompany him, and mentionedas a recommendation that he knew the Armenian,Persian, Median, and Cadousian languages. ' Myfriend,' said Apollonius, ' I know them all, though Ihave learnt none ;' and when Damis stood in amaze,he continued : ' Do not wonder if I know all the languagesof men, for I know also their secrethoughts.' iUpon this Damis adored him, considering him a deity,and henceforth followed him, remembering and storingup his wisdom." It does not, however, appear that inhis travels Apollonius used this assumed gift of foreigntongues, for he is nearly always described as conversingeither with foreigners who understood Greek, or bymeans of an interpreter.We have in the course of this journey a descriptionof Babylon, as if it subsisted still in the grandeurwhich Herodotus saw ; and of its king, who appearsas a great monarch, and honours the philosopher.But of the Magi we only hear that Apollonius sawand conversed with them, upon which he gives thisjudgment: " They are wise, though not in all things."After staying eight months with the King of Babylon,Bardanes, he is sent forward with great honour to theIndian king, Phraotes, and passing the Indus arrivesat Taxila. He finds this sovereign a philosopher,living with the utmost simplicity, and prizing hisfriends more than his treasures. Like Apollonius, heate only vegetables. He had also the advantage ofspeaking Greek perfectly, and loving Grecian literature.After an interval of three days spent in philosophicconversations, Phraotes sends him forward withcostly gifts of precious stones, and a letter to the1 Compare John ii. 25-"He needed not that any should bearwitness about man, for He knew what was in man."

218 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMIndian wise men, in which he said, " Apollonius, thewisest of men, deems you wiser than himself, and iscome to learn what you can tell him. Send him forth,therefore, instructed in all your knowledge, for nothingof it will perish, since he speaks better than all othermen, and remembers what he knows." I pass overall the strange stories inserted in this journey fromAntioch to the land beyond the Ganges, in order tobring Apollonius at once to the object of his travels,the seat of the wise men of India. As after manydays' journey, in a land teeming with wonders, he approacheswithin a furlong of the hill where they dwelt,a very dark Indian youth appeared, bearing in hishand a golden anchor, the symbol of the herald'ssacred office, and addressing Apollonius in Greek,while he passed the others by, " Leave these," he said," here, but come thou as thou art, for it is T/fy whocommand." In this Apollonius recognised the PythagoreanIpse dixit, and followed rejoicing.The Indian sages are described as having a sort ofenchanted dwelling upon a hill rising out of a plain tothe height of the Acropolis of Athens, defended on allsides by rocks. Here they cover themselves withclouds, or disclose themselves at pleasure, open or shutthe vessels of the winds and rains, which they dispenseto India. Apollonius approaching sees statues notonly of the Indian and Egyptian gods, but likewise ofMinerva, Apollo, and Bacchus, and these too worshippedwith Hellenic rites. " I saw," he says, " therah mans living upon the earth, and yet not on itfortified without walls, possessing nothing and yetpossessing all things/' larchas, the chief of the wisemen, with his seventeen companions, receives Apolloniuswith great honour, saluting him in the Greek

THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHIC HEATHENISM2 1 9tongue, and giving him forthwith an instance of hisknowledge by stating that the letter of recommendationwhich Apollonius had not yet shown was deficientin a delta. While Apollonius is in amazement atthis knowledge, larchas asks him, " What is youropinion of us ?" " That," he replies, " is plain from mycoming to see you, which no one of my countrymenhitherto has done. I esteem your knowledge greaterand more divine than my own, and if I should learnnothing from you, I should have the satisfaction ofknowing that you have nothing to teach me." Uponthis larchas in clear distinct order gives him thehistory of his family, of his past life, and his journeythither. And when Apollonius, in spite of his knowledgeof men's thoughts, is astonished at this, larchassays, " You too are a sharer of this wisdom, butnot yet in its completeness." " Teach me then," hereplies, " all wisdom." " That I will," replies larchas," without stint, for it is wiser to communicate thaninvidiously to conceal what ought to be known.In further conversation larchas says, " Propose whaquestion you please, for you are come to men who knowall things." " What, asks Apollonius, " is your opinionof the soul ?"" The same," replied larchas, " whichPythagoras delivered to you, and we to the Egyptians."And he proceeds to enforce and illustrate by his ownpre-existence in the King Ganges, the doctrine of theransmigration of souls. Thus it is plain that Philstratus represents his hero in the character of a Pythgorean as recurring to the Brah mans of India becauhe esteems them the fountain-head of that wisdcwhich Pythagoras received immediately indeed fromEgypt, but ultimately from them through an Ethiopiancolony. And the purpose of his visit is to compare

220 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMhis own doctrine as a disciple of Pythagoras withtheirs, and if necessary to enlarge it, or at any rateto confirm it by conference with those who held it atits original source. Now he is said to remain fourmonths with the wise men, and to hold innumerableconversations with them, and to be initiated in all thesecrets of their science. The most important matterthat we learn from the thirty-five chapters in whichPhilostratus describes this intercourse, is the accountof the constitution of the world. Apollonius, beingbidden to ask any question, inquires how the worldwas composed. They reply, " Of five elements, the fifthbeing ether, whence the gods have their generation,)r whatever things breathe air are mortal, but whateverbreathe ether are immortal and divine." " Whichelement then existed first ?"" All together," replieslarchas, " for that which lives is not produced by parts."" Is then the world a living thing ?" " Yes, for it producesall things alive." " Is it then feminine, or bothmale and female ?"" It is both, for by an act of self-coalescence it performs the functions both of fatherand mother in the generation of that which lives, andis more ardently fond of itself than other things havinglife of each other. This love it is which harmonisesand unites it. And as in a living thing its movementand the mind which is in it, the source of itsimpulses, perform the work of hands and feet, so weconsider the parts of the world through its mind to becapable of providing what is needed for all its productions.And even the calamities arising fromdrought happen according to this mind, as punishmentsfor human depravity. And this living thingis ruled not by one hand but by hands which nonecan count or express, and in spite of its size is obe-

THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHIC HEATHENISM 221dient and docile. It may further be likened to a greatEgyptian merchant ship, with many compartments,many pilots, under the command of one, the oldest andwisest, many skilful sailors and armed combatants.We may consider the world in the likeness of thisship. The chief and most conspicuous place is to beassigned to God, the progenitor of this living thing,and next under Him to the deities who direct itsparts. And here we assent to the poets when they tellus that there are many gods in heaven and in the seaand in the springs and rivers, and likewise about theearth, and some too under the earth. But that placeunder the earth, if such a place exists, which they describeas full of horror and the abode of corruption, letus separate from our conception I of the ordered world." 1Now we have been told that Apollonius in his dietavoided wine, as disturbing the ether of the soul.Thus he viewed the human soul as sharing that fifthelement which the Indians said that the gods breathed.Again, Apollonius especially loves to converse withlarch as on the subject of foreknowledge. larchashighly praises him for this, and says, " They who takepleasure in the art of divination become by it divine,and work for men's salvation. For I consider thatman most happy and equal in power to the Delphicgod who possesses in himself the power of foreling and foretelling to others ignorant of it what welearn by approaching the oracles. And since the artof divination enjoins all who consult the oracle to gothither with pure hearts, or orders them to depart, itseems to me that he who wishes to know the secretsof futurity should keep himself pure, should have nostain upon his soul, no scars of sins upon his mind.1 Book iii. 34, 35.

-72^ £* J-*-^ THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMThus he foresees the future through understandinghimself and the tribunal of his own breast. And sohis oracles will be more true and pure. Hence it isnot surprising that you should possess this kind ofknowledge, who have so great a portion of ether inyour soul," the ether, that is, which is the substance ofthe gods. It is in full accordance with this tenet as tothe nature of the soul that when Apollonius asked theIndians whom they esteemed themselves to be, larchasreplied, "Gods." ' ut for what reason ?" Be-cause we are good men :" an answer which Apolloniusthought so full of wisdom that he cited it afterwardsto Domitian. " Why," said the accuser then to him, " domen call thee god?" " Because," he replied, "every manthat is deemed good is honoured with the name of god."And when the Indians take leave of him they assurehim that he would be considered a god not only afterhis death but during his life.1In fact the passages we have thus cited concerningthe constitution of the world, the gods, and the humansoul, and its capacity of knowing the truth and futurethings, contain the kernel of the whole Neopythago-rean philosophy. In it the pre-existence and transmigrationof souls, the immortality of the soul'ssubstance and its identity with the substance bothof the supreme God and the particular gods, and theright therefore of the good man who lives accordingto this nature of the soul to be called god, cohere to-gether. If 2 the essential nature of the divinity isimmortal and imperishable being, it is especially inthe immortal essence of the human soul that the relationshipof the human nature with the divine is mani-1 See Book i. 8; iii. 42 ; iii. 18 ; viii. 5 ; iii. 50.2 Banr, Apollonius und Chrisfus.

THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHIC HEATHENISM223fested. Hence every human life has a certain sharein the divine being. As, however, only the purestnature of light and an all-embracing knowledge inunion with the highest clearness of consciousness canbe attributed to the deity itself, it follows in thisphilosophy that whoever is conscious to himself in ahigh degree of the immortal nature of the soul and ofhis own being before the present life, will likewise inthe same high degree participate in the divine being."This is the key to the whole life and character ofApollonius in the description of Philostratus, and themotive-power of that reform in heathendom which heis supposed to work. This too explains, if it does notjustify, his syncretistic worship of all deities in alltemples, " the 1 various forms of the gods in the poly-heistic religion being so many various symbols of the3 divine being."But the Indian sages unite power with knowledge,Apollonius, before he leaves, witnesses theirmiracles. Thus a mother comes to intercede for herson, who is possessed by a lying wicked demon.Thereupon one of the sages takes a letter from hisbosom, which he gives to the mother, and tells herthat it will command the spirit to relinquish his hold.Again, a lame man recovers by touch the use of hislimb, and a blind man his sight.Finally, Apollonius having had communicated tohim all their public and their most secret knowledge,takes leave of larchas and the other sages. He sendsback to them their camels, thanking them for the wisdomwhich they had bestowed on him in showing him thepath to heaven, and promising to impart this to theGreeks, as if they were present with him. And so by1 Ba ur.

224 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMthe Indus, Babylon, Ninus, and Antioch, after a visit tothe Isle of Cyprus, where he instructs the priest inthe temple of Venus, and explains the meaning of itssymbolical statue, he sets sail for Ionia, amid theapplause and salutation of all who esteemed and valuedwisdom.Here is completed the first stage of the public lifeof Apollonius, in which one, who is described as moredevoted to wisdom than even Pythagoras was, havingformed his youth upon the model of his master, visitsthe fountain-head of that knowledge O whence the masterdrew. He treats the Indian wise men with a certainreverence, but he finds and they recognise his wisdomto be identical with their own. He does not thenreceive yth new m hem. but is as it wfirmed in th< knowledg f P fir -^^^"-t mwisdom ith th H e h nou by the kings ofBabylon and India as th t present f thhitrhest civilisation, wh beloners - to G Andhe comes bacl his native land to dispense wisdomh trym as pub t h a w th itywhere to strengthen, correct, and encourage tP b worshin. as it brated in the rit of tg ds. in all which h ) is a perfect meT is public life of Apollonius as a teacher thb :s are given by Philost tus, in which he is madtraverse the whole Rom E mp The effect 3 ofh dom are seen in promoting piety and w hipywh public life, in correcting and imh t f f all horn he meet in b ^^^p othe bad emperors, Nero and Domitdvising and preparing f gnty good em psu as Vespasian, Titus, and Nerva, in a contmforeknowledge of future events, whether concerning

THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHIC HEATHENISM225the Roman State or his own life, * and in working Omiracles, especially such as consist in detecting andexpelling evil spirits. He is accompanied not onlyby Damis, who never leaves him, but by a number ofdisciples.He begins by residing at Ephesus for some time,where ambassadors from the surrounding cities waitupon him, esteeming him " the guide of life," and theadviser in the erection of altars and statues. Thechief act which he performs at Ephesus is that whe:the plague has made its way there, he, being aSmyrna, transports himself in a moment thither. Asoon as he arrived,1 he collected all the people togetheand said to them, " Be not afraid, for I will this daput a stop to the disease." - Saying this he carried thepeople of all ages to the theatre where now stands thestatue of the Averter. Here they beheld an old manbegging alms, who had a strange way of winking withhis eyes. He had a wallet in his hand in which hd crusts of bread. He was clad in rags andhad a most squalid appearance. Apollonius bade thEphesians surround him and pelt him with stonesThey were shocked at the thought of'killing a strangein so wretched a plight, for at this time the poor ma:appeared in the act of supplication, and doing all hcould to excite their compassion. But Apolloniusunmoved by this, insisted that what he commandedshould be executed, and bade them not let him escape.When some of the bystanders began to throw stones,he who lately appeared only capable of winking withhis eyes, darted them flaming with fire and furyHence the Ephesians saw that he was a demon, andpelting him with stones till they piled a1 Book iv. 10VOL. TIT. P

226 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMheap over his head. Whereupon, a pause ensuing,Apollonius ordered the stones to be removed, that allmight see the wild beast they had destroyed. Andlo, what they thought was destroyed had made itsescape, and a dog similar to one of the Molossianbreed, but as big as the largest lion, appeared whenthe stones were taken away, vomiting foam as madmendo. Now the statue of the Averter, Hercules,was erected on the very spot where the spectre wasstoned.Apollonius now travels into Greece, visiting on hisway the tomb of Achilles, whose ghost appears to himas a shape of ineffable beauty, and tells him amongother charges to warn people against discontinuingreligious ceremonies. f At Athens the philosopherswelcome him with delight, and ten young men declarethat they were just on the point of sailing toIonia to meet him. Finding the Athenians muchgiven to religious worship, he made sacrifices thesubject of his discourse, wherein he specified the kindof offering best suited to each god, and the precisehour of day or night when they should sacrifice, offerlibations, or pray.1 Here among ^ his auditors was ayouth whom he saw to be possessed by a demon,though the youth knew it not. And when ApolloniusI fixed his eyes I uponhim, the spectre broke out intocries of fear and anger O like those who are racked, * andswore that he would depart out of the youth, andnever again enter into another. Apollonius rebukedhim as a master does a cunning, saucy, insolent slave,and commanded him to come out, and give a visiblesign of his departure. Upon this the demon said, " Iwill overthrow a certain statue," to which he pointed.1 Book iv. 19.

THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHIC HEATHENI!The statue first shook and then fell, upon wpeople shouted with joy. The young man, havingrubbed his eves " as if he recovered from a dream,turned to his right mind, and followed henceforth therule and manner of life which Apollonius led.Apollonius visited all the temples of Greece, attendedby his disciples, and the priests whom heinstructed, and his biographer says, " His words werecollected as in goblets, out of which all who wouldquenched their thirst." When at Olympia he stoodupon the steps of the temple discoursing upon wisdomand fortitude and temperance and all virtues, strikingall men with wonder not at his thoughts only, but atthe forms of their expression. At Corinth he meetswith the famous Cynic philosopher, Demetrius, whofelt for him the reverence which Antisthenes felt forS tes. and he delivered ppus, a friend ofDemetrius, from a g wh ar d t b abeautiful worn Th nth was on h point ofm ymg h but Ap P him athe marriage-feast, the gold and silver vessels, thp-b d k h at h bidd in thereupon the phantom appeared as in t dbesought him not to torment h nor rce hfess who she was. But Apollonius was peremptory,d pelled 1 t f< t sh w a ghfeeding on human bodies, and Menippus, being dered from her, became his disciple, and followed inh i train.2From Sparta and Crete, which he visited, warnedoV1 Compare "Never man spoke as this Man ;" and John vii. 57," If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink."2 Book iv. p. 25. r6 d

228 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMby a dream, Apollonius proceeded to Rome, and thishe did at the moment when Nero was banishing thephilosophers. The peril was so great that at AriciaApollonius was met by a fugitive philosopher, whowarned him not to go on. And here out of his thirty-four companions all but eight deserted him. Withthe rest he entered Rome. And he remained therea considerable time, publicly practising and teachingphilosophy in spite of Nero, and visiting the temples,which the Consul Telesinus, attracted and subdued byhis conversation, authorised him to do. In vain didTigellinus attempt to daunt him ; the evil minister ofNero was quelled in spite of himself the divineknowledge of the philosopher, and not wishing to contendwith God, " Go," he said, " where thou wilt, forthou art too great to be subject to me." That he hadreason to say this appears from what follows. A girldied on the eve of her marriage, and the intendedbridegroom followed the bier weeping, and all Romewept with him, for she was of a consular family. NowApollonius happening to meet the funeral procession," Set down," said he," the bier, for I will dry up the tearswhich you are shedding for the maid." Upon whicl ihe asked her name. Now the spectators thought hewas going to pronounce a funeral oration over her.ut all he did was to touch her, and uttering somethingin a low tone of voice wakened the maid fromthat seeming death. She immediately began to speak,and returned to her father's house, as Alcestis of oldwhen recalled to life by Hercules. When the relationsoffered Apollonius 150,000 drachmae, he added thisto her dowry. " Now whether he found in her aspark of life, which those who attended her did notsee, or whether, when the soul had departed, he

THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHIC HEATHENISM 229kindled it afresh and brought it back, neither I northe bystanders can tell." lAll this purports to have taken place just at thetime when Nero was persecuting the Christians, beforehis visit to Greece. But when he published anedict forbidding the philosophers to remain in Rome,Apollonius left it, and went, accompanied by his disciples,into Spain. iFrom Spain he went to Africa,Tuscany, and Sicily. And here at Catana he askedhis disciples, " Is mythology any real thing ?"Andanswering his own question he preferred to it thefables of ^Bsop as being more adapted to conveywisdom. For heroic fables, which make the matterpoetry, corrupt the hearers by introducing absurdours, incestuous marriages, blasphemies against theds, devouring children, unbecoming stratagems anddisputes. These being represented as realities, invitethe lover, the jealous man, the miser and the ambitious,to carry them out in life.2 From Sicily he passed overto Greece, and on the way having sailed prosperouslyin a certain vessel, he said, " Let us leave the ship, forit is not good to sail in her to Achaia." Only thosewho knew him took note of his words, and followedhim into another ship. The one he left presentlyafterwards foundered. He passed the winter in thetemples of Greece, visiting the several cities,and dispensing praise and blame as he saw themto be required. He pursued his journey into Egyptin the spring, where, says his biographer, as he disembarkedfrom the ship at Alexandria, the pelooked upon him as a god, and made wa for himthe narrow streets as is don for those wh1 Book iv. 45. All have been struck with the imitation here of theraising the widow of Nairn's son. 2 Book v. 14.

230 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMsacred things. Here he fell in with Vespasian, andbeing consulted by him, strongly advised him toassume the empire. Vespasian accepted his advice,treated him with great reverence, and wished to beaccompanied by him ; but he excused himself ashaving a great desire to compare the Egyptian wisdomwith the Indian, and for this purpose to visit theGymnosophists, and to drink of the source of the Nile.Leaving then twenty of his disciples at Alexandria,he took the other ten, after warning them that life isa contest for victory, as is shown in the Olympic,Delphic, and Corinthian games, and ascended the riverwith them. No city, or temple, or sacred spot inEgypt was passed by unobserved, but in continual conversationson sacred subjects an interchange of knowledgetook place, and the boat in which Apolloniussailed resembled a sacred galley carrying pilgrims toa shrine.The interview of Apollonius with the EthiopianGymnosophists is described at great length. Theylived on a small rising ground not far from the banks|_ the Nile, but were further surpassed in wisdomby the Indians than they themselves surpassed theEgyptians. And the assurance of this, obtained byactual intercourse, seems to be the fruit which we areintended to suppose that Apollonius sought after inhis long journey to them. Thus their chief, Thes-pesion, in a lengthy discourse recommended to himthe independence and freedom from care which theirphilosophy secured, and tried thereby to incline himto their simplicity and rude mode of life. Apolloniusin reply told them that being older than them all,except Thespesion, he had not come thither to takethem as counsellors of his life, having already chosen

THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHIC HEATHENISM231his mode of life according to the doctrine of Pythagoras,who in his unspeakable wisdom knew notonly what he was, but what he had been. Theyhad formerly instructed Pythagoras in his philosophy,having themselves derived it from the Indians. Nowhe had seen it in its source, and had gone to theIndians rather than to them, " as men of sublimergenius, living in a purer atmosphere, and also asholding truer opinions respecting nature and the gods,by reason of being nearer heaven, and the fountain ofan ethereal and vivifying substance." Such men bestknew the nature of the soul, " of whose generationthat which is immortal and immutable is the source."1" The Indians," he farther told them, " having instructedme in all those points of their wisdom which I thoughtof service to me, I do not forget my instructors. Igo about teaching what I have heard from them, andI may be of service to you if you send me forthacquainted with all you know, for I should nevercease imparting it myself to the Greeks and writingit to the Indians." * He then reproached them thatwhile the Greeks represented their gods only in anoble and beautiful shape, they made them ridiculousand unseemly by figuring them as beasts. Thespesionreplied that the Egyptians dared not venture to giveany forms to the gods, but represented them onlyin symbols and allegories, that they might be morevenerable. Apollonius retorted by asking what therecould be symbolical or venerable in a dog, an ibis, ora goat.Apollonius thus "quitted the Egyptian Gymnoso-phists in full assurance that the wisdom of Egyptpossessed nothing which he as a Pythagorean had to1 Book vi. 11. -fjs rb adavarbv re Kal dyevvrjTov Tnjyal yevecreus.

232 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMlearn. This was in the year 70, and on his return liehad a correspondence with Titus, who had just takenJerusalem, and by his invitation visited him at Tarsus.He gave Titus much the same advice as to his government,and with the same assumption of superiority, ashe had given to his father, Vespasian." These," says the biographer, " were the countrieswhich Apollonius visited in his ardour to give andreceive instruction. He made no further journeysto nations unvisited before, but he continued to visitPhoenicians, lonians, and Italians, ever remainingconsistent with himself. Hard as it is to knowoneself, I esteem it harder for the wise man to remainalways consistent with himself. For that man willmake no improvement on the corrupt minds of otherswho has not first so ordered himself by discipline asnot to change." Then, after giving certain anecdotesrespecting his life at different times, he concluded thiswhole period with saying, " Such were the deeds of theman in behalf of temples and cities and peoples, thedead, or the sick: such his intercourse with the wisethd the foolish, and with emperors who made himtThe seventh book of Philostratus opens a new periodin the life of Apollonius. He had visited the Indianwise men in early manhood, and the Ethiopian wisemen in the full maturity of age, only to find his doctrineidentical with that of the former and superior tothat of the latter. The meaning of this obviously is,that the Greek wisdom and culture which he carriedin his person found nothing outside of Greece to surpassor compete with it. And he as representing ithas traversed the Roman Empire from end to end,1 Book vi. 43.* » " " -* * *".*'""" : .

THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHIC HEATHENISM 233blending philosophy with religion, and by his encouragementof every rite and worship proclaiming andenforcing the practical identity of the one divinepower which they expressed. He has everywherebeen received with honour, as the mouthpiece of wisdomand the restorer of religion. The priests crowdto hear his instructions ; the young attend upon hissteps ; he rescues victims from evil spirits ; he foreseesdangers and avoids them. He braves Nero in hispersecuting mood, but departs unscathed. He selects,as i£ were, and places Vespasian and Titus upon thethrone. One thing only remains. All things havehitherto prospered with him. He has not yet suffered.But his biographer recognises that, in order to be perfect,suffering is necessary. He considers that theconduct of philosophers under despotic governments isthe truest touchstone of their character.1 And thetyranny of Domitian is to furnish Apolionius with theopportunity of bearing witness for his principles.Apolionius, then, having fallen under the suspicionof Domitian, when in the last years of his life he persecutedthe philosophers, is cited to Rome. But hegoes at once, and his old friend the Cynic, Demetrius,whom he meets on the way at Puteoli, in vain attemptsto frighten him from appearing before the emperor toanswer the charge of conspiring against him. Apolioniuspursues his way, attended only by Damis, reachesRome, and is put into prison, where, with unbrokenequanimity, he consoles the various fellow-prisoners.In due time he is brought before Domitian, at firstprivately. He answers fearlessly, but is treated withgreat contumely, has his beard and hair shaven, andis sent back to prison among the lowest malefactors.1 Book vii. i.LIBRARY ST. MARY'S COLLEGE

234 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMWhile thus in fetters, to show Damis that he can atany moment deliver himself, he withdraws his legfrom the chain, saying, " You see the liberty which Ienjoy." Then, said Damis, he first understood thatthe nature of Apollonius was divine and superior toman ; for without offering sacrifice-how could he ina prison ?-without praying, without uttering a word,he mocked at his fetters, and replacing the leg thereinresumed the demeanour of a prisoner. At length,his public trial being appointed, Apollonius dismissesDamis, bidding him travel to Puteoli by land, saluteDemetrius, and there, he said, you will see me. " What!alive," said Damis, " or how ?"Apollonius laughed andanswered, " Alive in my opinion, but in yours raisedfrom the dead." Damis says that after this he set outmuch against his will, doubtful between hope and fear,and not knowing whether Apollonius would be savedor perish. Arriving at Puteoli on the third day heheard of a violent storm at sea, which had sunk anddispersed vessels, and then he understood why Apolloniushad told him to go by land.In the meantime Apollonius meets the public trialwithout the least fear. The court is fitted up withthe greatest solemnity, and the chief men of the Stateare present, on an occasion on which the emperor isbent upon convicting the prisoner. But the prisonerrefuses even to cast ;i glance at the omnipotent judge.When the accuser charges him to look upon onewhom he terms " the god of all men," Apolloniusraises his eyes to the ceiling, showing by his gesturethat they were turned to Jupiter, and that he consideredone who admitted flattery so gross to be vilerthan the flatterer himself. He defends himself withgreat moderation, and the emperor pronounces his

THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHIC HEATHENfSM235acquittal, but orders him to stay until he has hadsome private conversation with him. Then Apollonius,bursting out, replies, " I thank you, 0 emperor,for this, but on account of the wicked informers bywhom you are surrounded, your cities are ruined, yourislands filled with exiles, the continent with groans,the army with fears, the senate with suspicions.Listen, if you please, to me; if not, send to take mybody, for my soul you cannot take, or rather, even mybody you cannot reach. Slay me thou wilt not, for Iam not mortal." And, as he spoke, he vanished fromthe tribunal. This was before mid-day. In the eveninghe appeared to Demetrius and Damis at Puteoli.They were at this moment sitting down by a cistern ofwhite marble, and Damis cried out, " 0 ye gods, shallwe never see again our good and virtuous friend ?"Apollonius was already standing by, and replied, " Youshall see him, or rather you see him now." "What,alive? " said Demetrius, " for if dead we shall never havedone lamenting you." Hereupon Apollouius stretchicout his hands, said he, " Feel me, and if I escape yoihold me as a shade just come from Proserpine, such ithe terrestrial gods present to the afflicted ; but if Iabide your touch, persuade Damis also that I am aliveand have not lost my body." Doubting no longer thetruth of what he said, they rose and ran to him andembraced him. They asked him about his defence,and how he had come to them in so short a time." Ascribe it not," said Apollonins, "to the ram of Phrixus,or the wings of Dedalus, but to God." Then he describedhis defence, and how he had disappeared at the words" Thou shalt not kill me." Demetrius upon this is fullof fears respecting the persecution which Domitianwill institute, but Apollonius is quite tranquil, says

236 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMthat he only requires sleep, and after a prayer to Apolloand the sun, casts himself on a couch, and addressingsleep in the words of Homer, rests without anxiety.The next day he determines to sail to Greece, accompaniedby Damis, and the remainder of the biographycontains what we may call his triumphant life, afterhe has defied the utmost power and malice of Domi-tian, and escaped by a sort of resurrection.In Greece he appears at Olympia, where he takesup his abode in the temple of Jupiter. Rumour hadgone abroad that he had been burnt, or hung uponhooks, or cast into a pit, but when it was ascertainedthat he was there alive, all Greece flocked to see himwith more eagerness than it had ever gone to theOlympian games. They almost worshipped him whenthey heard with what modesty he described so wonderfulan escape. His life at this period may be thussummed up. He conversed on matters of great importancefor forty days at Olympia. Then he said:" I will for the time to come converse with you, 0Greeks, from city to city in your public meetings,your processions, your mysteries, your sacrifices, yourlibations :1 but now I go to see Trophonius." In thecave of Trophonius he remains seven days, putting tohim the question, "Which is the most perfect andthe purest philosophy ?" and he issues forth in a strangemanner bearing a book which contains as an answerto his question the precepts of Pythagoras. And nowwe are told all his followers, " whom Hellas calls theApollonians," come forth to meet him, forming anadmirable company from their numbers and their zeal.People went in crowds to hear his philosophy, and asthe ancient kings, Gyges and Croesus, opened the doors1 Book viii. 19.

THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHIC HEATHENISM 237of their treasury to those who wanted money, so didApollonius impart his wisdom to those who were filledwith the love of it, permitting them to ask him anyquestions they pleased.Having thus passed two years in Greece, he sailedto Ionia with all his company, dwelling chiefly inSmyrna and Ephesus, but likewise visiting the othercities, and everywhere welcomed with delight. It isat Ephesus that he has a vision of the murder ofDomitian as it is happening at Rome. He was conversingin one of the groves, when he paused in hisdiscourse, lowered his voice, hesitated, looked on theground, advanced three or four steps and cried out," Strike the tyrant, strike !" as if the whole scene waspassing before him. Thirty days afterwards a messagefrom the new emperor, Nerva, reaches him, whichsaid that he was reigning by the counsels of thegods and Apollonius, and would be more secure if hehad his presence and advice. Therefore Apolloniusanswered enigmatically, " We shall live together a verylong time, in which we shall not command others, norshall others command us." And presently he partswith Damis under pretext of charging him with aletter for the emperor, though in reality to carry outthe word which had been always in his mouth," Conceal your life, but, if you cannot do that, concealyour death." Wishing then to separate fromDamis, that he might have no witnesses of his departure,he invented this letter with which to sendhim to Home. Now Damis said, that though he knewnot what was coming, he was affected at leaving him.Apollonius, however, who knew it well, said nothing tohim as if he should not see him any more, but had sofull a conviction of living for ever as to charge him,

238 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTP^NDOM" Damis, when you are alone and philosophise, keepme before your eyes."" Now here," says Philostratus, " the account ofDamis ends, but I can find no certain account howApollonius died, if indeed he did die. Some say helived to be eighty, some ninety, some more than ahundred years old, sound in all his body, and moreagreeable than in his youth." The story whichPhilostratus seems to prefer is that he lived in Cretemore honoured than ever, and used to frequent thetemple of Diana, which was guarded by savage dogs,who however did not bark at him, but fawned uponhim even when he approached at untimely hours.The priests who had the care of the temple seeing thisseized him and bound him, as if he were not only amagician but a robber, saying that he had given thedours a sop to tame them. About midnight he freedhimself from his chains, and called those who had boundhim, to show that he did nothing in secret. Then heran to the gates of the temple, which opened beforehim and closed after him, but the voice of virginssinging was heard, and their song was, " Leave theearth-Come to heaven-Come : " as if they told himto ascend on high. i ^^^Looking back on the life which has been thusepitomised, we find it divides itself into six periods.The first embraces the birth of Apollonius, his education,and manner of life as a Pythagorean, or ratheras a new Pythagoras, more than equal to the original.The second contains his visit to the Indian Brahmans,to test and confirm, as it were, his doctrine, the doctrine,that is, embodving the Greek wisdom, andall the civilisation and glory which it has produced.1 Book viii. 30.

THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHIC HEATHENISM 239The third takes in his life as a public teacher. Comingback as accredited by the Indian sages, yet as an equal,not as an inferior, he meets with universal acceptancethroughout ^J the whole realm which is the dominion ofthe Greek mind. He teaches and instructs all ordersrom city to city, enlightens priests as to their duties,encourages and revives worship according to the severalrites of the various divinities, admonishes emperors, andfinds by personal converse with the sages of Egypt-therival of Hellas-that its wisdom is inferior to his own.In the fourth period we pass to his suffering life, inwhich in the fulness of years he goes of his own accordin defiance of warnings to Borne in order to encounterthe tyranny of Domitian. Philosophers cower beforethe emperor, and, it may be added, Christians are putto death by him, the result being that Apollonius istreated by him with contumely, but escapes by miraclein the open court, and laughs his power to scorn. Thefifth period carries us to the triumphant life of the sage,following upon this sort of resurrection. Greece in thevery central point of its varied life, Olympia, is stirredat his presence, hangs upon his lips, follows his footstepswith a crowd of disciples, the flower of the land,who are called after his name Apollonians, while in allthis he is only reproducing the wisdom of Pythagoras,as he shows by emerging from the oracle of Trophoniuswith a book containing the precepts of the Samian sage.Thus in all his life he is but inheriting the heirloomof the Greek mind, is but the manifestation of theGreek spirit, what any one may be who knows " bothwhat he is and what he has been," that is, is consciousof the imperishable soul which has lived before andwill live after him through a series of transmigrations.Thus Apollonius, fairer in age than in youth, unim-

240 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMpaired in senses, in mind only matured and enriched,approaches a hundred years, the utmost bound ofhuman existence. Sixthly, and lastly, this long lifeis crowned with a death-if so it can be calledin keeping with it, for his tomb can nowhere be foundthough Philostratus searches for it. Rat r as swanshymned his entrance into life on the flowery meadso the temple's gates op fore him and close bhind him. and he is seen no w t voice og s is heard welcoming 3 the ascent eaven othe man who is the representat f Greek wisdomd in fact bee? a d m be« h infoldth e deity with h t tab m. - f d. thhighest concept f the heathen mindNow through the whole of this biography, whiclmakes in the original a volume of 343 pages, rathelarger than the ur Gospel th is t a gemention of the Christian religion, or that t hadb y such p as Christ, or any people calledfter II N ?rtheless. as to the time at whichApd to have lived, and the places in whichhis tivity was hiefly exercised th are somcurious point t ted which m t indiata hidd to all ese. First as tmPh t mak im d ry greft th accession and bef th death thEmperor Nerva. If he be given, as some accountsaccording to Philostratus gave him, full a hundredyears, this would bring his birth exactly to the date ofthe birth of our Lord. But at any rate his exit fromthe earthly scene coincides exactly in time with thedeath of the Evangelist St. John. Thus his life comprehendsthe whole period of our Lord and HisApostles. Moreover, he is described to be traversing

THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHIC HEATHENISM 241the Roman Empire from end to end as a public teacherprecisely at the time that the Author of Christianityand His immediate disciples began to propagate theChristian religion. Then, as to place, his sojourn isdwelt upon at Ephesus, Athens, Corinth, and Koine, ateach of which cities he is said to work a notable miracle.But there is something much more remarkable in theway in which he is said to visit Rome. There weretwo emperors who persecuted the Christians at Romeduring the supposed duration of his life, and he visitsRome twice precisely at the time of these two persecutions,and expressly to measure himself, as it were,with the tyranny of Nero and Domitian. Apolloniusfirst goes to Rome just before Nero visits Greece, and-boldly preaches his philosophy there at the momentother philosophers are flying from Nero, also at thetime when the great Apostles Peter and Paul lay downtheir lives. But Apollonius after preaching withoutfear departs without molestation. The very Tigellinus,who is the instrument of Nero's cruelty to the Christians,acknowledges and venerates his power. ThusApollonius departs unscathed out of the furnacewhich consumed the chief Christian teachers, proceedingon his course to Spain with the tranquilsuperiority of a higher nature. Again, some twenty-five years later he returns to Rome, and this time itis exactly at the moment that Domitian is puttingto death his relation Flavius Clemens and otherChristians. Domitian tries his hand likewise uponApollonius, and brings him to a public trial on acharge of conspiracy and other accusations, amongwhich is one of being a god. The emperor is constrainedto acquit him, when the philosopher, as ifdisdaining so to escape, and to accept a tyrant'sVOL. III.Q

242 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMpardon, exercises his divine power, makes himselfinvisible, and appears suddenly afterwards to hisfriends at Puteoli. Thus, as the Apostle St. Johnwas delivered out of the hands of Domitian justabout this time, after encountering the risk of martyrdombefore the Latin gate, so the Greek teachertriumphs over all the power and malice of thetyrant in his worst time, but in a manner whichwould seem to the writer of his life much moredistinguished. And it may be noted that in the lastperiod of his life he appears in Ionia, crowned as itwere with glory, and attended by his whole company," philosophising, it is said, most part of his time whilstthere at Smyrna and Ephesus, without overlooking theother towns, of which there was not one wherein hewas not well received."1 Now these were just thoseseven Churches of Asia to which the Apostle directedhis letters in the Apocalypse, and where he taught inthe. last years of his life. On the other hand, thereare two places to which Apollonius shows a markeddislike. One is Tarsus, to which he is sent by hisfather at the age of fourteen, but which he quitsbecause he finds " the manners of the city absurdand not suited to philosophical pursuits, and thepeople insolent scoffers, addicted to pleasure, and morepassionately fond of fine clothes than the Atheniansof wisdom."2 This is that Tarsus, "no mean city,"of which the Apostle Paul declares himself to havebeen a citizen, and it should be noted that he wouldhave been living there just at this time, as he wascontemporary with the supposed Apollonius. Theother city is Antioch, where Apollonius found thetemple at Daphnae " beautifully situated, but no zeal1 Book viii. 24. a Book i. 7.

THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHIC HEATHENISM 243in the worship there, the people semi-barbarous andwithout education."1 And Antioch, it must be remembered,was the place where the disciples werefirst called Christians, and the seat, when Philostratuswrote, of one of the largest and most distinguishedChristian communities.h result of all this will be that Philostratus drawing as an artist the portraiture of his ideal teacher,makes him a positive and independent figure. He isby no means to appear in the world as a teacher ofthe highest Greek wisdom, and the supporter of Greekworship, because another wisdom and another worshiphad arisen to compete with these. On the contrarhe is a new Pythagoras, more than equal to the old.His wisdom is the.same as that of Pvthagoras. * O ' andthis is attested by the book containing his preceptswith which*in the last period of his life, as if to setthe seal on all his teaching, he returns from the caveof Trophonius. It is then no new thing, as might beobjected by a Greek to the mission of Christ. On theother hand Apollonius is near enough to the time ofPhilostratus to show that Greece possessed its originalvigour in undiminished force by producing such aman, and he tacitly appears when and where theChristian religion appears, but outbidding as it wereits original Author and its first teachers, who areignored while they are surpassed.Let us examine the chief features of the characterwhich Philostratus thus presents to us in independentmajesty as the pure and genuine offspring of theGreek wisdom.There is a certain unity of conception runningthroughout his book. From beginning to end it is1 Book i. 16.

244 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMknit together by one thought, which is that of a greatreligious and moral reformer and restorer. Apolloniusis described as animated by such a zeal. All hisactions are to illustrate and effect the purification andrevival of the old religion. He is the bearer andestablisher of this movement, which in his person as aGreek by blood, and down to the very niceties of hisAttic diction, springs as it were out of the heart ofthe old belief, and appeals to all its customs. Asparts of this one conception we may enumerate thefollowing points.I. His birth was miraculous. His mother whenexpecting his birth has an apparition of the Egyptiangod Proteus, who in reply to her question whom shewould bear, tells her, " Thou shalt bring forth me."And this god is described as taking all shapes, asknowing and foreknowing all things. In this perhapshe is an image of that unity in multiplicity of worshipwhich the conduct of Apollonius was to show, and ofthe wisdom ascribed to him, one and yet multiform,grasping all sacred rites, yet caught in none of them,because consisting of the doctrine which is the essenceof them all. Proteus is the immutable substanceunder the ever-changing shape, which is the one thingApollonius worships.2. Accordingly the knowledge of the divinity isfrom his youth forward the one knowledge to whichthe mind of Apollonius is given up. Having tried allthe schools of Greek wisdom-in which it is to beobserved that he discovers no incompatibility with eachother-he finds the complete truth in that of Pythagoras.He devotes himself for five years to the lawof silence, and then visits the Indian sages, to verifyand compare his wisdom with theirs. Eeturning

THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHIC HEATHENISM 245back, he begins an active life, of which he says,"I go about and teach." In fact, Philostratus wouldhave us believe that during a period of sixty years hetraverses all the parts of the Eoman Empire, extendinghis action over all countries and all men, and with thepurpose of making the wisdom which he possesses thecommon good of all whom he meets. While he iseminently Greek in mind himself, yet he deems allmen as possessors in various degrees of the samedivine substance in their souls to be of one familycapable of improvement and correction. In his eyesall the rites of the various deities, however differingin circumstances, not all of which he approves, areyet but as it were Protean shapes and symbols of theone divinity. In accordance with this view, thoughhe has his own special religion, he frequents thvarious temples and confers with the priests.3. In this function of public teacher a knowledgnot only of absent but of future things is ascribed thim. He possesses all the languages of men withouthaving learnt them, nay, the things which they keepsecret he knows. He quits a ship which is presentlyto founder; he anticipates future events by turningthe conversation upon them. He has a vision atEphesus of the tyrant's murder at Home. He knowswhen persecuted what will happen and what will nothappen to himself.4. His power corresponds to his wisdom. Thushe works miracles, and we are carefully told thathis power does not arise from magic, but is a poweinherent and working in him, as when without utteiing a prayer he withdraws his foot from the fetIn particular the whole world of spirits is subject thim. He stones the plague at Ephesus in the shap

246 THK FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMof an old man ; casts a devil out of a young man atAthens; forces at Corinth a ghoul to reveal herself,and give up her prey ; and finally at Koine raises aKoman maiden to life, the description of which readslike a copy of the raising the widow of Nairn's son.He passes instantaneously from Smyrna to Ephesus,and again from the judgment-court of Domitian toDamis and Demetrius at Puteoli, where his appearanceseems once more like a copy of our Lord's appearanceto His Apostles after His resurrection., But he is to be as great in practice as indoctrine, and if his wisdom as prophet and teachercollects all the scattered beams of light which pro-ceed from the ethereal substance wherein consists thenature of the divinity, so his conduct is to correspond.He practises an ascetic life in food and drink, goesbarefoot, wears linen vesture, since he must not outragethe principle of life by wearing the skins ofanimals any more than by feeding on their flesh.He maintains absolute continence, surpassing hereinthe fidelity of Pythagoras to one wife, and throughouthis life is superior to every blandishment of femalelove. Moreover, possessing himself the most astonish-ing beauty of person, he resists every attempt on hisown virtue from that perverted sin of his age andcountry to which this beauty exposed him. Allvirtues of self-control and temperance, all masteringof sensual tendencies and passions, all disregard ofoutward goods are ascribed to him.. In all his relations with his fellow-men he ispre-eminently thel friend of man, filled with thepurest affection to the race. In his service to thedivinity, whose visible image the perfect wise man1 As Baur remarks, whose words I here take.

THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHIC HEATHENISM 247should be, he consecrates himself wholly to thespiritual and bodily good of humanity. Thus theextraordinary gifts and powers which he possessesabove all other men are only used by him for thenoble purpose of lessening the sufferer's need, improvingthe condition of social life, and by theconfidence thus won extending more widely his influenceas a religious and moral teacher.7. But the last and crowning trial of virtue is toencounter the fear and danger of death without quailing,and Apollonius, we are told, is betrayed by aformer friend and follower from motives of jealousyand avarice, and is denounced to the emperor asplotting against him. Hereupon he might escape,but of his own choice proceeds to Rome, disregardingthe entreaties of his disciples. There with imperturbableserenity he consoles his fellow-prisoners,and exposes himself to the risk of every tormentand of death itself with composure of spirit. He isinsensible to all the power and threats of the emperor,and he defends himself from the accusation of being: oa god.8. Lastly, the death ascribed to him, if death it canbe called, is miraculous, is in correspondence with hisbirth and worthy of his life. Without pain and sufferingwhich other men undergo, as he is welcomed intolife by the song of birds consecrated to the god oflight, whose religion he practises, so he disappearsfrom the earth and is invited to ascend to heavenby a choir of virgins, hymning from the recesses ofa temple.Now it is much to be noted that the whole precedingpicture of doctrine is conveyed to us in theform of a biography. The career of Apollonius is

248 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMfollowed out from before his birth to after his death,and the narrative of his actions is the exhibition ofhis religion. But as the whole Greek and Romanhistory does not furnish us with a single instanceof a man who spent his life in going about teachingand doing good, so the whole Greek and Romanliterature before Philostratus does not furnish uswith a single example of an attempt to convey asystem of religious teaching in the form of biography.There are indeed two instances, one before and oneafter Christ, of men whose life furnishes a point ofresemblance with the life here assigned to Apollonius.The one is Socrates, inquiring and discussing with allmen at Athens ; the other is Epictetus, who devoteshimself to philosophic teaching with a select circleof disciples. And in both these instances theirfriends and pupils have put together books whichcontain some of their conversations. ut neitherthe conversations of Socrates as recorded by Xenophon,nor those of Epictetus by Arrian, come up to the designof Philostratus. That design, as it reveals itselfby internal evidence, seems to have been to supply tothe Hellenic religion and civilisation a person as itsbearer and representative in the same manner as theChristians had such a bearer and representative inChrist. Thus Philostratus, carefully abstaining fromany mention of Christ or the Christian Church, tacitlyimitates what he ignores. ut likewise his imitation istwofold. The first and very remarkable imitation is thathis book purports to set forth the life of a religiousteacher, whose doctrine is unfolded by his acts. In thisit has for its only adequate prototype the life of Christcontained in the four Gospels. The second imitationis not less noteworthy. The character which he

THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHIC HEATHENISM249ascribes to Apollonius is not a simple copy of thecharacter of Christ, but a heathen reflection of it. Itis so drawn as to be to the Greek and Roman heathenswhat Christ is to Christians. We have an adequatereason for this double imitation in the fact that theChristian society was, at the moment he wrote, in thehighest degree aggressive, advancing, and influential.He wished to show that his own heathenism could doas well or better. If Christ went about doing goodfor three years in one small country, Apollonius shoulddo the same for sixty years through the whole regionfrom Syria to Spain, from Eome to India and Ethiopia.If Christ worked miracles and cast out evil spirits,Apollonius should do as much. If Christ could despiseexternal goods, practise continence, face betrayal,danger, and death, the heathen champion should matchHim in this. Christ's birth even and disappearancefrom the earth should have their parallel, nay, beoutdone, as his biographer might think, by those ofApollonius. And Apollonius should remain throughouttrue to his Hellenic race, should stand throughout onhis own ground. For, as we have said, it is not asimple copy which he sought to make.We have just been specifying the very striking pointsof similarity which this pretended life of Apolloniusoffers to the life of Christ. Let us now glance at thepoints of contrast, which no less illustrate the designof Philostratus, and the state of the mental conflictthen carried on.I. The doctrine which runs through the whole bookis the relationship of the human soul with the divinity.The ethereal light-substance, which is the supremeGod, is shared also by every human soul. Apolloniusthought ta^ i-i v it * V the W -*-» \-s highest MA «*, wisdom of the Indian Brahrnans

250 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMwhen they told him that they were gods because tl iwere good men. So in parting with him they thim that he would be considered a god not only afthis death but during his life.1 So, in the long def

THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHIC HEATHENISM 2 5 Itot surpassing the limits of his wisdom, anhis, as Domitian himself will admit, requires a manike unto God. What, then, is the appearance whichhis world wears ? Souls in a state of disorder madlv V,ssume every sorfc of shape. Laws seem to thembsolete, moderation is lost, the worship of the godglected, idle talking is in fashion, and dissipfrom which flows indolence, the counsellor of everyevil deed. Souls thus besotted by intemperance plungeinto every excess, and nothing can restrain this wildirregularity, not if they were to swallow all thosepotions which like mandragora are medicined to sleeBut to regulate such a world of souls as these needsa man who shall come to them as a god in wisdom.Such a man is able to recall them from loves to whichthey are devoted, and from avarice which is neversated by riches until choked. Perhaps such a manmay restrain them beforehand from disorder, but whenonce committed, he adds, "neither I, nor God, who isthe Constructor of all things, can wash them from itsstain."1»Now in these words we have a picture of the wholeaction attributed to Apollonius throughout his life.This and no more he aspired to do in virtue of theinnate power of the soul, as being a part of the divineethereal nature. Such he conceived to be the truetask of philosophy. So much, as it thought, requiredto be done, and so much it attempted to do. And asthe soul, being a portion of the divine intelligence, isthe source of all good to man, so the body, which isregarded as the prison of its higher nature, must bethe source of the disordered affections which gainmastery over the soul. All the ascetic life of Apol-1 Book viii. 7, 7, pp. 311, 312. Edit. Kayser.

252 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMlonius is therefore directed to subdue this tyranny ofthe body. His notion of evil is physical ; the notionof the body overmastering the high and pure natureof the soul. His notion of good is, the subduing thebody to the control of the soul. Thus the work ofthe wise man in the world corresponds to the work ofthe Demiurge in chaos, to reduce everything to theorder of reason. This he must do, first in himself,then in those around him, and finally in the commonwealth.It is this idea consistently carried out whichmakes the Pythagorean philosophy.From all this we see how far Philostratus and hishero are removed from approaching the Christiannotion of sin. They would not even understand theconception of a purely immaterial spirit who was inrebellion against God. The soul, according to them,became liable to evil by its contact with matter, becameevil so far as it was ruled by the matter which concernedit, that is, its own body; whilst in itself it wasidentical in quality, not in quantity, with the onesupreme nature. And when the soul exerted this,its original power, the man became wise, divine, oreven god. The doctrine of the pre-existence, post-existence, and transmigration of souls is evidently anessential part of such philosophy, which is as evidentlyat the bottom pure pantheism.Thus the similarity between the picture of Apol-lonius, as drawn by Philostratus, and that of Christ inthe Gospels, to which we have alluded, is merely external.Beneath it lies the most absolute antagonism.This may be further illustrated by pointing out thatthe opposition to the tyranny of Nero and Domitianoccupies in the life of Apollonius the place which oppositionto the tyranny of sin takes in the life of Christ.

THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHIC HEATHENISM2533. The biographer plainly conceives that he isexalting his hero to the utmost when he makes himteach philosophy at Rome in spite of Nero's tyranny,to which, however, he gives way by retiring uponthe definitive banishment of philosophers: and thathe does this still more when he makes Apollonius goto Rome to meet the accusations brought against himbefore Domitian, and take this occasion to rebuke hisdespotism. In fact, in the Pythagorean philosophythe tyranny of despotism would be that malady in thecommonwealth corresponding to the malady in theindividual whereby the unseemly passions of the bodyinvade and subject the soul, both again being imagesof that chaos in the universe which existed in shapelessconflict before the divine reason reduced it toorder. The function of wisdom, which is the soulacting by the energy of its divine nature, is to restoreharmony in the inner world of man and the outerworld of human society. But Philostratus is far fromgoing any deeper than this into the malady of humannature. Nay, he expressly declares that God Himself,the Constructor of the universe, cannot wash the soulfrom the guilt of blood once shed.4. We see, then, that Philostratus had caught andimitated that portion of our Lord's character whichconsisted in His being a public teacher, going aboutdoing good: but he had not the least entered intoHis character as a Redeemer from sin, and a Victim.And the next contrast we shall note very curiouslyillustrates this defect in the heathen apprehension.Thus he gives his hero a miraculous * birth and a mira-culous departure from the earth, and it is difficult toread them without at once thinking of our Lord'sNativity and Ascension. They are plainly heathen

254 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMcounterparts of these, intended to be more brilliantand more triumphant. But the circumstances of pain,which belong to the real events, are carefully detachedrom their imitation. There is nothing in the birthupon the flowery meadow, heralded by the song ofswans, and foretold by the god Proteus, to correspondto the Cave of Bethlehem and the Flight into Egypt.There is similarity in the disappearance from a templeamid the songs of virgins calling upon Apollonius tomount to heaven, and the Ascent from the Mount ofOlives, but there is no Gethsemane and no Golgothapreceding it in the heathen life, for there was nothingin the heathen mind to call for these. There is, however,the recognition that real greatness is not accomplishedwithout suffering. Philostratus strives tomake his hero confront the loss of goods, torment,imprisonment, and death. But it is only seeming.The reality of suffering is away. Thus Apollonius onhis way to Rome says to his friends : " Neither firenor sword would terrify a wise man : none of thesethings prevail on him to make him flinch or utterfalsehood." But he adds: "I know more than allmen, since I know all things : that I am not comehere on a fool's errand you may see by this. I runno risk as to my own body, nor can I meet with mydeath from the tyrant's power even if I would."lSo a little later he dismisses Damis, being perfectlysure as to his own escape. And all through the trialhe is in no disquietude, knowing well that at thecritical moment he will vanish from the tribunal andelude Domitian's grasp. Thus, in the heathen's copyof Christ, while the ideal of suffering is admitted thereality is expunged. The glory of endurance is ad-1 Book vii. 14.

THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHIC HEATHENISM 255mired; but its actual cross abominated. The onlyoutrage which Apollonius is described as having reallydared is the cutting off his hair and beard in dby order of Domitian, which is the feeblest psible imitation of the mocking and scourging of theDivine Original, while it is accompanied by the unfailingassurance of ultimate and painless delivery. The senseof the reality of an actual human life fails us throughoutin the supposed biography. Most of all is it wantingin the attempt to make the hero suffer, which istransparently counterfeit. Philostratus admitted thaperfect virtue must be suffering virtue. Plato's anticipation,however, of the torments the perfectly good manwould undergo in such an actual world as ours is far morevivid and lifelike than the feeble imitation of the realevent on which Philostratus ventured. He never succeedsin making us think that his hero is not imaginary.Most of all in the attempt to give him the glory withoutthe reality of suffering the imposture is evident.But the heathen had nothing in his mind to make thecross acceptable. It inflicted upon him the horrorwhich St. Peter before his conversion felt when hisMaster declared that He would undergo it. It hadnot for him that meaning and that power which ledSt. Peter afterwards to embrace it for himself.5. This whole state of mind will become most clearwhen we consider that doctrine of the soul's immortalitywhich Philostratus makes Apollonius teach afterhis death. For he represents him as appearing invision to a young man who had disputed the soul'spost-existence. This is the doctrine which the formof Apollonius returns to the earth to reveal to thedoubting disciple: " The soul is deathless, not thyproperty, but that of Providence, and when the body

256 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMis dissolved in corruption, like a mettlesome courserfreed from all restraint, it mingles with thin air,casting off at length its long-endured and hatefulservitude." l The individual man then ceases to be :why should the body, which drops away and is neverto be glorified, suffer crucifixion ? Unless man needsredemption, there is no reason for the cross. Unlessbody and soul live together for ever, there is no rewardfor it. Philostratus neither accepted the reason noraspired after the reward.The sum then of the contrast we have been notingis this. Apollonius is the man-god, by virtue of thespark of divine intelligence, of which his soul is enkindled,and his ideal task is to restore the order ofthe universe first in the individual man and then inthe commonwealth. In doing this the appearance ofsuffering and shame may rest upon him, but not itsreality, and the soul which seems in its divine actionlike a god upon earth reaches its full power whendelivered from the trammels of the body. If themanifold resemblances before noted assure us thatApollonius was intended to be a heathen Christ, thecontrast here shown goes to the very bottom of thefundamental antagonism between philosophic heathenismin what we may certainly call its highest form,and the Christian faith.We now come to the question, what was the attitudeof Philostratus in this work towards the Christianreligion ? We have found him completely ignoring it,yet delineating a character which had no original inheathen history. The Pythagoras referred to is sodressed up in the school to which Philostratus belongedas to be a mere fiction. Yet it is a tacit imitation1 Book viii. 31.

THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHIC HEATHENISM257of Christ so far as His example of a public teacherextends. Further, the peculiarity of the imitation liesin this, that while the supposed Apollonius is to bemade at least equal to Christ in wisdom, wonderworkingpower, piety, and goodwill to all men, he isto be all this on a heathen basis, by the kindred, thatis, which his soul possesses to the divinity. He is tocall forth in a high degree the power which belongsto every human soul. He is wise, wonder-working,pious, benevolent towards other men, yet all men maybe such as he is, for he is only the representative ofhumanity. He is a man-god, but in no exclusivesense. Thus the outward similarity of the man-godreveals an intense inward antagonism to the God-man. ^^Philostratus then is far removed from the position ofTrajan a hundred years before condemning Christianityas a State offence. He is no less removed from thescoffing derision of Christ by Celsus, and the mockingspirit of Lucian, to which his piety is in the strongestcontrast. In his whole conception of Apollonius wesee the greatest proof of the force with which theChristian Church was acting on the world. It was aconquest of that Church that one outside of it shouldseek to give to a heathen personage a character anddetailed life which should be to heathenism what thecharacter and life of Christ are to Christians. Thedegree of the resemblance measures the force withwhich the character of Christ was influencing menwho were not Christians. A heathen ideal is producedwhich but for the life and actions of Christwould never have been conceived. But heathenismdoes not therefore abdicate its own right of existence.It is said of the Emperor Alexander Severns, whoreigned just at the time that this bock was published,VOL. III. R

258 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMthat lie set up in his private chapel images of Abraham,the father of the Jewish people, and of Christ, thefounder of the Christian Faith, as well as of Orpheus,the institutor of the Hellenic mysteries, and of Apol-lonius, as the teacher of Indian, Egyptian, and Grecianwisdom. The same emperor, we are told, in his publicgovernment, " permitted the Christians to exist," andChristian churches were in his days publicly frequentedat Rome for the first time. It is this sort of liberalfusion of creeds which the book of Philostratus represents.A favourite of the Empress Julia Domna,writing under her commission, very naturally reproducesthe policy which was followed by her son Cara-calla, as well as by her sister's grandsons, Elagabalusand Alexander Severus. These emperors would havebeen content if all the worships of the Roman Empirecould have been comprehended in a solar religion,which is exactly that of Apollonius. They werewilling to admit Christ as a god into it, if the god soadmitted would acknowledge O his brotherhood with thedeities embraced by the like comprehension. Thisperiod lasted from the death of Septimius Severus in211 to the accession of Decius in 250. But fromthe time of Decius the Roman emperors became awareof two things, the one that Christ would accept nosuch brotherhood, and the other that His religion wascontesting with them the possession of the Romanworld. And a new period ensued, which contains thegreat and what may be termed scientific persecutionsof the Church.We can now, then, sum up the results which weain from the work of Philostratus.Nothing is more afllicting to the student of historyin the first three centuries than the want of anythingfc

THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHIC HEATHENISM259like a continuous record of events, and especially ofthe action which the Roman State exerted upon theChristian Church. Thus the brief reference of Pliny,as the governor of a province, to the Emperor Trajan,respecting the Christians with whom he had to deal,illuminates, as it were, a whole period which is darkfrom the absence of authentic information. But forthis, modern " scepticism would probably have deniedthat Trajan persecuted at all. In like manner theRomance of Philostratus, entirely worthless as history,f the utmost value as revealing to us the state ofmind among learned and reflecting heathens in thfirst half of the third century, and how great wthe change which had passed over society since thetime of Seneca. All the preceding tendencies whichwe have been following since the rise of the Neopythagorean school are fully developed in the Apolloniuof Philostratus. With regard to the bearing of philosophy upon religion, we may take as three stages, thseveral positions of Seneca, of Plutarch, and of Philostratus. Seneca's god, if we can say that he has aris nature or reason. " He utterly scorns the existingworship; he considers prayer useless, he has no notionof reconciling philosophy with the worship of thgods. His Stoic doctrine would be the complete subversion of that worship, for not only does he reducethe multiplicity of its objects to unity, but his notionthe god within him is incompatible with piety orreligion at all. A man cannot be pious to himselNot such is the mind, and still less such the heart cPlutarch. He, too, holds a unity of the godhead, butone by which all the ancestral and traditional deitieshave sunk into subordinate parts of the chief God,while they retain their own rites and worship. PrayerLIBRARY ST. MARY'S COLLEGE

26o THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMto him is of the utmost moment. Sacrifice and worshipa god-pleasing acts, and th t only thebond < of hurm n society, but the p id supportf the individ soul. The whole existing worship1 its multiplicity, is taken under the protection ofth philosophic mind, and th r toration of pietytion with it makes up the character of PlutBut h f d Philostratus o beyond PlutarchMaximus, Ap Celsus, and th k In hption of God perhaps not all. S as thihis Ap b mbodiment f suchbelief d o ,hip th t had 0 r anbeyond this he constructs an ideal of the philosophic lifh is a heathen copy of Christ b f scope,knwled m d death but ascension.And as in doing this Philostratus carefully ignoresChrist and Christians, so if in all the works of Plutarchthere is no hint that such a religion was existing,it cannot be taken as a conclusive proof either thatPlutarch knew nothing about it, or that knowing ithe did not think it worthy of notice. How vast isthe difference between the heathendom Seneca represents,and that portrayed by Philostratus, is shownmost of all in that spirit of piety with which hisApollonius fosters religious worship wherever hegoes. An active principle of belief has been substitutedfor the principle of negation which prevailedin the century closed by Seneca. Further, the valueof the work of Philostratus to us consists in its beinga full-length picture of the Neopythagorean system ofthought. It contains the best that cultured heathenismhad to say for itself in the first half of the thirdcentury. It also indicates unmistakably the positionwhich it took up in the face of the advancing Church.

THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHIC HEATHENISM261The one is its absolute, the other its relative meaning.Hardly a learned man has studied this work withoutcoming to the conclusion that its author was wellacquainted with the letter at least of the Gospels.The inference has likewise been general that it washis intention to give a concrete example of humanlife which should be to the religion and philosophyof the Greek mind-the object throughout which heseeks to exalt-what the example of Christ was to theChristian. However convinced the reader becomesthat the pretended life is a pure fiction, this purposeretains its value. The work is anything but historicalin its facts, yet its appearance at that time and itsintention contain history. 1 It is in this view that thepoints of similarity and the points of contrast betweenChrist in the Gospels and Apollonius as imagined byPhilostratus are equally striking. He portrays a mandevoting his life to the communication of religioustruth, in whom knowledge and power were perfectand equal, and who used both only in going aboutand doing good. The fact that they had up to thattime no sort of counterpart in actual heathen history,points unmistakably to the Original thus copied. Onthe other hand the agent so acting, that is, the divineparticle in virtue of which the human soul is one withthe supreme God, indicates as decisively the heathenstanding-ground on which Philostratus rested. It is acounter-system which Philostratus thus set up. Whilehis imitation shows his knowledge of the great inimitablelife which he presumed to attempt to transfer toanother, it also shows that the counter-system whichhe tried to set up had a special reference to theChristian original. Thus his work is the answer otphilosophic heathenism to the Christian Church and

262 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMits doctrine. It gathers up the elements of thepreceding progress which had taken place in thisdirection, and hardly anticipates in time the fulldevelopment of the Neoplatonic philosophy which wehave next to consider.

LECTUREXXTHE NEOPLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND EPOCHIIN the character of Apollonius, as delineated by Philo-stratus in his pretended biography, we find a completeunion of philosophy and religion. It is not theabstract pursuit of knowledge. The philosopher'smotive is shown to be the government and directionof other lives by the principles of divine wisdom.So, again, he is represented as living in the temples,as consulting the oracles, and especially that ofTrophonius, from which he receives a sort of authenticationof his doctrine in the book of Pythagoras.Thus he acknowledges the need of a revelation for theacquisition of truth. Philostratus likewise has investedhis creature with the power to work miracles, and thispower is assigned to him as a result of his piety, and inorder to accredit his teaching. It is, moreover, an inherentpower, belonging to the soul as identical in itsnature with the one divine ethereal essence which Apol-lonius worships underneath all the various manifestationsof Hellenic or Indian or Egyptian deities. Forthe author is careful to express by the practice of hishero the notion that the unity of this god is unimpairedby the variety of rites with which these severaldeities are worshipped. And, further, union with thisgodhead is the end after which ApoUonius strives,263

264 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMand he is supposed to return after death for the purposeof convincing a doubting youth that it has beenaccomplished in the soul as soon as set free from thebondage of its imprisonment in matter, that is to say,from the body borne about by it on earth. Thus inApollonius the union of philosophy with religion isassociated with another union, in which the multitudinousdeities of Hellenic, Indian, and Egyptianworship are taken up and absorbed. They becomein a manner which is nowhere defined, manifestationsof one power. In it, as the producer of all things,the source of that generation whose evolutions arecountless, the whole universe is lying.This is one side of the biography by Philostratus.It is its aspect viewed absolutely. If we look at itrelatively, the latest historian of Greek philosophy isonly summing up what is the concurrent judgment ofalmost all who have studied the work, where he says :" The delineation of Apollonius as a whole and inmany particular traits is so remarkable a counterpartto the representation of Christ in the Gospels, that wehave every ground for assuming the purpose of itsauthor to have really been to set an equally distinguishedrepresentative of the old religion overagainst the wonder-working Prophet of the newone." Thus both the knowledge of the Gospels andthe imitation of Christ by Philostratus are indisputable,although both Christ and Christians are completelyignored by him, and although his system hasits own positive and entirely heathen standing-ground.For the thorough contrast of his doctrine with theChristian is as remarkable as the covert imitation ofChrist.Nor is this, as has been already observed, a1 Zeller, v. 135.

THE NEOPLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND EPOCH 265simple and direct imitation, but a heathen renderingof his features. Apollonius is to be to the heathenwhat Christ is to the Christian, with a view to showthat the religion which produced Apollonius was atleast equal to the religion set up by Christ. The factof a tacit reference to Christ throughout the supposedcharacter of Apollonius would not be overthrown, nay,would not be impaired in force, by showing that theprinciples from which the two characters spring, aswell as the results in which they terminate, are quitedifferent. Kather the imitation and the contrast illus-trateeach other.In all the points above mentioned the doctrinewhich Philostratus was exhibiting under the form ofa biography was about the same time put forth in theschools of Alexandria in a system of philosophic teaching.They agreed in the complete union of philosophyand religion, in acknowledging the need of revelationin order to attain that truth which is the object of both,in claiming the power to work miracles as a result ofpiety and in order # to accredit teaching, in maintainingthe absolute unity of the Godhead, and the relationshipof the human soul to it, and consequently in proposingunion with that Godhead as the end of man's life, andfurther in the close alliance of this religious philosophy,notwithstanding its tenet of the divine unity, with theexisting polytheistic worship. Arnmonius Sakkas, thereputed founder of the Neoplatonic school, was indeedthe exact " contemporary of Philostratus, as the lives ofboth ran from about A.D. 180 to 250. Porphyriusdeclares that Ammoniusl was of Christian parents,and brought up a Christian; but asserts that when hebegan to think and philosophise, he changed to the1 Quoted by Eusebius, Hist. vi. 19.

266 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMestablished religion. This is denied by Eusebius,who says that he remained a Christian to the last.The pupils of Ammonius considered his doctrine asthe revelation of a higher wisdom, which should notbe communicated to the uninitiated. Porphyriusasserts Plotinus to have derived his system from theoral teaching of Ammonius. But as no writing byAmmonius is extant, it is from the treatises of thedisciple that we learn the Neoplatonic system. Thisvery eminent philosopher was born A.D. 205, atLykopolis in Egypt. In his twenty-eighth year, A.D.232, he gave himself up to the study of philosophy.After frequenting the schools of various teachers hecame to that of Ammonius, and the doctrine anddemeanour of this teacher so attracted him, that heexclaimed, " That is the man for me," and he remainedin faithful and devoted attendance on him for elevenyears.^^ He then attempted to visit the East in orderto learn the wisdom of the Persians and Indians, andfor this purpose accompanied the army of the EmperorGordian. But this expedition did not succeed, andthereupon I'lotinus betook himself to Rome in the year244. In this place he gave philosophical lectureswhich were much frequented by the higher classes.He won great applause, not merely by the originalityof his thoughts and by the skilful and attractivemanner of his instruction, but likewise by the dignityof his person, his intense earnestness, and the purityof his moral character. He practised the Pythagoreanlife in all the severity of its abstinence. His wholeheart was in the work of teaching. So highly was heesteemed, that a great many friends chose him forguardian of their children of both sexes. Those whoO1 See Zeller, v. 413.

THE NEOPLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND EPOCH 267were in closest intercourse with him looked up to himwith veneration. His disciple Porphyrius, in his Life,attributes to him a gift of working miracles and ofprophecy, such as that assigned to Apollonius byPhilostratus. The great ladies of Rome hung uponhis lips. His extant treatises were composed at Romefrom his fiftieth to his sixty-fifth year, A.D. 254-269.The next year he died of a sickness in Campania.Philostratus had given, in the form of a pretendedbiography, the principles of the Neopythagorean philosophyas they had been more or less prevalent fromthe time of Plutarch. The system of Plotinus proceedsfrom the same principles, but is drawn out withgreater philosophic accuracy, with a more defined purpose,with clearer knowledge P of the ultimate issues.If the character of Apollonius was fictitious, the realPlotinus appears to have been as devoted to his workof teaching as the philosopher imagined by Philostratus.His whole life, from the time that he gavehimself up to study in the school of Arnmonius to hisdeath in Campania, was noble and blameless upon theheathen model. He is described as searching fortruth through all the systems of philosophy; and afterhis attendance of eleven years upon Ammonius, heendeavours to visit the Persian and the Indian wisemen, exactly after the manner and with the motivewhich Pbilostratus attributes to Apollonius. It cannotbe pretended that a man so devoted to inquiry inreligious systems was ignorant of Christianity. Notonly was his master Ammonius originally a Christian,whether or not he afterwards became a heathen, asPorphyrius, the traducer of Christians, maintains, andEusebius, the Church historian, denies, but in thetwenty-five years which Plotinus spent at Rome, he

268 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMtnessed the great persecutions of Decitis, of Gd of Valerian, the martyrdoms .of at least tPontiffs, St. Stephen and St. Sixtus, with that of St.Laurence. The time of his greatest mental activitywas exactly that of which St. Cyprian said that theemperor would rather endure a competitor for histhrone than a successor to the Chair of Peter. Thusduring the fifteen years in which Plotinus was committingto paper the philosophy which in the previousdecade of years he had delivered orally to the mostdistinguished circles of Rome, the Christian Church,teaching and suffering, was visibly contesting withheathenism the possession of society, and was recognisedby the emperors as the foe they had to dreadand were resolved to exterminate. The truce underwhich Origen had spent so large a part of his life hadbeen rudely broken, and if in his answer to Celsus hehad remarked that the number of martyrs up to thattime had been comparatively few, he lived long enoughto enter upon a period in which it would be largelyincreased. It is a fact that the appearance of theNeoplatonic philosophy, as set forth by Plotinus, synchronisedwith the great persecutions which assaultedthe Church, when in all the domain of thought theChristian doctrine was the burning question of theday, and in the daily life of men Christian conductwas the spectacle of all beholders. If the systems ofPhilostratus and Plotinus are in their positive tenetsidentical, it will not be surprising to find that theytake up a similar position towards the ChristianChurch. It will hereafter be shown that the samereference which the person and character of theinvented Apollonius as a teacher bear to the personand character of Christ is found in the religious

THE NEOPLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND EPOCH 269system of Plotinus when considered over againstChristian doctrine. As in the one a complete heathenstanding-ground did not exclude a tacit imitation ofChrist, so in the other the summing up, classifying,and rearranging heathen elements derived from Plato,Aristotle, and the Stoics, will not exclude that forceof Christian thought permeating the lettered world,which caused heathenism to collect its whole strengthagainst an advancing enemy.The system of Plotinus is nothingl but a methodicaldescription of the gradations by which the processionof the world from the divinity and the return of manto the divinity is brought about. Its motive 2 may besaid to be a yearning after perfect union with the divinity.It may be divided objectively into three mainparts : his view of the world above the senses, that is,the intellectual and invisible world; and,, springingout of this, his view of the world which meets thesenses, and specially of man its chief denizen; andthirdly, the raising of the mind to the invisible worldand its return thither, which it is the proper functionof philosophy to direct and effectuate.I. As to the first point, Plato had3 distinguishedthe world of ideas from the world of appearance, andplaced the soul in the mean between them. Thoughhe had set the Idea of the Good above all the rest, yetit was only the first of them. And he had attemptedto explain the world of appearance by the existenceof Matter, which he made independent of Ideas. Inthese respects Plotinus differed from him. Plato hadtwo original principles, one positive, the Ideas, andone negative, Matter. Plotinus distinguished, as Platohad done, * between the world bevond *' the senses and1 Zeller, v. 370. - Ibid. v. 420. :j Ibid. \. 422.

2/0 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMthe world of which they are cognisant, matter being itsgeneral foundation. At the same time he did awaywith that original duality of principles, and deducedin the last resort everything from one supreme cause.But his invisible world was triply graduated. Firstthere was the Primal Bein^, exalted above all existenceand thought: secondly, there was Mind, comprehendingthe pure thoughts into which it parts itself : thirdly,there was Soul, the supersensuous being which has apropensity to Matter. In these three principles heincluded all the powers of the invisible world.As to the conception of the Primal Being by Plo-tinus it may be 1 summed up in the triple descriptionof the Infinite, the One and Good, and the AbsoluteCause of all things And In this lie seemi to haveemployed in fact the three philosophical methods forreaching the knowledge of God, though he nevernames them, the way of negation, the way of emi-nence, and the way of causality, which afterwardscame, through the so-called Dionysius Areopagites, intousage in the Christian schools. The conception ofthe Infinite belongs to the first way, that of the Oneand the Good to the second way, that of AbsoluteCausality to the third way It2 is especially inthe last that his conception becomes intelligible : aswhen he says, that only the conclusion from ect tocause leads us to the Primal ^^^^^B^ Being. As the Good isnot seldom described as the cause of all things, so itis called infinite power, the power from which everythingis derived. It is this3 point of view whichespecially rules in Plotinus the relation of the finite tothe infinite. As * the Primal Being is conceived to beefficient power, it necessarily produces another down1 Zeller, v. 429. 2 Ibid. v. 439. 3 Ibid. v. 440. 4 Ibid. v. 441.

THE NEOPLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND EPOCH 2J Ito the furthest limit of the possible : and this productionis not one of reflection and free-will, which haveno place in the First One, but simple necessity ofnature. As every complete being strives to produceanother, the most perfect and the most powerful mustabove all work producingly, the best communicateitself ungrudgingly. The First One overflows, and inoverflowing produces another. But in this he wouldnot only exclude all thought of generation in time ; hewould likewise expressly guard against the thought ofemanation by remarking that the inferior must not beconceived as an efflux of the superior. The First Oneremains in itself unmoved and unlessened, while thestream of being goes forth from it; the Derived is inIt, but not It in the Derived. He uses other imagesexpressly to show the immanence of this relation.The First One is the Root; the Derived, the Plant:that the Sun, and this its Light-atmosphere. TheDerived stands to the First One not as a part to thewhole, but as the effect to its cause. It is not takenfrom the substance of the First One, but without lesseningor change of this substance is established and supportedby its power. In fact these images serve tconceal want of precision in the;conception. There isa contradiction to be covered by them, and it consistsin this, that the First One is the cause of the Derived,but yet is required to be enclosed in itself, and to needno completion. Now, cause as such cannot be conceivedwithout effect, nor power without its result.Here, on the contrary, a cause is maintained which isessentially outside its effect, and does not need itmpletion of its beingiThat which is produced is entirely dependent up1 Zeller, v. 444.

2/2 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMthat from which it is originated, that is, not merelyreceives its condition in its origin, but only subsists independence on it, is borne and supported by it. Thepower which goes forth from the First One diffusesitself into every being, without, however, dividing itselffrom its origin. The First One is therefore presento each being with its whole undivided infinite power:it is one life which issuing from it pervades all andconfers on each its proper being. Plotinus expressesthis by a metaphor. The whole is enlightened by thebeams of the Primal Being. This is the Sun, whichours forth the universe, as a circle of light, around :the Centre, which rules by its power the whole circumferenceof existence. Thus everything is essentiallyrelated to the First One in its being and activity : hasin it the end of its operation : the centre about whicht t/ Now so far as the First One reveals itself in theDerived, the Derived stands to it in a relation of identity,partakes of it: but so far as this revelation isonly appearance in another, the representation of thesupreme cause in its effects, the two stand negativelyto each other. The Original can only communicateitself imperfectly to the Derived. In proportion asthe chain of beings O is removed from its origin « its com-pleteness diminishes. Plotinus dwells on both thesesides of his doctrine. The One is present to everythingwhich is, as penetrating it with its power. Allis an imitation, or more accurately, a shadowed ormirrored image of the First: that is, is not merelysimilar, but produced as a copy by the continuouseffect of the Primal Being. To Be comes to a beingonly so far as it is one, and the completeness of its1 teller, v. 447.

IIRRARY ST. A/.ABY'S mi ITHE NEOPLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND EPOCH 273.being is in proportion to its unity. But everything isly so far as it imitates the original unity. Slikewise everything has the end of its effort and th

2/4 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMtakes place neither by an act of Thought or Will, norby a logical necessity, but by a purely physical effect,being moreover a procession which ever diminishes incompleteness, though this weakening is only the effect,not the substance of the Original Being. And wemust note secondly, that in the relation thus maintainedbetween the Divine and the Finite, the Finitehas no being of its own, is mere accident, mereappearance of the Divine. Everything which is Derivedis upborne by the powers which streamfrom the Primal Being. These are not separated fromtheir origin, so that one operation embraces, penetrates,determines all things.This presence l of the Divine is always brought intot for the lower degrees of being by the highThe part works first upon the part, then ththrough the part. The corporeal world is in thSoul: the Soul in the Mind : the Mind in the OmOr, again, of the unfolding spheres, the Innermost, orMind, is enlightened by the Centre; the Second, orSoul, by the Mind ; the Third, or Corporeal, by theSoul. Hence the Corporeal moves itself first towardsthe Soul ; the Soul towards the Mind ; and both onlyin this gradation towards the First One.The Primal Being,2 the Original Unity, the Onei is likewise Good, being above reason and theknowledge of reason, out of the superabundance of itspower causes an image of itself to go forth, as the sunsends forth its beams. The likeness of necessity turnsitself to its original, in order to contemplate it, andthereby becomes Mind. The Ideas are immanent inthe Mind, but not as mere thoughts, rather as portionstself substantially existing in it. They make in1 Zeller, v. 453. 2 Ueberweg, i. 244.

THE NEOPLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND EPOCH 275their unity the Mind, as theorems in their unity makea science. Plato's Ideas become to Plotinus, as toPhilo, intelligences which are embraced by the Mindas universal intelligence. These the Mind works outin itself, and of these it consists: spiritual powers,thinking or spirits, * which are contained in it and underit, as species in genus, or as particular sciences inscience as a whole. Thus the conception of Mind,inasmuch as it contains in itself a multiplicity offorms and powers, broadens into that of the intelligibleworld. It is the very Living eing whichcontains the archetypes of all living beings in itself.In it the multifold intelligible powers are one power,the many gods one god.As the Second proceeds from the First,2 so by thesame necessity a Third proceeds from the Second, whichstands in the same relation to it as it to the First, - 7 andits generation is no more in the one case than in theother a work of intention or purpose, or connectedwith change in the Producer. This production of theMind is the Soul.The conception of the Soul is determined in generalby its being the next to the Mind. The mean betweenit and the world of appearance, being on the one sidefilled, moved, and illumined by the Mind, on the otherside touching the corporeal which is produced byit. It stands, however, nearer to the Intelligible,and with it is reckoned to belong to " the Divine.In its essence it is Number and Form, like the Idea,Life, and Activity, like the Mind : the outermostof the light-circles which surround the Primal Light.Beyond it darkness begins. In its nature it is eternaland outside of time, though it produces time. Pro-1 Zeller, v. 471, 473. dvro^ov, 475. 2 Zeller, v. 476.

276 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMceeding 1 forth from the Mind it stretches itself outinto bodies, as a point extends itself to a line. Thusit has an ideal indivisible element, and likewise adivisible element which enters into the corporeal world.The indivisible element2 belongs to it as totality, orworld-soul. That which proceeds immediately fromthe Second Principle is only the universal Soul. Particularsouls spring from this. They are only options of the universal Soul, different manifestathe one life which streams through all. Therefore,though individually different, they are yet one andthe same, as science in its different parts is one,as there is one light which illumines the most variousplaces. The Soul of the universe remains undivided,but each several being takes from it what it canhoiAt this point we reach the boundary of the integible world, and if the universal Soul does not pout of it, yet in its division among particular soulsenter upon the world of appearance.As the invisible divine world -proceeds fortlby necessity from the Primal Being, first in the Mindd then in the Soul, so the whole visible world wh :imeets the senses proceeds forth from the Soul by thsame necessity. The Soul, standing at the limit cthese two worlds, illuminates, in accordance with thsystem of nature, that which is beneath it, nameMatter. It enters into Matter with a portion of itspowers, becomes in its operation bound up with it, andadvances out of the eternal and intelligible into the lifeof time. It is only through this connection of theSoul's powers with Matter that the visible world comesinto existence. Without it, Matter, as being devoid

THE NEOPLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND EPOCH 277quality, and of body, would be no object of perception.So far Plotinus,1 following Plato and Aristotle, considersMatter as the basis of everything which meetsthe senses, and distinguishes it from the Intelligible.It is a universal Substratum of that which has body,distinct from every particular body. It is the merepossibility of being. Only by the accession of Formto it, it becomes definite.By this coming down of the Soul upon Matter, thewhole visible world starts into being,2 not by an act ofthought and will, but by simple natural necessity, forthe Soul could do no otherwise than give shape to theMatter which needed shaping, no otherwise than enlightenthat which lay beneath it. And since thisnecessity ever equally existed and will ever equallyexist, Plotinus absolutely contradicts any temporalbeginning and any temporal end of the world. Butthough this operation of the Soul in forming theworld is necessary, yet its connection with Matter is asinking down into an unfitting state, a fall of theSoul. For Plotinus,3 passing herein beyond Plato,places the cause of evil in the connection of the Soulwith Matter. The Soul, in virtue of its higher nature,is of itself free from evil. Evil can only arise to itfrom the polluting connection with something in itselfevil. For, if evil is the absence of good, Matter isthe original and absolute privation, pure want. Ifevil consists in motion without rest, in absence oflimit, in want of form, proportion, and definiteness,of Matter alone these properties are not only predicated,but make up its essence. Hence Matter is thePrimal Evil; corporeality is a secondary evil; andonly in the third degree can the Soul, in so far as it1 Zeller, v. 486. 2 Ibid. v. 493. 3 2bid. v. 489.

2/8 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMgives itself up to an evil which is foreign to it, betermed evil.This doctrine,1 that the nature of evil consists inthe connection of the soul with matter, is the specialcharacteristic of Neoplatonism, and, it must be added,a special contradiction in itself, and one which leadsto a disarrangement and confusion in the whole viewof human nature. The contradiction consists in this,that Plotinus makes everything, without exception,including flatter itself, proceed forth in orderly sequencefrom the Primal Being, the absolute One andGood. But Matter is evil, as being privation and purewant. Thus, that which in quality is the absolutecontradiction of the One, the Good, and the Spiritual,is made to arise out of it by the quantitative way ofa progressive weakening or deterioration. The wholevisible universe, which Plotinus otherwise marks as awork of transcendent wisdom and power, is producedby the connection of the Soul with Matter. This veryconnection is at the same time stigmatised as evil.Yet to this predicament Plotinus was reduced, sincefrom his point of view he could neither derive Matterfrom, the Divinity as a positive condition of the Divinebeing carried into act, nor place it as a second originalprinciple beside the Divinity.But this conception of Matter as evil is neitherthat of the natural philosopher nor that of themetaphysician ; it arises clearly from the moralist'sview of the effect of a bodily nature on the humansubject. Let us proceed then from it to the doctrineof man, / as set forth bv * Plotinus.This divides itself into three parts: the first willconcern the condition of the human soul in its state1 Zeller, v. 490, 422.

THE NEOPLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND EPOCH 2/9before this life; the second, its condition during thlife : the third, its condition after this life.As to the pre-existence of the soul, Plotinus says,Before this generation had taken place (that is,before our entrance into this life), we were there asother men, and some as gods, pure souls, mind boundup with the universal substance, being portions ofthe intelligible not parted off nor detached from it,ut being of the Whole." As long as souls2 continuein this state they are free from all sufFerinand as portions of the World-soul rule with it thworld, without being in it. They are outside thworld, since in that which is beyond the senses theris neither time nor change. There is in them neithethe faculty of discursive thought, nor selfness, nor remembrance, for they do not need to seekknowledge, which they eithej* do not yet or no longerpossess, but as they are perfectly transparent to eother, they see immediately in themselves the Mind,and all Essence, and the superessential Good. Yetsouls cannot continue in this their original state.As the original unity produces multiplicity, so by thesame necessity the Soul must produce something else,and communicate itself to that which is beneath it.And thus individual souls by a necessity, which is athe same time called a fall and a fault, pass by aneternal law into a body suited to their quality andwill. This descent3 is at once by an internal impulse,by the power of the absolute cause, and for the adornmentof the corporeal world. Souls pass into a bodybecause the Soul of the universe, according to the1 Enncad, vi. 4, 14. Quoted by Zeller, v. 512. z Ibid. v. 513.3 Enncad, iv. 8, 5. poirr) aure^ovai^ /ecu ctm'p Swct/tews, /cat rov /xer'a,\jTT)v Kocr^crec w5t ^pxerat- Quoted by Zeller, v. 515.i

280 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMconception of it in the system, is the point of unionbetween the intelligible and the sensible world.We must bear in mind this previous state of thesoul in considering man as he is in this life. By itsconnection with the body something strange and foreignhas been attached to the soul, which is in its natureincorporeal, and likewise was once without a body.Another being of opposite qualities has now hungon to the pure being of man. The soul has beentransferred from its natural element into a new one,and has been subjected to the necessity of a doublelife. We toe iirofold. ae ire take into account \li

THE NEOPLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND EPOCH281uperior to us, and that the Soul is made equivaleno the human I, at one time as distinguished fromthe Mind, at another as identified with it.The result is that in the Plotinic theory, soul andbody do not make up one nature of man.1 But ifhere is no real unit in the parts which comphim during his life on earth, with the end of thlife these parts separate again, and the return of thesoul from the world of sense to the world which isabove the senses follows. This is a simple consequenceof what precedes. If the soul before this lifewas bodiless, it can be so likewise after it. If thepresent life is merely a disturbing of its originalstate, we shall consider the leaving it only a returnto a higher and more natural being. Further,Plotinus points to the soul's relationship with " theDivine." If any soul, for instance, the World-soul,be immortal, our soul must be so likewise, since itis of the like essence. Yet as it is of the soul'sessence to be immortal, so a restoration of the bodyis not to be thought of, since it would be a perpetuationof the prison in which the soul now finds itself." The true waking up/' says Plotinus,2 " is a resurrectionnot together with the body, but away from it :to wake ^^^^^^^I^^H^H ^^^^^^^^^^^^K up with the body would be only a changeas it were of bed from one sleep to another. Towake up absolutely without bodies is the real waking."Plotinus, like the whole Greek philosophy, abhors thedoctrine of the resurrection of the body. But heembraces the old Pythagorean and Platonic doctrineof the transmigration of souls. As souls were originally1 The difficulties and inconsistencies of the theory in this respect aredwelt upon by Zeller, v. 519-527.2 Ennead, iii. 6, 6. Quoted by Zeller, v. 528.

282 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMdrawn down into bodies by the attraction of the senses,so at their issue from the body the souls which havenot freed themselves from this attraction will passinto new bodies, whether of beasts or of men, correspondingto their quality, and thus each shall receivea retribution for what it has here deserved. Thepurest souls rise above the world of sense altogether,and return to their original country.It may be remarked, that according to this doctrinethe conception of personality, as belonging &- &to the soul,is wanting in the period before its earthly existenceand in the period after it. In its original state itscondition is clearly impersonal altogether. The wordsabove quoted express this. In such a stat souls are" pure," that is, disencumbered from matter, " mindbound up with the universal substance." To thisstate the completely - purified souls return. Theybehold the universe. As i in the intelligible worldthere is no change and no time, upon entering intoit life in time, and with it remembrance, is ex-tinguished in an absolutely uniform thought of thesupersensuous world. Thu s the soul proceeds intothe body, as into a prison, out of an impersonal state ;and when it is best and purest it returns out of thatprison into an impersonal state. But what is it inthe interval ? What in this life constitutes thehuman being ? The soul alone is said to be thereal man. It is of its own nature free from errorand free from fault. It is only connection witha bodv that it can become involved in either. Sensu-ality, which is the source of all evil, belongs to thebody only, yet the soul alone is punished for it inthe retribution which follows after death. According1 Zeller, v. 532.

THE NEOPLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND EPOCH 283to the doctrine of transmigration, to which imperfectlypurified souls are subject, the body in which they didwell or ill is neither rewarded nor punished. Thesoul is punished by passing into another body, ofman or beast, corresponding to the quality which ithas acquired by its transitory union with the formerbody. It is plainly regarded as the only principleof identity in the man, but its reward consists inbecoming again impersonal, as its punishment liesin being again connected with a body. Nor isthis all. Even during its imprisonment in the bodyit has no substantial existence of its own, but is aportion cut off from the World-soul. It follows thatin Neoplatonic doctrine there is no such union betweensoul and body as to constitute a personality made upof the two. If we regard the soul's own nature, itis divine; if we regard its connection with the body,it is an imprisonment of the divine in matter; if weregard the body, it is a portion of matter, which byits connection with ^. the soul becomes to it the intrinsicseat of evil. The man, in whom these two antagonisticelements co-exist, indeed, without coalescing, is literally"halfdust, half deity," but he is not a whole at all.According to this system of thought, the unity ofbody and soul, which constitutes a proper humanpersonality, does not exist.3. The soull has come into its present conditiononly by a darkening of its original being, and duringits connection with the body can never cease to lookupon it as something foreign and disturbing. Thus, ifit can hope for a return to its original state only by absolutefreedom from the dominion of sense, its propertask is to work for this deliverance and so to reach the1 Zeller, v. 533.

284 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMend of its nature. Accordingly this elevation of themind above the world of sense forms the third portionof the Plotinic system.As to the end at which man should aim, his doctrineis Stoic. Perfect life must be life in accordancewith nature, nature however so understood as thatwhich is highest in man, and most proper to him, andthis is thought, the activity of the thinking mind.All the rest is but accessory. External circumstancesare merely the shell, the mind the kernel. Happinessconsists in the bearing of the man towards this reinward self.The doctrine respecting moral good and evil whichfollows upon this is of the highest moment in thesystem.itAs 1 it is not an inward perversion of the spiritualbeing, but only the connection of the soul with thebody from which the imperfection of its present lifesprings, no more than the dissolution of this connectionis required to get rid of this imperfection. So far asit is affected by the soul's own inclination to sensuous-ness, the mere cessation of this external bias, not achange of its inward character, will be requiredtake back the soul to its purity and perfectness. Thesoul has no more to do than to turn itself away fromwhat is foreign to it, and to confine itself to its ownoriginal activity. A change in this activity, as such,is neither possible nor necessary, since the properbeing of the soul, its real self, has remained withoutult and without error. The decision in man's moralcondition consists in the turning away from sensuous-ness. The turning towards that which is above thesenses follows immediately, as a natural consequence,1 Zeller, v. 537.

THE NEOPLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND EPOCH 285and requires no special working of the will upon itself,no further inward process, to bring it about. Thesensuous inclination may prove an impediment to thesoul's natural activity. As soon as this is removed,the soul pursues its course to that which is above thesenses as surely and directly as a balloon mounts intothe' air when the ropes binding it down are cut. Thusthe notion of purification understood as a deliverancefrom the body forms the basis of this moral system.That, at least, is the negative side; the positive is,that conversion to the invisible world, that becominglike to God, which follows immediately from it. Asthe soul's badness consists in its mixture with thebody, and its dependence on the body, its goodnesscan only consist in its detaching itself from the body,and working for itself alone. All virtues are nothingmore than a purifying, and this purifying does nottouch the soul as such, which in itself has no stain,but only its relation to the body. Accordingly, thebecoming like to God is contained in the purifying.As soon as the impure elements are removed, thsoul appears again in its original being. As thptor only needs to cut away a portion of thmarble to bring out the divine image, so the maworking upon himself only needs to remove thsuperfluity in order to stand revealed in his pure beauty.Nor only this, but at the same time he will seethe Divine above him, for kith only can discern kin.On which Plotinus 1 remarks, " For never did eye gazeon the sun without being of sun-like nature, nor thel behold beautv. *J without already *l being O beautifulAll moral activity, then, in its last resort, leads bthe delivery of the soul from the body.1 Ennead, i. 6, 9. Quoted by Zeller.

286 THK FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMBut i highly as Plotinua pri/.es the activity of dis-cursive thought, it is not to him the highest thing ofall. It presupposes an immediate knowledge of thatwhich is above the senses. The soul of itself islimited to mere reflection ; it can only borrow fromthe Mind the principles of a higher knowledge.Spirit only can reveal itself to spirit; kin only canknow kin; mind only can understand the Mind.This higher knowing is an immediate possession ofwhat is known. In the contemplation which thustakes place the distinction between the divine and thehuman Mind ceases. The human thought, retiringinto the purity of its being, thereby unites itself withthe divine thought of which it is a part. In thewords of Plotinus: - " If he who has mind is himselfsuch as to be all things, when he conceives self heconceives all things with it; so that such an one withenergetic inworking, beholding himself, holds all thingsas contained in himself, and himself as containing allthings." The highest degree of this state is that doctrineof Ecstasy which is in contradiction to the wholeoriginal direction of Grreco-Roman thought. Plotinusmakes the ultimate end of philosophy to consist in abeholding of the divinity, in which all definiteness ofthought and all self-consciousness disappear in mystictrance. When3 God appears suddenly in the soul,there is nothing more between him and it; they areno longer two, but an indistinguishable unity. Thesoul becomes in this contemplation of the divinity notonly one with itself, in that the opposition betweenmind 4 and soul disappears, but one with the divinity.1 Zeller, v. 547.2 Knnead, iv. 4, 2. Quoted by Zeller, v. 548.3 Zeller, v. 551. 4 I.e., vovs and

THE NEOPLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND EPOCHThe Primal Being unites itself with its being. TSoul has no part which it does not touch ; it fallsinto one point with it. It can then no longer becalled a contemplation of God, but a being God. Thesoul becomes pure light, free from all gravity ; becomesGod, or, yet more rightly, knows that it is God. Inthis unconditional unity with the highest, how couldself-consciousness or conscious tbought remain ? Self-consciousness is only where the subject can distinguishitself from the object; thought only where these aredeterminate conceptions; whereas here we have gonbeyond everything determinate and conceivable. If iwe ask how the soul can reach this state, the replyis, through absolute abstraction from external things,through complete sinking into itself. If the soul re-moves every inclination and every image of what ismtside it, if it draws back into itself from everythingvhich is not itself, then it is at once immediately inhe divinity, being entirely in itself. This higherlight may not be pursued, but must be waited for tillit appear. It dawns on the soul without *fsieans orpreparation, by a sudden enlightening. The soul cannotsay whence it comes, from within or from without.Indeed, strictly speaking, it does not come, but is there,and fills us with delight and blessing.We may suppose that with a character so inwardand concentrated as that of Plotinus, and with a systemthe culminating point of which is the identification ofthe soul with the Divinity, his philosophy would "Jalso his religion : the two would be to him convertibleterms. We have seen this to have been a markedfeature in the character of Apollpnius as imagined byPhilostratus. No doubt it became a reality in the1 Zeller, v. 553.

288 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMliving Plotinus. Yet the imagined Apollonius waslikewise devoted to the worship of the gods : and theapparently absolute monotheism of Plotinus found roomin his system for an unlimited number of deities, inwhich he could comprehend the ancestral gods ofthe popular worship, and the visible gods, the starsand heavenly bodies. The Mind, the Second God, themost immediate revelation of the Inconceivable, pro-duces all the Ideas, all the invisible gods. They areportions of his substance, and so make up collectivelythe supersensuous world. The divine Mind comprehendsthese several minds. They are personified intogods, and gifted with the contemplative knowledgeof the intellectual world. Then again their separatepersonality vanishes away into identity with the divineMind. They are indescribably beautiful and venerable,but only through the Mind which works in them.a They are not," 1 he says, " at one time intelligent, atanother time unintelligent. They are always wise inthe impassible, stable, pure Mind, and know all things,and are acquainted not with human affairs, but theirown, and all things which the mind beholds." Here,then, he can find room for all the deities of the Greekor any other mythology. By interpreting the mythfreely used by philosophy, and by using the interpretationof the myth which had become common in philosophy,his Primal2 Being can become Uranos, thefather of the gods, and Kronos, who swallows his ownchildren, whilst that Being is also the Mind, in thathe encloses in himself his offspring which is the intelligibleworld. If Zeus is said to escape from that destiny,the real meaning here indicated is the production of the1 Ennead, v. 8, 3. Quoted by Zeller, v. 558,2 Zeller, v. 560.

THE NEOPLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND EPOCH 289World-soul, the Third Deity, out of the Mind. ThisWorld-soul is Jupiter. Apollo is the One, as thenegation of the multiple. Hermes is intelligibleForm, the Logos. The most degrading symbol ofGreek worship represents the productive power of theLogos, and the mother of the gods is the abstractconception of Matter, as the general substratum ofForms. In fact, *" iust as the Stoic Monotheism withits one all-embracing god did not scruple to recogniseinnumerable particular gods under various apparentshapes, so Plotinus,1 laying down one great King ofwhom all things are the production, did not hesitateto assert that His greatness was shown by the multitudeof the gods who were ranged beneath Him anddependent on him, and that those who knew His powerwould not contract God into one, but declare Him tobe manv.t/ "Nor was it2 only the whole range of mythologywhich Plotinus defended by philosophical argument.He extended this defence to the concrete worshipcarried on in thousands of temples and paid to thestatues of the gods who represented the qualities whichhe interpreted after the manner we have just indicated.For inasmuch as the whole universe is bound togetherby sympathy, the higher powers communicate themselvesin preference to that which is like them. Nowas the statue is formed after the idea of a particulardefinite god, it is through this idea connected withthat god, in the same manner as the world of sense isconnected with the intelligible world by the mediumof the Soul. Thus, though he did not admit that thegodhead descended into the statue, yet the powerimparted from the godhead to the visible world has ir1 Plotinus. ii. 9, 9. Qnotpfi >ty Zeller, v. 557. 2 Zeller, v. 562.VOL. III. T

290 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMa special manner its seat in it. The statue is, as itwere, a mirror reflecting a portion of the divine radiance,which the worshipper thus catches up.Now in all this system of religious philosophy,which was committed to writing CD at Rome betweenthe years 254-270, and which has been arranged forus by Porphyrius, the chief disciple of Plotinus, thereis no mention of the Christian religion. o We haveseen that there was none in the life of Apollonius byPhilostratus. Plotinus presents his system as theresult of ancient Greek thought: the harmony ofPythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle. But the master oflotinus, that Ainrnonius Sakkas on whom he hadsedulously and reverently attended for eleven years,and from whose oral teaching Porphyrius, who worshipshis own master, declares that he drew his inspiration,was a Christian. Moreover, the character of the mindof Plotinus, as well as the time and circumstances ofhis life, leave scarcely a possibility that he was notinformed in Christian doctrine. Nor must we fail toremember that the actual arranger of his writings, hischief disciple Porphyrius, was a man very well acquaintedwith Christianity, who wrote an elaborateattack upon it, an attack which the chief defenders ofthe Church thought worthy of refutation. Into thebearing of the Plotinic philosophy upon Christiandoctrine we shall enter presently. Here it is sufficientto say that it cannot with any show of probability bedoubted that the author of it was acquainted with theChristian belief, as he was beyond question a witnessof a time of unprvralleled suffering undergone by theChurch while he was resident at Rome. The manwho philosophised in the very city and at the verytime when the martyrdom of St. Lawrence thrilled

LIBRARY ST.THE NEOPLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND Ethrough every breast, knew what Christianityin belief and in action.And here a word must be said about Porphyrius.It need not be more than a word, because he didnot himself add to the Plotinic philosophy, which heexpounded and popularised, and which he laboured tomake clear and intelligible. That philosophy alreadystood under its founder in the closest relation togion, having a practical scope. Now in Porphyit is the main object to work a reform f gphilosophy, to cultivate piety in conn h thheath d Some Christian writers state th hw ginally a Christian, an. but on account c sommerit which he experienced fell off to heathism. This, however, seems contrary t h Ian 11f St. Augustine, 2 ho laments over him that pridd pecially h disg ¥the doct th Godmed a body vented him m b i aCh Still beyond quest th th mwh boured e th g< nd mclei th Plotir c yst< m f philosophy was himselfmbued ith m h sentiment Moreoverwas once quainted with the Chreligion and its bitterest enem But h diddd yth g material to that philosophy. Sas P m d it it d b during thwhole period in which heathenism ied on th estruggle with the Christian Church From Ptin us t Julian, w d t with th powerof the E Emp h iciples c thl philo-phy, th PP id persecut >f theChristian Faith were heath f this fashi mJulian to Proclus, during which th wer secu-1 Zeller, v. 580. 2 De Civitate Dei, x. 29.

29 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMtion was taken from them, they maintained exactlythe same principles respecting the supreme God, Hisrelation to the world, and respecting man and hisplace in the world, as Plotinus. They maintainedlikewise the same intense abhorrence of the ChristianFaith. They united devotion to the heathen worshipand defence of its gods, its fables, and its practiceswith such an exoteric belief as that of Plotinus. Tomeet the Christian objection against plurality in thegodhead, they were monotheists in the sense of Plotinus; while on the part, of all those who maintainedthe deity of Jupiter, Juno, and Venus, and the rest,they defended the worship and all the manifold practiceswhich belonged to that worship with such aninterpretation as we have seen above.What has been said of Porphyrius, that he took upphilosophy mainly on its religious and practical side,is yet more applicable to lamblichus. If the formerhad found the help of religion and the assistance ofthe gods necessary to enable philosophy to dischargeits work, much stronger was this feeling in the latter,since he still more distrusted the strength of humannature, and was still more convinced of his own helplessness.How the gods produce what is finite wecannot tell; enough for us the conviction that all isdone by them. The first condition of a true knowledgeof God is the belief that nothing is impossibleto the gods. He who has this belief will betakehimself to a theology which allows him to assumeeverything that is taught about the gods. To aphilosopher who proceeded from these principles nopopular belief could appear absurd, no blending oftenets in a system of mixed philosophy and religion1 Zeller, v. 619.

THE NKOPLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND EPOCH293be extravagant. The wider the grasp with which heembraced in his speculation the religions of all peoples,the more perfectly he must have thought himself tohave reached the end at which his philosophy aimed.It is needless to enter into more detail as to theparticular views of Porphyrius and lamblichus, or ofProclus, the last exponent of this philosophy. Suchas it appears in Plotinus, it continues in its mainprinciples and conclusions to the end.There can be no doubt that this Philosophy, as itis the last production ^* of the Greek mind, so it is theissue and the outcome of a long preceding train ofthought. We are told that Plotinus, like his greatdecessors who were the objects of his professedPythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle, was aman of the most curious mind. He had, in fact,followed up with a sort of devotion the lives of thephilosophers who preceded him, and examined theirseveral tenets. He composed a system which wasthe working out and arrangement of certain fundamentalideas inherited from Pythagoras, Plato, andthe Stoics on the one hand, from Philo and the Alexandrineschool of thought on the other. The workso accomplished was the logical issue of the wholeNeopythagorean movement, a movement which in thedays of Cicero and Seneca, as we have seen themdeclare did not exist but which we have found sostrong in the time of Plutarch. Plotinus, indeedmay be said to be his interpreter, to give a logicand connected expression to that which was at thebottom of Plutarch's mind. What was the causeof all this movement ? What resuscitated, with aforce it had never before possessed, a train of thoughtwhich had apparently come to an end in Seneca's time ?

294 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMPlotinus, like Philostratus, was fully aware of the newpower which was stirring the world, and he searchedthe whole arsenal of Greek thought for a counter force.His philosophy is the ultimate ground taken up byHellenism, on which to fight its last and desperatebattle with the advancing Christian Church.Nor is it only the last chosen ground of conflict,but likewise the development of a complete antagonismin which heathendom gathers itself up to produce onits own domain and from its own principles all thoseeffects which it saw the Christian Church in the trainof accomplishing. It aimed at satisfying the mindand heart of man with regard to the same objectswhich the Christian Church had made of primaryinterest in the world. At the moment1 when Am-monius Sakkas and Plotinus founded their school, thesearch after the Absolute was the capital problemwhich agitated and troubled minds. What the Philosophercalls the Absolute, the Christian calls God.But to produce such a state of things had been thework of the Christian Church. In Seneca's time sucha question would have been otiose, a complaint whichhe makes in fact, when he says that so few regardphilosophy. Plotinus felt that the unity of the Godheadhad assaulted the polytheistic worship with aprodigious force, and he set up a counter unity to itwith which he wished to satisfy the reason on oneside, and spread an aegis over the whole pantheon ofGreek and Oriental gods on the other.For, further, his system is a heathen analogon ofChristianity, to which it stands just as the pretendedApollonius stands to Christ. Apollonius was theman-god, in that, possessing in his soul a portion of1 Jules Simon, Alexandrine Philosophy, Preface, p. i.

THE NEOPLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND EPOCH295the divine reason, in virtue of it he possessed allknowledge and the power of working miracles. Assuch, he was set over against the God-man. As aspecimen of human nature in its highest condition,he was to bear a comparison with human nature asassumed by a Divine Person, in which fact the wholeChristian revelation is summed up. The force of thesimultaneous connection and contrast lies preciselyin this, that Apollonius not only stood entirely onheathen ground, but represented unassisted humannature. Such as he was, Pythagoras had been andothers might be. On this ground he was to rival,encounter, and, as Philostratus thought, to prevailover Christ. Just so the system of Plotinus wasintended on a heathen basis to meet and encounterthe Christian Church at all points, wage war with itfor the possession of human hearts, satisfy the yearningswhich it had called forth, and all this in virtueof a force belonging to human nature itself.This triple thesis, -that the Philosophy which wehave above contemplated in its chief features was thelast production and outcome of Hellenic thought, thatit was the development of a complete antagonism withthe Christian mind, and at the same time a heathenanalogon of it, I shall now proceed to illustrate.\nThis will be done sufficiently, I think, if we considerunder three heads the opposition between the Neo-platonic system and the Christian Creed. The firstopposition will be between the Primal Being as conceivedin the system, and God as He is in Hirnselr

296 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMaccording to the Creed, between the Impersonal andthe Personal God. The problem of God and theWorld, as stated by the one and the other, makes thesecond opposition. The relation between God andman, issuing out of these two several conceptions ofthis problem, forms the third.The Primal Being of Plotinus appears to be formedby logical abstraction after this wise. All which meetsthe senses he generalises under the conception ofMatter ; all which thinks he generalises under the conceptionof Mind, as Spinoza did after him.1 Furthermore,beyond both Mind and Matter lies the conceptionof Being. Not content, however, with this, he triesto invent something beyond not only Mind but Being,which he terms the Absolute Unity. He personifies2the result of his abstraction, holds it for the principleof that from which it is abstracted, and identifies itaccordingly with what he calls the Godhead. Then,following the inverse process, and descending fromthe abstraction to which he had mounted, he makesthe first production of the Absolute Unity to be Mind,that is, the conception of Intellect as distinct fromMatter. The second, according to him, is Soul, whichhe considers already to touch upon the corporeal world,or Matter. Then through the connection of the Soulwith Matter he supposes the whole visible world toroll itself out into existence.The procession of all things from this so conceivedUnity is necessary and eternal: not of thought orpurpose. And all that which so proceeds has no realsubstance of its own. It is mere accident, an appearanceof the Divine: for it is one operation which1 See note at the end of the chapter.- Ueberweg, p. 251.

THE NEOPLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND EPOCH 29?embraces, penetrates through, and determines allthings.1If we attempt to reach the meaning of all this, itwould seem to be that the Unity which is called theDeity has no real existence. It is merely the substitutionof the highest logical abstraction for thereally Absolute. It substitutes the emptiness of allbeing, which may become anything, which exists onlyin our thought, and nowhere in reality, instead of thefulness of Being, Mind, and Life.Such a conception of the Primal Being is logicalPantheism ; and its relation with the universe that ofdynamical Pantheism.But it was from a physical view of the world anda desire to reduce it to a physical unity, that Greekphilosophy took its start; and the confusion of Gocwith the world, as it was involved in its beginningso remains its great error during the course of ninehundred years from Thales to Plotinus. In th

298 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMfirst, spring from the latter. In the former the confusionof God with the world consists in making himits material cause; * in the latter it consists in making: Ohim its formal cause: in both the relation of allexisting things to him is that of the Appearance tothe Essence, that of the Part to the Whole.In the first stirrings of Greek philosophic thoughtMatter and Mind were not distinguished, but Anaxa-goras clearly brought out the conception of Mind asdistinct from Matter, of one universal Mind as thedisposer and controller of all things. This conceptionappeared to Aristotle so important, that he calledAnaxagoras, in comparison with those who precededhim, a sober man among drunkards. And in truththis conception was the highest reached, whether byPlato or by himself. rough t up in the belief of amultitude of gods, and with the material figures whichrepresented the functions of those gods continuallybefore their eyes from childhood, their merit was thatthey conceived one supreme God distinct from Matter,pure Mind. Yet in considering the relation of thisGod, who was pure Mind, to Matter, of which theendless manifestations in the universe may be summedup in the word Nature, Plato did not reach beyond theconclusion that this Matter had always existed. Itwas in some undefined way over against the supremeMind, who worked upon it indeed, and reduced it toorder, but who found it there, a something to becounted with, and not wholly to be subdued. ThisMind, distinct from all contact with Matter, waseternal, the first mover, and the cause of motion, buthimself pure Act, and incapable of change. Thus farAristotle carried out the conception of Anaxagoras.Yet in dealing with the problem of Matter, and its

THE NEOPLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND EPOCH 299relation to this Mind, he held that the universe waseternal. Thus the two princes of Greek thought,while not Pantheists, so far as they conceived oneSupreme Mind, entirely detached from Matter, yetfailed to solve the problem of the relation of thisMind to the universe in such a manner as wouldescape the error of Pantheism. For not only wasMatter conceived by them as ever existing overagainst Mind, but their conception of Mind itselfappears to have been only an abstraction from thehuman mind; a generalising of Intellect parallel tothe conception of Materia prima as the substratum ofall body. At least the result in those who followedthem was that the one Supreme Mind and the humanmind fell under the same genus with only a quantitativedifference. And so they made this mind notindeed the material but yet the formal cause of theworld : the formal cause inasmuch as the world sub-sisted as it does because Mind was in it arranging andordering it, as the soul is in the body. And if thenotion of creation out of nothing is excluded, thenthis arranging and ordering must be by the substanceof the arranging and ordering power being likewisethe substance of things. This in philosophic languageis to make God the formal cause of the world.Now, excepting the Epicurean school, which wasmaterialistic, that is, placed in Matter itself the forcewhich made the world, it seems to have been the universaldoctrine of Greek philosophy after Plato andAristotle that the Logos in man is part of the onedivine Logos. We have seen this run through Stoicismas its generating and characteristic doctrine, thebasis of such moral teaching as it possessed. Cicerorepresented this not only as his own conclusion, the

300 THtt FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMresult of reasoning and discussion, but likewise acceptedit on the authority of the highest philosophers. Pythagorasand his school had never doubted that our mindsare drops of the universal divine Mind. The humanspirit having been severed off from the divine Mindcan be compared with nothing else, if this may bereverentially spoken, but with God Himself. Elsewherehe affirms that " there is one infinite natureand power of mind, separate from these natures usualand known to us. And so, whatever that is whichfeels, which understands, which wills, which energises,it is heavenly and divine, and therefore must beeternal. Nor, indeed, can God Himself, who is conceivedby us, be otherwise conceived than as Mind,pure and free, distinct and apart from all mortalcomposition, feeling and moving all things, and itselfendowed with eternal motion. Of this kind and ofthe same nature is the human mind." The view iscompleted by the parallel between the soul in the bodyand God in the world, which he puts in the mouthof the elder Scipio, addressing the younger with asort of revelation from the supernal region in whichhis soul as a part of the universal soul was dwelling." Know then thyself to be God, if, indeed, He is Godwho energises, feels, remembers, provides: who asmuch rules and directs and moves that body overwhich he presides as the supreme God does withregard to this universe. And as God, who is Himselfeternal, moves the universe which is in one part of itsubject to death, so the everlasting mind moves a corruptiblebody."Cicero l may be said to be here expressing the out-1 Cicero, De Senectute, 21 ; Tusc. Disp. v. 13, i. 27. SomniumScipionis from De Republica.

THE NEOPLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND EPOCH 30 Icome of the Pythagorean, Platonic, and Peripateticphilosophy as to the important point of the relation ofGod to the universe. .Thus the highest reach of pre-Christian philosophicthought in the Grgeco-Roman world may amount tihis, the admission of one Supreme God who is a purelymmaterial intelligence without beginning and withoutmd ; the belief that the soul of man is an immaterialntelligence of the same nature, and related to it as apart to the whole. By an image familiarly usedis in regard to the universal Mind as a drop of thocean, as a spiration of the breath, as a sparkjof thfire. And the God so conceived is to the universe athe human soul is to its body.In the three centuries which elapse between Cicerand Plotinus, Greek philosophy does not shift itstanding-ground as to the relation between the substance of what it terms by a neuter and abstracnoun" the Divine/' and the intellectual part in man.We have seen how this kinship, or rather, identity,of nature between the divine and human mind runsthrough the doctrine of Epictetus and Marcus Aure-lius; how it no less rules the opposite school ofPlutarch, Dio, and Maximus Tyrius; how it makesup as it were the whole philosophy of the pretendedApollonius, as drawn by Philostratus.Confusion between the substance of God and thesubstance of the world, in one shape or another, andmaking something which is denominated God eitherthe material or formal cause of the visible and intelligibleuniverse, runs in various degrees throughall the philosophic thought of the nine hundredyears before Plotinus. So the doctrine of Plotinusmay be considered one in which Pantheism obtains a

302 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMcomplete sway. The universe is the evolution of theOne. The Absolute Unity is immanent in the world,which is its eternal and necessary development, notmerely the human soul but matter itself being partof this procession. In it there is one life, one being,one substance. And as to the important point onwhich we have been treating, the assertion of a merelyquantitative difference between the human and theuniversal soul, no more conclusive proof of the beliefof Plotinus can be given than the words of the dyingphilosopher as recorded by his friend, admirer, anddisciple, Porphyrius: " I am going to lead back theGod that is in me to the God of the universe." Thatmovement of thought which is apparent at the startingof Greek philosophy, to reduce all things to aphysical unity, receives its completion in the systemof Plotinus. But in two hundred years which elapsefrom Seneca to that philosopher there had been afurther effort which shows itself equally in the Neostoicand the Neopythagorean school, an effort to reconcilethe gods of Polytheism and the worship of them withthis one power or cause. In Plotinus we find thisreconciliation carried out with the greatest completeness.His Absolute Unity admits into its capaciousbosom all gods, for the gods so admitted are simplyparts of one universal power, which is the substance ofall things. Pantheism and Polytheism share the sameerror iof giving the incommunicable Name to stocksand stones ; for if the being of God is the being of allthings, it is as true to say a stone is God, as to say astone is a being. If God be at once the matter andthe soul of the world, and in both, in spite of his1 See St. Thomas, Contra Gentiles, i. 26, and Kleutgen, Philosophieder Vorzeit, ii. 418.

THE NEOPLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND EPOCH 303eternity and unchangeableness, be subject to everychange in time, idolaters were not to be blamed forhonouring with divine worship the air, or the fire,or irrational animals. Bather the only blame theydeserved was that they did not worship everything.Plotinus was only faithful to the whole course ofGreek philosophy from its rise in rejecting the doctrineof creation. Even Plato and Aristotle had neverrisen above the conception of a Mind who arrangedand ordered matter, an architect of the universe, whobuilt from pre-existent materials. The creation ofmatter and mind equally out of nothing was notreached by them; or we may rather say it was opposedto certain principles which were the basis of alltheir thought. That out of nothing nothing comes,was an axiom with all Greek thinkers. It was theStoic conception of utmost impossibility that anythingshould come out of nothing. And that anythinghould happen without a cause they said was similTheir view of the order of the world was this: " Theuniverse is a unity governed by a living, reasonable,and intelligent nature, in which all things proceed byan eternal series linked and strung together; so thatin this process of becoming, every antecedent has itsresult necessarily suspended from it as a cause. Nothingtherefore in the universe is, or becomes, withouta cause, inasmuch as there is nothing in it unattachedor severed from all the constituents preceding it. Forthe universe would be distracted, * divided, * and no longer oretain its unity, nor the one order and series of itsdistribution, if a single uncaused movement could beintroduced." Again, the conception is brought out byCicero with all the lucidity of the master of Romandiction. " Fate I call the order and series of causes,

304 THI-; FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMin which cause linked to cause generates from itselfthe real. That is everlasting truth flowing out ofthe abyss of eternity. According to this nothing hastaken place which would not have taken place; andin like manner nothing will take place of which naturedoes not contain within her the exactly efficientcauses. By which we may understand that fate isnot a superstitious but a physical expression, theeternal cause of things, why all that is past has takeneffect, all \\hich is instant is taking effect, all whichfollows shall take effect/' 2No words could more exactly express the processionall things from the Absolute Unity as conceivedby Plotinus. And as herein he exactly followed hisStoic predecessors, so as he anticipated his modernsuccessors; for this is the very kernel of Pantheism.This procession was the deity of "Plotinus, and isthe only deity which his modern successors admit." God, through the activity of thought determiningHis originally undetermined being, produces things.The meaning of which is, that He generates thingsaccording to their proper and real being out of Hiown essence, and that accordingly this, His essence, isin things under manifold forms; a metamorphosis ofthe Absolute which Hegel could not characterise moresharply than by naming God the eternal procession »3And in this respect Plotinus and Hegel are exactlyone.We have, then, now before us the Neoplatonicconception of God and of His relation to the world,in whiclTit is clear that He has neither unity nor per-1 " Ea est ex omni aeternitate fluens veritas sempiterna."2 Alexander, De Fato, p. 70, and Cicero, De Divinatwue. i. 55.Referred to by Zeller, iv. 149.8 Kleutgen. Phihsoj hie der Vorzdt, i. 48.

THE NEOPLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND EPOCH 305sonality, nor even any being of his own apart from theworld and independent of it. He is, in fact, merely alogical conception, drawn from abstraction and assumedto be real. And the world is his eternal and necessaryprocession, under an infinite variety of appearance.The antagonism in the teaching of the ChristianChurch respecting the being of God and His relationto the world with the Neoplatonic system may bmmed up under four heads. The first will be thunity and unicity of God ; the second, the Trinity ofPersonal Relations in God ; the third, the doctrine ofCreation ; and the fourth, the infinite gulf betweenthe being of God and the being of creatures whichthat doctrine establishes.I. The Church proclaimed belief in one God, whowas not the abstract conception of unity or beingformed by the mind, the highest generality whicarises in the thought when it considers the universe,a thing of logic, not real nor actual. God is the Beingapart from all other being, subsisting in Himself, consciousand free. His Being is concrete, not abstract;peculiar, not general; not the possible basis of all being,which is nothing and may be anything, but the fulnessof beingr infinite on all sides, incanable of mixture, in-pable of addition, incapable of becoming, that is, ofchange; determined in Himself, and divided from allother beings because no addition can be made to Him. iSuch is the One God viewed as over against theAbsolute Unity.2. In this One God the Christian Church proclaimeda Trinity of Personal Relations, eternal as God Himself,the Father eternally generating, the Son eternallygenerated, the Holy Ghost eternally proceeding, but1 See Kleutgen, Theologie der Vorzeit, i. 364 ; i. 208.VOL. Ill,

306 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMhaving one eternity, immensity, infinity, immutability ;one omnipresence, one omniscience, one goodness, onesanctity. Now in the Plotinic Trinity the first processionof the Absolute Unity was the Universal Mind,and the second procession from the Universal Mindwas the Universal Soul, both being successive weakeningsof the First One, and the latter touching alreadyon the world of matter. There was, therefore, no realresemblance between the two. The Plotinic Trinityis as remote from the Christian as the Plotinic Unityis from the One God. It stands, however, to thatUnity as the Christian Trinity stands to the ChristianUnity. For the Plotinic Trinity is an attempt to explainthe origin of things, and is produced in furtherance ofthat attempt; whereas the Christian Trinity is a revelationof the ever-blessed Being of God, His inner Lifeand Blessedness in Himself, independent of creatures.ut the force of the Plotinic conception lay inthe relation which it established between the worldand God ; and here the antagonism with the Christian.Faith comes into yet fuller light. The processionof all things from the Absolute Unity through theMind and the Soul, down to the last particle ofMatter, was as eternal and necessary as the processionof "the Divine " itself; a procession devoid of will, inwhich there was one only substance, and one onlyoperation, under every variety of appearance. utthe Triune Christian God creates all things out ofnothing, and this in a threefold sense. Out ofnothing, because there is no pre-existent matter;again, out of nothing, because non-being precedes innature ; and, once more, out of nothing, because non-being precedes in time.1 And hence is seen the truth1 See Stockl, Philosophic dcs Mittelaltcr*, ii. 542, from St. Thomas,

THE NEOPL ATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND EPOCH 307d reality of that being which God confers. Whthus arises out of nothing is not an appearance ofsomething else, but a being consisting in itself.Again, it is not drawn out of any other substance, butmade out of nothing. Equally, whether Matter orMind, it is a simple creation out of nothing. Andtly, which is not the least important point of theitrast, what thus arises springs from the free-willand choice of the Creator. Being perfect in HimselfHe chooses to create, as He might have chosen tcremain without creatures. There is no necessity in HisBeing for this choice, for which there is no other causeconceivable than the divine Will.4. We have seen how the Absolute Unity of Plo-tinus took into itself the Polytheism with which itsauthor was surrounded. This was part of its use.The multitude of the manifestations of the one force,as conceived by Plotinus, might be endless : it onlyneeded to personify each manifestation with the nameof a god, as the Stoics had done before him. Also,if there is only one substance, this abstract god ofPlotinus may be a stone as well as Jupiter. But theOne God who creates Mind and Matter alike out ofnothing, excludes all other beings from approachingHim by an infinite chasm. Their being and His donot fall under one genus. And so the gods of heathendomdropped away before Him. In His presence theywere simply nowhere : vanity, non-entity. This wasthe meaning of the reproach of " godless " addressedto the ancient Christians; and this too was at thebottom of the profound hatred with which Neopla-tonists, when in power; persecuted the Christians.They saw and felt the full force of the antagonismbetween their pantheistic unity and the One God of

THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMthe Christians: between a necessary force proceedingthrough all nature to its utmost limit, and the Lordof Hosts, surrounded by hierarchies of spirits, who arecalled into existence, and maintained in it, by Hisomnipotent Fiat: between a universe in which manis the product of a nature eternally unfolding itselfwithout will, and man the creature of God.This brings us to the third point of contrast whichwe had to consider, the being, position, duties, andhopes of man in Neoplatonism and in Christianity.The God of Plotinus does not create, but evolvesitself in an eternal becoming; and the human spiritis a portion of the divine Universal Mind. This latterpantheistic doctrine seems to date from Pythagoras,and coming down through Plato and the Stoics, to)rm the basis of the conception of human nature inall the course of Greek philosophy, and in its lasteffort shows itself as part of a complete pantheisticsystem. If such be the nature of the human spirit,its conjunction with matter would seem of itself to bethe cause of evil, and so, as we have seen, it is reckonedby Plotinus to be. Yet that the will is free,1 thatue is without a master, that every one bears thault of his own actions, all this, he says, is a factwhich is grounded so immediately in the being oman, that without free-will we should be no men, butmere portions of the universe, moved from without.Yet he totally fails, or rather does not endeavour, toreconcile these statements with that necessary chainf cause and effect according to which the universees forth without any will or choice of a contrive]d in which man's actions are bound as part of thmachine. Human nature in fact has no unity und1 Zeller, v. 525.

THE NEOPLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND EPOCH 309his hand. The soul, as such, in virtue of its di\origin and nature, is incapable of error, while matas such, is incapable of good ; and so far as concehe whole question ^^ of moral evil and the freedomf human actions, its two parts, mind and matter,start asunder, and we are left in an insuperablecontradiction.This contradiction indeed had beset Greek philosophyeven in the hands of Aristotle. Strongly as hemaintained that man is the master of his own actions,1and has it in his own power to be good or bad, yet hecould find no place for true freedom of the will betweenthe movement which proceeds from sensuous desire,and the other which proceeds from the divine minddwelling in the soul. Necessity broke in on bothsides, from the action of things on the sensuous soul,and from the divine intelligence.At least so much as this is plain. In the systemof Plotinus man is not bound to God as a creatureto the Creator. He has not that dependence whichone whose whole being is made by another owes tothat other. Thus in this, as in the Stoic system, thespring of virtue lay in the pride engendered by thebelief that the soul is of4the same nature as God.This God is not self-conscious, not free, but a blindforce of nature, Power without Will. Somehow oranother the soul, a portion of this God, has beenjoined with a portion of matter, and human life is theresult.But in the practical scope at which it aims is seenthe closest point of connection and at the same timethe fundamental opposition between this system andthe Christian Faith. The divine intelligence dwell-1 Dollinger, Heidenthum und Judenthum, p. 311.

3 IO THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMing iii man must according to its nature seek for arestoration of order, first in the little universe of thedividual, secondly in the larger one of the comwealth. This is put forth in the person of an idealPythagoras, which lamblichus dressed up in a pretendedlife of that sage, at the beginning of thth century. In it he attributed to his hero thhingFirst he communicated to men a higher religand speculative knowledge. Secondly, he sought tbring them by the religious and moral principlehe set up for their everyday life into a relatwith the deity which should correspond to theirkinship with it. Thirdly, the idea of order was thecentral point and main substance of the religious andphilosophical knowledge which he communicated. Torealise this in human society was his purpose, and theunion of disciples which Pythagoras set up was themeans thereto. As the Christian Church was to pit a visible appearance of the kingdom of hthe Pythagorean union was have an orgwhich should incorporate its founder's idea of ordIts members had certain reciprocal engagementseach other, and all were in subjection to the foundewhose person was so sacred that no one uttered hname. During his life thev termed him " the Dand after his death spoke only of " him," or " thaman." Thus the influence exercised by Pythagoraswas not only religious and moral, but political. Byit he sought to banish the two greatest evils,anarchy and tyranny, and to give a constitution to1 society in which law alone, as the expression of1 I take these remarks on the Pythagoras of lamblichus from Baur'sreview of the Life of Apollonius by Philostratus.

THE NEOPLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND EPOCH 3 I Iorder, should bear sway, and Pythagoras is praisedby lamblichus as the discoverer of all political education.In this work the Neopythagorean conception offriendship appears as the exact counterpart of theChristian charity. The one is based upon the naturalcognation of the soul with the deity, as the other isfounded on supernatural union with Christ by HisSpirit. An instance where both the language issimilar and the thought is parallel may be seen in^the words of lamblichus. " All that is commandedto be done or left undone aims at intercourse with thedeity ; and this is the principle.Moreover the wholelife is ordered so as to be an imitation of God: thisis the function of philosophy." Here philosophy correspondsto religion, and friendship to charity.As the Neopythagorean good was the carrying outorder, that is, the Kosmos, through the whole bodythe universe including man, so to its thought thefirst germ of sin lay in the connection of the soul withthe material body. By this connection alone man wasin his birth impure, besides the guilt of a previous lifewhich lay upon him.Thus, in this system, the conception of good wasthe acting of the soul according to its divine nature;the conception of evil was physical, as resulting fromthe imprisonment of mind in matter. The conceptionof the revolt of the soul itself from God was entirelywanting. A disorder was indeed recognised, and itwas sometimes called " sin," or "a fall of the soul," or" guilt," but the root of it was placed in the union ofthe soul, with a body, not in the destruction of theunion of the soul with God. The notion of moral perversityin the soul itself, as the intellectual principle of

312 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMman, was an absolute contradiction to its belief thatthe soul was a particle of the divine intelligence.These notions run through the whole movement ofGreek thought from Seneca to Plotinus, and akin tothem, one may say their corollary, is a theory of immortality.While the restoration of the Kosmos inman and human society is the good aimed at for thislife, as to anything beyond it is the union with "theDivine " by the return of the spirit freed from matterto that of which it was a portion, and from which itwas severed at its entrance into bodily life. ThePythagorean and Platonic pre-existence and post-existence of the soul, with the doctrine of transmigrationwhich attends upon it, and the obscure andconfused view of retribution hovering over that doctrine,is part and parcel of the Pantheistic conceptionthat the soul is a particle of the divine reason. Such08t-eii8t< UC8 is m>V a living mi of the human bring,perj f the human identitv. Cicero, whplatonising, makes the mind of Scipio speak to hisdescendant as one living indeed an immortal life, buti dentified with the universal Mind, and without anstence of his own. The Stoic raptures of Senecato the future condition of the mind when purifiedfrom contact with matter, amount to a philosophicNirvana. The same thought inspires the proud exclamationof the dying Plotinus above mentioned, that hewas leading back the god that was in him to the godof the universe. Such a notion of the post-existencehe soul offers exactly the same contrast to theChristian doctrine of eternal life as the Primal Beingoffers to the one living God. It is, indeed, but reason-ble that, if the universe is the eternal procession ofone impersonal substance, mind also, though for a

THE NEOPLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND EPOCH 3 I 3few years intercepted by the bars of its fleshly prisoshould presently rejoin the universal Mind. It is bjust and logical that a god who has no being of hown should be incapable of creatinThe culminating point in such a system is, as wehave seen, such a conception as the imaginary Apol-lonius or the ideal Pythagoras. Every good man isod : specially such men as these in whom the soulasserts its original and inherent power, lives accordingto its nature, restores harmony in the being over whichi \ presides, and works for the restoration of the sameharmony in the commonwealth of man, and in thewhole universe. We have seen in the romance ofApollonius how far a tacit imitation of the life andconduct of Christ could be carried upon this entirelynatural basis. Upon it likewise lamblichus attributedto his Pythagoras the formation of a societywhich was the exact counterpart of the ChristianChurch. In both these instances we may trace theworkings of minds which saw the Christian Church inoperation before them, profoundly admired the work,but wished to transfer it to their own hereditarystanding-ground.Both these authors can speak, as Stoics had spokenbefore them, of the unity of the human race, of thebrotherhood of man with man, even how man, as Epic-tetus had said, is a " son of God," how all gradationsof human rank vanish before that divine equality, howan emperor is less than a wise man. All this unityof the human race rested upon the common possessionof the divine intelligence within it.But if in a few choice minds such as Seneca, Epic-tetus, Marcus Aurelius, or Plotinus, such a conceptionserved for the basis of many kindly thoughts con-

314 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMcerning universal brotherhood and benevolence, howvery far was it from taking root in society ! Thebrotherhood they extolled remained for the mass anunknown thing. It did not pass the limit of theirschool; it touched only refined and contemplativeminds. The whole heathen society was affected bythe absence of belief in the relation between Godd an as C t an t d by wha wasan tab q ' h b equally c f bf in the relation bet m d man as fcreatures of one God. The inner life of each humanbeing, his domestic life, his social life, his politicallife, all were touched in all their springs by thatopposing doctrine of philosophy according to which theAbsolute Unity, the Primal Being, the Divine, waseither the material or the formal cause working in andthrough all things. This is best seen by conciselystating o the antagonistic o truths which the ChristianChurch set forth not to the select votaries " of a school, 'not to the learned, the rich, and the refined alone, butto the poor, to the slave, to the enthralled female sex.It poured them forth as the light of the sun to gladdenevery human eye, and ennoble every human affection.I. Instead of the notion that the human mind,being a port f the divine intelligence, had becomn plained td f a twith a body and th th man was th mind, eChurch taught that it as an tirely f ct of Godwhich called every man into t Th t fth d volition ted th l t f td fused it into a body derived immediately fromth parent but ltimately k out fth It thus constituted the one man the humbeing, by a union most unsearchable in its inner

THE NEOPLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND EPOCH3 I 5nature, most clear in its results, in which the soul isthe form of the body. The tie between the creaturethus made and the Creator is so stringent, the dependenceof the one on the other so absolute, that naturethrough its whole realm offers no parallel. For inevery operation of nature that which is produced isproduced out of something pre-existing. So far andno farther experience carries us, and an observationproceeding only from experience and limited to physicalappearances had left the Greek philosophic mindshort of the idea itself of creation. The parerirelation led up the nearest to that between thCreator and the creature. But the parent communicates only a part of his nature to the child, and thpart the less noble. The distance which remaistween the function of the natural parent and theact of creation transcends altogether the conception ofsuch fathership. The exercise of illimitable poweron one side finds adequate correspondence only inabsolute dependence on the other. Such a dependencewas the foundation of all that the Church taughtrespecting the duties and the hopes of man.2. The philosophy, proceeding from its false notionas to the nature of the human soul, gave a physicalnotion of evil as inherent in the junction of mind andmatter. The notion of evil which the Church assertedwas one purely spiritual, that is, rebellion against theeternal law in thought, word, or deed. The eteilaw is the sanctity of God exhibited in His c< mmands. These commands were summed up in therst and second tables of the law. The rebellion ofman against his Creator was therefore the radtion of sin and this rebellion would extend throughthe whole of his nature, beginning from the spirit,

3*6 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMand stretching out to the body as informed by thespirit. And though the conjunction of body withspirit afforded a large matter and occasion for sin bythe body being subject to one class of desires, whilethe spirit was moved by another, yet the seat of therebellion would be in the spirit alone. From italone infringement of the Creator's command inthought, word, or deed could proceed.3. In the Neoplatonic system, as in the Stoic, wefind a perpetual assertion of man's free-will counterworkedand contradicted by the whole theory of theproduction of the world. According to them that productionwas not the result of will but the necessarygoing forth of an absolute power, in which a physicalconcatenation of cause and effect could not suffer theslightest break. Consequently they were compelled toconsider that the actions of man, as part of thismachine, were bound by this necessity. Most pointedis the opposition of the Church's doctrine here, and onboth sides. In the ineffable inner life of God, thatFuthership, Sonship, and Procession of the Spirit, composingthe Holy Trinity, the greatness and majesty ofthe Creator are specially seen in His will to create.And the freedom of the reasonable creature so madeis the mage of the Creator's freedom in making.it The reasonable creature indeed cannot create, thatis, call out of nothing into existence, but it can producechanges in itself, and in something outsideitself, which by God's will is there. And so as thefreedom of the Creator consists in that His will isthe last ground of the being of creatures, the freedomof the creature consists in that the last groundof such changes lies in its will. This is to say thatin the sphere which God has assigned to our freedom

THE NEOPLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND EPOCH 3 I 7the operations which we can produce are but possiblethrough the nature of things, through the will of God,and our own constitution : to make them actual dependson our will. We determine whether they shallbe, which of them shall be, how long and in whatcircumstances they shall be."lAs a world evolved by necessity cannot admit afreedom of will in a subordinate part of itself, so aGod free to create makes a creature free in the choiceof his actions. This created dignity in man answersto that uncreated dignity of will in God, which is thesource of all beings outside of Himself.4. The evil which the philosophy saw was that themind should not act according to its nature as aneffluence of the divine mind, being drawn down bythe contact with matter. The good was such a restorationof order that everything in man and in societyshould be done according to this nature. But theChurch taught that the malady of human nature consistedin an inward rebellion of the spirit itself againstits Maker. Its good was the removal of that rebellionby the sanctification of man. Thus the word " sin "was used in the philosophy in a sense entirely opposedto that which belonged to it in the Christian teaching.In the philosophy it was the soul missing its aim,falling short of its intrinsic dignity as a portion of" the Divine/' and the body with which it was encumberedwas the perpetual cause of such a fall. In theChristian sense Sin was the disobedience of the creatureto the will of the Creator. If in the actual state ofman the body perpetually solicited the will to such adisobedience, yet the mind likewise was liable to classesof sins more dangerous and more difficult to overcome1 Kleutgen, Theologie der Vorzeit, i. 514.

THK FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMh thos by th body A and in tw ill telf hat s, n an errng use th bertyhich made its dignity, lay th seat f all sn. OfRedempt hat the philosophy k andd know nothin and ke manner of Sanctifit Both were repugnant t pt f thhuman mind But these two ideas w he spring ofChristian ethics and of Christian p m mttd th le m der to the indiidal and tthe body politic.The difference in the cwf after life correspondedto the difference in the view of the nature of goodduring life. In the philosophy the mind freed frommatter returned to that from which it had beensevered. Individual identity was lost. The body,prison of the mind, was for ever dissolved. The mind,after a longer or shorter sojourn in some new prison,was absorbed again in the universal mind. Insteadof this shadowy dream of immortality the Churchtaught the everlasting union of the human personwith the Triune God, the Giver of that personalitywhich is the highest completion of the creature'sbeing. But in this union the personal being wasfor ever maintained by the preservation of identityin the whole man, body and soul. As truly as in thisworld each man had been " the individual substanceof a rational nature," so in that world in which manwould find his true end the full man and the sameman should exult in the glory of body and soul underthe divine light of a vision unfolding to him thedivine essence. If to be a person, enjoying free-will,is the natural dignity bestowed upon man by God increating him, so, when he attained his true end, hewas not to lose that dignity, but retain it ineffably

THE NEOPLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND EPOCH3 I 9exalted. If the use of free-will on earth constitutedhis trial, and made up the quality of his virtue, thereward of both would not consist in the suppressionof the gift, but in such a union of the will with Godas left it free and made it blessed. The sight of Godis the accomplishment of this.6. It is in the doctrine^on which the Christianbelief is founded that the most thorough antagonismbetween the Neoplatonist system and the Church wasrooted. To the Neoplatonist the union of mind withmatter was the fall of the soul: the encumbrance, theimposition, so to say, of the body upon the mind, inwhich lay the ever-present cause of evil. Nothingtherefore could be more abhorrent from his principlesthan the assumption of a human body by the DivineWord. Thus what to the Christian was the greatest,the most magnificent, the tenderest work of God, wasto the Neoplatonist a scandal, a degradation, a blasphemy.That God should take to Him a materialbody, and work through that body the sanctification ofmatter, that His body should become the tree of lifeto every generation of His people, was to overthrowfrom its very foundation the philosophy we have beenconsidering, for it was a denial equally of its twoparts, its doctrine as to mind and its doctrine as tomatter. The human mind was not a particle "* of thedivine mind, for God assumed a human soul in orderto destroy the rebellion of every human soul againstits Maker. The union of the body with the mindwas not the cause of evil in man, for God assumed abody in order to give eternal life to every hi mbody. Thus the Incarnation carried in itself the cure)r all those erroneous notions respecting both mindnd body which had travelled down to Plotinus, if

320 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMnot from the teaching of Pythagoras, at any rate fromhis time, through the stream of Greek philosophy.St. Augustine, who was almost the contemporary ofPorphyrius, reproached him with having been deterredfrom becoming a Christian by this very doctrine,1 forhe could not give up his cardinal tenet that all contactwith the body was to be shunned, in order thatthe soul may dwell blessed with God.7. This error no doubt was radical in the philosophy.The unity of the whole human race, aspossessing reason, which was the ground of Stoicand Neoplatonic doctrine as to fraternity and equality,was falsely exalted by it into a divine unity by theassertion that reason was part of the divine mind. Itwas only by this fiction that it could be set againstthe Christian unity founded on the gift of the HolyGhost, which was bestowed upon the members ofChrist as the fruit of the Incarnation. This deificationof reason is the completion of the contrast whichwe have been noting between the philosophy and thefaith. It sets np nature against grace, as by assertinga natural affinity and identity of essence betweenthe human mind and the divine it attempts to give toman in his natural condition all that union with Godwhich in the supernatural order is conferred upon himas a gratuitous gift, the effect of an unspeakable loveon the part of God in becoming man.8. The summing up of the whole is this. In thephilosophy the Primal Being is the cause of things bytheir being produced out of him, though not voluntarily,1 DC, Ciritate Dei, x. 28. " Contemnis enim emn proptt-r corpusex fannina acceptum." 29. " Ideo viluit superbis Dens ille magister,quia Verbum caro fact inn est, et habitavit in nobis : ut parum sitmiseris quod aegrotant, nisi se in ipsa etiam segritudine extollant, etde medicina qua sanari poterant, erubescant."

THE NEOPLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND EPOCH 321but by a natural necessity. In the faith, God is thecause of all things by creating them out of nothing,by creating them according to an idea which is inHimself, by creating them for Himself. He is thePower which works, the Exemplar which guides, theEnd to which all things tend. Being in these threerelations the cause of the world, He is its sole author,yet absolutely independent of it, for it is not Hiseing and Substance which are the being and substanceof the world. He is as little the form of theworld as He is its matter, for He created both outof nothing, and with them called into existence theuniverse in its all but infinite variety. iIt is in His character of Creator that God is theRevealer of His will, the Giver of law, the Goverof mankind the Rewarder and the Punisher of mIt is part of natural religion to believe in Himhese. In the poets and historians of Greece, gously as Polytheism had lowered the conception cdivine things, yet a divine power was recognised twhich these attributes belonged. And a like recognition lay at the basis of the religious rites. In the popularmind and feeling such a power was still appealedto, often with a singular and personal appellation, asGod, or Father, especially in times of emotion, amidthe troubles and sorrow of public and private life.It is in the philosophical teaching from Thales toPlotinus that we find this conception of God mostobscured and least recognised. And the reason seems3 that such a conception springs out of thatCreatorship which this philosophy from beginning tcend denied, and in the most emphatic denial of itthe Neoplatonic system, expired.1 See Kleutgen, Philosophic dcr Vorzcit, ii. 865, 866.VOL. III. X

322 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMGreek thought in its best representatives was everinclined to a pantheistic origin of things, which formedthe very core of its latest system. It is incompatiblewith a God who is independent of the world, with anyfree ruling of the world by the power directing it,with moral freedom on the part of man, \vith allmoral dignity, with any real immortality of reasonablenatures, with retribution after death to man as apersonal being. There is neither moral freedom normoral dignity without the freedom of the will. Onthe other hand, the God, who gives their whole beingto things, can never desert the universe so made.Mind no less than matter is His mere creature;matter He moulds at His pleasure. His mostfinished work is endowing the creature with personality,as a self-conscious moral being, its own, and notanother's, and as such, an image of the divine immor-talitvJand self-subsistence. And the siffnsOof Hispresence are that He communicates His will, and inso doing establishes law, that He governs, rewards,and punishes. And if His government here is manifestlynot complete, because reward and punishmentby no means always follow according to His own law,yet His own being, the inviolable Sanctity which isHis nature, forbids that they should not follow hereafter.Among men the evil often triumph in this life,and the good suffer, of which the crucifixion of ourLord is the great example. But in this, the world'sutter condemnation, is contained also its imperishablehope, the well-head of Christian life, since the failureof justice here makes certain that hereafter in whichit will be fully attained. All these conceptions, thatis, the revelation of God's will as a rule to His creatures,the law thus established, the government of them

THE NEOPLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND EPOCH 323hich thence ensues, their permanent reward for theood exercise of their will, or their permanent punishmentfor the bad exercise of it, are in fact componentparts of the idea of Creator. Almighty God is atonce the Power creating all things, the Kule guidinthem, the End for which they are made.CONNECTION OF ANCIENT WITH MODERNPANTHEISMNote to p. 296.That the whole contest lies between a Personal and an ImpersonalGod, between a God who because He has created andmaintains all tilings and all beings is their Lord, and a forcewhich by an innate necessity develops itself in the universe, seemsto be proved by the history of philosophy from its earliest timeto the present day. Of the seventh century A.C. Kleutgen,Theologie der Vorzeit, vol. ii. pp. 204, 205, sect. 649, 650, observes:"Over against these systems of the Ionian school a pantheisticview of the world was formed in the Eleatic school, in whichthe pantheism of our own "days itself recognises its beginning.Whilst the lonians searched for the substantial foundation ofall beings in the endless multiplicity of atoms, the Eleatios,Xenophanes, Parmenides, and Zeno, de^cl. is Being,andOne that is real. ThatX* fnot. Things therefore can only be, in so far as they are theBeing. This Being, which is the All, can neither be originated,nor pass away : therefore as the Many and the distinctions ofthing?, so likewise all Origination and Passing away, which thesenses perceive, belong to the world of appearance. Thus wefind already here that interchange of the Logical and the Real,of the General and the Absolute, which lies at the bottom of allidealistic and logical Pantheism. AVhat the highest conceptioncontains, that is, Being in general, is put as somethir ,dVle to coincide with this Being. Further, sincePV

324 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMBeing, as embraced in the conception, is without distinct ion becauseof the conception's indeterrainateness, so the distinctions ofthings are made to disappear by means of the unity which theyhave in this Being. But the root of logical Pan theism comes out yetmore definitely, inasmuch as the Klcalics also explained thisOne, which they made to be the All, as the Reason, or theThought, which permeates and holds together the UniversalWhole of things as their proper and true essence. This conception,which is the All, is their God."The two opposing schools of the lonians and Eleatics wereyet accordant in two errors. Neither the one nor the other consideredGod as a Being distinct from the world, nor did theyrecognise substantial distinctions in the things of nature. Accordingto the Eleatics there is only one Substance, and all multiplicityof things, which appears to the senses, disappears before thethinking reason. According to the lonians there are indeed asmany Substances as there are elements or atoms, but things aredIt if old composition of this materialvhich is common to all. Thus likg subtantial is produced or destroyed ^^^^^^^^Spinoza's doctrine is thus summed up by Zeller, Gexchichte

THE NEOPLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND EPOCH325one undivided, unchangeable, infinite Being : which for that veryreason we must not change into a single Being, nor endow withfinalities which can onlv belong to finite beings, such as understandingand will. In virtue ofthere are in it infinitely many realities; it exists under innu-merable attributes, of which however we can only know two.Extension and Thought, because these only are given us in ourown nature.The corporeal world is Substance as it presents itself under the>rm, or attribute, of Extension ; the totality of souls or spirits ioubstance as it presents itself under the attribute of Thought.But as it is one and the same Substance which is discerned underboth these forms, both have in the whole and in the particularthe like contents. . . . Man, as much as every other being, is aportion of nature, and nothing can happen in his life which doesnot proceed with strict necessity from natural reasons. Hencethe human will, as our philosopher expressly declares^ is not afree but a compelled cause. The actions of men are to be regardedjust as any other appearance of nature, and their passionslikewise are just as much in agreement with nature as theirvirtues. For the philosopher they are not an object of blameand abhorrence, but of scientific explanation."In all this Spinoza seems to have simply reproduced andcarried out to its furthest consequences a thought which lay atthe root of the oldest Greek philosophy,, and was probably transmittedto it from the Indian ; which formed the core of Stoicism,and which Plotinus also made the centre of his system. Moreover,all modern systems of the infidel philosophy appear to bemerely variations played upon the same thought. ProfessorTyndalPs lecture at Belfast is the last exhibition of it."^rdLIBRARY ST. iVARY'S COLLEGE

LECTUREXXITUE RESPECTIVE 1'OWEIl OF THE GKKKK PIIlLOSOl'llY ANDTHE CHRISTIAN CIH RCII TO CONSTRUCT A SOCIETY" Who then and what is this Christ, who has tilled the whole worldwith His teaching ? . . . When and in whom of men that have been bornhas the teaching prevailed everywhere from end to end of the earth oneand the same, so that His worship found itself wings to traverse theworld ? "St. Athanasius on the assumption of human nature by the Word, andon His appearance to us in a body. Written about A.D. 318, sect. 48, 49.IN a former lecture, I traced from the time of Thalesto the accession of the Emperor Claudius the effectof philosophy in the way of forming a society whichshould be ruled by its doctrine. I had occasion toremark its utter impotence to unite together belief,morality, and worship, and by such union to satisfythe needs of the human heart and conscience in theindividual, or to construct a commonwealth. Havingnow in the last h've lectures dwelt upon the teachingof philosophy as it concerned the most important problemsof human life, and deduced the logical issue ofthat teaching as set forth in the Neoplatonic system, itremains briefly to consider the power which philosophyshowed to organise society during this same period,Torn Claudius to Constantino. As to doctrine, I havespoken successively of Seneca, Musonius, Epictetus,and Marcus Aurelius, who give us the spirit of theNeostoic school for the first one hundred and forty »'326

POWER OF THE GREEK PHILOSOPHY 327years of this period. Then, again, I have describedanother movement which was affected by Philo, andrepresented by Plutarch, Dio Chrysostomus, MaximusTyrius, Apuleius, and Celsus. In so doing I touchedupon the functions which philosophy attempted toexecute in the private life of the Komans and by theteaching of its professorial chairs in the great centresof Athens, Alexandria, and Rome itself. Before theend of the second century this latter school of thoughthad obtained a complete predominance. In the romanceof Philostratus we have seen it exhibited at full lengthin an ideal portrait of Apollonius. With it anotherlife of an imaginary Pythagoras by lamblichus, whichseems to have been published in the reign of Con-stantine,1 is identical in spirit. But the movementis already complete and final, and the last standing-ground of defence taken up when, two hundredyears after Seneca, Plotinus, in a series of lecturesat Eome, unfolds to the cultured classes of the greatmetropolis of heathendom the system by which hehopes to stem the progress of the Christian religion.It is the system which gathers up for a final effortthe whole force of pagan philosophy, and fights forthe multitude of gods with the arms of the pantheisticunity. I have just considered the three oppositionspresented by that system to the Christian Faith, thefirst and second in its conception of God, and of Hisconnection with the world, and*the third as shown inthat whole relation between God and man which maybe termed the collective result of the former twoprinciples. Having then dealt with the developmentof heathen doctrine over against the doctrine of the1 Zeller, v. 613, n. 2, remarks that the death of lamblichus may beset about 330.

THE FORMATION OK CHRISTENDOMChurch, it is lull time to consider the respecti?epower to form society exercised by the one and bythe other.IFirst of all, in order to see this society in its truelight, let us trace back to its source not merely theGni'co-Roman civilisation, but this great stream ofnations of which it formed the most cultivated part.We may leap over the intervening period since itsorigin stands out to us in clear light. Its starting-point is definitely fixed for all Christian believers, andthe direction given which it was intended to take.God spake unto Noah, saying, Go forth from theark, thou, and thy wife, thy sons, and thy sons' wiveswith thee. Walk abroad upon the earth, increaseand multiply upon it. Noah therefore went forth,and his sons, and his wife, and his sons' wives withhi m. ut Noah built an altar to the Lord, and tookof all clean cattle and birds, and offered holocaustsupon the altar. . . . And the Lord blessed Noah andhis sons, and said to them, Increase and multiply, andreplenish the earth. . . . Whosoever hath shed man'sblood, his blood shall be shed; for man is made afterthe ima^e O of God. . . . Thus also said God to Noahand to his sons with him, Behold I will establish Mycovenant with you, and with your seed after you.. . . And the sons of Noah who came out of the arkwere Shem, Cham, and Japhet. These three are thesons of Noah, and from these was all mankind spreadover the whole earth."Thus human society was planted 011 the soil of theearth wet with the Flood, and belief, conduct, andworship had one root at the cradle of the race. For

PO\VKR OF THK GREEK PHILOSOPHY 329wthis sacrifice to the One God was the witness of beliefin Him, and the actions of men rested on their belief,which was mirrored in their worship. So strong, soperfect, so self-supporting was the triple cord bywhich God bound in one the new society of rescuedman. And let us well note that He joined togetherthe civil and the divine society. The new father ofthe race was its priest. The covenant for perpetualgenerations was made with sacrifice, and so restedupon a positive right of the deepest signification. Thefamily from which nations should spring was thus consecrated,and the State sanctified in its birth by itshomage to God its Pounder. And this connectionwas the ideal relation between the commonwealth andreligion for the whole race.Again, it is to be noted that at the head of thecivil and religious society of man thus founded therestood one who had seen all the glory and civilisationof the old world before the Flood, and had moreoverbeen a " preacher of justice" to that "world of theimpious " in its corruption. It is not from man makingthe tentative efforts of an inexperienced childhood,and far less from man as he grovelled on the penaldescent of savagery, that the second society ofhuman race took its rise ; but it was set up infathership and headship of a Patriarch renownedp*^o "tried wisdom and eminent sanctity. Thus hisfirst step upon the recovered earth is to offer sacrifice; in which is contained potentially the whole ofman's religion to God ; and the importance of the actis signified by the words following it: " And God1 Ezech. xiv. 14. "And if these three men, Noah, Daniel, andJob, % shall -- be in it, _--- they shall deliver their own souls by " their v justiceHosts'3

33° THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMsmelt an odour of sweet smell, and said, 1 will nolonger curse the earth on account of men." Moreover,beside Noah stood his sons, likewise of full manhood,and likewise witnesses of what the old worldhad been and how it had perished. Thus humansociety was based at its second rise upon belief in theunity of God and upon a perpetual covenant madewith Him in the rite of sacriiice, which was a confessionof that belief. Thus it was at the same timebased upon the conjunction of belief in Him and worshipof Him with the first springs of human actionas a corporate body. At that moment, big with thedestiny of a world, the race was in the family, andthe word of the father became the constituent law ofhis descendants. A whole mass of belief as to thefuture of man was contained in this rite of sacrifice,which was a prophecy and promise of redemption andrestoration, made perpetually visible to the eyes andminds of men by recurring acts of daily life.A part of sacrifice was the public institution ofprayer, so that with the offering of it the daily wantsof man were presented before God, the daily praiseand thanksgiving of man to God as the Author ofhis being was made, and the daily confession of man'sand request for pardon associated with the bloodof the victim. Thus the essential parts of man'sinner life with God were connected with the outwardreligious rite, and the whole conduct of maninseparably bound up with his belief and worship.The sacrifice carries with it the priest, and the riteof sacrifice everywhere established among the childf Noah brought with it likewise altars and tempfestivals and processions. Let us consider these thii fo > fthe moment as they existed without corrupt

POWER OF THE GREEK PHILOSOPHY 331and before that process had set in; as they existed inall the portions of the human family, which had nowrun out into tribes and nations. All these things arelegitimately contained at least in germ in that accountwhich we have cited of Noah, as he emerged from theark and set foot upon the earth. If we reflect uponthem, we shall find that the union of the religiousworship with the civil society was a common goodbestowed by God on all the descendants of Noah.It was not a development of human civilisation; nota work of human craft; but the signet of divine careand providence stamped upon the forehead of the race,and guarded by every device with which reverencefor a primeval institution and the natural feelings offamily affection could surround it.The depth of the fall and the multiplicity of thecorruption which we are afterwards to witness oughtnot to blind us to the tenderness of the divine providencein bestowing this original good on the race.In order to assure its continuance, God surrounded itwith every care compatible with man's free will. Thebeneficent action of civil society depended on themaintenance and purity of God's worship in His unapproachableunity.If we look upon the nations of the world as presentedto us when history first opens on them, wefind that all of them were * communities in which thecivil power and the religious worship are in closealliance. Nay, this alliance is one of the " unwrittenlaws," more powerful and influential than any positiveenactment of which the date can be given ; for theselaws are the life of the community, the blood whichruns in its veins. Assyria and Egypt, Medea andPersia, Hellenic tribes, first monarchies and then

332 THK FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMrepublics, Etruria and Home, and no less the greatrealm of India, and China stretching through all timesin her vast peopled isolation, bear alike witness tothis alliance. Not only the house has its householdgod, but the city and its worship are blended together,and sacrilege is likewise treason. That in itself isthe legitimate carrying out of Noah's first sacrifice :the normal state of human life according to the divineideal given in the fathership of Noah, wherein belief,action, and worship are harmoniously joined togetherfor the man, the family, and the commonwealth.It is hard to calculate the enormous disturbanceof this triple union produced by the denial of God'sunity. By such denial man's conception of God wasessentially corrupted. As soon as God was multiplied,He ceased to be immense and infinite, all-powerfuland all-wise : He ceased likewise to be the God ofthe whole earth, and of the whole race of man. Theconception of the One God corrupted by the divisionof His Being ran speedily out into all the abominationsof false worship, as seen in its three main lines,worship of dead men exalted into heroes, worship ofinferior spirits, worship of the powers of nature. Thevarious false gods thus set up became national gods,and were made after the imaginationo of those whomthey were supposed to protect. We are led to concludefrom the passage of Scripture recording theconfusion of languages that it was a punishment forsome great act of pride and rebellion on man's part.It may be conjectured that the earth ceased to be ofone tongue at the same time that it ceased to worshipone God, and it is certain that the variety of languages-^^^"- ensuing upon the dispersion of men over theearth was rivalled by the variety of gods whom the

POWER OF THE GREEK PHILOSOPHY 333dispersed peoples began to worship. In fact, whenthe corruption had gone on for some centuries, itwould have seemed as difficult to reduce to that ori-ginal worship of one God the worship offered by miiheir various d hich they had sunkt th P f m 1 d m god as toluce all the speeches which m in h dispd duced to his origin S Thtdeed a singular and mysterious parallel as well asynchronism bet h betw th deflectionf the human speech from the original languae-e. cr o andhe deflection of polytheistic worship from the worship3 red to God by Noah.But the union of wor ,hip with th autho y 'had been the foundation-stone of human societyas laid by God ihitect. and would have ensuredd and beautiful structure, fitted r all tl df man, was deeply and fatally affected by the risef Polytl Th fi th trdued strukd >wn to t 7 d f th hhilst the union indeed did not cease, its blessingwas d cases h h pt wastreme it miht seem to be almost changed O into acurse. Thus every act huma fe, both domestd civil, being td with ligious rit dw rship, th hip, when falsified bjectmight lend itself to the desecration of most sacredhins and turn religion into a pon againstty h case t y of Bab andher Asiatic deities but of Greek and AndG d generally had come to be immmen of human passions and superhum n p Yetthey were in the thought of the peop th guardf the A p he defenders of the land h g

334 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMof the harvest, and to them the original rite of sacrificewas still offered, and to them the mental sacrificeof prayer still ascended. Now prayer and sacrificewere the primary goods of human nature, the heirloomof Noah's f'athership, which his children in thedepth of their moral descent had retained, but sostrangely degraded. And for prayer and sacrificethe moral nature of man, still possessing from age toage sound reason and upright natural sense, and sopersisting to be the witness of the one true God inHis fallen world, continued to yearn amid all thecorruptions with which they had been tainted.When philosophy first raised its head in Greecethe corruption of the public worship had proceededvery far: yet the union between the city and itsworship was still unbroken. Moreover the greatlineaments of an original revelation from God to manwere preserved in the popular mind. The monarchyof Jupiter, a witness imperfect indeed and faltering,but still a witness to the original doctrine of thedivine unity, was impaired by a multitude of deitieshis assessors. Then again the support which theconception of creation gives to the relation of theGodhead to the world was wanting to the Greek,who only recognised a world generating itself out ofPrimal Matter or Chaos, not a world which the Godheadmade by an act of free-will. Moses set at thehead of all being a God who created because Hewilled to create, whilst in the whole Greek mythologythere is not to be met the conception of a Creator,that is, a Being before all things, who in absolutefreedom produces the universe as it pleases Him.11 Niigelsbach, Narlihomcrizchc TJicoloijir^ p. 71, who refers alpo tor>mmi, Gricchixchc Giittcrlchrr, p. 7.

POWER OF THE GREEK PHILOSOPHY 335Yet in spite of this ,defect it would appear that inGreek belief the gods collectively maintained thewhole world in its existing order. It was believedalso that the individual man in all his circumstances,in his whole spiritual and moral nature, was ruledand determined by the deity. Nor was it supposedhat the gods only worked upon the individual, butkewise that they guided and ruled the lot of pand states, and sent punishments upon them. Andthis divine rule was believed to be not only one ofpower but a moral government. Men conceived thgods to determine the course of events, and to maintain the right which they had established among merOn the maintenance of this right the moral order cthe world rested. They had made and they supportedwhat we call the law of nature. Thus in a well-knownpassage Sophocles speaks of "that holy purity of wordand deed, whose laws are inscribed on high, born inthe celestial sky, whose sire is heaven alone, nor haththe mortal nature of men produced them, nor willoblivion ever lull them to sleep. In these God isgreat, and grows not old."l So further, as thefoundations of the State are laid upon marriage andthe family, marriage itself was deemed to be thecreation of the gods, together with the variety ofcharacter and occupation given to the man and thewoman, which make the tie possible and desirable. Itis also to be noted that penal I justice formed an essentialpart of the divine idea in the Greek mind. Thus,they believed that the deity exercised his office ofpunishing with a law so stringent that he wouldrather destroy the innocent with the wicked, if theywere bound up indivisibly together, than pardon the1 (Edipns Rex, 863-872.

THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMsinner for the sake of the good. It is a summary ofthe general belief in this respect to say that penaljustice was represented as an original and everlastingprinciple of the world's government, maintainedZeus himself.1Thus the individual thought of inquiring mindsfound itself in the presence of a society which offeredto the observer two very different aspects. On the onehand was a civil and religious order, closely united,coming down from remote antiquity. It bore upon itthe tokens of an original divine sanction, with largeportions of a divine tradition preserved in it, with greatand venerable institutions, that of sacrifice showingtraces of a primeval covenant between God and man.Under this lay a revelation and a promise, that ofprayer, which forrr.ed part of the ordinance of sacrifice,expressing the perpetual relation between God andman, a divine government of the world. Togetherwith these were oracles, in which man professed toseek divine guidance in the trials and obscurities ofhis private lot, as well as in public dangers ; and furthermysteries, in which he also sought for deliverance fromguilt. This on the one hand. On the other the wholeof this religious order had suffered an incredible corruption.First the unity of God had been divided,and by that division the conception of His eternal andinfinite Being unspeakably degraded : next, His sanctity1 The above propositions are proved by a great array of quotationsfrom Greek authors by Xiigelsbach, pp. 71-84 and 30-36. 1 take onetruly JEschylean pas- ige, L'ho(^h, 309.vrl-yXuxrcra reXetV^W T6vfi\6fj.evoviraffaovaa A IK?; /J.ty' avrel"avrl; ' dpdaavTi TTO.!j.vdos rd5e

POWER OF THE GREEK PHILOSOPHY337had been tainted by the character of the false godswhich mythology had invented. Thus a priesthood,which had everywhere been established to dischargethe functions of His worship and declare a daily beliefin His government of the world, became the instrumentof corruption in offering this worship both tothose to whom it was not due, to false gods, and tothose who were besides unworthy of any honour, asimpure and unholy beings. And so the four greatheads which contain the whole religious life of man,whether individual or aggregated, Prayer, Sacrifice,the instruction of man in the divine will, and hisdeliverance from sin incurred, had suffered as it werean usurpation by an evil possessor, were held down ininjustice. The original good of the great primaryrevelation had passed under the power of an enemy.Now, as I began by stating, I have elsewhere 1 dweltupon the conduct of philosophy in the presence of thiscomplex aspect of human society during the periodfrom its first rise in the seventh century before Christto the reign of Claudius, and have drawn out theresults which it produced on the belief and actions ofmen. When the Christian Church appeared in theworld it may be said that the corruption of the goodwhich I have been noting had reached its ultimatepoint of intensity. Bearing in mind, then, what hadbeen the original constitution of society, and what wasthe nature and extent of the corruption under whichit had fallen, we have now to consider the respectiveaction of philosophy and of the Christian Church fromthe time they began to co-exist during ten generations,in the face of this perplexed and difficult problem, andwith a view to restore what had been corrupted.1 Lectures xiii. and xiv. vol. iiVOL. III. Y

33$ THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMIII. In all the various peoples composing the RonEmpire, except the Jews, belief as influencing acthad been detached from worship. The ereat actworship, sacrifice, subsisted in its material integrity,nd was performed daily on countless altars, and wastill connected with various priesthoods belonging t(he several deities. And certain stated prayers were>ffered still in coniunction with the sacrifice. Butthese priesthoods were not connected withby any hierarchical rule and institution. The religionstraditions to which their very existence bore witnesswere not drawn out by any religious writings into anyspecific form. Throughout this whole realm of heathendom,in all its regions, no religious instruction washabitually given. The priests discharged their severalliturgic offices, but the cure of souls, the forming thereligious character of their people, did not enter intotheir practice, and made in the opinion of the peopleno part of their function.Thus sacrifice itself had long failed to point to thatgreat religious doctrine for which it had been instituted,and so had ceased both to prophesy and topromise. It was performed mechanically, and theood of the nation or individual for whom it wasffered, and the favour of the gods, was supposeddepend upon its performance, whilst the reason of tdependence was lost to the mind both of people andpriest. There was then absence not only of churchbut of religious dogma. There remained only a traditionalbelief, which still acted as a ground of conductfor such as followed the leading of conscience,

POWER OF THE GREEK PHILOSOPHY 339and there was a customary worship from which latterconduct had been detached. And the most strikingsign and proof of this detachment is the fact that thepriest was nowhere approached as the adviser, exhorter,and trainer in the religious life. This fact in its deepsignificance is beyond question. Its explanation is tobe found in the division of the divine unity which hadbroken down and laid waste the union of belief andconduct with worship. Mythology, which is themirror of popular belief, is itself the result of false,that is, polytheistic worship. As long as men believein one only God, no mythology is possible, as there isnone among Jews, or Christians, or Mahometans. Butthe division of the divine unity introduced gods ofthree sorts, deified men, deified spirits, deified powersof nature, and mythology is the endless play of humanfancy, differing according to the mental quality ofvarious peoples in describing the various attributes andactions of these various deities. Such wild fictions,mixed up indeed with religion, and containing somedisguised and disfigured religious truth, could not bereduced to the severe and orderly arrangement ofreligious instruction, could not form a consistent codeof human duty, any more than a theory of correctbelief. So the priest of the false god ceased to teachhis people religious truth and a rule of life. Hebecame a mere sacrificant; he was no longer an in-structor; and specially he ceased to teach what thesacrifice which he outwardly performed carried in itsinward meaning. And in his own life there hadequally ceased to be a connection between upright conductand the priestly office.Thus in all this period the strange result is seenthat in the various trials of life, in bereavement,

340 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOManxieties, and perplexity recourse was not had,-iny priest. Again, in whatever attempt there waso form and maintain a moral conduct of life, it wasthe philosopher whose advice and exhortation weresought. And once more, it was to the philosopherthat the education of youth was entrusted. Everywhereand at all times human nature has threeabiding needs, and the higher its civilisation themore it feels them. These needs are to be consoledin its trials, to be directed in its difficulties, to beinstructed in its belief, and in the duties which springout of that belief. As to all these at this period menturned away from the priest, for he had forfeited hischarter by serving false gods, but some men betookthemselves to the philosopher. Let us see how hesped in the work thus put on him.2. Cicero and Seneca, as we have seen, both proclaimedphilosophy, not religion, to be the guide oflife. Consequently they turned entirely away from theworship offered to the " immortal gods " upon innumerablealtars by all the various nations who didhomage to the rule of Rome, and sought for peace,tranquillity of mind, and all the dignity of moralnature from the effort of human thought, the searchfor wisdom. Their countrymen generally acceptedthis view and ratified it by their practice. In theretinue of a Roman noble was usuall to be foundone who was termed " his " philosopher, as anothermight be called his steward. From casual mentionof philosophers at the Courts of Augustus, Nero,Trajan, Hadrian, Julia Domna, and Elagabalus, welearn that these professors of wisdom were, if notas a rule, yet frequently to be found living in theclosest intercourse with the emperors. One remark-

POWER OF THE GREEK PHILOSOPHY 34!able instance given us by Seneca in the case of themost sagacious of princes, Augustus, will serve toindicate the part which they played. In his Consolationto Marcia, Seneca bids her to follow theexample of her friend, the Empress Julia. In thefirst outburst of her grief for the loss of her sonDrusus, she sought consolation from Areus, " herhusband's philosopher." And she found him of greatservice ; more than the Eoman people, whose sorrowshe would not increase by her own ; more than LAugustus, who was already overthrown by losing oneof his supports ; more than the affection of her sonTiberius, who by redoubling his devotion to her soughtto compensate for his brother's loss. And the influenceof Areus upon a woman so chary of her confidencewas grounded on this, that up to that day he hadbeen the constant companion of her husband, towhom not only their public acts were made known,but, both as to husband and to wife, their " deepheart-courses and its motive seeds." l This instancestanding at the head of Csesarean history will showthe wonderful vantage-ground occupied during thisperiod by philosophers in the eclipse of the influencewhich reasonably and properly belongs to religion.If we add to this confidential position in the bosomof the great Eoman families the means of propagatingtheir doctrine given by the possession of the greatprofessorial chairs in large cities, accompanied withample revenues and high consideration, we can estimatewhat opportunities were afforded to the pro-1 Seneca, Ad Marciam, 4. Areus says of his intercourse withAugustus, " Assiduus viri tui comes, cui non tantum quse in publiciimemittuntur nota, sed omnes sunt secretioreg animorum vestrorumniotus." I venture to translate the last words by a beautiful linefrom Father Newman's poems.

342 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMlessors of wisdom for acting upon the public opinionand the private practice of men.This being so, it becomes the more interesting toknow what they taught. Into this confidential situationall the philosophical sects entered. It is statedindeed even of the second century that the greaterpart of those who as Headers, Educators, and Companionslived in the houses of distinguished Pomans,followed the Kpicurean principles:1 but there werelikewise Stoics, Peripatetics, Cynics, Platonists, Eclectics,as afterwards Neoplatonists. Now these sectswaged a continual war with each other, a war carriedon with the most jealous bitterness, and offering tooutsiders the spectacle of irreconcilable contradictionseven in the first and most important questions. Ofthem Cicero had said in his own time concerningthe first question of all, the Being of God, " we arecompelled by the disagreement of the wise to beignorant ' of our own Lord and Kuler. We knownot whether we are subjects of the 'Sun or theEther."2The same remark might have been made of themall for three centuries onward down to Plotinus andPorphyrius. If, indeed, they had no common doctrine,still less had they any union of a society betweenthemselves. Not only was the Stoic not a Platonistor an Epicurean, but the Stoics and the Platonistshad no society of their own. They were all mereunits, each working by himself. But to completethe view of their situation we must bear in mindthe split between the inward conviction of the phisopher, whatever he might be, and his outward pract1 Tzschirner, Fall d< x Hcid< iithums, p. 15- Lucullus, v. 41.

POWER OF THE GREEK PHILOSOPHY343of the vulgar worship. Philosophy, in fact, was attemptingits cure of souls upon the basis of human nature'sintrinsic strength, the force of free inquiry, and thisin complete severance from that foundation of tradition,custom, and public law on which the worship rested.Yet the philosopher himself frequented that worship.He was trying to do the work of religion, withoutbeing a priest in any sense of the word, nor did thepriest attempt the work of the philosopher. It wasnot only that they remained apart, and that troubledconsciences went to the philosopher and not to thepriest. There was likewise this, that the philosopherconsoled and instructed not by the hopes, the fears,the ordinances of religion, but by an esoteric teachingof his own quite at variance with the religion. Letus observe the two characters in Marcus Aurelius.He is the most profuse employer of the establishedrites and offerer of endless sacrifices so that the whiteoxen threatened to fail, not to say that he is officialPontifex Maximus of all the religions sanctioned bythe empire; but his philosophy, and that is the wholeinward man, stands quite apart from these. It is ahard Pantheism, an iron order of physical sequence,in which prayer and sacrifice are utterly unavailingand out of place. There is no harmony whateverbetween the philosophic communer with his soul andthe worshipper of the gods.The same contradiction belongs to Epictetus, toPlotinus, and to Porphyrius. No one of these philosophersstood aloof from the public worship: no oneof them frequented it with the belief of the un-philosophic vulgar mind. Their patronage of it, infact, was setting a new meaning on it which wasnothing better than a falsehood. Their frequenta-

344 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMtion uf the public worship gave the lie to their inwardteaching. This indicates the temper of the second andthird centuries as to the relation between philosophyand religion. It is, in the minds of the culturedclass, the juxtaposition of an esoteric belief, likethat of Epictetus, or Plutarch, or Plotinus, with anoutward and likewise real honouring of the gods, atleast as to the visible ceremonies of worship, butwith no harmony between the two; nay, with anutter contradiction.Never before had philosophy been so honourableand so lucrative a profession. We have hithertospoken of those who practised it seriously, but ofcourse there was a multitude of pretenders, philosophersof the beard, cloak, and stick only, who aredescribed by their rivals and enemies, the Rhetors,as the pests of society. The Cynics especially, underwhose name Epictetus has given a portrait of his idealteacher, bore a bad character. They were creditedwith every vice contrary to their assumed profession.Lucian has given us a vivid picture of the trickery,vanity, grasping avarice, and immorality of the pre-tenders to philosophy. And he is surpassed byAristides, who says their grasping is insatiable ; totake from others their property they call communityof goods; their envy is termed philosophy, their persistencein begging contempt of money. Insolent toall other men, they crouch before the rich, and evenbefore the cooks and bakers of th rich. Theirstrength lies in shameless cupidity, insulting, andslandering. iHowever, without dwelling on the abuse, we mayreflect on the work which the best of the class wereQuoted by Dollinger, Ueidenthuw, p. 605.

POWER OF THE GREEK PHILOSOPHY 345attempting, the men such as Areus among Court chaplains,such as Cornutus, Musonius, and Taurus amongeminent Romans, such as Epictetus among the Greeks.These men took human conduct for their field of labour,but they detached it from belief on the one side, andfrom worship on the other. As to belief, the philosopherwas, in spite of himself, member of a societywhich had inherited large portions of an ancient orderof things based upon the government of the world bythe godhead. From this, however, he had emancipatedhimself as far as he conld. His philosophy, as a workof simple human reason, was in opposition to religion,tradition, and usage, and to all the rites which belongedto this triple source. As to worship, he had noneof his own. Not once, in any instance from Socratesto Plotinus, did the philosopher proclaim and openlypractise the worship of one God, and of one alone.That same effort of reason which had alienated himfrom the corruption of the popular religion, shouldhave led him to such a proclamation and to the correspondingpractice. But he built his system ofhuman conduct on the dignity of that reason as article of the divine essence, and as the essentialpart of man, not on submission to that Lord andRuler, whom, as Cicero said, the dissensions of thephilosophers compelled men not to know. As to thehomage of the heart to God, all these philosophwere an unworshipping race. Their accommodtion to the worship of the gods from JupiterzEsculapius was equally universal with their omisto proclaim and adore " the Lord " of human natand of human beings.3. Another characteristic of philosophy is of greatportance, both to show its nature and temper and

346 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMto calculate its influence. Viewed as a movement, it-touched from beginning to end the cultured class only.It may almost be termed a pastime for the rich. Itsprang from a few men who bore in after times thename of " the Wise," and who were certainly of conspicuousmental power. By those who had reachedthe highest point, first Pythagoras, then Plato andAristotle, it was admitted that the study of philosophywas fitted only for the few. Throughout all its existenceit was confined to the narrow precincts of " theschools," and expressed contempt for " the unphilo-sophic mob." It took no account of the poor, theignorant, the female sex in general, of the vastpopulation engaged in manual labour, which at thattime lay almost, without exception, under the ban ofslavery. All this means that while it assumed thereligious office of being " a cure for the sick," it leftthe generality of the human race outside of its cure.Being destitute of charity, it despised their ignorance.Let us take a double instance of this. That conceptionof God into which the last and at length thesole prevailing school of philosophy settled down, theconception, that is, of an abstract power or forcerunning through all things, was a nonentity toordinary men and women. This philosophic god ofPantheism never was a god of the people, and nevercan be. It would be a liberal computation to supposethat this notion of " the Divine" could have anyexistence for one in a thousand of the human race.But while Plotinus discoursed with profound earnestnessand false mysticism upon such a god to thegreat lords and ladies of Rome, in the days whenthe minister of Valerian was torturing St. Laurence,he left the unphilosophic multitude to frequent the

POWER OF THE GREEK PHILOSOPHY347rites of heathen worship. They cared nothing forhis " Primal Being," but they burned incense beforethe statue of Jupiter, and were given up to a mostunspiritual devotion of Cybele and Aphrodite. Thusboth in what it taught itself, and in what it sufferedthe vast majority to practise, philosophy was exclusiveand eclectic. It was in all its course the exact contradictionof that divine word, " To the poor the Gospelis preached." It may be added, that in its conductit entirely disregarded that citizenship of the wholehuman race which it was the boast of Stoicism to setforth. The principle which we are told was inherentin Zeno's doctrine did not develop itself for manygenerations after him; but it remained always atheory, never carried into effect by philosophers. IfStoics taught universal brotherhood, Christians alonepractised it.4. Taking then the period from Claudius to Con-stantine, what had philosophy done to reunite thetriple strand of human belief, conduct, and worship ?It found belief and worship separated from each other,and conduct left to the insufficient support which theremains of an ancestral tradition gave ; and it showeditself absolutely impotent to create a society whichshould live and flourish by the union of the three.This creation of society is the test of power. It wasin the beginning a divine work. Human corruptionhad done its worst upon it, had divided the greatparts and made them struggling adversaries in a hugedislocated mass, rather than members yielding theirco-operation according to the measure of each part inone body. Philosophy could not repair the corruption.It produced, indeed, individual writers, used in thecloset, and affecting cognate minds, such as were

34* THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMJSeneea, Epictetus, Plutarch, Nutuenius, Plotinus, Por-pliyrius, and the rest. The utmost that one couldsay of these, supposing, which is far from the i'act,that each had taught truth and accordant truth withthe others, would be that they were like irrigatedpatches in a desert, lying apart, and insufficient evento form an oasis. ut where was the philosophic landfull of pasture for the human flock, and watered withfountains for human thirst ? Philosophy could makeno such a country. They who strove to set up anideal Pythagoras in envy of the work of Christ, neverattempted even that society which Pythagoras, fraughtwith the elder wisdom of Egypt and the East, conceived.All this work of teaching in private families,of philosophers acting as quasi-chaplains to noblemen^^^M__l__ or emperors, of great _^H__T professorial chairs, of supposedCynic missionaries discoursing upon human rights andduties to mixed audiences from city to city, endedin this way. One day the most famous of philosophersasked an emperor, conspicuous for his persecution ofChristians, to bestow on him a city wherein to drawtogether the devotees of philosophic teaching. Theemperor refused. Platonopolis never existed in Campania,and philosophy in all the Roman world couldmake no city of its own. It had, indeed, wielded thearm of demolition against things once sacred, and thenworn out or perverted, but it did not possess materialsof its own to build with, and still less the art ofconstruction.The positive result appears to be this. An attemptwas made to prop up the falsehood of the polytheisticworship by substituting a pantheistic unity. A handfulof philosophers announced this unity, and asprinkling of the educated classes accepted it. The

POWER OF THE GREEK PHILOSOPHY349people, however, went on worshipping its ancestral anddebased, though personal, deities. And in the meantimethe State, led on by the philosophers, furiouslypersecuted the Christian society which had gathereditself everywhere together under the real unity of theone living God.inWhen Constantine in the possession of the imperialauthority cast his eyes over the vast Roman world ofwhich his sword had given him the sovereignty, whatdid the mind of the statesman discern ? He saw thatthe work inaugurated by Peter in the capital of hisempire had had an enduring success. In the intervalof two hundred and seventy years the vigorous treeof the Apostle's planting had been shaken by manya persecution, and had come forth from all with rootsmore deeply driven below, and branches more widelyspread above. Nor was it merely that the spiritualsociety had divided into regions the whole city ofRome, erected basilicas, portioned them among priests,and filled them with worshippers, so that the emperor'sown gift of the Lateran palace for the residence of aPontiff who had just come forth from the catacombsseemed only in keeping with the importance of theplace which he occupied in the mother-city of theRoman dominion. The spiritual mother had beenas fruitful in the spiritual order as the creatrix ofcolonies and municipalities on the banks of the Rhoneand the Rhine, the Ebro and the Thames. Constan-tine held in his hand the network of the Romanadministration, and the emperor both saw and feltthat in five hundred cities of his empire the work of

350 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMPeter at Eome had been imitated and repeated. Thesame structure which I have described in a precedingchapter had grown up, modified in some measureaccording to the differences of place and circumstance,but identical in character throughout province afterprovince. To use the metaphor of Tertullian, theApostolic See, like a fruitful vine, had sent out suckersin all directions, and the plant had everywhere preservedthe likeness of that from which it was drawn. Norcould he fail to see that the organisation was as completein the East as in the West; that there alsosuffragan sees had radiated from two Apostolic centres,on both of which rested the name and power of Peter.The second rank in the- Eoman Empire among citieswas held by that wonderful creation of Alexander'sgenius, the city of Alexandria. Thither Peter hadsent his disciple Mark, who had founded a Churchin his blood. In strictest dependence on it eachEgyptian city had received its bishop. Thus inConstantine's time the whole mass of the bishops ofEgypt moved as by one impulse under the hand ofMark's successor and Peter's representative, the Primateof Alexandria. The third city of the empire, Antiochthe Great, metropolis of the East, gloried no less inPeter as its first bishop. Antioch stood at the headof a large number of metropolitans and bishops, whosesees had been propagated from its bosom, and coveredvast provinces as far as the Tigris and the Euphrates.Here was a principle of spiritual growth which Con-stantine saw by the experience of nearly three centuriesto be as strong, as stable, and as fruitful as anytemporal power of the Roman polity which he held inhis hands. Here was an authority which he perceivedlikewise with the evidence of sight not to be of the

POWER OF THE GREEK PHILOSOPHY 3 5 Iearth earthy, for it had grown in spite of all worldlyinfluence, in spite of that imperial power whose forcenone knew better than himself. The acts of his predecessorswere before him, and of their last and mostdesperate attack on the Church he had been an eyewitness.He knew that during all that time it hadbeen at the best and always discouraged by them,at the worst and often persecuted. The sameness ofthe structure and the multiplicity of its extent inthis spiritual creation could not fail to strike themind of such an observer as Constantine. It wasa sight worthy of a Roman emperor, for it waswrought with more than Roman order, wisdom, andpertinacity.This was the fact, uniform and universal, as itmet the eye of Constantine. Its existence cannot bedisputed nor its force parried. By the side of it alldiscussion of certain points of detail, as, for instance,how the Apostolic power became restricted in thebishop, yet that of the bishop everywhere superior tothe priests, must be termed otiose and fruitless. Itake the unquestionable result of the Church's developmentby her own intrinsic power, since she was notfavoured by the State but throughout opposed, as theone fact which I need, and as the only one which Ithink it worth while to state. Before it all speculationsof infidel criticism fall to the ground: the factis a thousand times more powerful than them all,speaks for itself, and is sufficient. It is enough tolook upon the finished structure of the divine buildingas it rose before the gaze of the first ChristianEmperor.When Constantine examined the nature of theauthority thus everywhere set up, which so moved

352 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMhis admiration that it won his acceptance, he wouldfind it the same in all places, and its sameness toconsist in a triple force distinct yet bound togetherin its operation. This force corresponds to the intellectand the will in the human soul, which is at onceboth intellect and will, and, thirdly, to that homageof both these powers, which the soul offers to itsMaker. This force is the office of teaching, and soinforming the intellect; the office of ruling, and sodirecting the will in action ; the office of sacrificing,which is the presentation of both intellect and will totheir author. These are the three rays of the divinesovereignty as partitioned to the Prophet, the King,and the Priest in the great type of the Jewish people,which together form a perfect government and commonwealth,which satisfy the needs of human nature,and produce its good. These are the powers whichwo have seen dislocated in heathenism, bestowedindeed upon the race in its first ancestor Noah, butdisturbed by the treason of man in giving the incommunicableName to the offspring of his own lusts, andfinally, in the lowest descent of corruption, set againsteach other. These are the powers which the IncarnateGod took up into His own Person, giving themby that assumption a divine consecration, and fromthat Person recommunicated them to men exalted andenhanced. The triple force, as it remains everywhereidentical in character, so it is everywhere bound togetherand no more separable. The teaching cannotbe exercised fully without ruling, nor both withothe sacrifice, which betokens their completeness. TheTeacher, the Shepherd, and the Priest is one in origin,being none other than a divine Person, as He appearsin that adorable act of power, wisdom, and love which

LIBRARY ST MARY'S mi IPOWER OF THE GREEK PHILOSOPHY 353made and carries on the Christian Church. The workcontinues one likewise in operation by the Church inall times and places. The teacher who does not holdspiritual rule is an impotent teacher; the teacher whodoes not offer sacrifice is a false teacher. How poorwas the mere sacrificant who did not teach, though headministered a rite in itself full of teaching, we haveseen in the fully-ripened heathen corruption. Howmiserable was the separation of action from belief andworship we have seen in that same corruption. Infact, the efficacy of each several function lies in theirunion.The office of the Teacher, the Pastor, and the Priestis carried on undivided in the whole Church, but inits bearers it is seen in three degrees. In its fulnessit dwells in the Sovereign Pontificate; in its diocesanderivation it is stored up in each bishop; it is diffusedthrough the whole Church in the priesthood. WhenConstantine examined it he found the Christian Episcopatein all lands. No Christian community existedwhich did not form part of a diocese under the rule ofa bishop. Between diocese and diocese there was theutmost variety as to extent and population, but in allthe same organisation, and the rank of the bishop ineach the same with regard to all who were under hiscare. If this had been all, the Church would nothave formed a kingdom, but at the utmost a confederationof provinces far more numerous than the provincesof any temporal kingdom, and in proportionliable to disruption. The power which was to lastfor ever and to defy the gates of hell, would havebeen the weakest and most dissoluble of all powers.It was not so that the Church had grown. It was notso that the great commission, " Feed My lambs," " BeVOL. m. z

354 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMhepherd over My sheep," had been understood andCarried into practice. The One Flock was to remainOne. It was propagated from the Primacy of Peter,and in the Primacy of Peter it remained for ever oneand indissoluble. The more the brethren of Petermultiplied, the more they required to be confirmed.This was the bond of the faggot, without which thearm of the opponent could break every separate stick.This the keystone of the arch by which alone it coheres,and bears the weight set upon it. This the formwhich impressed unity of teaching and government onthe whole body. And the Christian priesthood, oneand the same throughout the whole, and making upthe multitude of teachers in each diocese, might betermed the blood of this body. The great variety offunctions which it discharges answers to this similitude.The Church which Constantino beheld acted throughoutand in all its work as one body. To contemplatepriest or bishop or primate as acting separately andby himself would be to separate and so extinguish thelife which makes the body.The unity just described is not a sort of super-induced perfection adding a lustre to its subject, butis indeed that without which the subject cannot exist.This will be seen by considering what are those greatworks which in her teaching, her spiritual rule, and herpriesthood the Church is bound to exercise. Sheexercised those works in the time of Constantine, sheexercises them now, and will exercise them for all time.I. The first of these is the manifestation to theworld of the fact that Grod had become Incarnate, andof the consequences springing from that fact, whichbegin with the individual man, but permeate thewhole human society and transform it. This is the

COLLPOWER OF THE GREEK PHILOSOPH 5religious truth which the Church is charged to communicate.It is a word spoken by authority, the concurrentwitness of the whole Church, not the speculationof an individual, not a literature, but the deduction ofa whole intellectual creation from its first source, aprocess in which all gifts of the human intellect areto be used. It is a perpetual work from generationto generation, lodged in the whole priesthood, to dis-charge which a line of men consecrates its mind.At the same time it is a work executed under strictlaws of order, wherein the priest is subordinate to thebishop, and every bishop to the Apostolic See of Peterin its occupant. Thus there is unity in the truth tobe so communicated, which extends through all timesand places, and with unity there is all the force derivedfrom impact. The philosophic school scattersitself into endless divergencies; the Christian priesthoodremains one and indivisible in its propagation ofthe truth with which it is charged. But within theselines of unity and order there is room for the play ofevery human faculty, and the free exercise of everyintellectual gift. The truth thus endless in itsapplication, offering so rich and inexhaustible asubject for the labour of every mind, springs indeedfrom a mystery which is received only by faith. ThatGod the Son has condescended so to touch His creationas to enter Himself into the line of human nature, tohave a Mother, and to call men His brethren, as wellas God His Father, this is a fact to which the order ofmen above mentioned bears witness for ever. Itsreception nevertheless rests upon a gift of God, anillumination of the mind to which we give the nameof faith. When once so received, the development ofthe truth offers scope to the most rigorous philosophiciC

356 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMthought; nor has the human mind ever reached ahigher o decree o of excellence than in some of those whohave exercised its powers in this development, as, forinstance, St. Augustine among the Fathers, and St.Thomas among scientific theologians.The main work of propagating this truth is doneby word of mouth. The word thus originally pouredforth is often indeed gathered up and stereotypedafterwards, but in its propagating power it is essentiallyfluent and oral. It is the work of persons uponpersons, and therefore of speakers upon hearers ; for thewhole life of the speaker, his bodily presence, his moralcharacter, impregnate the truth which he delivers forthe reception of the hearer.The oral delivery of the truth divides itself intotwo main branches, orderly exposition by discourse,and instruction by question and answer. To conceivearight and adequately the force and grandeur of theinstitution which produced an order of men dedicatedto this work we must recall the sight as it met theeyes of Constantino, and regard it from his point ofview. In every city of his empire he saw this workof preaching and catechising carried on simultaneouslyby a body which had arisen in spite of many activepersecutions by the imperial government, of invariableand long-continued discouragement, calumny, and ill-will on the part of the influential classes in society, offrequent violence by the people. He saw the heathenpriests in attendance upon countless temples rich instatues and works of art, and endowed with costlyrevenues. He saw them, perfunctory ministers, as theyperformed a solemn service of sacrifice daily at thealtars of their various deities, declaring no religioustruth, unvisited by any anxious conscience. Again,

POWER OF THE GREEK PHILOSOPHY357his empire was scoured by philosophers who contendedwith each other in a chaos of ever-varying opwithout authority, unpersuasive and fruitless to thrn iss of mankind. To the cultured few who listened ttheir disputations, they were unable to give any definitnotion of that cloudy god of fire, or ether, or the universal mind, whom they obscurely hinted at. At thsame time, and in every city, he saw an orderly societyof bishop, priests, and people taught by them, of theyoung instructed by laborious interchange of questionand answer, of the faithful collected together, cheered,exhorted, and directed by the unfailing proclamationof a religious truth, one, definite, precise in all places.We have preserved for us an instance of this preaching,the more precious because it stands at the beginningof this institution, is addressed to the profthat philosophy which we have been so long considering,and represents the bearing and attitude cthe institution towards the philosophy. It shows athe same time how it set forth those very truthsconcerning which it was vain to seek for any definiteinformation from philosophy, the One God, the relationof man to Him, and of the various members of thehuman family to each other.When St. Paul in his apostolic travel first came toAthens, his spirit was stirred within him at the sightof a city given up to idolatry. His discussions withStoics and Epicureans in the market-place led to theirdemanding an account of his doctrine, and of the" strange things which he brought to their ears." Hewas led to the Areopagus, and at their demand gavethem what may be termed a manifesto of the ChristianChurch to the Greek philosophy. His words area summary of three hundred years of action, for tha

358 THE FORMATION

POWER OF THE GREEK PHILOSOPHY3 59appointed, giving assurance of this to all by nHim up from the dead."The fitness of this doctrine for the circumstwhich it was given will appear if we reflect that itw s uttered in the high place of philosophy, at theuest of its two most powerful sects, and that itcontains a summary of the relation between God andman which will vainly be sought in Plato or Aristotle,or in the whole line of Greek philosophers from Thalesto Plotinus. For with the utmost simplicity andprecision St. Paul declares there to be One God, whois a living God, inasmuch as He is the Creator of allthings, and by the fact of creating the Absolute Lordof all beings. He gives life and breath to all, andwants nothing of them. He has made every nationof men of one blood, and predetermined the times andboundaries of their habitation over the whole eartleaving them to search and feel after Him, yet remainingso close to every one of His creatures, that theylive, move, and have their being in Him, and are Hisoffspring. The fact that they are His offspring oughtto prevent their conceiving the Deity to be like anywork of man's hand or thought graven in gold orsilver or stone, for how much nobler is the mind ofman himself than any such works, and this mind isonly a faint reflex of the Creator. However, Godpassing over, as it were, the times of this ignorance,now calls on all men in the whole world to repent,because He will judge not this or that people but thewhole earth in j'ustice, by the Man whom He hasappointed, giving proof of this appointment to all byraising Him from the dead.If we compare this proclamation of St. Paul withthe evolution of Greek thought from Seneca to Plotinus

360 THE FORMATION OF CHI:ISTENJ)OA1which we have been tracing, we shall see that thegreat preacher pointed out to his hearers exactly whatwas wanting in their conception of God and man.He knitted the unity of God with His Creatorship,and deduced from the latter the entire dependence ofman on God, and the absolute sovereignty of God,which is the counterpart of this dependence. Thenfollowed the unity of the human race, and the unfailingprovidence of God, encompassing every creature wholives, moves, and has in him the being derived fromHim, and every nation, which, wherever it may dwellover the face of the whole earth, only occupies theboundaries predetermined for it by the Creator. Agreat defect degraded the conception of God entertainedby Greek philosophy from its beginning to itsend. This statement of man's creatorship at oncestruck at that defect whilst it also contained in itselfthe censure of that gross idolatry to which both Stoicsand Epicureans in their practice showed themselvesbasely subservient, an idolatry afterwards patronisedby Plotinus and his followers. For the God whocreates is a jealous God, who will not give Hisglory to another; but the pantheistic god of forceadmits all forces as parts of itself into its universalbosom. St. Paul likewise by the simple statementof God's absolute lordship over all, who were allequally His creatures, cut the root of that arrogationof superiority for one race over another which wasfostered alike by the Greek pride of mind, and theRoman pride of dominion, and established therebyquite another bond between men than that devisedby the Stoic fiction of the divine reason dwelling inman. Then he drew the practical conclusion fromthis. God had given the nations knowledge of Himself

POWER OF THE GREEK PHILOSOPHY 361from which they had fallen away, and had maintaineda daily witness of Himself in their hearts by theabsolute dependence of their life upon His power andgoodness. He had suffered them indeed to incur anignorance which was caused by their own will, andnow He called on all men everywhere to prepare forthe judgment of their actions by the Man whom He hadappointed Judge of all. And the proof of this appointmentlay in that resurrection from the dead,which is the seal of man's undying personality: adoctrine which philosophy had as entirely failed toteach, as it had shrunk from giving to God the gloryof creating.Let us multiply this preaching of St. Paul by thedaily voice of the Christian priesthood in five hundredcities, and we reach some conception of that powerwhich was so persuasive in its unity and simplicity,so vast in its range and influence. What was philosophy'slecture-room and the daily contradictions ofthose who spoke there, in comparison with it ? This,however, was but one half of that oral delivery of thetruth on which we have been speaking. Its otherdivision consisted in the catechistic instruction. Suchdoctrine as that of St. Paul's above was distributedato a series of short statements and imparted care-ully to those who were under teaching. The catechismled to systematic and perspicuous arrangementof doctrine, which is a most powerful security againsterror. Moreover, it offered the mind continuenourishment in small portions, and induced reflectionby imparting knowledge in the form of question andanswer. Thus it came to pass that a child in thChristian community had a distinct conception cthat Maker and Father of the universe whom Plat

362 THE FORMATION OF C'll K1STENJ)OMfound it both hard to discover, and when discoveredimpossible to declare to all.e must endeavour to realise this order of oralteaching by discourse and by catechising as establishedthrough the whole Church and in perpetualoperation. It was quite new to the actual heathenworld. The freedom, the richness, the accuracy thusimparted to religious teaching had nothing similar toit in all the nations forming part of the empire,outside of the Jews. Its connection with the Jewishforeshadowing ^ ' of it I have treated elsewhere.1 Fromit we proceed to consider the second great work ofthe Church. The first has been addressed to the intellect,the next will be addressed to the will; butthe two are not divided in their application. Simultaneouslywith her instruction of the intellect, theChurch unfolded the manifold treasure of her sacramentallife.2. When the philosopher had addressed the reasonof his hearers, he had exhausted all his strength.Now the whole action of the Church exercised uponthe intellect by the imparting of truth in its twodivisions, as described above, was accompanied by aparallel action on the will. Revelation and gracewent hand in hand. In the case of those who werewithout the fold, the oral instruction of the proselytewas terminated by the baptismal rite, one name forwhich was Illumination. Moreover, it was likewise anew birth of the soul, investing it with divine virtuesof faith, hope, and chanty. In the case of those whowere within the fold, the oral instruction of theyoung was accompanied by the grace which belongedto them as baptized, and their appropriation of the1 See above, Lecture xv.

POWER OF THE GREEK PHILOSOPHY363truth thus imparted grew with their growth andtrengthened with their strength. It was strongnough to carry St. Agnes at the age of thirteen tmtempt of the world and to martyrdom. At 1me when human passions ordinarily assault theart, the grace of confirmation came to make thChristian complete. Through the whole time of hiswarfare the Bread of Life was offered to him asthe perpetual nourishment of the regenerated soul.Through the whole time of his warfare another sacramentlikewise opened to him the gate of penance,and enabled him to wipe away the spots of sin contractedthrough negligence or deeper guilt. Further,the whole triple order of the teaching, the pastoral,the sacerdotal function was conveyed by a divinegift, and was the subject of a sacrament belongingto itself. Though every act of this triple functionbelonged to the intellectual nature of man, it receiveda divine consecration of the will, an imparting ofthe power of the One Prophet, King, and Priest, andby this consecration the intellect was fertilised. Thesame divine power likewise touched that bond of thesexes by which human society is held together, andhuman love burned more brightly and lasted moresteadfastly when fed with the oil of charity. Evensickness and the danger of death were not left withouta special force to be exercised upon them by thepriests of the Church. The power of the sacraments,that is, the unction of the Prophet, Priest, and King,covered the whole ground of daily life. The humansoul is at once intellect and will, and the acts of eachrun into each other and are indivisible. So in thegreat work created by the Author of the soul theone and the other were equally provided for, and the

364 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMillumination of the mind was accompanied by theforming of the will. The whole domain of humanconduct was thus touched and encompassed by thesacramental life, which constituted the ordinary stateof the Christian.3. But this union between belief and action, betweendoctrine and conduct, was powerfully upheldby the offering of the One great Sacrifice to theOne God in all lands. This Sacrifice contained thesupreme act of worship, the homage to God of bothintellect and will. Moreover, it likewise contained initself indivisibly the expression of great truths, thosetruths on which the human race lives its real life, thosevery truths which popular heathenism had obscuredand degraded, and which scientific heathenism in itsphilosophy had denied. The very shrine of Christianbelief was the Offering of Christ which brought invisible form before the Christian daily the supremeact of divine love. To it all eyes turned, and for itall hearts yearned. He who attended that Sacrificetestified thereby that God was one alone, and thatHe was the Creator; testified moreover that Hehad become Incarnate, and had wrought Redemption ;testified, thirdly, that He maintained perpetually thework which He had wrought. The offering of thisSacrifice was the perpetual guardian of truth in theChurch; it was no less the perpetual guardian ofcharity. It confirmed daily the charter of thatcovenant which had been made with Noah, and thenbroken by his posterity; which was made afresh withAbraham, and established for ever in the Son ofAbraham and David. The offering of this Sacrificewas the third work of the Church, indissolubly blendedwith her whole task of instructing man's intellect and

POWER OF THE GREEK PHILOSOPHY365persuading his will. And Constantino beheld thatin five hundred cities of his dominion, and whereverthe Christian community existed, this Sacrifice wasoffered incessantly, and gathered about it the mostfervent prayers of all worshippers for the variousorders of the great Christian Church. In it wereremembered princes and governments, relations andfriends, enemies likewise and persecutors, the prosperousand the afflicted, departed souls who had notyet fully discharged the temporal punishment dueto sin. In it, in short, the Christian heart prayedwith absolute unanimity for the living and thedead.In this triple function which made up the perpetualwork of the Church, teaching was inseparably boundup with action, the informing of the intellect with themoulding of the will. And equally close with bothwas the union of the Christian Sacrifice. It taughtdaily before the eyes what the sacraments communcated. It set forth 4Jesus Christ crucified ; and He wthe beginning and end of the teaching ; He was thsource and giver of the sacraments. The severpowers which a corruption, whose seat was in thewill much more than in the intellect had disunitedhe society originally set up by God for the whol, and which philosophy, assuming as it did thffice of religion, had utterly failed to reunite, where once more joined together. The teaching, thsacraments, and the Sacrifice embraced the wholinner life of the individual from childhood to age,m birth to death. The heathen priest had worshipwithout teaching; the philosopher taught without aworship; but to both the wide field of human actionT suffering lay apart from the teaching or the

366 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMworship. On the contrary, that triple work of instruction,spiritual rule, and worship, which occupiedthe priesthood of the Christian Church, touched everycondition of life with its inexhaustible charity. Anincident of modern life will serve to show what wasas true in the fourth century as it is in the nineteenth. " One day," says M. Cochin, " scarcely a fewmonths ago, I was walking in the court of thInstitute with M. Cousin, and a learned professorphilosophy. A young curate had just passed, andhe went from us towards the bride M. Cousin lookg at him from a distance, stopped and said to hislleague : ' My friend, we have been teaching philophyall our life ; we call young men of educationther, and endeavour to prove to them by labus arguments that there is a soul. In the meantimewhat has this young priest been doing, and wherehas he been going ? He goes to reconcile the soulsf husband and wife, to strengthen the soul of anld man at the point of death, to struggle with vicein the soul of a bad man, with temptation in tsoul of a young girl, with despair in the soul of thunhappy, to enlighten the soul of a child. And wewish to throw such people as that into the river !It would be better for us to be thrown in ourselveswith a stone about our necks. Let us be honestenough to admit what they are doing for souls whilewe are trying to recognise the soul's existence.'" lBut the priesthood thus engaged was one in itsnature and character through every diocese. So theauthority of the bishop was one and the same in all;and the guardian of both in teaching and spiritualrule was the Primacy of St. Peter. Thus the organi-Lnoonlaire's Correspond tn^f ?r/V/> Mtnlamc Sioetcki^e, p. 570.

POWER OF THE GREEK PHILOSOPHY367sation of the great Christian commonwealth was asperfect as the direction of the individual's life and conduct.There is every reason to believe that this organisationpowerfully affected the mind of Constantine, andthat he looked upon it as a result beyond humanwisdom to contrive or human ability to execute. Letus think of it for a moment from the point * of viewfrom which it appeared to him.For indeed it is in the joint action upon the threegreat forces which together constitute human life,that is to say, the belief, the conduct, and the worshipof man, that the definite formation and establishmentof the Christian Kingdom consists. To make such akingdom is a work by itself, single, and withoutparallel in all time. It had no predecessor; it hasno rival; it will have no successor. It is a distinctwork of Christ over and above His teaching, over andabove His suffering, built upon both, but a furtherexercise of power. We shall be helped to see howgreat this power is by reflecting on the utter impotenceof human genius in those who had preceded Himto do anything of the kind. The force of it lies notin the number of bishops or believers, but in thecharacter of a perfect and afc the same time anuniversal society. And it is not a nation which isselected as the recipient of such a society, so that anysupport for it might be drawn from natural qualitiesor locality. The embryo of such a society had beenset up by God as a-type in the Jewish people, but itceased to be national before it could become universal.The wonder here is that such a society was impressedon the most heterogeneous elements, in the greatswarming hive of confederated peoples called theRoman Empire. The material elements, the men of

368 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMvarious races of whom it was composed, the differentclasses, rich and poor, learned and ignorant, a multitudeof slaves, and a mass of the female sex which had lainfor centuries enthralled and degraded by the strongersex, all these in themselves, and still more in theattempt to weld them together, portended dissolution.The society was maintained not by force of them butin spite of them. Again, it was maintained withoutbreak or failure amid a multitude of sects which usedthe same liberty of internal belief that itself possessedto break away from it: which successively rose likebubbles and dissolved. Again, this society had beenformed and attained full effect in the ten generationsduring which it had never been legally tolerated, andwas often actually persecuted. What that persecutioncould be none could tell so well as an emperor, andConstantine had indeed witnessed the full force in theEast of the last and worst himself. And it had beenformed right in the teeth of the cultured classes, whichturned from it with aversion, and gave themselves inpreference to philosophy, that is, to the unaided effortsof human reason. These were the antecedents whenConstantine saw it, and no human ingenuity couldhave suggested any adequate reason for its subsistenceexcept a divine power: and this he recognised,and therefore he set the Cross upon his diadem.He saw the whole society as based upon the Person 4of the Son of God Incarnate. This alone was itsreason for existence ; this alone the adequate supportof its existence. The whole teaching, pastoral, andsacerdotal office in all its parts was simply a derivationfrom Christ. It was He who created the teaching,named the pastors, and invested them with His ownpriesthood after the order of Melchisedech. They

POWER OF THE GREEK PHILOSOPHY 369were drawn from His Person. They dated fromthe Ccenaculum and the Day of Pentecost. Again,every priest throughout the Church by the possessionof these three functions and in the union of themrepresented Christ. The bishop in every diocese bythe same possession and union represented Christlikewise; but in him the teaching and the pastoralfunctions had a larger derivation of the virtue of theHead. So lastly the Primate of the whole Church,inasmuch as he possessed with one and the samepriesthood the teaching and pastoral functions in thehighest degree and immediately from Christ, was in apre-eminent sense His Vicar. This was the Rockwhich Christ had laid so that " though there be inthe people of God many priests and many pastors,Peter should rule all with ordinary whom Christ alsorules with sovereign power."1In this sense it is that the Church is the realisationof Christ in the world as King and Legislator. Noother kingdom is wrapped up in the person of thesovereign, and developed from him. This is the uniqueglory of the God-man. But that union of belief,conduct, and worship which was perfectly carried outonly by Him, was pointed at in the preceding dispensations.As we have seen, the society establishedby Noah, which itself was a repetition of the originalsociety as constituted in Adam, and which carried onthe same rite of sacrifice, began in this union, and1 St. Leo, Epist. iv. 2. It may be noted that the first foursermons of St. Leo, preached the first upon the day of his consecration,and the three following on the subsequent anniversaries, that is, inthe years A.D. 440, 441, 442, 443, contain a statement of doctrinerespecting the Primacy of St. Peter, as continued in his heir, theBishop of Rome, which is identical and coextensive with that setforth in the First Dogmatic Constitution concerning the Church ofChrist decreed by the Vatican Council.VOL. III.2 A

370 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMgradually declined from it. The nations as they comebefore us in a state of moral degradation show traces ofit. But in the dispensation given to Moses the triplemediation of Prophet, Priest, and King made a completesociety for the Jewish people, and was in this atypical picture of the great world-wide Church whichshould spring out of its bosom. Nevertheless, tocarry that into effect, and to maintain its effect in theworld from age to age, the personal action of theDivine Legislator was needed, and Constantine, andin him the Roman Empire, acknowledged that action,and did homage to the King in His Kingdom.

LECTUEEXXIITHE CHURCH RECONSTRUCTING THE NATURAL ORDERBY THE SUPERNATURALVIN that intellectual battle of three hundred yearswhich we have been narrating in so many precedinglectures, all the power of civilisation from Claudius toConstantine stood on the side of the heathen philosophy.It started in possession of the cultured mind,it was favoured both by the prepossessions of thehigher classes and by the wishes and policy of thegovernment. It was not merely free from all interference,but munificently endowed. In all the worthiermembers of the philosophic profession it broughthonour as well as means V of living to be a philosopher.It flattered in the highest degree the national feelingof the Grecian part of the empire, which comprehendedgenerally the men of letters, inasmuch as it was themost glorious heirloom of the Greek mind. The verynames of Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle touchedtheir remotest descendant with a halo of renown. Itwas favoured no less by the political feeling andinstincts of the Romans, who viewing philosophy inits alliance with the established religion consideredit to be supporting their empire, which from Eomulusand Numa downwards had been associated with theirworship. On the other hand its opponent startedfrom the deep opprobrium of Golgotha, to the Jews astumbling-block and to the Greeks folly ; its standard-371

372 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMbearers were fishermen relieved by a publican and atent-maker, all of them from a despised and odiousprovince. It laid hold of the ignorant, of women,and of slaves, and its adherents among the culturedclasses were for a long time few and far between.Under these conditions the contest began and wascarried on, and at the end of ten generations Philosophyhad proved a rope of sand, utterly powerless toform a society out of its adherents. On the other hand,stretching her organisation throughout the empire anddischarging her triple yet simultaneous work of theteaching, the pastoral, and the sacerdotal function witha unity which no persecution could mar, and no sectrival, the Church presented to the emperor's searchingeye a divine society. To it he certainly looked for therevivifying of his empire, when he took the banner ofthe Cross for his Oriflamme, and inscribed upon it thewords of the heavenly vision, " In this sign shalt thouconquer."It was on such a victory that St. Jerome lookedback a hundred years later when he wrote to the nobleRoman ladies Paula and Eustochium, c< If any oneseeks for eloquence and takes pleasure in declamations,he has in the one language Demosthenes and Polemo,in the other Tullius and Quintilian. The Church ofChrist was drawn together not from the Academia orthe Lyceum, but from the meanest of the multitude.Whence too the Apostle said, ' Consider your vocation,brethren, that you are not many wise according tothe flesh, not many powerful, not many noble, butGod chose the foolish things of this world to confoundthe wise, and the weak things of the world to confoundthe strong, and the base things of the world and the1 In Epist. ail Crdfdtas. torn. vii. 486.

RECONSTRUCTING THE NATURAL ORDER 373things that are contemptible has God chosen, andthings that are not, that He might bring to noughtthings that are. For because the world had not learntGod. ^^^^^" by wisdom from the order, the variety, and thesettled continuance of creatures, it pleased God by thefolly of preaching to save those that believed, not bywisdom of language, lest the Cross of Christ should bemade of no effect.' But lest he might be thought inthus speaking to be a preacher of unwisdom, heoverthrew with prophetic mind a possible objection,saying, < We speak the wisdom of God in a mysterywhich has been concealed, which no one of the princesof this world knew/ Who is there now that readsAristotle ? How many know Plato's books or evenhis name ? Scarcely here and there a few old menin their retirement turn them over. But our country-in and fishermen the whole world speaks of: they) voiced by the universe."Perhaps it is well for us in the nineteenth centuryto refer to this simple mention of a fact in the fifth.For it is a victory never to be forgotten, being indeedthat miracle which seemed to the greatest thinker ofthat same fifth century the greatest of mor so the Catholic Church viewed in her course up tohis own time appeared to St. Augustine.But it.was not only that Philosophy failed to forma society; it likewise failed and utterly failed up tothe - time of Constantine to implant " the belief of oneGod in the hearts of men. St. Paul addressed theStoics and Epicureans in the Areopagus of Athenswith the words, " I proclaim to you that God whomyou unknowing worship." For two centuries and ahalf from the time these words were spoken theChurch pursued her work on the one hand, and Philo-

374 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMsophy its discussion on the other. At the end of thattime what was the result? The pantheistic god ofPhilosophy never got beyond the lecture-room, wherehis audience comprised a sprinkling of cultured menand women, who employed their learned ease in listeningto a Plotinus or a Porphyrius, and worshipped atthe same time the gods of Greece, or Egypt, or theEast. Up to the reign of Constantino it may safely besaid that Philosophy hud never caused a single idolaterto desert his idols, or a single servant of the temple togive up her unholy worship. But had the belief inthe philosophic god been far more real than it was,there is yet a vast difference between the existenceof a doctrine on paper, and the impressing thatdoctrine upon the lives and habits of men. Thetest of spiritual power lies in producing action, intransmuting belief into conduct. Heathen life wasaction ; Christian life was action; Philosophy was talk,or writing; the talk evaporated in the lecture-room ;the writing never passed further than the paper. Forthe recitation in the restricted lecture-room was but apage out of a book which the hearer might receive ashe pleased and do what he pleased with. All thewhile there were statues in myriads of temples to amultitude of gods, sacrifices upon myriads of altars,priests who offered them, national and hereditarytraditions hovering around them, customs of life andhome affections connected with them, these were areality, a great and abiding force, which Philosophydid not attempt to overthrow, of which indeed it hadmade itself the ally. Plotinus and Porphyrius and lam-blichus were perfectly good friends with Jupiter and hiswife, and all his children legitimate and illegitimate.I. The doctrine th;it there is One God, distinct

RECONSTRUCTING THE NATURAL ORDER 375from all other beings, subsisting in Himself, intelligent,free, and the Creator of all things out of nothing, isthe foundation of human society and of morality. Tore-establish this doctrine in the minds and hearts ofmen, corrupted by a false worship which for ages hadobscured it, and was itself tainted with unspeakableprofanations, was a task of the greatest difficulty. Atthe time of Constantine it had been accomplished bythe Church through the joint and simultaneous actionof her teaching, pastoral, and sacerdotal office. Not onlydid the whole of this action turn upon the Person ofChrist, but the fact that it did so turn led to the resultthat every "/ doctrine was brought O out in the form of aconcrete fact. Let us observe this with regard to thatmaster doctrine the Being of God as above set forth.St. Paul ended his address to the philosophers, inwhich he so clearly and precisely challenged them to_ »accept the God who was the Author and Preserver oftheir being, with the words, " Because God has appointeda day wherein He will judge the world in»equity by the Man whom He has appointed, givingassurance of it to all by raising Him up from tbedead." The Resurrection of Christ was a fact whichall could comprehend. It formed the basis of theApostolic teaching. But it led on to the further doctrinethat He was the Messiah and the Son of God.Now in what sense was He the Son of God ? Andwhat was His work as Messiah ? Here again thedoctrine when unfolded led up to the mysteries of theRedemption and Incarnation, and to the primalmystery of all, that God was one in Nature yet threein Person, and that the Fathership, the Sonship, andthe Procession of the Spirit made a triple personalityin the one divine Essence. The preaching of Jesus

376 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMChrist crucified-a simple fact, concrete if ever factwas-carried in its bosom all these consequences.And one of the first acts of the Church was to embodythem all in a short document which was taught byheart, and so given to each disciple as the symbol ofhis faith. It was in the main a simple statement ofa number of facts concerning a Person, His birth,His life, His death, and His resurrection. The powerof a document like the Creed, summing up the chiefheads of a perfectly concordant and harmonious doctrine,was very great. It was also new, and nothinglike it had been known in the heathen world. Itsounded in the disciples' ears like a trumpet to battlein the ears of the soldier. Indelibly impressed onthe memory, repeated morning and night, it remindedthe disciple with every day's coming and departurewhose he was and in what power he stood. Thus itwas that the Creed formed Christ in the Christian, andin so forming fixed in him the belief in the Living Godthe Creator of man, who was at the same time theGod and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ.Moreover, this teaching was only one touch of atriple instrument. These same doctrines of the Redemption,the Incarnation, and the Godhead wereapplied to the disciple by the whole hierarchy of theChurch, that is, the perpetual daily action of the priest,or the bishop, or the Primate, in continual exercises ofauthority, all of which had their reason of existencein the Person of Christ alone, and without Him weresenseless and profitless. All the sacraments utteredthose doctrines vocally and expressed them in a concreteform. Baptism itself made the Christian in the nameof the Triune God; the Eucharist supported him withthe llesh of Christ crucified; Penance remitted his

RECONSTRUCTING THE NATURAL ORDER 377guilt with the voice of Christ, and by applying themerits of Christ; Marriage set the blessing of Christupon the chief relation of civil life, and raised it atthe same time to be a type of His union with HisChurch and of the soul's union with God.Furthermore, in the great act of Christian worship,the culminating point of the Christian's life, these samedoctrines, the Kedemption, the Incarnation, and theTrinity in Unity, were daily set forth in action.There above all the Bishop or the Priest stood in thePerson of Christ, spoke the words of Christ, and bythe virtue of those words-an act of no less thancreative power-accomplished the Sacrifice. In theliturgy above all was enshrined the belief that one ofthe Divine Persons became incarnate and was crucified,and thereby redeemed the world. The belief thusembodied became a concrete fact, and all who hadattained the age of reason could make it their own.Thus by the joint action of personal teaching, ofthe hierarchy with its attendant sacraments, and ofthe Sacrifice, the Church exhibited the mysteries ofher faith, the great supernatural doctrines of theTrinity in Unity, the Incarnation, and the Redemption.And in doing so, as it were by a surplusage shebrought out, illuminated, and made concrete to everymind and heart the conception of God as distinct fromthe world, free to create or not to create, and caringfor His creatures with intensest love.But I must note further two points in this mode

THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMPersonality in God. The whole of the above teachingof Christ in the triple office of the Church, as atonce God and Man, was thereby of the greatest serviceto the Christian. The cords of a man enabled him tocomprehend God in that respect in which Philosophyhad most erred, and wherein the reason of Pythagoras,Plato, and Aristotle had fallen short. And secondly,the distinction of Persons in the One Essence of Godafforded help in the same direction, since it is thestrongest example of Personality which can be givento the creature. It is also the most emphatic denialof Pantheism, on which that ancient paganism restedas its ultimate basis. On it every fresh paganism whichhas arisen or will arise must equally rest. For theDivine Essence is absolutely One, yet in it theFathership, the Sonship, and the Procession of theSpirit constitute eternal relations, which are theDivine Persons. There is no other distinction in Godthan these. And they are inseparably connected withthe work of human salvation, each co-operating inregard -^^^"- to that by which they ^^ are Divine Persons.The Father co-operates by giving His Son, the Son inconferring His Sonship upon men His brethren, theHoly Spirit in conveying the gift of the divine Love,which He is Himself.The whole loveliness of the Christian Faith was thusexpended in setting forth God as He is in Himself, inHis personal relations. Redemption threw back alight upon Creation, and the Unity and Personalityof God were conceived in one lisrhtOof faith.The restoration of the belief and the worship of theOne living God may be said to be among the greatestworks of the Church, and in accomplishing it she laidafresh the foundation of human society.

RECONSTRUCTING THE NATURAL ORDER 3792. The credibility of the Christian Faith was restedby its heralds and proclaimers upon a fact, the resurrectionof their Master in the body in which He haddied upon the Cross. This was their guarantee to theworld of the truth which they sought to promulgate.When St. Paul said, " If Christ be not risen again,then is our preaching vain, and your faith is alsovain ; yes, and we are found false witnesses pf God,"he expressed the vast importance of this doctrine, andits special position as basis of the Christian fabric ofbelief. Nor was there any doctrine which morekindled the animosity or sharpened the scorn of theheathen than this of the resurrection of the body.When the Stoics and Epicureans heard it, " somemocked, while others said, We will hear thee againabout this matter," a time which probably never came.Yet there was a doctrine about the immortality of thesoul, that is, the intellectual principle in man, currentat least among philosophers, and that something ofman survived after death was generally believedthe multitude of men, and was borne witness to upontheir tombs. What then was the reason for thisanimosity and scorn ?All arguments as to the immortality of the sowere in the force which they exercised to persuadas nothing in comparison with one fact of ChristResurrection. For this fact, the foundation of Christianhope, without which Christians were, as they arestill, of all men the most miserable, established in tmind the conception of the eternal personal subsience of the human compound, soul and body, distincfrom God, but sustained by Him. It was the corollary to the doctrine of the Personal God: it didthe manhood what the preceding doctrine did for th

380 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMGodhead. But such a conception of the eternal andpersonal subsistence of the human compound had droptaway from the Gentile mind together with the beliefof a God creating and therefore absolutely detachedfrom the world. Thus it was that when the Apostlesurged upon their hearers the resurrection of Christin the body in which He suffered, and with it theresurrection of all men in their several bodies afterHis example, they set forth a belief which touched thewhole life and conduct of the heathen man in its everydetail. It was the greatest moral revolution whichcould be imagined, for it altered the value of everythingin the world. If this were true, that alsobecame true, " What shall it profit a man to gain thewhole world and lose his own soul ?"Not only hadJulius Cassar, and Tiberius, and Nero to look to it, butZeno and Cato of Utica no less, for what had Philosophyhitherto done with the soul ?Plato, after Pythagoras, and carrying on his doctrine,argued for the post-existence of the soul afterthe death of the body, on the ground of its pre-existeucebefore it entered into the body. And this again wasconnected with the doctrine that all intellect is oneand divine, and so not subject to death. Thus theyheld that when man's life on earth in the body began,it was not a creation but a union of the intellectualprinciple already existing with so much matter, a unionwhich was to terminate at death. Then the matterwould be resolved into other changes, and the mindwould recur to its former state. If therefore any distinctbeing was thus supposed to be carried on, therewas a want of continuity in its condition, unrelievedby any further hope. The body which had been thepartner and instrument of all its work on earth ceased

RECONSTRUCTING THE NATURAL ORDER381to be connected with it. But in point of fact theheathen belief as to the lot of the soul itself was quitevague and undetermined. The philosophic opinionjust cited was that the mind in its pre-existent statehad, at least originally, not been severed from theuniversal mind, and apparently in its post-existentstate it was, at any rate in the end, to return to itsfirst condition. Thus the conception of man evenduring his earthly life as a personal being was imperfect.With the union of the soul and body at anyrate the personality disappeared. This was the philosophicbelief at the highest point which it reached.But what was the popular belief? It was a struggleof human desire and affection, a whispering too ofconscience, and the lingering echo of old traditionagainst the fear that death was the last determiningline of each human life. For the Greek the touchingwords of Moschus express an universal plaint:" 0 muse of Sicily, begin the dirge,Woe-woe-the mallows dying in the garden,Or the green parsley and the florid aniseRevive again,, spring up another year.But we, the great, the mighty, and the wise,Once laid in death, lie voiceless in earth's Losom,A long, a boundless, unawakened sleep."And Catullus mourns for the whole Latin race :" Suns set, and suns can rise again,But our brief light of day once goneYields to one endless night of sleep."And the plaint too often turned into the carouse : letus eat and drink, let us crown ourselves with roses,let us love, for to-morrow we die. That we may besure will be the practical result with the vast majority,if they can bring themselves to believe that after all

382 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMthe joys and sorrows of life, after all its struggles andcares, after its shortcomings and its crimes, with death" like stivaks of morning cloud they melt into theinfinite azure of the past." lNothing therefore could be more distinct eitherfrom the philosophic doctrine of a qualified post-existence of man's spirit, grounded on the pantheisticnotion of an universal mind, or the popular mixture ofincertitude, sorrow, desire, and despair as to a life ofman after death, than the peremptory doctrine, Christis risen from the dead to be the Judge of all men,who likewise shall rise in their bodies from death todie no more. As the same Christ who had beenfied who had been laid in the tomb rose in thvery body in which He had suffered shame and tment, so each man should rise to receive erood or

RECONSTRUCTING THE NATURAL ORDER383about the heathen tomb, became the man, with all hisaffections, all his aspirations, and, it must be added,with all his deeds upon him.Let us note further two corrections which thisderfully pregnant fact brought with itFirst there was the correction of a long and manifoldscientific error which showed itself in the greatestforce in the last or Neoplatonic phase of Grecian philo-sophy. There had been a disposition throughoumake Matter the seat of evil, as if there were somthing essentially unruly, which was so inherent inthat it baffled even the power of the Demiurge tovercome and reduce it to order. Again, the Platonistmade the body a mere instrument of the soul, not a]essential part of man's nature; or, again, the priso:the spirit, not its partner and yoke-fellow in thnoble work of life. Or further, they considered thathe contact of Matter with Mind corrupted the mindand polluted its divine nature. Now all these errorswere overthrown together by the resurrection of Christin His body. This ' fact restored the body to honour,as being not the seat of evil, not the mere instrumentof the soul, far less its prison, and yet less again thecause of its corruption. That Resurrection showedthe body of man to be the creature of God, and revindicatedto it the original part which it had held, whenthe Creator took earth, moulded it into an organism,and breathed into it the breath of life. When He thusmade the soul the form of the body He made thebody likewise the partner of the soul, constructing analliance in which there was nothing debasing, nothingunholy, but which was to be for ever a miracle of divinepower and wisdom, and the subject of divine goodnessin its highest exhibition. The Resurrection of Christ

384 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMwas the full accomplishment of that design, for in itthe body of man, which had been raised to inexpressiblehonour by its assumption on the part of the DivineWord, entered into the visible and everlasting possessionof its rank in creation.But, secondly, from this fact was to spring thecorrection of an intense moral corruption.The resurrection of Christ in His Body was notmerely proclaimed by word of mouth ; it ran structurallythrough the whole fabric of the Church. Itwas the seminal principle of the sacraments. Andthe great Sacrifice of the new covenant-the daily actof Christian worship-presupposed it and rested onit. A comparison will best illustrate this whole view.Some of the worst impurities of heathen life wereconnected with the worship of Ceres and Bacchus.These false gods were considered to preside over theprinciple of increase and multiplication in the fruits ofthe earth; the one over corn and every sort of dryseed, the other over wine and every sort of liquid.Their festivals, celebrated with an extraordinary concourseof people, became infamous for the open exhibitionof debauchery, a sort of glorying in deeds ofshame. It was the very consummation of turpitudein the devil's kingdom to abuse in this manner forevil that very bounty of the Creator in which Heopened His hand to fill all living things with plente-ousness. But now it was precisely of corn and winethat the divine Restorer took hold to convey in Hissacrament the grace of purity. He caused the cornof wheat which had died in His Body to become thefood of His people, and of the natural fruit of thevine He made His Blood to become tbe wine whichproduces virgins. Thus the true King, in overthrow-

RECONSTRUCTING THE NATURAL ORDER385ing the usurper, took those very elements of naturalincrease which heathenism had put under two falsedeities, and perverted in their worship to incitementsfor evil, and in taking them caused them to becomeHis Body and Blood for the creation of a sacred race.Moreover, He took them likewise and constituted themto be the perpetual commemoration of the Sacrificewhich He had offered of His Body. He had associatedmatter with Himself in a wonderful way in taking abody; and now He made that Body itself the meanswhereby the Creator and Kedeemer of man becomeshis Sacrifice. This is the part which matter playswhen touched by God. In the Neoplatonic philosophyit was deemed the cause of evil. In the ChristianFaith it becomes the special instrument which bringsabout the triumph of good. But the consecrationthus given to matter ran all through the doctrine ofthe sacraments. Water conferred regeneration, aridoil was the channel of grace; and the Church tookpossession of the whole material world for the gloryof its Maker. All this was involved in the fact ofChrist's resurrection in the body.The second great fact, therefore, by which the Churchin setting forth supernatural mysteries replaced civilsociety on its true basis, was in establishing by theresurrection of Christ in His Body the eternal personalityof man. This doctrine, and this alone, isan adequate foundation for the whole conduct of manin the .trial to which he is exposed. Without itmorality becomes what it became in the Graeco-Eomanheathenism, and what it is now in every country wherethe moral order is not based upon Christian belief.3. God is One. He is intelligent. By an actof freedom, which had He chosen He need not haveVOL. m. 2 B

386 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMexercised, He created all men and all things. Manso created has an abiding personal subsistence, whichin its unity, its intelligence, and its freedom is animage, however faint, of these attributes in God.These are the two great truths on which I havehitherto dwelt, as being re-implanted in the mindsof the Gentile nations by the action of the Church.From them follows another truth, the absoludominion of God on the one hand over the manso formed and sustained, and the duty of absoluteobedience to God by inan on the other. That, inother words, is the conception of creatureship. Nowit is not too much to say that this was the precisewant of the Gentile world. Prevalent untruths hadgreatly impaired the sense of dependence on thedivine power, and destroyed the complete loyalty ofheart which man owes to that power. These werethe debasement of God's nature by breaking Hisunity ; the diminution of God's sovereignty bysupposing Matter to stand over against Mind, asco-eternal or at least co-original whilst conceivingthe divine and the human intelligence to fall underone genus; and the loss of belief in man's futureeverlasting personal subsistence. The people indeedwere better than the philosophers in this respect.There was more reverence, more sense of a divinegovernment, in the popular and untutored mindthan in the Neoplatonic fabulist of a Primal Being.In a universe in which men and women weresupposed, by virtue of some force which was everythingand nothing, to grow like animals and plantswithout knowing whence they came or whitherthey were going, in such a world, the world of thelast Greek philosophy, the obedience of man to his

RECONSTRUCTING THE NATURAL ORDER387Lord-Dominus suits, as Cicero phrased it, using justthat Eoman word which expressed absolute propertywas extinct. The world was given up to a multitude of deities, who were indeed supposed to bepersonal, but were full of crimes and inconsistentwith each other, and who were not supposed to havemade man, though they presided in some sense overhuman society, and were its guardians. The dependenceallowed to exist between man and these beingswas not that of creatureship, wanting both its stringencyand its tenderness.Moreover it should be noted that the philosophicschool which most exalted the notion of duty restedit on quite a different ground from that of obedienceerson. The Stoic conception of life according toreason or nature was based on the principle that manshould submit himself to the control of what wasdivine in his own nature, the spark of mind whichwas in him for a time. The ground of this was threasonableness of the subjection of the part to thewhole, of the particular reason to the general, of somuch mind and matter put together to the unvaryingseries of physical cause and effect termed necessity.The particular reason in man which was called uponto submit was no more a creature than the universereason to which that submission was urged as a dutywas a creator. And the submission of the individualto the commonwealth, the basis of heathen patriotism,was closely akin to the Stoic notion of duty. Similarlyit had no limit; it had no moral reserve. Theindividual had no fortress in himself inexpugnable tohuman power, the fortress of the creature's will, supportedby the sense of obedience due to the Creator.In all this state there was nothing of personal devotion,LIBRARY ST. MARY'S COLLEGE

THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMobedience, and love. These are virtues of the creaturtowards the Creator, but that relationship had bQored.Whatever there was of grand and forcible inter Koman life was the ioinfc result of the Stofficium and Roman patriotism. Such men as Trajan,Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius amongstemperors, such men as Agricola among soldiers andofficials, are instances of a considerable class. A certainunbending vigour and even rectitude in theirofficial duties, a certain sacrifice of time and risk offe, gave somewhat of nobility to this temperamentd undoubtedly prolonged the tenure of Romanpower. But the private life of these men, asinstance of Trajan and Hadrian, was often an abyssof turpitude. The first of these, the model of constitutionalrulers, as Tacitus and Pliny viewed him,deserved to be banished from human society as theworst of criminals: the second, a man of the mostrestless energy, and the model of imperial generalsas he marched bareheaded with his troops, went,if it was possible, even beyond his predecessor byting the foulest of human perversities into awIt has passed into a commonplace among Christtruths that the whole Christian life is built upon theimitation of Christ. This imitation is the symbolwhich comprehends the root, the motive, and thestrength O of the whole race, ' the standard and model ofits virtue, the ground of its reward. We may limithere our notice of this imitation to a single point, thecharacter of the perfect creature, the Just Servant ofGod, which consists in absolute obedience. In thisbedience, as the expression of Christ's life from t

RECONSTRUCTING THE NATURAL ORDER 389moment when, coming 1 into the world, He uttered, " Abody Thou hast fitted to Me ; behold I come; in thehead of the book it is written of Me, to do Thy will,0 Lord," to the last words upon the Cross, " Father,into Thy hands I commend My spirit," is summed upall His thought and all His action. That conceptionof creatureship the Church took, and out of it formedthe whole of her ritual. Her teaching through thewhole order of the year revolves round the life ofChrist, and sets forth His example as the perfectcreature in His obedience. But no less her hierarchy,from its highest point in the Primate to the humblestdoorkeeper, was a carrying out of the ministry ofChrist. As He ministered to His Father in the wholework which He came to do upon earth, so in carryingO on that work to the end of time, ' the hierarchy "/which He instituted ministered to Him. The highestof all in the highest of his functions expresses thisministry when he terms himself Servant of the servantsof God, but most of all in the divine Sacrifice,in virtue of which Christ is for ever in the midst ofHis Church, His obedience unto death is embodied.This perhaps is the most striking of the many greatlessons which with every day it perpetually enjoins.From the teaching, the hierarchy, and the Sacrifice,one accordant voice sounds everywhere in the ears ofthe great Christian people that obedience, unreservedand absolute, is the part of the creature towards theCreator. Thus by the publication of the Christianmysteries, which is the Church's work in the supernaturalorder, she re-established the shaken basis ofthe natural order in the world, man's creatureship,and obedience as the mark of it. When the great D1 Heb. x. 5, from Psalm xxxix. 6.

390 THK FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMantichristian revolution burst in the full force of itshurricane upon European society, the blast which itblew was of man's rights, but the order which itattacked rested upon man's duties. Obedience is thespring of those duties which he owes as a creature.In the first three centuries of her course-the periodof persecution - the Church had immutably basedher society upon the principle of obedience. Shecould not do otherwise, because she is the Kingdomof Christ, the Just Servant ; and she made thisprinciple the foundation of all her works, carryingit out consistently, and applying it first in theRoman State, and then in every State which sheformed.It was then by the example of Christ in His absoluteobedience that she healed the

RECONSTRUCTING THE NATURAL ORDER 391that all men are made by one Creator, children of oneFather, in consequence drawn together by the bond ofbrotherhood, equally entitled and equally bound tomutual love, this view developed itself in non-Christianantiquity for the first time during the period ofthe Roman world-empire; nor did it ever becomegeneral. Greek and Roman antiquity, in oppositionto that undistinguishable equality before God of allcreated, recognised as subsisting in right those numerousgradations of human existence which political,national, and social developments had produced.Neither divine command nor moral law hinderedhim who had the best of it from making his superiorright felt in its whole range over any one less favoured.The existence of man was not in the eyes of mensacred to that degree in which it must be in presenceof a deity from whom all life proceeds, and whonot only has not allowed but has expressly forbiddento them the right to destroy His creatures.This belongs to Himself alone. From the positionwhich the ancient view of the order of the worldassigned to man, there resulted to him, together withhis greater freedom and independence, a far more extendedauthority to determine upon the existence ofthose who were given over to his protection or hispower. Not only had the master the right over thelife of his slaves, the father had it likewise over thelife of his children, and Plato and Aristotle expresslyrecommended the withdrawal of life from those whowould be a burden upon society."Let us note here as of great importance the avowalby so competent a witness, who refers likewise to onea learned and as competent as himself, the last historianof Greek philosophy, that the principle of men

392 TIIK FOliMATlON OF CHRISTENDOMbeing made by one Creator, children of one Fatherand so bound together by the bond of brotherhoodand entitled and no less bound to mutual love, wasunknown to Greek and Roman antiquity, and first developeditself in the time of the Roman Empire. Andlet us add for greater precision that it did not develcitself until after our Lord had died upon the CrosWhen we consider the facts which the author justcited sums up with so much clearness, we canncdoubt that the doctrine of man's brotherhood under acommon Father was simply of Christian origin.MoreoverI wish to remark further that the view of humanfraternity, so far as it does appear in non-ChristianGreek and Roman authors after the Sacrifice of Christ,not merely never became general, but was not identicalwith the Christian doctrine either in its ground or inits character. It was the special boast of the Stoicsto claim to be citizens of one commonwealth, the greatworld-commonwealth of gods . and men. Plutarchascribes this renowned doctrine to the founder ofStoicism, and Cicero records it as belonging to theStoics. It rested upon that supposed joint and exclusivepossession of reason by gods and men which madethem both " the reasonable race." In its first conception,then, it was an implicit denial of creatureship onthe part of man. This denial was fully held and maintainedby the chief extollers of the Stoic commonwealthof gods and men who flourished after our Lord'scoming, Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. Thebrotherhood which these magnified was therefore notfellow-creatureship, and had none of the tendernesswhich fellow-creatureship inspires towards those whomit embraces, none of its veneration for God the Creatoras its origin. And moreover it was severed from any

RECONSTRUCTING THE NATURAL ORDER 393thought of the continuance of man's personal beingafter death, so that it carried with it none of the pre-ciousness of human life, as the trial-ground and conditionof an eternal state, which is part of the Christianbrotherhood. It led to contempt of life in general,not to love of brethren. It is also to be observed thatthis view, belonging, as it does, to the principles ofStoicism, remained otiose from Zeno to Seneca. Itwas never carried out before our Lord's Passion. Itwas a mere intellectual conception which the proudestand most selfish of men could entertain without allowingit to influence their conduct; which Cato andSeneca did so entertain, and remained the one a pitilessslave-master and the other a grinding moneylender.What the observer of history, if he will takecare not to disregard chronology, will find is this.From the time that another doctrine, that of Christianfraternity, which we shall presently mark, had beenpublished through the Koman Empire, and carried intoimperial palaces and the paedagogea of slaves, theStoic doctrine of human equality and brotherhoodseemed to assume new dimensions. It is apparent inthe pages of Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius,as no less in the whole Platonic and Neoplatonic schoolof Plutarch, Dio Chrysostomus, and Plotinus afterwards.But we must not forget that here too it remained anintellectual conception alone. The Stoic slave-masterneither emancipated his slaves nor treated them asbrethren. Epictetus, by far the most consistent, as byfar the most real of those who put forward this viewof men's confraternity, as possessing reason in common,was unable to transfuse his doctrine into any livingsociety of scholars. JFrom Seneca to lamblichus thedoctrine remained, though stimulated by Christian

394 THK FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMactivity, not only on its entirely heathen basis, butinoperative; a vision of the intellect, not an action ofthe will; a theory never effectuated.There is, however, a fact in history, the extension ofthe right of Roman citizenship by the Emperor Cara-calla to all inhabitants, which has sometimes beenmentioned as the result of Stoic principles carried intoRoman legislation by great jurists, such as Ulpian.However, it is not clear but that fiscal considerationsmay have had much influence in bringing about thismeasure, for all who were citizens became liable tovery heavy duties. What is certain is that whenthis citizenship was conferred, the Church for sixgenerations had been leavening the Roman worldwith the doctrine of the divine fraternity of men inChrist, which involved in it much more than theequality of Roman citizenship.For indeed far other both in its character and itsefficacy than any Stoic teaching was the brotherhoodof men in Christ conveyed, in the first words of ourLord after His resurrection, to the Church in the personof St. Mary Magdalene : " Go to My brethren, andsay to them, I ascend to My Father and your Father,and My God and your God:" words of unspeakabletenderness, of immortal consolation, words carryingwith them a new creation of never-ending power,establishing a family of undying heirs. In themspoke the charity of Christ the God-man, fresh fromthe Sacrifice of Himself for man. And because thebrotherhood reaches its accomplishment and fulfilmenin the sacrifice, they form tlae whole conception of threlation of man to his fellow-man which was to forrand rule the Christian Kingdom.From these brethren to whom Christ sent this first

RECONSTRUCTING THE NATURAL ORDER 395Easter greeting of God's Fathership and His ownBrotherhood with them, the Church went forth intoall lands, being itself a brotherhood in Christ fromthe beginning. This brotherhood is altogether supernatural,springing from a double source, which wecan but trace up to the very Being of God, and leavethere to be unfolded in the light of eternity. Theone source is the infinite condescension which movedthe Eternal Father to send His coequal and coeternalSon in the likeness of man, creating thereby a raceof brethren by the tie of the nature which the Sonassumed; the other source is the infinite charity inwhich He gave the Son, when made Man, to be asacrifice for His brethren. The love of the Creatortherefore ran out into the love of the Redeemer, andwhen both had been combined, they formed thatbrotherhood of men with Christ, and therefore witheach other, of which we are speaking. The Churchthen in setting forth these transcendent mysteries,upon which she is built, included in them the wholedoctrine of the Creator and His creatures and theirco-creatureship together, but made it tenfold moreamiable by pouring upon it the light of an infinitecondescension and an infinite charity. It was in thisguise that brotherhood was taught to that vast multitudeof separated nations and races which made upthe Roman Empire; and in this guise it was acceptedby a large proportion of them. And thus in the verysoil desecrated by centuries of division and enmity, pollutedby idolatries without number and expression, the. result of gods not to be named for their foulness, wasintroduced again the conception of the true relation ofman to his fellow-men as creaturei of one God.This doctrine of brotherhood rin equally through

396 THK FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMhe whole teaching of the Church, through her livingtructure in the hierarchy, through her channels ofgrace in the sacraments, and through -^^~- her great -^^^"- act ofworship, the Sacrifice. For were not all her membchildren together of one Father ? Was not this theirbaptismal name ? Was it not her very distinguishingmark that neither difference of rank nor difference ofrace affected at all the Christian adoption ? He whoreceived it arose " renewed unto knowledge accordingto the image of the Creator, where there is neitherGentile nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision,barbarian nor Scythian, bond nor free, but Christ isall and in all." Nor did this remain a fine theory,like the Stoic fraternity or the Epicurean and afterwardsthe Neoplatonic friendship. From the beginningmaster and slave partook together of thesacraments which conferred the brotherhood, and sustainedit when conferred. Nor was God the Creatorever celebrated with such chants of praise as" thosewhich arose from the eucharistic altar on which Godthe Redeemer lay sacrificed, to be the food of Hisbrethren.Philosophy had - been for ages trying to find anadequate basis for the relative duties of man to man.The Stoic conceived that he had found it in thecommon possession of reason, which he attempted toexalt into a share of the divine nature. This samenotion formed the core of the Neoplatonic theory.Hence both deduced a sort of duty of man to himself,and by consequence to other men of like nature.But the theory was tainted at its source with falsehood.Man's spirit was as much made as his body.To represent, therefore, human duty as springingfrom the possession of reason on the ground that this

RECONSTRUCTING THE NATURAL ORDER 397was a spark of the divine fire, a portion of the universalmind, was to found it upon a fiction. On thecontrary, the true foundation of it was that both man'sspirit and his body were the work of an infinitelysuperior power, and the teaching of the Church inrevealing that power, and recognising the bond whichthe creation both of spirit and of matter formed forthe being so united, laid afresh the missing basisof morality. Whatever theory may re-attempt, thescheme of forming a morality independent of a moralgovernor will fail as the Stoic failed; for the firstspring of duty lies in the obligation which the act ofcreation imposes on the being created. The Church,in preaching her great doctrines of Redemption andAdoption, re-established the basis of morality byunveiling the Creator of man. But she availed herselfof an infinite attraction in disclosing Him at thesame time as Father and Redeemer.The sum of what I have said is this: that thedivine brotherhood of men in Christ, together withthe charity of Christ the God-man sacrificing Himself for His brethren, unitedly make up the Christianconception of the relation of man to his fellow-ma:And all the relative duties of life are affected by thdouble fact. This conclusion was drawn by St. Paifrom these grounds in the following words: " Bkind to one another, merciful, forgiving one anotheieven as God has forgiven you in Christ. Be thereimitators of God, as most dear children, and walkin love, as Christ also has loved us, and deliveredHimself for us an oblation and a sacrifice to God foran odour of sweetness."11 Ephes. iv. 32. It is to be noted that the expression, "odour ofsweetness," here ascribed to the Sacrifice of Christ, is the same as that

398 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOM5. A point of the greatest importance in consideringthe Gra:co-Roman civilisation is the attitude ofthe State towards the individual. It is remarkedby Zeller i that " an essential difference distinguishesall modern ideal commonwealths from the Platonicrepublic. Plato's leading idea is the effecting moralityby the State. It is the State which must form itscitizens to virtue. The State is a vast educationalinstitute which embraces the whole life and being ofits members. All other ends must be subordinate tothis one; all private interests be unreservedly sacrificedto it. The State can only aim at the happinessand perfection of the Whole. The individual canclaim no more tban is compatible with the beauty ofthe Whole." " Plato wishes to do away with privateinterest; his modern imitators wish to content it.Plato strives after the perfectness of the Whole ; theseafter the happiness of individuals. Plato treats theState as the end, the Person as means; these treatPersons as the end, the State and society as means."The contrast here drawn will serve to bring out thethorough distinction between what we may call theChristian conception of the State's functions and theHellenic conception. " That consists," says the sameobserver, " much less in forms of constitution thanin the position which is assigned to the State as awhole in regard to individuals, their rights and theirconduct. In our view the State is built up frombelow; individuals are the first. The State arisesfrom the fact that they meet together for the protectionof their rights and the general furtherance ofused of God in accepting the first sacrifice of Noah as he came fromthe ark. See above, p. 329.1 Zeller's Vortrdgc. "Der platonische Staat in seiner Bedeutungfur die Folgezeit." Pp. 78-80.

RECONSTRUCTING THE NATURAL ORDER 399their srood. For this reason individuals remain tlm t of the State's life. We ask of itprovide for the collective mass of those belonging to itas individuals the utmost possible freedom, prosperity,d culture ; and we can never be persuaded thatduce to the perfection of the State as a whthat it is allowable, to sacrifice the essential rightand interests of individuals to its ends. To theGreek, on the contrary, the State appears as the firstand most essential ; the individual only as a portionof the commonweal. The feeling of political communityis so strong in him, the idea of personalityrecedes so entirely into the background, that it isonly in the State that he can picture to himself anexistence worthy of man. He knows of no higherfunction than the political; no more original rightthan that of the whole mass. The State, says Aristotle,is in its nature earlier than individuals. In allthis, accordingly, only so much right is allowed tothe Person as his position in the State carries with it.Strictly speaking, there are no general rights of man,but only rights of citizens; and however deeply theinterests of individuals may be violated by the State,if the interest of the State require it they cannotcomplain. The State is the sole original proprietor ofall rights, and is not bound to secure to its subjects agreater portion of them than its own interests allow.Plato also shares this point of view, and has evenpushed it to an extreme in his republic."Now why does all modern thought build up theState from below, and consider the individual beforethe mass ? Why does it acknowledge private rightsas inviolable ? Why does it treat men as men befthey are citizens ? The ground of this most thorough

400 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMhis essential difference between not only Greek butRoman and generally heathen thought, and Christthought, on the position of man as an individualregard of the State, is the conception of human py-that counterpart and reflex of the PersonalGod-which has been wrought into the hearts of menby the Christian Church. It is the force of the divineword, " What shall it profit a man to gain the wholeworld and lose his own soul ? " which has been incorporatedby her preaching into human society. TheChristian Church taught heathenism the fact that thehuman soul is greater than the world. With thispebble from her sling the Church struck on the foreheadthe giant of heathen tyranny, who had exercisedautocracy in the State over the actions and the consciencesof men. The Church as the City of God, theBody of Christ, established a whole code of treatmentin dealing with the individual. This code has onlyto be applied to the human commonwealth in orderto illuminate all the relations of the individual to theState.How did the Church deal with the individual inrespect to the whole body ?For answer let us consider heathenism in the ripenessof that corruption which it had reached by thetime of the Emperor Claudius. We may note thatthe whole heathen conception of the commonwealth,as it bears upon the individual, was the result ofdisbelief in any future life, and ignorance concerningthe true nature of the human personality.If man was not to l-ve after this life, the valueof his life here was essentially altered. He wasbecome the property of the State. The generalinterest would rule every particular interest. In

RECONSTRUCTING THE NATURAL ORDER 401this, therefore, Plato and Aristotle reasoned with theutmost correctness, and Greece and Rome were no lesswise than logical in carrying out their conclusionto practical results. Now the Church started fromthis very truth of a human personality continued oner death. She built the whole structure of hersociety upon the sacredness of that personality. Itwas, therefore, impossible that she should sacrifice theindividual to the corporate body. Moreover she hadno motive so to sacrifice him. It was quite otherwisewith the heathen State, which considered itselfand its subjects as belonging to this life only. Theinterests of this life ruled it therefore absolute!But the Christian society-the Body of Christ-wenton into eternity together with each Christian man.To it, therefore, the highest good of the Body andthe highest good of the Individual were one andthe same. Again, the Church had one rule whichdmitted of no single exception. Sin, that is adeliberate breaking of the eternal law, was not allowablefor any conceivable purpose. And this rule protectedthe individual in every circumstance of his life.Plato and Aristotle could recommend, and the heathenState could carry out the suggestion, that feeble andinfirm children, who were little likely to benefit theircountry, should be exposed and left to perish. TheChurch insisted that every human life was sacred, andtook them from unnatural parents to nurture andeducate.1 Plato had no scruple to impose upon his" Watchers" the prohibition of founding a family,in order that they might belong entirely and exclu-1 Chinese heathenism repeats at this day the cruelty of the oldheathenism-and Christian charity, it must be added, is true in thenineteenth century to the part which it played in the first.VOL. III.2 C

402 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMsively to the State. But when V the rule of celibacygrew up as a qualification for all spiritual governmentin the Church, it was a free choice of those who embracedthe highest function which can fall to man.It was an imitation of their Lord, in which the voluntarysacrifice of a natural good was accepted by thosewho made it for the attainment of a supernaturalgood. Plato trampled down the instincts of naturefor the sake of a temporal good ; the Christian clergywere content to follow Christ. They would thusbecome not founders of an earthly home, but co-builders in an eternal house, without father, withoutmother, without genealogy, in the earthly order, if bobe that in the spiritual they might be likened to theSon of God. Indeed this great institution of Christiancelibacy affords perhaps as good an instance as can befound to show the coincidence in the Christian societyof the highest good of the Individual with the highestgood of the Body. Plato, in enjoining celibacy on his" Watchers," had a real and excellent object in view,their complete devotion to their work, without the interruptionof family cares. For this end he simplysacrificed them to the commonwealth. But all the greatworks of Christian charity in their heroic degree dependfor their fulfilment on freedom from the bonds ofdomestic life. How did the Church reach this end ? Byher counsels of perfection she set the virginal or thecelibate life before her children as a reward in itself, ascarrying higher privileges and a more perfect imitationof the Master for those to whom it was given. She proposedit to them as a choice leading to an infinite recom-pense, beginning in this life,completed in thelife to come,and she reached her end without sacrificing the individualto the commonweal. For the choice exalted

* >vRECONSTRUCTING THE NATURALCOLUSG1the chooser, and gave him a betterhich he resigned. Moreover, Plato's ideal remaineddream, f whereas the Christian religious life is a realityThere have been no Platonic " Watchers " in a humrepublic, whilst there have been myriads of priests andreligious, who have followed to the end the Virgin Sonof the Virgin Mother.The Church then, as a society making individualman her unit of construction, in no case sacrificed thepart to the whole. In this she was in contradictionto the heathen State. And whereas that was instinctwith a despotic spirit, she breathed freedom to herchildren by this scrupulous regard to every individual,however weak, friendless, and forlorn. This was withinher own society. But now what was the effect of heroperation upon the heathen State into which she wascast ?The State, as we have seen, admitted no reserve onthe part of the individual to its sovereignty. He wasbound to obey the command of emperor, or senate, ordemos, in all things. It was Christ who set a limitto this authority in those words which have created anew political as well as a new moral world, " Renderto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and to Godthe things which are God's." It was the Churchwhich during three hundred years of persecutioncarried those words into effect, and established thedomain of the human conscience, not to be infringedby emperor, by parliament, or by democracy.For let it be considered that liberty does not consistin the form of government but in the nature of thepower which the government exercises. The rule ofparliament or democracy may be as absolute as thatof an autocrat emperor, and in that case those who

404 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMare ruled will not be free because the power, is exercisedby a joint resolution of many instead of a decreeof one. Freedom consists in such a limit being setto the power of the government itself, whatever formit may bear, as will secure to the individual his lawfulrights. The Athenian demos became a byword for itstyranny; the Roman senate in the days when Romewas said to be free, acted with the most arbitrarylicense towards subject nations. The Roman Empirewas not more tyrannical than either of these, and pro-bably was much more temperate in the actual exerciseof its power. But all these admitted no limit to thatpower. And they had this ground at least for theirclaim to illimitable authority, that the power of theState, so long as it is considered with reference to thislife only, does admit of no limit, and is an absolutesovereignty. Now these governments were fallen intosuch a state as to act only with reference to this life.The limit to the power of civil government is given bythe fact that the whole of this life is subordinate toanother life ; it is given when we introduce " tllimes -' of God " over against Q " the things CJ of Ca3This truth was conveyed in that sentence of our Lord ;and the Church during ten generations of persecutioncarried it into effect, which is quite a different thingd manifests quite a different power from an intellectual perception of it. The divine power of ourLord therefore was shown in His Church when Hemade her His instrument for separating off " thethings of God" from "the things of Caesar." Thenature of the Christian religion M *" W "*""*- brought **J*" W -^ it into constnntconflict with the Roman State. It was no doubtan intellectual and a moral revolution at once whichtook its source from the cave of Bethlehem and the

RECONSTRUCTING THE NATURAL ORDER 405cross of Calvary. As often as the Apostles and theirsuccessors had to say, " It is better to obey God thanman," and to suffer for so saying, they were introducinga new principle into human government;they were limiting the State's supremacy by theforce of the human conscience. And thus in factcivil liberty was contained in the bosom of religiousliberty, and this was the cause which was being contendedfor from Claudius to Constantine. Hence avast store of lessons for all future time is laid upin this period. One of these is that in it the battleof human liberty, as against the arbitrary and unlimitedpower of the civil government, was then won.Every Christian teacher who was occupied in thepromulgation of doctrine, who was a member of theChristian hierarchy, who administered the sacraments,who offered the Sacrifice, all of them " things of God,"to which our Lord referred, every confessor who sufferedfor these things, every martyr who died for them, wasa witness for the freedom of the human conscience inthe face of the civil authority. By the same act he waalso establishing civil liberty ; he was setting a morabound to the State's authority, which left room for thexercise of every lawful right by the individual.This vast result had been definitely gained not fothe Roman Empire only but for all time, and under a'governments, when Constantine accepted the Christia:Faith, and as emperor, the possessor of all the rights ohe State, the Senatus Populusque Rom anus, acknowdged the independent authority of the ChurchhLet us then observe a mighty contrast in Ron-history. When Peter in the second year of Claudcame to Rome, an unacknowledged stranger of a m

406 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMunpopular race, he found Claudius exercising the wholepower of the Roman Empire without any limitation tothe obedience which it might demand of its subjects.As the Pontifex Maximus Claudius stood at the headof religious power, as the Princeps he wielded civilauthority, and as the Imperator "^^^ the armed force.When the Emperor Constantino arranged with St.Silvester the summoning of the Nicene Council, theChristian Episcopate met from all the East underthe presidency of the West in acknowledged freedom ^^as the Kingdom of Christ to determine a point ofChristian doctrine. The State had receded from itsown omnipotence. In the whole domain of conscienceit allowed man to be free. Caesar acknowledged" things of God" over which he had no control,and which were given not to his determination, butto the determination of those who bore rule in theKingdom of God. Therein lay the principle of civilliberty also for the Europe and the World of thefut ure.6. But yet more than this was then achieved.The Church at the Nicene Council stood forth inthe sight of all men as the one Kingdom of Godthroughout all the world. Those who sat there satnot as subjects of the Roman Empire, but as bishopsof the Church of God. The great armies of theNorth and West were already mustering in suchforce that the Roman unity had scarcely been preservedin the preceding century: they were shortlyto prevail, to take captive the mother of nations,and to found distinct kingdoms out of the spoilsof her world-empire. Then the successors of thesebishops who sat in the Nicene Council would be nolonger members of one civil empire, but they would

RECONSTRUCTING THE NATURAL ORDER 407be equally princes of one divine kingdom. They wouldequally represent the people of dioceses spread throughoutthe world. They would be equally bound in thebonds of Christian charity to each other. Could theyand their people be in their civil capacity enemies,when in their spiritual they were friends and brethren ?The Church then as the one Kingdom of God throughoutall the world contained in herself a law of nations,which take their place as harmoniously within herbosom as individuals hold definite rights within theirown State over " against that State.Thus the duties of States to States were carriedpotentially in the establishment of an universalChurch. But a law of nations consists precisely inconceiving adequately the proper relation which onenation or State bears to another nation or State.That which divides States, which operates as a ptual nourishment of jealousies, rivalries, and wars,are temporal interests; the struggle for increase ofterritory, dominion, and wealth, and the sense thawhat is gained by one nation in these things musbe taken away from another. But what unitnations are eternal interests, and these are the mfor all, and one nation does not gain by another's lossof these. They were not indeed the same until acommon faith arose to bind nations together; butthis was precisely the crowning good brought by theChristian Faith to the various nations, so far asconcerns its bearing upon natural society. So faras that Faith was received by them, it became tothem an everlasting bond. It destroyed the enmitybetween Europe and Asia which was coeval withhistory; it joined the men of the North and Southwith the men of the East and West. In the faith

408 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMof Christ they had a common home and a centralhearth. The fact was not only new, but when itbegan to arise was treated by Celsus in his objectionsto Christianity as a pretension so unattainable thatit was deserving of ridicule. Yet this universalreligion became a fact. The gods of the nations,the standard-bearers of their petty jealousies, theirnational exclusiveness, their moral corruptions, wentdown before the Cross. But the Faith of Christ asan universal religion, raised by its very nature abovethe pettiness of nationalities, likewise establishedequality between all nations in the exercise of theirrights. It did away with all predominance arisingm superior force or size. This equality, agis a necessary condition for a law of nations. Thesmall must feel that they are respected by the great:that the fact of great or small in the parties concernedhas nothing to do with the justice of the case. Butone justice flows out of one religion; and more particularlyone justice flows out of men's brotherhoodin Christ. For it is much to be noted that thequality of fallen human nature had never been ableto construct a law of nations. The Stoic doctrine ofreason has never been so persuasive over the heartsand minds of men as to lead them to admit an universaljustice. It was only the equality of regencrahuman nature which had that power. But the spduty which touches man and man, and which bythe same movement directs the relation of the individualto the State, reaches also, and by the sameforce, to the relation between one State and another.Morals, politics, international rights, have one andthe same foundation, one and the same measure.What is wrong in morals can never be right in

RECONSTRUCTING THE NATURAL ORDER 409politics: and crime is not less crime because it iswilled by a nation. The nation is as responsible asthe man. A parliament which enacts an immolaw is as guilty as a man who commits murdThe establishment of an universal Church made thisprinciple visible to men, and it is one of the greatestboons which that Church has conferred on humansociety. But it was symbolised and expressed mostpowerfully in the position which the First Bishopand Primate of the Church possesses as the CommonFather of all, equally near to all, equally interestedr all. The successor of St. Peter in his office wathe Council of Nice, as he is now, as near to thmen of Antioch and Egypt as to the men of GauSpain, Britain, and Germany. And when the timto which I have above alluded had come, when thmperial unity of Kome had been broken, the spirity of Rome shone out clearly to the eyes of mThen the sovereigns ofdiff

410 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMconception of the relation thence arising betweenGod and man. And from this the triple range ofhuman duties, what man owes to his fellow-man,inasmuch as they are creatures of one God, whatthe individual man owes to the commonwealth, andthe commonwealth reciprocally to the individual man,and finally what each nation of these men owes toeach other nation.It was my purpose to show that the ChristianChurch in the exercise of purely supernatural functions,that is, in promulgating a belief in the mostBlessed Trinity, in the Incarnation, and in thedernption, by means of her teaching, her ritual, herhierarchy, her sacraments, and her Sacrifice, effectedlikewise a wonderful change in the natural order byestablishing both the belief and the practice of thesesix principles in the minds of men. It was furthermy purpose to show that Philosophy, which meansthe utmost effort of the unassisted human intelligence,the flower and fruit of Hellenic civilisation, had utterlyfailed to estabish these principles in the minds andpractice of men. It had gone astray as to the firstafter a god of forces, a god without morality andsanctity. As to the second, Philosophy had neveraccepted a continuous and abiding human personalityafter death, responsible for its actions in life, andsubject to an exact retribution. And as these twoconceptions are the conditions of the rest, it had equallyfailed to carry those others into effect.Further, from what I have said it will be apparentthat the effective promulgation of these principlessprung from the declaring and preaching the Personof our Lord as the God-man. They did not at allspring from any effect of race, or development of

RECONSTRUCTING THE NATURAL ORDER 41!natural circumstances, or previous preparation of me:by their civil condition. They did not spring from thunion of Oriental with Western civilisation. Suchunion Philosophy could have brought about, if aidedby the powerful bond of a common civil government.Philosophy indeed tried what it could do, but failedignominiously either to establish belief in one God, orto destroy the worship of a thousand idols. Again, Ihave shown that the introduction and establishment ofthese principles were completed as a fact of historybefore the accession of the Teutonic nations to theChurch. Thus the belief in an abiding human personalitywith all its immense consequences was fullyfelt and acknowledged and carried out into practiceby teachers in their doctrine, by confessors in theirlife, by martyrs in the tortures which they bravedbefore a single German tribe had been taught thedignity of human nature by its introduction into thegreat Christian society. The sense of the personaldignity of man, the sense of the rights of the individual,was not the result of the fusion of the natural qualitiesof the Teuton with the Christian spirit. In Basil, andGregory, and Athanasius, and Jerome, and Augustine,and in whole generations of Christian men and womenwho preceded them, we see this sense complete andperfect. It was the gift of our Lord to His people byHis doctrine, when He said, " What shall it profit a manto gain the whole world and to lose his own soul;" byHis act when He gave up His body to the extreme oftorment and humiliation, and when He raised it to lifeagain from the Cross.

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wINDEXABEKLE, his rule as to the writings of the New Testament, 15, note.JEschylus, asserts the penal justice of God, 336.Alexander, de Fato, 304.Ammonias Sakkas, his time and place, 265.Apollonius of Tyana, his pretended Life by Philostratus, " 207-62 ; forparticulars see table of contents, Lecture xix.Apuleius of Madaura, his philosophical opinions, 202,Augustine, St., 75, 291 ; his reproach of Porphyrius, 320. "AUK, Apollonius und Christus, 222, 223, 246, 310.CELSUS, his time, work, and positive standing-ground, 203.Cicero, quoted, 25, 32, 104, 114. Identity of divine and humanmind, 300, 303, 342. -Clemens Alexandrinus, states that the Apostles for twelve yearspreached only to the Jews, 12. "Clement, Pope, St., the First, testimony to foundation of the RomanChurch, 14. -DE Rossi, Roma Sotteranea, burial of the Popes in the CryptaVaticana, 20.Dio Chrysostomus, 168 ; his conception of the universe, and the powerruling it, 168 ; man's intuition of God, 169; his supreme God aDemiurge, 171 ; man's kinship with God, and the humanitariandoctrine as its result, 172 ; his Demiurge and Plato's, 173,Dionysiua, Bishop of Corinth in the second century, testifies to thefoundation of the Roman Church, 14.Dollinger, Hcidenthum und Judcnthum, 51, 123, 128, 147, 309, 344.Christenthum und Kirche, 39, 41.Dubois-Cuchan, quoted, 10, note.413LIBRARY Si. ,,,~RY S COLLEGE

414 INDEXriCTKTUs, what function he assigns to philosophy, 79; belief as toGod and Providence, So, 183; the human mind and its kindredwith God, 80; denies personal subsistence after death, 82, 191 ;advocates suicide, 84, 166 ; bearing of his philosophy on polytheism,82, 192 ; his religion compared with that of Plutarch,164; his knowledge of Christians, 165; sole open reference tothem, iSS ; his ideal teacher, 184; a messenger of God, 186;whose office is a bishopric, 186; must be without wife andchildren, 1X7 ; fearless of men, 187 ; his ideal only realised in theChristian teachers whom he had seen, 188 ; a heathen in hisgrounds of action, 191 ; but who had seen Christians, 192 ; parentof modern Deism, 165 ; his treatment of slavery compared withthat of"St. Paul, 106.Euripides, gives the Anaxagorean view of immortality, 83.Eusebius, History of the Church^ quoted, 13, 14, 20, 265." FOLLOW Me," vast meaning of the p:i Ages in which it occurs, 35.Friedlaender, Darstdlutigcn aus der Sittengeschichte Jtoms, his statementthat Stoics rose by their own force to conceptions of moralduty like the Christian, 102, note ; answered, 192 ; power of theheathen worship, 122; education of heathen youth, 194, 196,198, 200 ; gives a reason for the contrast between Graeco-Romanand Christian morality, 390.Future life of man as a personal being, denied by Epictetus, 82 ; byMarcus Aurelius, 87 ; by Seneca and the Neostoics in general,89, 109 ; by the Neopythagorean school, as set forth by Philo-Btntui in bin Apollonian, -55 : l\v Plotmua, 2M ^; l>y th- \vhoirline of Greek thinkers from Seneca to Plotinus, 312; how thet " HI f in i: \v;is: H -:..'" U i.- i byth< ( -I uroh pr< aching :'," i;< rar-rection of Christ, 378-83 ; overthrow thereby of the whole philosophiceiTOr, jx >, 3^4 : and Correction of :i v;i.-t mural corruption.» 385-GREEK and Roman mind, contrast in Tacitus, Pliny, Suetonius, Juvenal,and Trajan, to Epiotetua, Dio Chrysostomus, and Plutarch,175-83.Grote's Plato, 173.HAGEMANN, die Romische Kirclie, 13, note.IAMBLICHUS, 292.retestifies to the foundation of the Roman Church bySt. Peter and St. Paul, 13.

INDEX4 I 5JEROME, St., states as a fact of his day the result of the conflict betweenheathen philosophy and the Church, 372.Judaism and Christianity, their relation, 37~43»Juvenal, his religious and philosophic standing-ground, 177.KKLLNER Ifcllcnismus und Christenthum, 207.Kleutgen, Theologie dcr Vorzeit, statement of the Being of God, 304 ;freedom of the creature an image of the Creator's freedom, 317 ;early pantheism of Greek philosophy, 323, 324 ; Philosophic dcrVorzeit, 45, 297, 302 ; the doctrine of Pantheism, 304 ; God, theefficient, exemplary, and final cause of things, not their formalor material cause, 321.LACORDAIRE, anecdote recorded by, 366.Lasaulx, 115, 116, 123.Leo the Great, Pope, St., mentions the presence of St. Peter at Rome,both under Claudius and Nero, 13, note; his statement of thePrimacy of St. Peter, as continued in the Roman See, identicaland coextensive with its definition " in the Vatican Council, 369,note, 42, 43.MARCUS AURELIUS, outline of his philosophy, 84; passages referringto man's state after death, 88; his cosmopolitanism, 96.Maximus Tyrius, his philosophical standing-point, 201.Merivale, History of Rome, quoted, 7, note.Mohler, Kirchengeschichtc, 123.*Musonius, general sketch of his teaching, 77.NAGELSBACH, die Nachhomerische Theologie, 83,184. Greek mythologyknows no Creator, 334. Lineaments of an original revelation inthe Greek traditional religion, 334-36.Northcote and Brownlow, quoted, 37.ORIGEN, 63, 204, 205.Orosius, cited, 13.Ott, Dr., in Tubinger Quartalschrift, quoted, 67-9.PANTHEISM, i.e., the confusion of the substance of God with the substanceof the world, by making God either the formal or thematerial cause of the world, f runs in various degrees O through D allphilosophic thought from Thales to Plotinus, 301; carries withit a denial of creation, 302, 308 ; and of free-will, 308, 309. Thecontradictory Christian truth that God is the efficient, exemplary, andnal cause of all things, 320-23. The whole contest between ancient

416 INDEXGreek religion, 114. The society in which it arose possessedand modern infidel Philosophy on the one side, and the ChristianChurch on the other, summed up in this antagonism, note, 323-25.The doctrine of one God, distinct from all other beings, *^f I subsisting +*f *-» *-f *" »*K-JV 4 »"*^^in Himself, intelligent, free, -and the Creator of all things, thefoundation of human society and morality, 374 ; how re-establishedby the preaching of the Church, 375-78. An eternal humanpersonality, the corollary of a personal God, 379. Its denialrunning through Greek and Latin thought, 380-82. Denial ofcreatureship a result of pantheism, 385-88 ; the great wound ofheathen society, and how healed by the Church, 388-90. Denialof creatureship made the Greek and Roman morality entiallydifferent from the Christian, 390-94; the Church found a basisfor morality, which the whole pantheistic philosophy sought invain, 394-97 5 and by the same power wrought out the civillibt-rty of the individual over against the State, 397-405 ; andcast the outline of a law of nations, 406-9.Per-ius, his strong testimony to Cornutus, 197.Philo, his time and position, 123-26. His attempt to unite Greekscience with Hebrew revelation, 127-31 ; his conception of God,131-33. Man's need of grace, 134; subordination of humanscience to theology, 135. His pn^ible effect on subsequent Greekphilosophy, 137-40; his partiality for the imperial government, 3.Contradiction of his veiw to that of Tacitus, 4, note.Philosophy. Its work as conceived by Pythagoras, 25 ; by Plato, 26;by Aristotle, 27 ; by Zeno, 28 ; the common effect produced bythem, 29 .; v [ts radical ; > ot tin disjunction of the three forces,beli ". i: rmlity, ad ironhip, : : I - -,v i£ '{"-}' c 1)!':M mthese respects presented to it by the Church, 349-70. Its disregardof the ignorant, the poor, and the labouring classes, 22, 345.Its result as to formin a society from Claudius to Constantine,347. The ideal life which the Xeopythagorean philosophy soughtto substitute for the Christian life, 249-56, 309-11. The Neo-platonic system a heathen analogon of Christianity, 294 ; as shownin three oppositions, between the Primal Being and God, 296,320-23; between the confusion of God with the World and thedoctrine of creation, 296-308 ; and between the being, position,duties, and hopes of man in Neoplatonism and in Christianity,308-21. Philosophic and Christian immortality, 312, 318. Philosophicsubstitute for creation, ancient and modern, 304, and note,323-25. Three positions of Greek philosophy in reference to theprayer, sacrifice, orack>, and mysteries, 116. The proper ancientphilosophy ends not in purifying the primary truths recognised by

INDEX4 I 7the polytheistic worship, but in denying them, 120-22. Rise of abelieving movement in philosophy, 123. Admits the principle ofrevelation and the principle of holiness, in opposition to all itsprevious course, 130, 137. Patronises polytheism and is patronisedby the emperors from Nerva's time, 160-63. Accepted bythe higher Romans as the guide of life, 340 ; want of agreementin the teaching of it, 342. Its function as described by Plutarch,195. Supervision of the whole life exercised by philosophers, 196 ;house and court philosophers and public teachers, 198.Philostratus, Life of Apollonius, quoted, passim, Lecture xix., 207-62.Plato, quoted, 27, 119, 131, 174.Plotinus, his time and place, 266; his character, 267; produces hissystem at Rome in the midst of the persecution of the Christians,268. His doctrine as to the Primal Being, 269-75; as to theprocession of the world from it, 276-78; as to the human soulbefore, during, and after this life, 278-83; as to happiness,moral good and evil, 283-85 ; as to ecstasy, 286. His pantheisticunity amalgamates itself with the polytheistic worship, 287 ;ignores Christianity, 289; opposition of the whole system to theChristian Faith, 295-323 ; Plotinus wishes to found a city ofphilosophers, but is not allowed, 32.Plutarch: time and circumstances of his life, 141 ; first representativeof Neopythagorean school, 142 ; his theodicea, the Supreme God,142; constructor, not creator of the world, 143; the visible godsand demons, 145; Triple Providence, 145; his piety, 146; hesets up a divine monarchy, 148; but supports polytheisticworship, 148. Relation between Plutarch and Philo, 150-54.Review of the change which took place in the interval whichpassed between them, 154-59. Assigns the work of moraleducation to philosophy, 194 ; defends the position of a courtphilosopher, 200.Porphyrius, 291.REUMONT, VON (Geschichtc dcr Stadt J?ow, i. 347), states the Romanrule of Augustus and Tiberius in the East to have been incomparablymilder and juster than that of the native kings, 7.Roman Church, founded by St. Peter (A. p. 42), 12 ; recorded by St.Le^fof Rome, and St. Dionysius of Corinth, 14; probable allusion bySuetonius, 15 ; testimony of St. Paul to its growth and eminencebefore he came to Rome, 16; of Tacitus, to its spread among thenobility (A.D. 58), 17 ; and to its strength at the first persecution,(A.D. 64), 18 ; nature and strangeness of the work thus accora-VOL. III. 2 D

418 INDEXplished, 18-22 ; its intrinsic contrast with philosophy in the unionof dogma, morality, and worship, 23-5 ; its success as comparedwith the previous efforts of human genius in Pythagoras, Plato,Aristotle, and Zeno, 25-32 ; St. Peter's work a personal followingof Christ, 32-35 ; represented in catacombs and sarcophagi atRome, 35-7 ; carries on into the Christian people the triplemediation of Prophet, Priest, and King, which made the Jewishnation, 37-43 ; this work of St. Peter at Rome seen by Constan-tine to have been repeated in each city of his empire, 349-53 ;in it consists the establishment of a Christian Kingdom, 367-68 ;which is based upon the Person of Christ, 368-70.SANGUINETI, de Sedc Romamt B. Pctri, 13, 15, 17.Seneca, his life and circumstances, 57 ; his view of the task of philosophy,58 ; his conception of God, the World, Cause and Matter,60; of the human soul, 64; his teaching on beneficence, anger,revenge, a great advance on his predecessors, 66 ; but modifiedby his view of man's duty to himself, 68; doctrine on slavery, 69;inconsistency between his life and writings, 72 ; his superiority tothose before him a singular case, 73; his principles pagan, hisexpressions almost Christian, 74; how this problem may besolved, 75 ; points common to him with Musonius, Epictetus, andMarcus Aurelius, 88; his relation to Attalus, 196; Seneca,Plutarch, and Philostratus, three stages in the bearing of philosophyupon religion, 259; Seneca contrasted with Philo, 138;passages in his writings which seem to refer to Christian martyrs,74; assigns to reason in his syatein a parallel place to that whichis given to charity in the Christian religion, 92 ; the analogy ofhis language with that of St. Paul as to human wickedness, 101,102; his teacher, Sotion of Alexandria, a Pythagorean, 139;anecdote of the trust of Augustus and the Empress Julia in thephilosopher Areus, 341.Simon, Jules, Alexandrine philosophy, 294.Sophocles, recognises a moral law, sustained by God, 335.Stiefelhagen, Theologie des 1/eident/titms, Il6, 117.Stockl, Philosophic des Afittclalters, true doctrine of creation, 306.Stoicism, alone in force in the reigns of Claudius and Nero, 54 ; itskosmology, theology, and ethics, 55; its four chief teachers'representative men, 57 ; its doctrine of reason, as a portion ofthe divine spirit, 90, 299, 313, 81, 249; virtue, the only good, 92 ;science subordinate to virtue, 93 ; the philosophical life preferredto the political, 94 ; cosmopolitanism, 95 ; its view as to designand final causes in the world, 98 ; as to the subordination of all

INDEX419things to the good of man, 99 ; considers the mass of men sinnersagainst the law of nature, i.e., reason, loo ; its view as to humanity,philanthropy, and beneficence, 102; as to submission to the willof God, 106 ; Stoic end of man compared with Christian, 109; itseffect from Claudius to Marcus Aurelius, no; ends in negationof primary truth, 120.Suetonius, 15, note; his religion, 177.TACITUS, admits that the condition of the provinces was improved bythe empire, 7, note; trial of Pomponia Grsecina, the ChristianLucina, 17 ; on the first persecution of the Christians, 18, 19 ;his philosophical and religious standing-point, 176; his death ofThrasea, 199.Thomas Aquinas, St., Contra Gentiles, 302, 306.TO 0etoi>, ** the Divine," a pantheistic term, 91. Once used " by St. Paulin contradistinction to the personal name of God, note, 358.Tocqueville, 95.Tyudall, Professor, his lecture at Belfast, a restatement of the earlyGreek materialistic pantheism, 325, 382.Tzschirner, Fall des Heidenthums, 207, 250, 342.UKBERWEG, Grundriss der Geschichtc dcr Philosophic des Alterthwms,55-7, 93> 274, 276, 296.WERNER, Geschichte der christlichen Theologie, 204.ZELLER, Philosophic der Griechen, supposes Christianity and Neopla-tonism to have drawn their joint origin from the needs of theirtime, 9; quoted, 57, 62, 66, 77, 80, 8l, 84, 85, 90, 91, 93, 101,103, 104, 106-8, 124, 128-30, 134, 137, 139, 140, 144-7, IS1, 152,200-2, 211, 264. Doctrine of Plotinus, 269-290, passim. Por-phyrius, 291. lamblichus, 292-304, 398. Vortrcige, physicalunity of nature from which Greek philosophy started, 297 ; thePlatonic State, 398. Gcschichte der Deutschen Philosophic, statementof Spinoza's pantheism, 324,END OF VOL. II[.BURNS AND GATES, LIMITED, LONDON

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