Chapter XXI: Persecution Of Heresy, State Of The Church.—Part II

The eloquence of Plato, the name of Solomon, the authority of the
school of Alexandria, and the consent of the Jews and Greeks,
were insufficient to establish the truth of a mysterious
doctrine, which might please, but could not satisfy, a rational
mind. A prophet, or apostle, inspired by the Deity, can alone
exercise a lawful dominion over the faith of mankind: and the
theology of Plato might have been forever confounded with the
philosophical visions of the Academy, the Porch, and the Lycæum,
if the name and divine attributes of the _Logos_ had not been
confirmed by the celestial pen of the last and most sublime of
the Evangelists. 20 The Christian Revelation, which was
consummated under the reign of Nerva, disclosed to the world the
amazing secret, that the Logos, who was with God from the
beginning, and was God, who had made all things, and for whom all
things had been made, was incarnate in the person of Jesus of
Nazareth; who had been born of a virgin, and suffered death on
the cross. Besides the general design of fixing on a perpetual
basis the divine honors of Christ, the most ancient and
respectable of the ecclesiastical writers have ascribed to the
evangelic theologian a particular intention to confute two
opposite heresies, which disturbed the peace of the primitive
church. 21 I. The faith of the Ebionites, 22 perhaps of the
Nazarenes, 23 was gross and imperfect. They revered Jesus as the
greatest of the prophets, endowed with supernatural virtue and
power. They ascribed to his person and to his future reign all
the predictions of the Hebrew oracles which relate to the
spiritual and everlasting kingdom of the promised Messiah. 24
Some of them might confess that he was born of a virgin; but they
obstinately rejected the preceding existence and divine
perfections of the _Logos_, or Son of God, which are so clearly
defined in the Gospel of St. John. About fifty years afterwards,
the Ebionites, whose errors are mentioned by Justin Martyr with
less severity than they seem to deserve, 25 formed a very
inconsiderable portion of the Christian name. II. The Gnostics,
who were distinguished by the epithet of _Docetes_, deviated into
the contrary extreme; and betrayed the human, while they asserted
the divine, nature of Christ. Educated in the school of Plato,
accustomed to the sublime idea of the Logos, they readily
conceived that the brightest _Æon_, or _Emanation_ of the Deity,
might assume the outward shape and visible appearances of a
mortal; 26 but they vainly pretended, that the imperfections of
matter are incompatible with the purity of a celestial substance.

While the blood of Christ yet smoked on Mount Calvary, the
Docetes invented the impious and extravagant hypothesis, that,
instead of issuing from the womb of the Virgin, 27 he had
descended on the banks of the Jordan in the form of perfect
manhood; that he had imposed on the senses of his enemies, and of
his disciples; and that the ministers of Pilate had wasted their
impotent rage on an ury phantom, who _seemed_ to expire on the
cross, and, after three days, to rise from the dead. 28

20 (return) [ The Platonists admired the beginning of the Gospel
of St. John as containing an exact transcript of their own
principles. Augustin de Civitat. Dei, x. 29. Amelius apud Cyril.
advers. Julian. l. viii. p. 283. But in the third and fourth
centuries, the Platonists of Alexandria might improve their
Trinity by the secret study of the Christian theology. Note: A
short discussion on the sense in which St. John has used the word
Logos, will prove that he has not borrowed it from the philosophy
of Plato. The evangelist adopts this word without previous
explanation, as a term with which his contemporaries were already
familiar, and which they could at once comprehend. To know the
sense which he gave to it, we must inquire that which it
generally bore in his time. We find two: the one attached to the
word _logos_ by the Jews of Palestine, the other by the school of
Alexandria, particularly by Philo. The Jews had feared at all
times to pronounce the name of Jehovah; they had formed a habit
of designating God by one of his attributes; they called him
sometimes Wisdom, sometimes the Word. _By the word of the Lord
were the heavens made_. (Psalm xxxiii. 6.) Accustomed to
allegories, they often addressed themselves to this attribute of
the Deity as a real being. Solomon makes Wisdom say “The Lord
possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of
old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever
the earth was.” (Prov. viii. 22, 23.) Their residence in Persia
only increased this inclination to sustained allegories. In the
Ecclesiasticus of the son of Sirach, and the Book of Wisdom, we
find allegorical descriptions of Wisdom like the following: “I
came out of the mouth of the Most High; I covered the earth as a
cloud;... I alone compassed the circuit of heaven, and walked in
the bottom of the deep... The Creator created me from the
beginning, before the world, and I shall never fail.” (Eccles.
xxiv. 35- 39.) See also the Wisdom of Solomon, c. vii. v. 9. [The
latter book is clearly Alexandrian.—M.] We see from this that the
Jews understood from the Hebrew and Chaldaic words which signify
Wisdom, the Word, and which were translated into Greek, a simple
attribute of the Deity, allegorically personified, but of which
they did not make a real particular being separate from the
Deity.
The school of Alexandria, on the contrary, and Philo among
the rest, mingling Greek with Jewish and Oriental notions,
and abandoning himself to his inclination to mysticism,
personified the logos, and represented it a distinct being,
created by God, and intermediate between God and man. This is
the second _logos_ of Philo, that which acts from the
beginning of the world, alone in its kind, creator of the
sensible world, formed by God according to the ideal world
which he had in himself, and which was the first logos, the
first- born of the Deity. The logos taken in this sense,
then, was a created being, but, anterior to the creation of
the world, near to God, and charged with his revelations to
mankind.
Which of these two senses is that which St. John intended to
assign to the word logos in the first chapter of his Gospel,
and in all his writings? St. John was a Jew, born and
educated in Palestine; he had no knowledge, at least very
little, of the philosophy of the Greeks, and that of the
Grecizing Jews: he would naturally, then, attach to the word
_logos_ the sense attached to it by the Jews of Palestine.
If, in fact, we compare the attributes which he assigns to
the _logos_ with those which are assigned to it in Proverbs,
in the Wisdom of Solomon, in Ecclesiasticus, we shall see
that they are the same. The Word was in the world, and the
world was made by him; in him was life, and the life was the
light of men, (c. i. v. 10-14.) It is impossible not to trace
in this chapter the ideas which the Jews had formed of the
allegorized logos. The evangelist afterwards really
personifies that which his predecessors have personified only
poetically; for he affirms “_that the Word became flesh_,”
(v. 14.) It was to prove this that he wrote. Closely
examined, the ideas which he gives of the logos cannot agree
with those of Philo and the school of Alexandria; they
correspond, on the contrary, with those of the Jews of
Palestine. Perhaps St. John, employing a well-known term to
explain a doctrine which was yet unknown, has slightly
altered the sense; it is this alteration which we appear to
discover on comparing different passages of his writings.
It is worthy of remark, that the Jews of Palestine, who did
not perceive this alteration, could find nothing
extraordinary in what St. John said of the Logos; at least
they comprehended it without difficulty, while the Greeks and
Grecizing Jews, on their part, brought to it prejudices and
preconceptions easily reconciled with those of the
evangelist, who did not expressly contradict them. This
circumstance must have much favored the progress of
Christianity. Thus the fathers of the church in the two first
centuries and later, formed almost all in the school of
Alexandria, gave to the Logos of St. John a sense nearly
similar to that which it received from Philo. Their doctrine
approached very near to that which in the fourth century the
council of Nice condemned in the person of Arius.—G.
M. Guizot has forgotten the long residence of St. John at
Ephesus, the centre of the mingling opinions of the East and
West, which were gradually growing up into Gnosticism. (See
Matter. Hist. du Gnosticisme, vol. i. p. 154.) St. John’s
sense of the Logos seems as far removed from the simple
allegory ascribed to the Palestinian Jews as from the
Oriental impersonation of the Alexandrian. The simple truth
may be that St. John took the familiar term, and, as it were
infused into it the peculiar and Christian sense in which it
is used in his writings.—M.]

21 (return) [ See Beausobre, Hist. Critique du Manicheisme, tom.
i. p. 377. The Gospel according to St. John is supposed to have
been published about seventy years after the death of Christ.]

22 (return) [ The sentiments of the Ebionites are fairly stated
by Mosheim (p. 331) and Le Clerc, (Hist. Eccles. p. 535.) The
Clementines, published among the apostolical fathers, are
attributed by the critics to one of these sectaries.]

23 (return) [ Stanch polemics, like a Bull, (Judicium Eccles.
Cathol. c. 2,) insist on the orthodoxy of the Nazarenes; which
appears less pure and certain in the eyes of Mosheim, (p. 330.)]

24 (return) [ The humble condition and sufferings of Jesus have
always been a stumbling-block to the Jews. “Deus... contrariis
coloribus Messiam depinxerat: futurus erat Rex, Judex, Pastor,”
&c. See Limborch et Orobio Amica Collat. p. 8, 19, 53-76,
192-234. But this objection has obliged the believing Christians
to lift up their eyes to a spiritual and everlasting kingdom.]

25 (return) [ Justin Martyr, Dialog. cum Tryphonte, p. 143, 144.
See Le Clerc, Hist. Eccles. p. 615. Bull and his editor Grabe
(Judicium Eccles. Cathol. c. 7, and Appendix) attempt to distort
either the sentiments or the words of Justin; but their violent
correction of the text is rejected even by the Benedictine
editors.]

26 (return) [ The Arians reproached the orthodox party with
borrowing their Trinity from the Valentinians and Marcionites.
See Beausobre, Hist. de Manicheisme, l. iii. c. 5, 7.]

27 (return) [ Non dignum est ex utero credere Deum, et Deum
Christum.... non dignum est ut tanta majestas per sordes et
squalores muli eris transire credatur. The Gnostics asserted the
impurity of matter, and of marriage; and they were scandalized by
the gross interpretations of the fathers, and even of Augustin
himself. See Beausobre, tom. ii. p. 523, * Note: The greater part
of the Docetæ rejected the true divinity of Jesus Christ, as well
as his human nature. They belonged to the Gnostics, whom some
philosophers, in whose party Gibbon has enlisted, make to derive
their opinions from those of Plato. These philosophers did not
consider that Platonism had undergone continual alterations, and
that those who gave it some analogy with the notions of the
Gnostics were later in their origin than most of the sects
comprehended under this name Mosheim has proved (in his Instit.
Histor. Eccles. Major. s. i. p. 136, sqq and p. 339, sqq.) that
the Oriental philosophy, combined with the cabalistical
philosophy of the Jews, had given birth to Gnosticism. The
relations which exist between this doctrine and the records which
remain to us of that of the Orientals, the Chaldean and Persian,
have been the source of the errors of the Gnostic Christians, who
wished to reconcile their ancient notions with their new belief.
It is on this account that, denying the human nature of Christ,
they also denied his intimate union with God, and took him for
one of the substances (æons) created by God. As they believed in
the eternity of matter, and considered it to be the principle of
evil, in opposition to the Deity, the first cause and principle
of good, they were unwilling to admit that one of the pure
substances, one of the æons which came forth from God, had, by
partaking in the material nature, allied himself to the principle
of evil; and this was their motive for rejecting the real
humanity of Jesus Christ. See Ch. G. F. Walch, Hist. of Heresies
in Germ. t. i. p. 217, sqq. Brucker, Hist. Crit. Phil. ii. p
639.—G.]

28 (return) [ Apostolis adhuc in sæculo superstitibus apud Judæam
Christi sanguine recente, et _phantasma_ corpus Domini
asserebatur. Cotelerius thinks (Patres Apostol. tom. ii. p. 24)
that those who will not allow the _Docetes_ to have arisen in the
time of the Apostles, may with equal reason deny that the sun
shines at noonday. These _Docetes_, who formed the most
considerable party among the Gnostics, were so called, because
they granted only a _seeming_ body to Christ. * Note: The name of
Docetæ was given to these sectaries only in the course of the
second century: this name did not designate a sect, properly so
called; it applied to all the sects who taught the non- reality
of the material body of Christ; of this number were the
Valentinians, the Basilidians, the Ophites, the Marcionites,
(against whom Tertullian wrote his book, De Carne Christi,) and
other Gnostics. In truth, Clement of Alexandria (l. iii. Strom.
c. 13, p. 552) makes express mention of a sect of Docetæ, and
even names as one of its heads a certain Cassianus; but every
thing leads us to believe that it was not a distinct sect.
Philastrius (de Hæres, c. 31) reproaches Saturninus with being a
Docete. Irenæus (adv. Hær. c. 23) makes the same reproach against
Basilides. Epiphanius and Philastrius, who have treated in detail
on each particular heresy, do not specially name that of the
Docetæ. Serapion, bishop of Antioch, (Euseb. Hist. Eccles. l. vi.
c. 12,) and Clement of Alexandria, (l. vii. Strom. p. 900,)
appear to be the first who have used the generic name. It is not
found in any earlier record, though the error which it points out
existed even in the time of the Apostles. See Ch. G. F. Walch,
Hist. of Her. v. i. p. 283. Tillemont, Mempour servir a la Hist
Eccles. ii. p. 50. Buddæus de Eccles. Apost. c. 5 & 7—G.]

The divine sanction, which the Apostle had bestowed on the
fundamental principle of the theology of Plato, encouraged the
learned proselytes of the second and third centuries to admire
and study the writings of the Athenian sage, who had thus
marvellously anticipated one of the most surprising discoveries
of the Christian revelation. The respectable name of Plato was
used by the orthodox, 29 and abused by the heretics, 30 as the
common support of truth and error: the authority of his skilful
commentators, and the science of dialectics, were employed to
justify the remote consequences of his opinions and to supply the
discreet silence of the inspired writers. The same subtle and
profound questions concerning the nature, the generation, the
distinction, and the equality of the three divine persons of the
mysterious _Triad_, or _Trinity_, 31 were agitated in the
philosophical and in the Christian schools of Alexandria. An
eager spirit of curiosity urged them to explore the secrets of
the abyss; and the pride of the professors, and of their
disciples, was satisfied with the sciences of words. But the most
sagacious of the Christian theologians, the great Athanasius
himself, has candidly confessed, 32 that whenever he forced his
understanding to meditate on the divinity of the _Logos_, his
toilsome and unavailing efforts recoiled on themselves; that the
more he thought, the less he comprehended; and the more he wrote,
the less capable was he of expressing his thoughts. In every step
of the inquiry, we are compelled to feel and acknowledge the
immeasurable disproportion between the size of the object and the
capacity of the human mind. We may strive to abstract the notions
of time, of space, and of matter, which so closely adhere to all
the perceptions of our experimental knowledge. But as soon as we
presume to reason of infinite substance, of spiritual generation;
as often as we deduce any positive conclusions from a negative
idea, we are involved in darkness, perplexity, and inevitable
contradiction. As these difficulties arise from the nature of the
subject, they oppress, with the same insuperable weight, the
philosophic and the theological disputant; but we may observe two
essential and peculiar circumstances, which discriminated the
doctrines of the Catholic church from the opinions of the
Platonic school.

29 (return) [ Some proofs of the respect which the Christians
entertained for the person and doctrine of Plato may be found in
De la Mothe le Vayer, tom. v. p. 135, &c., edit. 1757; and
Basnage, Hist. des Juifs tom. iv. p. 29, 79, &c.]

30 (return) [ Doleo bona fide, Platonem omnium heræticorum
condimentarium factum. Tertullian. de Anima, c. 23. Petavius
(Dogm. Theolog. tom. iii. proleg. 2) shows that this was a
general complaint. Beausobre (tom. i. l. iii. c. 9, 10) has
deduced the Gnostic errors from Platonic principles; and as, in
the school of Alexandria, those principles were blended with the
Oriental philosophy, (Brucker, tom. i. p. 1356,) the sentiment of
Beausobre may be reconciled with the opinion of Mosheim, (General
History of the Church, vol. i. p. 37.)]

31 (return) [ If Theophilus, bishop of Antioch, (see Dupin,
Bibliothèque Ecclesiastique, tom. i. p. 66,) was the first who
employed the word _Triad_, _Trinity_, that abstract term, which
was already familiar to the schools of philosophy, must have been
introduced into the theology of the Christians after the middle
of the second century.]

32 (return) [ Athanasius, tom. i. p. 808. His expressions have an
uncommon energy; and as he was writing to monks, there could not
be any occasion for him to _affect_ a rational language.]

I. A chosen society of philosophers, men of a liberal education
and curious disposition, might silently meditate, and temperately
discuss in the gardens of Athens or the library of Alexandria,
the abstruse questions of metaphysical science. The lofty
speculations, which neither convinced the understanding, nor
agitated the passions, of the Platonists themselves, were
carelessly overlooked by the idle, the busy, and even the
studious part of mankind. 33 But after the _Logos_ had been
revealed as the sacred object of the faith, the hope, and the
religious worship of the Christians, the mysterious system was
embraced by a numerous and increasing multitude in every province
of the Roman world. Those persons who, from their age, or sex, or
occupations, were the least qualified to judge, who were the
least exercised in the habits of abstract reasoning, aspired to
contemplate the economy of the Divine Nature: and it is the boast
of Tertullian, 34 that a Christian mechanic could readily answer
such questions as had perplexed the wisest of the Grecian sages.
Where the subject lies so far beyond our reach, the difference
between the highest and the lowest of human understandings may
indeed be calculated as infinitely small; yet the degree of
weakness may perhaps be measured by the degree of obstinacy and
dogmatic confidence. These speculations, instead of being treated
as the amusement of a vacant hour, became the most serious
business of the present, and the most useful preparation for a
future, life. A theology, which it was incumbent to believe,
which it was impious to doubt, and which it might be dangerous,
and even fatal, to mistake, became the familiar topic of private
meditation and popular discourse. The cold indifference of
philosophy was inflamed by the fervent spirit of devotion; and
even the metaphors of common language suggested the fallacious
prejudices of sense and experience. The Christians, who abhorred
the gross and impure generation of the Greek mythology, 35 were
tempted to argue from the familiar analogy of the filial and
paternal relations. The character of _Son_ seemed to imply a
perpetual subordination to the voluntary author of his existence;
36 but as the act of generation, in the most spiritual and
abstracted sense, must be supposed to transmit the properties of
a common nature, 37 they durst not presume to circumscribe the
powers or the duration of the Son of an eternal and omnipotent
Father. Fourscore years after the death of Christ, the Christians
of Bithynia, declared before the tribunal of Pliny, that they
invoked him as a god: and his divine honors have been perpetuated
in every age and country, by the various sects who assume the
name of his disciples. 38 Their tender reverence for the memory
of Christ, and their horror for the profane worship of any
created being, would have engaged them to assert the equal and
absolute divinity of the _Logos_, if their rapid ascent towards
the throne of heaven had not been imperceptibly checked by the
apprehension of violating the unity and sole supremacy of the
great Father of Christ and of the Universe. The suspense and
fluctuation produced in the minds of the Christians by these
opposite tendencies, may be observed in the writings of the
theologians who flourished after the end of the apostolic age,
and before the origin of the Arian controversy. Their suffrage is
claimed, with equal confidence, by the orthodox and by the
heretical parties; and the most inquisitive critics have fairly
allowed, that if they had the good fortune of possessing the
Catholic verity, they have delivered their conceptions in loose,
inaccurate, and sometimes contradictory language. 39

33 (return) [ In a treatise, which professed to explain the
opinions of the ancient philosophers concerning the nature of the
gods we might expect to discover the theological Trinity of
Plato. But Cicero very honestly confessed, that although he had
translated the Timæus, he could never understand that mysterious
dialogue. See Hieronym. præf. ad l. xii. in Isaiam, tom. v. p.
154.]

34 (return) [ Tertullian. in Apolog. c. 46. See Bayle,
Dictionnaire, au mot _Simonide_. His remarks on the presumption
of Tertullian are profound and interesting.]

35 (return) [ Lactantius, iv. 8. Yet the _Probole_, or
_Prolatio_, which the most orthodox divines borrowed without
scruple from the Valentinians, and illustrated by the comparisons
of a fountain and stream, the sun and its rays, &c., either meant
nothing, or favored a material idea of the divine generation. See
Beausobre, tom. i. l. iii. c. 7, p. 548.]

36 (return) [ Many of the primitive writers have frankly
confessed, that the Son owed his being to the _will_ of the
Father.——See Clarke’s Scripture Trinity, p. 280-287. On the other
hand, Athanasius and his followers seem unwilling to grant what
they are afraid to deny. The schoolmen extricate themselves from
this difficulty by the distinction of a _preceding_ and a
_concomitant_ will. Petav. Dogm. Theolog. tom. ii. l. vi. c. 8,
p. 587-603.]

37 (return) [ See Petav. Dogm. Theolog. tom. ii. l. ii. c. 10, p.
159.]

38 (return) [ Carmenque Christo quasi Deo dicere secum invicem.
Plin. Epist. x. 97. The sense of _Deus, Elohim_, in the ancient
languages, is critically examined by Le Clerc, (Ars Critica, p.
150-156,) and the propriety of worshipping a very excellent
creature is ably defended by the Socinian Emlyn, (Tracts, p.
29-36, 51-145.)]

39 (return) [ See Daille de Usu Patrum, and Le Clerc,
Bibliothèque Universelle, tom. x. p. 409. To arraign the faith of
the Ante-Nicene fathers, was the object, or at least has been the
effect, of the stupendous work of Petavius on the Trinity, (Dogm.
Theolog. tom. ii.;) nor has the deep impression been erased by
the learned defence of Bishop Bull. Note: Dr. Burton’s work on
the doctrine of the Ante-Nicene fathers must be consulted by
those who wish to obtain clear notions on this subject.—M.]