History Of The Apostolic Church
EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION TO THE "GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO
CHURCH HISTORY" IN HISTORY OF THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH
In a preface to his History of the Apostolie Church Schaff wrote that in addition to the valuable English translations of important volumes of German theology and historical research,
We need still more, works written, so to speak, from the Anglo-German point of view--works which are influenced and pervaded by the earnest, energetic, and pious mind of England as well as that of Germany--and which will modify and apply the best results of German thought and scholarship to the peculiar wants of the Anglo-Saxon world.
I have honestly laboured to prepare the way for a more intimate union and harmonious co-operation of the German and English mind in the department of Historical Theology, which increases in importance every year, and must exert a growing influence on the final solution of the great problems of our age.
His History of the Apostolte Church included a "General Introduction to Church History," the text of which follows.
It represents an expansion of his views on the nature, method, and importance of church history.
He again pointed out that an "accurate acquaintance with the past" is 4 basic foundation for understanding the present.
The church cannot understand itself without clearly discerning its origin and growth.
As in What ts Church History? Schaff reemphasized the validity of the "organic development" pattern, the standpoint of modern German historiography.
It was the best approach to help one appreciate and write about the history of the church.
The introduction also offered Schaff the occasion for describing and evaluating the contributions of a large number of continental thinkers such as Neander, Dorner,
Thiersch, Rothe, Baur, and Strauss.
Not the least of the significant facets of this important essay was Schaff's call for a "higher union of Protestantism and Catholicism."
He acknowledged the partnership of his friend, John Williamson Nevin, in this hope.
On the last two pages he observed:
The United States may be expected, at no distant day, to make important contributions to historical theology, proceeding mainly from a combination of the English and German mind, and serving the interests of a sound evangelical catholic Protestantism.
Philip Schaff was himself a major figure in trying to bring this forecast to reality.
HISTORY
OF THE
APOSTOLIC CHURCH
WITIE A
GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO CHURCH HISTORY.
Ligh if
PHILIP SCHAFE,
PROFESSOR IN THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY AT MERCERSBURG.
VOLUME FIRST.
EDINBURGH:
T. AND T. CLARK,
38, GEORGE STREET
LONDON: HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO. DUBLIN: JOHN ROBERTSON,
AND HODGES AND SMITH.
MDCCCLIV.
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SH a al
PREFACE.
To present from original sources, in a faithful, clear, and life-like picture, the history of the church of Jesus Christ, the God-man and Saviour of the world; to reproduce, with ardent love of truth and with genuine catholicity, her inward and outward experience, her conflicts and triumphs, her sufferings and joys, her thoughts, her words, and her deeds; and to hold up to the present age this panorama of eighteen centuries as the most complete apology for Christianity, full of encouragement and warning, of precept and example ;—this is a task well worthy the energies of a long life, and offering in itself the amplest reward, but at the same time so vast and comprehensive, that it cannot be accomplished to any satisfaction, except by the cooperation of all varieties of talent.
The individual must feel sufficiently fortunate and honoured, if he succeed in furnishing a few blocks for a gigantic edifice, which, in the nature of the case, cannot be finished till the church shall have reached the goal of her militant stage.
Jor science grows with experience, and with it alone becomes complete, Two years ago, I published in the retired village of Mercersburg,
Pennsylvania, with discouraging prospects and at my own risk, _ the first volume of a General History of the Christian Church in _ the German language, and dedicated it to the memory of my late honoured teacher and friend, Dr Aucustus NEANDER (by his permission granted to me, with the kindest wishes for my sucVOL. I. a
EDO PREFACE. cess, shortly before his lamented death), as a token of my high veneration for the profound and conscientious scholarship, the liberal and catholic spirit, and the deep-toned, humble, and child-like piety of this truly great and good man, the " father of modern church history."
Although very limited in circulation, it was received with unexpected favour on both sides of the Atlantic by most competent judges of different evangelical denominations; and I feel under special obligations to the Rev.
Doctors J. A. Alexander of the Presbyterian Church, J. W.
Nevin of the German Reformed, C. P. Krauth of the Lutheran, J. M'Clintock of the Methodist Episcopal, C. E. Stowe of the Congregational, also to Prof. Dr Jul. Miiller of Halle, and Dr
This favourable reception, and the earnest call expressed from various quarters, both publicly and privately, for an English translation, have induced me to issue it in that language, which alone can open to it a respectable circulation in this country and in England.
I have revised the whole work with reference to what has appeared in the same department since its publication, and have made some additions, especially in the fourth chapter of the General Introduction, and in the last chapter of the fifth book on the Heresies of the Apostolic Age.
The translation (including the re-translation of those portions which had been previously published, as separate articles, in various American Reviews) has been executed by my friend, the Rev. Edward D. Yeomans, a gentleman of excellent character and fine talents, who will no doubt make himself favourably known also in course of time by original contributions to our American theological literature.
Having carefully revised the translation before sending it to the
PREFACE. leo press, I can vouch for its faithfulness ; while at the same time the style, I think, will be found as free and easy as that of an original English work.
By this arrangement the translation appears much sooner, and to much better advantage, than if I had undertaken it myself.
For the careful reading of the proof I express my grateful acknowledgments to my learned friend, the Rev. John Lillie of New York.
I prefer, for several reasons, to publish this volume as a separate work on the Apostolic Church, with a full General Introduction, which contains the Outlines of a Philosophy of Church
History, and will supply, I hope, a defect in this department of our literature.
It is my wish and intention, however, if God spares my life and strength, to bring the history down to the present time ; and thus, so far as lies within my humble abilities, to give from reliable sources, under the guidance of our Lord's twin parables of the mustard-seed and leaven, a complete, true, and graphic account of the development of Christ's kingdom on earth, for the theoretical and practical benefit especially of ministers and students of theology.
As regards compass, I propose to steer midway between the synoptical brevity of a mere compend and the voluminous fulness of a work which seeks to exhaust its subject, and is designed simply for the professional scholar.
Each of the nine periods, according to the scheme proposed in the General Introduction, § 17, will probably require a moderate volume.'
With these remarks, I send this book forth to the public, fully conscious of its many imperfections, yet not without hope, that under the blessing of Almighty God it may accomplish some
1 [ regret that the large and valuable work of Conybeare and Howson, " The Life and Epistles of St Paul," 2 vols., London, 1853 (embellished with many splendid plates), did not reach me till after the greater part of the manuscript was already in the hands of the printer.
Niners PREFACE. good, so long as its time may last. With modest claims, and the most peaceful intentions, polemical and uncompromising only towards rationalism and infidelity, whether of German or English origin, but conservative, conciliatory, and respectful towards the various forms of positive Christianity, and reaching the hand of fellowship to all who love the Lord Jesus in sincerity and in truth, it sails into the ocean of a deeply distracted, yet most interesting and hopeful age, where, amid powerful fermentations and keen birth-throes, a new era of church history seems to be preparing.
Whatever the future may bring, we know, that the church of Christ is built upon a rock, against which even the gates of hell shall never prevail ; that she must go on conquering and to conquer, until the whole world shall bow to the peaceful sceptre of the cross; and that all obstructions and persecutions, all heresies and schisms, all wickedness and corruption of men, will only tend at last, in the hands of infinite wisdom and mercy, to bring out her glorious attributes of unity, catholicity, and holiness, in brighter colours and with more triumphant power.
May the great Head of the Church use this representation of her history as an humble instrument to promote His own glory, to serve the cause of truth, unity, and peace, and to strengthen the faith of His people in the divine character, immovable foundation, and ultimate triumph of the kingdom of God !
PHILIP SCHAFF.
MercersBurG, PENNSYLVANIA, September 1853.
ies
PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION.
By an arrangement concluded with Messrs Clark, which extends also over the subsequent volumes promised in the Preface to the American edition, I appear before the English public with this work on the most important and most interesting period of church history.
In doing so, 1 feel not as a stranger amongst strangers, but as a friend amongst friends and fellow-labourers in the same vineyard of our common Lord and Saviour.
For although a Swiss by birth and a German by education, I have now lived ten years in America, which is substantially a continuation of England in religion as well as in language, politics, and social life, and have had ample opportunity to come in contact with the various branches of English and Anglo-American theology and Christianity.
I have, therefore, made frequent reference to English literature, as far as it touches on the same subject; and,-in the proposed continuation of the work to the present time, I intend to devote much more space to the history of the church in Great Britain and the United States than is generally done by German authors, who can hardly be expected to have a full and adequate conception of the Anglo-American world, and its important bearings upon all the interests of Christ's kingdom.
I am fully convinced that the idealistic and theoretical German can learn as much from the predominantly realistic and practical tendency of the English and American mind, as the latter from the former.
The peculiarities of both are equally
PREFACE. necessary and important for the interests of science and religion, and ought therefore harmoniously to co-operate for the same common end.
However different in their historical development and present condition, the Anglo-Saxon and German minds are still of the same Teutonic root, and can coalesce much easier than those of any other nationalities.
Such an amalgamation becomes even a physical necessity and a social duty in the United
States, where all the nations of Europe, especially the English and German, meet in the various relations of life, to undergo a process of renovation and transformation, and to constitute the one American nationality ; so that this will continue to be, as it already is, predominantly English, but will embody at the same time, we hope, the best elements of the other nations represented there, particularly the German inorganic union.
We have had of late years, especially from the press of Messrs Clark of Edinburgh, excellent translations of learned and pious German works on the various departments of theology.
These have served, and will continue to serve, the important object of bringing English Christians in contact with the thorough scholarship, the minute criticism, the earnest investigation, and the evangelical spirit, which characterize the better portion of the recent literature of Germany.
With all their defects and imperfections, inseparable from all human works, they contain, not only a great deal of valuable learning and useful information, but also many deep and noble ideas, which cannot but enrich and fertilize the theology of England and Scotland, and excite it to new vigorous activity.
But mere translations cannot satisfy our wants in this direction.
We need still more, works written, so to speak, from the Anglo-German point of view—works which are influenced and pervaded by the earnest, energetic, and pious mind of England
PREFACE.
+55 as well as that of Germany—and which will modify and apply the best results of German thought and scholarship to the peculiar practical wants of the Anglo-Saxon world.
I have honestly laboured to prepare the way for a more intimate union and harmonious co-operation of the German and English mind in the department of Historical Theology, which increases in importance every year, and must exert a growing influence on the final solution of the great problems of our age.
How far I have succeeded in this difficult task is, of course, not for me to decide.
I will only add, that I intend, after my return to America, from a visit to good old Europe, to devote my best time and strength to the continuation of this work, and that I have made such arrangements with Messrs Clark, as will enable them to issue the subsequent volumes in Edinburgh simultaneously with the American edition.
And now may the blessing of the Apostolic Church accompany this humble effort to illustrate its history, and to present its inexhaustible treasures, that it may benefit the present age and tend to the glory of God.
PHILIP SCHAFF.
BERxIN, April 15, 1854.
ADDENDA.
AFTER the final revision of the present volume was concluded, the following works on the early history of the Church have appeared, which would find their proper place in §§ 36 and 37.
1. Dr Baur of Tiibingen: Das Christenthum und die Christliche Kirche der drei ersten Jahrhunderte.
1853.
It is of the
ADDENDA. same character as the other works of the Tiibingen school, mentioned in § 36, and gives a short but comprehensive summary of the Author's peculiar'views on early Christianity.
2. Dr Cur. Fr. Scumin, late Professor of Theology in Tiibingen: Biblische Theologie des N. Testaments, 2 vols., published after the death of the Author (+ 1852), by Dr Weizsicker.
1853.
They are very valuable for the theology of the apostolic age ; and as I had the benefit of the oral instruction of the learned and pious Dr Schmid, I alluded to these lectures in a note to SHOT:
3. Dr J. P. LANGE (formerly at Ziirich, now at Bonn) :
Geschichte des Apostolischen Zeitalters, 2 vols.
1853-54.
It forms the first part of a General History of the Church, laid out on an extensive scale.
The first volume is almost entirely occupied with introductory matter, and a far too lengthy review of the Tiibingen speculations.
This is an evident want of proportion and proper literary economy.
The book generally has the same virtues and defects as the " Life of Christ,' and the numerous other works of this genial, pious, and amiable, but almost too prolific author, in whom theology and poetry extend to each other the hand of friendship, and exchange parts occasionally. They are fresh and suggestive, full of original, spirited, and interesting ideas, but unsatisfactory in a scientific point of view, and contain many inaccuracies and additions of a rich imagination, which will not stand the test of sober criticism.
Finally, I would observe, that Dr Rothe is now no more at Bonn, as stated in § 37 (p. 140), and that Dr Dorner has followed a call to Gottingen.
Brruin, April 15, 1854.
Loy
GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO CHURCH HISTORY.
CHAPTER I.
HISTORY.
§ 1. Idea of History.
THE object of this General Introduction is to obtain a clear view of the nature and purpose of Church History, and thus to gain the proper position for the contemplation of its details.
A perfect understanding of it can be attained, indeed, only at the close of the historical course; for the best definition of any science is the thing itself.
But some preliminary explanation is indispensable, to give us, at least, a general idea of church history, and to serve as a directory for the study of the whole and its parts.
Our best method will be, to resolve the compound conception into its two constituents, and to inquire into the _ nature, first of history, secondly of the church, thirdly of church history ; with a fourth chapter on the progress of Church History as a science.
Thus the introduction will be, at the same time, a sort of philosophy of church history.
By history in the objective sense we understand the sum of what has happened, or, more precisely, of all that pertains to the outward or inward life of humanity, and enters essentially into its social, political, intellectual, moral, and religious progress and development.
It comprehends the thoughts, words, and deeds, and the prosperous and adverse events which constiVOL. I.
die)
§ 1. IDEA OF HISTORY.
[GENER. tute the past, and which have produced the existing state of civilized society.
Hence barbarians have no history of their own, and figure in that of the world merely as rude material, or as blind forces operating as it were from without.
History in the subjective sense is the science of events, or the apprehension and representation in language of what has thus taken place in the course of time.
Its value depends altogether on its faithfulness as a copy of the objective history ; and requires that the historian surrender himself wholly to his object
—be it the history of the world at large, or any portion of it— reproduce it in a living way in his own mind, and thus become a conscientious organ, a faithful mirror of the past, making the representation exactly answerable to the actual occurrence.*
History in the objective sense, with which we are here mainly concerned, is either secular, or sacred.
The former comprehends the natural life of humanity, and those actions and events which relate primarily to temporal existence in its external and internal aspect, under the general guidance of Divine Providence.
The latter has to do with the special revelation of the triune God for the salvation of men, with the process of redemption, and the fortunes of regenerate humanity.
Here again we must distinguish sacred history in the proper and narrow sense of the term, that is, the history of the revelation of God as deposited in an authoritative and infallible form in the books of the Old and New Testaments, from church history.
The latter is the continuation of the former, though in perpetual contact with secular history, and more or less disturbed by it.
The general relation, then, between secular or profane, and sacred history (including church history), is substantially the same as that between nature and grace, reason and revelation, time and eternity.
The former constitutes the natural basis and preparation for the latter.
The "Father draweth to the Son"
(John vi. 44).
All history before Christ prepared the way for the incarnation; all history since Christ must ultimately, * The English word history refers primarily to this subjective meaning ; being derived through the Latin from the Greek icregia (from the verb iersgew), signifying first research, then what is known by research, then science generally, and in particular the science of events, or history proper.
The corresponding German word, Geschichte, comes from " geschehen," to happen, to occur, and thus expresses primarily the objective sense.
INTROD.]
§ 1, IDEA OF HISTORY.
either directly or indirectly, serve to glorify His name and extend His everlasting kingdom.
Sacred history, on the other hand, exerts a regenerating and sanctifying influence upon secular, or, as it is frequently called, the world's history.
It is the leaven, which is gradually to leaven the whole lump (Matt. xiii. 33).
Both departments, however, are in continual conflict.
The world, as far as it is under the influence of sin and error, still hates and persecutes the church, as it hated and persecuted Christ and his Apostles." But the final issue of the conflict, according to the infallible word of prophecy, will be the complete triumph of the kingdom of Christ over the dominions and powers of this world, so that He shall reign King of nations, as He now reigns King of saints.
A representation of all history, both sacred and secular, making the fact of the incarnation the centre and turning-point of the whole, would be
Universal History in the widest sense.
It is evident, that as the life of the human race is a unit, and as therefore the different departments of history have an intimate relation, no one branch can be fully understood, or satisfactorily presented, without reference to the whole.
For history, under any aspect, is not, as is frequently supposed even by a certain class of so-called historians, a mere aggregate of names, dates, and deeds, more or legs accidental, without fixed plan or sure purpose.
Itis a living organism, whose parts have an inward, vital connection, each requiring and completing the rest.
All nations form but one family, having one origin and one destiny; and all periods are but the several stages of its life, which, though constantly changing its form, is always substantially one and the same.
History, moreover, while it involves indeed the freedom and accountability of man, is yet, as already intimated, even in its secular departments, under the guidance of Divine Providence ; it proceeds on an eternal, unchangeable plan of infinite wisdom, and tends therefore, as by an irresistible necessity, to a definite end. This end is the same as that of the creation at large, the glorifying of God, the Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier of the world, through the free worship of His intelligent creatures, who at the same time in this worship attain their highest happiness.
A 2
§ 2. THE FACTORS OF HISTORY.
[aener.
§ 2. The Factors of History.
History is thus to be viewed as always the product of two factors or agencies.
The first and highest factor is God himself, in whom "' we live and move and have our being,''—who turns the hearts of men "as the rivers of water,"—who worketh in the good " both to will and to do,"—and ruleth the wrath of the wicked to His own praise,—yea, maketh Satan himself tributary to His will.
In this view history may be styled a se/fevolution of God in time—in distinction from nature, which is a revelation of the Creator in space—a continuous exhibition of His omnipotence and wisdom, and more particularly of His moral attributes, justice, holiness, patience, long-suffering, love, and mercy.
A history which leaves this out of sight, and makes God an idle spectator. of the actions and fortunes of men,:1s deistic, rationalistic, and ultimately atheistic, and thus in reality without spirit, without life, without interest, without consolation.
Such a history must be at best a cold statue, without beaming eye or beating heart.
God works in history, however, not as in nature, through blind laws, but through living persons, whom He has created after His own image, and endowed with reason and will.
By these endowments He has assigned to men a certain sphere of conscious, free activity, for which He holds them responsible ; intending not to force them to His worship, but to form them to a moral communion, the fellowship of love, with Himself.
Thus men form a relative, secondary factor of history, receiving the reward of their words and deeds, whether they be good or evil.
To deny such subjective causality, and make men mere passive channels or machines of the Divine activity, is to go to the opposite extreme of pantheism and fatalism, abolishing of course all human accountability, nay, in the end, all distinction between good and evil, virtue and vice.
These two causes, the divine and the human, the objective and the subjective, the absolute and the relative, are to be conceived, not in a mere abstract, mechanical way, as operating collaterally or independently, but as working in and through one another.
With our present knowledge, which, though ever on the advance, must still be imperfect till we shall "see face to face" (1 Cor.
inTROD.]
§ 2. THE FACTORS OF HISTORY.
xiii, 9-12), we may not be able to draw the line clearly between the finite and the infinite causes; yet the general recognition of both is the first condition of any just conception of history.
And it is this that makes history a lofty, unbroken anthem of praise to Divine wisdom and love—an humbling mirror of human weakness and guilt—and, in either view, the richest repository of instruction, encouragement, and edification.
As the biography _ of humanity, which unfolds its relations to itself, to nature, and to God, it must of course embrace all that deserves to be known,
—all that is beautiful, great, noble, and glorious in the course of the world's life.
In it are treasured all the outward and inward experiences of our race,—all its thoughts, feelings, views, wishes, endeavours, and achievements,—all its sorrows and all its joys.
Divine revelation itself belongs to history.
It forms the very marrow of its life—the golden thread which runs through all its leaves.
Thus, in the nature of the case, there | can be no study more comprehensive, more instructive, and more entertaining, than the study of history in the wide sense.
Of the two wonders which filled the mind of the philosopher Kant, according to his own confession, with ever-growing reverence and delight—" the starry heavens above us" and "the moral law within us "'—the latter is certainly the greater.
And the study of history, or of the progressive unfolding of this moral jaw, and of all the intellectual powers of man, is as far above the study of the natural sciences in importance and interest, as the 'immortal mind is above matter, its perishing abode,—a man, formed in the image of God is superior to nature, his servant.
This co-operation of two factors holds good in secular or profane history, as well as in sacred ; but with a twofold difference.
In the first the human agency is most prominent; in the second the divine takes the lead, and makes its presence felt at every step.
Then again both the factors appear under different cha- 'racters.
'There God acts as Creator, Preserver, and Ruler of 'the world, and man, in his natural, fallen state ; here God mani- 'fests himself as the Saviour and Sanctifier of the world, and 'man comes into view as an object of redeeming love, and as a »member of the kingdom of grace.
Secular history is the theatre (of Elohim, or God under his general character, as the Father of Gentiles as well as Jews.
Sacred history and its continua-
§3. CENTRAL POSITION OF RELIGION IN HISTORY.
[cener. tion, church history, is the sanctuary of J ehovah, the God of the covenant, the Lord of a chosen people.
§ 3. The Central Position of Religion im History.
Universal history, like the life of humanity itself, comes before us, of course, in various departments ; which, however, are all more or less connected, and form each the complement of the rest.
There is a history of government, of trade, of social life, of the different sciences and arts, of morality, and of religion.
Of these, the last is plainly the deepest, most central, and most interesting.
For religion, or the relation of man to God,—the principle which ennobles man's earthly existence,—the bond which binds him to the fountain of all life and peace, to the invisible world of spirits, and to a blissful eternity,—is the most sacred element of his nature, the source of* his loftiest thoughts, his mightiest deeds, his sweetest and purest enjoyments.
It is his sabbath, his glory, his crown, in the consciousness of all nations.
It is the region of eternal truth and rest, where, as it is expressed by a profound German philosopher, all mysteries of the world are solved, all contradictions of the spirit reconciled, all painful feelings hushed.
It is an ether, in which all sorrow, all — care is lost, either in the present feeling of devotion, or in a hope — which transforms the darkest clouds of earthly tribulation into | the radiance of heavenly wisdom and mercy.
It cannot be ex- | pected that every man should be a scholar or an artist, a states- | man or a warrior; but every one must be moral and pious, or his life will end in a failure.
It is only by piety, without which there can be no pure morality, that man fulfils the end of his being, and actually shews himself the image of God.
Without it he can neither be truly happy in time, nor blessed in eter- | nity; and unless he secure the righteousness of the kingdom of | heaven, it were better for him if he had never been born.
Reli- | gion, reunion and communion with God, is the morning, noon, | and evening of history; the paradise from which it starts; the | haven of peace, into which, after a course of many thousand | years on the storm-lashed ocean of time, it shall at last be con- | ducted, to rest for ever from its labours, where God shall be " all in all."
Even the other departments of history become most luminous and attractive only in the celestial light of religion.
INTROD.]
§3. CENTRAL POSITION OF RELIGION IN HISTORY.
Les All this, however, is properly applicable only to Christianity, the absolutely true and perfect religion, which is destined to absorb all others.
As the world of nature looks to man, its head and crown, its prophet, priest, and king; so man is originally made for Christ, and his heart is restless until it rests in Him.
Jesus Christ, the God-man, the Saviour of the world, has brought humanity to its perfection in Himself, reconciled it to God, and raised it to a permanent vital union with Him.
Take Christ away, and the human race is without a ruling head, without a beating heart, without an animating soul, without a certain end,—an inexplicable enigma.
He, the great founder of Christianity, is the vital principle and the guide, the centre and turning-point, and at the same time the key, of all history, as well as of every individual human life.
His entrance into the world forms the boundary between the old and the new.
From Hin, the Light and the Life of the world, light and life flow backward into the night of Paganism and the twilight of Judaism, and forward in the channel of His church through all after ages.
Even in ancient history, what is most remarkable and significant is the preparation for Christianity by the divine revelation in Israel, and by the longings of the benighted heathen.
As to all later history, Christianity is the very pulse of its life, its heart's blood, its central stream.
This is most clearly visible in the Middle Ages, when all science and art, all social culture, and the greatest political and national movements, received their impulse from the church, and were guided and ruled by her spirit, however imperfect the form may have been, under which Christianity then existed.
But the history of the last three centuries also, in all its branches, rests throughout upon the great religious movements of the sixteenth century ; and in the process of its development we ourselves are still involved.
From this we may readily see the comprehensive import of church history.
§ 4. IDEA OF THE CHURCH.
[GENER.
CHAPTER II.
THE CHURCH.
§ 4. Idea of the Church.
CHRISTIANITY, which, as the absolute religion, holds this central, ruling position in history, and on which depends the salvation of the human race, exists not merely as something subjective in single pious individuals, but also as an objective, organized, visible society, as a kingdom of Christ on earth, or as a church.
The church is in part a pedagogic institution, to train men for heaven, and as such destined to pass away in its present form, when the salvation shall be completed; in part the everlasting communion of the redeemed, both on earth and in heaven.
In the first view, as a visible organization, it embraces all who are baptized, whether in the Greek or Roman or Protestant communion.
It contains, therefore, many hypocrites and unbelievers, 1 The word church, like the Scotch kirk, the German kirche, the Swedish kyrka, the Danish kyrke, and like terms in the Sclavonic languages, must be derived, through the Gothic, from the Greek xugsaxév (i.e., belonging to the Lord), se. dame, OY xUCIEKN, SC. oixia, Dominica, as Basilica from BaciAcds, Regia from rex.
It may signify the material house of God, or the local congregation, or, in the complex sense—which is the original one (Matt. xvi. 18), and in which it is used in the text—the organic unity of all believers ; but it always involves etymologically the close relation of the church to the Lord as its head, by whom it is ruled, and to whom it is consecrated.
Some derive the word, with less probability, from the old German kueren, kiesen, to elect, to call.
Then it would nearly correspond to the Greek term éxxAncia (the Hebrew >np), an assembly or congregation, legally called or summoned, used in the New Testament mostly in a religious sense, to denote (1.) the whole body of believers (Matt. xvi. 18;
1 Cor. x. 32; Gal. 1. 13; Eph. i. 22, iii. 10, v. 23, 24, 27, 29, 82; Phil. iii. 6;-1 Tim. iii.
15, &c.); (2.) a part of this whole, a particular congregation, as that at Jerusalem, or at Antioch, or at Rome (1 Cor. xi. 18, xiv. 19, 33, ¢v rdois rails ExxaAnclous ray ayiwy.
Philem. v. 2, &c.).
In both cases, it involves the idea of a Divine call and election to the service of the Lord, and to eternal life.
INTROD. ]
$4. IDEA OF THE CHURCH.
who will never be entirely separated from it until the end of the world.
Hence our Lord compares the kingdom of heaven, Matt. xiii., to a field, where wheat and tares grow together until the harvest; and to a net, which " gathers of every kind."
The true essence of the church, however, the eternal communion of saints, consists only of the regenerate and converted, who are united by a living faith with Christ the head, and through Him with one another.
Though the church is thus a society of men, yet it is by no means on that account a production of men, called into existence by their own invention and will, like free-masonry, for instance, temperance societies, and the various political and literary associations.
It is founded by God himself through Christ, through His incarnation, His life, His sufferings, death, and resurrection, and the outpouring of the Holy Ghost, for His own glory, and the redemption of the world.
For this very reason, the gates of hell itself can never prevail against it.
It is the ark of Chris_ tianity, out of which there is no salvation,—the channel of the - continuous revelation of the triune God, and the powers of eternal life.
St Paul commonly calls the church the body of Christ, and believers the members of this body.
As a body in general, the church is an organic union of many members, which have, indeed, different gifts and callings, yet are pervaded by the same life-blood, ruled by the same head, animated by the same soul,
_all working together towards the same end.
This is set forth in a masterly and incomparable manner, particularly in the 12th and 14th chapters of the First Epistle to the Corinthians.
As the body of Christ, the church is the dwelling-place of Christ, in which He exerts all the powers of His theanthropie life, and also the organ, through which He acts upon the world as Redeemer ; as the soul manifests its activity only through the body in which it dwells.
The Lord, therefore, through the Holy Ghost, is present in the church, in all its ordinances and means of grace, especially in the word and the sacraments; present, indeed, in a mystical, invisible, incomprehensible way, but none the less real1 Rom. xii. 5; 1 Cor. vi. 15, x. 17, xii. 20, 27; Eph. i. 23, iv. 12, v. 23, 30; Col. i.
24, &e.
§ 4. IDEA OF THE CHURCH.
[GENER. ly, efficiently, and manifestly present, in His complete theanthropic person.
'" Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am J,"—not merely my spirit, or my word, or my influence, but my person—* in the midst of them" (Matt. xviii.
20).
"Lo, J am with you"—the representatives of the whole body of saints—* alway, even unto the end of the world" (Matt. xxviii. 20).
Hence Paul calls the church " the fulness of Him, that filleth all in all" (Eph. i. 23).
We may justly say, therefore, that the church is the continuation of the life and work of Christ upon earth, though never, indeed, so far as men in their present state are concerned, without a mixture of sin and error.
In the church, the Lord is perpetually born anew in the hearts of believers, through the Holy Ghost, who reveals Christ to us, and appropriates His work and merits to the individual soul.
In the church the Lord speaks words of truth and consolation to fallen man.
In and through her He heals the sick, raises the dead, distributes the heavenly manna, gives Himself as spiritual food to the hungry soul.
In her are repeated His sufferings and death; and in her, too, are continually celebrated anew His resurrection and ascension, and the outpouring of the Holy Ghost.
In her militant state, like her Head in the days of His humiliation, she bears the form of a servant.
She is hated, despised, and mocked by the ungodly world.
But from this lowly form beams forth a Divine radiance, " the glory asof the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth."
In her womb must we be born again of incorruptible seed; from her breast must we be nourished into spiritual life; for she igs the Lamb's bride, the dwelling of the Holy Ghost, the temple of the living God, "the pillar and ground of the truth."
Those ancient maxims, Qui ecclesiam non habet matrem, Deum non habet patrem, and Extra ecclesiam nulla salus, though perverted by the church of Rome, and applied in a carnal and contracted sense to herself as the church, are yet perfectly correct, when we refer them not simply to a particular denomination but to the holy catholic church, the mystical body of Christ, the spiritual Jerusalem, " which is the mother of us all" (Gal. iv. 26).
For since Christ, as Redeemer, is to be found neither in Heathenism, nor in Judaism, nor in Islamism, but only in the church,
1NTROD. |
§5. DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHURCH.
Ley the fundamental proposition, "' Out of Christ no salvation," necessarily includes the other, "' No salvation out of the church."
This, of course, does not imply that mere external connection with it is of itself sufficient for salvation, but simply that salvation is not divinely guaranteed out of the Christian church.
There are thousands of church-members who are not vitally united to Christ, and who will therefore be finally lost ; but there are no real Christians anywhere who are not, at the same time, members of Christ's mystical body, and as such connected with some branch of his visible kingdom on earth.
Church-membership is not the principle of salvation—which is Christ alone— but the necessary condition of it; because it is the divinely-appointed means of bringing the man into contact with Christ and all his benefits.
§ 5. The Development of the Church.
The church is not to be viewed asa thing at once finished and perfect, but as a historical fact, as a human society, subject
_ to the laws of history, to genesis, growth, development.
Only the dead is done and stagnant.
All created life, even the vegetable, and especially animal and human life, though always in substance the same, is essentially motion, process, constant change, unceasing transition from the lower to the higher.
Every member of the body, every faculty of the soul exists at first merely potentially or virtually, and attains its full proportions only by degrees; just as the tree grows from the germ, unfolding first the root and trunk, then the branches, leaves, blossoms, and fruit.
The same law holds in the case of the new man in Christ.
The believer is at first a child, a babe in Christ, born of water and of the Spirit, and rises gradually, by the faithful use of the means of grace, unto perfect manhood in Christ, the author and finisher of our faith, until this spiritual life reaches its perfection in the resurrection of the body unto life everlasting.
As the church is the organic whole of individual believers, it must likewise be conceived as subject to the same law of development, or, to use the expressive figure of the Saviour, as a grain of mustard-seed, which grows at last to a mighty tree, overshadowing the world.
The church, therefore,
§5. DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHURCH.
[GENER. like every individual Christian, and, indeed, like Christ himself in his human nature,! must be viewed, under her historical form, as having her infancy, her childhood, her youth, and her mature age.
To avoid misunderstanding, however, we must here make an important distinction.
The church, in its idea, or viewed objectively in Christ, in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, who is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, is from the first complete and unchangeable.
So also the revealed word of Christ is eternal truth and the absolute rule of faith and practice, which the Christian world can never transcend.
The doctrine of an improvement on Biblical Christianity, of an advance on the part of men beyond revelation, or beyond Christ himself, is entirely rationalistic and unchristian.
Such a pretended improvement were but a deterioration, a return to the old Judaism or Paganism.
But from this idea of the church in the Divine mind, and in the person of Christ, we must distinguish its actual manifestation on earth; from the objective revelation itself we must discriminate the subjective apprehension and appropriation of it in the mind of humanity at a given time.
This last is progressive.
Humanity at large can no more possess itself at once of the fulness of the divine life in Christ, than the individual Christian can in a moment become a perfect saint.
This complete appropriation of life is accomplished only by a gradual process, involving much trouble and toil.
The church on earth advances from one degree of purity, knowledge, holiness, to another; struggles victoriously through the opposition of an ungodly world; overcomes innumerable foes within and without; surmounts all obstructions ; survives all diseases; till at last, entirely purged from sin and error, and passing, at the general resurrection, from her militant to her triumphant state, she shall stand forth eternally complete.
This whole process, however, is but the full actual unfolding of the church which existed potentially at the outset in Christ; a process by which the Redeemer's
Spirit and life are completely appropriated and impressed on * Comp. Luke ii. 52; " And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man."
Heb. v.8; "Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered; and being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey Him."
INTROD.]
§ 5. DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHURCH.
every feature of humanity.
Christ is thus the beginning, the middle, and the end of the entire history of the church.
_ The growth of the church is in the first place an outward extension over the earth, till all nations shall walk in the light of the gospel.
It is with reference mainly to this, that our Lord compares the kingdom of God to a grain of mustard, which is the least of all seeds, yet grows to be a great tree, in whose branches the fowls of heaven lodge (Matt. xii. 31, 32).
In the second place, it consists in an inward unfolding of the idea of the church, in doctrine, life, worship, and government; the human nature, in all its parts, coming more and more to bear the impress of that new principle of life, which has been given in Christ to humanity, and which is yet to transform the world into a glorious and blessed kingdom of God.
To this our Lord refers in the parable of the leaven, " which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened"
(Matt. xiii. 33).
St Paul, also, has this in view in numerous _ passages in his epistles, where he speaks of the growth and edi- | fication of the body of Christ, "till we all come, in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ, that we henceforth be no more children," &c.1
This development, moreover, is organic.
It is not an outward, mechanical aggregation of facts, which have no living connection.
Itis a process of life, which springs from within, from the vital energy implanted in the church, and which remains, in all its course, identical with itself, as man through all
_ the stages of his life still continues man.
What is untrue and imperfect in an earlier stage is done away by that which follows; what is true and essential is preserved, and made the living germ of further development.
The history of all Christian nations, and of all times, from the birth of Christ to the final judgment, forms one connected whole; and only in its totality does it exhibit the entire fulness of the new creation.
But as the church om earth is in perpetual conflict with the unbelieving world, and as believers themselves are still encumbered with sin and error, this development of the church is not 1 Eph. iv. 12-16, comp. iii. 17-19 ; Col. ii. 19; 1 Pet. ii. 2,5; 2 Pet. iii. 18.
ae)
$5. DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHURCH.
[GENER. a regular and quiet process, but a constant struggle.
It goes by extremes, through all sorts of obstructions and diseases, through innumerable heresies and schisms.
But in the hand of Him, who can bring good even out of evil, these distractions themselves must ultimately serve the cause of truth and piety.
History properly allows no pause.
Single lateral streams of it, indeed, may dry up; small sects, for instance, which have fulfilled their mission, or even large divisions of the church, which once played a highly important part, but have wilfully set themselves against all historical progress, may become stagnant, and congeal into dead formalism ; as is the case with most of the Oriental churches.
But the main stream of church history moves uninterruptedly onward, and must finally reach its divinely-appointed end. ecclesia non potest deficere.
But together with the wheat, according to the parable already quoted, the tares, also, ripen for the harvest of the judgment.
Accompanying the development of the good, of truth, of Christianity, there is also a development of the evil, of falsehood, of Antichristianity.
'Together with the mystery of godliness, there works also a mystery of iniquity.
And the two processes are often in so close contact, that it requires the keenest eye to discriminate rightly between light and shade, between the work of God and the work of Satan, who, we know, often transforms himself into an angel of light.
Judas was among the apostles, and Antichrist sits in the temple of God (2 Thess. ii. 4). The hand of justice, indeed, rules even here, turning wicked thoughts and deeds to shame, and punishing the enemies of God; but in the present world this retribution is only partially administered.
The famous sentence of Schiller, " Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht,' must, accordingly, be so far corrected: "The history of the world is a judgment of the world," distributing blessing and curse; but not the final judgment, at which alone the curse and blessing will be complete.
If Goethe, in his conversations with Eckermann, says of nature ; " There is in nature something approachable, and something unapproachable ; many things can be only to a certain extent understood, and nature always retains something mysterious, which human faculties are insufficient to fathom ;" the same may be said, still more aptly, of history.
Here, too, we encounter many mysteries, which
INTROD.]
§6. THE CHURCH AND THE WORLD.
Alay eternity alone will fully solve.
Here, too, we find everywhere the working of a revealed and a hidden God, who can be approached only by a mind reverently pious and deeply humble.
All is calculated to stimulate man, who, even on the heights of science, must "eat his bread in the sweat of his face," to renewed investigation, to greater faith.
As prophecy can be perfectly understood only in the light of its fulfilment ; the Old Testament, only by the New; so the history of the church can be perfectly comprehended only when it shall have laid open all the fulness and variety of its contents, and shall have reached its goal.
As the Jewish economy was a prophecy and type of the Christian dispensation, so the history of the church militant is but a prophecy and a type of the triumphant kingdom of God; and eternity alone will furnish a complete commentary on the developments of time.
§ 6. The Church and the World.
The church, like Christianity itself, of which it is the vehicle, is a supernatural principle, a new creation of God through Christ, far transcending all that human intelligence and will can of themselves produce.
As such, she appears at first in direct hostility to the world, which lieth in wickedness; and so far, the history of the church and that of the world (here taken in the sense of profane history) are in mutual conflict.
But since Christianity is ordained for men, and is intended to raise them to their proper perfection, this opposition cannot be directed
- against nature as such, as it has come from God himself, and constitutes the true essence of man, but only against the corrup- | tion of nature, against sin and error; and it must cease in pro_ portion as these ungodly elements are overcome.
Christianity aims not to annihilate human nature, but to redeem and sanctify it. It can truly say :—Nihil humani a me alienum puto. Reve- | lation is intended not to destroy reason, but to elevate it, and fill it with the light of Divine truth.
The church must finally _ subdue the whole world, not with an arm of flesh, but with the 1 A more extended exposition of the idea of development, which properly coincides with the idea of history itself, and is indispensable to the treatment of history with any living spirit, has been attempted in our small work: What is Church History?
A Vindication of the idea of Historical Development.
Philadelphia: Lippincott & Co., 1846.
See especially p. 80, et seq.
Bee
$6. THE CHURCH AND THE WORLD.
[anner. weapons of faith and love, the Spirit and the Word, and lay it as a trophy at the feet of the crucified Redeemer.
Thus the supernatural becomes natural.
It becomes more and more at home on earth and in humanity. In this view, also, the Word becomes flesh and dwells among us, so that we can see, feel, taste, and enjoy His glory.
Nor is it merely a single department of the world's life which the kingdom of God proposes thus to pervade and control, but the world asa whole. Christianity is absolutely catholic or universal in its character; it is designed for all nations, for all times, and for all spheres of human existence.
The church is humanity itself, regenerate, and on the way to perfection.
The whole creation groans after redemption, and after the glorious liberty of the children of God.
No moral order of the world can ever become complete, without being permeated throughout by the life of the God-man.
Nay, even the body, and the system of nature, in which it belongs, are to come under the all-pervading and transforming power of the Gospel.
The process of the new creation is to close with the resurrection of the body, and the manifestation of new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.
Hence our Lord compares the kingdom of God to leaven, which is destined to pervade the whole lump, the entire human nature, spirit, soul, and body (Matt. xiii. 33).
The several spheres of the world, in its good sense, or the essential forms, ordained by God himself, for the proper unfolding of the human life, are particularly the family, the state, science, art, and morality.?
On all these Christianity, in her course, exerts a purifying and sanctifying influence, making them tributary to the glory of God and the establishment of his kingdom, till God shall be all in all.
It recognises the family, that seminary of the state and the * Tt is well known that the term " world" has various senses both in the Bible and in common parlance.
It may signify: (1.) the universe—e. g. "God created the world'"— (2.) humanity and the human life as a whole—e.g. " God so loved the world," &c.,
" Christ, the Saviour of the world"—(3.) the unconverted part of humanity, the whole mass of human sin and error, the kingdom of evil—e. g. " the world lieth in wickedness,"
" Satan, the prince of this world,' &c.
A similar variety of meanings attaches to the word nature.
? We take this term here in the popular sense.
In a wider view the life of the family, and of the state itself, nay, all scientific and artistic activity, falls into the sphere of ethics, and has either a moral or an immoral character and tendency.
INTROD.]
§6. THE CHURCH AND THE WORLD.
Lis church, as a Divine institution, but raises it to a higher level than it ever occupied before.
It makes monogamy a law, places the relative duties of husband and wife, parents and children, master and servant, on their highest religious ground, and consecrates the whole institution by shewing its reference to the sacred union of Christ with his church.
It is in the history of Christianity, therefore, and particularly among the Germanic nations, that we behold marriage in its happiest forms, and meet with the most beautiful exhibitions of domestic life.
So also the state is regarded by Christianity as a Divine institution for maintaining order in human society, for encouraging good and punishing evil, and for promoting generally the public weal.
But the magistrate himself is made dependent on the absolute sovereignty of God and responsible to Him, and subjects are taught to obey "in the Lord."
Thus arbitrary despotism is counteracted ; obedience is shorn of its slavish character ; cruel and hurtful institutions are gradually abolished, and wise and wholesome laws are introduced.
History, in this view, is to end in a theocracy, in which all dominion and power shall be given to the saints of the Most High, all nations be united into one family, and joyfully yield themselves to the Divine will as their only law.
To science, the investigation and knowledge of truth, Christianity owns no inherent opposition, but imparts a new impulse, and itself gives birth to the loftiest of all sciences, theology.
It is always active, however, in purging science from error and egoism; it leads her to the highest source of all wisdom and knowledge, to God revealed in Christ; and will not rest, till it shall have transformed all the branches of learning into theosophy, and thus brought them back to the ground, from which they sprang.
What Bacon says of philosophy is true of science in general :—" Philosophia obiter libata abducit a Deo, penitus hausta reducit ad eundem."
Art, also, whose object is to represent the idea of beauty, the church takes into her service, and herself produces the noblest creations in architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and poetry.
For Christ is the fairest of the children of men, the actual embodiment of the highest ideal of the imagination, the complete harmony of spirit and nature, of soul and body, of thought and VOL. I.
$6. THE CHURCH AND THE WORLD.
[GENnER. form, of heaven and earth, of God and man; and the anthems of eternity can never exhaust his praise.
The scope of history in this department is to spiritualize all art in worship, or divine service.
Lastly, Christianity transforms the whole moral life of individuals, and of nations ; breathes into morality its true life, love to God; and ceases not till all sin is banished from the earth, and holiness, which is essential to the idea of the church, is fully realized in the life of redeemed humanity.
God is the fountain of all law, truth, beauty, and virtue; and as all created things proceed from him, so all must return to him at last through Christ.
Christ is "the way, the truth, and the life," by whom all must come to the Father; the prophet, the priest, and the king of the world.
INTROD.]
$7. DEFINITION OF CHURCH HISTORY.
ath
CHAPTER ITI.
CHURCH HISTORY.
§ 7. General Definition.
WE are now prepared to define church history.
It is simply the progressive execution of the scheme of the divine kingdom in the actual life of humanity; the outward and inward development of Christianity—the extension of the church over the whole earth, and the infusion of the spirit of Christ into all the spheres of human existence, the family, the state, science, art, and morality, making them all organs and expressions of this spirit for the glory of God, and for the elevation of man to his proper perfection and happiness.
It is the sum of all the utterances and deeds, experiences and fortunes, all the sufferings, the conflicts, and the victories of Christianity, as well as of all the Divine manifestations in and through it.
As we have distinguished two factors, a divine and a human, in general history ; so we must view church history as the joint product of Christ and of his people, or regenerate humanity. On the part of Christ, it may be called the evolution of his own life in the world, a perpetual repetition, or unbroken continuation, as it were, of his incarnation, his words and deeds, his death and his resurrection, in the hearts of individuals and of nations.
On the part of men, church history is the external and internal unfolding of the life of believers collectively, who live and move and have their being in Christ.
But as these are not perfect saints this side of the grave, as they still remain more or less under the influence of sin and error, and as, moreover, the church militant is associated with the ungodly world, which intrudes
$7. DEFINITION OF SHURCH HISTORY.
[Genrr. into it in manifold ways, there appear, of course, in church history all kinds of sinful passions, perversions and caricatures of divine truth, heresies and schisms.
We find all these in fact even in the age of the New Testament. For in proportion as the kingdom of light asserts itself, the kingdom of darkness also rouses to greater activity, and whets its weapons on Christianity itself.
Judas not only stood in the sacred circle of the apostles, but wanders, like Ahasuerus, through the ecclesiastical sanctuary of all centuries.
It is in opposition to the highest manifestations of the Spirit of God, that the most dangerous and hateful forms of human and diabolical perversion arise.
But, in the first place, church history shews that this opposition, and that all errors and divisions, even though they may have a long and almost universal prevalence, must in the end serve only to awaken the church to her real work, to call forth her deepest energies, to furnish the occasion for higher developments, and thus to glorify the name of God and His Son Jesus
Christ.
All tribulation, too, and persecutions are for the church, what they are for the individual Christian, only a powerful refining fire, in which she is to be gradually purged from all her dross; till at last, adorned as a bride at the side of her heavenly spouse upon the renovated earth, she shall celebrate the resurrection morning as her last and most glorious pentecost.
When Fleury was asked, why he darkened his pages unnecessarily so much with events calculated to disgrace the church, he very properly replied, that he considered it to be a triumphant proof of the divinity of our religion that it had not been annihilated by the vices and crimes of those who preached it, and that the same God who was able to defend His work against the sword of persecution, was able also to defend it from the poison of the greatest iniquities, which seem to bring about its ruin.
In the next place, however, this dark side of church history is only as it were its earthly and temporary outwork.
Its inmost and permanent substance, its heart's blood, is the Divine love and wisdom itself, of which it is the manifestation.
Church history first of all presents to us Christ, as he moves through all time, living and working in his people, cleansing them from all foreign elements, and conquering the world and Satan.
It is 1 D'Alembert, Hist. des Membres de UV'
Acad. iv. 180.
INTROD.]
§8. EXTENT OF CHURCH HISTORY.
ary the repository of the manifold attestations and seals of His Holy Spirit in that bright cloud of witnesses, who have denied themselves even unto death—who have battled faithfully against all ungodliness within and without—who have preached the Gospel of peace to every creature—who have bathed in the depths of the Divine life and everlasting truth—and have brought forth and unfolded the treasures of revelation for the instruction, edification, and comfort of their contemporaries and posterity— who, with many tears and prayers, willingly bearing their master's cross, but also rejoicing in faith and hope, and triumphing over death and the grave, have passed into the upper sanctuary, to rest for ever from their labours.
§ 8. Hatent of Church History.
The beginning of church history is properly the incarnation of the Son of God, the entrance of the new principle of light and life into humanity.
The life of Jesus Christ forms the unchangeable theanthropic foundation of the whole structure.
Hence Gieseler, Niedner, and other historians, embrace a short sketch of this in their systems, while Neander has devoted to it a separate work.
But since the church, as an organic union of the disciples of Jesus, comes into view first on the day of Pentecost, we may take this point as the beginning; and this is preferable, because the mass of matter to be handled is so great, that there could be no room to do full justice to so difficult and momentous a subject as the life of Christ.
At all events, however, the history of the apostolic age must be preceded by an introductory sketch of the condition of the Jewish and heathen
_ world at the time when the church entered it as a new creation ; for only thus can we obtain any clear conception of the comprehensive historical import of Christianity.
The relative goal of church history for any given time is the then existing present, or rather the epoch, which lies nearest the historian ; since what is passing before his eyes, and is not yet finished, cannot well be freely and impartially treated.
Its absolute goal is the final judgment.
But what is for us future can of course be only the object of prophetic representation, and is therefore out of the range of any simply human history.
The inspired Apocalypse only, the exposition of which belongs
$9. RELATION TO OTHER DEPARTMENTS.
[GENER. to exegetical science, is a prophetic church history in grand symbols, which, like the Old Testament prophecies, can never be fully understood until all are fulfilled.
§ 9. Relation of Church History to the other Departments of Theology.
For us, then, church history embraces a period of eighteen centuries.
This shews at once, that of all branches of theology it is by far the most copious and extensive.
Itis preceded by exegesis ; that is, the exposition of the canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, with all needful introductory and auxiliary sciences, as sacred philology, biblical archeology, hermeneutics, criticism, &c.
The Bible being the storehouse of Divine revelation, and the infallible rule of faith and practice for the church, this exegetical department may be styled fundamental theology.
Much exegetical matter, however, enters into history, especially in the patristic age, and in that of the Reformation, to shew how the Bible has been understood and expounded at different times, and by different theologians ; and thus exegesis itself has its history.
Where exegesis stops, church history begins—the two coming in contact, however, in the apostolic age.
For the Acts of the Apostles and the New Testament Epistles are source and object for both sciences, only under different modes of treatment.
The exegetical theologian may be compared to a miner, who brings to light the gold of Scriptural truth; the historian of the apostolic church is the artist, who works the gold and gives it shape.
Then, following historical theology in natural order, is speculative,' or, as it is usually termed, systematic divinity G@ncluding apologetic, polemic, dogmatic, and moral theology).
The province of this is, 1 We use this term here in a wider sense than " philosophical."
There are two kinds of speculation, a philosophical and a theological, which will at last coincide indeed in the absolute knowledge beyond the grave, but which start from different points, and pursue different methods.
The philosophical speculation proceeds from the sed/-consciousness (coyito, ergo swm), and follows simply the laws of logical thought ; the theological begins with the religious sense, or the consciousness of God, and seeks to understand God, man, and the world, not only in accordance with reason, but by the help of revelation, and in agreement with it.
The measure of the first is consistency of thought; the rule of the second, harmony with the Word of God.
Although the wisdom of the world must be lost at last in the wisdom of God, or theosophy, and reason ultimately find its true home in revelation, yet for the present stage of our knowledge both stand in a relative opposition, and ought not to be confounded.
INTROD.]
$10. HISTORY OF MISSIONS.
Ses to explain and vindicate scientifically the Christian faith and practice in their present posture.
The whole organism of the science of religion is completed in practical theology, which, resting on exegetical, historical, and systematic divinity, gives directions for the advancement of the Christian faith and life in the people of God by means of preaching (homiletics), religious instruction (catechetics), the administration of Divine service
(liturgics), and church government (theory of ecclesiastical law and discipline).
Exegesis, therefore, has to do with the regulative charter, with which the revelation begins; church history, with the continuation and apprehension of the revelation in time past ; speculative theology, with the present scientific posture of the church ; and practical theology looks to the future.
But since the present and future are always becoming past, speculative and practical theology are continually falling into the province of church history, which, in this view again, appears as the most comprehensive department of theology.
§ 10. Single Branches of Church History.
History of Missions.
Since the Christian religion, on account of its universal character, pervades and regenerates all the spheres of human life
(§ 6), church history falls into as many corresponding branches, any one of which may be treated separately, and in fact will furnish study for a lifetime.
To do anything like justice to the whole, requires of course the co-operation of innumerable learned minds ; and even when a work of history rests upon the shoulders of many centuries of labour, it is after all but an imperfect fragment as compared with the objective history itself.
1. The first branch of church history, and the one too which is usually first treated, is the history of missions, or the spread of Christianity among unconverted nations.
By some nations the Christian religion is embraced; by others, rejected; and again, different nations have very different degrees of religious susceptibility.
The missionary work, which the Lord himself before his departure solemnly committed to his church, must continue so long as there are heathen, Jews, or Turks, or a single soul on earth, to whom the sound of the Gospel has not come.
It is not carried on, however, at all times with the same zeal
$10. HISTORY OF MISSIONS.
[cunrr. and success.
The conversion of the heathen meets us on the grandest and most effective scale in the first and second centuries ; then on the threshold of the Middle Ages in the Christianizing of the Germanic nations; and lastly in our own time, when Asia, Africa, and Australia are covered with a network of Protestant and Roman Catholic missionary stations.
But the church is often so much occupied with her internal affairs and conflicts, with her own purification or self-defence, that she almost forgets the poor heathen; as, for instance, in the age of the Reformation, and in the Protestant church of the seventeenth century.
At such times, however, a home missionary activity, directed towards the waste or lifeless portions of the church itself, commonly takes the place of the foreign operations.
Under the head of such internal or home missionary work may be reckoned the course of the Reformation through the Roman Catholic countries of Europe in the sixteenth century ; the labours of the Evangelical Society in France in favour of Protestantism ; the operations of the American Home Missionary
Society, and of other Associations for providing the Western States of North America with evangelical ministers and the means of grace; and properly also the Protestant missions among the Abyssinians and other Oriental churches.1
2. A direct counterpart to the history of missions is the history of the compression of the church by persecution from hostile powers, as from the Roman empire in the first three centuries, and from Mohammedanism in the seventh and eighth.
As the Lord predicted the growth of His kingdom (Matt. xiii.
3l, et seg.), so also He foretold its persecution.? But what appears in one aspect as a compression, is in a higher view a purifying and strengthening process, and promotes in the end even the outward extension of the church.
Under the Roman emperors "the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the church."
* Sometimes the phrase "interior or home missions " has been taken in a still wider sense, particularly of late, so as to embrace all self-denying exertions of the church, and of religious associations for allaying or removing the spiritual and temporal evils which have crept into the church mainly in consequence of modern intidelity and indifferentism, and from various other causes.
But an account of such benevolent operations, societies, and institutions, as sisters of charity, deaconesses, hospitals, orphan houses, asylums for the insane, the blind, &c., belongs not so much to the history of missions, as to the history of Christian life and practical piety.
2 Johnexy, 20.
Mattey. 10; 125) x. 23); xxinn34, Comp. 2 Tim. iii. 12.
INTROD.]
§ 11. HISTORY OF DOCTRINES.
cite Here, again, we may distinguish between outward persecution by unchristian powers, and an inward persecution of one part of the church by another.
An instance of the latter we find in the suppression of the Reformation in Spain, Italy, Austria, and other regions, by the Roman Catholic Inquisition and the machinations of Jesuitism.
Protestantism, too, has its martyrs, particularly in France, Holland, and England.
But when once Christianity has established itself in a nation, it commences the more tedious work of uprooting all the remains of heathenism, and re-casting thought and life, manners and customs, in the mould of the Gospel.
The church must take root, attain a vigorous growth, and bring forth its proper flowers and fruits.
This leads us to other branches of church history, far more difficult of treatment than the two now mentioned.
§ 11. History of Doctrines.
3. Christianity aims not to suppress the desire for knowledge and science implanted by the Creator in the human mind, but rather favours it by giving it the right direction towards the fountain of all truth.
Faith itself incites to knowledge.
It is always yearning after a clearer view of its object.
It feels the attainment of a still deeper apprehension of God, His word, and His relation to men, to be a sacred duty and a lofty satisfaction.
To this is added, as an impulse from without, the opposition of secular science and learning; and still further, the perversions of Christian doctrine by heretical sects.
As the church must be always ready to give an account of her faith to every man, these attacks force her to inquiry and self-vindication.
Thus, under the impulse, on the one hand, of faith from within—on the other, of assaults from without—arises theology, or the science of the Christian religion ; which first appears in the apologetic and polemic form, in opposition to Pagan philosophy and Gnostic error.
Theology is the conception of the faith of the church, as it lies in her more highly cultivated minds; and theologians are her leading intelligences—the eyes and ears, so to speak, of the body of Christ.
It is in the most active and fruitful times of the church that we find divinity most flourishing—as in the time of the Fathers, in the best period of the Middle Ages, and in the period of the Reformation ; while the decline of theology
$11. HISTORY OF DOCTRINES.
[oENnER. is commonly attended with a relapse into ignorance and superstition, and with a general religious torpor.
The most prominent part of the history of theology is doctrine history—the history of the dogmas or doctrines of Christianity.'
It constitutes the most intellectual, and in manyj respects the most important branch of all church history, and has, therefore, of late been honoured in Germany with a number of separate works by Minscher, Engelhardt, Baumgarten-Crusius, Hagenbach, Baur, and others.
Besides this, German scholars have devoted extended, and in some instances very valuable monographs to the history of the most important doctrines ; as those of Baur and Meier on the doctrine of the Trinity and the incarnation, that of Baur on the doctrine of the atonement, of Dorner on the person of Christ, of Ebrard on the Lord's Supper, &c.?
The New Testament, the living germ of all theology, contains the whole collection of saving doctrines ; not, however, in a scientific form, but in their original, living, popular, and practical character.
Only Paul, who had a learned education and a mind of the most dialectic cast, approaches in his epistles, especially the Epistle to the Romans, the logical and systematic method.
A dogma is simply a biblical doctrine, brought by means of reflection into a scientific form, and laid down as a fixed article of religion.
It becomes symbolic when it is adopted by the whole church, or by a branch of the church, as expressing its view, true or false, of what the Scriptures teach, and is formally sanctioned as an authoritative doctrinal rule.
Hence dogmas and dogmatic theology, in the strict sense, exist only from the time when the church awoke to the scientific apprehension and defence of her faith, as she did particularly under the influence of the early heresies and perversions of Christian doctrine.
The dogma, of course, has its development, and is subject to change with the spirit and culture of the age; whereas the biblical truth in itself continues always the same, though ever
1 There is no term in English which exactly corresponds to " Dogmengeschichte."
Dogmatic History, as it is generally called, would properly denote a history of dogmatic theology, or of the scientific treatment of doctrines, thus referring more to the form than to the contents. The phrase, " History of Christian doctrine," or the term " Doctrine history," founded on the analogy of "Church history," will, perhaps, express it best.
? There is also an extended, philosophical, instructive, and suggestive Introduction to Doctrine History, by Theodore Kliefoth ; 1839.
INTROD.]
§ 11. HISTORY OF DOCTRINES.
fresh and ever new.
Each period of church history is called to unfold and place in clear light a particular aspect of the doctrine, to counteract a corresponding error, till the whole circle of Christian truth shall have been traversed in its natural order.
Thus the Nicene period was called to assert particularly the doctrine of the divinity of Christ and of the Holy Ghost, or the doctrine of the Trinity, against the Arians and Semiarians; and the Augustinian period, to vindicate the doctrine of human sinfulness and Divine grace against the Pelagians.
The doctrinal task of the Reformation lay in'the field of soteriology.
The work of that period was to set forth the doctrine of the inward appropriation of salvation, especially the doctrine of justification by faith, in opposition to the Roman idea of a legal righteousness.
In our times the doctrine concerning the church seems to be more and more challenging the attention of theologians.
And finally, eschatology, or the doctrine of the Last Things, will have its turn.
But since all the doctrines of Christianity form a connected whole, no one of them, of course, can be treated without some reference to all the rest.
As theology in general is connected with the secular sciences ; exegesis, with classical and oriental philology; church history with profane; Christian morality with philosophical ethics; homiletics with rhetoric, &c.; so doctrine history stands in special relation to the history of philosophy; and dogmatic theology, though it ought never to compromise its own dignity and independence, must always be more or less under the influence of philosophy.
The theological views of the Greek Fathers were modified to a considerable extent by Platonism; those of the medizeval schoolmen by the logic and dialectics of Aristotle ; those of later times by the systems of Descartes, Spinoza, Bacon, Locke,
Leibnitz, Kant, Fries, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel.
Few scientific divines can absolutely emancipate themselves from the influence of the philosophy and public opinion of their age; and when they do, they have commonly their own philosophy, which is the less valuable in proportion as it is subjective, arbitrary, and out of the line of history and of the wants of the age.
The history of philosophy and doctrine history move forward side by side, alternately repelling and attracting one another; till at last the natural reason shall come into perfect harmony with reyve-
g 12. HISTORY OF MORALITY, GOVERNMENT, ETC.
[axener. lation, and the wisdom of the world be lost in the wisdom of God.
; § 12. History of Morality, Government, and Discipline.
4. The next branch of our science is the history of Christian practice, or of religious life and morality.
This very important and most practical part has been thus far but too much neglected.
Neander, who throws it into one section with the history of worship has bestowed upon it more than the usual attention; and it is this, especially, which gives his celebrated work its peculiarly spiritual and edifying character.
The-doctrine of Christianity requires a corresponding holy walk.
Faith must work by love.
Since the Christian religion is wholly of a moral nature, having always in view the glory of God and the sanctification of the whole man, all church history is indeed, in a 'wide sense, a history of morality.
The formation of dogmas, theology, church government, and worship, are all moral acts.
But we here use the term in a narrower sense, to denote what is directly practical.
To this branch of church history, then, belongs the description of the peculiar virtues and vices, the good and evil works, the characteristic manners and customs of leading individuals in the church, and of whole nations and ages.
It falls to this branch to describe the influence of Christianity upon marriage, the family, the female sex, on slavery and other social evils.
In this division a large space is occupied with the history of monachism, especially in the Middle Ages, when the institution split into many orders, each of which presents a more or less peculiar type of morality, and is liable also to corresponding dangers and temptations.
5. Again, the church must have a form of government, and exercise discipline on her disobedient members. Hence arises the history of church polity and church discipline.
These two subjects have been commonly thrown together in one section; but they may as well be treated separately, or (as seems to us most natural) the latter in connection with the history of religious life.
The constitution of the church, like its doctrine, has an unchangeable substance and a changeable form.
The former is the spiritual office, established by Christ himself, to which belongs the power of binding and loosing in the name of the Lord.
The lat-
INTROD.]
§ 13. HISTORY OF WORSHIP.
ter varies with the necessities of the time, and with the particular circumstances.
At first we find the apostolic constitution, where the apostles are the infallible teachers and leaders of the church.
In the second century the episcopal system appears, which grows naturally into the metropolitan and patriarchal forms. The Eastern churches stop with the latter ; while the Latin church in the Middle Ages concentrates all the patriarchal power in the Roman bishop, and develops the papal system.
This degenerates at last into an intolerable spiritual despotism, when the Reformation produces new forms of church constitution, corresponding better with the free spirit of Protestantism, and with the idea of universal priesthood ; in particular, the Presbyterian form of government, with lay representation.
Discipline is at one time strict, at another lax, according to the prevailing spirit of the church, and the nature of her relation to the temporal power.
It is chiefly in the sphere of government and discipline that _ the church comes into connection with the state ; and this relation
of church and state also appears under very different forms, and has its peculiar history.
The state, for example, may take a hostile attitude towards the church, and oppress her with persecutions, as did the heathen power in the first three centuries, before the conversion of the emperor Constantine.
Or the church, as a hierarchy, may rule the state, as did the Western church in the Middle Ages, and as she does to this day, where the papacy is in full power.
Or the Christian state, as an imperial papacy, may rule the church, on the false principle, cujus regio ejus religio ; as in the case even of the Byzantine emperors, who interfered very much with the external and also with the internal affairs of the Greek church; and again, in a number of Protestant establishments since the sixteenth century.
Or, finally, state | and church may be mutually independent, and leave each other
_ undisturbed ; this order prevails in the United States, and seems to be latterly introducing itself also into some parts of Europe, as in the case of the Free Church of Scotland.
§ 13. History of Worship.
6. Finally, we have to notice the history of divine service, or worship.
The essential elements of it, as appointed by Christ
§ 13. HISTORY OF WORSHIP.
[GEnER. himself, are the preaching of the word, and the administration of the sacraments.
And here, again, the manner of preaching, of giving religious instruction, of administering the sacraments, has its history.
In addition to this, the church appoints sacred places and sacred times; produces prayers, liturgies, hymns, chorals, and all sorts of significant symbolical forms and actions ; enters into alliance with the fine arts, especially architecture, painting, music, and poetry, and makes them tributary to the purposes of worship.
The service may abound with these artistic forms, and indeed be overladen with them, as in the Greek and Roman church, which seeks to work upon the imagination and the feelings by imposing symbols, by outward show and pomp, especially in the service of the mass.
Or it may be simple and sober, making all of the pulpit and nothing of the altar; as in the Puritan churches.
Then again, each single branch of worship has its peculiar history.
There is a history of the pulpit, of catechetical instruction, of liturgies, of church architecture, of religious sculpture and painting, of sacred poetry and music, &e.
Here, too, much still remains to be done, especially in the department of Christian art.
Hase is properly the only one among the writers of general church history, who has given it a place in his system ; and even with him, the small compass of the manual confines the treatment to short, though spirited sketches.
The history of church government and the history of worship are often combined under the name of Christian archeology, which is usually limited to the first six centuries, as the period of the origin and development of ecclesiastical forms and laws.
The most important works on this subject are Bingham's Antiquities of the Christian Church, of which there is also a Latin translation; and the later Archeologies of Augusti (complete in twelve volumes, abridged in three), Rheinwald, Bohmer, Siegel, and the compilation of Coleman.
From all this, we may readily see the copiousness and variety of church history, and at the same time the difficulty of mastering its Immense material.
In the detailed treatment, however, we cannot strictly carry out this sixfold division without becoming pedantic, and interrupting the natural order of things.
In the period of the Reformation, for example, the different departments, especially the
INTROD.]
§ 14. SOURCES OF CHURCH HISTORY.
Kail course of outward events and the development of doctrine, are so interwoven, that a strict distribution of the matter among the several heads would do violence to the history, and would rather hinder than assist a clear view.
Nor will it do to follow always the same order.
In each period, that department should be placed first, which is found to be really most prominent. The development of doctrine, for instance, from the seventh century to the tenth, is almost at a stand; and hence this subject must occupy but a subordinate place in the history of that period.
In some periods it is desirable to add new heads; as in the Middle Ages, for the history of the papacy, the monastic orders, and the crusades.
The peculiar disposition and views of the historian, however, and his particular object also, have, of course, great influence on the plan and treatment of the material in the different periods.
§ 14. Sources of Church History.
Whatever furnishes information, more or less accurate, respecting the outward and inward acts and fortunes of the church, may be reckoned among the sources of her history.
The credibility of this information must be determined by criticism on external and internal grounds.
We may make a general division of these sources into immediate and mediate.
A. The IMMEDIATE or DIRECT SOURCES, being the pure, original utterances of the history itself, are the most important.
They may be divided into— a. Written.
Here belong, 1. Oficial reports and documents.
Of special importance among these are the acts of councils.'
Then the oficial letters of bishops, particularly the bulls of the popes."
These decrees and bulls refer to all departments of church history, but especially to doctrine and government.
Then, again, for particular branches, there are special documentary sources.
In doctrine 1 Of these there are several collections; the best by Mansi: Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio. Florent. et Venet. 1759, et seq., in thirty-one folio volumes.
(For the history of our American churches, the transactions of synods are likewise the most authentic immediate source.) 2 Of these, also, there are various collections; one of special note by Cocquelines :
Bullarum amplissima collectio.
Rom. 1739, 28 t. fol, and Magni bullarii continuatio (1758-18380), collegit Andr. Advocatus Barbieri.
Rom. 1836, et seq.
§ 14. SOURCES OF CHURCH HISTORY.
[aEnner. history, for example, we have first of all the confessions of ae which set forth the church doctrine in an authoritative form.'
In the department of Christian life, we have the various monastic rules ;2 in that of worship, the liturgies ;* in that of government, the civil laws of the Byzantine, Frank, and German princes relating to the church.* 2. Inscriptions ; particularly upon tombs.
These frequently throw light upon the birth and death, the deeds and fortunes of distinguished men, and are exponents of the spirit of their age.
They are not so valuable, however, for church history, as for some parts of profane.° 3. The private writings of personal actors in the history.
The works of apologists and church fathers, for instance, are of the greatest importance for the history of the ancient church ; the correspondence of popes and princes, of bishops and monks, the works of the schoolmen and mystics, for the history of the Middle Ages; the writings of the Reformers and their Roman adversaries, for the history of the Reformation.
These records give us the liveliest image of their authors and their age.
Here, however, we must first weigh, in the scales of a careful and thorough criticism, the genuineness of the writings in question, so as not to be misled by a false representation.
This is especially necessary in the written monuments of the second and third centuries, when a multitude of apocryphal writings were
1 A collection of the older symbols is given by C. W. F. Walch, in his Bibliotheca symbolica vetus, Lemgo, 1770; and more recently by A. Hahn, Bibliothek der Symbole und Glaubensregln der apostol. kath. Kirche.
Breslau, 1842.
The Confessions of the Lutheran church are found complete in the editions of J. G. Walch, Rechenberg, and Hase ; those of the Reformed church in the Collectio Confessionum, &c., by Niemeyer.
Leipzig, 1840, and in " Bekenntnisschriften der evang. reform. Kirche," with Introduction and Notes, by E. G. A. Bockel.
Leipzig, 1847.
? L. Holstenius: Codex regularum monasticarum, Rom. 1661, 3 t., enlarged by Brockie, 1759, 6 t.
> Comp. Assemani : Codex liturgicus ecclesia universe.
Rom. 1749, 13 t.—Renaudot :
Liturgiarum orientalium collectio.
Par. 1716, 2 t—Muratori: Liturgia rom. vetus.
Venet. 1748, 2 t.
4 The laws of the Roman emperors may be found in the Codex Theodosianus and Cod. Justinianeus ; those of the Frank kings, in Baluzii Collectio capitularium regum
Francorum.
Par. 1677; those of the German emperors, in Heiminsfeldii Collectio constitutionum imperialium.
Fref, 1713.
5 Among the collections of such inscriptions are Ciampini Vetera Monumenta.
Rom.
1747, 3t. fol.; Jacutii Christ. antiquitatum specimina. Rom. 1752, 4 t.; F. Miinter's Sinnbilder und Kunstvorstellungen der alten Christen.
Altona, 1825,
INTROD. |
§ 14. SOURCES OF CHURCH HISTORY.
fabricated.
These fraudulent productions are characteristic, indeed ; not, however, of the pretended authors, but only of the heretical tendencies, out of which, for the most part, they sprang.
Then again we must have correct and complete editions. b. Unwritten.
'These consist of works of art; particularly church edifices and religious paintings.
The Gothic domes of the Middle Ages, for instance, embody the gigantic spirit of that period.
They are exponents of the prevailing conception of Christianity, and of the church; and, on this account. are of the greatest moment for the historian.
B. The MEDIATE or INDIRECT SOURCES are : a. First of all, the accounts and representations of historians.
These give us, not the history itself in its original form, as the immediate sources present it, but the view of it as apprehended by particular individuals, in the form of compilation and commentary.
Among these productions, those, of course, take the first rank, which come from eye and ear witnesses, whether friends or foes.
Such are almost the same as immediate sources (a. 3).
Their value depends on the credibility and capacity of their authors.
Thus the Acts of the Apostles by Luke, even aside from its canonical character, is of great importance for the history of the apostolic age; the reports of the churches of Smyrna and Lyons, for the history of the early persecutions ;
| the historical works of Eusebius, for the age of Constantine; the annals and chronicles of the monks, for the Middle Ages; Spalatin's Annales Reformationis, the biographies of Luther by Melancthon and Mathesius, Sleidan's Commentarii, Beza's History of the Reformed Church in France, &c., &c., for the Reformation.
Historians, who have lived after the occurrence of events they relate, may be considered sources, when they have drawn upon reliable documents, monuments, and the reports of eye-witnesses,
1 Of all the important church fathers good editions have been published, especially in the seventeenth century and the first half of the eighteenth.
(See Walch's Bibliotheca patristica.) We have also valuable collections of patristic literature, as, for instance,
Maxima bibliotheca veterum patrum, etc. Lugd., 1677, 28 t. fol.; Gallandi: Bibliotheca vett. patrum antiquorumque scriptorum ecclesiast., postrema Lugdunensi locupletior.
Venet. 1765-88, 14 t. fol.; and Migne: Patrologiz: cursus completus, sive Bibliotheca universalis integra, uniformis, commoda, ceconomica, omnium S. 8. patrum, doctorum scriptorumque ecclesiast. qui ab aevo apostolico ad usque Innocentii III. tempora floruerunt, etc.
Paris (Siron), 1844, et seq.
VOL. I.
§ 14. SOURCES OF CHURCH HISTORY.
[cunrr. which have since been either entirely lost, like several of the writings used by Eusebius, or placed beyond our reach, as is partially the case with the treasures of the Vatican library.
Important documents of this kind are the biographies of prominent individuals in the church.
Such biographies, especially of the saints and martyrs, we have in great numbers.' b. Finally, we may place among the mediate sources, though in avery subordinate rank, oral traditions, legends, and popular sayings, which are often characteristic of the spirit of their age; the saying, for example, current throughout the Middle
Ages, that the church, since her union with the state under Constantine, had lost her virginity; and that which arose in the time of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, that Frederic II. would return, or that an eagle would rise out of his ashes, to destroy the papacy—-shewing, in a portion at least of the German people, an early opposition to Rome.
For the professional historian a critical study of at least the principal sources is indispensable; and this again requires a vast amount of preliminary knowledge, especially an intimate acquaintance with the Greek and Latin languages, in which most of the direct sources are written.
For the general need, however, and for practical purposes, such works will answer as are based on a thorough study of sources.
The most valuable Protestant works of this kind are the church histories of Neander and Gieseler, which, however, are both as yet unfinished.
Neander unites with the most extensive reading, especially in the patristic literature, the finest sense of truth and justice—an inward sympathy with all forms and types of the Christian spirit and life—a great talent for apprehending and genetically unfolding the spirit of leading persons and tendencies—and a lovely, childlike disposition—qualities which have justly gained
* The most important collection of this kind, which, however, on account of the fables interwoven with it, must be very cautiously used, is the Acta Sancterum, quotquot toto orbe coluntur, edd. Bollandus et alii (Bollandiste).
Antwerp, 1643-1794, in fifty-three folio volumes.
It is composed by Jesuits, and arranged according to the days of the month, reaching to the 6th of October.
The apparatus for this work alone embraces about seven hundred manuscripts, found in a castle in the province of Antwerp.
A similar work, though far less extensive, and better adapted for popular use, is "The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and other principal saints, compiled from original monuments, and other authentic records, by the Rev. Alban Butler," of which several editions have been published in England and America.
INTROD. ]
§ 15. AUXILIARY SCIENCES.
him the title "father of modern church history," and which make us almost forget the defects of his immortal work.
One of his greatest faults is the carelessness and often wearisome diffuseness of his style.
Gieseler's text is very meagre, and betrays rather an outward, spiritless, rationalistic conception of history ; but his work is invaluable for its copious extracts from sources, selected with vast diligence and skill, which occupy by far the largest space, and enable the reader to see and judge for himself.
But besides such general works, there are also many exceedingly instructive and interesting monographs by modern German scholars on distinguished theologians and their times.
These especially should be consulted on account of their minuteness of detail, which in many cases almost supersedes the necessity of a study of sources.
Such monographs we have, for instance, on Justin Martyr, Irenzeus, Hippolytus, Tertullian, Cyprian, Origen, Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa, Chrysostom, Augustine,
Gregory the Great, Anselm, Bernard of Clairvaux, Hugo of St Victor, Gregory VII., Innocent III., Alexander III, on the Forerunners of the Reformation, on alinost all the Reformers,
—on Spener, Franke, Zinzendorf, Bengel, &c.; as also on the most important parts of doctrine history, and on single branches and periods of the church.
This monographic literature is continually increasing.
German diligence, especially since Neander has led the way in this department also, is almost every year adding some new and valuable work, and is not likely to rest till every nook and corner of church history 1s explored, and the entire past is reproduced before us.
§ 15. Auailiary Sciences.
Science in its widest sense, or the investigation and knowledge of truth, is, like truth itself, an organic whole, having its origin, its centre, and its end in God.
It is impossible, therefore, absolutely to separate any one science from the others.
All the sciences are, directly or indirectly, more or less connected, each preparing for, illustrating, completing, and confirming the rest.
Historical theology, in particular, presupposes the knowledge of the following auxiliary sciences :—
1. Ecclesiastical Philology, or the knowledge of those lanc2
§ 15. AUXILIARY SCIENCES.
[GENER. guages in which the sources of church history are written.
These ancient records'are by no means all translated ; and even though they were, the scientific and critical scholar cannot rely upon translations, but must go as much as possible to the original.
Among the ecclesiastical languages the most important are the Greek and Latin, in which a great majority of the documents of the Eastern and Western churches have been composed.
The Latin especially, throughout the Middle Ages, and even down to the seventeenth century, was the learned language of Europe, and is to this day extensively used in the Roman
Catholic church for theology, government, and worship.
The ecclesiastical Greek and Latin, however, differs somewhat from the classic, as it is adapted to a new world of ideas, lying far beyond the horizon of the ancient heathen authors.
Hence the necessity of having special Greek and Latin dictionaries for the elucidation of the older ecclesiastical writers.1_
But ecclesiastical philology, in a wider sense, includes also all the other oriental, medieval, and modern Kuropean languages, whose literature is more or less important to church history.
Since the Reformation of the sixteenth century, the Latin has gradually ceased to be the exclusive, or even the principal medium of literary and ecclesiastical communication, and has given way to the living and popular languages.
The German, French, and English are the languages now most prominent, and most generally used in the modern history of the church as well as of the world.
2. Ecclesiastical Geography, the description of the locality or stage on which church history moves.
The theatre of history is not in the air, but on the firm soil of this earth ; and the peculiarities of the place or country are not without their effect upon the national character, which again forms the natural basis of the religious complexion of the people.
Who can deny, for instance, that the constitutional peculiarities of the Greek, Roman,
French, German, Dutch, and English nations reappear in a * The principal works of this kind are Suicer's Thesaurus ecclesiasticus e patribus
Greecis ; and Carol. du Frésne's (Domin. du Cange) Glossarium ad scriptores mediz et infime Greecitatis (Lugd. 1688, 2 tom. fol.) ; also his Glossarium ad scriptores media et infimee Latinitatis (Par. 1733-36, 6 t. fol.), with Carpentier's supplement in 4 vols. fol.
The last and most complete edition of Du Frésne's Latin Glossary is that of Henschel,
Paris, 1840-50.
7 vols. 4to.
INTROD.]
§ 15. AUXILIARY SCIENCES.
vs higher form, in the Greek, Roman Catholic, Gallican, Lutheran, and Reformed churches?
Nor is it merely accidental, that Catholicism is still predominant in Southern countries, where feeling and imagination are strongly developed ; while Protestantism has established itself most firmly among the colder, but more energetic and active nations of the North.
Ecclesiastical geography differs from political, as church history differs from secular.
Itis governed throughout by the idea of Christianity.
It describes countries from an ecclesiastical point of view, dividing the Christian portions from those occupied by false religions, marking the territorial limits of different confessions and denominations, the number and boundaries of patriarchates, dioceses, synodical districts, and charges, and pointing out those places which are memorable for distinguished persons or events of church history.
The history of the primitive church is confined almost entirely to the limits of the old
Roman empire, i. e. to the countries lying around the Mediterranean Sea.
But as fast as the kingdom of Christ spreads, the field of ecclesiastical geography and statistics widens; and the modern missionary operations carry us into the most distant parts of the world.} 3. Ecclesiastical Chronology, i. e. the science of the various systems of chronology (ab urbe condita, aera Seleucidarum, aera
Hispanica, aera Diocletiana, aera Dionysiana, &c.), and of determining the dates of ecclesiastical events."
4. Ecclesiastical Diplomatics (diplomatica, ars diplomatica), i.e. the science of diplomas or documents, teaching the value, the criticism, and the right use of the different documentary instruments, such as bulls, breves, statutes, patents, &c.
This department includes the special sciences of Paleography, the science of ancient writings and manuscripts of the Bible, church
1 The best work in this department is the Handbuch der kirklichen Geographie und
Statistik von den Zeiten der Apostel bis zum Anfang des 16ten Jahzhunderts, 2 vols.
Berlin, 1846, by J. E. Th. Wiltsch, in connection with the same author's Atlas sacer sive ecclesiasticus, Gotha, 1848, fol.
On the geography of Palestine in particular we have a number of excellent books and maps, among which those of Raumer, Ritter, and Robinson merit special praise.
2 The general works on chronology, by Gatterer, Ideler, Brinkmaier, are mentioned in Gieseler's Ch. Hist. Int. § 3, note 7. A special work on ecclesiastical chronology is furnished by Piper: Kirchenrechnung.
Berlin, 1841.
19h
§ 15. AUXILIARY SCIENCES.
[GENER. fathers, &c.; Sphragistics, the science of seals ; Numismatics, of coins; Heraldics, of weapons.'
5. General History of the world.
This is intimately connected, nay, interwoven with church history, and is indispensable to a clear view of it.2
The church exists, not outside of the world and humanity, but in the midst of them.
At every step it comes into contact, either friendly or hostile, with the manners, institutions, deeds, and fortunes of men.
Without an acquaintance with Judaism and heathenism, and with the external and internal condition of humanity at the time of Christ's appearance on earth, we can form no adequate estimate of the position and importance of Christianity in the history of the world.
In the first three centuries the church gives most striking exhibitions of her moral power in her victorious conflict with the Roman empire, and with heathen philosophy.
During the Middle Ages the history of the papacy is interwoven throughout with the history of the German empire.
The Reformation was not merely a religious, but also a political and social convulsion, particularly in France, Holland, England, and Scotland, and most of its champions and opponents figure in secular history as well as in ecclesiastical.
Hence theological and secular writers are constantly meeting on this field, as may readily be observed in any of the histories of England—for instance, by Hume,
Lingard, and Macaulay.
Even in the United States, whose * The science of diplomatics was started by the Belgian Jesuit, Daniel Papelroth, one of the principal authors of the Acta Sanctorum, in his Propylaeum antiquarium, a.D.
1675, This called forth the most important work on general diplomatics by the learned
French Benedictine, Mabillon, De re diplomatica libri VI., in quibus quidquid ad veterum instrumentorum antiquitatem, materiam, scripturam et stilum, quidquid ad sigilla, monogrammata, subscriptiones ac notas chronologicas, quidquid inde ad antiquariam historicam forensemque disciplinam pertinet, explicatur et illustratur, ete.
Par. 1681; then 1709: and, with additions by others, Naples, 1789.
It is illustrated with more than two hundred documents, from the fifth century to the twelfth, and a great number of excellent impressions.
Respecting the later diplomatic works of Montfaucon (Paleographia Greeca, etc.), the Benedictines, Tassin and Tonstin (Mabillon's commentators), Gatterer, Schonemann, &c., the reader is referred to the comprehensive article ' Diplomatik," in Ersch and Gruber's large Encyclopeedia, Sec. i., part 25, p. 441,
Ct seq.
? Universal history, in its widest sense, includes church history as its most important part, representing the deepest life of humanity (comp. § 3). Some modern writers still seem to have the childish notion, that history is simply an account of outward facts — kings, dynasties, wars, and bloodshed—as if the infinitely more important intellectual, moral, and religious life of humanity had no history at all!
INTROD.]
§16. METHOD OF WRITING CHURCH HISTORY.
church and state are separate, it is impossible to understand the religious life, without an insight into the national character, and the political and social condition of the country.
The special branches of church history correspond then more particularly to special departments of secular history.
In the history of missions, a knowledge of the false religions of the respective nations will be of good service, to shew their contrast with Christianity.
The history of church government and discipline frequently comes in contact with the history of politics.
The history of theology and Christian doctrines and that of philosophy and general literature run parallel, and exert a reciprocal influence.
The history of divine worship is intimately connected with the history of the fine arts; and in the Middle
Ages, when architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and poetry, stood almost exclusively in the service of the church, the two nearly coincide.!
§ 16. Method of writing Church History.
We come now to consider the way of arranging and presenting the material of church history.
1. As to the external method, or the disposition of the matter, it is best to combine the two modes of dividing—by time, and by subjects.
The chronological method, which has hitherto been in much favour, has its advantages, but is very external and mechanical, when carried out by itself, especially in the form of Annals.
It degrades history to a mere chronicle, and interrupts the flow of events, so that things which should go together are sundered, and not unfrequently a heterogeneous
_ mass is crowded into one section, because it belongs in one chronological division.
This is the case, to some extent, even with | the division into centuries, adopted by the Magdeburg centuriators, Mosheim and others.
For though we may attribute to | each century a peculiar spirit, yet the epochs of history by no | means coincide with the beginnings and ends of centuries.?
1 It is impossible here to enumerate even the most important works on general history,
| which have more or less bearing on church history.
See Gieseler, Intr. § 3, note 1-6.
2 Goethe also remarks, in his Farbenlehre, ii., 169 :—" To divide a historical work according to centuries, has its inconveniences.
With none are the events formally closed ; | man's life and activity reach from one into the other."
Dr D. Welsh, of the Free | Church of Scotland, in his Klements of Ch. Hist.,i. p. 475, calls the division of church
§ 16. METHOD OF WRITING CHURUH HISTORY.
[ezner.
The apostolic period commences with the year 30; the age of Constantine, A.D. 311% that of Hildebrand, a.p. 1049; that of the Reformation, A.D. 1517.
The divisions ought never to be arbitrarily made upon a preconceived scheme ; they should grow out of the history itself.
But it is equally inconvenient to arrange rigidly and exclusively by subjects, distributing the material under certain heads, as missions, doctrine, government,
&c., and following out each single head, irrespective of the others, from the beginning to the present time.
This would make history a number of independent, parallel lines.
It would afford no view of the inward connection and mutual influeace of the different departments—no complete general view of any one period.
In view of these disadvantages on either side, the best way will be so to combine the two methods, as to have the benefit of both.
While we follow the course of time, we may make our division of it depend upon the character and succession of events, and pursue those things which naturally belong together to their relative goal, whether this goal coincide with the end of a year or century, or not.
Thus, by dividing the entire history into periods, which correspond to the stages of the development itself, we meet the chronological demand; while, by arranging the material, within these periods, under particular sections or heads, as many as each period may need, we conform to the order of things.
2. The internal method of the historian is that of genetic development, 7.e. the natural reproduction of the history itself, or the representation of it exactly as it has occurred.
This method differs, on the one hand, from simple narration, which arranges facts and names in a mere outward juxtaposition, without rising to general views and a philosophical survey ; and, on the other hand, from a priori construction, which adjusts the history to a preconceived scheme, and for the spirit of a past age substitutes that of the writer himself.!
The historian must history by centuries the most objectionable, the most arbitrary, and most calculated to destroy all historical interest, and to distract and perplex the mind.
"Itis as if we were to study the geology of a country, not by examining continuously the natural position of the strata, but by determining the spaces for observation by concentric circles at the distance of milestones."
* Against such historians the ccuplet of the poet holds good :— "Was sie den Geist der Zeiten heissen, Das ist der Herren ezgner Geist."
inTROD.]
§ 16. METHOD OF WRITING CHURCH HISTORY.
HOT give himself up entirely to his object; in the first place, accurately and conscientiously investigating the facts—then identifying himself in spirit with the different men and times, which have produced the facts—and then so presenting the facts, instinct with their proper spirit and life, that the whole process of development shall be repeated before the eyes of the reader, and the actors stand forth in living forms.
MHistory is neither all body, nor all soul, but an inseparable union of both; therefore both the body and the soul, the fact and the idea, in their mutual vital relation, must be recognised and brought into view.
The older historians have done invaluable service in the accumulation of material, but their works lack generally the charac_ ter of impartial criticism and living freedom.
Historians of the modern school penetrate more to the marrow of history, discover the hidden springs of its life, and lay all open to our view. The | two methods do not of necessity absolutely exclude each other,
_ though they call for different kinds of talent; but each com_ pletes the other, and only by the intimate union of the two can
. the entire fulness of the history be presented.
Truth and fidelity are, therefore, the highest aim of the historian.
As a fallible man, he can never indeed perfectly attain it; yet he is bound to keep it always before his eyes.
He must divest himself of all prejudice—of all party interest, so as to present the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Not, as some have unreasonably demanded, that he should lay _ aside his own mental agency, his character, nay, even his religion, and become a mere tabula rasa.
For, in the first place, this is an absolute impossibility.
A man can know nothing without the exercise of his own thought and judgment; and it
| is plain, that those very persons who make the greatest boast of their philosophical freedom from all prepossession, as Strauss, for instance, in his notorious " Leben Jesu,'' are most under the dominion of preconceived opinions and principles, with which | they seek to master history, instead of sitting as modest learners at her feet.
Then again, the very first condition of all right knowledge is a pre-existing sympathy with the object to be known.
He who would know truth, must himself stand in the truth; only the philosopher can understand philosophy ; only
| the poet, poetry; only the pious man, religion.
So also the
§ 17. DIVISION OF CHURCH HISTORY.
[oENER. church historian, to do justice to his subject, must live and move in Christianity. And as Christianity is the centre of the world's life, and is truth itself, it throws the clearest light on all other history.
Nor can it be said, that according to the same rule only a heathen can understand heathenism; only a Jew Judaism; only a rationalist, rationalism.
For it is from above that we survey what is below, and not the reverse.
It is only by means of truth that we can comprehend error; whereas error understands not even itself.
Verum index sui et false.
Paganism, as opposed to Christianity, is a false religion; and whatever of truth it may contain, such as its longing after redemption, is found complete in Christianity.
The same is true of sects in their relation to the Biblical truth in the church.
And as to Judaism, it is but a direct preparation for Christianity, which is its completion: and hence the Christian can obtain clearer views of Judaism than the Jew, just as the man is able to understand the child, while the child can have no proper apprehension of himself.
Hence Augustine, with perfect propriety, says: " Novum Testamentum in Vetere latet, Vetus in Novo patet.
The object, then, after which the historian must always strive, though he may never, in this life, fully attain it, is truth itself, which can be found only in Christ.
In him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, and he is the soul of church history.
This truth is, at the same time, inseparable from justice; it allows no partiality, no violation of the suwm cuique.
Such impartiality, however, as springs from a self-denying, tender sensibility to truth, and from a spirit of comprehensive love to the Lord, and to all his followers, of whatever name, time, or nation, is totally different from that colourless neutrality and indifferentism, which treats all religions, churches, and sects, with equal interest, or rather want of interest, and is, in reality, a hidden enmity to the truth and moral earnestness of Christianity.
§ 17. Division of Church History.
The development of the church has various stadia, or stages, called periods.
The close of one period and beginning of the next is an epoch, literally a stopping-place (émoy4).
It marks the
INTROD.]
$17. DIVISION OF CHURCH HISTORY.
OD entrance of a new principle; and an event or idea which forms an epoch is one which turns the course of history in a new direction.
Such events were the first Christian Pentecost; the conversion of Paul, the apostle of the Gentiles; the destruction of Jerusalem ; the union of church and state under Constantine ; the rise of Gregory VII.; the posting of the ninety-five theses by Luther; Calvin's appearance in Geneva; the accession of Queen Elizabeth; the landing of the Puritan pilgrims at Plymouth ; the appearance of Spener, Zinzendorf, Wesley ; the outbreak of the French Revolution; the year 1848; &c.
A period, then, is the circuit (egiodos) between two epochs, or the time within which a new idea or view of the world, and a new series of events unfold themselves.
Among periods themselves, again, we may distinguish greater and smaller.
The larger periods may be called, for the sake of perspicuity, ages.
A new age will commence, where the church, with a grand and momentous revolution, not only passes into an entirely new outward state, but also takes, in her inward development, a wholly different direction.
Such an age then falls into several sections or smaller periods, each of which presents some particular aspect of the general principle which rules the age.
The whole history of the church, down to the present time, may be divided into three ages, and each age into three periods, as follows :—
FIRST AGE.
The ANCIENT, or the Graco-LATIN (Eastern and Western) UNIVERSAL CHURCH, from its foundation on the day of Pentecost to Gregory the Great (A.D. 30-590) ; thus embracing the first six centuries.
First Period:
The Apostolic church, from the first Christian Pentecost to the death of the apostles (a.p.
30-100).
Second Period: The Persecuted church (ecclesia pressa), to the reign of Constantine (311).
Third Period: The established church of the Greco-Roman empire, and amidst the barbarian storms, to Gregory the Great (590).
POO
$17. DIVISION OF CHURCH HISTORY.
[GENER.
SECOND AGE.
The MrpIEVAL CuurcH, or the RoMANO-GERMANIC CATHOLicisM, from Gregory the Great to the Reformation (a.p. 590—
1517).
Fourth Period: The commencement of the Middle Ages, the planting of the church among the Germanic nations, to the time of Hildebrand (1049).
Fifth Period:
The flourishing period of the Middle Ages, the summit of the papacy, monachism, scholastic and mystic theology, to Boniface VIII.
(1303).
Siath Period:
The dissolution of the Middle Ages, and preparation for the Reformation, to 1517.
THIRD AGE.
The MopDERN, or EVANGELICAL PROTESTANT CHURCH, in conflict with the Roman Catholic Church, from the Reformation to the present time.
Seventh Period: The Reformation, or productive Protestantism and reacting Romanism (sixteenth century).
Eighth Period: Orthodoa-confessional and scholastic Protestantism, in conflict with ultramontane Jesuitism, and this again with semi-protestant Jansenism (seventeenth century and first part of the eighteenth).
Ninth Period:
Subjective and negative Protestantism (Rationalism and Sectarianism), and positive preparation for a new age in both churches,
(from the middle of the eighteenth century to the present time).
This division differs somewhat from that of other historians.
Neander, as well as nearly all modern writers, commences new epochs, it is true, with Constantine, Gregory the Great, Gregory VII., and Boniface VIII.
But what forms, with us, the fourth period, and the transition from the Patristic to the Middle
Age, he divides into two periods; the first extending from Gre-
INTROD.]
$17. DIVISION OF CHURCH HISTORY.
gory the Great to Charlemagne, the second from Charlemagne to Gregory VII. (1073).
These two sections, however, are so much alike in their general character, that such a division seems uncalled for. And besides, it occasions a great disproportion, in the amount of contents, between these periods and the others; as appears in the fact, that each of these two sections occupies but one volume (in the German edition), while each of the other periods, so far as the work extends, fills two large volumes.
Gieseler makes four periods: (1.) from Christ to Constantine, the church under outward pressure; (2.) to the beginning of the image controversy (which, however, is hardly of sufficient importance to constitute an epoch), Christianity as the prevailing religion of the Roman empire; (3.) to the Reformation, the development of the papacy ; (4.) the development of Protestantism.
These periods he subdivides into a great many smaller sections ; thus cutting up the whole too much, and making it very difficult to take a comprehensive survey.
His lines of demarcation, moreover, are sometimes rather arbitrarily drawn.
He dates new epochs, for instance, at the time of Adrian (117), and Septimus Severus (193), in the first period; at the council of Chalcedon
(451), and the appearance of Mohammed (622), in the second; at the pseudo-Isodorian decretals (858), and the transfer of the papal see to Avignon (1305), in the third.
Hase's division is more simple,—three ages, and in each age two periods; thus:
(1.) Ancient church history, to the formation of the holy Roman empire of the German nation, (a) to Constantine, (b) to Charlemagne (800) ; (2.) Medieval church history, to the Reformation,
(a) to Innocent ITI. (1216), (6) to the Reformation (1517) ; (3.) Modern church history, (a) to the treaty of Westphalia (1648),
(b) to the present time.
The last or sixth period he characterizes as a " struggle between ecclesiastical tradition and religious independence."
Very similar to this is the scheme proposed, but not carried out, by the Roman Catholic theologian Mohler, in his Introduction to Church History.!
He, too, distinguishes three ages, and in each age two periods, but differs somewhat in assigning their limits.
He closes the first age with John of Damascus for the Greek church, and with Boniface, the apostle of Germany,
1 Published from his literary remains by Dollinger, in Mohler's Gesammelte Schriften und Aufsadtze, 1839.
Vol. ii., 277.
§18. GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE THREF AGES.
[GENER. for the Latin; and the second, he continues only to the end of the fifteenth century. Constantine the Great, Gregory VII., and the end of the eighteenth century, mark his subdivisions.
In modern church history he would, of course, make the development of the Roman Catholic church the basis of division ; whereas the Protestant historian looks upon Protestantism as representing the main current of modern Christianity.
§ 18. General Character of the Three Ages of Church History.
Our division can be justified, in detail, only by the history itself.
It may be proper here, however, in some degree, to verify the main division into three ages by a preliminary survey of their general character.
1. The Ancient church, from her foundation to the close of the sixth century, has her local theatre in the countries immediately around the Mediterranean Sea; viz., Western Asia (particularly Palestine and Asia Minor), Southern Europe (Greece,
Italy, Southern Gaul), and Northern Africa (Egypt, Numidia, &c.) Thus was she planted in the very centre of the old world and its heathen culture.
Emanating from the bosom of the Jewish nation, Christianity, even in the days of the apostles, incorporated itself into the Grecian and Roman nationality ; and this national substratum reaches through the whole first age.
Hence we have good reason to style this the age of the GrecoRoman, or, which is here the same thing, the Hastern and Western Universal church.
For the Grecian mind, at that time, ruled not only in Greece Proper, but also in all the East, and in Egypt ; nay, in such cities as Alexandria and Antioch it was, in its later character, even more active and vigorous, and therefore more important for church history, than in the mother country. Western
Asia and Egypt, since the conquest of Alexander the Great, had lost their former character, and become Grecian in language and culture.
Even the Jewish nationality, stiff as it was, could not withstand this foreign pressure; as the writings of Philo and Josephus abundantly prove.
Hence the oldest Christian literature is predominantly Greek.
So, on the other hand, the Roman mind held sway not only over Italy, but over the whole western portion of the empire.
INTROD.]
§ 18. GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE THREE AGES.
Christianity, at first, had to sustain a mighty conflict with Judaism and heathenism; and with the latter, too, in its most cultivated and powerful form.
Hence, together with the history of the spread of the church, an important place belongs also to the history of its persecution, partly by the Roman sword, and partly by Grecian science and art.
But in this conflict, the church, by her moral power in life and in death, on the one hand, and by her new view of the world on the other, comes off triumphant.
She appropriates the classic language and culture, fills them with Christian contents, and produces the imposing literature of the fathers, which has had a fertilizing influence on all subsequent periods.
The Eastern or Greek church, as the main channel of the development, occupies the foreground.
In this age she gives birth to her greatest heroes, as Clemens of Alexandria, Origen, Athanasius, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzen, and Gregory of Nyssa, Eusebius and Chrysostom.
At this time she displays her highest power, and unfolds her fairest blossoms, especially in the field of theology proper.
With great depth of speculation and dialectic skill, she establishes the fundamental doctrines of the divinity of Christ and the Holy Ghost, and of the Trinity ; whence her complacency in the title of the orthodox church. The Latin church, also, enters the field, but moves more slowly and steadily, and exhibits a more practical spirit; bearing the impress of the old Roman national character, as distinct from the scientific and artistic turn of the Greek genius.
For theology and general culture she, at first, depends altogether on the Greek church ; but in government and religious life she pursues a path of her own.
It is a remarkable fact, that the Romanized Punic nationality comes into view before the Roman proper.
The North-African church, in the second period and part of the third, displays far more activity than the Italian.
Through Tertullian she lays the foundation for a Latin theology.
Through Cyprian she takes a prominent part in the development of the episcopal hierarchy.
And finally, in St Augustine, she furnishes the most pious, profound, and spirited of all the fathers ; one who took the lead in the doctrinal controversies of his time ; directed theological investigation in the most important practical questions, in anthropology, and the doctrines of sin and grace ; and, by his writings, exerted the greatest influence upon the
§18. GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE THREE AGES.
[arnen. whole Middle Age, and even upon the Reformation of the sixteenth century.
This first age forms, in dogma, polity, and worship, the foundation for all subsequent centuries; the common ground, out of which the main branches of the church have since sprung.
In this age, too, the church presents, even outwardly and visibly, an imposing unity, joined, at the same time, with great freedom and diversity; and she commands our admiration by her power to overcome, with the moral heroism of martyrdom and with the weapons of the Spirit and the truth, not only Judaism and Paganism without, but also the most dangerous errors and schisms within.
2. The church of the Middle Ages, though, in one view, the product and legitimate succession of the primitive church, is yet, both externally and internally, very different,
In the first place, the territorial field changes.
It moves west and north into the heart of Europe, to Italy, Spain, France, Britain, Germany,
Scandinavia, Russia.
The one universal church splits into two great halves.
The Kastern church, separated from the Western, gradually loses her vitality ; a part of it stiffening into dead formalism; a part yielding to a new enemy from without, Mohammedanism, before which also the North-African church, after having first been conquered by the Arian Vandals at the death of Augustine (a.D. 430), is forced to give way.
This loss ia the East, however, is amply compensated by a gain in the West.
The Latin church receives into her bosom an entirely new national element, barbarian, indeed, at first, but possessed of most valuable endowments and vast native force.
The Germanic hordes, pouring from the north like a flood upon the rotten empire of Rome, ruthlessly destroy her political institutions and literary treasures, but, at the same time, found upon the ruins a succession of new states full of energy and promise.
The church rescues from the rubbish the Roman language and the remains of ancient culture, together with her own literature ; from Rome as her centre she Christianizes and civilizes these rude tribes; and thus brings on the Middle Ages, in which the pope represents the supreme spiritual power; the German emperor, the highest temporal; and the church rules all social relations and popular movements of the West.
This is, therefore, the age of
INTROD.]
$18. GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE THREE AGES. 205
Romano-Germanic Catholicism.
Here we meet the colossal phenomena of the papacy, in league or conflict with the German imperial power ; the monastic orders, the scholastic and mystic divinity, the Gothic architecture and other arts, vying with each other in adorning the worship of the church.
But in this activity the church gradually loses sight of her apostolical foundation, and becomes, like
Judaism in the hands of the Pharisees, encumbered with all sorts of human additions and impurities, which made "the word of God of none effect"
(Mark vii. 13).
The papacy becomes an intellectual and spiritual despotism ; the school divinity degenerates into empty forms and useless subtleties; and the whole religious life assumes a legal, Pelagian character, in which outward good works are substituted for an inward living faith in the only Saviour. Against this oppression of the hierarchy with its human ordinances, the deeper life of the church, the spirit of evangelical freedom, reacts.
3. Thus, after due preparation, not only outside of the medieval Catholicism, but still more, in its very bosom, comes the Reformation of the sixteenth century, which gives the stream of church history an entirely different direction, and opens a new age, in the progress of which we ourselves have our place.
The Modern church has its birthplace in Germany and Switzerland, where the Reformation broke out in two simultaneous movements, and was inwardly matured.
This gives it, in a national point of _ view, a predontinantly Germanic character.
It spreads, however, with rapid triumph, into the Scandinavian North, into France,
_ the Netherlands, England, Scotland, and finally, by emigration, into North America.
And this latter country, gradually rising into view from the beginning of the seventeenth century, filling up with both the good and the evil of the old world, particularly of Great Britain and Germany, and representing, in unbounded freedom and endless diversity, the various tendencies of Protestantism, together with the renovated life of Roman Catholicism, promises to become even the main theatre of the church history of the future.
As, in the second age, the Greek and Latin churches fell asunder; so, in the beginning of the third age, the Latin church itself divides into the Roman and the Protestant, the latter separating again into the Lutheran and Reformed branches.
As, in VOL, I.
206 $19. CHARACTER OF THE THREE AGES, CONTINUED.
[eEner. the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic church was the spring of all great movements, while the Greek church, which now, indeed, seems to have a new future before her in the vast empire of Russia, had stagnated at an earlier stage; so Protestantism is plainly the centre of life for modern history. The Roman church herself, though numerically the stronger branch, owes her activity mainly to the impulse she receives, directly or indirectly, from the Protestant.
This third grand division of the history may, therefore, be fitly termed, as to its leading characteristic, the age of the Evangelical Protestant church.
§ 19. Character of the Three Ages, continued.
The most general mutual relation and difference of these three ages may be best described by means of the comprehensive philosophical distinction of objectivity and subjectivity.
The first age presents the immediate union of objectivity and subjectivity ; that is, the two great moral principles, on which the individual human life, as well as all history, turns, the authority of the general and the freedom of the individual, appear tolerably balanced, but still only in their first stage, without any clear definition of their relative limits.
In the primitive church we meet a highly productive activity and diversity of Christian life and Christian science, and a multitude of deformities, also, of dangerous heresies and divisions.
But over all these individual and national tendencies, views, and characters, the mind of the universal church holds sway, separating the false element with infallible instinct, and, in ecumenical councils, settling doctrines and promulgating ecclesiastical laws, to which individual Christians and nations submit.
The prevailing tendency of this early Christianity, however, in doctrine, government, worship, and practical piety, is essentially Catholic, and prepares the way for that system, which reached its full proportions in the Middle Ages.
Afterwards these two principles of objectivity and subjectivity, the outward and the inward, the general and the individual, authority and freedom, appear, each in turn, in disproportionate prominence.
And in the nature of the case, the principle of objectivity first prevails.
In the Catholic church of the Middle Ages Christianity appears chiefly as law, as a pedagogical insti-
INTROD.]
§ 19. CHARACTER OF THE THREE AGES, CONTINUED. 207
tution, a power from without, controlling the whole life of nations and individuals. Hence this may be termed the age of Christian legalism, of church authority.
Personal freedom is here, to a great extent, lost in slavish subjection to fixed, traditional rules and forms.
The individual subject is of account, only as the organ and medium of the general spirit of the church.
All secular powers, the state, science, art, are under the guardianship of the hierarchy, and must everywhere serve its ends.
This is emphatically the era of grand universal enterprises, of colossal works, whose completion required the co-operation of nations and centuries; the age of the supreme outward sovereignty of the visible church.
Such a well ordered and imposing system of authority was necessary for the training of the Romanic and Germanic nations, to raise them from barbarism to the consciousness and rational use of freedom.
Parental discipline must precede independence; children must first be governed, before they can govern themselves; the law is still, as in the days of Moses, a schoolmaster to bring men to Christ.
This consciousness of independence awoke, even before the close of the Middle Ages.
The more the dominion of Rome degenerated from a patriarchal government into a tyranny over conscience and all free thought, the more powerfully was the national and subjective spirit roused to shake off the ignominious yoke.
All this agitation of awakened freedom was at last concentrated in a decisive historical movement, and assumed a positive, religious character in the Reformation of the sixteenth century.
Here begins the age of subjectivity and individuality ;—a name which may be given it both in praise and in censure.
It is the characteristic feature of Protestantism, and its great merit, that it views religion as a personal concern, which every man, as an individual, and for himself, has to settle with God and with his own conscience.
It breaks down the walls of partition between Christ and the believer, and teaches every one to go to the fountain of the Divine Word, without the medium of human traditions, and to converse, not through interceding saints and priests, but directly, with his Saviour, individually appropriating Christ's merit by a living faith, and rejoicing in his own personal salvation, while he ascribes all the glory of it to the Divine mercy alone.
Evangelical Protestantism, in its genuine form, moves throughout in D2
208 § 19. CHARACTER OF THE THREE AGES, CONTINUED.
[ GENER. the element of that freedom into which Christ has brought us, and naturally calls forth vast individual activity in literary culture, social improvement, and practical piety.
What Germany, Switzerland, Holland, England, Scotland, and the United States have accomplished during the last three centuries in religion, literature, and politics, is all more or less connected with the memorable Reformation of the sixteenth century.
We ourselves are all involved in its development.
Our present Protestant theology and piety breathe in its atmosphere.
The Puritanism of the seventeenth century, the Pietism anc Methodism of the eighteenth, and most of the religious movements of our day, are but continued vibrations of the Reformation; essentially the same Protestant principle of religious subjectivity, variously modified and applied.
But, on the other hand, what thus constitutes the strength of Protestantism, may be called also its weakness.
Every right principle is liable to abuse.
Every truth may be caricatured, and turned into dangerous error, by being carried to an extreme, and placed in a hostile attitude towards other truths equally important and necessary.
Thus, together with its evangelical religious life, the Protestant movement includes also revolutionary and destructive elements, and dangerous tendencies to licentiousness and dissolution in church and state.
True, the Reformers themselves aimed to free the Christian world only from the oppressive authority of human ordinances, and not by any means from the authority of God.
On the contrary, they sought to make reason obedient to the word of God, and the natural will subject to His grace.
They wanted no licentiousness, but a freedom pervaded by faith, and ruled by the Holy Scriptures. i ay, So many churchly and Catholic elements did they retain, at much of our present Protestantism must be considered an hee tere Si ena Vea and Calvin. cavollpe ette ee shies: Wee sin ulness, which is always the Protestant he ti a ck en ee extent, into the te ee ee a Bes, Sie ieee ir Abia and i ent - Paocaige division; ei Le sae pee P or every sort of authority.
This has » especially since the middle of the last century, theoretically in Rationalism, practically in Sectarianism.
INTROD.]
§19. CHARACTER OF THE THREE AGES, CONTINUED. 209
Rationalism has grown, indeed, into a learned and scientific system, chiefly among the Germans, a predominantly theoretic and thinking people, and in the Lutheran church, which has been styled the church of.theologians.
But in substance it exists also in other European countries, and in North America, under various forms, as Arminianism, Deism, Unitarianism, Universalism, Indifferentism, and downright infidelity ; and it infects, to some extent, the theology even of the orthodox denominations.
It places private judgment, as is well known, not only above the pope and the church, but also above the Bible itself, receiving only so much of the word of God as can be grasped by the natural understanding or reason (ratio, whence rationalism).
The system of sect and denomination has sprung more from the bosom of the Reformed church, the church of congregational life, and owes its form to the practical English character, which has a tendency to organize every new principle into a party, and to substitute sects for mere schools.
In North America, under — the banner of full religious freedom, it has reached its height; but in its essence it belongs properly to Protestant Christianity asa whole.
All our Protestantism is sadly wanting in unity, at least in outward, visible unity, which is as necessary a fruit of inward unity as works are of faith.
The sects, indeed, do not commonly reject the Bible.
On the contrary, they stiffly adhere to it, in their own way. But they rely on it in opposition to all history, and in the conceit that they alone are in possession of its true sense.
Thus their appealing to the Bible, after all, practically amounts in the end to rationalism; since, by the Bible, they always mean their own sense of it, and thus, in fact, follow merely their private judgment.
Finally, the principle of false subjectivity reveals itself in the fact, that since the Reformation the various departments of the world's activity, science, art, politics, and social life, have gradually separated from the church, and pursue their own independent course.
In this wide-spread rationalism, in this frittering of the church into innumerable party interests, and in her consequent weakness in relation to all the spheres of human life, and especially in relation to the state, we see the operation of a bad, diseased subjectivity, which forms just the opposite pole
210 $19. CHARACTER OF THE THREE AGES, CONTINUED.
[GENER. to the stiff, petrified, and burdensome objectivity of degenerate Catholicism.
But against these evils the deeper life of the church, which can never be extinguished, again reacts.
In opposition to Rationalism there arises victoriously a new evangelical theology, which aims to satisfy the demands of science as well as of faith.
And, on the other hand, against the sect system there comes up a more and more painful sense of its evils, which calls forth a longing for church union.
This practical want presses the question of the nature and form of the church prominently into the foreground.
The deeper, though by no means the prevailing and popular tendency of the time is thus towards objectivity ; not, indeed, towards that of the Middle Ages, or even of the Romanism of our day,—for history can no more flow backwards, than a stream up hill,—but to an objectivity enriched with all the experience and diversified energies of the age of subjectivity to a higher union of Protestantism and Catholicism in their pure forms, freed from their respective errors and infirmities.
These yearnings of the present, when properly matured, will doubtless issue in a reformation far more glorious than any the church has yet seen.
And then will open a new age, in which human activity, in all its branches, shall freely come back into league with the church; science and art join to glorify the name of God; and all nations and dominions, according to the word of prophecy, be given to the saints of the Most High.
We may find a parallel to this development of the Christian church in the history of the Jewish theocracy, which is everywhere typical of the experience of Christ's people.
The age of the Primitive church corresponds to the Patriarchal age, which already contained in embryo the two succeeding periods.
Medieval Catholicism may be compared to the Mosaic period, when law and authority, and the organization of the Jewish commonwealth, were fully developed.
And the Modern, or Evangelical Protestant church is not without resemblance to the age of the Old 'Testament prophets, in whom the evangelical element, the Messianic hope, predominated, and who stood, to a certain extent, in a hostile attitude towards the unfaithful hierarchy, and towards the dead formalism and ceremonialism of the people.
Law and prophecy, the two poles of the Old Testament religion,
INTROD. |
§ 20. USES OF CHURCH HISTORY.
aN after having been separately developed, appeared at last united, and, as it were, incarnate, in the person of John the Baptist, immediately before the first advent of Christ.
Perhaps in this point, also, the analogy will hold; and then we might indulge the hope that a union, or at least a friendly approach of the two greatest principles of church history, and of the pious portions of the two most hostile sections of Christendom, will precede the second coming of our Lord, and the perfection of His kingdom, when there shall be one fold and one shepherd.
Such private speculations, however, must not be too much trusted, and by no means permitted to influence the representation of facts.
Philosophy, instead of presuming to dictate the course of history, and to accommodate it to a preconceived theory, must be made to depend upon it, and must draw her wisdom from its teachings.
§ 20. Uses of Church History.
1. It is in the knowledge of her history, that the church has a sense of her own development; and this knowledge, therefore, has an intrinsic value.
On this we must lay stress, in opposition to a contracted utilitarian view, in which church history is cultivated only for certain party interests, and thus degraded to a mere tool for temporary purposes.
The present is the result of the past, and cannot possibly be fully understood without a thorough knowledge of the past.
The church cannot properly comprehend herself, without a clear view of her origin and growth.
Her past deeds, sufferings, and fortunes, belong to the substance of her life.
They are constituent elements of her being, which require the gradual course of time for its evolution.
We wait no outward impulse to engage our interest in the history of the kingdom of God.
Faith itself, in its nature, prompts every one to this investigation, according to his inward calling and outward opportunity.
Continually striving after a clearer apprehension of its object, it takes the deepest interest in the ways of God, the words and deeds of His servants, the innumerable witnesses of the past.
If man, as man, according to the old saying, homo sum, nihil humani a me alhenum puto, is prompted and bound to take an interest in everything properly human; the Christian, also, as a Christian, should cultivate the liveliest sympathy with the deeds and fortunes of all his brethren in the faith,
ale
$20. USES OF CHURCH HISTORY.
[Gener. with whom he is joined in one body.
Theology, apprehended and cultivated in the right spirit, is in no department a mere theoretical matter, but Divine worship.
Church history, therefore, deserves to be studied for its own sake, as an essential part of that knowledge of the Triune God, which is life eternal (John
Xvi. 3).
From this high, intrinsic, and abiding worth of church history arise its practical utility and necessity for particular purposes and callings, especially for the teachers and leaders of the Christian community.
This science, like all human knowledge and action, should be made subservient to the glory of God, and the advancement of his kingdom.
2. Thus the knowledge of church history is also one of the most powerful helps to successful action in the service of the kingdom of God.
The present is not only the product of the past, but the fertile soil of the future, which he who would cultivate must understand.
But the present can be thoroughly understood only by an accurate acquaintance with the past.
No one, for example, is prepared to govern a state well, and to advance its interests, who has not made himself familiar with its wants and its history.
Ignorance can produce but a bungling work, which must soon again fall to pieces.
History is, next to the Word of God, the richest source of wisdom and experience.
Her treasures are inexhaustible.
Whence the ephemeral character of so many productions in church and in state?
Their authors were ignorant and regardless of history.
That tree only defies the storm whose roots strike deep.
And that work only can stand which is built on the solid foundation of the past.
3. Again, church history is the best and most complete defence of Christianity, and is therefore pre-eminently fitted to strengthen faith, and to minister abundant comfort and edifica.tion. It is a continuous commentary on the promise of our Lord :
"To, Lam with you alway, even unto the end of the world."
The Saviour moves along, with the fulness of his grace, through the centuries of Christianity, revealing Himself in the most diverse personalities, and making them organs of his Spirit, his will, his truth, and his peace.
The apostles and martyrs, the apologists and church fathers, the schoolmen and mystics, the reformers, and all those countless witnesses whose names are
INTROD. ]
§ 20. USES OF CHURCH HISTORY.
NS indelibly traced on the pages of church history, form one choir, sending up an eternal anthem of praise to the Redeemer, and most emphatically declaring, that the Gospel is no fable, no fancy, but power and life, peace and joy, in short, all that man can wish of good or glory.
Such examples, bearing the actual impress of the life of the God-man, and, as it were, embodying
Christ, speak far more forcibly than any intellectual demonstration or abstract theory.
So, also, church history furnishes the strongest evidence of the indestructibility of Christianity.
To the words of our Lord:
" On this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it," every century responds, Yea! and Amen !
There is no power on or under the earth which has not sworn hostility to the band of the redeemed, and done its utmost to annihilate the infant community.
But the church has vanquished them all.
Stiff-necked and blinded Judaism laid its hand upon the Anointed of the Lord and his servants.
But the Saviour has risen from the dead; his followers have beheld _ with adoration his wonderful judgments upon Jerusalem ; the chosen people are scattered, without a shepherd, and without a sanctuary, through all nations and times, a perpetual living witness to the truth of the Divine threatenings; and "this generation shall not pass away" till the Lord come again in his glory.
Greece applied all her art and philosophy to confute the doctrine of the-cross, and make it ridiculous in the eyes of the cultivated world.
But her wisdom was turned into foolishness, or made a bridge to Christianity.
Rome, proud mistress of the world, devised the most inhuman torments to torture Christians to death, and root out their name from the earth.
But tender _ virgins faced eternity more firmly than tried soldiers or Stoic | philosophers; and after two centuries of the most bloody perse_ cution, lo! the Roman emperor himself casts his crown at the | feet of the despised Nazarene, and receives baptism in His name.
The crescent of Islam thought to outshine the sun of _ Christianity, and moved, blood-red, along the horizon of the Eastern and African churches, passing over even into Spain and _ France.
But the messengers of the Lord have driven back the false prophet, and his kingdom is now a mouldering corpse.
Heresies and schisms of all sorts arose in the bosom of the
21h
§ 20, USES OF CHURCH HISTORY.
[GENER. charch itself, even in its earliest history, and seemed for a long time to have displaced the pure doctrine of the Gospel.
But the truth has always broken for itself a new path, and forced the hosts of error to submission.
The Middle Ages loaded the simple doctrine of salvation with so many human additions, that it could scarcely be decerned, and was made almost " of none effect" (Mark vii. 13).
But the inward energy of the church powerfully worked its way through the superincumbent mass— placed the candle of the pure word again on its candlestick—and set conscience free from the fetters of the hierarchy.
Deists, materialists, and atheists, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, poured contempt upon the Bible; nay, the heroes of the French Revolution, in their mad fanaticism, even set aside the God of Christians, and, in the midst of scenes of the most frightful cruelty, placed the goddess of Reason on the throne of the world.
But they soon had to undo their own folly.
The Lord in heaven laughed, and had them in derision.
Napoleon, the greatest potentate and captain of modern times, proposed to substitute for the universal dominion of Christianity the universal dominion of his own sword, and to degrade the church into an instrument for his own political ends.
But the Lord of the Church hurled him from his throne; and the giant, who had thrown all Europe out of joint, must die of a broken heart—a prisoner on a lonely rock of the ocean.
In the bosom of Protestantism has arisen, within the last and present century, a Rationalism, which, wielding all the powers of learning and philosophy, has gradually advanced to the denial of a personal
God, and of immortality, and has turned the history of the Saviour into a book of myths.
But it has been promptly met by a believing theology, which has triumphantly driven its objections from the field, while division has broken out in the camp of the enemy itself, and one system of unbelief is found actively refuting another.
Indifferentism and spiritual death have spread, in the train of Rationalism, over whole sections of the church.
But the Christian life already celebrates its own resurrection.
Banished from one land, it flourishes with fresh vigour in another, and pushes its activity even to the uttermost parts of the heathen world.
The mightiest empires, the most perfect systems of human wisdom, have perished; while the
INTROD. ]
§20. USES OF CHURCH HISTORY.
(Zs simple faith of the Galilean fishermen shews itself to-day as powerful as ever—regenerating the most hardened sinners—imparting strength to do good, joy in affliction, and triumph in death.
The Lord of Hosts has ever been 4 wall round about his Zion.
The gates of hell, through eighteen centuries, have not prevailed against the church; as little will they prevail against her in time to come.
'To have weathered so many storms, coming forth only purer and stronger from them all, she must indeed be made of indestructible material.
Church history, studied with a truth-loving spirit, places this beyond a doubt.
It is, therefore, next to the Word of God, the richest and most edifying book of devotion, forbidding despair, even when thick darkness rests upon the present, and the walls of Zion are beset with foes.
4, Finally, church history, in proportion as it strengthens our faith in the Divine origin and indestructible nature of Christianity, must also exert a wholesome moral imfluence on our character and conduct, and thus prove a help to practical piety.
It is morality in the form of facts—Divine philosophy taught by examples—a preaching of Christ and his Gospel from the annals of his kingdom.'
Its shining examples of godly men powerfully challenge our imitation; that we, like them, may consecrate our thought and life to the honour of the Lord and the welfare of man, and may leave a lasting, hallowed influence behind us when we die.
The study of history is especially fitted to free our minds from all prejudice, narrowness, party and sectarian feeling, and to fill us with a truly catholic spirit; with that love which joyfully accords due praise to the most diverse forms of the Christian life, adores the wonderful wisdom of the heavenly gardener in the variegated splendour of the garden of the Lord, and feels itself vitally united with the pious of all
1 Luther strikingly says ; "' There is a rare value in histories ; for all that philosophy, wise men, and universal reason can teach or devise, which is profitable for an honourable life, history forcibly presents by examples in actual fact, and sets immediately before the eyes, as though we were by, and saw it acted.
And if we look at it deeply, almost all rights, art, good counsel, warning, threatening, terror, consolation, strength, instruction, providence, prudence, together with all virtues, gush forth from histories and annals, as from aliving fountain.
In this view, histories are but the advertisement, memorial, and token of the work and judgment of God—of the way in which he upholds, governs, hinders, advances, punishes, and rewards the world, and especially men, as each may deserve, be it evil or good."
§20. USES OF CHURCH HISTORY.
[ GENER. ages and nations; with that love, which must be poured out copiously upon the church, before her present mournful divisions can be healed, the precious promise of one fold and one shepherd be accomplished, and: the prayer of our great High Priest be fulfilled: "That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that thou hast sent me."
Here, of course, all depends on the spirit in which church history is studied.
Like every other science, and like the Bible itself, it may be, and often has been, scandalously perverted to the service of bad ends.
This will sufficiently appear from the history of our science, to which we shall devote the last chapter of the General Introduction.!
* On the subject of this section, compare the third division of my tract: What is
Church History ? p. 114, et seq.
INTROD.]
§ 22. HISTORIANS OF THE PATRISTIC PERIOD.
CHAPTER IV.
THE PRINCIPAL WORKS ON CHURCH HISTORY, OR THE PROGRESS
OF CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE.
§ 21. Progress of Church Historiography.
CuuRCH historiography, like every other branch of science, has its history, in which its true object and proper method are continually coming more and more clearly to view.
At first it existed merely as a collection of material.
The next step was the addition of critical research and discrimination.
Then came the pragmatic elucidation and combination of events, shewing the nexus of cause and effect.
And finally, the scientific mastery, artistic construction, and organic reproduction of the objective history itself.
We shall not fatigue the reader with a dry catalogue of books, but confine ourselves to an account of the leading works, paying particular attention to the peculiar lights in which the different historians, especially since the Reformation, view church history, and the method they pursue; and to the progress of church history as a science.
We may divide the historians into three classes: (1.) The old Catholic church historians, from Eusebius to the Reformation ;
(2.) Roman Catholic historians since the split of the Latin church; (3.) Protestant historians, who again branch into various schools, particularly in Germany, reflecting, as in a mirror, the different theological phases through which Protestantism has passed.
I. CHURCH HISTORIANS BEFORE THE REFORMATION.
§ 22. The Patristic Period.
The old Catholic historians belong partly to the Patristic 1The same subject is treated on a somewhat different plan in the tract:
What is Church History ? A Vindication of the Idea of Historical Development, p. 41-80.
§ 2%. HISTORIANS OF THE PATRISTIC PERIOD.
[aeEner. period, or the first six centuries; partly to the Middle Ages.
In the Patristic period we must again distinguish the Greek fathers and the Latin.
1. As in all other departments of theology, so also in church history, the Greek church leads the way.
Leaving out of view the Acts of the Apostles by Sr Luxe, which belong to the canonical literature of the New Testament, and the five books of Ecclesiastical Memoirs by Hecrsrppus, a Jewish Christian writer of the second century (150), of which only a few fragments have been preserved, the title " father of church history," belongs undoubtedly to the learned, candid, and moderate KuSEBIUS (1340), bishop of Czesarea in Palestine; in the same sense in which Herodotus is called the father of profane history.
In his Church History, which reaches, in ten books, from the Incarnation to the year 324, he has made faithful use of the libraries of his friend Pamphilus of Czsarea, and of Alexander, bishop of Jerusalem ; of the canonical and apocryphal writings ; of the works of the apostolic fathers (the immediate disciples of the apostles), the apologists, and the oldest church writers, including many valuable documents, which have since been lost.?
His Biography of Constantine the Great is not so trust-worthy.
He was too much blinded by the favour which this emperor shewed to the church, not to sacrifice the character of the historian frequently to that of the panegyrist.
His Chronicle gives a short account of general history from the beginning of the world to Constantine the Great, with chronological tables.
For a long time it was only partly known, through the free translation of Jerome; until found, in the year 1792, in a complete
Armenian copy, and published in Latin and Greek by Angelo Mai (Rome, 1833), and others.
The historical works of Eusebius are chiefly valuable for their material and antiquity, and for the interesting position of the writer, who lived while persecution was still raging, and also witnessed the great change caused by Constantine's conversion.
As regards style and method, he is far surpassed by the classical historians of Greece and Rome.
His mild disposition, love of peace, and aversion to * Comp. the Dissertation of Dr Baur: Comparatur Husebius Owes. Historic ecclesiasticce porens cum parente historiarum Herodoto Halic.
Tiibing. 1834.
? A detailed account of his sources, sixty in number, is given by Fliigge: Versuch emer Geschichte der theolog.
Wissenchaften.
Halle, 1797.
Part ii. p. 321, et seg.
INTROD.]
§22. HISTORIANS OF THE PATRISTIC PERIOD.
doctrinal controversies and exclusive formulas of orthodoxy, have brought upon him'the suspicion of having favoured the Arian or Semiarian heresy, but without sufficient foundation.
It is certain that he signed the symbol of Nice, and at least substantially agreed to it; though for himself he preferred the looser terminology of his favourite, Origen, concerning the divinity of Christ.
The work of Eusebius was continued in the fifth century, first, by two jurists of Constantinople ; SocraTEs, who brought down the history, in seven books, from the~accession of Constantine
(306), to the year 439, in unpretending, often careless style, but without prejudice, and with greater critical tact than Eusebius; and HerRMIAS SOZOMENUS, a Palestinian, whose nine books embrace the same period (823-423), but have more regard to monasticism, of which he was an enthusiastic admirer.
Then comes THEODORET, bishop of Cyrus in Mesopotamia, who wrote his Heclesiastical History in five books (covering the period 325-429), about the year 450, and excels both the last named authors, and even Eusebius, in style, spirit, and richness of matter.
In his Lives of Thirty Hermits (pird3e0s iorogia), however, he relates sometimes the most wonderful things respecting his heroes, without leaving the least room for doubt.
His Fabule Heretice are valuable for doctrine history.
Besides these Catholic authors, there was also PHILOSTORG1US, who wrote in the interest of Arianism; but of his twelve books (reaching from 318 to 425), we possess only extracts in the Bibliotheca of Photius.
In the sixth century we have THEODORUS of Constantinople, who continued the history to the year 518; and the Syrian lawyer, Evacrius of Antioch, who brought it down to 594.
Photius extols this latter author, as more orthodox than all his predecessors. * All these historians, except the heretical Philostorgius, view the history from essentially the same position, and follow the same general method.
Where one breaks off, another commences, and continues the narrative in the same spirit.
Their 1 All these seven historians have been published together, in Greek and Latin, with notes, by Valesius (du Valois), in three volumes folio (Par. 1659-73, also Amstelod. 1695, and Cantabr. 1720).
A spirited, but one-sided review of the Greek historians may be found in Dr Baur's Epochen der kirchlichen Geschichtschreibung.
Tubing. 1852, p. 7, et seg.
ye)
§ 22. HISTORIANS OF THS PATRISTIC PERIOD.
[GENERo works all have an apologetical character, bearing the marks of the struggle of the youthful church against prevailing Judaism and heathenism, and-reflecting the moral glory of martyrdom.
The later Greek church, whose general course, since its separation from the Latin, may be styled a progressive stagnation, has done but little for our science.
In the fourteenth century, NICEPHORUS CALLISTI (son of Callistue), a monk of Constantinople (about 1333), compiled from the older historians a new church history, in twenty-three books; but only eighteen of them (to A.D. 610), are preserved in a single manuscript of the Vienna library, and edited by Duczus (le Duc), Par. 1630.
From the close connection between church and state in the Byzantine empire, however, all the so-called ScRIPTORES ByzanTINI, from the seventh century to the fifteenth, may also be considered as in part belonging to the literature of church history.?
2. The Latim church historians were wholly dependent on Greek models.
RUuFINUS, presbyter of Aquileia (410), translated the church history of Eusebius, and added two books, extending it to the death of Theodosius the Great, a.p. 395,
The learned JEROME (1419) furnished very valuable material for the biography of the early ecclesiastical writers, in his
Catalogus virorum illustrium sive scriptorum ecclesiasticorum, which was afterwards continued by the Gallic presbyter, GENNADIUS (+490), and the Spanish bishop, Istpor oF SEVILLA
(+636), Sunprcius SEVERUS, a presbyter of Gaul (+ about 420) wrote, in good Latin, a Historia Sacra, from the creation of the world to a.p. 400 ; but it scarcely merits the name of a history.
Of still less account are the Seven Books of History against the Heathens, by the Spanish presbyter, PauLus Orosius, of the fifth century.
CassIopORUS, consul and monk, (ft about 562), towards the close of his life, from the works of Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret, which were translated for him into Latin by his friend Epiphanius Scholasticus, compiled his Historia tripartita, in twelve books; and this extract served the Latin church as a manual through the whole Middle Age.
* Historie byzant. scriptores.
Par, 42 t. fol. 1645-1711.
Corpus scriptor. hist. byz. consilio Niebuhrii. Bonne. 1828, et seg.
They include the Chronicon paschale, the works of Syncellus, 'Theophanes, Nicephorus, Metaphrastes, Zonaras, Leo Diaconus, Acropolita,
Pachymeres, and others.
INTROD. |
§ 23. HISTORIANS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
Bradt § 23. Historians of the Middle Ages.
The Middle Ages furnished no independent works of general church history.
The Historie Ecclesiastice of HAyMo, bishop of Halberstadt (+853), in ten books, is a mere extract from Rufinus' translation of Eusebius; and the Historia ecclesiastica, swe chronographia tripartita, of the Roman presbyter and librarian ANASTASIUS (} about 886), is in part a translation of the Chronography of Nicephorus, and in part an extract from the works of Syncellus and Theophanes.
We have, on the other hand, in this period a multitude of chronicles, biographies of saints, histories of single convents and monastic orders, and of distinguished popes and bishops, which are mostly indeed simple, often uncritical narrations, but full of valuable material.
Then, again, there are histories of the churches of particular nations ; the history of the Gallic Church, for instance, by GREGORY OF Tours (+595), to the year 591; of the Old British and Anglo-Saxon Church, by the VENERABLE BEDE ({735), to the year 731; the four books of the canon, ADAM OF BREMEN, on | the Period from Charlemagne to the year 1076, which give important information respecting the spread of Christianity among the Saxons and in Scandinavia, especially respecting the archbishopric of Hamburg-Bremen.
Most of the historians and annalists of the Middle Ages were monks, whose literary labours and missionary zeal give them, in other respects, a prominent place in the history of European civilization.
The revival of classical studies in the fifteenth century aroused here and there the spirit of critical research.
An example of _this we have in the Roman canon LAuRENTIUS VALLA (1457), who ventured to prove! the utter groundlessness of Constantine's donation to Pope Sylvester, and also attacked the traditional opinion that the apostles each composed a part of the Apostles'
Creed.
Such bold attempts at historical criticism and free investigation, were, however, though unconsciously, forerunners of the Reformation.
All these works of the time before the Reformation, invaluable as they are in their way, exhibit but the infancy or child1 Jn his book, De falso credita et ementita donatione Constantini M.
VOL. Ls E
§24. ROMAN CATHOLIC HISTORIOGRAPHY,
[GENER. hood of our science. The church was engaged more in making history than in writing it.
She had not yet begun to reflect, in an independent manner, on her own existence, her origin, her development.
She was so firmly convinced of her divine character, that she left no room for scepticism or doubt.
She enjoyed her wonderful legends in childlike faith and superstition, as though they were all pure historical realities.
The old and the new, the distant and the near, poetry and truth, she combined, without discrimination, in one grand structure, which is itself, however, one of the most imposing creations of history, and a most worthy subject of historical research and representation.
In a word, the power of tradition was yet unshaken.
This occasioned an almost entire want of the spirit of free inquiry, and of genuine scientific method.
The whole conception of what constitutes history was imperfect.
It properly embraced only facts, the outward activity of the spirit.
Doctrine history, in any proper sense, was wholly excluded, as implying that the doctrine of the church itself passes through a living process of development.
The only form in which this most important branch of historical theology existed, and made its first appearance, was that of the history of heresies ; as may be seen in the principal works of ecclesiastical antiquity on this subject, by EpipHanius! and
THEODORET.?
II. ROMAN CATHOLIC HISTORIANS SINCE THE REFORMATION.
§ 24. General Character of Roman Catholic Historiography.
From the old Catholic historians we pass directly to those of the Roman Catholic church since the Reformation, as in spirit and tendency most nearly related to the former.
In these, also, the idea of development is wanting, and with it all free, unbiassed criticism.
Their position is determined for them beforehand.
It is that of fived orthodoay and exclusive churchliness.
Their doctrine of the infallible authority of the papacy cramps inquiry in every direction; and, since they conceive of the church as identical with the Roman church, they look upon 1 In his Tlaveépiov, or Laboratory, written about a.D. 374, against eighty heresies ; where the intolerant zeal of a fanatical orthodoxy reaches its height.
2 Fabule Hoeretice.
INTROD. |
$25. ITALIAN HISTORIANS.
every deviation from it'as apostacy and corruption, as damnable heresy and schism.
They cannot, therefore, be expected to do justice to non-Catholic and anti-Romanist movements.
This exclusiveness comes out most harshly in the treatment of the last three centuries, which, it is plain, have been chiefly ruled by the spirit of the Reformation.
The purely historical character of their works is here impaired by apologetic interest for the papacy, and polemic zeal against everything Protestant.
The constant effort is, to trace back-the Roman doctrines and institutions into the earliest antiquity, and to claim for them, if possible, apostolic authority; and this, of course, involves often the greatest violence to history.
Yet among the Roman Catholic historians there is no lack of extensive learning.
In what concerns their own church, they have gone into the most ingenious and profound investigations, under the very impulse, mainly, of Protestant opposition; and in general they have done our science much meritorious service, especially by laborious antiquarian research and collections, and by critical editions of the fathers, decrees of councils, papal bulls, and other valuable sources of church history.
And then, too, they could not fail, particularly the most important of them in France and Germany, to proceed more cautiously than the older historians ; giving up many manifest fables and superstitions, which had before been received without question, as historical facts, and accommodating themselves more, both in matter and manner, to modern taste.
§ 25. (a) Italian Historians.
Caesar Baronius.
The first Protestant church history, the Magdeburg Centuries, made such a sensation, that the Roman church was forced to cast about in earnest for a reply in the same form.
This service was undertaken by a Neapolitan, CasarR Baronius, properly BaRonio, at the instance of his teacher, Philip Neri, in a very learned and ingenious work, on which he laboured for thirty years, till his death (A.D. 1607), with unwearied diligence; and for which he was rewarded with the dignity of a cardinal.
His Annales ecclesiastict, which appeared first at Rome (1588-1607), and have since been many times reprinted, extracted from, translated, and continued, though with less skill, by others, embrace, in twelve folio volumes, as many centuries, from the birth of E2
2eh
$95. ITALIAN HISTORIANS.
[oENER.
Christ to A.D. 1198.
They furnish, from the papal archives, and from many libraries, particularly the Vatican, a host of documents and public papers previously unknown ; and in general, with all their faults, they are of so much value, that even at this day, in a thorough course of study, they cannot well be dispensed with.
The cardinal comes forward under the conviction that he is presenting the first true church history. He censures
Eusebius for leaning towards Arianism; Socrates and Sozomen for favouring the Novatians; and all his predecessors for going to work without critical discrimination.
The Magdeburg Centuries he considers " Centuries of Satan ;'! though, in his profound contempt for them, he seldom refers to them directly, but rather lets history speak for itself, and refute his Protestant opponents in a positive way, by copiously unfolding its authentic testimonies.
And in many instances he undoubtedly has the decided advantage, and is backed by an overwhelming mass of authorities.
He wrote unconditionally in the interest of absolute Romanism.
He endeavours to shew that the papacy was instituted by Christ; that it always remained, in doctrine and constitution, the same; and that the Reformation was an apostacy from the true church, and a rebellion against the ordinance of God.
But for this purpose he is compelled to call in the aid of many fictitious or corrupted narratives and spurious documents, and, on the other hand, to suppress or distort important public records.
This drew forth opposition, not only from the Protestants, particularly from Casaubonus, F'r. Spanheim, and Sam. Basnage, but, upon subordinate points at least, from the more liberal Catholics themselves, especially from the profoundly learned French Franciscan ANTON Paqi, who paid special attention to the correction of chronological mistakes."
In connection with the Annals of Baronius, we should here mention those authors who have continued them in the same spirit; especially OporIcUS RAYNALDUS, an Italian, who extended them to the year 1565; and HENR. SPONDANUS (Sponde),
» Thus they are styled in the Parentalia Justi Baronti in obitum Cesaris. Baronit, prefixed to the first volume.
2 In his Critica historico-chronologica in Annales Barontit, Antwerp, 1705, 4 t., fol— The best edition of the Annals of Baronius, including Raynaldi continuatio, Pagii critica, and other explanatory writings, was published by Mansi, at Lucca, between the years 1738 59, in 38 volumes folio.
INTROD.] |
§ 26. FRENCH HISTORIANS.
22% a Frenchman, originally of the Reformed church, who wrote two volumes, bringing the narrative down to 1640.
Caspar Sa_ CHARELUI, towards the end of the eighteenth century, wrote an independent work on church history, in twenty-five volumes.'
For single portions of church history, valuable collections of documents, and editions of older writers, special credit is due, among the Italians, to MURATORI, ZACCAGNI, ZACCARIA, MAN- - §I, and GALLANDI; also to the three ASSEMANI, celebrated ori_ ental and antiquarian scholars, originally from Syria, but residents of Rome in the last century ; and in our own age, to Cardinal ANGELO MAI, the indefatigable collector and editor of valuable unpublished manuscripts from the treasures of the Vatican and other libraries.2
The most gifted and free-minded among the Italian historians was the Venetian monk PAOLO
SARPI (+1623); but from him we unfortunately have only a _ History of the Council of Trent.
This work is written with almost Protestant boldness and independence, and in excellent
_ style.
The Cardinal PALLAVICINI has only partially succeeded _ in his learned attempt to refute it.
§ 26. (b) French Historians.
The first merit, in Catholic historiography, belongs, on the whole, to the French, whose more independent posture in relation to the Roman See has here served a good purpose, however objectionable Gallicanism may be in other respects.
It was in part, indeed, the very defence of the Gallican church freedom, - which called forth the most interesting and thorough investigations.
With this purpose appeared, first, the work of Bishop GODEAU, of Venice, in popular form (1635), but coming down only to the end of the ninth century; then that of the far more
| learned Dominican NATALIS ALEXANDER (Noél) in twentyfour volumes (1676-86), reaching to A.D. 1600.
The latter writer, in direct opposition to Baronius, vindicates the rights of the church, and of secular princes against the popes, and declares the reformatory councils of Pisa, Constance, and Basle, to be ecumenical; yet he justifies the cruel persecution of the Albigenses, and is full of zeal against the Protestant heretics.
In3 [istoria ecclesiastica.
Rom. 1772-95.
25 vols. 4to.
1 Comp. Mai's Collectio scriptorwm veterum, 1825, et seq.
§ 26. FRENCH HISTORIANS.
[GENER. nocent XI., in 1684, prohibited this work on pain of excommunication; but thirty years later, Benedict XIII., himself a Dominican, set it free again.
In 1690, CLaupE FLEURY, abbot of a Cistercian convent, after 1716 confessor of Louis XV., but living as an anchoret at court (+1723), began the publication of his Histoire Ecclésiastique, which reaches, in twenty volumes, to the year 1414, and was continued by FaBre, though with no genius, down to A.D. 1595.
Fleury writes diffusely, and in the spirit of a monk, but with taste, skill, mildness, and decided love for the church and Christianity, and with a view to edify as well as to instruct.
He follows the order of time, though not slavishly ; and some volumes he prefaces with general views.
He, too, defends antiquity and the Gallican ecclesiastical constitution, though without at all compromising the credit of the church, its general tradition, or the necessity of the pope, as its head.
His principal concern is with doctrine, discipline, and practical piety.
The spirited and eloquent bishop of Meaux, BossvEt (+1704), also a Gallican, in his Universal History
(Discours sur l'histoire universelle, 1681), reaching from the Creation to Charlemagne, presents with brilliant genius religion and the church as the soul and centre of all history.
In his polemic work on the Variations of Protestantism (Histoire des variations des églises protestantes), he appears more as a learned and skilful controversialist and partizan, than as an impartial historian."
The Jansenist TILLEMONT (1698) pursued a new plan.
He composed a church history of the first six centuries, in sixteen volumes (1693-1712), purely from original sources, with the most accurate and conscientious fidelity, adding his learned investigations in the form of notes.
The 1 His argument against the Protestants comes to this: Your history is a history of constant changes and contradictions; therefore you cannot have the truth, which is in its nature unchangeable.
The celebrated historian, Gibbon, when a student at Oxford, was converted to the Roman church by this work of Bossuet, but afterwards became an infidel.
In his Autobiography, published by Lord Sheffield, ch. viii., he says; " I read,
I applauded, I believed, the English translations of two famous works of Bossuet, bishop of Meaux, the Exposition of the Catholic doctrine, and the History of the Protestant variations, achieved my conversion, and I surely fell by a noble hand..... In the History, a bold and well-aimed attack, he displays, with a happy mixture of narrative and argument, the faults and follies, the changes and contradictions of our first reformers, whose variations (as he dexterously contends) are the mark of historical error, while the perpetual unity of the Catholic church is the sign and test of infallible truth."
INTROD. |
§ 27. GERMAN AND ENGLISH HISTORIANS.
eet latest large French work on general church history is that of ROHRBACHER, Prof. in Louvain, in twenty-nine volumes, coming down to the present time, a second edition of which has been published, 1850, et seg.
A Roman Catholic reviewer describes this work as "wanting method, sometimes a little crude and indigested, and not always consistent with itself, but at the same time as a work of extensive erudition, written from a truly
Roman Catholic (ultra-montane) point of view, with great sincerity, earnestness, and vigour."
But in addition to these general works, many single portions of church history, costly editions of the fathers, and other valuable helps to our science, have issued from the learned monastic institutions of France.
Among the authors of such works, special mention is due to the St Maur Benedictines, D'AcuERy,
RUINART, Masitton, Massuet, MArtTENE, DuRAND, MontFAUCON ;! and to the Jesuits, StRMOND and PETAU (Petavius) whose celebrated and very learned work, De theologicis dogma tibus (1644-50), marks an epoch in doctrine history.
§ 27. German and English Historians.
No free and independent interest in church history shewed itself among the Catholics of Germany, till the Josephine period ; nor then was the spirit thoroughly aroused, till it received the impulse of the Protestant theology.
The productions of Ger_ many, therefore, in this department, are chiefly of recent date.
General works—some of them, however, unfinished—have been furnished by RoyKo, DANNENMAYR, the well-known pious and amiable poet and convert Count FR. L. von STOLBERG,? KaTER1 Tn the congregation of St Maur there was a complete system of study.
In extensive literary enterprises, the general was authorized to assign parts to the different members according to their talents and tastes ;—to one, the collection of material; to another, the arrangement of it; to a third, the manufacture; to a fourth, the finishing; to a fifth, the charge of the press, &c.
Each was required to labour, not for personal renown, but only for the good of the church and the honour of his order.
The authors are often not even named.
This co-operation of various scholars, who were free from all temporal care, and favoured with wealth and the most ample literary helps, brought out vast works, such as even an academy of sciences could hardly undertake.
The best editions of the church fathers, Cyprian, Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, Justin Martyr,
Ireneus, Athanasius, Basil, Chrysostom, Gregory the Great, Bernard of Clairvaux, &c., we owe to the diligence of the St Maurists, which, in literary matters, surpassed that of the Jesuits.
2 Geschichte der Religion Jesu.
Hamburg, 1806-19.
15 vols. continued by F. von Kerz, vols. 16-38, coming down to the twelfth century.
Hase strikingly says of Stol-
22o
§ 27. GERMAN AND ENGLISH HISTORIANS.
[GENER.
KAMP, Ritter, LocHERER, Hortie, ALzoc, DéLLINGER; valuable monographs by the genial GOERRES (Geschichte der christ lichen Mystik), the distinguished convert and Austrian historiographer Hurter,' by HEFELE, STAUDENMAIER, and others.
The finest endowments for a historian must be conceded to the spirited and pious Méu_er (1838), the greatest Roman Catholic theologian since Bellarmine and Bossuet.
He has aided his church in coming to herself again, and has inspired her with new polemic zeal against Protestantism ; though, in truth, he himself everywhere reveals the influence of the Protestant theology, especially that of Schleiermacher and Neander, and of all the modern German culture, upon his own idealistic apprehension and defence of Catholic doctrine and usage.
He wrote no complete church history, indeed; but his larger works (Symbolik, Patristik, Athanasius M.), and his smaller tracts (on Anselm, the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, Gnosticism,
Monasticism, &c.), almost all have more or less to do with history, particularly with doctrine history ; and in depth and freshness of spirit, as well as in graceful, animated style, they surpass all the productions of the authors now mentioned.
Of his disciples, JoHANN ALzOG, whom we might call in some respects the Roman Catholic Hase, has made use, according to his own confession, of Mohler's unpublished lectures, and furnished a Manual of general church history (fifth edition, 1850), which commends itself highly by a comparatively liberal spirit, clear arrangement, vivacity and beauty of style, and may upon the whole be pronounced the best work of the kind which has issued from the Roman Catholic press of Germany.
The Roman Catholic church-dictionaries (Kirchenleaica) lately issued, the one by AscHBAcH (1846-51), the other by berg, that "he has written and poetically decked out (geschrieben und gedichtet) the history of the Jewish nation, as well as ofthe ancient church, with the zeal, unction, and unreserved devotion of a proselyte, but also with a heart full of enthusiasm and love."
* HuRTER, when he wrote his learned and ingenious work on Innocent III. (in four volumes), was, it is true, still Antistes of the Reformed church in Schaffhausen.
But even in that history he unmistakably betrays his Romanizing tendency, in his unqualified praise of his hero and his age, and in his marked predilection for a brilliant hierarchy and a gorgeous ceremonial.
It is everywhere visible that the author, in his infatuated partiality for the Middle Ages, esteems the dome of St Peter's above the manger of Bethlehem, and the decretals of the popes above the word of God.
His dissatisfaction with the moral insecurity of the present age, and with the politico-religious confusion of his own country, afterwards decided and fully justified to his own conscience a transition, which was inwardly complete long before.
_ INTROD.]
§ 27. GERMAN AND ENGLISH HISTORIANS.
ee, | WerzeER and Wetrx (1847, et seq.), contain also many learned and valuable historical articles, especially from the pens of Alzog and Hefele.
The Roman Catholics of England have thus far contributed very little to historical theology.
Quite recently, however, an author has arisen among them, who, for accurate study of sources, and calm, simple, clear, and dignified representation, takes rank with the first historians of the age.
Dr Jouwn LinGARD, priest of the Catholic chapel. of Hornby in England (1851), in his " Aatiquities of the Anglo-Saxon church," has furnished perhaps the most satisfactory and reliable work we have on the church history of England before the Norman conquest.
His larger and excellent '' History of England," which extends in thirteen volumes (new ed. 1848, et seq.), from the first invasion by the Romans to the accession of William the Third (1688), contains chiefly the political history of that country, but has its ecclesiastical history interwoven.
The | author, however, with all his love of truth, with all his compara- | tively mild and liberal spirit, and his general accuracy in the statement of facts, is by no means free from religious bias, and can, therefore, not always be trusted.
In his accounts of distinguished Protestants, as Edward VI., Somerset, Cranmer, Knox, and especially Elizabeth, in whom he finds hardly anything praiseworthy but her talents, he involuntarily becomes Polemical; while for the bloody Mary, Mary Stuart (that "innocent and much injured woman," as he calls her), and other
_ Roman Catholics, he always at least indirectly, and sometimes directly, apologizes.
Thus he himself gives proof of what he _ says in the preface to the first volume ; that the historian, "as he is always exposed to the danger, will occasionally suffer himself to be misled by the secret prejudices or the unfair state_ ments of the authors whom it is his duty to consult."
A considerable addition to English Catholic literature may be expected from the recent Puseyite converts to Romanism, several of whom, especially Dr NEWMAN, are men of extensive learning and highly cultivated mind.
Their productions, thus far, however, since their conversion, have been mostly of a polemical or devotional character, or translations and compilations from older and continental Romish works.
It remains to be
§ 27. GERMAN AND ENGLISH HISTORIANS.
[GENER. seen, whether the ingenious theory of development which Dr Newman brought forth in his " Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine" (1845) immediately before his conversion, and which he has not since retracted, will have a material influence upon the future literature of Roman Catholic historians.?
His theory, however, comes only to this, that the Catholic system was not complete and fully unfolded from the start, but is the product of a living process of gradual evolution.?
As to Protestantism, he excludes it entirely from the process, and treats it as an apostasy from Historical Christianity, and a progressive corruption which must ultimately run into infidelity.
10. A. Brownson of Boston, the well-known convert from Puritanism and infidelity to extreme Romanism, has, in several articles of his able but fanatically anti-protestant
Review, vehemently opposed this theory of development as essentially anti-catholic, and as preparing the way for a new and dangerous heresy in the Roman church, unless it be checked in time by the proper authorities.
We are inclined to believe that he does personally great injustice to Newman, and seems to be unconsciously under the influence of jealousy of his distinguished fellow-converts of the ex-Puseyite school, but, at the same time, that the strictly ultra-montane standpoint which he occupies does not admit any theory of development, but rests rather on the principle of absolute immutability.
Newman's theory, says Brownson (Quarterly Review for July 1846, p. 342, et seq.),
"is essentially anti-catholic and Protestant.
It is not only not necessary to the defence of the church, but is utterly repugnant to her claims to be the authoritative and infallible church of God. .... Newman forgets that she sprang into existence full-grown, and armed at all points, as Minerva from the brain of Jupiter, and that she is withdrawn from the ordinary law of human systems and institutions by her supernatural origin, nature, character, and protection."
It is easy to make such a bold assertion, but impossible to prove it historically.
With Mr Brownson, however, and his like, history must nolens volens bend to his preconceived creed and logic.
2« The following essay," says Newman, p. 19 (Americ. ed.), "is directed towards a solution of the difficulty which has been stated—the difficulty which lies in the way of using the testimony of our most natural informant concerning the doctrine and worship of Christianity, viz., the history of eighteen hundred years.
The view on which it is written has at all times, perhaps, been implicitly adopted by theologians, and, I believe, has recently been illustrated by several distinguished writers of the Continent, such as De Maistre and Mohler: viz., that the increase and expansion of the Christian Creed and Ritual, and the variations which have attended the process in the case of individual writers and churches, are the necessary attendants on any philosophy or polity which takes possession of the intellect and heart, and has had any wide or extended dominion; that, from the nature of the human mind, time is necessary for the full comprehension and perfection of great ideas; and that the highest and most wonderful truths, though communicated to the world once for all by inspired teachers, could not be comprehended all at once by the recipients, but as received and transmitted by minds not inspired, and through media which were human, have required only the longer time and deeper thought for their full elucidation, This may be called the Theory of Developments."
INTROD.] § 28. CHARACTER OF PROTESTANT HISTORIOGRAPHY. eS
III. PROTESTANT HISTORIANS.
§ 28. General Character of Protestant Historiography.
As the Reformation of the sixteenth century opens a new age for the church, and for theology in general, so also it forms an epoch in the history of our science.
In fact we may say, it was only the Reformation which made church history properly free and independent.
Before that time, the historian was, so to speak, of one growth with his subject.
Now, he rose, by reflection, above it; and instead of at once receiving on authority everything Catholic as true, and condemning everything not Catholic as false, he began to subject the whole development of the church itself to critical examination, judging it without regard to papal decrees, according to the word of God and common reason.
This opened the door, indeed, to a false freedom and emancipation from lawful authority, to a negative tendency, an entire contempt and rejection of history, such as we meet with in Rationalism and among sects; but at the same time it prepared the way for such impartial research as would bring the mind, by free conviction, into harmony with the objective course of the kingdom of God, as a truly rational and necessary unfolding of His plan of salvation.
And to this result the most important labours in later historiography seem inevitably to tend.
It was a long time, however, before Protestant science here attained a clear perception of its mission.
It had to pass, in its - own history, through various periods, widely different in their mode of viewing and treating the past.
We may distinguish _ five such periods: the orthodox-polemical, the unchurchly-pie- - tistic, the pragmatic-supranaturalistic, the negative-rationalis- | tic, and the evangelical-catholic.
Of these periods, the first and _ the fourth are related to each other as opposite extremes; the _ second and third, as stages of transition from the position of church orthodoxy to that of rationalism; while the fifth seeks
_ to combine the excellencies of all the others without their faults ; and is, moreover, itself divided into so many different schools, that it cannot easily be brought under any general designation.
§ 29. PERIOD OF POLEMIC ORTHODOXY.
[GENER.
§ 29. (a) Period of Polemic Orthodoxy.
Flacius.
This period embraces the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
The Reformers themselves did nothing directly for church history, except as they gave it a mighty impulse, and waked up a new spirit of inquiry; which, however, is of itself no small merit.
They were too much occupied with polemics, and with the creation of new material for subsequent historians, to possess the calmness and leisure required for the writing of history.'
Besides, their theological activity was mainly directed to the settlement of articles of faith, and to the exposition of the Scriptures.
But argument from Scripture alone could not permanently satisfy.
As the Catholics continually appealed to the fathers, and declared the Reformation to be an innovation, which had no ground at all in the past, it became an object with the Protestants to wrest the historical argument from their opponents, by drawing ecclesiastical antiquity to their own side.
For to admit that pure Christianity had vanished from the earth, and had not come to light again till the sixteenth century, was impossible for them in the face of their Lord's promise to be with his church always, even to the end of the world; and they wished also to be counted not heretics, but true Catholics.
Thus the apologetic interest in the struggle with Rome forced the Protestants to the study of history.
This, however, gave their first productions throughout a character either directly or indirectly polemical.
During the whole of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries church history was viewed exclusively from the standpoint of some particular confession or denomination, and made subservient to party ends.
Not only the Roman Catholics, but also the Protestants, with the same zeal, and almost the same intolerance, converted history into an armory to furnish them weapons against their ecclesiastical opponents.
The object of each party was always to shew that they were truly orthodox, either, on the one hand, as the heirs, or, on the other, as the restorers of the pure catholic doctrine and practice; and to represent the opposite party as * The Reformers of the second generation, however, could look back upon this great movement as an accomplished fact.
Thus Matthesius wrote the life of Luther; Camerarius, that of Melancthon; Bullinger, Zuingli's successor, composed the history of the Helvetic Reformation ; Beza, with the skill of a master, the fortunes of French Protestantism down to the year 1563, and the life of his predecessor and friend, Calvin.
INTROD.]
§ 29. PERIOD OF POLEMIC ORTHODOXY.
heretics, who either, as the Romanists, corrupted the true faith, or, as the charge ran against the Protestants, set it aside, and substituted arbitrary innovations.
In abhorring the heretics of the primitive church, as the Gnostics, Arians, Semiarians, Sa bellians, Nestorians, Monophysites, Pelagians, and others, both parties agreed ; for the Reformation had expressly indorsed the ecumenical symbols.
But in the treatment of the Middle Ages they widely differed. The one extolled them as the ages of faith ; the other abused them as the period of growing darkness and superstition.
Even such institutions and doctrines as are now acknowledged to be of later origin, the Roman church tried, partly by means of spurious, or at least suspicious documents, to date back to the remotest antiquity ; while it viewed the Reformation as having sprung from the most impure motives, as a rebellion against God, and as the fruitful source of all disorder and confusion.
The Protestants, on the other hand, misrepresented, with the same fanatical party zeal, the history of the Roman Catholic church. They refused to acknowledge her great merits in Christianizing and civilizing the Romanic and Germanic nations; while, after the example of Flacius, they glorified, as heroes of faith and "witnesses of truth" (testes veritatis), even those of her opponents, who, on closer inspection, are found to have rejected the fundamental doctrines of the gospel, and of the Reformation itself The only defence of Protestantism known in those days was such as included a wholesale condemnation of Popery, as essentially anti-Christian.
The noblest and most effectual way of opposing Catholicism is, to shew that it was necessary in its time, and, in the hand of Providence, like
Judaism before the advent of Christ, served high moral ends ; and, at the same time, to view the Reformation as the grand product of the Middle Ages themselves, representing a higher and more free, evangelical development in the life of Christianity.
But this liberal and comprehensive view has only recently taken root in some portions of Protestantism.
2 It will not now be denied by unprejudiced scholars, that the older Protestant historians do still greater violence to history, than the Roman Catholic, who, in the most important points of controversy, have the weight of the church before the Reformation, up to the second century, plainly on their side.
Thisis admitted even by Dr Baur, a radical ultraProtestant, in his comparison of Baronius with the authors of the Magdeburg Centuries :
Epochen der kirchl. Geschichtschr., p. 81.
23h
§ 29. PERIOD OF POLEMIC ORTHODOXY.
[GENnER.
The Lutheran and Reformed historians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, while they substantially agreed in their opposition to Romanism, as a corruption of the Dark Ages, differed between themsélves.
Each confession was anxious to find its own doctrinal system in the age of the fathers.
But this effort rests, to a considerable extent, on an illusion. A full and unbiassed investigation makes it more and more evident, that the church of the first six centuries was strictly neither Lutheran, nor Calvinistic, nor Anglican, but essentially Catholic in the reigning spirit of its theology and religious life, already containing the proper germs of scholasticism, monachism, and the hierarchy and worship of the Middle Ages.
This is shewn by the Greek church, which is known to cling with the most obstinate tenacity to primitive traditions, and to be, in doctrine and discipline, much nearer akin to the Roman church, than to the Protestant.
But, irrespective of this defect in their historical standpoint, the Polemico-historical works of the older Protestant orthodoxy, like those of its opponents, have great merits, and mark an important advance by their most industrious accumulation of material, and laborious and minute investigation of ancient documents.
Some of them, relating to particular points of controversy, are unsurpassed in this respect even to this day.
The Reformed church, especially in France, Holland, and England, furnished perhaps a greater number of thorough, persevering, and accurate scholars in the seventeenth century than she has ever since done.
The polemical and denominational party interest, moreover, awakened the spirit of criticism ; still leaving it, however, entirely under the control of dogmatism.
1. The Lutheran church takes the lead; and in this church, not the moderate and pacific school of Melancthon, but that party which set itself stiffly against all attempts at reconciliation with the Catholics and the Reformed, and afterwards expressed itself symbolically in the Form of Concord.
Marruias FLACIUS, one of the most zealous and violent controversialists of his age, in the year 1552, while settled at Magdeburg, commenced, in connection with several rigid Lutheran divines (Wigand, Judex, Faber, Corvinus, Holzhuter), and younger assistants, the celebrated Centurie Magdeburgenses, as the work
INTROD. ]
§ 29. PERIOD OF POLEMIC ORTHODOXY.
ee) is called; making use of a vast amount of published and unpublished sources, and supported in his undertaking by the liberality of princes and cities.
This work, which marks an epoch in historiography, presents, in thirteen folio volumes, first published at Basle (1559-74), as many centuries of the Christian era, each century in sixteen sections ; the express design being to vindicate the doctrines of the Reformation as catholic and orthodox, and to confute the papacy, as an innovation and apostasy.
Hence the controversial character of the work.
The Centuries found so much favour, that, for a hundred years after, it was counted sufficient, in the Lutheran Church, to compile text-books from their material, and in their spirit.
Among these extracts and continuations, that of the Wurtemberg divine, Lucas OstANDER (in nine quarto vols., Tubingen, 1592-1604), was most approved.
On the other hand, in the dogmatic works of the seventeenth century, especially in CHEMNITZIUS' Hxamen Concili Tridentini, GERHARD'S Loci theologici, and QUENSTEDT'S Theologia dogmatico-polemica, all in the same controversial tone, we find avast accumulation of material for doctrine history, some of which is still of great value. Among works on particular periods the most important place belongs to the Latin History of the German Reformation, by LuD. A SECKENDORF (died at Halle,
A.D. 1692).
It is a triumphant refutation of the history, or rather caricature, of Lutheranism, by Maimbourg, the French
Jesuit (Par. 1680).
1 As the preface states: " Est igitur admodum dulce pio pectori in tali historia cognoscere, quod hee ipsa doctrines forma, quam nunc in ecclesiis nostris ex ingenti Dei beneficio habemus, sit illa ipsa vetus, non nova, germana, non adulterina, non commenticia," &c.
Flacius had the same polemical and apologetical object in view in his previous work, entitled Catalogus testiwm veritatis (A.D. 1556), the materials for which he collected from all sorts of libraries and convents, with the most persevering industry, and at great expense.
It was intended to prove, that as God, in the times of the prophet Elijah, had seven thousand left, who had never bowed the knee to Baal, and who constituted the true Israel; so in the Christian church there had always been, even in the darkest ages, " witnesses of truth," who protested against the prevailing errors and corruptions, and saved the light of the gospel from extinction, till at last it broke forth in all its primitive splendour in the reformation of Dr Martin Luther.
But such a catalogue of all kinds of Anti-Romanists, including the Albigenses, Cathari, Paulicians, and other Manichzean sects, is a poor substitute for the unbroken succession of a holy catholic church.
It is absolutely vain to try to make out such a succession, without including the Roman Catholic church of the Middle Ages.
For the greatest saints of those times, Anselm, Bernard, Thomas a Kempis, and a host of others, are found, not among the opponents, but among the very champions and heroes of this church.
§ 29. PERIOD OF POLEMIC ORTHODOXY.
[oEner.
Another Lutheran divine of the seventeenth century, GEORGE CALIXTUS (+1656), merits honourable mention, as, in the spirit of his writings, an exception to the general rule, and a forerunner of a more liberal view of church history, the representative, in the midst of a polemic age, of a peaceful theology, which concerned itself with practical and essential points. In opposition to the intolerant party spirit and bigotry of his orthodox contemporaries, who vehemently cried him down as a dangerous Syncretist, he endeavoured in various historical publications, to find elements of truth in all confessions, and to point outa truly catholic church as standing above the parties; going back for this purpose to the primitive age, as the common ground from which the various visible churches sprang. He and such men as Arnde, the pious author of " True Christianity," sowed the seed of the Pietistic movement of Spener and Franke.
2. In the Reformed church, Joun H. HOTTINGER of Zurich proposed to furnish a counterpart to the Centuries.
His work! evinces great knowledge, particularly of the East, with love of order and justice.
But it is unequal, devoting five volumes to the sixteenth century alone.
It drags in, too, according to the taste of these times, much foreign matter; the history, for instance, of the Jews, Pagans, and Mohammedans; accounts of remarkable natural phenomena, earthquakes, locusts, famines, floods, monstrosities, eclipses of the sun and moon, &c., as foretokening the fortunes of the church.
FREDERICK SPANHEIM,
of Leyden, founded his Summa historic eccl. (A.D. 1689) upon a most accurate and conscientious use of sources and a searching criticism, with a view to the refutation of Baronius.
The two Frenchmen, JAMES BASNAGE,? minister at the Hague, and SAMUEL BASNAGE,® minister in Ziitphen, wrote, the former against Bossuet, the latter against Baronius; both, especially
James, with the purpose of shewing that the ats church of Christ has never failed, and has, at all times, had faithful witnesses.
But from the latter part of the sixteenth century to the beginning of the eighteenth, the Reformed church, particularly in France, Holland, and England, was far more successful in culti1 Tn nine vols.
Tig. 1655-67.
? Histoire de I' église depuis Jésus Chr. jusqu' 4 présent.
Rotterd. 1699.
° Annales politico-ecclesiastici, etc. 1706.
3 vols. (reaching only to A.D. 602.)
INTROD. |
§29. PERIOD OF POLEMIC ORTHODOXY.
Bo vating, under the impulse of learned curiosity and antiquarian taste, as well as of opposition to Rome, single portions of history, shedding light on patristic antiquity, the course of the papacy, and of the Reformation, with profound learning and keen penetration, though not without a strong controversial bias. Such monographs, some of which are still highly valuable, have distinguished the names of BULLINGER, HOSPINIAN, J.
JACOB HotTINGER (son of John Henry, and author of the Helvetic Church History), and HEIDEGGER, among the German Swiss; BEza,
Du PuEssis MorNAY, PrerrE Du Movin, DAVID BLONDEL, JEAN DAILLE' (Dallaeus), CL.-SAUMAISE (Salmasius), JEAN
CLAUDE, and later, ISAAC BEAUSOBRE and J. LENFANT,! among the French; Fr. SPANHEIM, the elder Vossius, GERDES, and later, VITRINGA, among the Dutch; Archbishop Ususr, J.
PEARSON, W. BEVERIDGE, GILBERT BURNET, STRYPE, JOSEPH
BINGHAM, GEORGE BULL, W. Cave, J. E. GRABE,? WHITBY,
PRIDEAUX, to whom we may add the dissenter, NATH. LARDNER, of the eighteenth century, among the English.
The Anglicans directed their attention chiefly to the government and antiquities of the church, with an eye to the Presbyterian controversy, as well as to that with Rome.
Before passing to the next period we must mention also the name of the celebrated PETER BAYLE, son of a Huguenot minister, educated first by his father, then by the Jesuits.
He was for eighteen months a Roman Catholic, but was afterwards re-converted to Protestantism, and died at Rotterdam, a.p.1706. Though he defended Calvinism with great success against the aspersions of the French Jesuit Maimbourg, who was master of the art of "turning history into romance and romance into history," yet he occupied an original position very different from that of his orthodox contemporaries, and, in his scepticism, must be considered a forerunner of the French infidels of the eighteenth century.
But, in extent of historical information, critical acumen, and bold research, he was inferior to none of his age. His large
Dictionnaire historique et critique is also a miracle of learning, and not without value even at the present time.
1 The last two, French Reformed preachers in Berlin, were already influenced, to a considerable extent, by Arnold's new view of the relation of the sects to the church, as may be seen in Beausobre's History of Manicheism.
? Originally a German Lutheran, who passed over to the Episcopal church, (+1711).
NAOMes We F
§30. PIETISTIC PERIOD.
ARNOLD.
[cener.
§ 30. (b) Pietistic Period.
Arnold.
Milner.
The next period in. church historiography after that of the Magdeburg Centuries was introduced by the Impartial History of the Church and of Heretics from the beginning of the New
Testament to the year 1688 (Frankf. 1699, et seq.), by GortFRIED ARNOLD (+1714), a friend and follower of Spener, and a short time professor at Giessen.
He precisely reversed the principle which reigned before.
He made, not the dominant church, but the sects, the main line of development, and the channel of the Christian life; and is, accordingly, the historian of unchurchly, separatistic piety.
The great body of historical Christianity, before and after the Reformation, especially the ruling clergy, are, with him, the apostasy predicted in the New
Testament; whilst the persecuted minority, the dissenting sects and individuals, constitute the true church, the bride of Christ, like the apostles in the midst of the reigning Judaism of their day, and the confessors and martyrs of the second century in the vast Roman empire.!
This view of church history grew out of the one-sided practical tendency of pietism, and the violent resistance it met with from Lutheran orthodoxy.
Arnold placed the essence of Christianity in subjective, experimental piety.
This, he thought, was to be found in the oppressed and persecuted minority; while the great visible church, Protestant as well as Roman Catholic, was looked upon as haughty, worldly,
1 The following passage from the Preface of his work, § 30 and 31, is but a mild specimen of its general tone : " Many may, perhaps, again bring forward the common objection: Our dear mother, the Christian church, ought not to be so prostituted, seeing she has already had so much to suffer.
To this I reply, first, that it is hard for the inexperienced to see which of those outward church assemblies is to be counted the true church ; since every one, according to his own inclinations and interest, will have that religion to be the true one into which he himself has happened to be born. Besides, it is not a Scriptural expression and opinion that the church is a mother.
The Scriptures know of but one mother of all saints, the Jerusalem above, Gal. iv. 26; Heb. xii. 22.
But they have never given those ungodly pretenders and hypocrites, much less the apostate clergy, liberty to call themselves a mother, and in this way to entrench and secure themselves against all testimony, admonition, and improvement.
The true, pure congregation of the Lord has been, from the beginning of the gospel and the times of the apostles, a virgin, and the bride of Christ.
But the false, apostate church, according to the testimony of the first teachers, and the report hereafter to follow in this history, has become a harlot; and by means of the miscellaneous and inconsiderate introduction of all hypocrites and wicked men, under Constantine the Great, as also by the natural increase and propagation of false Christians, has given birth to many millions of bastards, with whom, however, no true member of Christ has anything to do."
INTROD. ]
$30. PIETISTIC PERIOD.
ARNOLD. oS) and intolerant.
It is true, the orthodox church historians of the seventeenth century also took the part of the Albigenses and Waldenses, of Wickliffe, Huss, and other " witnesses of the truth" in _ the Middle Ages against the reigning Catholicism.
But Arnold, _ making his own personal experience the measure and rule of all _ church history, carried the same way of thinking back even into the first six centuries, or at least to the age of Constantine, and forward into the Protestant church ; which, of course, made a very material difference.
He had the pious courage to become _ the patron and eulogist of all persons of ill repute in church history. Yet, after all, he could not carry out his own principle with absolute consistency.
Being a pious man, and holding fast to the essential doctrines of the gospel, he stood in reality more
_in harmony with the ancient church orthodoxy, than with the | Gnostics, Manicheans, Arians, Pelagians, and other such sects ; though, as far as possible, he espoused their cause.
But while Arnold thus endeavoured, as no historian before him _ had done, to shew fair play to all sorts of heretics and schisma_ tics, enthusiasts, and fanatics, particularly to the Mystics, for _ whom he had a special predilection, he did the grossest injustice
_ to the representatives of orthodoxy.
He imputed to them the basest motives.
He passed over their merits in silence.
He dwelt almost exclusively on their human imperfections, and aspersed their character in every possible way.
His work, therefore, in contradiction to its own title, is but a production of passionate party spirit against the Catholics, still more against the orthodox Protestants, and above all against the Lutherans,—
~ slinply a faithful mirror of his own one-sided subjectivity, and of the sympathies and antipathies of his own time.
It makes a most gloomy impression, and is adapted to upset all faith in one holy apostolic church, to undermine all confidence in the presence of God in history, and in the final triumph of good, and thus to promote a hopeless scepticism.
Many Pietists, it is true, were highly pleased with the History of Heretics; and the celebrated
| Thomasius, of Halle, who stood midway between Pietism and the rationalistic Illuminationism, declared it, next to the Bible,
_ the best of books.
But Spener, the pious and amiable leader of the Pietistic movement, was by no means satisfied with it; and the orthodox Lutherans, Cyprian, for instance, Vejel, Corvinus,
§ 30. PIETISTIC PERIOD.
MILNER.
[GENER.
Gotz, Lischer, Faustking, Wachter, exposed a mass of perversions and errors in it, by replies, which were, however, not only vehement, but in most cases equally one-sided.'
With all these imperfections, Arnold must be awarded the decided merit, not only of having collected a great mass of material for the history of sects, especially in the seventeenth century," but also of having introduced a new and more liberal treatment of the sects, and of having brought out the relation of church history to practical piety.
He was, moreover, the first who wrote church history in the German language instead of the Latin; though in that tasteless periwig style, full of half and whole Latinisms, which characterizes the period from Opitz to Bodmer, and makes it the most gloomy in the history of German literature.
"With Arnold may be named, as in some measure akin, the later historian, JOSEPH MILNER (+1797), a pious minister of the English Episcopal church.
His Church History, with the continuation of his like-minded brother, the Dean of Carlisle, in five volumes, following the current centurial division, comes down to the Reformation, which he treats with special minuteness.
He, too, looked on the sects, even the Paulicians and Cathari, as the main depositors of piety; and hence, in the Middle Ages, which he handles with very little favour, he devotes by far the largest space to the Waldenses.
He, too, wrote for edification, in the spirit of Methodistic piety, which bears a close affinity to that of the Pietists, though it has less sympathy with the inward, contemplative life, and with the various forms of Mysticism.
Greatly surpassed by Arnold in learning and original research, Milner, on the other hand, excels him in popular style, and in fairness towards the reigning church of the first six centuries.
Pope Gregory the Great, for example, fares much better at his hands.
His object, also, is exclusively prac1 These writings are found quoted in the third volume of J. G. Walch's Bibliotheca theologica selecta, Jenx, p. 129, et seg.
They appear at large, with replies and illustrations, in the third volume of the Schaffhausen edition of Arnold's History (1742).
2 On this point Schrockh, who is by no means a friend of Arnold, says of him (Kirchengeschichte, vol. i., p. 185, 2d ed,): " If one wishes to know what sorts of small sects, enthusiasts, dreamers, new prophets, senseless mystics, unlucky reformers, and other spiritual monsters, there have been, especially within the last two centuries, in and out of our (Lutheran) church, he must betake himself to their common rendezvous, Arnold's
Ketzerhistorie."
InTROD.]
§31. PRAGMATIC SUPRANATURALISTIC PERIOD.
tical, and leads him, therefore, to omit entirely all subjects which, in his own narrow view, serve not for edification ; as, for instance, church government, most of the theological controversies, the scholastic and mystic divinity, ecclesiastical art and learning.
His simple aim is, to exhibit the moral life of the invisible church.!
Milner's work is, accordingly, almost entirely free from the polemic spirit with which Arnold's overflows, and is, so far, much better adapted for practical and popular use, and still well worthy of commendation.
Nay, it may be said to have been the best church history of this sort, till Neander asserted anew the claims of practical piety, and fully carried out the good intentions of Pietism and Methodism, but with incomparably greater knowledge, and on a scale so much more liberal, as to require no sacrifice of other interests to this.
§ 31. (c) Pragmatic Supranaturalistic Period.
Mosheim.
Schrockh.
Planck.
From a combination or compromise of the Old Orthodox and the Pietistic principles, now arose the third form of Protestant historiography, which may be called the pragmatic supranaturalistic.
By supranaturalism, in the historical sense,? we 1 Or, as he himself says, in his Introduction: " Nothing but what appears to me to belong to Christ's kingdom shall be admitted; genuine piety is the only thing which I intend to celebrate."
So far, he was assuredly right in styling his work, " An Ecclesiastical History on @ new plan."
But how one-sided were his views of piety, appears, for instance, in his judgment of Tertullian, of whom he says: " Were it not for some light which he throws on the state of Christianity in his own times, he would scarcely deserve to be distinctly noticed.
Ihave seldom seen so large a collection of tracts, all professedly on Christian subjects, containing so little matter for useful instruction" (vol. i., Boston ed. p. 220).
How vastly different the opinion of the equally pious and far more learned Neander!
When, on the other hand, Milner so highly extols Cyprian, defending him against the reproaches of Mosheim, and placing him far above Origen, he is inconsistent, for Cyprian moulded himself throughout on the model of Tertullian's writings, and made them his daily food; and he contributed more than any of the older fathers to the development of the principle of Catholicism, especially of the hierarchy.
He was, in fact, the first to look upon, or, at least, distinctly to speak of the Roman bishopric, as the Cathedra Petri, and the centre of church unity (unde unitas sacerdotalis exorta est),
Augustine, Anselm, and Bernard, Milner recognises as truly pious men, and dwells upon with delight; yet, after all, his view of them is imperfect and contracted, taking in only those features in which they seem to fall in with his own notions of religion.
'Their decidedly Catholic traits he either altogether overlooks, or considers as merely accidental , outward appendages, which must be excused in them on account of the prevailing spirit of the age; whereas, in truth, those traits have an intimate and most influential connection with their whole system of doctrine and mode of life.
? For in the theological and philosophical sense, the old orthodoxy, as well as every
CuO
§31. PRAGMATIC SUPRANATURALISTIC PERIOD.
[cenzr. understand the last product of the Protestant orthodoxy ; that is, that theological system, which, under the influence of Pietism and the liberal tendencies in philosophy and general literature beginning to spread simultaneously in England, France, and Germany, materially relaxed from the strict, exclusive orthodoxy of the seventeenth century, gave up the stronghold of church symbols, and fell back simply upon the Bible, and in a number of its representatives approached the very threshold of Rationalism.
Thus, in the church historians of this period, including some who date before the proper supranaturalism, we no longer observe the rigid exclusiveness which had formerly prevailed.
The polemic zeal for particular confessions, and the horror of heretics, in whom Arnold had found so much to praise, gradually disappear, and give place to a peaceful, conciliatory spirit, in which the monographs of Calixtus, so vehemently condemned by the orthodox zealots of the seventeenth century, had already led the way.
The great effort now is, to do justice to all parties; and there must certainly be admitted, in the works of a Mosheim, a Schrockh, anda Walch, an impartiality, which belonged to neither of the preceding schools.
This virtue, however, it must be owned, runs out at times into doctrinal laxness and indifference,' and is in part connected with a very low and essentially rationalistic conception of the church.
Even with Mosheim, and still more with Schréckh, Spittler, and Planck, the church, at least after the apostolic age, is in reality stripped of her divine, supernatural character, and degraded to the common level of human societies and the political state.
For this very reason, this form of supranaturalism must ultimately yield to the power of Rationalism.
For a divine Christianity without a divine church proves in the end to be an unmeaning abstraction.
We call this period pragmatic, with reference to its reigning method.
After the time of Mosheim and Walch in Germany, and of Robertson, Hume, and Gibbon, in England, it came to be required of the historian that he should proceed pragmatically ; form of Christian theology, is likewise supranaturalistic ; 7. ¢., it rests upon the view that Christianity is strictly a supranatural revelation, and a new moral creation, altogether transcending the powers of mere nature ; whereas Rationalism allows no such revelation, either Genying its possibility, or in an overestimate of the human powers, particularly of reason, declaring it useless.
1 Comp. Mosheim's general judgment of the heretics, Zist, Hist. Eccles, Prep. § 11, p.5.
INTROD.]
§31. SUPRANATURALISTIC PERIOD.
MOSHEIM. eis that is, that he should not simply relate events, but should also, to make the history of greater practical use, psychologically investigate their causes in the secret springs and inclinations of the human heart.
Not satisfied with the statement of facts as they are, the pragmatic method, in which Gottl.
Jacob Planck was the greatest master, tries to shew the internal connection of cause and effect, and the manner, as well as the reason, of the occurrence of certain events.
This is undoubtedly an important advance in our science, and could do no harm, where it was accompanied by a strong faith in the presence of God in the world.
But at the same time it: gave the treatment of history, especially in the hands of the Rationalists, who soon followed, a very subjective character.
Events were referred mostly to external, accidental causes and arbitrary motives.
In the diligent search for these subjective, finite factors, the power of the objective idea, of general laws, was gradually forgotten, and in the end even the highest and most sacred power of history, the all-ruling providence of God, the spirit of Jesus Christ, which dwells in his church, was lost out of sight.
History came to be viewed as the result, partly of human caprice and calculation, partly of a remarkable concurrence of fortuitous circumstances.!
We must here observe, that since the middle of the last century, church history has been cultivated and advanced almost exclusively in Germany—especially by the Lutheran, and more lately the United Evangelical churches—while in other Protestant countries it has made very little progress.
Among the works of this period on the general history of the church, must be mentioned first, Cur. E. WEISMANN'S Introductio in memorabilia ecclesiastica historie sacre N. T. etc.
(Tubingen, 1718), distinguished for its pious, mild spirit, its quiet, moderate tone, its predilection for the school of Spener, and for the better Mystics, and its regard to the purposes of edification in the selection of its matter.
He was soon eclipsed, however, by the celebrated chancellor of Géttingen, Jonn LAWRENCE VON MosHEIM (}1755), who holds the first place among the church historians generally of the last century, and has acquired the honourable title of 1 This vulgar and virtually atheistic view underlies also the historical works of Hume and Gibbon, who mistook it for the very highest philosophy.
ehh
§ 31. SUPRANATURALISTIC PERIOD.
MOSHEIM.
[exEneR.
" father of church history."
His Institutiones historie ecclesiasticee (Helmstadt, 1755), in four books, also translated into German, and continued by SCHLEGEL and Von EINEM, gained, in England and North America, an authority even greater than in Germany, being used to this day (as translated by Maclaine, and more recently by Murdock) as a text-book in most seminaries of theology.
On the contrary, there is but little acquaintance, out of Germany, with his valuable monographs on the Period before Constantine (A.D. 1753),' and on the History of Heretics (the Ophites, Apostolic Brethren, Michael Servetus), and his Institutiones H. EH. Majores (1739), of which, however, only the first volume (sec. 1.) was published.
In all these works Mosheim distinguishes himself by his thorough use of sources, his critical acumen, his varied culture and knowledge of men, his bold, although at times extravagant combination, his power of historical contemplation, and his command, beyond all his predecessors and contemporaries, of a clear, tasteful, and pleasing style, both Latin and German.
He is properly the founder of church historiography as an art.?
To the practical purposes of history, on the other hand, he pays less regard.
He too, in various cases, takes the part of heretics, even of such a man as Servetus ;> not however, like Arnold, enthusiastically eulogizing them, and traducing their orthodox opponents ; but shewing, by a calm and dignified criticism, the sense and inward consistency of theirsystems.
He was the first, for example, who ceased to regard the Gnostic speculations as a mere chaos of extravagant and senseless opinions, and felt in them the presence of a connected system of thought resulting from a strange combination of ancient heathen philosophy with certain elements of the Christian religion.
In view of these decided advances 1 These Commentarii de rebus Christianorum ante Constantinum Magnum, in which more especially Mosheim deposits the results of his extensive research, have been recently translated into English by Dr Murdock.
2 By his mastery of the German, which he employed in his smaller historical monographs, his pulpit orations, and his theological Ethics, he marks an epoch. also, in German literature, which at that tine began to revive and to approach its classical period through Klopstock, Lessing, Winkelmann, and afterwards through Wieland, Herder,
Gothe, and Schiller.
3 Compare the far too charitable and favourable judgment he passes on this unfortunate victim of Calvin's religious zeal, in his Ketzergeschichte, 1748.
Book II. § 89, p. 254, et seq., quoted in my tract on Historical Development, p. 59.
INTROD.]
SUPRANATURALISTIC PERIOD.
WALCH.
Bus upon his predecessors, it is the more strange that he still adhered to the old plan of division by centuries, and that he could adopt so mechanical an arrangement as that of external and internal history, prosperous and adverse events.
His contemporary Prarr, of Tibingen, was equally learned, indeed, but his Jnstitutiones (A.D. 1721) were not written in so clear and interesting a style, and were overladen with names and citations.
The indefatigable scholar 8. J. BAUMGARTEN, brought down his Abstract of Church History only to the end of the ninth century.
CorTta's New Testament Church History im Detail (1768-73) likewise remained incomplete.
The most extensive work from this school of mild and impartial Supranaturalism—a work, too, which betokens its gradual transition to latitudinarianism and rationalism—is the Church History of J.M. Scurécku (+1808), a disciple of Mosheim, and Professor first of poetry, afterwards of history in Wittenberg.
With TZSCHIRNER'S continuation it makes forty-five volumes, and was published between the years 1768 and 1810.
In spite of its wearisome diffuseness, its want of philosophical depth and just proportion, and its wholly injudicious method, it is still invaluable for its exceedingly industrious and faithful transcriptions from original authorities, and will long remain a real mine of historical learning.
It is also the first church history in which the centurial division is abandoned in favour of one by larger periods, more conformable to the real divisions of the history itself.
- Smaller text-books were published by Scurocku, SPITTLER, and STAUDLIN, the last in the interest of Kant's moral philosophy.
J. FR. Roos wrote popularly, more for the general public.
After these general authors, however, several Lutheran theologians merit honourable mention, who have done permanent service in particular parts of church history.
J. A. CRAMER,
eventually chancellor of the university of Kiel (1788), in his continuation of Bossuet's Universal History, thoroughly investigated the Scholasticism of the Middle Ages, and was the first
German, after Mosheim, who wrote history with elegance and force in his vernacular tongue.
J. GEORGE WALCH, Professor in Jena, ({1775), and still more his son, W. FRANcIs WALCH,
Professor in Gottingen (#1784), are among the most industri-
§ 31, SUPRANATURALISTIC PERIOD.
PLANCK.
[cener. ous, solid, and honest inquirers who have ever lived.
The latter gave himself mainly to the history of heresies, divisions, and religious controversies,-and his work on this field, in eleven parts
(1762-85), is still indispensable.
In his own persuasions he stands firmly, indeed, on Lutheran ground; but he is free from polemic zeal, and solely bent upon the conscientious investigation and critical, pragmatic representation of his subject without sympathy or antipathy. He already approaches so near the true view of history, that he cannot conceive of it without change ; while he justly discriminates between the unchangeable essence of the Christian truth itself, and the ever varying form of its apprehension among men.
He lacks, however, in organic conception and graphic life, and is extremely tiresome.'
The elder PLANCK, a native of Wuirtemberg, and since 1784 Professor of Theology in Gottingen (71833), who has immortalized himself especially by his learned and' skilful History of Protestant Doctrine,' though still entertaining personally a high regard for Scriptural Christianity, stands at the extreme limit of this school, where it is just ready to merge in Rationalism.
With him the subjective, pragmatic method reaches its height.
History already becomes only the dreary theatre of human interests and passions.
Hence he everywhere obtrudes his individual sympathies and antipathies, and cannot complain enough of the shortsightedness, stupidity, passion, and malice of man.
Though he relates doctrinal controversies with great prolixity and familiar loquacity, yet he holds himself quite indifferent to their contents.
His interest in them is not religious or theological, but regards merely their psychological analysis and outward form.? With such indifference to church doctrine, itis truly
* Dr Baur (Hpochen, &c., p. 147) says: " There is nothing more dull, spiritless, and intolerably tedious, than Walch's Ketzergeschichte."
? Six vols., Leipzig, 1781-1800, 2d ed., 1791, et seg.
The first three volumes give the political history of the Reformation.
The remaining and more important ones treat of the theological controversies from the death of Luther to the appearance of the Form of Concord, the last symbolical book of the Lutheran church.
In 1831 Planck published a continuation, giving a condensed account of the theological controversies from the Form of Concord to the middle of the eighteenth century.
° Comp., for instance, his preface to vol. iv., in which he enters upon the department of doctrine history, where he candidly avows, p. 6, that the subject before him is one in which even the theological public of his time can hardly continue to take any real interest; since not only have most of the doctrinal questions themselves, about which our fathers contended, "entirely lost, for our present theology, the importance they once
inTROD.]
§31. SUPRANATURALISTIC PERIOD.
SPI'TTLER.
Ug, amazing, that he could bestow so much toilsome study and learned industry on such "perfectly indifferent antiquations" as the theological contentions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Of course his work, with all its great and enduring merits, and the relative truth and necessity of its position, could not fail to have a bad effect, in completely sundering the doctrinal consciousness of its age from the basis of the older church orthodoxy, and in justifying this rupture as a pretended advance.
In his other large work, the History of Church Government,! Planck likewise starts from that rationalistic conception of the church, which dates from Locke, viz., that this divine establishment was originally a mere voluntary association, which formed its laws and institutions in accordance with the changing wants of the times, and under the influence of fortuitous external circumstances; and that in this way it gradually assumed an aspect altogether different from what its founder and first members intended or foresaw.
In this way he accounts for the gigantic hierarchy of the Middle Ages, which he looks upon in a simply political light, with the calmness of a learned but indifferent spectator ; while the older Protestant orthodoxy had held it in pious abhorrence, as the broken bulwark of the veritable Antichrist.
His friend, L. Tim. SPITTLER, also a native of Wurtemberg, Professor of Philosophy at Gottingen, afterwards secretary of state at Stuttgart (11810), is still more decidedly rationalistic. Though not a theologian by profession, but a secular historian and statespossessed ; but their history, also, has lost, for the spirit of our age, even the negative interest, with which the slowly-maturing aversion to those questions could, fora long time, clothe it.
Ten years ago they might have been dwelt upon with some interest ; because ten years ago they had not wholly lost their power over the mind of the age..... But now this bond also is gone.
An entirely new theology has arisen. Not only those forms, but even many of the old fundamental ideas have been left behind.
Nor have we now any fear that the spirit of our theology can ever return of itself, or be forced back, to them; and we view them accordingly as a perfectly indifferent antiquation."
Scarcely could a Rationalist express himself more unfavourably on the doctrinal controversies of the church.
No wonder, that Planck passes so favourable a judgment on the theological revolution of the last century, in his continuation of Spittler's Manual of Church History,
5th ed., p. 509, where he says: " Upon the whole, however, we have made extraordinary gain by this revolution of the last thirty years (the rise of German Rationalism), which will probably be hereafter distinguished as the most splendid period in the history of the Lutheran church !"
1 Geschichte der Entstehung und Ausbildung der christlich-kirklichen Gesellschaftsverfassung.
5 vols.
Jlanover, 1803 9,
§ 3]. SUPRANATURALISTIC PERIOD.
[GENER. man, he delivered lectures on church history with immense applause, and his published Manual! became quite a popular textbuok in Germany. He breaks through the confines of a strictly theological position, and handles church history, as a man of the world, from a political and general literary point of view, but at the expense of religious depth and spirituality. Though he never directly assails Christianity itself, yet his work is by no means suited to increase our faith in its supernatural character.
His rationalistic temper comes out plainly even in the first sentence of the first period, which is a fair specimen of the whole.
"The world," says he,? "' has never experienced a revolution apparently so insignificant in its first causes, and so exceedingly momentous in its ultimate consequences, as that which, eighteen hundred years ago, a native Jew, by the name of Jesus, made in a few years of his life." A man who speaks in such a cold, and almost irreverent style of the Son of God and the Saviour of the world, and has no higher predicates for him than 'a very tenderminded man," "the greatest, most benevolent man,' must, at the same time, of course, be destitute of any true conception of the divine character of the church, and incapable of duly appreclating the spiritual life of its heroes.
Spittler derives even the grandest phenomena of history from mere finite causes and accidental circumstances, and sinks them to the common level of everyday occurrences.
The Reformed church, in this period, produced but one work of any great extent, the Institutions h. eccl. V. et N. T.,* of the learned Hollander, VENEMA.
This work is carefully drawn from original sources, and extends to the year 1600; but bears no marks of the revolution effected in this science since Arnold, and hence might as well have been mentioned in the orthodox period.
It had become the fashion in Holland, from the time of Cocceius, to put church history into close connection with systematic theology, and with the exposition of the Scriptures, especially of the Apocalypse, in which the picture of Popery was seen clear as the sun. This, of course, destroyed its independence as a science,
* Grundriss der Geschichte der christ]. Kirche. 1782.
The fifth edition was published and continued by Planck, 1812, pp. 569.
2 Page 26, (5th ed.) * Ibid. pp. 27-28.
4 1777-83, in seven parts.
INTROD.]
§ 32. RATIONALISTIC PERIOD.
and put an end to its progress.
The popular and edifying work of the English MiLner has already been noticed.
Smaller, and in their way excellent, manuals of church history were published by the Genevan divine, TURRETINE, A.D. 1734, who still occupies substantially the same doctrinal position as the Reformed historians of the seventeenth century ; P. KE. JABLONSKY, Professor in Frankfurt on the O., A.D. 1755 ; and by Munscumr, Professor in Marburg, a.D. 1804.
This last author has won a still greater reputation by his Doctrine History (1797, et seq.), which comes down, in four volumes, to the year 604, and was continued by Dan. v. Colin.
But his doctrinal indifferentism shews, that, like Planck, he already belongs more properly to the Rationalistic school.
§ 32. (d) The Rationalistic Period.
Semler.
Arnold's unchurchly view of history, and his defence of all sorts of heretics and schismatics, as well as the looseness and doctrinal indifference of the last representatives of the Supranaturalistic school, had already so thoroughly prepared the way for Rationalism, that we are forced to concede to the latter a certain historical necessity.
But while Pietism loved the sects for their real or supposed piety, Rationalism favoured them for their heresies ; and the indifferentism of a Planck, a Spittler, and a Munscher, ran out into formal hostility to the doctrine and faith of the church.
-Several other causes, as the influence of the - Popular Philosophy of Wolff, of Kant's Criticism, of English
Deism and French Materialism, combined to develop the seeds of German Rationalism, and to complete this far-reaching theological revolution, the disastrous effects of which are not, to this day, entirely obliterated.
Now Arius, in his denial of the divinity of Christ, was in the right against Athanasius; Pelagius, with his doctrine of an undepraved human will, against Augustine; the Paulicians, Cathari, ry _ &c., against Catholicism ; the Socinians, against the Reformers ; the Arminians, against the Synod of Dort; the Deists, against the English church.
These were, in fact, in their real spirit, but the forerunners of Rationalism in its war against the church doctrine, nay, in the end, against the divine revelation in the Bible itself.
For any unprejudiced person must admit, that at
§ 32. RATIONALISTIC PERIOD.
[GENER. least the main substance of the church doctrine is grounded in the Bible.
Hence Rationalism, in its latest phases, has, with perfect consistency; rejected not only the material principle of Protestantism, the doctrine of justification by faith, but its formal principle also; taking as the source and rule of truth and of belief, or rather of unbelief, not the word of God, but human reason (whence Rationalism); and this, not in its general objective character, as it actuates history and the church, but the subjective reason, as determined by the prevailing spirit of its own age, virtually the finite, everyday understanding, what we call "common sense," in its baldest form.
This tendency is, in its very nature, utterly unhistorical.
It has no regard for history, as such ; but only a negative interest in it, as a subject for its own destructive criticism.
It denies the objective forces of history ; banishes from the world not only Satan, whom it looks upon as merely the superstitious creation of a heated fancy, but what is, of course, far more serious, even God himself; and thus turns all history into an eyeless monster, a labyrinth of human perversions, caprices, and passions.
Everything is referred to some subjective ground.
Rationalism considers itself as having mastered the greatest and loftiest facts, when it has traced them,
'"'pragmatically," to the most accidental and external, or even the most common and ignoble causes and motives; the doctrine of the divinity of Christ, for instance, and of the Holy Trinity, it derives from the dreamy fancy and transcendental Platonism of the Greek fathers ; the evangelical doctrines of sin and grace, from Augustine's restless metaphysics ; the papacy of the Middle
Ages, from the trick of the pseudo-Isidorian Decretals and the ambition of "the rascal" Hildebrand; the Reformation, from the pecuniary embarrassment of Leo X. and the impudence of Tetzel; Luther's view of the Lord's Supper, from his own stubborn and dogmatizing humour. This extreme, subjective view of history not only casts censure on God, as having made the world so badly that it went to ruin in his hands, or as having no more concern with its history than a watchmaker with a watch long since finished and sold—thus furnishing excellent resources for scepticism and nihilism; but it offered, at the same time, the greatest possible insult to human nature, by robbing it, in this way, of all its dignity and higher worth.
It would be inconceiv-
INTROD.]
§ 32. RATIONALISTIC PERIOD.
eo able that men should still expend so much diligence and learning on so heartless a work, were it not explained by the spirit of opposition to the church and the irresistible propensity of the German mind to theory and speculation.
Yet, on the other hand, Rationalism has been of undeniable service to church history.
In the first place, it exercised the boldest criticism, placing many things in a new light, and opening the way for a more free and unprejudiced judgment. Then, again, it assisted in bringing out the true conception of history itself, though rather in a merely negative way.
Almost all previous historians, Protestant as well as Catholic, had looked upon the history of heresies as essentially motion and change, while they had regarded the church doctrine as something once for all settled and unchangeable ; a view, which cannot possibly stand the test of impartial inquiry. For though Christianity itself, the saving truth of God, is always the same, and needs no change ; yet this can by no means be affirmed of the apprehension of this truth by the human mind in the different ages of the church; as is at once sufficiently evident from the great difference between Catholicism and Protestantism, and, within the latter, from the distinctions of Lutheranism, Zuinglianism, and Calvinism.
But Rationalism now discovered fluctuation, motion, change, in the church, as well as in the sects; thus taking the first step towards the idea of organic development, on which the latest German historiography is founded.
Still it did not rise above this vague notion of change, which is but the outward and negative aspect of development.
It entirely overlooked the element of truth in the old orthodox view.
It failed to discern, that, together with the changeable, there is also something permanent; and that, amidst all these variations, the church remains, in her inmost life, the same.
Church history became, in its hands, a stormtossed ship, without pilot or helm, a wild chaos, without unity or vital energy; the play of chance, without divine plan or definite end.
Rationalism knew nothing of a development, which proceeds according to necessary, rational laws ; remains, in its progress, identical with itself; preserves the sum of the truth of all preceding stages; and, though it be through many obstructions and much opposition, and in perpetual conflict with the kingdom of evil, ever presses on towards a better state.
It regarded the
Zoe
§ 32. RATIONALISTIC PERIOD.
[ornrr. course of history rather as a steady deterioration, or, more properly, a process of rarefaction and sublimation, in which the church gradually loses her doctrinal and religious substance ; till at last the age of Illuminationism makes the happy discovery, that the whole of Christianity may be ultimately resolved into a few common-place moral maxims and notions of virtue!
The main instrument of this great revolution in the conception and treatment of church history, the man who is unquestionably entitled to the name, "father of German neology," was JOHN
SOLOMON SEMLER, Professor of Theology in Halle (+1791).
He had beeneducated in the bosom of an anxious, narrow-minded, and pedantic Pietism, and from this retained his " private piety," which he held to be entirely independent of all theory, and in virtue of which he opposed the appointment of the notorious
Bahrdt, and wrote against the Wolfenbiittel Fragments.
To Arnold's History of Heretics he was early indebted for much of his aversion to orthodoxy and partiality for heretics; to Bayle's
Dictionary, for all manner of doubts ; and to his preceptor, Baumgarten, for the conviction that the church doctrine, as it then stood, '' had by no means borne always the same form." His own studies shewed him more and more clearly that allis motion and flow; everything is in transition or past; every age has its own views and modes of thought, its peculiar consciousness, into which a man must transfer himself before he can understand it. He was endowed with rare powers of invention, but was destitute of all system, method, and taste in representation ; impulsive and sanguine; in fact, the very embodiment of his own favourite notion of change.
With gigantic diligence and insatiable curiosity he traversed the most retired regions of history, and particularly the Middle Ages, trying to place everything in some hitherto undiscovered light.
Everywhere he made new discoveries, and roused the spirit of inquiry, but without himself producing anything solid and permanent.'
' His whole course is merely preparatory, breaking ground, agitating all possibilities, perpetually raising doubts and suspicions, forming conjectures and combina- * Of his 171 works, hardly one is now read, except by the professional historian. They include, among other things, even treatises on the habits of snails in winter, and on making gold, with which, however, not only his literary voracity, but also, as Tholuck at least suspects (Vermischte Schriften, part ii., p. 82), his devotion to Mammon had something to do.
INTROD. |
§32. RATIONALISTIC PERIOD.
tions; a vast rummage of material.
His writings on doctrine history are like an unbroken field, which has yet to be tilled; a building-lot, where, amid rubbish and ruins, the materials for a new structure still lie in endless confusion.'
The most characteristic and energetic work from Semler's school is HENKE's General History of the Christian Church, in eight parts (1788, et seg.) His principal aim is, to shew up the mischief which religious despotism and doctrinal constraint, as he supposes, have everywhere wrought through all ages ; and he presents a glaring, keenly sarcastic picture of enthusiasm, superstition, stupidity, and wickedness.
His work is thus truthfully characterized by Hagenbach :* "In his hands church history becomes mainly a history of human aberrations.
Fanaticism, hypocrisy, calculation, and cunning, or bigotry, are the factors, with which he meets, wherever the unprejudiced eye discerns greatness, to be measured by a different rule from any that modern reason and taste may suggest.
The historian, who sees in Tertullian merely the ' extravagant head;' in St Augustine, ' the ingenious babbler ;' who discovers nothing but 'cunning and baseness' in Gregory VIL., and calls him 'a man without religion, without truthfulness and honesty ;' who has no other opinion of St Francis of Assissi, than that he was 'a man sick in soul and body,' ' an unfortunate madman,' ' an entirely neglected and crippled head ;'—shews, by such judgments, that he is destitute of one of the most important qualifications of a historian, that elasti_ city of mind arid soul which enables him to adapt himself to characters and situations different from those which meet us in the _ every-day wisdom of the surrounding world." Varsr, in his con_ tinuation and fifth edition of the work, has considerably smoothed
_ off its sharp corners, and breathed into it a more kindly spirit.
After Henke and others had thus let out their hatred of the ecclesiastical past to their hearts' content, there arose a perfect indifference to the religious import of church history.
In this spirit J.
E.Cu. Scumipt, of Giessen, compiled his instructive work, continued by RETTBERG, purely from original sources.?
DAnz | 1 He is thus strikingly characterized by Dr F. Ch. Baur, who himself greatly resembles him in many things (Lehrb. d. Christl. Dogmengesch., 1847, p. 40).
2 Tn Ullmann's " Studien und Kritiken," 1851, p. 562, et seq.
3 Handbuch der Christl. Kirchengeschichte, Giessen. 1801-20. 6 parts (2d ed., 1825-7),
The seventh part, by RETTBERG, comes down to A.D, 1305.
Schmidt wrote, also, a short VOI. 1.
254 — ¢33. RATIONALISTIC HISTORIANS IN ENGLAND.
[ornen. took a similar course.
But GIESELER surpassed them all in the judicious selection of. his extracts, and in sober and cautious criticism.
In his valuable, though yet unfinished Church History, Rationalism appears still more cooled down, and retreats behind a dry and purely scientific research, and a calm, objective narration.
§ 33. Rationalistic Historians in England.
Gibbon.
While the awful rationalistic apostacy from the faith of the fathers has fully developed itself, both theoretically and practically, in Germany, and especially within the Lutheran confession, the Reformed church of France, Holland, England, and Scotland has remained far more stationary in its theology.
We observe in it, indeed, a considerable decline in ecclesiastical and religious life since the middle of the last century, from which several branches have not to this day recovered ; and we still more frequently meet with undeveloped and often unsuspected rationalistic elements and tendencies in a great portion of English and American theology ; in close connection, however, with a certain traditional orthodoxy and practical piety.
Our current ultraProtestant views of the early church, and especially of the Middle Ages (Dark Ages, as, through ignorance or prejudice, we generally call them), and of all that appertains to the history of the Roman Catholic church, are very much like those of German
Rationalism, and rest on a virtual denial of Christ's uninterrupted presence in his church 'even unto the end of the world."
(Matt. xxviii. 20.) But with the decline of living faith in the various Reformed confessions, the interest in theology also decreased, and latitudinarianism and indifferentism obtained more sway, in the eighteenth century, than open hostility to Christianity.
Great Britain produced, indeed, in the middle and latter part of the last century, her first great historians, ROBERTSON and Davip Hume (41776), of Scotland, and especially Epwarp
GIBBON (+1794), of England.' But they selected for their invesManual of Ch. Hist. (2d ed., 1808), with ample references, in clear style, and well arranged, but without spirit and life.
* «The old reproach, that no British altars had been raised to the muse of history was recently disproved by the first performances of Robertson and Hume, the histories of Sectland, and of the Stuarts. .... The perfect composition, the nervous language, the
a I TE
INTROD.]
§ 33. RATIONALISTIC HISTORIANS IN ENGLAND.
| tigation interesting portions of political and secular history, and touch the subject of religion and the church only occasionally, as it comes in contact with their direct object. In these portions, however, the last two writers give free vent to the sceptical and infidel spirit of the so-called philosophic age ; especially GIBBON, in his celebrated History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire.
This work, in unity of design, extent and variety of research, admirable skill in the selection and condensation of matter, luminous arrangement, harmony, clearness, and vivacity of diction, not only surpassed all its predecessors in England,
_ but occupies a prominent place among the greatest historical com- | positions of ancient and modern times.
It is, on this account, the more to be regretted, that its author was so utterly blind to the claims of Christianity, the divine origin and moral grandeur of which find one of their most convincing illustrations in the _ very event which he portrays, the downfall of its deadly enemy, the colossal Roman empire, and in the erection of the new European civilization upon its ruins by the untiring energy of the church.
It is in the famous fifteenth and sixteenth chapters of his work, particularly, that Gibbon treats of the propagation of Christianity and its early history in the Roman empire.
His own religious opinions did not rise above the vagaries of a heathen philosopher. He seems even to have doubted the immortality of the soul ;! or at least he suffered this important truth to have no influence on his theory or practice. How could he be expected, then, to do justice to a religion based altogether upon the realities ofa supernatural, heavenly world? It is true, he does not directly attack Christianity, and either dexterously eludes, or speciously well-turned periods of Dr Robertson, inflamed me to the ambitious hope that I might one day tread in his footsteps; the calm philosophy, the careless inimitable beauties of his friend and rival, often forced me to close the volume with a mixed sensation of delight and despair."—Gibbon, Autobiography, ch. xii.
1 In the 15th ch. (vol. i., p. 527, et seq., ed. Harper), he relates, with apparent approbation, the doubts and uncertainties of heathen writers on this subject; and, judging from the general tone of his Autobiography, he believed in and desired only the immortality of fame.
In one of his last letters to Lord Sheffield on the death of his lady, dated April
27, 1793, he writes:
"' The on/y consolation in these melancholy trials to which human life is exposed, the only one at least in which I have any conjidence, is the presence of a | friend, and of that, as far as it depends upon myself, you shall not be destitute." (Autobiog., p. 358, New York ed.)
A poor consolation indeed, and, in this instance, of short duration ; as Gibbon died a few months after at London, under circumstances by no means edifying or encouraging.
§33. RATIONALISTIC HISTORIANS IN ENGLAND.
[GENER. concedes its divine origin, in order to make its real or supposed corruptions in a subsequent age the more apparent and appalling.
"The theologian," says he, with latent sarcasm, in the beginning of the fifteenth chapter, "may indulge the pleasing task of describing religion as she descended from heaven, arrayed in her native purity.
A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian.
He must discover the inevitable mixture of error and corruption, which she contracted in a long residence upon earth, among a weak and degenerate race of beings."
But he wrongs Christ by casting reproach on his people; he undermines the authority of the apostles by suspecting the virtues of their immediate successors.
What reasonable confidence can we have in the Divine Founder of our holy religion if his work proved a failure almost as soon as it was done ?
Fortunately, however, Gibbon's picture of early Christianity is, in the main, but the skilful caricature of a thoroughly prejudiced and sceptical mind, utterly incapable of entering into its spirit. His sympathies are with the heroes of ancient Greece and Rome ; and while he praises the virtues, and often apologizes for the vices of heathens, he either wilfully omits, or diminishes and casts suspicion on the virtues of Christians, and, with sneering contempt and almost malignant sarcasm, carefully enumerates and exaggerates all their failings ; itis only with reluctance, and with exception and reservation, that he admits their claim to admiration.
<'' This inextricable bias," says his editor, Milman,} 'appears even to influence his manner of composition.
While all the other assailants of the Roman empire, whether warlike or religious, the Goth, the Hun, the Arab, the Tartar, Alaric and Attila, Mahomet, and Zengis, and Tamerlane, are each introduced upon the scene almost with dramatic animation—their progress related in a full, complete, and unbroken narrative—the triumph of Christianity alone takes the form of a cold and critical disquisition.
The successes of barbarous energy and brute force call forth all the consummate skill of composition ; while the moral triumphs of Christian benevolence, the tranquil heroism of endurance, the blameless purity, the contempt of guilty fame, and of honours destructive to the human race, which, had they assumed the proud name of philosophy, would have been blazoned
* Preface to Gibbon's History, p. xvii, et seg.
INTROD.]
§ 33. RATIONALISTIC HISTORIANS IN ENGLAND,
aot in his brightest words, because they own religion as their principle, sink into narrow asceticism.
The glories of Christianity, in short, touch on no chord in the heart of the writer; his imagination remains unkindled; his words, though they maintain their stately and measured march, have become cool, argumentative, and inanimate."
The great work of Gibbon, from whose real merits we would not detract a single iota, furnishes a new commentary on the Saviour's word, that the things of the kingdom of heaven are hid from the wise and prudent, and revealed unto babes.
Gibbon's covert attack on Christianity called forth, at the first appearance of his work, various answers; but the apology of Bishop Watson excepted, they were hastily compiled by inferior and now forgotten writers.
Guizot, Wenck, and Milman, in the valuable annotations to their translations and editions, have pointed out a number of errors, omissions, and mis-statements in the History of the Decline and Fall; but neither of them shew a very profound knowledge of early Christianity, and consequently neither has done it full justice.
A thorough and satisfactory refutation of the fifteenth and sixteenth chapters, and of the latter portions of Gibbon, relating to church history, may be considered still a desideratum in English literature.
In this connection we must mention the work of the zealous English Unitarian JosEPH PRIESTLEY, a better naturalist than theologian, who died at Northumberland, Pennsylvania, 4.D.1804.
It is entitled, An History of the Corruptions of Christianity, in two volumes,! and is mainly a sort of history of Christian doctrine, the character of which may be easily inferred from the title.
It is a very incomplete and thoroughly one-sided account of the origin of the "opinions" concerning Christ, the Trinity, the atonement, concerning sin and grace, angels and saints, &c. ; with a view to shew that the orthodox doctrines of the church are an apostacy from primitive Christianity, as contained (according to his own subjective and low rationalistic interpretation, of course") in the New Testament, and were gradually intro1 Second edition, 1793, Birmingham.
The dedication to his friend Lindsey is dated November 1782.
2 He himself makes the truthful remark, though without applying it to his own case, vol. i., p. 11: " Nothing is more common than for men to interpret the writings of others according to their own previous ideas and conceptions of things."
§ 34. EVANGELICAL CATHOLIC PERIOD.
[GENER. duced from without, especially through the influence of the Greek philosophy.
, The first step in this supposed process of "eorruption" was thédeification of Christ, the germ of which is found in Justin Martyr's Platonic idea of the Logos.
This fundamental error was the fruitful source of other corruptions, until at last Christianity was brought into a state little better than heathen polytheism and idolatry.
Dr Priestley could not fail to see that such a conversion of church history into a history of progressive corruption might easily be laid hold of by the infidel in an open attack on Christianity itself, as the fountain of all these errors and illusions.
But he thought he had a sufficient answer and consolation in the honest conceit, that " these corruptions appear to have been clearly foreseen by Christ and by several of the apostles," and in the further consideration, that in his days, " according to the predictions contained in the books of Scripture, Christianity has begun to recover itself from this corrupted state, and that the reformation advances apace."
The work is written in a moderate tone, in a clear and pleasing style ; but is destitute of real research and scientific value.
It is chiefly interesting as a significant parallel to the contemporary, but far more learned historical productions of German Rationalism.
§ 34. (e) Hvangelical Catholic Period of Organic Development.
German Protestantism, like the prodigal son, gradually became ashamed of the husks on which it has long fed (and on which, in some places, it still tries to live), smote upon its breast in penitent sorrow, and resolved to return to its father's house, to the old, and yet eternally young faith of the church.
Ag the deistical or vulgar Rationalism gained prevalence and power towards the end of the last century, by the co-operation of different causes and influences; so men of various callings and tendencies, as Herder, Hamann, Jacobi, the romantic school of Schlegel, Tieck, and Novalis, the philosophers Schelling and Hegel, and still more the theologian Schleiermacher, each did his part towards overthrowing its dominion in the scientific world, and preparing the way for a new theology, pervaded by the life of faith.
To their exertions must be added the re-awakening of moral earnestness and religious life, occasioned partly
* See Preface to the first volume, p. 15.
INTROD. |
§ 34. EVANGELICAL CATHOLIC PERIOD.
by the after-workings of Pietism, and of the Moravian movement; partly by the deep concussions of the Napoleon wars, and the patriotic enthusiasm of the popular struggles for freedom, accompanied by an effort, though somewhat vague, for a universal regeneration of-Germany ; in part, finally, by the third centennial jubilee of the Reformation, a.p. 1817, and the important and pregnant fact connected with it, of the Mvangelical
Union between the hitherto separated sister churches of the Lutheran and Reformed confessions, first in Prussia, and afterwards, in pursuance of this example, in Wurtemberg, Baden, and other parts of Germany.
From these causes, and in bold, unintermitted, and victorious warfare, first against the older popular Rationalism, and afterwards against the speculative forms of it proceeding from the Hegelian school, arose the modern evangelical theology of Germany; displaying in all departments of religious knowledge, especially in exegesis, church history, and doctrine history, a noble and still lively and productive activity ; and, of all Protestant theological schools of the present day, unquestionably the first in learning, acumen, spirit, vigour, and promise.?
This period has done proportionally more than any other for the advancement of our science, as to both matter and form.
Within the last thirty years in Germany historical theology has engaged an extraordinary amount of diligence and zeal, the effects of which will long be felt, and will be found increasingly beneficial, also, in other lands, particularly in the various branches of English and American Protestantism.?
In the mass of literature thus created, we must distinguish three classes of works: (1.)
Those which embrace the whole range of church history; and 1 Comp. my Gallerie der bedeutendsten jetzt lebenden Universitatstheologen Deutschlands, a series of articles in the April, May, July, August, and September numbers of the " Deutsche Kirchenfreund," vol. v., for the year 1852.
2 Winer, in the first Supplement to his Manual of Theological Literature, mentions no less than five hundred works pertaining to the department of church history, which appeared in the short space of two years (1839-41).
In addition to these, the theological journals of Germany—as Jigen's " Zeitschrift fiir historische Theologie ;" now edited by Dr Neidner ; Ullmann and Umbreit's " Studien und Kritiken"—contain a multitude of historical treatises, many of them of great value; while almost all the later exegetical and dogmatical works are very largely interwoven with historical matter.
A very careful and minute account of what has been added to the literature of church history from the year 1825 to 1850, especially by German zeal and industry, may be found in several articles of Dr ENGELHARDT, in Neidner's Zeitschrift fiir histor. Theologie, for 1851 and 1852.
§ 34. EVANGELICAL CATHOLIC PERIOD.
[oxnzr. here, again, (a) those constructed on an extended plan, and designed more for professional scholars, but as yet mostly unfinished ; as the works of NEANDER (1825, et seq.), GIESELER
(1824, et seg.), ENGELHARDT (4 vols., 1833, et seq.), GFRORER (1841, e¢ seg.) ; and (6) smaller manuals, intended rather for students. Among the latter, the number of which has of late very rapidly swollen, we may mention particularly that of NIEDNER
(1846), distinguished for original learning and masterly condensation of details; that of HASE (sixth edition, 1848), which, in spirited, piquant description, comprehensive brevity, esthetic taste, and successful delineation of individual characters, excels all former or later compends; and, finally, that of GUERICKE
(seventh edition, 1849), which, in spite of its illiberal spirit, and heavy and awkward style, has found much favour and an extensive circulation, by its skilful working up of material furnished mostly by others, especially Neander, by its decided orthodoxy, and its enthusiasm for old Lutheranism.t
(2.) Those which are limited to the department of doctrine history; among which are most conspicuous the works of BAUMGARTEN-CRUSIUS
(two volumes, 1832, abridged 1840 and 1846), ENGELHARDT (two parts, 1839), HAGENBACH (two parts, second edition, 1847), and Baur (one volume, 1847).
(8.) A whole host of monographs on celebrated persons, on single doctrines of Christianity, on special topics, as the missions, government, worship, moral and religious life, of the church.
It is impossible here to enumerate even the most important of them.
A great number of the later theologians, Neander, Ullmann, Marheineke, Engelhardt, Thilo, Liebner, Hagenbach, Bohringer, Bindemann, Jirgens, Henry, Herzog, Baum, Rauchlin, Erbkam, Baur, Rothe, Dorner, Bunsen, Hasse, Ebrard, Heppe, &c., have applied themselves with zeal and success to the field of monographic historical literature.
Roman Catholic scholars of Germany, too, as Mohler, 1 Less generally known, yet equally valuable in their way, are the manuals of church history by SCHLEIERMACHER (one of his most imperfect and unimportant works, published after his death by Bonnell, A.D. 1840, from sketches of lectures), LINDNER (1848, et; seq.), FRICKE (1850), Jacopr (1850), Kurtz (1850), Scumipt (1851).
Jacobi isa worthy and faithful disciple of Neander ; Lindner and Kurtz have a decided predilection for Lutheran orthodoxy, but greatly surpass Guericke in liberality and style, and will in all probability gradually take his place in regard to circulation.
The work of Kurtz especially, which is just now (1853) coming out in a greatly enlarged and improved edition, has all the elements and prospects of general popularity.
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§ 34. EVANGELICAL CATHOLIC PERIOD.
Hofler, Staudenmaier, Hefele, Hurter, have followed the example set especially by Neander in this sphere of study.
The relation of the general works to the special is that of reciprocal completion.
The former, as Dr Kliefoth happily remarks,! have a double office: " first to go before the monographs, and shew the chasms which still need to be filled by such labour; and then, again, to come after the monographs, and give their results the proper place in the living organism of the history.?
This mass of historical literature, both general and special, is by no means pervaded by one and the same principle and spirit.
It reflects the endless diversity and partial confusion of the theological schools and tendencies of modern Germany.
In the general views and judgments of Gieseler, Gfrorer, and others, as well as in their cold, unedifying way of treating their subject, we recognise still the influence of the older common-sense Rationalism. The productions of the Tiibingen school are in league with the speculative, or transcendental and pantheistic Rationalism of the Hegelian system.
MHase, one of the most elegant and tasteful writers of history, is, indeed, an opponent of the common Rationalism, and attacked it with spirit and ingenuity in his controversies with the late General Superintendent, Rohr.
He has uncommon facility in adapting himself to the various forms of Christianity and the different stages of its development ; possesses a delicate sense of the beautiful ; and furnishes capital
-miniature portraits, also, of such saints as Antony, Bernard, Francis of Assissi.
But he sympathizes with the heroes of the Catholic and Protestant churches more from his humanism and poetic taste, than from the standpoint of a supernatural faith ; and the highly artistic structure of his otherwise masterly textbook wants the heaven-aspiring tower and the holy sign of the 1 Reuter's " Allg. Repertorium fiir die theol. Literatur und kirchliche Statistik," for 1845, p. 106; where the reader will find several instructive articles by Kliefoth, on Zhe later Ecclesiastical Historiography of the German Evangelical Church.
2 Fr. BOHRINGER has attempted to present all church history in a chronological series of the biographies of its heroes, in his yet unfinished work, Zhe Church of Christ and her witnesses, or Chuech History in Biography, Ziirich, 1842, et seg. His plan certainly aims to supply a real want, has something very attractive in it, and is followed out with diligence and talent.
But it seems to us too extensive for a larger, more promiscuous class of readers, such as he has in view; while for the scholar it is likewise ill adapted, on account of its entire want of literary apparatus.
The independent thinker can take nothing on mere authority, but must everywhere examine the historian, and see whether his text be a faithful copy of the sources he has used.
§ 34. EVANGELICAL CATHOLIC PERIOD.
[cenen. cross.
Guericke, where he does not follow Neander, falls back into the obsolete method and spirit of Flacius, and, from the time of the Reformation, mars the historical character and the dignity of his Manual quite too much by passionate and coarse attacks upon the Reformed church, and every form of union which does not square with his own contracted notions of orthodoxy. Gfrorer began in low, rationalistic style, but, in the progress of his work, seems to approach a politico-Catholic, hierarchical view.
Engelhardt, in his thoroughly learned works on church and doctrine history, makes it his business simply to report from original sources with scrupulous accuracy and colourless monotony, without suffering any judgment of his own to appear.
Niedner has thoroughly mastered and digested all his material with considerable energy of thought; but his singular terminology and the artificial interweaving of his categories make it hard to obtain any clear, simple view.
With these explanations and qualifications, we proceed to point out those general features of the modern German historiography which give it a decided superiority over that of the preceding periods.
1. Its most prominent excellence, as to form and method, we take to be its scientific structure and that spirited, lifelike mode of representation, which springs from the idea of an organic development.'
History is no longer viewed as a mere inorganic mass of names, dates, and facts, but as spirit and life, and therefore as process, motion, development, passing through various stages, ever rising to some higher state, yet always identical with itself, so that its end is but the full unfolding of its beginning.
This makes church history, then, appear as an organism, starting from the person of Jesus Christ, the creator and progenitor of a new race; perpetually spreading both outwardly and inwardly ; maintaining a steady conflict with sin and error without and within; continually beset with difficulties and obstructions; yet, under the unfailing guidance of providence, infallibly working towards an appointed end.
This idea of organic development combines what was true in the notion of something permanent and unchangeable in church history, as held by both the Catholic and the Old-Protestant Orthodoxy, with the element
* See ahove, § 5.
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§ 34. EVANGELICAL CATHOLIC PERIOD.
of truth in the Rationalistic conception of motion and flow; and on such ground alone is it possible to understand fully and clearly the temporal life of Christianity.
A permanent principle, without motion, stiffens into stagnation ; motion, without a principle of permanence, is a process of dissolution.
In neither case can there properly be any living history.
The conception of such history is, that, while it incessantly changes its form, never for a moment standing still, yet, through all its changes, it remains true to its own essence ; never outgrows itself; incorporates into each succeeding stage of growth the results of the preceding ; and thus never loses anything, which was ever of real value.
This idea of an organic, steadily improving development of humanity, according to a wise, unalterable plan of providence, is properly speaking as old as Christianity, meets us in many passages of the New Testament (Matt. xiii. 31,32; Eph. iv. 12-16;
Col. ii. 19; 2 Pet. iii. 18), and in occasional remarks of the early fathers, such as Tertullian and Augustine, and was brought out in the eighteenth century with peculiar emphasis and freshness by the genial Herder, in his "Ideas for the Philosophy of the History of Humanity" (1784), so highly valued by the gifted historian of Switzerland, John von Miiller.t
The more mature and philosophical conception of it, however, and the impulse which it gave to a deeper and livelier study of history, are due especially to the philosophy of Schelling, and, still more, of _ Hegel.
With Hegel, all life and thought is properly development, or a process of organic growth, which he calls Aufhebung ; that is,in the threefold sense of this philosophical term so much used by him; (1.) an abolition of the previous imperfect form
(an aufheben in the sense of tollere), (2.) a preservation of the essence (conservare), and, (3.) an elevation of it to a higher stage of existence (elevare).
Thus as the child grows to bea man, his childhood is done away, his personal identity is preserved, and his nature raised to the stage of manhood.
So, as Judaism passes into Christianity, its exclusive character, as a preparatory establishment, is lost; but its substance is transferred into the gospel, and by it completed.
Christ is, on the one hand, the end of the law and the prophets, while, on the other,
1 Comp. some extracts on this point from Herder's works, in my tract on Historical
Development, p. 73, et seq.
26)
§ 34. EVANGELICAL CATHOLIC PERIOD.
[anner. he says :—" I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil."
This is no contradiction, but only the exhibition of the same relation in different aspects.
* The general idea of development, however, takes very different forms from different standpoints; as faith, authority, freedom, nay, even Christianity itself, are liable to the most contradictory definitions.
How far apart, for example, are Neander and Baur, though both apprehend and represent church history as a process of life!
How different again from both the Roman Catholic convert Newman, who has likewise a theory of development of his own!
Hegel's development, in the hands of his infidel followers, is, at bottom, merely an intellectual process of logical thinking, in which, in the end, the substance of the Christian life itself is lost. As once Platonism was, for Origen, Victorinus,
Augustine, Synesius, and others, a bridge to Christianity, while, at the same time, the Neo-Platonists and Julian the Apostate used it as a weapon against the Christian religion ; so, also, the categories of modern philosophy (not only German but English too) have subserved purposes and tendencies diametrically opposite.
The right application of the theory of development depends altogether on having beforehand a right view of positive
Christianity, and being rooted and grounded in it, not only in thought, but also in heart and experience.
With this preparation aman may learn from any philosophical system without danger, on the principle of Paul, that " all things are his." Here, too, we may say: Amicus Plato, amicus Aristoteles, sed magis amica veritas.
But when this mode of viewing history is adopted, it cannot fail to have its influence on the representation. If history is spirit and life, and, in fact, rational spirit, the manifestation and organic unfolding of eternal, divine ideas, its representation must likewise be full of spirit and life, an organic reproduction.
A mechanical and lifeless method, which merely accumulates a mass of learned material, however accurately, is no longer enough.
The historian's object now is, to comprehend truly the events, leading ideas, and prominent actors of the past, and to unfold them before the eyes of his readers, just as they originally stood ; to know not only what has taken place, but also how ithas taken place. The old pragmatic method, too, of referring things merely
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§ 34. EVANGELICAL CATHOLIC PERIOD.
to accidental subjective and psychological causes and motives, has become equally unsatisfying.
A higher pragmatism is now demanded, which has paramount regard to the objective forces of history ; traces the divine connection of cause and effect ; and, with reverential wonder, searches out the plan of eternal wisdom and love.
2. With this view of history, as an inwardly connected whole, pervaded by the same life-blood and always striving towards the same end, is united the second characteristic, which we look upon as the greatest material excellence of the most important historians of modern Germany; viz., the spirit of impartiality and Protestant catholicity. Here, also, Herder, with his enthusiastic natural sensibility to the beautiful and the noble in all times and nations, was the mighty pioneer.
By the recent development of theology and religious life in Germany the barriers of prejudice, which separated the Lutheran and Reformed churches, have been, in a great measure, surmounted, and by the Prussian Union
(which, without such inward development, would be an unmeaning governmental measure) these barriers have been, in a certain degree, also outwardly removed, and almost all the great theologians of the day in Germany now stand essentially upon the basis of the Evangelical Union.
Nay, more.
Protestantism has also been forced to abandon for ever her former one-sided posture towards Catholicism.
The old view of the Middle Ages _ especially, whose darkness Rationalism in its arrogant pretensions to superior light and knowledge (Aufklarung) could not paint black enough,! has been entirely repudiated, since the most thorough research has revealed their real significance in poetry, art, politics, science, theology, and religion."
It is now generally 1 Tn a rationalistic pamphlet on Luther, which appeared in Berlin as late as A.D. 1817, and has been frequently reprinted, we find even the fabulous assertion, that "poor men at that time knew almost nothing of God."
2 Fr. Galle, a disciple of Neander, says in the preface to his " Geistliche Stimmen aus dem Mittelalter," p. vi' Long past is that period of stiff Lutheran orthodoxy which summarily rejected every intellectual production in any sort of connection with the Catholic Middle Ages; already passing away is the time of shallow illuminationism (Aufklarung), which could see in the Reformation, at best, the murky dawn of the pretended noon-day of the present; and in the Middle Ages, only a dark, dreary night, in which nothing stirred but the wild beasts of Obscurantism and barbarism.
Men have begun to perceive, with all esteem for the Reformatiom and its invaluable services, that the Lord has at all times filled His church with His Spirit and His gifts, and that, even where her skies have been darkened with mist and clouds, He has always been near her with the light of His truth."
g 34. FVANGELICAL CATHOLIC PERIOD.
[cEnnr. agreed, that the Middle Ages were the necessary connecting link between ancient and modern times; that this period was the cradle of Germanic Christianity and modern civilization ; that its grand, peculiar institutions and enterprises, the papacy, the scholastic and mystic divinity, the monastic orders, the crusades, the creations of sacred art, were indispensable means of educating the European races; and that, without them, even the Reformation of the sixteenth century could not have arisen.
Here, of course, the ultra-Protestant fanatical opposition to the Catholic church must cease.
The general disposition now is to break away from the narrow apologetic and polemic interest of a particular confession or party, the coloured spectacles of which allow but a dim and partial view of the Saviour's majestic person.
We wish to be guided solely by the spirit of impartial truth; and truth, at the same time, always best vindicates itself by the simple exhibition of its substance and historical course.
Christianity can never be absolutely fitted to the last of a fixed human formula, without losing her dignity and majesty; and her history may claim, for its own sake, to be thoroughly investigated and represented, sine ira et studio, without any impure or loveless designs.
The greatest masters in this field become more and more convinced, that the boundless life of the church can never be exhausted by any single sect or period, but can be fully expressed only by the collective Christianity of all periods, nations, confessions, and individual believers; that the Lord has never left himself without a witness; that, consequently, every period has its excellencies, and reflects, in its own way, the image of the Redeemer.
A Neander, for example, reverentially kisses the footprints of his Master, even in the darkest times, and bows before the most varied refractions of his glory.
Hence, within the last thirty years, almost every nook of church history has been searched with amazing industry and zeal; the darkest portions have been enlightened; and a mass of treasures brought forth from primitive, medieval, and modern times, to be admired and turned to the most valuable account by present and future generations.
In short, the investigations of believing Germany in the sphere of church history are inwardly and irresistibly pressing towards an evangelical catholic, central, and universal position, which
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§ 34. EVANGELICAL CATHOLIC PERIOD.
will afford a fair view of all parts of the vast expanse.
They are making men see how the flood of Divine light and life, emanating from Jesus Christ, the central sun of the moral universe, has been pouring, with unbroken effulgence, on all past centuries, and will continue to pour upon the world in ever new variegations.
For this reason, the study of our science is continually acquiring a greater practical importance.
Church history is the field on which are to be decided the weightiest denominational controversies, the most momentous theological and religious questions.
It aims to sketch forth from the old foundations of the church the plan for its new superstructure.
In truth, the spirit of the modern evangelical theology of Germany seems to have already risen, in principle, above the present sad divisions of Christendom ; and to foretoken a new age of the church.
It can reach its aim, and find complete satisfaction only in the glorious fulfilment of the precious promise of one fold and one
Shepherd.
Having noticed these general features, which, however, as al- | ready intimated, by no means belong to all the German church historians of our day, we must now characterize more minutely the most prominent authors; and, in so doing, we shall have occasion at the same time to explain our own relation to them, especially to Dr Neander.
Among the latest German ecclesiastical historians, who stand at the head of their profession, we must distinguish two widely different schools, which, as to their philosophico-theological basis, attach themselves to the names of the two greatest scientific geniuses of the nineteenth century, Schleiermacher and Hegel.
They bear to each other, in some respects, the relation of direct antagonism, but partly, also, that of mutual completion; and are well matched in spirit and learning.
They are :—(1.) The school of Schleiermacher and Neander, with Dr NEANDER himself at its head, as the " father of modern church history." For Schleiermacher was, properly, no historian ; and his posthumous lectures on church history amount to no more than a loose unsatisfactory sketch.
But his philosophical views of religion, Christianity, and the church, have indirectly exerted a very important influence upon this department of theology, as well as upon almost all others.
(2.) The Hegelian school.
This, how-
§ 35. DR NEANDER.
[GENnER. ever, falls again into two essentially different branches, viz.: (@) an unchurchly and destructive branch, the Tiibingen school, as it is called, the chief representative of which is Dr Baur, of Tiibingen ;' and (b) a conservative branch, devoted to the Christian faith, among the leaders of which must be named with special prominence Drs RoTHE and Dorner.
Since this later school, however, combines with the objective view of history and the dialectic method of the Hegelian philosophy, the elements also, of the Schleiermacherian theological culture, it may as well have an independent place, as a third school, intermediate between the two others.?
§ 35. Dr Neander and his School.'
Dr Aucustus NEANDER forms an epoch in the development of Protestant church historiography, as well as Flacius in the sixteenth century, Arnold at the close of the seventeenth, Mosheim, and, somewhat later, Semler, in the eighteenth; and was accordingly, by general consent, distinguished, even before his death (1850), with the honorary title, '" Father of (Modern)
Church History.""
From him we have a large work, unfortunately not finished, on the general history of the Christian church ; extending from the death of the Apostles almost to the Reformation.*
Next a special work on the Apostolic period,' which, * Not to be confounded with the half crazy Bruno Bauer, whose blasphemous productions on the Gospels and the Acts belong not to the literature of theology, but to the history of insanity.
? In the following review of these schools we will not forget the debt of personal gratitude we owe to their leaders, Neander, Baur, and Dorner, who were our respected instructors; the first, in Berlin; the two last, previously, in Tiibingen.
But this cannot induce us to withhold a decided and uncompromising protest against the dangerous and antichristian extravagances of the sceptical school of Baur.
All personal considerations must be subordinated to the sacred interests of faith and the church.
* Comp. my Lecollections of Neander, in the " Mercersburg Review" for January 1851; and Neander's Jugendjahre, in the " Kirchenfreund" for 1851, p. 283, et. seq.
* In six volumes, or eleven parts (1825-52).
The last volume, embracing the period preparatory to the Reformation, down to the council of Basil (A.D. 1480), was published after the author's death by Candidate Schneider from manuscripts left in a very fragmentary form.
The first four volumes have appeared, since 1842, in a second improved edition.
The English translation of this work by Prof. Torrey, though not entirely free from errors, may be pronounced, in general, a very accurate version.
* Geschichte der Pflanzung und Leitung der Christlichen Kirch durch die Apostel.
vols. 1832, 4th ed. 1847.
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§ 35. DR NEANDER.
together with one on the life of Christ (1837, 5th ed. 1849), serves as a foundation for the main work.
_Then, several valuable historical monographs on Julian the Apostate (1812), St Bernard of Clairvaux (1813, 2d ed. 1849), the Gnostic Systems
(1818), St John Chrysostom (1821, 3d ed. 1848), the AntiGnostic Tertullian (1825, 3d ed. 1849).
Finally some collections of smaller treatises, mostly historical, in which he presents single persons or manifestations of the Christian life, on the authority of original sources, indeed, but in a form better adapted to meet the practical religious wants of the public generally.
The most important of these is his Denkwiirdigkeiten aus der Geschichte des christlichen Lebens (3 vols. 1822, 3d ed:
1845), a series of edifying pictures of religious life in the first eight centuries.
Neander was fitted, as few have been, for the great task of writing the history of the church of Jesus Christ.
By birth and early training an Israelite, and a genuine Nathanael too, full of childlike simplicity, and of longings for the Messianic salvation ; in youth, an enthusiastic student of the Grecian philosophy, particularly of Plato, who became, for him, as for Origen and other church fathers, a scientific schoolmaster, to bring him to Christ!—he had, when in his seventeenth year he received holy baptism, passed through, in his own inward experience, so to speak, the whole historical course, by which the world had been prepared for Christianity ; he had gained an experimental knowledge of the workings of Judaism and heathenism in their direct
- tendency towards Christianity ; and thus he had already broken his own way to the only proper position for contemplating the _ history of the church ; a position whence Jesus Christ is viewed as the object of the deepest yearnings of humanity, the centre
1 Even in the academical gymnasium at Hamburg, Plato and Plutarch were his fa~ vourite study.
The intimate friend of his youth, William Neumann—whose surname he afterwards at his baptism assumed, in its Greek form, with significant reference, also, to his own inward change—wrote of David Mendel as Neander was originally called, in _ the year 1806 (Chamisso's Works, vi., p. 241, et seg.): " Plato is his idol and his perpetual watchword.
He pores over him day and night, and few, perhaps, take him in so entirely or with such full reverence.
It is wonderful how he has become all this, so perfectly without foreign influence, solely by reflection and honest, pure study.
With little knowledge of the Romantic philosophy, he has constructed it for himself, getting the germs of it from Plato.
On the world around him he has learned to look with sovereign contempt."
For a more minute account of Neander's education, see the " Kirchen~ freund," loc. cit., p. 286, et seq.
NMOL. 1.
§ 35. DR NEANDER.
[oENER. of all history, and the only key to its mysterious sense.
Richly endowed in mind and heart; free from all domestic cares; an eunuch from his mother's womb, and that for the kingdom of heaven's sake (Matt. xix. 12); without taste for the distracting externals and vanities of life; a stranger in the material world, which, in his last years, was withdrawn even from his bodily eye,—he was, in every respect, fitted to bury himself, during a long and uninterrupted academical course, from 1812 to 1850, in the silent contemplation of the spiritual world, to explore the past, and to make his home among the mighty dead, whose activity belonged to eternity.
In theology, he was at first a pupil of the gifted Schleiermacher, under whose electrifying influence he came during his university studies at Halle, and at whose side he afterwards stood as colleague for many years in Berlin.
He always thankfully acknowledged the great merits of this German Plato, who, in a time of general apostasy from the truth, rescued so many young men from the iron embrace of Rationalism, and led them at least to the threshold of the holiest of allt
But he himself took a more positive course, rejecting the pantheistic and fatalistic elements which had adhered to the system of his master from the study of Spinoza, and which, it must be confessed, bring it, in a measure, into direct opposition to the simple gospel and the old faith of the church.
This was, for him, of the greatest moment. For only in the recognition of a personal God, and of the free agency of individual men, can history be duly apprehended and appreciated.
But apart from this he was, in his own particular department, entirely independent.
For Schleiermacher's strength lay in criticism, dogmatics, and ethics, far more than in church history; though, by his spiritual intuitions, he undoubtedly exerted on the latter science also a quickening influence.
Thus, from the beginning of his public labours, Neander appeared as one of the leading founders of the new evangelical theology of Germany, and its most conspicuous representative on the field of church and doctrine history.
His first and greatest merit consists in restoring the religious * Comp. especially Neander's article on The past half century in its relationto the present time, in the " Deutsche Zeitschrift," established by Dr Miiller, Dr Nitzsch, and himself, vol. i, 1850, p. 7, e¢ seg., where he gives his views at large respecting Schleiermacher.
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§ 35. DR NEANDER.
ee and practical interest to its due prominence, in opposition to the coldly intellectual and negative critical method of Rationalism ; yet without thereby wronging in the least the claims of science.
This comes out very clearly even in the preface to the first volume of his great work, where he declares it to be the grand object of his life, to set forth the history of Christ, " as a living witness for the divine power of Christianity ; a school of Christain experience ; a voice of edification, instruction, and warning, sounding through all ages, for all who will hear."
True, he is second to none in learning.
With the church fathers, in particular, many years of intercourse had made him intimately familiar.
And though, from his hearty dislike for all vanity and affectation, he never makes any parade with citations, yet, by his pertinent and conscientious manner of quoting, he everywhere evinces a perfect mastery of the sources: for the genuine scholar is recognised, not in the number of citations, which, at any rate may be very cheaply had from second or third hand ; but in their independence and reliability, and in the critical discernment with which they are selected.
With the most thorough knowledge of facts he united, also, almost every other qualification of a scientific historian; a spirit of profound critical inquiry, a happy power of combination, and no small talent for genetically developing religious characters and their theological systems.
But he diffuses through all his theoretical matter a pious, gentle, and deeply humble, yet equally earnest spirit.
Like Spener and Franke, Neander views theology, and with it church history, not merely as a thing of the understanding, but also as a practical matter for the heart; and he has chosen for his motto: Pectus est quod theologum facit.1
This gives his works a great advantage over the productions of the modern Tiibingen school, as well as over the text-book of Gieseler, which, in learning and keen research, is at least of equal merit; though in the case of the latter work we are bound to consider, that the author pursues a different object, and by his invaluable extracts from sources compensates in parts for the lack of life in the dry skeleton of his text.
Neander moves through the history of the church in 1 Those Hegelians who ridiculed this motto, and mockingly called Neander a " pectoral theologian," only exposed, in this way, their own shame.
We can never make theology too earnest or practical ; for it has to do with nothing less than the everlasting weal or woe of undying souls.
H 2
efe
§ 35. DR NEANDER.
[GENER. the spirit of faith and devotion ; Gieseler, with critical acumen and cold intellect.
The one lives in his heroes, thinks, feels, acts, and suffers with them; the other surveys their movements from a distance, without love or hatred, without sympathy or antipathy.
The former reverently kisses the footsteps of his Lord and Saviour, wherever he meets them; the latter remains unmoved and indifferent even before the most glorious manifestations of the Christian life.
This spirit of Christian piety, which animates Neander's historical writings, and rules his whole habit of thought, is further characterized by a comprehensive liberality and evangelical catholicity.
Arnold and Milner, in their subjective and unchurchly pietism, had like regard indeed to practical utility ; but they could find matter of edification, for the most part, only in heretics and dissenters.
J'rom these 'historians Neander differs, not only in his incomparably greater learning and scientific ability, but also in that right feeling by which, notwithstanding his own disposition to shew even too much favour to certain heretics, he still traces the main current of the Christian life in the unbroken line of the Christian church.
From the orthodox Protestant, rough, polemical historians of the seventeenth century, on the other hand, Neander differs in the liberal spirit with which, though constitutionally inclined rather to the German Lutheran type of religious character in its moderate,
Melancthonian form,' he rises above denominational limits, and plants himself on the basis of the Union, where Lutheran and Reformed Protestantism become only parts of a higher whole.
But his sympathies go far beyond the Reformation, and take in also the peculiar forms of Catholic piety.
With him, in truth, the universal history of the church is no mere fortuitous concourse of outward facts, but a connected process of evolution, an unbroken continuation of the life of Christ through all cen- * True, Gieseler also demands, in the church historian, " the spirit of Christian piety ;" and on the right ground ; " because we can never obtain a just historical apprehension of any foreign spiritual phenomenon, without reproducing it in ourselves" (Einl. § 5).
But in his own text, as might be expected from his rationalistic position, there is certainly little trace of such a spirit.
? Among all the characters of church history there is hardly one whom Neander more resembles, both in light and shade, than Melancthon.
Both are of the Johannean stamp, of the mild, amiable, peace-loving, conciliatory, yielding temperament ; ard both are, in an eminent sense, Preceptores Germanic,
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§ 35. DR NEANDER.
ae turies.
He has won, im particular, the priceless merit of having introduced a more correct judgment respecting the whole church before the Reformation; above all, of having presented to the Protestant mind, not in the service of this or that party, but in the sole interest of truth, and in an unprejudiced, living reproduction, the theology of the church fathers in their conflict with the oldest forms of heresy.
This he did first in his monographs.
In his Tertullian, he drew a picture of the African church of the second and third centuries, and taught the true value, hitherto so much mistaken, of this rough but vigorous Christian, the patriarch of the Latin theology.
In his John Chrysostom, he portrayed the greatest orator, interpreter, and saint of the ancient Greek church.
In his Bernard of Clairvaue, he described with warm, though by no means blind admiration, the worthiest representative of monkery, of the crusades, and of the practical and orthodox mysticism, in the bloom of the Catholic
Middle Ages, previously so little known and so much decried.
He felt thus at home in all periods, because he met the same Christ in them all, only in different forms.
By such sketches, drawn from life, and then by the connected representation in his large work, he contributed mightily to burst the shackles of Protestant prejudice and bigotry, and to prepare the way, in some measure, for a mutual understanding between Catholicism and Protestantism on historical ground.
He adopted the significant words of the Jansenist Pascal, one of his favourite authors :—'' Lin Jésus-Christ toutes les contradictions sont accordées.""
And in these great antagonisms in church history he saw no irreconcileable contradiction, but two equally necessary manifestations of the same Christianity ; and he looked forward with joyful hope to a future reconciliation of the two, already typified, as he thought, in St John, the apostle of love and of the consummation ! !
These large views of history, however, and this candid acknowledgment of the great facts of the ancient and medieval church—views which may lead, in the end, to practical consequences even more weighty than he himself could foresee or 1 Comp. the closing words of his History of the Apostolic Church, and the Dedication of the second edition of the first volume of his larger work to Schelling, where he alludes with approbation to that philosopher's idea of three stages of development answering to the three apostles, Peter, Paul, and John.
§ 35. DR NEANDER.
[anner. approve—spring, in Neander's case, by no means from a Romanizing tendency..
Such a disposition was utterly foreign to him.
His liberality' proceeds, partly from his mild, John-like nature, and partly from his genuine Protestant toleration and high regard for individual personality; or from such a subjectivity as formed a barrier against ultra-Protestant and sectarian bigotry, no less than against Romanism, where individual freedom is lost in the authority of the general.
In this he is a faithful follower of Schleiermacher, who, though he based his philosophy on the pantheistic system of Spinoza, had nevertheless an uncommonly keen eye and a tender regard for the personal and individual.
What Schleiermacher thus asserted mainly in the sphere of speculation and doctrine, Neander carried out in history.
He was fully convinced that the free spirit of the gospel could never be concentrated in any one given form, but could be completely manifested only in a great variety of forms and views.
Hence his frequent remark, that Christianity, the leaven which is to pervade humanity, does not destroy natural capacities, or national and individual differences, but refines and sanctifies them.
Hence his partiality for diversity and freedom of development, and his enmity to constraint and uniformity.
Hence his taste for monographic literature, which sets a whole age concretely before the eye in the person of a single representative ; of which invaluable form of church history Neander is to be accounted the proper father.
Hence the love, and patience, and scrupulous fidelity with which he goes into all the circumstances of the men and systems he unfolds, to whatever nation, time, or school of thought they may belong; setting forth their defects and aberrations, as well as their virtues and merits; though without neglecting the duty of the philosophical historian, to collect the scattered particulars again into one complete picture, and refer them to the one unchanging idea.
Finally, this sacred reverence for the image of God in the persons of men, and for the rights of individuals, accounts for the esteem and popularity which this equally pious and learned church father of the nineteenth century commands, more than any other modern theologian, in almost all sections of Protestantism, not only in Germany, but also in France, Holland, England, Scotland, and America, nay, so far as difference of ecclesiastical ground at all
INTROD. |
§ 35. DR NEANDER.
Ne allows, among liberal-minded scholars of the Roman Catholic church itself.
In this view he stands before us, amidst the present distractions of Christendom, as an apostle of mediation, in the noblest sense of the word; and as such he still has, by his writings, a long and exalted mission to fulfil.
To sum up what has now been said; the most essential peculiarity, the fairest ornament, the most enduring merit of Neander's church history consists in the vital union of the two elements of science and Christian piety, and in the exhibition of both in the form, not of dead narrative, or mechanical accumulation of material, but of life and genetic development.
The practical element is not a mere appendage to the subject, in the way of pious reflection and declamation, but grows out of it as by nature.
It is the very spirit which fills and animates the history of Christianity as such.
Neander is Christian, not although, but because he is scientific; and scientific, because he is Christian.
This is the only form of edification which can be expected in a learned work ; but such must be expected where the work has to do with Christianity and its history.
And this gain, therefore, ought never to be lost. A church historian without faith and piety can only set before us, at best, instead of the living body of Christ, a cold marble statue, without seeing eye or feeling heart.
But a perfect church history calls for more than this.
While we respect and admire in Neander the complete blending of the scientific element with the Christian, we miss, on the other hand, its union with the churchly.
By this we mean, first, that he lacks decided orthodowy.
In his treatment of the life of Jesus, and the apostolic period, we meet with views respecting the Holy
Scriptures, their inspiration and authority, together with doubts respecting the strictly historical character of certain sections of the Gospel history, and the genuineness of particular books of the sacred canon (the First Epistle to Timothy, the Second Epistle of Peter, and the Apocalypse), which, though by no means rationalistic, are yet rather too loose and indefinite, and involve, in our judgment, too many and sometimes too serious concessions to modern criticism.
Of all his works, his Leben Jesu is, perhaps, in this respect, the farthest from satisfying the demands of sound faith, however highly we must esteem the honesty and tender
§ 35. DR NEANDER.
(GENER. conscientiousness which usually give rise to his critical scruples and doubts.
There is, it is true, in this difficult field, a scepticism more commendable than that hasty and positive dogmatism which, instead of seriously labouring to untie the Gordian knot, either refuses to see, or carelessly cuts it.
But the full and unconditional reverence for the holy word of God, in which the whole Schleiermacherian school is more or less deficient, requires, wherever science cannot yet clear away the darkness, an humble submission of reason to the obedience of faith, or a present suspension of decisive judgment, in the hope that farther and deeper research may lead to more satisfactory results.
Again, Neander must be called unchurchly in his views of theology and history, on account of his comparative disregard for the objective and realistic character of Christianity and the church, and his disposition, throughout his writings, to resolve the whole mystery into something purely inward and ideal.
In this respect he appears to us quite too little Catholic, in the real and historical sense of the word.
True, he is neither a Gnostic, nor a Baptist, nor a Quaker ; though many of his expressions, sundered from their connection, sound very favourable to these hyper-spiritualistic sects.
He by no means mistakes the objective forces of history, and can readily appreciate the realistic element in such men as Tertullian, Athanasius, Augustine, Bernard, and even in the popes and schoolmen, up to a certain point.
He, in fact, speaks frequently of general directions of mind, which embody themselves in individuals; and the antitheses of idealism and realism, rationalism and supranaturalism, logical intelligence and mystic contemplation, and the various combinations of these tendencies, belong to the standing categories of his treatment of history.
But, in the first place, he refers these differences themselves, for the most part, to a merely psychological basis, to the differences of men's constitutions, that is, to a purely subjective ground. His prevailing view is, that the kingdom of God forms itself from individuals, and therefore, in a certain sense, from below upwards ; that, as Schleiermacher once said, " the doctrinal system of the church takes its rise from the opinions of individuals."
Then, in the next place, it is plain that Neander himself is of the spiritualistic and idealistic turn, and does not always succeed in avoiding the dangers to which
INTROD.]
§ 35. DR NEANDER.
2G this tendency, in itself needful and legitimate, is exposed. Hence his predilection for the Alexandrian fathers, Clement and Origen.
Hence his too favourable representation, as it appears to us, of Gnosticism, especially of Marcion, whose pseudo-Pauline hostility to the Catholic tradition he even makes to be a presage of the Reformation,—which, if true, would do the Reformation poor service.
Hence his overstrained love of equity towards all heretical and schismatical movements, in which he almost always takes for granted some deep moral and religious interest, even where they clearly rest on the most wilful insurrection against lawful authority ; the love of justice, with him, though by no means so abused as by that patron of sects, the pietistic Arnold, still often running into injustice to the historical church.
Hence his undisguised dislike for all that he comprehends under the phrase re-introduction of the legal Jewish ideas into the Catholic church, including the special priesthood and outward service; this he thinks to be against the freedom advocated by St Paul and the idea of the universal priesthood (which, however, even under the Old Testament, had place along with the special; comp. 1 Pet. ii. 9, with Ex. xix. 6); though he is forced to concede to this Catholic legalism at least an important office in the training of the Teutonic nations.'
Hence his indifference to fixed ecclesiastical organization, and his aversion to all restriction to confessions in the Protestant church; this, to him, savours of "bondage to the letter," "'mechanism of forms,"
"symbol-worship."
On this latter point we must, indeed, regard him as mainly in the right against those who would absolutely repristinate some particular confession of the past—the Form of Concord, perhaps, with its rigid Lutheranism—utterly regardless of the enlarged wants of the present.
There was still more ground, also, for his zeal against the philosophical tyranny of the Hegelian intellectualists and pantheists, who, in the zenith of their prosperity, aimed to supplant a warm, living Christianity by dry scholasticism and unfruitful traffic in dialectic
1 Dr Baur, in his Epochen, p. 218, remarks, that this favourite category of a transfer of Old Testament institutions to Christian soil, which Neander applies to Episcopacy,
Montanism, and especially to the papacy of the Middle Ages, amounts to nothing, since what is past never returns in history, without becoming, at the same time, something entirely new.
oie
§ 35. DR NEANDER.
[aener. forms.
Still the theological school now in hand is plainly wanting in a just appreciation of the import of law and authority in general,—a defect closely connected with the false view taken of the Old Testament in Schleiermacher's theology and philosophy of religion, and with his half-Gnostic ultra-Rationalism.
The freedom for which Neander so zealously contends is of quite a latitudinarian sort, running at times into indefiniteness and arbitrariness, and covering Sabellian, Semiarian, Anabaptist,
Quakerish, and other dangerous errors, with the mantle of charity.
Much as we respect the noble disposition from which this springs, we must still never forget the important principle, that true freedom can thrive only in the sphere of authority,—the individual only in due subordination to the general; and that genuine catholicity is as rigid against error, as it is liberal towards the various Menifee of truth.
Neander views Christianity and the church, not, indeed, as necessarily opposed to each other, yet as two separate and more or less mutually exclusive spheres.
In the mind, at least, of the whole ancient Eastern and Western church, these two conceptions virtually coincide, or, at all events, are as closely related as soul and body; and the one is always the measure of the other.
This is abundantly proved by the examples of Irenzeus, Tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrose, Augustine, Athanasius, Chrysostom, Anselm, Bernard, &c., even according to Neander's own representations of them.
But the very title of his large work, 'General History of the Christian Religion and Church," seems to involve the idea, to which a one-sided Protestant view of the world may easily lead, that there is a Christian religion owt of and beside the church.
On this point we venture no positive decision ; but we think that such a separation can hardly be reconciled with Paul's doctrine of the church, as the "body of Jesus Christ," "the fulness of him, that filleth all in all.'
The future must reveal whether Christianity can be upheld without the divine institution of the church ;? that is, whether the soul
* In this war with the Hegelian philosophy and its panlogism, he frequently gave way, ocesionally in his prefaces, but oftener in private conversation, to an impatience and vehemence which seemed inconsistent with his usual calmness and gentleness.
But hatred, in this case, was only inverted love.
We remember the polemic zeal of St John against the Gnostics of his day.
? In which case the Bible and Tract Societies, for example (or, according to Dr Rothe, the State), would assume the functions of the ministry, and instead of being in the church,
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§ 35. DR NEANDER.
UES) can live without the body; whether it will not, at last, resolve itself into a ghost or Gnostic phantom, as certainly as the body without the soul sinks into a corpse.
Meanwhile we hold to the maxim: Where Ohrist is, there also is the church, his body ; and where the church is, there also is Christ, her head, and all grace; and what God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.* With these principal faults of Neander's Church
History, which we have comprehended under the term " unchurchliness," in the wide sense, though, on the other hand, with its above named merits too, are more or less closely connected several other subordinate defects.
Neander is pre-eminently the historian, so to speak, of the invisible church, and has, therefore, exhibited the development of Christian doctrine and Christian
_ life, especially so far as these express themselves in single theo_logians and pious men, in the most thorough and original way.
In this he has, in general, surpassed all his predecessors.
On the contrary, in what pertains more to the outward manifestation of the church, to its bodily form, his contemplative, idealistic turn allows him less interest.
This appears at once in his sections on the constitution of the church, where the subject is treated, even in the first period, in a very unsatisfactory manner, and under the influence of his antipathy to the hierarchical element; which, we may here remark, undeniably made its appearance as early as the second century, in the Epistles of Ignatius, too groundlessly charged by him with interpolation, even in their shorter form.
For the worldly and political aspect of church history, with which the department of ecclesiastical polity has chiefly to do; the connection of the church with the state; the play of human passions, which, alas! are perpetually intruding even into the most sacred affairs, the godly man, in his guileless, childlike simplicity and his recluse student life, had, at any rate, no very keen eye." But while he takes little notice of small and as auxiliary associations, would usurp its place, and make it no longer necessary.
We are of opinion, however, that Tract Societies and other such voluntary associations, in proportion as they should go beyond their original sphere, and seek to put themselves in the place of the church of God, would lose the confidence of the sound Christian public and the blessing of Heaven.
1 Coleridge somewhere remarks:
" Christianity, without a church exercising spiritual authority, is vanity and delusion."
2 Dr Hagenbach, in his fine article on Neander in the "Studien und Kritiken," 1851,
§ 35. Dk NEANDER.
[GENER. low motives, he enters the more carefuily into the deeper and nobler springs of actions and events.
Tor the superficial pragmatism of his instructor, Planck, who often derives the most important controversies from the merest accidents and the most corrupt sources, he thus substitutes a far more spiritual and profound pragmatism, which makes the interest of religion the main factor in church history.
If he sometimes causes us almost to forget that the kingdom of God is in the world, it is only to bring out the more forcibly the great truth of that declaration of Christ, which he has characteristically taken as a motto for each volume of his larger work: " My kingdom is not of this world."
Equally lacking was the excellent Neander in a cultivated sense for the esthetic or artistic in church history; though this defect, again, appears as the shadow of a virtue, arising from the unworldly character of his mind.
Had he lived in the first centuries, he, with Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, and others, would have looked upon art, so prostituted to the service of heathen idolatry, as a vain show, inconsistent with the humble condition of the church, if not as an actual pompa diaboli.
This, indeed, is by no means his view.
He is not puritanically, from principle, opposed to art.
The all-pervading, leavenlike nature of the Gospel is one of his favourite thoughts.
He advocates even the use of painting "for the glorifying of religion; agreeably to the spirit of Christianity, which should reject nothing purely human, but appropriate, pervade, and sanctify all; and in his account of the image controversies, he approves the middle course between the two extremes of worship of images and war upon them. But a full description of the influence of Christianity upon this sphere of human activity, a history of church sculpture, painting, architecture, music, and poetry, as well as of all that belongs to the symbolic show of the medieval Catholic worship, is not to be looked for in his work.
_In this respect he is far surpassed by the spirited, though much less spiritual Hase, who was the first to interweave the history of Christian art into p. 588, likewise notices this honourable defect of his character, and adds :—*The other extreme is found, perhaps in Gfrorer, who takes delight in tracing the intricacies of intrigue and chicanery, but, in so doing, leaves the religious agency out of view.
See, for example, the notice of the Gotteschalk controversy in his history of the Carlovingians."
? Kirchengeschichte, iii., p. 400.
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§ 35. DR NEANDER.
the general body of church history, with his elegant taste, in short, but expressive and pointed sketches.
But Neander's indifference to the beautiful as such is fairly balanced, to a great extent, by his merit, in not allowing himself to be repelled, like polite wits and worldlings, by the homely and poor servant-form in which the divine on earth is often veiled; in discerning the real worth of the heavenly treasure in earthen vessels, of the rich kernel even under a rough shell ;-or, as he himself says of Tertullian, in " recognising, and bringing out from beneath its temporal obscurity, the stamp of divinity in real life.'
From the same point of view must we judge, finally, Neander's style.
His writing moves along with heavy uniformity and wearisome verbosity, without any picturesque alternation of light and shade, without rhetorical elegance or polish, without com_ prehensive classification; like a noiseless stream over an unbroken plain.
Thus far it can by no means be recommended as a model of historical delineation.
But, on the other hand, by its perfect naturalness, its contemplative unction, and its calm presentation of the subject in hand, it appeals to sound feeling, and faithfully reflects the finest features of the great man's character, his simplicity and his humility.
'The golden mean here appears to us to lie between the unadorned and uncoloured plainness of a Neander and the dazzling brilliancy of a Macaulay. re But, in spite of all these faults, Neander still remains, on the ' whole, beyond doubt the greatest church historian thus far of the -nineteenth century.
Great, too, especially in this, that he never _ suffered his renown to obscure at all his sense of the sinfulness and weakness of every human work in this world? With all his
' comprehensive knowledge, he justly regarded himself as, among many others, merely a forerunner of a new creative epoch of + Preface to the second edition of his Antignosticus, Geist des Tertullian, p. xi.
Comp. the striking remarks of Hagenbach, loc. ctt., p.589, who rightly demands for the perfection of historical science, that it "should catch upon the mirror of the fancy, from real life, the most different impressions of all times; copy the past with artistic freedom; create it, as it were, anew; breathe into the conditions of bygone days a fresh life, yet without allowing itself to be blinded by their charms.
This is the union of poetry with history, towards which the modern age is striving."
2 Comp. the touching words at the close of his Dedication to his friend, Dr Julius
Miiller, in the second edition of his Tertullian, written a year before his death :—" Although like you, I well know that no man is worthy of celebrity and veneration ; that in all we know or do, we are, and must ever be, beggars and sinners."
§35. DR NEANDER.
[ GENER. ever-young Christianity ; and towards that time he gladly stretched his vision, with the prophetic gaze of faith and hope, from amidst the errors and confusion around him.
'" We stand," says he,! on the line between an old world and a new, about to be called into being by the ever fresh energy of the Gospel. For the fourth time an epoch in the life of our race is in preparation by means of Christianity.
We, therefore, can furnish, in every respect, but pioneer work for the period of the new creation, when life and science shall be regenerated, and the wonderful works of God proclaimed with new tongues of fire."
To the school of Schleiermacher and Neander, in the wide sense, belongs the majority of the latest theologians of Germany, who have become known in the field of church and doctrine history, by larger or smaller, general or monographic works ; Hoss-
BACH, RHEINWALD, VoGT, SEMISCH, PIPER, JACOBI, BINDE-
MANN, SCHLIEMANN, HERZOG, HENRY, ERBKAM, GUERICKR,
LINDNER, and Kurtz (the last three having, however, a decided leaning to strict Lutheran orthodoxy) ; but especially
LEHNERDT,
SCHENKEL,
HUNDESHAGEN, HAGENBACH,
and ULLMANN, who are, perhaps, the most learned and original of all here named.
The compends of Jacobi, Guericke, Lindner, and Kurtz have already been mentioned ; the others have written valuable contributions to various branches of historical literature, particularly biography. From Hagenbach, for instance, we have a Doctrine History, and, in more popular style for the general reader, an interesting work on Protestantism, and another on the first three centuries ; which, by their simple, clear vivacity, and freedom from technical pedantry, commend themselves even to English taste.
Hundeshagen and Schenkel have likewise bestowed their chief strength upon the nature and _ history of German Protestantism; the former, at the same time, touching, with the soundest discernment, upon many of its weaknesses, and the bad effects of a disproportionate literary activity, from which Germany has long suffered.
But still more distinguished is Ullmann, Professor in Heidelberg, whom we consider, next to Neander, the most eminent church historian of Schleiermacher's school.
His monograph on Gregory Nazianzen (A.D.
* Preface to his Leben Jesu, 1st ed. p. 9, et seq.
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§ 36. DR BAUR.
1825), and still more his work on the Reformers before the Reformation (two volumes, 1841-2), are, for thorough learning, calm clearness, and classic elegance, real masterpieces of church historiography.
From this mild and amiable author we may, perhaps, still look fora general church history, which, as to form and style, would undoubtedly greatly surpass that of Neander.
Among the historians, who, though not professional theologians, have yet made church history the subject of their study, we cannot omit to mention, in this connection, the celebrated LEoPOLD RANKE, Professor in Berlin, and author of the History of the Popes in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and of German History in the Age of the Reformation.
He is not a man of system, and seldom rises to general philosophical views ; but he has an uncommonly keen eye for details and individuals, and is in this respect akin to the school of Schleiermacher, and still more to Dr Hase.
With this he combines fine diplomatic tact and shrewdness—the power to reveal the most secret springs of historical movements, and that, too, in part from original unprinted sources, especially from accounts of embassies and private correspondence.
And he can present the results of his thoroughly original investigations with graphic perspicuity and lively elegance, affording his readers, at the same time, instruction and delightful entertainment.
He might be termed, in many respects, the German Macaulay.
§ 36. Dr Baur.
Pantheistic Rationalism and Modern Gnosticism.
In direct opposition to the Neandrian style of church history stands the new Tiibingen school, in close connection with the Hegelian philosophy.
This philosophy carries out in all directions, and brings into well-proportioned shape the fundamental views of Schelling ;! though, at the same time, it is in a high degree independent, and a wonderful monument of comprehensive knowledge, and of the power of human thought.
Its original peculiarity, which distinguished it from the systems of 1 Hegel bears the same relation to Schelling as Aristotle to Plato, as Wolf to Leibnitz.
What the latter have produced, the former have systematized and logically completed.
That such a relation of dependence is consistent with uncommon metaphysical talents and the most comprehensive learning, is strikingly seen in Aristotle, and in the kindred and equally gifted mind of Hegel.
28h
§ 36. DR BAUR.
[GENER.
Fichte and Schleiermacher, was its objective and so far historical spirit.
It was, ina certain sense, a philosophy of restoration, in rigid antagonism to the revolutionary, self-sufficient Illuminationism of the last century.
To arbitrary self-will it opposed stern law; to private individual opinion, the general reason of the world and the public opinion of the state.
It regarded history, not as the play of capricious chance, but as the product of the necessary, eternal laws of the spirit.
Its maxim is: Everything reasonable is actual, and everything actual (all that truly exists) is reasonable.
It sees, in all ages of history, the agency of higher powers; not, indeed, of the Holy
Ghost in the Biblical sense, yet of a rational world-spirit, which makes use of individual men for the accomplishment of its plans.
Hegel acknowledges Christianity as the absolute religion, and ascribes to the ideas of the Incarnation and the Trinity, though in a view very different from that of the church doctrine, a deep philosophical truth, carrying the idea of trinity into his view of the whole universe, the world of matter as well as of mind.
But these general principles were capable in theology of leading to wholly opposite views, according as the objective forces, by which Hegel conceived the process of history to be started and ruled, were taken to be real existences or mere abstract conceptions, according as the mind was guided by a living faith in Christianity, or by a purely speculative and scientific interest.
Thus arise from the Hegelian philosophy two very different theological schools—a positive and a negative—a churchly and an antichristian.
They are related to one another as the Alexandrian fathers, Clement and Origen, who brought the Hellenistic, particularly the Platonic philosophy, into the service of Christianity, were related to the Gnostics, who by the same philosophy caricatured the Christian religion, and to the NeoPlatonists, who arrayed themselves directly against it.
The notorious Strauss, one of the infidel Hegelians, has applied to these parties the political terms— right wing and left wing, calling the neutral and intermediate party the centre.
The leaders of the Right are MARHEINEKE, DAvB, and GoéscHEL (the last two, however, having nothing to do with church history); of the Left, BAUR, and his disciples, SrRAUSS, ZELLER,
INTROD.]
§ 36. DR BAUR.
and SCHWEGLER, all from Wirtemberg, and all students and _ afterwards teachers in Tiibingen, so that they may be called the Tiibingen school.
As the Tiibingen theologians have paid more attention to historical theology than the older Hegelians, who devoted themselves almost exclusively to systematic divinity, we turn our eye first to them, and more particularly to Baur, on whom they all depend.
Dr FERDINAND CHRISTIAN Baur, Professor of Historical Theology in Tiibingen, is a man of imposing learning, bold criticism, surprising power of combination, and restless productiveness ; but, properly, too philosophical to be a faithful historian, and too historical to be an original philosopher ; a pure theorist,
_ moreover, and intellectualist, destitute of all sympathy with the _ practical religious interests of Christianity and the church.
He has founded, since the appearance of his article on the | Christ-party in Corinth, a formal historical, or rather unhis_ torical, school, which, in the negation of every thing positive,
_ and in destructive criticism upon the former orthodox views of | primitive Christianity, has far outstripped Semler and his followers.
We might, therefore, have placed it in the fourth period, as a new phase of the Rationalistic mode of treating history.
But, in the first place, this would too much interrupt the chronological order ; and then again there is, after all, a considerable scientific difference between the older and the later
Rationalism ; although, in their practical results, when consistently carried out, they come to the same thing, namely, the destruction of the church, and of Christianity.2
The vulgar Rationalism proceeds from the common human understanding (whence its name, rationalismus communis or vulgaris), and employs, accordingly, a tolerably popular, but exceedingly dry, spiritless style.
The more refined Rationalism deals with the speculative reason, and clothes its ideas in the stately garb of a high-sounding scientific terminology and dexterous logic.
The former is deistic, abstractly sundering the Divine and the human, 1 Die Christuspartes in der korinthischen Gemeinde, der Gegensatz des petrinischen und paulinischen Christenthums in der altesten Kirche, in the " Tiibinger Zeitschrift fiir Theologie," 1831, No. 4.
2 Just in proportion as the speculative Rationalism is popularized, it sinks to the level of the vulgar.
It ill becomes the Hegelians, therefore, to look down, with their supercilious scientific contempt, upon the latter.
VOL. I.
§ 36. DR BAUR.
[auner.
| so as to allow no real intercommunion of both.
The latter is pantheistic, confounding God and the world, and deifying the human spirit.
The one is allied to the Ebionistic heresy ; the other, to the Gnostic.
The first holds fast the ideas of so-called natural religion, God, freedom, and immortality, and endeavours to keep on some sort of terms with the Bible.
The last recognises neither a personal God, nor a personal immortality of man ; denies the apostolic authorship of almost all the books of the New Testament; and resolves the most important historical statements of the Bible into mythological conceits or even intentional impositions.
Both give themselves out for legitimate products of the Protestant principle of free inquiry and resistance to human authority; but both keep entirely to the negative, destructive side of the Reformation—have no concern for its positively religious, evangelical character, and must, in the end, destroy Protestantism itself, as well as Catholicism.
BAvR, in virtue of his predominant turn for philosophy, has applied himself with particular zest to the most difficult parts of doctrine history.
These suit him much better than biographical monographs, which require a lively interest in individual persons.
The extent of his productions since 1831 is really astonishing.
Besides a small text-book of doctrine history and several treatises in various journals, we have from him a number of larger works, of which we may mention particularly those on the Gnosis (1835), in which he wrongly and somewhat arbitrarily includes, not only the proper Gnosticism of antiquity, but also all attempts at a philosophical apprehension of Christianity ; on Manicheism (1831) ; on the Historical Development of the Doctrine of the Atonement (1838), and of the Dogma of the Trinity and Incarnation (three stout volumes, 1841-3); all characterized by extensive, thorough, and well-digested learning, great philosophical acumen, freshness of combination, and skilful description—forming epochs in their kind—but too much under the influence of his own false preconceptions,! to claim justly the praise of invariable objective fidelity.
1 True, this school, especially Strauss in his Leben Jesu, boasts of freedom from all philosophical or doctrinal prepossession.
But, with Strauss, this consists in freedom from all leaning towards the Christian faith, and a full bias towards unbelief, which wholly unfits him for any right apprehension or representation of the life of Jesus.
Absolute freedom from prepossession, in an author of any character, is a sheer impossibility and
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§ 36. DR BAUR.
ZOU The Tibingen school, however, has made most noise with its investigations respecting the history of primitive Christianity ; seeking to overthrow in due form the old views on this subject.
This operation was publicly commenced by Dr Davin FREDERICK STRAUSS—a younger pupil of Baur's, but rather more daring and consistent than his master—in his Leben Jesu, which astounded the world in 1835.
In this book he reduces the life of the God-man, with icy, wanton hand, to a dry skeleton of everyday history, and resolves all the Gospel accounts of miracles, partly on the ground of pretended contradictions, but chiefly on account of the offensiveness of their supernatural character to the carnal mind, into a mythical picture of the idea of the Messiah, as it grew unconsciously from the imagination of the first Christians—thus sinking the Gospels, virtually, to the level of heathen mythology.
This, of course, puts an end to the idea of a divine origin of Christianity, and turns its apologetic history of eighteen hundred years into an air-castle, built on pure illusions —a pleasing dream —a tragi-comedy, entitled,
"¢ Much ado about nothing."
The same crafty, sophistical criticism which Strauss did not hesitate to employ upon the inspired biographies of the Saviour,
Baur and several of his younger disciples have applied to the Acts of the Apostles, and to the whole Christian literature of the first and second centuries, gradually constructing an entirely peculiar view 'of early Christianity.
This philosophico-critical construction is most completely exhibited in BaurR's Paulus, der
Apostel Jesu Christi (1845), and SCHWEGLER'S Nachapostolisches Zeitalter (two volumes, 1846).
It makes Christianity proper only a product of the catholic church in the middle of the second century.
In the minds of Jesus, of the twelve apostles, and of the first Christian community, Christianity was only a perfected Judaism, and hence essentially the same as the Ebionism afterwards condemned as heresy.
Paul, the apostle of the Gentiles,—no one knows how he came to be an apostle of Jesus
Christ,—was the first to emancipate it from the bondage of Jewish particularism, and to apprehend it as a new and peculiar system ; absurdity.
The grand requisite for the theologian is, not that he have no preconceptions, but that his preconceptions be just, and such as the nature of the case demands,
Without being fully possessed beforehand with the Christian faith, a man can rightly understand neither the Holy Scriptures nor the history of the church.
§ 36. DR BAUR.
[oEneR. and that, too, in violent, irreconcilable opposition to the other apostles, particularly to Peter, the leading representative of Jewish Christianity. Of this the Epistle to the Galatians and the wellknown collision at Antioch (Gal. ii. 11, et seg.) give authentic proof; while the Acts of the Apostles throughout, and especially in its description of the apostolic council at Jerusalem, intentionally conceals the difference.
This latter production, falsely attributed to Luke, was not written till towards the middle of the second century; and then, not from a purely historical interest, but with the twofold apologetic object of justifying the Apostle af the Gentiles against the reproaches of the Judaizers, and reconciling the two parties of Christendom.
These objects the unknown author accomplished by making Peter, in the first part, come as near as possible to Paul in his sentiments, that is, approach the free, Gentile-Christian position; and in the latter part, on the contrary, assimilating Paul as much as possible to Peter, or, which is the same thing, to the Ebionites and Judaizers.
A similar pacific design is ascribed to the epistles of Peter and the later epistles of Paul, which all come from the second century ; for, of all the epistles of the New Testament, Baur holds as genuine only those of Paul to the Galatians, Corinthians, and Romans; and even from the Epistle to the Romans he rejects the last two chapters.
At length, after a long and severe struggle, the two violent antagonists, Petrinism and Paulinism, or properly, Ebionism and Gnosticism, became reconciled, and gave rise to the orthodox catholic Christianity. Thegrand agent in completing this mighty change was the fourth Gospel; which, however, is, of course, not the work of the apostle John—though the author plainly enough pretends to be that apostle—but of an anonymous writer in the middle of the secondcentury.
Thus the most profound and spiritual of all productions comes from an obscure nobody; the most sublime and ideal portrait of the immaculate
Redeemer, from an impostor!!
And it is not a real history, but a sort of philosophico-religious romance, the offspring of the speculative fancy of the Christians after the time of the apostles !!
Here this panlogistic school, with its critical acumen and a priori construction, reaches the point where, in its mockery of all outward historical testimony, its palpable extravagance, and violation of all sound common sense, it confutes itself.
" Professing
_INTROD.]
§ 36. DR BAUR.
| themselves to be wise, they became fools.''?
The notion, in itself true and important, of a difference between the Jewish Christi- | anity of Peter and the Gentile Christianity of Paul, is pushed so far, that it becomes a caricature, a Gnostic fable.
The process of sound criticism is tasked to its utmost by the Tubingen school.
The most genuine and reliable testimony of the aposto- 'lic and old catholic church is rejected or suspected; and, on the other hand, the self-contradictory, heretical productions of the second century, Ebionistic and Gnostic whims and distortions of history, are made the sources of the knowledge of primitive
Christianity!
Such a procedure can, of course, amount to nothing but theological romancing, a venturesome traffic in airy hypotheses.
And, in fact, the books of Baur and Schwegler | form, in this respect, fit counterparts to the pseudo-Clementine
Homilies and Recognitions, which charge the apostles James and Peter with a Gnostic Ebionism, and bitterly attack the | Apostle Paul under the name of Simon Magus; clothing their theory in the dress of a historical romance.
Generally speaking, this whole modern construction of primi- 'tive Christianity is, substantially, but a revival, with some modi- 'fication, of the ancient Gnosticism ; and of that, too, mainly in 'its heathen, pseudo-Pauline form.
In truth, Baur and his fol_lowers are, in the principles of their philosophy and criticism,
'the Gnostics of German Protestantism.'
The only difference is, that they are pure theorists and scholars of the study ; while at lleast the more earnest of their predecessors joined with their
: fantastic speculations a rigid asceticism—seeking, by an unnatural mortification of the body, to work out the salvation of the | soul.
It was not, therefore, a mere accident, that Baur, in the very beginning of his theological course, paid so much attention
'to the Gnostic and Manichean systems.
His affinity with the -anti-Judaistic and pseudo-Pauline fanatic, Marcion, is particuq larly striking.
In criticism, he seems to have taken this man 'for his model, only going beyond him.
Marcion retained in his 'canon at least ten of Paul's epistles and the Gospel of Luke;
1 Had the late Dr Mohler lived to see the subsequent course of his former colleague and | opponent in Tiibingen, he would have found in him a strong confirmation of the parallel
| between Protestantism and Gnosticism, which he draws in his able Symbolik, § 27, p. 245, et seq. (6th ed.)
$36. DR BAUR.
[GENER. though he mutilated the latter in a very arbitrary way, to cleanse it of pretended Jewish interpolations.
But Baur rejects all the Gospels, the Acts, all the General Epistles, and all but four of Paul's; and then these four he either arbitrarily clips (condemning, for instance, the last two chapters of the Epistle to the Romans, as a later addition by another pen), or wrests, to suit his own preconceived hypotheses.
This Tubingen school will, no doubt, meet the fate of the old Gnostic heresies.
Its investigations will act with stimulating and fertilizing power upon the church, calling forth, especially, a deeper scientific apprehension and defence of the historical Christianity of antiquity; and, for itself, it will dry up like the streams of the desert, and figure hereafter only in the history of human aberrations and heresies.
The fundamental defect of this destructive method is the entire want of faith, without which it is as impossible duly to understand Christianity, its inspired records, and its inward history, as to perceive light and colour without eyes.
Here this school is on the same footing with the older Rationalism. But it differs from the latter in having a philosophical groundwork.
It rests not, like the works of Semler, Henke, Gibbon, &ce., on an abstract Deism, which denies the presence of God in history ; but upon a logical Pantheism, or a denial of the personality of God, which necessarily brings with it an entire misconception of the personality of man.
Baur finds fault with Neander for recognising merely the individual, nothing general, in doctrine history ; and claims for himself the merit of having advanced this branch of history from the empiric method to the speculative, and of having found, in the idea of the spirit, the motive power of history."
What, then, is this " spirit," this " dogma," which according to his ever recurring high sounding, but pretty empty terminology, '' comes to terms with itself," " unfolds itself in the boundless multiplicity of its predicates, and then gathers itself up again into the unity of self consciousness?"
Is it the personal, living God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ?
Of this that philosophy has, at best, but the name, making it the vehicle of an entirely different conception.
The objective forces, which Baur justly declares to be the factors of history—are they
? Baur: Lehrbuch der christlichen Dogmengeschichte, pp. 52, 58.
Comp., also, the conclusion of his latest work, Die Lpochen der kirklichen Geschichtschreibung, p. 247, et seq.
INTROD.]
§ 36. DR BAUR.
C91 substantial things, living realities?
No! They amount to nothing but bare formulas of the logical understanding, abstract categories, Gnostic phantoms. The entire history of doctrines is, according to this school, a mere fruitless process of thinking, which thinks thought itself; a tedious mechanism of dialectic method; the "reeling off of a fine logical thread ;" which invariably runs out, at last, into Hegelian pantheism.
The labour of the most profound and pious minds for centuries upon the mystery of the Incarnation, the Trinity, the Atonement, results merely in the philosophical formula of the identity of thought and being, the finite and the infinite, the subject and the object !
Thus withers, beneath the simoon of a purely dialectic process, that glorious garden of the Lord, the history of the church and her doctrines, with its boundless wealth of flowers, with its innumerable fruits of love, of faith, of prayer, of holiness.
All becomes a sandy desert of metaphysics, without a green oasis, without a refreshing fountain.
This method fails most, of course, in those parts of church history where the leading interest is that of practical religion ; as in the apostolic period, and the one immediately following.
Here, under the pretence of objective treatment, it falls into the most wretched subjectivity of a hypercriticism, which has no solid ground, and sets at defiance all the laws of history. But even the purely doctrinal investigations of Baur, highly as we are willing to rate their other scientific merits, need complete revision.
For, interested only in speculation, he turns even the church fathers, the schoolmen of the Middle Ages, Calvin and Schleiermacher, into critics and speculators "upon the arid heath ;" sunders their thinking from its ground in their religious life; and hence frequently loads them with opinions of which they never dreamed.
This is true even of his celebrated reply to Mohler's Symbolik (1834), though written before his Gnosticism had fully developed itself. The Protestantism which he seeks to guard from the ingenious assaults of Mohler is by no means the faith of the Reformers in its purity, but corrupted by elements of modern pantheism and 1 Here apply, in their full force, the words of the poet :—
* Ich sag' es dir: ein Kerl, der speculirt, Ist wie ein Thier, auf diirrer Heide Von einem bosen Geist im Kreis herum gefiihrt,
Und rings umher liegt schone griine Weide."
29e
§ 36. DR BAUR.
[GENnER. fatalism.
Such assistance the true evangelical Christian is compelled to decline ; and he often feels tempted to join hands with the pious Catholic, in common opposition to modern scepticism and infidelity.
Baur has since gone much farther from the proper ground and limits of history.
He justly regards the grand antagonists, Catholicism and Protestantism, as the two poles, around which the entire history of the church now turns.
But he looks at Protestantism almost exclusively in its negative aspect.
"* Protestantism," says he, "is the principle of individual freedom, freedom of faith and conscience, in which the person is ~ a law unto himself, in opposition to all the outward authority involved in the Catholic idea of the church."!
Catholicism, he owns, was indispensable, as the only basis on which this freedom could arise ;? and, so far, has great significance and full historical authority ; but only for the past..
"' The Reformation is the grand turning-point whence the whole tendency of the idea of the church seems to be, to unravel again the web which itself had woven.
If the development of the church previously moved only forward, it now appears to have suddenly veered, to have turned backwards, and to have bent back into itself.
Opposition and protestation, hostility, negation of what exists ; this is the spirit which now animates the church" (p. 255). Though he immediately adds, that this negation is, on the other hand, a deepening, which will lead to a new affirmation of what is true and permanent; yet, in his system, this is saying very little or nothing.
According to the whole texture of his views, as above explained, the history of Protestantism is a progressive dissolution of the church, as such; till at last, even the Holy Scriptures, on which the Reformers planted themselves in protesting against human additions, are, by a shameless, profane, conceited hypercriticism, snatched from under our feet, and nothing is left us, but our own natural, helpless selves, with that empty notion of likeness to God, with which the fearful tragedy of the fall began.
This is the legitimate and necessary result of this negative Protestantism of the extreme Left.
* Die Epochen der kirchl. Geschichtschreibung, p. 257.
Ah PAO) : Protestantism must itself remain an inexplicable riddle, if, to be what it has become, it could think of itself in any other way, than by having its consciousness of itself mediated by papacy and Catholicism."
INTROD.]
§ 37. MARHEINEKE.
This extensive literature of modern philosophical and critical antichristianity would be absolutely disheartening, and would awaken the most gloomy anticipations for Protestantism, which imbosoms it, and even tolerates some of its champions in her chairs of theology, were we not assured, by the cheering testimony of many centuries of history, that God, in his infinite wisdom and love, can bring good out of all evil, and make all the aberrations of the human mind aid the triumph of the truth.
Like all previous enemies of Christianity, this most learned, most ingenious, and therefore most dangerous form of ultra, false, infidel Protestantism, which appears in the exegetical and historical productions of the Tubingen school, will also surely miss its aim.
Nay, it has already involuntarily given a mighty impulse to the productive energy of the positive, evangelical, churchly theology.
As Strauss' " Leben Jesu" has already been philosophically refuted by the counter productions of Tholuck,
Neander, Lange, Hbrard, Hofmann, Liicke, Ullmann, &c. ; so also the speculations of Baur, Schwegler, and Zeller, on the age of the apostles and the succeeding period, have been directly or indirectly assailed with the invincible weapons of thorough learning, and their inward weakness exposed, by the investigations of Dorner (in his History of Christology), Lechler (on the Apostolic and Postapostolic Periods), Weitzel (on the Paschal
Controversies of the First Three Centuries), Wieseler (on the Chronology of the Acts of the Apostles), Meander (in the last edition of his History of the Planting and Training of the Church), Bunsen (on the Ignatian Epistles, and on Hippolytus),
Thiersch (on the Formation of the New Testament Canon, and on the Apostolic Church), and others.
But certainly no work has yet appeared, which fully sets forth the whole history of the early church in its organic connection, with steady reference to these modern errors.
§ 37. Marheineke—Leo—Rothe—Dorner—Thiersch.
Recapitulation.
The right or conservative wing of the Hegelian school sought to reconcile this philosophical system with the faith of the Bible and the church; though it must be confessed, that in so doing they often too much spiritualized the articles of faith, and
29h
§ 37. MARHEINEKE.
[GENER. unwittingly did them more or less violence by their logic, resolving them pretty much into unsubstantial notions and metaphysical abstractions.
Their case was even worse than that of Origen, in whom Platonism, instead of always bending to Christianity, sometimes gained the mastery over it. The older Hegelians of this class, moreover, have confined their labours almost entirely to the philosophical and systematic branches of thcology. MARHEINEKE alone (+1847) was, at the same time, a historian.
His General Church History of Christianity (First Part, 1806) is the first attempt to construct a history on the basis of the modern speculations, and to set up a more objective method against the rationalistic subjectivism.
But the work is very defective, and, at all events, unfinished.
Of far more permanent value is his History of the German Reformation, drawn from the sources, and presented in a purely objective way, but without the learned apparatus, and intended more for the general reader.
This work, unsurpassable in its kind, is fortunately free from all that heavy dialectic accoutrement in which his "' Dogmatik"' is clothed, and is distinguished for its genuine national, old German style and spirit, peculiarly appropriate to the character of its leading hero, the thoroughly German Luther.
Marheineke has also won laurels in doctrine history and symbolism, and especially by his extended and on the whole faithful exhibition of the system of Catholicism (3 vols., 1810-13).
As to orthodoxy, this theologian, though a member and advocate of the United Evangelical Church of Prussia, was predominantly of the Lutheran doctrinal stamp.
This confession, with its closer affinity to Catholicism, speculation, and mysticism, suited the Hegelian mode of treating history better than the genius of the Reformed church, which recedes farther from the previous traditions, gives larger scope to subjectivity, and concerns itself more with practice than with theory.
With the younger WIGGERs, author of a work on Kcclesiastical Statistics (1842-3) ; still more with MARTENSEN, a Danish divine, but of purely German education, and a very spirited original theologian ; with THEODORE
KuterotH, the excellent author of an extended philosophical introduction to doctrine history; with Kaunis, who has published a work on the history of the doctrine concerning the Holy Ghost
* Four volumes, 2d ed.
Berlin, 1831-34.
INTROD. }
S537 eLbO.
(1847), and another on the doctrine of the Eucharist (1851); and with the jurist GoscHEL, only an amateur, however, in theology, a confused compound of heterogeneous elements; Hegel,
Goethe, and Christianity ;—with all these the Hegelian philosophy has become a bridge to strict symbolical Lutheranism.
But, on the same ground, the method of history started by Hegel may be considered as involving also, to some extent, a tendency towards Catholicism.
By its objective character it is better fitted than the more subjective method of the school of Schleiermacher and Neander to appreciate and do full justice to the heroes of the Roman church, and especially to the Middle
Ages.
We have an example of this in F. R. Hassr's monograph on Anselm of Canterbury ;' a model of purely objective and minute, yet living and clear historical representation, superior to Neander's Bernard.
This Catholicizing tendency is still more visible in HEINRICH LEo, and assumes with him an almost Romanizing form. Though not a theologian, he has yet, in his Universal History, carefully noticed religion and the church; and we cannot here omit his name.
Leo, a man of great originality and native force, but rough, unsparing, and prone to extravagance, altogether threw off, it is true, in later life, the strait-jacket of the Hegelian logic and dialectics; but the influence of this philosophy still appears in his making the subject entirely subordinate to the objective powers ; the individual to the general.
Since he exchanged his youthful free-thinking, however, which vented itself in his worthless History of the Jewish Commonwealth, for positive Christianity, he has meant by these objective forces, not dialectic forms and notions, but concrete realities, laws and institutions of the personal, Christian God, which to resist is sin and guilt, which to obey is man's true freedom, honour, and glory.
He regards history as proceeding from above,—the will of God, not the popular will, and least of all the individual, as its motive power.
Hence his favourable view of the Middle Ages, and his unfavourable, nay, one-sided and unjust judgment of the Reformation ;
1 The first volume, which appeared in 1848, exhibits the life, the second, 1852, the doctrine of the great father of the medieval scholasticism.
The author holds up his hero with evident love and admiration, though without obtruding his own opinions, except in the introductory sections.
§ 37. ROTHE:
[ GENER. though his fault here may well be excused as a reaction against the blind eulogies ofthat movement. lLeo's view of history is thoroughly ethical, churchly, conservative, absolutely anti-revolutionary, even to the favouring of despotism.
He feels it to be his duty, amidst the distractions and instability of modern Europe, to lay the strongest emphasis on law, the necessity of the principle of authority and the general will.
In this respect he goes undoubtedly too far; he overlooks the real wants of the people, and gets into conflict with the progressive spirit of the age.
Yet in a polemical character so harsh, violent, irritable, and uncompromising as Leo, who often falls like a bulldog on what displeases him,! we cannot always take single expressions in their strict sense any more than in the case of Luther, whom he much resembles in temperament, though his wrath is directed towards entirely different enemies.
Hence, we are not to understand, from his Catholicizing tendency, that he would hold the restoration of an antiquated state of things—say of the Middle
Ages—as possible, or even desirable; but, with many of the profoundest minds of our time, he doubtless has in his eye a new age, which will embody what is true in the past, and yet at the same time stand on peculiar and higher ground.
Anticipations of such an advancement appear, also, in the works of the two professors of theology in Bonn, Dr R. Rorue, and Dr J. A. DoRNER, whom we consider the most important speculative divines of the day.
They have confined themselves chiefly, it is true, to the dogmatic and ethical fields (especially
Rothe); but they merit the most honourable mention, also, as historians.
The philosophical principles of their theology, and, through these, their conceptions of history, have plainly received powerful impulse and direction from the philosophy of Hegel.
But at the same time they have appropriated all the elements of Schleiermacher's theology.
These two ingredients they have compounded with genuine originality, and wrought into a peculiar shape.
Rothe's '' Theological Ethics" stands forth as a ? Particularly in his occasional articles in the " Evang. Kirchenzeitung" of his friend
Hengstenberg, who is, like himself, completely anti-democratic, anti-republican, and absolutistic in his views of both church and state, and in this respect wholly at variance with the Anglo-American taste, with which in other points in his orthodoxy, especially his views of inspiration, and his exegesis, he accords better than most other German theologians.
INTROD. ]
§ 37. ROTHE.
aot thoroughly original work, and in fact as a masterpiece of speculative divinity, with which very few works of ancient or modern times can compare.
On account of this relation of both Rothe and Dorner to Hegel and Schleiermacher, and their essential agreement in a positively Christian, and yet genuinely speculative theology, we here put the two together, though in many other respects they differ.
Dr Rorus, in 1837, published the first volume of a work on the Beginnings of the Christian Church, and its Constitution, which, in our view, has not yet received the attention it merits.
It consists chiefly of an exceedingly thorough and acute investigation of the origin and development of the episcopal constitution, and (what is closely connected with this) of the Catholic doctrine concerning the historical, visible church, its unity, holiness, catholicity, apostolicity, and exclusiveness.
It comes to the conclusion, that the episcopate, as a necessary substitute for the apostolate in maintaining and promoting unity, reaches back even to the days of St John, and thus has the apostolic sanction ; and that the above-named idea of the church arose by an inward necessity in the first centuries, particularly through the influence of Ignatius,
Irenzeus, Cyprian, and Augustine, and lay at the bottom of the whole conception of Christianity in those days.?
This conclusion, if true, must have a powerful bearing on the final solution of the church question, which is now pressing so heavily on Protestant Christendom.
But while Rothe puts the whole weight of antiquity into the scale of Catholicism, where all the church fathers, in their prevailing spirit, belong, he is, in so doing, far from giving up Protestantism.
His position, in this respect, he sets forth in language which we particularly commend to the consideration of our fanatical anti-Catholics:—'" There is no more effectual way of defending Protestantism, than by just acknowledging, nay, expressly asserting, that, in the past, Ca1 The continuation he has unfortunately been obliged, thus far, to withhold from the public, on account of the almost universal opposition to his view of the relation of church and state.
2 Hence Rothe not improperly terms his work (Pref., p. ix.), a Protestant counterpart to Mohlers " Unity of the Church," a production, " to which," says he with noble impartiality, "I never return without joyfully admiring its original, profound, and, in the main, true conception of the inmost self-consciousness of the primitive church.
Perhaps this expression is not the only one, which might draw upon me the charge of Catholicizing.
I will never allow myself to be intimidated by such a report."
§ 37. ROTHE.
[ernen. tholicism had, in its essence, full historical reality and authority ; that it contained deepinward truth, high moral glory and power."
He also supposes, however, that the Reformation of the sixteenth century was a shock to the whole institution of the church in its previous form, a serious breach in its unity and catholicity; and at the same time, he rejects the distinction of a visible and invisible church, as a mere shift of the older Protestant theologians, to save the catholic idea of the church, whose visible, historical reality had disappeared!
He, therefore, vindicates Protestantism on the hypothesis, which he unfolds at large in his philosophical introduction, that the church is but a temporary vehicle and a transient form of Christianity, through which it passes into the more perfect form of the kingdom of God, that is, according to Rothe, an ideal state, a theocracy.
This result, moreover, is not fully attained till the end of the historical development; and thus the institution of the church is still, for a time, even in Protestantism, of relative authority and necessity along with the state, in its present imperfect form, until the latter shall become wholly penetrated and transformed by Christianity.
Rothe here starts from Hegel's overstrained idea of the state ; idealizing it, however, even far more than Hegel ; considering it, not indeed as it now is, but as it will one day be (?), the most suitable form of moral society ; and identifying it with the idea of the kingdom of God itself.
This is not the place to go more minutely into this remarkable theory.
But we must here repeat the observation, previously made respecting Neander, that such a separation between the kingdom of God and the church seems to us to have sufficient ground neither in exegesis nor in history ;
+ «Tn consequence of the Reformation," says Rothe, loc. cit., p. 103, " the visible church, a.e. the church, properly so called (which is, in fact, essentially the body of Christ, therefore visible), had been lost.
For though even the evangelical party did not dispense with an outward religious union, yet it had no longer a chwrch ; its union was not really churchly ; because it had to give up the element of catholicity, @.e. universality and unity, which is absolutely essential to the church."
But the Protestants, Rothe goes on to say, being unwilling to relinquish entirely this old hallowed notion of a church and communion of saints, sought a substitute for it, and thus hit upon the idea of an invisible church; to this they transferred all those glorious predicates of unity, universality, holiness, and apostolicity, which they denied to the historical and visible Roman Catholic church.
This whole Protestant conception of an invisible church, Rothe calls (p. 109) "a mere hypothesis, a pure fiction, a notion involving a contradiction ;" and, in the introduction to his work, he brings forth arguments against it, which are ingenious, and which, in fact, it is not so easy satisfactorily to refute, although there is, as we believe, a very important truth at the bottom of that old Protestant distinction.
INTROD. ]
§ 37. DORNER.
and that we very much doubt whether Christianity could perpetuate itself without the church, which, St. Paul tells us, is the body of Christ, the fulness of him that filleth all in all.
True, we too believe, that Catholicism in its former condition can never be restored, that Protestantism is preparing the way for a new outward form of the kingdom of God, and that church and state will, at last, be united in one theocracy; not, however, by the church merging in the state, but rather conversely, by the state being taken up and glorified in the church, as art in worship, as science in theosophy, as nature. in grace, as time in eternity.
Of the indestructible permanence of the church we are assured by the express promise of our Lord, that the gates of hell shall not prevail against her.t Even from her present shattered and apparently ruined condition, therefore, she will rise, phenixlike, in loftier beauty and new power; convert the whole world to Christ ; and thenceforth, as his bride, reign blissfully over the new heavens and new earth for ever.
From Dr Dorner we have a very valuable (but, in its new, enlarged form, not yet finished) history of the doctrine of the Incarnation of God and the Person of Christ (1845).
He here traces the development of this central doctrine of Christianity, on which the solution of all other theological problems depends, and which is justly, therefore, again claiming the serious attention of our age.
He sets forth the history with exemplary thoroughness,-keen penetration, perfect command of the copious material, and in dignified, happy language, though not entirely without a certain scientific pretension and stiffness. At the same time he makes it bear throughout, and triumphantly, against Baur's investigations on the same subject.
He is not a whit behind his opponent in speculative talent, while he far excels him in sound comprehension, and writes, in the service not merely of science, but also of the church.
Similar in spirit and con1 This is the natural sense of the well-known prophecy, Matt. xvi. 18, and of many other passages of Scripture.
Here also, indeed, Rothe, p. 93, proposes to distinguish txxanoia from Bauotrela Seov, and to refer the promise, 7vAc adov od xaric xvoovely avurns, merely to the time of conflict.
But this borders on sophistry, and has all exegetical tradition against it.
According to Rothe's view, we should have to expect from our Lord the declaration, that the church, founded by him upon a rock, will gradually perish, to make room for the kingdom of God, or the ideal universal state.
Comp. our remarks on this important book of Rothe's, in the Deutsche Kirchenfreund, vol. v., p. 171, et seq.
§ 37. THIERSCH.
[GENER. tents, but not so full and satisfactory, is the work of GEORGE AuGustus MEIER on the history of the doctrine of the Trinity
(1844), in part, also.a successful positive refutation of Baur's work on the Trinity and Christology.
In this connection we must mention, finally, a younger theologian, Dr Henry W. J. THIERSCH, one of the most learned opponents of Dr Baur and the Tibingen school. He has already written several interesting works ;—Lectures on Catholicism and Protestantism, a kind of conciliatory symbolism (1846); a book on the Formation of the New Testament Canon, against the modern hypercritics and dealers in hypotheses (1845); and a History of the Christian Church in Primitive Times, the first volume of which, embracing the apostolic period, appeared in 1852.1
Thiersch has no sympathy whatever with the Hegelian philosophy,? and as little with Schleiermacher's theology ; but fights against both with a zeal which reminds one of Tertullian's war against Gnosticism.
In his doctrinal persuasion, he was at first decidedly Lutheran, with a strong leaning to an ascetic pietism.
But of late he has fallen out with the present state of Protestantism at large, and, in honourable disinterestedness and impatient haste, has resigned his professorship at Marburg and joined the Irvingites.
Of all Protestant sects, this is the most churchly, catholic, hierarchical, sacramental, and liturgical.
It arose in England A.D. 1831, and has of late made some little progress also in Germany and in the United States.
It has in view the restoration of the apostolic church, with its peculiar supernatural offices, particularly the apostolate, and with its miraculous powers, as speaking with tongues and prophecy ; the collection of all the vital forces of the Catholic and Protestant churches into this community, to save them from the approaching judgment ; and preparation for the glorious return of the Lord.
Thiersch is related to this so-called " Apostolic Commu1 This work has been already translated into English by an Irvingite:
The History of the Christian Church, vol.%.
The Church in the Apostolic Age. By Henry W. J. Thiersch, Dr of Phil. and Theol. Translated from the German by Thomas Carlyle. London. Bosworth.
1852.
The work seems designed for general circulation, and is clothed, therefore, in quite a popular dress.
It is the intention of the author, according to his preface, to bring down the history to the time of Leo the Great and the Council of Chalcedon,
A.D. 451.
2 So far as he speculates at all, he leans towards the later views of Schelling and the philosophy of Von Schaden.
INTROD. |
§ 37. THIERSCH.
SO. nity," as the essentially,catholic and orthodox, and yet schismatic Tertullian was to the kindred sect of the Montanists in the second and third centuries.1 He is the theological representative of Irvingism, and stands mediating between it and Protestantism, especially in Germany.
-But the proper value of his historical works depends not so much, or not exclusively, on these Irvingite peculiarities and extravagances.
It consists, rather, in his clear, elegant, and noble style, which everywhere evinces the classical scholar and worthy son of the celebrated Greek philologian of Munich; in his extensive and thorough acquaintance with patristic literature ; in the lovely spirit of deep and warm, though sometimes enthusiastic and visionary piety, which breathes in all his writings; and in his mild, irenic, conciliatory posture towards the great antagonism of Catholicism and Protestantism.
Even his latest work, the history of the Apostolic Church, is, as he himself says, " not a part of his new activity, as pastor in the Apostolic Community, but a sequel to his former labours as teacher of theology."
Besides, Irvingism contains many elements of truth, well worthy of the most serious consideration ; and it is to be expected, that, through the writings of Thiersch, it will exert some influence on German theology. So Montanism wrought, through Tertullian, on the catholic church, though the system itself shared the inevitable fate of sects, death, without the hope of resurrection.
Only the universal, historical church has the promise that the gates of hell shall not prevail against her.
We have now traced the history of our science down to the labours of our contemporaries.
It runs parallel with, and reflects in an interesting manner the development of the church itself in its different ages.
We have seen how, in the abounding historical literature of Germany, since the appearance of Neander, is mirrored the whole confused diversity of the elements of modern culture—now repelling, now attracting one another, and now striving towards a higher position of union; at one time
"1° Comp. our articles on Irvingism and the church question, in the February, March,
May, and June numbers of the " Deutsche Kirchenfreund" for 1850, where we have taken particular notice of our esteemed and beloved friend and fellow-student, Thiersch, and of his spirited and suggestive Lectures ou Catholicism and Protestantism.
VOL. I.
B02
RECAPITULATION.
[ GENER. bound, entirely or in part, in the fetters of a philosophical system; at another, with free, untrammelled spirit, endeavouring to apprehend and do 'justice to everything, according to its own peculiar nature+ We have observed, too, that the most profound and earnest students in this department become moreand more convinced of the high practical office of this science, to set forth faithfully and candidly the whole undivided fulness of the life of Jesus Christ, as it has continuously unfolded itself in time ; to aid thereby in understanding the present—to animate for the work of the future—and gradually to effect the final, satisfactory solution of the question of all questions, that of Christ and His Church, in relation as well to the unbelieving world, as to the various parties in Christendom itself, especially to the colossal, all-comprehending antagonism of Catholicism and Protestantism.
Unite now the most extensive and thorough learning with the simple piety and tender conscientiousness of a Neander, the speculative talent and combining ingenuity of a Rothe and a Dorner, the lovely mildness and calm clearness of an Ullmann and a Hagenbach, the sober investigation of a Gieseler, the fine diplomatic wisdom of a Ranke, the vivacity and elegant taste of a Hase ;—unite all these, we say, in one person, free from all slavery to philosophy, yet not disdaining to employ it thankfully in the service of Scriptural truth; pervaded and controlled by living faith, and genuine, ardent love; and working, not for himself, nor for a party, but wholly in the spirit and service of the God-man, Jesus Christ, the life-giving sun of history, and for the interests of His bride, the one Holy, Catholic, Apostolic,
Church ; weaving into a crown of glory for the Saviour all the flowers of sanctified thought, faith, life, and suffering, from every age and clime ;—and we have, so to speak, the ideal of a Christian church historian in full form before us —an idea which, indeed, may never be realized on earth in any one individual, but to which all who are called to labour in this most interesting and important field of theology should honestly strive to conform.
» Nothing, therefore, can be more shallow and unjust, than to dismiss the entire German theology with a few vague expressions and magisterial judgments, as we regret to see still done by many of our American journals.
INTROD.]
§ 38. LATEST PROTESTANT CHURCH HISTORIANS.
§ 38. The latest Protestant Church Historians in France, England, and America.
While Germany has displayed, since Mosheim, an uncommon and uninterrupted activity in the field of historical theology, the other Protestant countries, on the contrary, have been till very lately remarkably inactive in this department.
Guizot in France, Macaulay in England, and Prescott in America, have, indeed, treated several portions of secular history with talents of rare brilliancy.
But church history, since the end of the last century, has plainly been neglected.
It is now, however, beginning to receive renewed attention in these countries ; partly on account of the need which the various churches and their theological institutions begin of themselves to feel, and partly on account of the direct or indirect influence of German literature.
The interest in the study of history, for scientific and practical purposes, is evidently growing every year, especially in England and North America, and will in time, undoubtedly, produce abundant fruit.
Such a result is the more desirable, since the German church historians in general, with all their extensive and varied knowledge, have but a very superficial acquaintance with the religious world of the English tongue, have given it far less than its share of attention, and cannot duly appreciate its vast present and future importance for the kingdom of God.
A general church history, which does full justice to the English and Anglo-American portions of Christendom, would, therefore, fill an important vacancy in this branch of theological literature.
1. France.
The later theological productions of the French Reformed church are almost entirely dependent, in the sphere of science, on the Germans, and in the practical department, on the English.1
The only prominent works on church history, besides a translation of Neander's History of the Apostolic
Church, are those of MATTER in Strasburg, and of MERLE in Geneva.
The former has written a general history of the church in four volumes ;? a history of Gnosticism, and a history of the 1 The learned Strasburg theologians, Bruch, Reuss, Schmidt, and Baum, commonly write in German, and hence do not come into view here.
2 Histoire universelle de 'église chretienne.
Strasb. 1829.
Two vols.—Vols. iii. and iv., 1840.
The work of the Hollander, P. Hofsteede de Groot—Institutiones hist. eccl.
Gronov., 1835—we know only by name.
30h
§ 38. LATEST PROTESTANT CHURCH HISTORIANS
[cener.
Alexandrian school, each in two volumes.
They are, however, scarcely more than compilations from German works, and belong to the school of the older Rationalism.
MERLE D'AUBIGNE', undoubtedly one of the most gifted French authors of our day, is decidedly evangelical, and, with Gaussen, the author of a defence of the old Protestant doctrine of inspiration, stands at the head of the orthodox party, which seceded from the established church of Geneva on account of its apostasy to Socinianism and Rationalism, and which, by its theological seminary in Geneva, by colportage, and by theological publications, is seeking to evangelize France in the sense and spirit of Calvinism.
Merle's yet unfinished History of the Reformation' claims our notice here the more, because it has attained an almost unprecedented celebrity and circulation, especially in England and America (far more than in France or Germany), and, by its popular and elegant style, has spread a knowledge of the subject where it would not otherwise have gone.?
As to its matter, the first four volumes of the work, containing the history of the Reformation in Germany and Switzerland, are almost entirely drawn from German works, especially those of Marheineke, Ranke, and Hagenbach, in this field.
They present, therefore, nothing new ; which, in fact, it would be very difficult to do in this thoroughly explored section of history.
Merle d'Aubigné's peculiar excellence and chief merit lies in his extraordinary power of spirited, dramatic, and picturesque representation, by which he makes the reading of history a real pleasure.
Yet it may not unjustly be said, that, in his zeal to make all the fortunes and deeds of his heroes as interesting as possible, and to keep the mind of the reader continually at a pleasing tension by brilliant pictures and eloquent declamation, he not seldom impairs the simplicity and truthfulness of his narrative—gives many facts and persons an undue importance, as though on each one of them hung the whole future of humanity—and thus too much confounds the task of the earnest historian with that of the novelist.
Another characteristic of Dr Merle, which gives him so great popularity, especially with ultraProtestants, is his enthusiasm for the cause of the Refor1 Histoire de la Réformation du 16 siécle.
Paris, 1835, et seq.
? The author himself tells us in the preface to the fourth volume, that from 150,000 to 200,000 copies of his work have been sold in the English language alone.
INTROD. |
IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA.
mation, and his polemic zeal against the ancient and modern papacy, which vents itself on almost every page of his book in exclamations, apostrophes, and tirades.
On this point, of course, persons of different ecclesiastical relations and views will judge very differently.
But from any point of view, a polemical spirit so prominent, whether in the service of Catholicism or Protestantism, seems to us hardly consistent with the dignity and impartiality of a historian.
The true historian may oppose or defend only indirectly, by faithfully presenting the objective course of the matter itself, and perhaps by comprehensive philosophical introductions and reviews ; and in this case he works with the greater effect the more he keeps clear of all the influences of personal feeling and party interest.
Dr Merle has evidently written the history of the Reformation, not for its own sake and sine ira et studio, but for the sake of combating Catholicism; and hence his work, with all its brilliant style and other excellencies, can never entirely satisfy one who is concerned simply for the pure, naked truth, and who subordinates his Protestant sympathies to love for the universal kingdom of God on earth.
2. In EneGLAnD and AMERICA the theological schools have contented themselves, strange to say, for a whole century, with Mosheim, who has attained much greater authority in these countries than in his own; and, by way of practical complement to his learning, they have added the work of the pious
Milner.
Yet we must certainly admit, that Mosheim's Church History, as a text-book for use in lectures, has great formal excellencies which the later works of Neander and Gieseler do not possess.
Leaving out of view the translations of Neander by Ryland, Rose, and Torrey, and of Gieseler by Cunningham and Davidson, there have appeared in the English language, since Gibbon, only a few works on the general history of the church which can lay claim to independent scholarship.
These are written, indeed, in a much better spirit (that is, the Christian), but certainly with far less brilliant talent than the illustrious production of the English Tacitus, and none of them has been carried down to the present time.'
1 The well-known convert, Dr John Henry Newman, before his transition to Rome, passed a very unfavourable, perhaps too unfavourable, judgment on his countrymen in
§38. LATEST PROTESTANT CHURCH HISTORIANS
[GENER.
Of these works Dr Burton's Lectures on the Ecclesiastical History of the first, three centuries (till 313)" are perhaps the most learned and acturate; but, besides being rather dry and dull, they hardly can lay claim to be considered a regular history, since they are not systematically arranged, and pass over many important points altogether, or treat them merely as events.
Of more permanent value are his eight Bampton Lectures on the Heresies of the Apostolic Age, the most learned work we have in English on Gnosticism.2—The Church History of WapDDINGTON? is more complete, extending from the apostolic age to the Reformation, but, in general, treats its subject in quite an outward mechanical way, and does not rise above the position of Mosheim.
It abandons, however, the centurial division, and substitutes for it a much more natural division of the history before the Reformation into five periods : the first, to Constantine the Great; the second, to Charlemagne; the third, to the death of Gregory VII.; the fourth, to the death of Boniface VIIL.; the fifth, to the Reformation.—The third English work to which we refer is the History of Christianity by Minman.*
It comreference to their knowledge of church history, when he remarked :—" It is melancholy to say it, but the chief, perhaps the only English writer, who has any claim to be considered an ecclesiastical historian, is the infidel Gibbon."—Hssay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, p. 12 (ed. Appleton).
The ground of this he finds in the unhistorical character of Protestantism (which, however, cannot include Germany): " Our popular religion," says he, " scarcely recognises the fact of the twelve long ages which lie between the councils of Nicwa and Trent, except as affording one or two passages to illustrate its wild interpretations of certain prophecies of St Paul and St John."
* Lectures on the Keclesiastical History of the First Century (12 in number), by the Rev.
Dr Edward Burton, Regius Professor of Divinity, and Canon of Christ Church, Oxford,
1831.
To these he added, afterwards, 18 Lectures on the History of the Second and Third Centuries; and, in 1836, he published a good popular abridgment, under the title,
History of the Christian Church from the Ascension of Jesus Christ to the Conversion of Constantine. London.
He also wrote An attempt to ascertain the Chronology of the Acts of the Apostles, and of St Paul's Epistles, 1830.
? An Inquiry into the Heresies of the Apostolic Age, in Eight Sermons, preached before the University of Oxford, 1829, pp. 600, with the notes.
He makes all the heretics of the New Testament (mentioned in Acts xx. 30; Col. ii. 8; 1 Tim. vi. 20, 21; 2 Tim. iii. 13; Tit. i. 16; 1 John v. 6), Gnostics, and derives their doctrine from the Jewish Cabbala, the Eastern dualism, and Platonic philosophy.
3 A History of the Church from the Earliest Ages to the Reformation.
Second edit. 3 vols.
London, 1835.
In 1841, Dr Waddington (Dean of Durham) published a History of the Reformation on the Continent, likewise in 3 vols.
This work gives a very favourable representation of the Reformation on the European continent, and shews more admiration of Luther than we can commonly expect in an Anglican theologian, since the person of the German reformer is, in many respects, not at all to English and Episcopal taste.
* Lhe History of Christianity, from the Birth of Christ to the Abolition of Page:nism in the
INTROD. ]
IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA.
BO" prises only the first five centuries, but contains, at the same time, an extended account of the life of Christ (ch, 2~7), with reference partly to Strauss' work.
Its plan, also, is new.
Its principal object is to describe " the reciprocal influence of civilization on Christianity, of Christianity on civilization."
This draws into it much that belongs more to the history of general culture than to proper church history ; while, on the contrary, the history of theology and doctrine is very imperfectly and unsatisfactorily treated.
Milman, moreover, has an' advantage over Waddington, in being pretty extensively acquainted with the modern
German investigations in heathen and Christian antiquity.1—Dr Davip WELSH, of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, commenced a general church history, which was to come down to the end of the sixteenth century, in six or seven volumes; but his death (1845) prevented him from completing more than the first volume, which covers the same period as Milman's History.?
It is a respectable beginning of a literature on church history in Scotland, where, as Welsh properly remarks, " systematic and practical theology have occupied the attention, to the Roman Empire ; by the Rev. H. W. Milman, Prebendary of St Peter's, and Minister of St Margaret's, Westminster, 1840.
The continuation, promised in the preface, has not, to our knowledge, appeared. Milman, who, like Waddington, belongs to the Established church of England, had previously become known by a History of the Jews (second edit.
London, 1830); and by an edition of Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall, &e., with notes; in commendation of which the London Quarterly Review says: 'There can be no question that this edition of Gibbon is the only one extant to which parents and guardians and academical authorities ought to give any measure of countenance."
1 Milman says in his preface, " In these animadversions, and in some scattered observations which I have here and there ventured to make in my notes on foreign, chiefly
German writers, I shall not be accused of that narrow jealousy, and, in my opinion, unworthy and timid suspicion, with which the writers of that country are proscribed by many.
J am under too much obligation to their profound research and philosophical tone of thought, not openly to express my gratitude to such works of German writers as I have been able to obtain, which have had any bearing on the subject of my inquiries.
I could wish most unfeignedly that our modern literature were so rich in writings displaying the same universal command of the literature of all ages and all countries, the same boldness, sagacity, and impartiality, in historical criticism, as to enable us to dispense with such assistance.
Though, in truth, with more or less of these high qualifications, German literature unites religious views of every shade and character, from the Christliche Mystik of Goerres, which would bring back the faith of Europe to the Golden
Legend and the Hagiography of what we still venture to call the dark ages, down in regular series to Strauss, or, if there be anything below Strauss, in the descending scale of Christian belief."
2 Elements of Church History.
Vol. i.
Comprising the External History of the Church during the first three centuries, pp. 479.
Edinburgh, T. Clark, 1844,
§ 38. LATEST PROTESTANT CHURCH HISTORIANS
[GENER. comparative neglect of exegesis and history.'"'1—The last work we have here to mention is that begun by Dr Jarvis, " historiographer of the church" (as he styles himself on the title-page of his book), which means of the Protestant Episcopal church of the United States, but interrupted by his death in 1851.
Its plan is unfortunately very defective and injudicious, and its execution by no means answers the demands of modern science.
For the first volume? is taken up entirely with a very learned and very dry mathematical and astronomical calculation of the true dates of Christ's birth and death ; and the second goes back to give the history from the Fall to the seventieth week of Daniel!
The whole would have wound up probably with a pedantic vindication of high-church Anglicanism and its singular unhistorical pretensions.
The study of church history shared in the impulse given to English theology in general within the last twenty years by the important Anglo-Catholic movement of Puseyism or Tractarianism, which originated in the University of Oxford in 1833, and in a short time spread through the whole Episcopal church of England and America, and brought perhaps one-third of her clergy to the brink of Romanism.
The study of the church fathers was revived, and carried on mostly in a pious and reverent, but rather slavish and mechanical spirit.
Translations of them and compilations from them, and a translation of Fleury's Church History, were prepared, and the history of the first five centuries variously elucidated in the celebrated " Tracts for the Times," and also in larger works, but for the most part under a bias in favour of this semi-Romish system.®
But this very study 1 P. 48.
We have, however, valuable contributions of Scotch Presbyterian divines to particular portions of church history.
Amongst these, Dr Thomas M'Crie's biographies of John Knox and A. Melville, and his works on the Reformation in Spain and Italy, also Dr Hetherington's History of the Church of Scotland, deserve special mention.
2 A Chronological Introduction to the History of the Church, &c.
New York, 1845, pp.
618.
Dr Jarvis comes to the conclusion that Christ was born six years before the common Christian era, and, in all probability, on the 25th of December, and that he was thirty-three years and three months old at the time of his death.
® One of the most industrious of the Puseyite divines, William Palmer (of Worcester
College, Oxford), has written also A Compendious Ecclesiastical History, from the earliest period to the present time (5th ed. 1844) ; but it is merely a condensed review of the great field, and has no claim to importance for science.
More learned and comprehensive are the Origines Liturgice, or the Antiquities of the English Ritual (2 vols. 4th ed.
London, 1845), and A Treatise on the Church of Christ (likewise in 2 vols.), by the same author.
INTROD. |
IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA.
S07 of ecclesiastical antiquity, and the discovery that its prevailing spirit was far more akin to Catholicism than to Protestantism, contributed greatly towards the final transition of the theological leader of the movement, Dr John Henry Newman, and a considerable number of like-minded and distinguished clergymen, from the Anglican to the Roman church; and the remarkably ingenious and learned work of Newman on the Development of Christian Doctrine,' which he wrote immediately before his decisive step, shews us the logical course from' Anglo-Catholicism to the more consistent Roman Catholicism.
On the other hand, however, Puseyism has roused also the zeal and literary activity of the low-church party in the Episcopal body, and has called forth, in particular, a historical work, which we must not fail to mention here, on account of its extensive patristic learning and skilful representation.
We mean Isaac TAYLOR'S Ancient Christianity.2— In this work the author adduces the writings of the most distinguished church fathers, especially their eulogies on the martyrs, their enthusiasm for the monastic and unmarried life, their extravagant veneration of Mary, and of the saints and their wonder-working relics, together with the extremely unfavourable, though certainly over-wrought pictures, which Salvian, a presbyter of Marseilles, drew about A.D. 440, of the moral condition of the church in his time; and from these he attempts to shew that the,, Nicene age, which the present Puseyites hold up as a model, and would fain reproduce, was already suffering under almost all the errors and moral infirmities of Romanism ; nay, that the latter was in many respects an improvement on the old Catholic church.? -Assuredly the facts which this original, vigorous, and earnest writer combines from the sources, form an incontrovertible argument against Puseyism, which rests to a considerable extent on illusions, and against that undiscerning and extravagant admiration of the ancient church, which 1 An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine.
1845.
Comp. § 27, supra.
2 Ancient Christianity and the Doctrines of the Oxford Tracts for the Times.
By the author of " Spiritual Despotism."
2 vols. 4th ed.
London, 1844.
3 « T firmly believe," says Taylor, " that it were on the whole better for a community to submit itself, without conditions, to the well-known Tridentine Popery, than to take up the Christianity of Ambrose, Basil, Gregory Nyssen, Chrysostom, Jerome, and Augustine.
Personally, | would rather be a Christian after the fashion of Pascal and Arnold, than after that of Cyprian or Cyril."
§38. LATEST PROTESTANT CHURCH HISTORIANS
[GENER makes it the golden age of Christianity and in every respect the model for our own.
But, on the other hand, it must also be affirmed, that Taylor gives the dark side of the picture very disproportionate prominence; erroneously derives the peculiar
Catholic doctrines and usages of that period, especially the whole ascetic system, from the Gnostic and Manichean heresies, and regards them as the apostasy, the mystery of iniquity, the antichrist predicted in the New Testament; instead of recognising the Christian element at the bottom of them, and appreciating their beneficent influence on the history of missions, for example, and the civilization of the nations in the Middle Ages.
He, moreover, involves himself in a striking and irreconcilable contradiction.
Such men as Athanasius, Ambrose, Augustine, Chrysostom, he, on the one hand, greatly admires for their learning, virtue, and piety, regarding the church fathers in general as the main bearers and heroes of Christianity in their day; and yet, on the other, he makes them the originators and grand promoters of the antichristian apostasy.!
Hence, not1 Read, for instance, the following representation of the fathers, in opposition to those who depreciate them.
Vol. i. p. 34, Taylor says:—" These ' fathers,' thus grouped as a little band by the objectors, were some of them men of as brilliant genius as any age has produced ; some commanding a flowing and vigorous eloquence, some an extensive erudition, some conversant with the great world, some whose meditations had been ripened by years of seclusion, some of them the only historians of the times in which they lived, some the chiefs of the philosophy of their age; and if we are to speak of the whole, as a body of writers, they are the men who, during a long era of deepening barbarism, still held the lamp of knowledge and learning, and in fact afford us almost all that we can now know, intimately, of the condition of the nations surrounding the Mediterranean, from the extinction of the classic fire, to the time of its rekindling in the fourteenth century.
The church was the ark of all things that had life during a deluge of a thousand years."
He further says, p. 36, e¢ seg. :—' It will presently be my task—a task not to he evaded—to adduce evidence in proof of the allegation that extensive and very mischievous illusions affected the Christianity of the ancient church ; nevertheless, the very men, Whose example must now be held up as a caution, were many of them Christians not less than ourselves, nay, some of those who were most deluded by particular errors, were eminent Christians.
Nothing is easier (or more edifying in the inference it carries) than to adduce instances of exalted virtue, piety, constancy, combined with what all must now admit to have been an infatuated attachment to pernicious errors.
Our brethren of the early church challenge our respect, as well as affection; for theirs was the fervour of a steady faith in things unseen and eternal; theirs, often, a meek patience under the most grievous wrongs ; theirs the courage to maintain a good profession before the frowning face of philosophy, of secular tyranny, and of splendid superstition ; theirs was abstractedness from the world, and a painful self-denial; theirs the most arduous and costly labours of love; theirs a munificence in charity, altogether without example; theirs was a reverent and scrupulous care of the sacred writings ; and this one merit, if they had no better, is of a superlative degree, and should entitle them to the veneration and grateful regards of the modern church.
How little do many
INTROD. |
IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA.
ou! withstanding all his beautiful and pointed remarks, in the beginning of his work, respecting the importance and necessity of church history, he himself lacks the great requisite for the proper study of it, the true historical standpoint.
The Puseyite and anti-Puseyite literature, especially this work of Taylor, and other valuable monographs of former date,! prove that England, particularly the Episcopal church, which has always laid great stress on its real or supposed agreement with the Nicene and ante-Nicene age, and hence has far more interest in history and antiquities than the dissenters and Presbyterians, is by no means lacking in thorough knowledge of single sections of church history, which bear upon special denominational or party objects, as also in distinguished power of historical criticism and representation; though her most prominent talents, certainly, as in Macaulay, Grote, and Thirlwall, have been devoted chiefly to the history of modern England and ancient Greece.
3. AMERICA, in her language, culture, and literature, is so interwoven with England and Scotland, that we have already included her in the foregoing remarks on general church histories in the English language.
To speak now more particularly of this country; it cannot be denied that the new world, in its youthful buoyancy, undervaluing the past, reaching restlessly into the future, disposed rather to make than contemplate
_history,is by no means favourable to historical studies in general ;? readers of the Bible, now-a-days, think of what it cost the Christians of the second and third centuries, merely to rescue and hide the sacred treasure from the rage of the heathen!'
And yet, in spite of this well-merited acknowledgment respecting the church fathers, it belongs to the object of the whole book, not merely to reduce within proper limits, but formally to undermine, confidence in the ancient church, which they represented.
After all this, he calls these same fathers " either the authors or the zealous promoters of the predicted apostasy," and " the most dangerous of guides in theology !"
(Vid. Supplement to No. 5, vol. ii.) How these two diametrically opposite views logically agree, we must leave to the author of " Ancient Christianity" to shew.
Undoubtedly the church fathers, with their great virtues, had also many defects ; but they cannot possibly have been at once the bearers of true Christianity and the progenitois of Antichrist.
The " great apostasy" must be lceoked for somewhere else than in them.
1 E.g. Burton's Lectures on the Heresies of the Apostolic Age, mentioned above, and The Ecclesiastical History of the Second and Third Centuries illustrated from the Writings of Tertullian.
By John Kaye, D.D., Lord Bishop of Lincoln.
3d ed. London, 1845.
He wrote also on Justin Martyr and on the Council of Nice.
2 Of this the most eminent American theologians are well aware.
The New lingland divine, Henry B. Smith, now Professor of Church History in Union Theological Seminary, New York, in his excellent Inaugural Address, entitled, Matwre and Worth of the
ere
§ 38. LATEST PROTESTANT CHURCH HISTORIANS — [GENER.
and the lamentable division of the church into denominations and sects, which, in'this country, under the protection of an unbounded freedom of conscience, is more consistently carried out than in Europe, calls forth, in itself considered, investigations
_of merely sectional and local interest, and party representations, and these, it is true, in abundance ; while it contracts and damps all sympathy with the one universal kingdom of God, the communion of the saints of all ages and climes.
Our popular Protestant theology, from its predominantly Puritanic character, is especially strongly prejudiced against the Middle Ages, and, in fact, against the whole church before the Reformation back to the second century, on account of its deep Catholic hue; and holds it, therefore, hardly worth while to trouble itself with this portion of history, save perhaps for the purpose of combating
Rome and finding a solution for some dark prophecies of Paul Science of Church History, Andover, 1851 (which evinces a clear insight into the nature and mission of this science, and commits itself in general to Neander's conception), very justly remarks of the Americans, p.5: " As a people we are more deficient in historical training than in almost any other branch of scientific research.
We live in an earnest and tumultuous present, looking to a vague future, and comparatively cut off from the prolific past—which is still the mother of usall.
We forget that the youngest people are also the oldest, and should therefore be most habituated to those
' fearless and reverent questionings of the sages of other times, which,' as Jeffrey well says, ' is the permitted necromancy of the wise.'
We love the abstractions of political theories and of theology better than we do the concrete realities of history.
Church history has been studied from a sort of general notion that it ought to be very useful, rather than from a lively conviction of its inherent worth.
History is to us the driest of studies ; and the history of the church is the driest of the dry—a collection of bare names, and facts, and lifeless dates.
It is learned by rote, and kept up by mnemonic helps," &c.
And in an article on the fHistory of Doctrines, by the Presbyterian divine, Dr J. A. Alexander, in the " Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review," for January 1847, p. 105, we find several striking remarks on this point.
" Our national tendency," says this highly-gifted writer, "so far as we have any, is to slight the past and overrate the present.
This unhistorical peculiarity is constantly betraying itself in various forms, but it is nowhere more conspicuous and more injurious than in our theology.
Hence the perpetual resuscitation of absurdities a thousand times exploded, the perpetual renewal of attempts which have a thousand times been proved abortive.
Hence the false position which religion has been forced to assume in reference to various inferior yet important interests, to science, literature, art, and civil government.
Hence, too, the barrenness and hardness by which much of our religious literature is distinguished, because cut off from the inexhaustible resources which can only be supplied by history.
The influence of this defect upon our preaching is perhaps incalculable.
But instead of going on to reckon up the consequences of the evil now in question, let us rather draw attention to the fact that it is not of such a nature as to be corrected by the lapse of time, but must increase with the increase of ignorance and lazy pride, especially when fostered by a paltry national conceit, and flattered by those oracles of human progress who declare that history is only fit for monks.
To counteract this tendency, we need some influence ab extra, some infusion of strange blood into our veins."
INTROD. |
IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA.
Shs and John respecting the antichristian apostasy.
It takes the Bible with private judgment as an all-sufficient guide; forgetting, in the first place, that the revelation of God is itself historical ; in the next place, that the history of the church, from the time of the apostles to our own, exhibits, according to our
Lord's unfailing promise, Matt. xvi. 18; xxviii. 20, the perpetual presence and control of Christ and His Spirit, in the lives and actions of His people, so as to be itself the best commentary on the Holy Scriptures; and finally, that in proportion as we despise and reject, in falsé independence, the experience of eighteen centuries and the voice of universal Christendom, we rob the present, also, and private judgment, of all claim to our confidence, and that, as we shake the authority of history, in which we all strike root, we cut off the sources of our own life; for the individual believer is just as dependent on the whole church and her history as the branch on the tree, or the arms on the body.
In spite of these obstacles, however, there has been of late _ years a considerable awakening of interest and zeal in the study of church history; partly through the influence of German literature, the fruits of which, both good and evil, are assuming more and more importance as elements of our higher literary and scientific culture; partly through the momentous practical significance of the church question, and the growing seriousness of the contest between Romanism and Protestantism, which must evidently be decided not merely on dogmatical and exegetical
- grounds, but also on the field of history.
A remarkable example of an altogether peculiar and powerful union of the scientific interest in church history communicated from Germany, and the practical interest proceeding from the English national cha- | | racter and the American church relations, we have in the _ historico-dogmatic and polemic treatises of the pious and learned
| Dr Joun W. Nevin, some on the Eucharistic controversy of the Reformation, in opposition to the latent and open Rationalism of modern times, which degrades the Lord's Supper into an | empty sign,' and some on the difference between early Chris1 The Mystical Presence.
A Vindication of the Reformed or Calvinistic Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist.
Philadelphia, 1846.
With this must be compared his defence of it in the " Mercersburg Review," 1850, p. 421-548, against the review of Dr Hodge.
Dr Nevin's smaller tracts on the History and Genius of the Heidelberg Catechism (1847), and
§ 38. LATEST PROTESTANT CHURCH HISTORIANS = [GENER.
tianity and the various forms of existing Protestantism.t The latter productions take a still bolder stand against the Rationalism and Sectarianism of our age than the former, and possess at the same time a more general interest.
They are intended to shew that the ancient church, the Christianity of the Apostle's Creed, of the martyrs, confessors, and church fathers of the first five centuries, is essentially different from Anglicanism and Puseyism, on the one hand, which form the extreme right wing of orthodox Protestantism, and still more from modern Puritanism, on the other, which forms the extreme left ; that it is, on the contrary, in its light and shade, evidently very closely allied to the Roman Catholic system ; that Protestantism, therefore, can be scientifically vindicated only on the theory of development, as a new phase of Christianity in the course of its history ; but that Protestantism must, for this very reason, acknowledge the historical authority, necessity, and moral glory of Catholicism, as the other and older grand form of the kingdom of God; if it would not in the end destroy itself as a church by giving up the Biblical doctrine of a supernatural and unbroken historical church, without which Christianity itself could not exist.
With these views, however, he thus far stands almost solitary and alone, since the prevailing tone of American theology is radically Protestant, and looks with suspicion upon every tendency which seems to make direct or indirect cessions to Catholicism, even in a merely historical point of view.
One extreme always calls forth another, until the golden medium is restored.
The United States may be expected, at no distant on the Life of Zacharias Ursinus (1851), have special reference to the denominational interests of the German Reformed Church in the United States, and have done very much to awaken in this branch of the church a clear consciousness of its origin, and of its character as a Melancthonian, conciliatory medium between Lutheranism and Calvinism.
1 Here belong particularly his spirited and uncommonly earnest, we may say, alarmingly solemn articles on the Apostles' Creed, Early Christianity, and the Life and Theology of Cyprian and his Times, in the first, third, and fourth volumes of the " Mercersburg
Review " (1849, 1851, and 1852), which have filled many with the apprehension that Dr
Nevin will ultimately despair of Protestantism and go over to Rome.
This, however, he cannot consistently do, so long as he holds his theory of development, which makes room for different forms and phases of Christianity in the progressive march of the church.
Those articles in the Mercersburg Review form an interesting parallel to Isaac Taylor's " Ancient Christianity," with which they agree in most of the historical positions; but they follow a different tendency, and evince a growing sympathy with the primitive church, and with Catholicism, for which the popular Protestant press of this country has raised an almost universal ery against them.
INTROD. ]
IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA.
Sly | day, to make important contributions to historical theology, proceeding mainly from a combination of the English and German mind, and serving the interests of a sound evangelical catholic Protestantism.
The close connection, in this country, between theory and practice, theology and the church, gives historical studies and their results a much greater practical importance than, for example, in Germany.
Hence the high office and heavy responsibility of those who are called to labour in this sphere, in a land which gives free play to all parties of Christendom, develops itself with unexampled rapidity, and to all appearance, according to the maxim, "' Westward the star of Empire takes its way," is destined to be the main theatre of the future history of the world and the church.