XLVII. CHAP. of the Gnostic heresy". They denied the truth and authenticity of the gospels, as far as they relate the conception of Mary, the birth of Christ, and the thirty years that preceded the exercise of his ministry. He first appeared on the banks of the Jordan in the form of perfect manhood; but it was a form only, and not a substance; an human figure created by the hand of Omnipotence to imitate the faculties and actions of a man, and to impose a perpetual illusion on the senses of his friends and enemies. Articulate sounds vibrated on the ears of the disciples; but the image which was impressed on their optic nerve, eluded the more stubborn evidence of the touch; and they enjoyed the spiritual, not the corporeal, presence of the Son of God. The rage of the Jews was idly wasted against an impassive phantom; and the mystic scenes of the passion and death, the resurrection and ascension of Christ, were represented on the theatre of Jerusalem for the benefit of mankind. If it were urged, that such ideal mimicry, such incessant deception, was unworthy of the God of truth, the Docetes agreed with too many of their orthodox brethren in the justification of pious falsehood. In the system of the Gnostics, the Jehovah of Israel, the creator of this lower world, was a rebellious, or at least an ignorant spirit. The Son of God descended upon earth to abolish his temple and his law; and, for the accomplishment of this salutary end, he dexterously transferred to his own person the hope and prediction of a temporal Messiah. His incorruptible body. One of the most subtle disputants of the Manichæan school, has pressed the danger and indecency of supposing, that the God of the Christians, in the state of an human fœtus, emerged at the end of nine months from a female womb. The pious horror of his antagonists provoked them to disclaim all sensual circumstances of conception and delivery; to maintain, that the divinity passed through Mary like a sun-beam through a plate of glass; and to assert, that the seal of her virginity remained unbroken even at the moment when she became the mother of Christ. But the rashness of these concessions has encouraged a milder sentiment of those of the Docetes, who taught, not that Christ was a phantom, but 11 About the year 200 of the Christian æra, Irenæus and Hippolytes refuted the thirty-two sects, res sudaruμs graosas, which had multiplied to fourscore in the time of Epiphanius (Phot, Biblioth. cod. cxx, cxxi, cxxii). The five books of Irenæus exist only in barbarous Latin; but the original might perhaps be found in some monastery of Gręęce. XLVII. that he was clothed with an impassible and incorrupti- CHAP. ble body. Such, indeed, in the more orthodox system he has acquired since his resurrection, and such he must have always possessed, if it were capable of pervading, without resistance or injury, the density of intermediate matter. Devoid of its most essential properties, it might be exempt from the attributes and infirmities of the flesh. A foetus that could increase from an invisible point to its full maturity; a child that could attain the stature of perfect manhood, without deriving any nourishment from the ordinary sources, might continue to exist without repairing a daily waste by a daily supply of external matter. Jesus might share the repasts of his disciples, without being subject to the calls of thirst or hunger; and his virgin purity was never sullied by the involuntary stains of sensual concupiscence. Of a body thus singularly constituted, a question would arise, by what means, and of what materials, it was originally framed; and our sounder theology is startled by an answer which was not peculiar to the Gnostics, that both the form and the substance proceeded from the divine essence. The idea of pure and absolute spirit is a refinement of modern philosophy; the incorporeal essence, ascribed by the ancients to human souls, celestial beings, and even the Deity himself, does not exclude the notion of extended space; and their imagination was satisfied with a subtle nature of air, or fire, or æther, incomparably more perfect than the grossness of the material world. If we define the place, we must describe the figure, of the Deity. Our experience, perhaps our vanity, represents the powers of reason and virtue under an human form. The Anthropomorphites, who swarmed among the monks of Egypt and the Catholics of Africa, could produce the express declaration of scripture, that man was made after the image of his Creatori2. The venerable Serapian, one of the saints of the Ni 12 The pilgrim Cassian, who visited Egypt in the beginning of the fifth century, observes and laments he reign of Anthropomorphism among the monks, who were not conscious that they embraced the system of Epicurus (Cicero, de Nat. Deorum, i. 18. 34). Ab universo propemodum genere monachorum, qui per totam provinciam Egyptum morabantur, pro simplicitatis errore susceptum est, ut e contrario memoratum pontificem (Theophilus) velut hæresi gravissimâ depravatum, pars maxima seniorum ab universo fraternitatis corpore decerneret detestandum (Cassian, Collation. x. 2). As long as St. Augustin remained a Manichæan, he was scandalised by the Anthropomorphism of the vulgar Catholics. XLVII. II. Dou of Cerin CHAP trian desert, relinquished, with many a tear, his darling prejudice; and bewailed, like an infant, his unlucky conversion, which had stolen away his God, and left his mind without any visible object of faith or devotion13. III. Such were the fleeting shadows of the Docetes. ble nature A more substantial, though less simple hypothesis, was thus. contrived by Cerinthus of Asia', who dared to oppose the last of the apostles. Placed on the confines of the Jewish and Gentile world, he laboured to reconcile the Gnostic with the Ebionite, by confessing in the same Messiah the supernatural union of a man and a God and this mystic doctrine was adopted with many fanciful improvements by Carpocrates, Basilides, and Valentine's, the heretics of the Egyptian school. In their eyes, JESUS of Nazereth was a mere mortal, the legitimate son of Joseph and Mary; but he was the best and wisest of the human race, selected as the worthy instrument to restore upon earth the worship of the true and supreme Deity. When he was baptised in the Jordan, the CHRIST, the first of the ons, the Son of God himself, descended on Jesus in the form of a dove, to inhabit his mind, and direct his actions during the allotted period of his ministry. When the Messiah was delivered into the hands of the Jews, the Christ, an immortal and impassible being, forsook his earthly tabernacle, flew back to the pleroma or world of spirits, and left the solitary Jesus to suffer, to complain, and to expire. But the justice and generosity of 13 Ita est in oratione senex mente confuses, eo quod illam aroga woμoppor imaginem Deitatis, quam proponere sibi in oratione consueverat aboleri de suo corde sentiret, ut in amarissimos fletus, crebrosque singultus repentè prorumpens, in terram prostratus, cum ejulatû validissimo proclamaret; "Heu me miserum!" tulerunt a me Deum meum, et quem nunc teneam non habeo, vel quem adorem, aut interpellem jam nescio. Cassian, Collat. X. 2. 14 St. John and Cerinthus (A. D. 80. Cleric. Hist. Eccles. p. 493.) accidentally met in the public bath of Ephesus; but the apostle fled from the Beretic, lest the building should tumble on their heads. This foolish story, reprobated by Dr. Middleton (Miscellaneous Works, vol. ii), is related however by Irenæus (iii. 3), on the evidence of Polycarp, and was probably suited to the time and residence of Cerinthus. The obsolete, yet probably the true, reading of 1 John iv. 3.- QUEL TOV INGR-alludes to the double nature of that primitive heretic. 15 The Valentinians embraced a complex, and almost incoherent, system. 1. Both Christ and Jesus were æons, though of different degrees; the one acting as the rational soul, the other as the divine spirit of the Saviour. 2. At the time of the passion, they both retired, and left only a sensitive sout and an human body. 3. Even that body was ætherial, and perhaps apparent. Such are the laborious conclusions of Mosheim. But I much doubt whether the Latin translator understood Irenæus, and whether Irenæus and the Valentinians understood themselves. XLVII. such a desertion are strongly questionable; and the fate CHAP. of an innocent martyr, at first impelled, and at length abandoned, by his divine companion, might provoke the pity and indignation of the profane. Their murmurs were variously silenced by the sectaries who espoused and modified the double system of Cerinthus. It was alleged, that when Jesus was nailed to the cross, he was endowed with a miraculous apathy of mind and body, which rendered him insensible of his apparent sufferings. It was affirmed, that these momentary, though real pangs, would be abundantly repaid by the temporal reign of a thousand years reserved for the Messiah in his kingdom of the new Jerusalem. It was insinuated, that if he suffered, he deserved to suffer; that human nature is never absolutely perfect; and that the cross and passion might serve to expiate the venial transgressions of the son of Joseph, before his mysterious union with the Son of God 16. incarna IV. All those who believe the immateriality of the IV. Divine soul, a specious and noble tenet, must confess, from tion of their present experience, the incomprehensible union of Apollina mind and matter. A similar union is not inconsistent ris. with a much higher, or even with the highest degree, of mental faculties; and the incarnation of an æon or archangel, the most perfect of created spirits, does not involve any positive contradiction or absurdity. In the age of religious freedom, which was determined by the council of Nice, the dignity of Christ was measured by private judgment, according to the indefinite rule of scripture, or reason, or tradition. But when his pure and proper divinity had been established on the ruins of Arianism, the faith of the Catholics trembled on the edge of a precipice where it was impossible to recede, dangerous to stand, dreadful to fall; and the manifold inconveniencies of their creed were aggravated by the sublime character of their theology. They hesitated to pronounce; that God himself, the second person of an equal and consubstantial trinity, was manifested in the flesh17; 16 The heretics abused the passionate exclamation of "My God, my God, "why hast thou forsaken me!" Rousseau, who has drawn an eloquent, but indecent parallel, between Christ and Socrates, forgets that not a word of impatience or despair escaped from the mouth of the dying philosopher. In the Messiah, such sentiments could be only apparent; and such ill-sounding words are properly explained as the application of a psalm and prophesy. 17 This strong expression might be justified by the language of St. Paul (1 Tim.iii.16); but we are deceived by our modern bibles. The word (which) was altered to Bees (God) at Constantinople in the beginning of the sixth C VOL, VI. CHAP. that a being who pervades the universe, had been conXLVII. fined in the womb of Mary; that his eternal duration had been marked by the days, and months, and years of human existence; that the Almighty had been scourged and crucified; that his impassible essence had felt pain and anguish; that his omniscience was not exempt from ignorance; and that the source of life and immortality expired on mount Calvary. These alarming consequences were affirmed with unblushing simplicity by Apollinaris, bishop of Laodicea, and one of the luminaries of the church. The son of a learned grammarian, he was skilled in all the sciences of Greece; eloquence, erudition, and philosophy, conspicuous in the volumes of Apollinaris, were humbly devoted to the service of religion. The worthy friend of Athanasius, the worthy antagonist of Julian, he bravely wrestled with the Arians, and Polytheists, and, though he affected the rigour of geometrical demonstration, his commentaries revealed the literal and allegorical sense of the scriptures. A mystery which had long floated in the looseness of popular belief, was defined by his perverse diligence in a technical form; and he first proclaimed the memorable words, "One incarnate nature of Christ," which are still re-echoed with hostile clamours in the churches of Asia, Egypt, and Ethiopia. He taught that the Godhead was united or mingled with the body of a man; and that the Logos, the eternal wisdom, supplied in the flesh the place and office of an human soul. Yet as the profound doctor had been terrified at his own rashness, Apollinaris was heard to mutter some faint accents of excuse and explanation. He acquiesced in the old distinction of the Greek philosophers, between the rational and sensitive soul of man; that he might reserve the Logos for intellectual functions, and employ the subordi century: the true reading, which is visible in the Latin and Syriac versions, still exists in the reasoning of the Greek, as well as of the Latin fathers; and this fraud, with that of the three witnesses of St. John, is admirably detected by Sir Isaac Newton. (See his two Letters translated by M. de Missy, in the Journal Britannique, tom. xv, p. 148-190. 351-390.) I have weighed the arguments, and may yield to the authority of the first of philosophers, who was deeply skilled in critical and theological studies. 18 For Apollinaris and his sect, see Socrates, 1. ii. c. 46. 1. iii. c. 16. Sozomen, 1. v. c 18. 1. vi. c. 25. 27. Theodoret, I. v. 3. 10, 11. Tillemont, Memoires Ecclesiastiques, tom. vii. p. 602–638. Not. p. 789-794. in quarto, Venise, 1732. The contemporary saints always mention the bishop of Laodicea as a friend and brother. The style of the more recent historians is harsh and hostile; yet Philostorgius compares him (1. viii. c. 11–15.) to Bar sil and Gregory. |