§ 6. OF THE CHURCH IN ROME, AND OF THE NEW GOSPELS.

When I came to Rome I was well received of the brethren, and I tarried there two months, observing the manner of their worship, and the teaching of the catechumens and the discourses of the elders to the faithful. But I seemed at first to be listening to a new Gospel; so great a change had fallen on the Church since I had last tarried in the great city, about fifteen years before. This appeared, not only in their worship, but also in the pictures and sculptures wherewith they had begun to adorn the tombs of those that fell asleep in the Lord; for in these I perceived that those very beliefs whereof I had written to Artemidorus as being currently reported among the faithful but not yet added to the Tradition, were now accepted by all. For example, when I entered into one of the places where the congregations commonly assemble themselves for worship—these are quarries, after the manner of galleries, hewn out of the rock under the earth beneath the city, commonly called catacombs, and used for entombments by the faithful—I perceived there the figure of a certain prophet, with a scroll in his hand, pointing to a Woman which bare a child in her arms, and above the child was a star; and I questioned my companions whether this was the Lord Jesus, the Son of the Virgin Mother, and they said “Yes,” but when I went on to speak of the Virgin as the Spiritual Sion, which is the Church of God, then they said, “Nay, but it sheweth the mother of our Lord according to the flesh, according to the saying of the prophet, ‘Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.’” Then asking concerning the star, I said that I supposed that it represented the brightness of the Messiah, even as it was written in the Scriptures that “a star should come out of Jacob.” To this they assented, “but,” added one, “it is also well-known that a star, visible to the eyes of men, did verily shine forth in the days of Herod, being seen of many nations, and especially in the East, insomuch that then was fulfilled the saying of the Psalms that the kings of Arabia and Saba should bring gifts.” “Are these things then,” said I, “contained in the Traditions of the Acts of the Lord?” Then he that had spoken replied, “No, not in the Tradition, but in a certain supplement which is now beginning everywhere to be read in all the churches, and it is said to have been put forth by the interpreters and disciples of one of the Apostles:” but another correcting him, said that one of the Apostles himself had written it, not indeed Petrus nor Jacobus who were unlearned men ignorant of letters, but in all likelihood Mattheus, as having been in earlier days a tax-gatherer and therefore ready with his pen.

Going on a little further I saw on the walls another picture of men supping at a table, and the food two fishes and some loaves. When I asked what this meant, they told me that it signified the banquet of the kingdom of God wherein all the faithful partake of the body of the Lord who, said they, is our Bread of Life, and also our true ΙΧΘΥΣ; and “of the two fishes,” said they, “the one denoteth Baptism, whereby the faithful enter into Christ, and the other the Lord’s Supper, whereby they are made partakers of the Lord’s body, so that they remain in him and he in them.” “And is this also,” I asked, “in the Tradition?” “Neither in the Tradition,” said they, “nor in the Supplement, but it is a symbol.” Then I took courage to speak concerning that other parable of a banquet, wherein I had been wont to teach how the Twelve had been bidden by the Lord Jesus to minister both of the Bread of Life and of the Fishes, asking them whether they interpreted this also spiritually and not according to the letter, even as they interpreted that other story of the ΙΧΘΥΣ. But hereat their countenances changed, and they said, “Nay, but this story is written according to the letter in the Tradition of the Gospel.” Then I told them how Philochristus the Elder had related to me that the Lord Jesus himself, in speaking of these matters, had rebuked his disciples because they understood him not, saying unto them, that when he spoke of leaven, and of bread, he spoke not of earthly bread or leaven, but of spiritual leaven and spiritual bread. But they replied that “it was not so written in the Tradition now, and that Philochristus (albeit to be reverenced as a faithful disciple of the Lord) was not to be too much trusted as a remembrancer of the Tradition, because he had lived now many years apart from the rest of the saints, not having experience of that which had been from year to year newly revealed to the Church, so that he knew naught save what he himself had heard and seen of the Lord Jesus, and this in all likelihood faintly and imperfectly remembered by him, as being well-stricken in years, not much less than fourscore and ten.” It came into my mind that to be thus all alone, remembering and teaching the words of Christ which he himself had heard (apart from controversies and colors and glosses of those who were disputing rather than remembering) was perhaps rather a help than a harm to Philochristus. However at that time I said no more.

On the morrow, coming somewhat late into the congregation in the midst of their worship, I heard them singing a psalm which, because there arose hence a question afterwards between myself and the brethren, I will here set down; and as near as I can remember, the words were these:—

“O Pilot of our bark

What though the night be dark?

What though the tempest rave?

Thou still canst hear and save.

“Tossed by the troubled sea,

O Lord, we cry to thee,

And through the murky night,

What figure meets our sight?

“Lo, pitying our fear

The Lord himself draws near,

Walking upon the wave

His helpless ones to save.

“In terror of his face

Vanish the clouds apace,

His footsteps on the deep

Lull every wave to sleep.

“The winds obey his will,

The raging storm is still;

Then turn we to adore

And lo, at hand the shore.”

Now these words or others like unto them, had been well-known to me for a long time, because some such psalm had been brought to us at Colossæ from Ephesus (from which city many psalms and hymns had come to divers churches) and it was commonly sung in the churches of Asia; and indeed, even among the ancient poems of the Jews, there is a psalm not much unlike this, wherein the mariners cry unto the Lord in their trouble and he delivereth them out of their distress, for, saith the psalm, “He maketh the storm to cease so that the waves thereof are still;” and another psalm saith, “Thy way is in the sea and thy path on the great waters.” But, often as I had sung these words, it had never so much as entered my mind to interpret them according to the letter; for even as the Greeks or Romans compare the state to a ship and the ruler to a pilot, even so had we been wont to speak, in a figure, of the Church as being a ship tossed upon the sea of troubles and persecutions, and of the Lord Jesus as her pilot in the storm; and I had also heard mention made, when I was in Britain, of some new hymn showing in a figure, how the blessed Apostle Petrus denied his Master, and describing how he adventured to walk, in his own strength, upon the troubled sea of temptation, but his faith failed him so that he began to sink, and he had been drowned in the deep waters of sin, but that the Lord stretched out his hand and saved him; but in this and other such psalms and hymns there was never a thought of any real boat nor of a real storm of wind and waves. Therefore, the worship being now ended, when a certain Philologus, one of the brethren, accosted me asking my judgment of this psalm, as if I should have censured it, I replied (not without some wonder at the strangeness of his question) that the psalm was a good one, and that none could find any fault in it. But Philologus replied, “If therefore, O Onesimus, you allow of this miracle of the Lord, why contend you against these other miracles of which the Gospel makes mention?” I said, “Nay, but of what miracle do I allow?” He said, “Even that miracle and no other, which is clearly described in the psalm, how the Lord Jesus walked upon the waters to save the holy Apostles; yea, and one of the new Gospels affirms that the blessed Apostle Petrus adventured himself to walk upon the waves; but his faith failed him so that he began to sink.”

Hereat I was speechless; and Philologus, as if he were ill at ease by reason of my silence, bade me follow him and two or three of the other elders into another chamber in the place where they were assembled. Here were depicted divers wonders, first, the sending down of the manna from heaven for Israel, and also the gushing forth of the water from the rock; and said he, if Moses wrought these wonders, must not the Lord Jesus have wrought others still more wonderful? Then said I to them, “Moses not only caused bread but also water to arise for Israel; and again the prophet Elisha, even when dead, had power to raise up a dead man; wherefore, if indeed the Lord Jesus desired to surpass Moses and Elias in wonders according to the flesh (and not, as I believe, in wonders according to the spirit) he must needs have caused water, as well as bread, to spring up for the multitude, or else perchance honey or wine; and he must needs also have raised up from the dead some one that was on the point to be buried or already buried; but is any such relation as either of these to be found in any tradition concerning the Lord Jesus?” They said there was not; and methought they were somewhat at a stand. But presently Philologus corrected them saying, “Nay, my brethren, say not ‘the Tradition containeth not these things’ but rather ‘These things are not known to us at present,’ for although it hath not yet been revealed to the Church in any Tradition that the Lord Jesus hath produced water or wine, or raised up a dead man from the tomb, yet is it possible that he may have wrought these very works, and in time they may be made known to the Church, even as the walking on the waves was not made known in the first Tradition of the Acts of the Lord, nor were other mighty works;” and here he made mention of many unknown to me such as the catching of a mighty draught of fishes, and the finding of a fish with a coin in the mouth of it.

Hereat I ceased from further speech. For I perceived that my questioning had the contrary effect to that which I had intended. For I had hoped to lead Philologus and his companions to see that the spiritual works of the Lord Jesus were greater than those wonders according to the flesh, of which they made so much. But instead thereof, Philologus had been made by my words more greedy than ever of fresh wonders, and was now ready to believe anything if it were only wonderful enough. So I held my peace, and only besought Philologus to lend me copies of the written books of the Gospels such as were now read in the churches.