SECTION IX.
The dictates of good sense are often curiously intermingled in the writings of the fathers with the defence of the absurd system they espoused. The incongruous mixture, has it not been of frequent occurrence in every age? Cyril of Jerusalem, in the fourth of his Catechetical Discourses, and in the section περι σωματος, with great vigor and propriety urges the consideration referred to above, while reprehending those, in his time, who affected to despise and maltreat the body. "Is not the body," says he, "the excellent workmanship of God?" and he reminds the ascetic that it is the soul, not the body, that sins. He goes on, in a lively manner, to hold forth the mean of wisdom between opposite extremes; and while he much commends the monkish celibacy, nevertheless bestows upon matrimony its due praise. The fathers, by appropriating the words continence, chastity, temperance, virtue, to the monastic life, robbed the Christian community of that standard of morals which belongs to all. Our Lord and his apostles enjoined purity, and continence, and temperance, and heavenly-mindedness, upon Christians universally, married and unmarried, engaged or not engaged, in the affairs of common life. But the monks shuddered to talk of purity and celibacy as if separable. What part then could the married claim in the practical portions of Scripture? These holy precepts were the property of the elect of Christ, that is, of the monks. Such are the consequences of extravagance in religion!
The story of Symeon Stylites, told by Theodoret, has been often repented. The well-attested exploits of the fakirs of India render this, and many similar accounts related by the same writer, by Gregory Nyssen, Sozomen, &c., perfectly credible in all but a few of the particulars; and in these it is evident that the writers were imposed upon. The fasts professed to have been undergone by Symeon, by Anthony, and by others of tho same class, most certainly surpass the powers of human nature; and must be held either to convict those monks and their accomplices of fraud, or their biographers of falsehood.
Ignatius must be held to have set an example of unhappy consequence to the church. His ardor for martyrdom, though unquestionably connected with genuine and exalted piety, was altogether unwarranted by apostolic precept or example, and stands in the strongest contrast imaginable with the manner of Paul, when placed in similar circumstances, whose calm, manly, and spirited defence of his life, liberty, and civic immunities, on every occasion, imparts the highest possible argumentative value to his sufferings in the cause of Christianity. Let it be imagined that Ignatius had acquitted himself in the same spirit; had pleaded with Trajan for his life, on the grounds of universal justice, and Roman law; had established his innocence of any crime known to the law; and had then professed distinctly the reasons of his Christian profession; and at the same time calmly declared his determination to die rather than deny his convictions. How precious a document would have been the narrative of such a martyrdom! There can be no doubt that many such martyrdoms actually took place; but they were less to the taste of the church historians of the third and fourth centuries than those that were made conspicuous by an ostentation of eagerness to die. The First Epistle of Peter holds forth the principle and temper of Christian submission under persecution with a dignity, calmness, pathos, good sense, and a perfect freedom from fanatical excitement, which, if no other document of our faith were extant, would fully carry the proof of the truth of Christianity.
No serious consideration need be given to those miraculous narratives which exist only in biographies composed in a turgid style of laudatory exaggeration, and not published, or not fairly and fully published, till long after the deaths of the operator, and of the witnesses. An instance precisely in point is the life of Gregory of Neocæsarea, by Gregory Nyssen: another of like kind has also been frequently quoted—the life of St. Martin, by Sulpitius Severus: the life of Cyprian, by his Deacon Pontius, might be included; as well as that of St. Anthony, by Athanasius. In passing, it may be observed that a perusal of the last-mentioned tract, which fills only same fifty pages, would convey a more exact and vivid idea of the state and style of religion in the fourth century, than is to be obtained by reading volumes of modern compilations of church history. At once the piety and the strong sense of the writer, and the extraordinary character of the narrative, give it a peculiar claim to attention. Let the intelligent reader of this curious document take the occasion to estimate the value and amount of the information that is to be received from modern writers—even the best of them, such as Mosheim and Milner, for example, of whom the first gives the mere husk of church history, and the other only some separated particles of pure farina. But can we in either of these methods obtain the solid and safe instruction which a true knowledge of human character and conduct should convey? It may be very edifying to read page after page of picked sentiments of piety; but do these culled portions, which actually belie the mass whence they are taken, communicate what an intelligent reader of history looks for—namely, a real picture and image of mankind in past ages? Certainly not. If nothing be wanted but pleasing expressions of Christian feeling, there can no need to make a painful search for them in the bulky tomes of the Greek and Latin fathers. Nevertheless, with all its defects, Milner's Church History is one of the best that has been compiled. A modern reader, led astray by the malign falsifications of Gibbon, and very partially informed of facts by church historians, has no means of correctly estimating the state of Christianity in remote times; or none but that of examining for himself the literary remains of ecclesiastical antiquity.
Transcriber's Note.
Apparent typographical errors have been corrected.