PART I.
[CHAPTER I.]
THE DUTY OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT.
Fellow Christians,
Whilst I invite you to accompany me in a free and full investigation of one of those tenets and practices which keep asunder the Roman and the Anglican Church, I am conscious in how thankless an undertaking I have engaged, and how unwelcome to some is the task in which I call upon you to join. Many among the celebrated doctors of the Roman Church have taught their disciples to acquiesce in a view of their religious obligation widely different from the laborious and delicate office of ascertaining for themselves the soundness of the principles in which they have been brought up. It has been with many accredited teachers a favourite maxim, that individuals will most acceptably fulfil their duty by abstaining from active and personal inquiries into the foundations of their faith; and by giving an implicit credence to whatever the Roman Church pronounces to be the truth[1]. Should this book fall into the hands of any who have adopted that maxim for the rule of their own conduct as believers, its pages will of course afford them no help; nor can they take any interest in our pursuit, or its results. Whilst, however, I am aware, that until the previous question (involving the grounds on which the Church of Rome builds her claim to be the sole, exclusive, and infallible teacher of Christians in all the doctrines of religion,) shall have been solved, many members of her body would throw aside, as preposterous, any treatise which professed to review the soundness of her instructions; I have been at the same time assured, that with many of her communion the case is far otherwise; and that instead of their being averse to all investigation, a calm, candid, and friendly, but still a free and unreserved inquiry into the disputed articles of their creed, is an object of their sincere desire. On this ground I trust some preliminary reflections upon the duty of proving all things, with a view of holding the more fast and sure what is good, may be considered as neither superfluous nor out of place.
Footnote 1:[(return)]
It is sometimes curious to observe the language in which the teachers and doctors themselves profess their entire, unlimited, and implicit submission of all their doctrines, even in the most minute particulars, to the judgment and will of the authorities of Rome. Instances are of very frequent occurrence. Thus Joannes de Carthagena, a very voluminous writer of homilies, closes different parts of his work in these words, "These and all mine I willingly subject to the judgment of the Catholic Roman Church, ready, if there be written any thing in any way in the very least point contrary to her doctrine, to correct, amend, erase, and utterly abolish it." Hom. Cath. De Sacris Arcanis Deiparæ et Josephi. Paris, 1615. page 921.
But just as it would belong to another and a separate province to examine, at such length as its importance demands, the claims of the Church of Rome to be acknowledged as that universal interpreter of the word and will of God, from whose decisions there is no appeal; so would it evidently be incompatible with the nature of the present address, to dwell in any way corresponding with the magnitude and delicacy of the subject, on the duty, the responsibility, and the privilege of private judgment; on the dangers to which an unchastened exercise of it may expose both an individual, and the cause of Christian truth; or on the rules which sound wisdom and the analogy of faith may prescribe to us in the government of ourselves with respect to it. My remarks, therefore, on this subject will be as few and brief as I believe to be consistent with an acknowledgment of the principles upon which this work has been conducted.
The foundation, then, on which, to be safe and beneficial, the duty of private judgment, as we maintain, must be built, is very far indeed removed from that common and mischievous notion of it which would encourage us to draw immediate and crude deductions from Holy Scripture, subject only to the control and the colouring of our own minds, responsible for nothing further than our own consciousness of an honest intention. Whilst we claim a release from that degrading yoke which neither are we nor were our fathers able to bear, we deprecate for ourselves and for our fellow-believers that licentiousness which in doctrine and practice tempts a man to follow merely what is right in his own eyes, uninfluenced by the example, the precepts, and the authority of others, and owning no submissive allegiance to those laws which the wise and good have established for the benefit of the whole body. The freedom which we ask for ourselves, and desire to see imparted to all, is a rational liberty, tending to the good, not operating to the bane of its possessors; ministering to the general welfare, not to disorder and confusion. In the enjoyment of this liberty, or rather in the discharge of the duties and trusts which this liberty brings with it, we feel ourselves under an obligation to examine the foundations of our faith, to the very best of our abilities, according to our opportunities, and with the most faithful use of all the means afforded to us by its divine Author and finisher. Among those means, whilst we regard the Holy Scriptures as paramount and supreme, we appeal to the witness and mind of the Church as secondary and subsidiary; a witness not at all competing with Scripture, never to be balanced against it; but competing with our own less able and less pure apprehension of Scripture. In ascertaining the testimony of this witness, we examine the sentiments and practice of the ancient teachers of the Church; not as infallible guides, not as uniformly holding all of them the same opinions, but as most valuable helps in our examination of the evidence of the Church, who is, after all, our appointed instructor in the truths of the Gospel,—fallible in her individual members and branches, yet the sure witness and keeper of Holy Writ, and our safest guide on earth to the mind and will of God. When we have once satisfied ourselves that a doctrine is founded on Scripture, we receive it with implicit faith, and maintain it as a sacred deposit, entrusted to our keeping, to be delivered down whole and entire without our adding thereto what to us may seem needful, or taking away what we may think superfluous.
The state of the Christian thus employed, in acting for himself in a work peculiarly his own, is very far removed from the condition of one who labours in bondage, without any sense of liberty and responsibility, unconscious of the dignity of a free and accountable agent, and surrendering himself wholly to the control of a task-master. Equally is it distant from the conduct of one who indignantly casting off all regard for authority, and all deference to the opinions of others, boldly and proudly sets up his own will and pleasure as the only standard to which he will submit. For the model which we would adopt, as members of the Church, in our pursuit of Christian truth, we find a parallel and analogous case in a well-principled and well-disciplined son, with his way of life before him, exercising a large and liberal discretion in the choice of his pursuits; not fettered by peremptory paternal mandates, but ever voluntarily referring to those principles of moral obligation and of practical wisdom with which his mind has been imbued; shaping his course with modest diffidence in himself, and habitual deference to others older and wiser than himself, yet acting with the firmness and intrepidity of conscious rectitude of principle, and integrity of purpose; and under a constant sense of his responsibility, as well for his principles as for his conduct.
Against the cogency of these maxims various objections have been urged from time to time. We have been told, that the exercise of private judgment in matters of religion, tends to foster errors of every diversity of character, and leads to heresy, scepticism, and infidelity: it is represented as rending the Church of Christ, and totally subverting Christian unity, and snapping asunder at once the bond of peace. So also it has been often maintained, that the same cause robs individual Christians of that freedom from all disquietude and perplexity and anxious responsibility, that peace of mind, satisfaction, and content, which those personally enjoy, who surrender themselves implicitly to a guide, whom they believe to be unerring and infallible.
For a moment let us pause to ascertain the soundness of such objections. And here anticipating, for argument's sake, the worst result, let us suppose that the exercise of individual inquiry and judgment (such as the best teachers in the Anglican Church are wont to inculcate) may lead in some cases even to professed infidelity; is it right and wise and justifiable to be driven by an abuse of God's gifts to denounce the legitimate and faithful employment of them? What human faculty—which among the most precious of the Almighty's blessings is not liable to perversion? What unquestionable moral duty can be found, which has not been transformed by man's waywardness into an instrument of evil? Nay, what doctrine of our holy faith has not the wickedness or the folly of unworthy men employed as a cloke for unrighteousness, and a vehicle for blasphemy? But by a consciousness of this liability in all things human, must we be tempted to suppress the truth? to disparage those moral duties? or to discountenance the cultivation of those gifts and faculties? Rather would not sound philosophy and Christian wisdom jointly enforce the necessity of improving the gifts zealously, of discharging the moral obligation to the full, and of maintaining the doctrine in all its integrity; but guarding withal, to the utmost of our power and watchfulness, against the abuses to which any of these things may be exposed? And we may trust in humble but assured confidence, that as it is the duty of a rational being, alive to his own responsibility, to inquire and judge for himself in things concerning the soul, with the most faithful exercise of his abilities and means; so the wise and merciful Ruler of our destinies will provide us with a sure way of escaping from all evils incident to the discharge of that duty, if, in reliance on his blessing, we honestly seek the truth, and perseveringly adhere to that way in which He will be our guide.
It is a question very generally and very reasonably entertained among us, whether the implicit submission and unreserved surrender of ourselves to any human authority in matters of faith, (though whilst it lasts, it of course affords an effectual check to open scepticism,) does not ultimately and in very deed prove a far more prolific source of disguised infidelity. Doubts repressed as they arise, but not solved, silenced but not satisfied, gradually accumulate in spite of all external precaution; and at length (like streams pent back by some temporary barrier) break forth at once to an utter discarding of all authority, and an irrecoverable rejection of the Christian faith. From unlimited acquiescence in a guide whom our associations have invested with infallibility, the step is very short, and frequently taken, to entire apostasy and the renunciation of all belief.
The state of undisturbed tranquillity and repose in one, who has divested himself of all responsibility in matters of religious belief and practice, enjoying an entire immunity from the anxious and painful labour of trying for himself the purity and soundness of his faith, is often painted in strong contrast with the lamentable condition of those who are driven about by every wind of novelty. The condition of such a man may doubtless be far more enviable than theirs, who have no settled fixed principles, and who wander from creed to creed, and from sect to sect, just as their fickle and roving minds suggest some transitory preference. But the believer must not be driven by the evils of one extreme to take refuge in the opposite. The whirlpool may be the more perilous, but the Christian mariner must avoid the rock also, or he will equally make shipwreck of his faith. He must with all his skill, and all his might, keep to the middle course, shunning that presumptuous confidence which scorns all authority, and boldly constitutes itself sole judge and legislator; but equally rescuing his mind from the thraldom which prostrates his reason, and paralyzes all the faculties of his judgment in a matter of indefeasible and awful responsibility.
Here, too, it is questioned, and not without cause, whether the satisfaction and comfort so often represented in warm and fascinating colours, be really a spiritual blessing; or whether it be not a deception and fallacy, frequently ending in lamentable perplexity and confusion; like guarantees in secular concerns, which as long as they maintain unsuspected credit afford a most pleasing and happy security to any one who depends upon them; but which, when adverse fortune puts their responsibility to the test, may prove utterly worthless, and be traced only by losses and disappointments. Such a blind reliance on authority may doubtless be more easy and more free from care, than it is to gird up the loins of our mind, and engage in toilsome spiritual labour. But with a view to our own ultimate safety, wisdom bids us look to our foundations in time, and assure ourselves of them; admonishing us that if they are unsound, the spiritual edifice reared upon them, however pleasing to the eye, or abounding in present enjoyments, will at length fall, and bury our hopes in its ruin.
On these and similar principles, we maintain that it well becomes Christians, when the soundness of their faith, and the rectitude of their acts of worship, are called in question, "to prove all things, and hold fast that which is good." Thus, when the unbeliever charges us with credulity in receiving as a divine revelation what he scornfully rejects, it behoves us all (every one to the extent of his means and opportunities) to possess ourselves of the accumulated evidences of our holy faith, so that we may be able to give to our own minds, and to those who ask it of us, a reason for our hope. The result can assuredly be only the comfort of a still more unshaken conviction. Thus, too, when the misbeliever charges us with an undue and an unauthorized ascription of the Divine attributes to our Redeemer and to our Sanctifier, which he would confine to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, exclusively of the Eternal Son and the Blessed Spirit, it well becomes every Catholic Christian to assure himself of the evidence borne by the Scriptures to the divinity of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, together with the inseparable doctrines of redemption by the blood of Christ, and sanctification by the Spirit of grace; appealing also in this investigation to the tradition of the Church, and the testimony of her individual members from the earliest times, as under God his surest and best guides. In both these cases, I can say for myself that I have acted upon my own principles, and to the very utmost of my faculties have scrutinized the foundations of my faith, and from each of those inquiries and researches I have risen with a satisfaction increased far beyond my first anticipations. What I had taken up in my youth on authority, I have been long assured of by a moral demonstration, which nothing can shake; and I cling to it with an affection, which, guarded by God's good providence, nothing in this world can dissolve or weaken.
It is to engage in a similar investigation that I now most earnestly but affectionately invite the members of the Church of Rome, in order to ascertain for themselves the ground of their faith and practice in a matter of vast moment, and which, with other points, involves the principle of separation between the Roman and Anglican branches of the universal Church. Were the subjects of minor importance, or what the ancient writers were wont to call "things indifferent," reason and charity would prescribe that we should bear with each other, allowing a free and large discretion in any body of Christians, and not severing ourselves from them because we deemed our views preferable to theirs. In such a case we might well walk in the house of God as friends, without any interruption of the harmony which should exist between those who worship the true God with one heart and one mind, ever striving to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. But when the points at issue are of so vast moment; when two persons agreeing in the general principles of belief in the Gospel and its chief characteristic doctrines, yet find it impossible to join conscientiously in the same prayer, or the same acts of faith and worship, then the necessity is imperative on all who would not be parties to the utter breaking up of Christian unity, nor assist in propagating error, to make sure of their foundations; and satisfy themselves by an honest inquiry and upright judgment, that the fault does not rest with them.
Such appear to me both the doctrine and the practice of the INVOCATION OF SAINTS. I have endeavoured to conjecture in what light this doctrine and this practice would have presented itself to my mind, after a full and free inquiry into the nature and history and circumstances of the case, had I been brought up in communion with the Church of Rome; the question to be solved being, "Could I continue in her communion?" And the result of my inquiry is, that I must have either discarded that doctrine at once and for ever, or have joined with my lips and my knees in a worship which my reason condemned, and from which my heart shrunk. I must have either left the communion of Rome, or have continued to offer prayers to angels, and the spirits of departed mortals. Unless I had resolved at once to shut my eyes upon my own personal responsibility, and to surrender myself, mind and reason, soul and body, to the sovereign and undisputed control of others, never presuming to inquire into the foundation of what the Church of Rome taught; I must have sought some purer portion of the Catholic Church, in which her members addressed the One Supreme Being exclusively, without contemplating any other in the act of religious invocation. The distinction invented in comparatively late years, of the three kinds of worship; one for God, the second for the Virgin Mary, the third for Angels and Saints;—the distinction, too, between praying to a saint to give us good things, and praying to that saint to procure them for us at God's hand, (or, as the distinction is sometimes made, into prayer direct, absolute, final, sovereign, confined to the Supreme Being on the one hand; and prayer oblique, relative, transitory, subordinate, offered to saints on the other,) would have appeared to me the ingenious and finely-drawn inventions of an advocate, not such a sound process of Christian simplicity as the mind could rest upon, with an undoubting persuasion that all was right.
This, however, involves the very point at issue; and I now invite you, my Christian Brethren, to join with me, step by step, in a review of those several positions which have left on my mind the indelible conviction that I could never have passed my life in communion with that Church whose articles of fellowship maintained the duty of invoking saints and angels; and whose public offices were inseparably interwoven with addresses in prayer to other beings, than the Holy and undivided Trinity, the one only God.
In pursuing this inquiry I have thought the most convenient and satisfactory division of our work would be—
First, to ascertain what inference an unprejudiced study of the revealed will of God would lead us to make; both in the times of the elder covenant, when "holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost," and in that "fulness of time" when God spoke to us by his Son.
Secondly, to examine into the belief and practice of the Primitive Church, beginning with the inspired Apostles of our Lord.
Thirdly, to compare the results of those inquiries with the tenets and practice of the Church of Rome, with reference to three periods; the first immediately preceding the Reformation; the second comprising the Reformation, and the proceedings of the Council of Trent; the third embracing the belief and practice of the present day.
In this investigation, I purpose to reserve the worship of the Virgin Mary, called by Roman Catholic writers "Hyperdulia," and for various reasons the most important and interesting portion of the whole inquiry, for separate and distinct examination; except only so far as our review of any of the primitive writers may occasion some incidental departure from that rule.
May God guide us to his truth!
[CHAPTER II.]
[SECTION I.]—THE EVIDENCE OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES.
Here, Christian Brethren, bear with me if I briefly, but freely, recall to our thoughts on this first entrance upon a review of the inspired volume, the principles, and tone of mind, the temper and feelings, in a word, the frame both of the understanding and of the heart, with which we should study the sacred pages, on whatever subject we would try all things, and hold fast what should prove itself to be most in accordance with the will of God. Whether we would regard the two great parts into which the Holy Scriptures are divided, as the Old and the New Covenants; or whether we would prefer to call them the Old and the New Testaments, it matters not. Although different ideas and associations are suggested by those different names, yet, under either view, the same honest and good heart, the same patience of investigation, the same upright and unprejudiced judgment, the same exercise of our mental faculties, and the same enlightened conscience, must be brought to the investigation. In the one case we must endeavour to ascertain for ourselves the true intent and meaning of the inspired word of God, on the very same principles with those on which we would interpret a covenant between ourselves, and a person who had made it in full and unreserved reliance on our integrity, and on our high sense of equity, justice, and honour. In the other case we must bring the selfsame principles and feelings to bear on our inquiry, as we should apply in the interpretation of the last will and testament of a kind father, who with implicit confidence in our uprightness and straightforward dealing and affectionate anxiety to fulfil his intentions to the very utmost, had assigned to us the sacred duty of executor or trustee.
Under the former supposition, our sincere solicitude would be to ascertain the true intent and meaning of the contracting parties, not to seek out plausible excuses for departing from it; not to cull out and exaggerate beyond their simple and natural bearing, such expressions in the deed of agreement, as might seem to justify us in adopting the view of the contract most agreeable to our present wishes and most favourable to our own interests. Rather it would be our fixed and hearty resolution, at whatever cost of time, or labour, or pecuniary sacrifice, or personal discomfort, to apply to the instrument our unbiassed powers of upright and honest interpretation.
Or adopting the latter analogy, we should sincerely strive to ascertain the chief and leading objects of our parent's will; what were his intentions generally; what ruling principles seemed to pervade his views in framing the testament; and in all cases of obscurity and doubt, in every thing approaching an appearance of inconsistency, we should refer to that paramount principle as our test and guide. We should not for a moment suffer ourselves to be tempted to seek for ambiguous expressions, which ingenuity might interpret so as to countenance our departure from the general drift of our parent's will, in cases where it was at variance with our own inclination, and where we could have wished that he had made another disposition of his property, or given to us a different direction, or trusted us with larger discretion. Moreover, in any points of difficulty, we should apply for assistance, in solving our doubts, to such persons as were most likely to have the power of judging correctly, and whose judgment would be least biassed by partiality and prejudice;—not to those whose credit was staked on the maintenance of those principles which best accorded with our own inclination. Especially if in either case some strong feeling should have been raised and spread abroad on any point, we should seek the judgment and counsel of those who had been familiar with the testator's intentions, or with the views of the covenanting party, before such points had become matter of discussion.
Now only let us act upon these principles in the interpretation of THAT COVENANT in which the Almighty has vouchsafed to make Himself one of the contracting parties, and man, the creature of his hand, is the other: only let us act on these principles in the interpretation of THAT TESTAMENT of which the Saviour of the world is the Testator; and with God's blessing on our labours (a blessing never denied to sincere prayer and faithful exertions) we need not fear the result. Any other principle of interpretation will only confirm us in our prejudices, and involve us more inextricably in error.
[SECTION II.]—DIRECT EVIDENCE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
The first step in our proposed inquiry is to ascertain what evidence on the doctrine and practice of the Invocation of Saints and Angels can be fairly drawn from the revealed word of God in the Old Testament.
Now, let us suppose that a person of a cultivated and enlightened mind, and of a sound and clear judgment, but hitherto a stranger to revelation, were required to study the ancient Scriptures with the single view of ascertaining what one object more than any other, subordinate to the great end of preparing the world for the advent of Messiah, seemed to be proposed by the wisdom of the Almighty in imparting to mankind that revelation; could he fix upon any other point as the one paramount and pervading principle with so much reason, as upon this, the preservation in the world of a practical belief in the perfect unity of God, and the fencing of his worship against the admixture of any other, of whatever character or form; The announcement that the Creator and Governor of the universe is the sole Giver of every temporal and spiritual blessing; the one only Being to whom, his rational creatures on earth should pay any religious service whatever; the one only Being to whom mortals must seek by prayer and invocation for the supply of any of their wants? Through the entire volume the inquirer would find that the unity of God is announced in every variety of expression; and that the exclusive worship of HIM alone is insisted upon and guarded with the utmost jealousy by assurances, by threats, and by promises, as the God who heareth prayer, alone to be called upon, alone to be invoked, alone to be adored. So to speak, he would find that recourse was had to every expedient for the express purpose of protecting God's people from the fatal error of embracing in their worship any other being or name whatever; not reserving supreme adoration for the Supreme Being, and admitting a sort of secondary honour and inferior mode of invocation to his exalted saints and servants; but banishing at once and for ever the most distant approximation towards religious honour—the veriest shadow of spiritual invocation to any other Being than Jehovah HIMSELF ALONE.
In process of time, the heathen began to deify those mortals who had conferred signal benefits on the human race, or had distinguished themselves by their power and skill above their fellow-countrymen. Male and female divinities were multiplying on every side. Together with Jupiter, the fabled father of gods and men, worshipped under different names among the various tribes, were associated those "gods many and lords many," which ignorance and superstition, or policy and craft, had invented; and which shared some a greater, some a less portion of popular veneration and religious worship. To the people of God, the worshippers of Jehovah, it was again and again most solemnly and awfully denounced, that no such thing should be. "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve," is a mandate repeated in every variety of language, and under every diversity of circumstance. In some passages, indeed, together with the most clear assurances, that mankind need apply to no other dispenser of good, and can want no other as Saviour, advocate, or intercessor, that same truth is announced with such superabundance of repetition, that in the productions of any human writer the style would be chargeable with tautology. In the Bible, this repetition only the more forces upon the mind, and fixes there, that same principle as an eternal verity never to be questioned; never to be dispensed with; never to be diluted or qualified; never to be invaded by any service, worship, prayer, invocation, or adoration of any other being whatever. Let us take, for example, the forty-fifth chapter of Isaiah, in which the principle is most strongly and clearly illustrated. "I am the LORD, and there is none else: there is no God beside me; I girded thee, though thou hast not known me; that they may know from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is none beside me: I am the Lord, and there is none else. They shall be ashamed, and also confounded, all of them; they shall go to confusion together, that are makers of idols. But Israel shall be saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation: ye shall not be ashamed nor confounded world without end: I am the Lord, and there is none else. I said not unto the seed of Jacob, Seek ye me in vain. They have no knowledge that set up the wood of their graven image, and pray unto a god that cannot save. There is no god beside me; a just God and a Saviour; there is none beside me. Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is none else."
But it is needless to multiply these passages; and members of the Church of Rome will say, that they themselves acknowledge, as fully as members of the Anglican Church can do, that there is but one supreme God and Lord, to whom alone they intend to offer the worship due to God; and that the appeals which they offer by way of invocation to saints and angels for their services and intercession, do not militate against this principle. But here let us ask ourselves these few questions:—
First, if it had been intended by the Almighty to forbid any religious application, such as is now professedly the invocation of saints and angels, to any other being than Himself alone, what words could have been employed more stringently prohibitory?
Secondly, had such an address to saints and angels, as the Church of Rome now confessedly makes, been contemplated by our heavenly Lawgiver as an exception to the general rule, would not some saving clause, some expressions indicative of such an intended exception, have been discovered in some page or other of his revealed will?
Thirdly, if such an appeal to the angels of heaven, or to the spirits of the just in heaven, had been sanctioned under the elder covenant, would not some example, some solitary instance, have been recorded of a faithful servant of Jehovah offering such a prayer with the Divine approbation?
Lastly, when such strong and repeated declarations and injunctions interspersed through the entire volume of the Old Testament, unequivocally show the will of God to be, that no other object of religious worship should have place in the heart or on the tongue of his own true sons and daughters, can it become a faithful child of our Heavenly Father to be seeking for excuses and palliations, and to invent distinctions between one kind of worship and another?
God Himself includes all in one universal prohibitory mandate, "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve." So far from according with those general rules for the interpretation of the revealed will of God, which we have already stated, and from which, in the abstract, probably few would dissent, an anxiety to force the word of God into at least an acquiescence in the invocation of saints and angels, indicates a disposition to comply with his injunctions, wherever they seem to clash with our own view, only so far as we cannot avoid compliance; and to seek how we may with any show of propriety evade the spirit of those commands. Instead of that full, free, and unstinted submission of our own inclinations and propensities to the Almighty's will wherever we can discover it, which those entertain whom the Lord seeketh to worship Him; to look for exceptions and to act upon them, bears upon it the stamp of a reserved and grudging service. After so many positive warnings, enactments, and denunciations, against seeking by prayer the aid of any other being whatever, surely a positive command would have been absolutely necessary to justify a mortal man in preferring any prayer to any being, saint, angel, or archangel, save only the Supreme Deity alone. Instead of any such command or even permission appearing, not one single word occurs, from the first syllable in the Book of Genesis to the last of the prophet Malachi, which could even by implication be brought to countenance the practice of approaching any created being in prayer.
But let us now look to the examples on this subject afforded in the Old Testament. Many, very many a prayer is recorded of holy men, of inspired men, of men, to whose holiness and integrity and acceptance the Holy Spirit bears witness; yet among these prayers there is not found one invocation addressed to saint or angel. I will not here anticipate the observations which it will be necessary to make in consequence of the extraordinary argument which has been devised, to account for the absence of invocations to saints before the resurrection of Christ, namely, that before that event the saints were not admitted into heaven. Although pressed forward with such unhesitating confidence in its validity, that argument is so singular in its nature, and so important in its consequences, and withal so utterly groundless, as to call for a separate examination, on which we will shortly enter: meanwhile, we are now inquiring into the matter of fact.
The whole Book of Psalms is a manual of devotion, consisting alternately, or rather intermixedly, of prayers and praises, composed some by Moses, some by other inspired Israelites of less note, but the greater part by David himself; and what is the force and tendency of their example? Words are spoken in collaudation of "Moses and Aaron among the saints of the Lord," and of "Samuel among such as called upon his name;" and mention is made with becoming reverence of the holy angels; but not one word ever falls from the pen of the Psalmist, addressed, by way of invocation, to saint or angel. In the Roman Ritual supplication is made to Abel and Abraham as well as to Michael and all angels. If it is now lawful, if it is now the duty of the worshippers of the true God to seek his aid through the mediation of those holy men, can we avoid asking, Why the inspired patriarchs did not appeal to Abel for his mediation? Why did not the inspired David invoke the father of the faithful to intercede for him with God? If the departed spirits of faithful men may be safely addressed in prayer; if those who in their lifetime have, to their fellow-mortals, (who can judge only from outward actions, and cannot penetrate the heart,) appeared accepted servants and honoured saints of our Creator, may now be invoked by an act of religious supplication either to grant us aid, or to intercede with God for aid in our behalf, why did not men whom God declared to be partakers of his Spirit of truth, offer the same supplication to those departed spirits, who, before and after their decease, had this testimony from Omniscience itself, that they pleased God? Why is no intimation given in the later books of the Old Testament that such supplications were offered to Moses, or Aaron, or Abraham, or Noah? When wrath was gone out from the presence of the Lord, and the plague was begun among the people, Aaron took a censer in his hand, and stood between the living and the dead, and the plague was stayed. If the soul of Aaron was therefore to be regarded as a spirit influential with God, one whose intercession could avail, one who ought to be approached in prayer, were it only for his intercession, could a stronger motive be conceived for suggesting that invocation, than David must have felt, when the pestilence was destroying its thousands around him, and all his glory and strength, and his very life too, were threatened by its resistless ravages? But no! neither Abel, nor Abraham, nor Moses, nor Aaron, must be petitioned to intercede with God, and to pray that God would stay his hand. To God and God alone, for his own mercy's sake, must his afflicted servant turn in supplication. We find among his prayers no "Holy Abraham, pray for us,"—"Holy Abel, pray for us." His own Psalm of thanksgiving describes full well the object and the nature of his prayer: "When the waves of death compassed me, the floods of ungodly men made me afraid, the sorrows of hell compassed me about, the snares of death prevented me; in my distress I called upon the Lord, and cried to my God; and He did hear my voice out of his temple, and my cry did enter into his ears." [2 Sam. (2 Kings Vulg.) xxii. 5. or Ps. xviii.] Abraham, when on earth, prayed God to spare the offending-people; but he invoked neither Noah, nor Abel, nor any of the faithful departed, to join their intercessions with his own. Isaac prayed to God for his son Jacob, but he did not ask the mediation of his father Abraham in his behalf; and when Jacob in his turn supplicated an especial blessing upon his grandsons Ephraim and Manasseh, though he called with gratitude to his mind, and expressed with his tongue, the devotedness both of Abraham and of Isaac to the Almighty, yet we do not find him appealing to them, or invoking their intercession with Jehovah.
When the conscience-struck Israelites felt that they had exposed themselves to the wrath of Almighty God, whose sovereign power, put forth at the prayer of Samuel, they then witnessed, distrusting the efficacy of their own supplication, and confiding in the intercession of that man of God, they implored him to intercede for them; and Samuel emphatically responded to their appeal, with an assurance of his earnestly undertaking to plead their cause with heaven: "And all the people said unto Samuel, Pray for thy servants unto the Lord thy God, that we die not. And Samuel said unto the people, Fear not.... The Lord will not forsake his people, for his great name's sake.... Moreover, God forbid that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you." [1 Sam. (1 Kings Vulg.) xii. 19.] Samuel is one whom the Holy Spirit numbers among those "who called upon God's name;" and when Samuel died, all Israel gathered together to lament and to bury him,—but we read of no petition being offered to him to carry on the same intercessory office, when he was once removed from them. As long as he was entabernacled in the flesh and sojourned on earth with his brethren, they besought him to pray for them, to intercede with their God and his God for blessings at his hand, (just as among ourselves one Christian asks another to pray for him,) but when Samuel's body had been buried in peace, and his soul had returned to God who gave it, the Bible never records any further application to him; we no where read, "Holy Samuel, pray for us."
Again, what announcement could God Himself make more expressive of his acceptance of the persons of any, than He actually and repeatedly made to Moses with regard to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? How could He more clearly intimate that if the spirits of the faithful departed could exercise intercessory or mediatorial influence with Him, those three holy patriarchs would possess such power above all others who had ever lived on the earth? "I am the God of your fathers; the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob: and Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God." "Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, The God of thy fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you. This is my name for ever, and this is my memorial throughout all generations." [Exod. iii. 6. 15.] Did Moses in his alarm and dread, when he was afraid to look upon God, call upon those holy and accepted servants to aid him in his perplexity, and intercede for him and his people with the awful Eternal Being on whose majesty he dared not to look? Did he teach his people to invoke Abraham? That was far from him. When Moses, that saint of the Lord, was himself called hence and was buried, (though no mortal man was allowed to know the place of his sepulture,) did the surviving faithful pray to him for his help and intercession with God? He had wrought so many and great miracles as never had been before witnessed on earth; whilst in the tabernacle of the flesh he had talked with God as a man talketh with his friend; and yet the sacred page records no invocation ever breathed to his departed spirit. The same is the result of our inquiry throughout.
I will specify only one more example—Hezekiah, who "trusted in the Lord God of Israel, and clave to the Lord, and departed not from following him, but kept his commandments," when he and his people were in great peril, addressed his prayer only to God. He offered no invocation to holy David to intercede with the Almighty for his own Jerusalem; he made his supplication directly and exclusively to Jehovah; and, yet, the very answer made to that prayer would surely have seemed to justify Hezekiah in seeking holy David's mediation, if prayer for the intercession of any departed mortal could ever have been sanctioned by Heaven: "Thus saith the Lord, the God of David thy father; I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears; I will heal thee. I will save this city for mine own sake, and for my servant David's sake." [2 Kings (Vulg. 4 Kings) xix. 15. and xx. 6.] Of what saint in the calendar was ever such a thing as this spoken?
I have already intimated my intention of referring, with somewhat more than a cursory remark, to the position assumed, and the argument built upon it by writers in communion with Rome, for the purpose of nullifying or escaping from the evidence borne by the examples of the Old Testament against the invocation of saints. The writers to whom I refer, with Bellarmin at their head, openly confess that the pages of the Old Testament afford no instance of invocation being offered to the spirits of departed mortals; and the reason which they allege is this, No one can be invoked who is not admitted to the presence of God in heaven; but before Christ went down to hell[2] and released the spirits from prison, no mortal was admitted into heaven; consequently, before the resurrection of Christ the spirit of no mortal was invoked. The following are the words of Bellarmin at the close of the preface to his "Church Triumphant:"—"The spirits of the patriarchs and prophets before the coming of Christ were for this reason not worshipped and invoked, as we now worship and invoke the Apostles and martyrs, because they were yet shut up and detained in prisons below[3]." Again, he says, "Because before the coming of Christ the saints who died did not enter heaven and saw not God, nor could ordinarily know the prayers of suppliants, therefore, it was not customary in the Old Testament to say, 'Holy Abraham, pray for me,' &c.; but the men of that time prayed to God only, and alleged the merits of the saints who had already departed, that their own prayers might be aided by them."
Footnote 2:[(return)]
The word Hell, signifying, in Saxon, a hidden-place, altogether corresponding in its etymology with "hades," is now used for the place of torment called by the Hebrews "Gehennah;" and we must perhaps regret that the same Saxon word is employed to signify also the unseen region of departed spirits. This circumstance has been the source of much difficulty and confusion.
Footnote 3:[(return)]
"Nam idcirco ante Christi adventum non ita colebantur neque invocabantur spiritus patriarcharum atque prophetarum, quemadmodum nunc Apostolos et martyres colimus et invocamus, quod illi adhuc infernis carceribus clausi detinebantur."—Ingolstadii, 1601. vol. ii. p. 833. "The last edition, enlarged and corrected by the Author."
Now let us inquire into this statement thus broadly made, and ascertain for ourselves whether the point assumed and the argument built upon it can stand the test of examination. Is this argument such as ought to satisfy the mind of one, who would humbly but honestly follow the apostolic rule, "Prove all things: hold fast that which is good?" Is this such an exposition as that the reason of a cultivated mind, and the faith of an enlightened Christian, can acquiesce in it? Let it be examined neither with prejudice in its favour, nor with any undue suspicion of its soundness, but with candour and impartiality throughout.
It is not necessary to dwell at any length on the inconsistencies and perplexities involved in this assumed abstract theory with regard to the souls of the faithful who died before the resurrection of Christ, and which require to be cleared away before its advocates can reasonably expect to obtain for it any general acceptance among thinking men. I do not wish to contravene the theory, far less to substitute another in its stead. On the contrary, I am fully content, in company with some of the most valuable among Roman Catholic writers, following the example of Augustin [Aug. De Pecc. Orig. c. 23. tom. vii. p. 338.—Quoted by De Sacy. 2 Kings (Vulg. 4 Kings) ii.], to leave the subject where Scripture has left it. To the arguments alleged, I would wish to reply independently of any opinion, as a matter of Christian belief, with regard to the place, the condition, and the circumstances of the souls of the patriarchs and prophets before our blessed Lord's resurrection. It may, nevertheless, materially facilitate an inquiry into the soundness of the reasons alleged for the total absence of invocation to those souls, if we briefly contemplate some of the difficulties which surround this novel theory. At all events, such a process will incline us to abstain from bold assumptions on a point upon which the Almighty has been pleased to throw so little light in his Holy Word, or at least avoid all severity of condemnation towards those who may differ from our views.
It is very easy to assert, that all the souls of the faithful departed were kept in the prison-house of Hades, and to allege in its behalf an obscure passage of St. Peter, to which many of the most learned and unprejudiced Christian teachers assign a meaning totally unconnected with the subject of departed spirits. But surely the case of Enoch's translation from this life to heaven, making, as it has been beautifully expressed, but one step from earth to glory, which St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Hebrews, cites with a most important comment of his own, requires to be well and patiently weighed. He was taken from the earth by an immediate act of Providence, that he should not see death; and before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God. Surely the case of Elijah too, when we would ascertain the soundness of this theory, must not be dismissed summarily from our thoughts, of whom the book of eternal truth declares, that Jehovah took him in a whirlwind into heaven; his ascent being made visible to mortal eyes, as was afterwards the ascension of the blessed Saviour Himself. Indeed the accounts of Elijah's translation, and of our Lord's ascension, whether in the Septuagint and Greek Testament, the Vulgate, or our own authorized version, present a similarity of expression very striking and remarkable.
On this subject we are strongly reminded, first, with what care and candour and patience the language of Holy Scripture should be weighed, which so positively declares, that Moses and Elijah, both in glory, appeared visibly to the Apostles at the transfiguration of our blessed Saviour, and conversed with Him on the holy mount: "And behold there talked with Him two men, who were Moses and Elias, who appeared in glory (in majesty, as the Vulgate renders the word), and spake of his decease which He should accomplish at Jerusalem;" [Luke ix. 30.]—and, secondly, how unwise it is to dogmatize on such subjects beyond the plain declaration of the sacred narrative. Moreover, how very unsatisfactory is the theory which we are examining as to the state of the souls of the faithful who died before Christ, even the words of Jerome himself prove, who, commenting on the transfiguration of the blessed Jesus, is unhappily led to represent the Almighty as having summoned Elijah to descend from heaven, and Moses to ascend from Hades, to meet our Lord in the Mount[4].
Footnote 4:[(return)]
"Elia inde descendente quo conscenderat, et Moyse ab inferis resurgente."—Hieron. in Matt. xvii. 1. Paris, 1706. vol. iv. p. 77.
Strange and startling as is this sentiment of Jerome, it is, you will observe, utterly irreconcileable with the theory, that the reason why the ancient Church did not pray to the saints departed, was because they were not yet in heaven.
On this point, among Roman Catholic writers themselves, there prevails a very great diversity of opinion, arising probably from the difficulty which they have experienced in their endeavours to make all facts and doctrines square with the present tenets and practices of their Church[5]. Thus, whilst some maintain that Elijah was translated to the terrestrial paradise in which Adam had been placed, not enjoying the immediate divine presence; others cite the passage as justifying the belief that the saints departed pray for us[6]. But not only are different authors at variance with each other on very many points here; the same writer in his zeal is betrayed into great and palpable inconsistency. Bellarmin, anxious to enlist the account given by our Lord of the rich man and Lazarus, to countenance the invocation of saints by the example of the rich man appealing to Abraham, maintains that section of Holy Writ to be not a parable, but a true history of a matter of fact which took place between two real individuals; and of his assertion he adduces this proof, that "the Church worships that Lazarus as verily a holy man[7];" and yet he denies that any of the holy men were in heaven before the death of Christ. Either Abraham was in heaven in the presence of God, or not; if he was in heaven, why did not his descendants invoke his aid? if he was not in heaven, the whole argument drawn from the rich man's supplication falls to the ground.
Footnote 5:[(return)]
See De Sacy on 4 Kings i. 1. See also Estius, 1629. p. 168. Pope Gregory's Exposition; Rome, 1553. p. 99. Stephen's Bible in loc. 1557, &c. The Vulgate ed. Antwerp, 1624, cites a note, "Thy prayers are stronger than chariots and horsemen."
Footnote 6:[(return)]
Gaspar Sanctius, Antwerp, 1624. p. 1360, considers the fable not improbable, that Elijah, living in the terrestrial paradise, wrote there the letters to Joram (mentioned 2 Chron. xxi. 12), and sent them by angels.
Footnote 7:[(return)]
Colit Lazarum ilium ut vere sanctum hominem.—Bellarm. De Ecd. Triumph, p. 864.
Another very extraordinary inconsistency, arising from the same solicitude, forces itself upon our notice, when the same author urges a passage in Leviticus [Levit. xix. 13.] to prove, that the saints are now admitted at once into the enjoyment of the presence of God in heaven, without waiting for the day of final judgment. [Bell vol. ii. p. 865.] "God (such are his words) commanded it to be written, 'The work of the hireling shall not remain with thee till the morning;' therefore, unless God would appear inconsistent with Himself, He will not keep back the reward of his saints to the end of the world." How strange, that in the same treatise [Ibid. p. 833.] this author should expressly maintain, that the reward of Abel and Abraham, and the holy prophet and lawgiver Moses, the very man who was commanded to write that law in Leviticus, was kept back,—the last for a longer period than a thousand years; the first well nigh four thousand years.
I mention these particulars merely to point out how very unsatisfactory and unsound is the attempted solution of the difficulties which surround on every side the theory of those who maintain, that the reason why we have no instance of the righteous departed being invoked in the times of the elder covenant is, that they were not as yet admitted into heaven, but were kept in prison till the resurrection of Christ. I would also observe, even at the risk of repetition, that I am here not maintaining any opinion as to the appointed abiding-place, the condition, and circumstances, the powers of consciousness, volition or enjoyment of the departed, before Christ's resurrection; on the contrary, I am rather urging the consideration of the great and serious caution requisite before we espouse, as an article of faith, any opinion which rests on so questionable a foundation, and which involves such interminable difficulties.
But while we need not dwell longer on this immediate point, yet there are two considerations which appear to be altogether decisive as to the evidence borne against the Invocation of Saints by the writers of the Old Testament. If the spirits of the saints departed were not invoked before the resurrection of Christ, purely because they were not then admitted into heaven; the first consideration I would suggest is this: Why did the faithful and inspired servants of Jehovah not invoke the angels and archangels who were in heaven? The second is this: Why did not the inspired Apostles and faithful disciples of our Lord invoke the spirits of those saints after his resurrection; that is (according to the theory before us), after those saints had been taken by Christ with him into his Father's presence? I wish not to anticipate here our inquiry into the testimony borne by the writers of the New Testament as to the doctrine and practice of the Roman Church in this particular; and I will only add, that whatever be the cause of the absence from the Old Testament of all worship and invocation of Abel and Abraham, whom the Roman Church now invokes, the alleged reason that it was because they were not in heaven till after Christ's resurrection, is utterly set aside by the conduct of the Apostles and disciples of our Lord recorded in the New Testament, for more than half a century after his return to his Father's glory.
This, however, seems to be the proper place for entertaining the first consideration, Why did not the holy men of old, under the elder covenant, invoke angels and archangels, as the Roman Church now does? Writers, indeed, who have declared themselves the defenders of that doctrine and practice, refer us to passages, which they cite, as affording examples of the worship of angels; and we will not knowingly allow any one of those sections of Holy Writ to remain unexamined. We must first endeavour to ascertain the testimony borne by the books of the Old Testament: and that presents to us such a body of evidence as greatly increases our surprise at the perseverance with which the invocation of angels has been maintained by any community of men acknowledging the inspiration of the sacred volume.
The inspired writers of the Old Testament, and those to whom through their mouth and pen the Divine word was addressed, were as fully as ourselves acquainted with the existence of angelic beings. They were aware of the station of those angels in the court of heaven, of their power as God's ambassadors, and agents for good. Either their own eyes had seen the mighty operations of God by the hands of those celestial messengers; or their ears had heard their fathers tell what HE had done by their instrumentality in times of old. Why then did not God's chosen people offer to the angels the same worship and invocation which the Church of Rome now addresses to them in common with the patriarchs and prophets of the elder covenant, and with saints and martyrs under the new? In the condition of the holy angels no one ever suggests that any change, affecting the argument, has taken place since the time when man was created and made. And as the angels of heaven were in themselves the same, equally in the presence of God, and equally able to succour men through that long space of four thousand years, which intervened between Adam's creation and the birth of HIM who was Son of Adam and Son of God, so was man in the same dependent state, needing the guidance and protection of a power above his own. Nay, surely, if there was in man any difference affecting the argument, it would all add weight to the reason against the invocation of angels by Christians. The Israelites of old had no clear knowledge, as we have, of one great Mediator, who is ever making intercession for us; and yet they sought not the mediation and intercession and good offices of those superhuman beings, of whose existence and power, and employment in works of blessing to man, they had no doubt[8]. This is a point of great importance to our argument, and I will refer to a few passages in support of it.
Footnote 8:[(return)]
A small section indeed of their countrymen in our Saviour's time denied the reality of a future state, and the existence of angels and spirits; but the sect was of then recent origin, and the overwhelming majority believed as their fathers had believed.
When David, who had, as we know [1 Chron. xxi. 16.], visible demonstration afforded him of the existence and ministration of the angels, called upon them to unite with his own soul, and with all the works of creation through all places of God's dominion, in praising their merciful, glorious, and powerful Creator, he thus conveys to us the exalted ideas with which he had been filled of their nature, their excellence, and their ministration. "The Lord hath prepared his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom ruleth over all: Bless the Lord, ye his angels that excel in strength, that do his commandments, hearkening unto the voice of his word. Bless ye the Lord, all ye his hosts, ye ministers of his that do his pleasure." [Ps. ciii. 19-21.] David knew moreover that one of the offices, in the execution of which the angels do God's pleasure, is that of succouring and defending us on earth. For example, in one of the psalms used by the Church of Rome at complin, and with the rest repeated in the Church of England, and prophetic of the Redeemer, David, to whom this psalm is probably to be ascribed, declares of the man who had made the Most High his refuge and strength, "There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling; for he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways; they shall bear thee up in their hands lest thou dash thy foot against a stone." [Ps. xci. 10-12.] And again, with exquisitely beautiful imagery, he represents those same blessed servants of heaven as an army, as a host of God's spiritual soldiers keeping watch and ward over the poorest of the children of men, who would take refuge in his mercy: "The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him, and delivereth them[9]." And yet David, the prophet of the Lord, never addresses to these beings, high and glorious though they are, one single invocation: he neither asks them to assist him, nor to pray for him, nor to pray with him in his behalf.
Footnote 9:[(return)]
Ps. xxxiv. 7. (Vulg. xxxiii. 8.) "Immittet angelus Domini in circuitu timentium eum, et eripiet eos." In the Vulgate the beauty of the figure is lost; which, however, Roman Catholic writers restore in their comments. Basil makes a beautiful use of the metaphor. See De Sacy in loc.
Isaiah was admitted by the Holy Spirit to witness in the fulness of its glory the court and the throne of heaven; and he heard the voices of the seraphim proclaiming their Maker's praise; he experienced also personally the effect of their ministration, when one of them said, "Lo, this hath touched thy lips, and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged." [Isaiah vi. 7.] Still, though Isaiah must have regarded this angel as his benefactor under God, yet neither to this seraph, nor to any of the host of heaven, does he offer one prayer for their good offices, even by their intercession. He ever ascribes all to God alone; and never joins any other name with His either in supplication or in praise. Let us also take the case of Daniel. He acknowledges not only that the Lord's omnipotent hand had rescued him from the jaws of the lions, but that the deliverance was brought about by the ministration of an angel. "My God hath sent his angel, and hath shut the lions' mouths, that they have not hurt me." [Dan. vi. 22.] Yet when we look through Daniel's prayers, we find no allusion to any of the highest angels. He had seen Gabriel before his prayer; he had heard the voice and felt the hand of that heavenly messenger who was commissioned to reveal to him what should be done in the latter end; and immediately after the offering of his prayer, the same Gabriel announces himself as one who was come forth to give the prophet skill and understanding. And yet neither towards Gabriel, nor any other of the angels of God, does one word of invocation fall from the lips of Daniel. In the supplications of that holy, intrepid, and blessed servant and child of God, we search in vain for any thing approaching in spirit to the invocation, "Sancte Gabriel, ora pro nobis."
[SECTION III.]—EVIDENCE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT (continued)
We must now briefly refer to those passages, by which Roman Catholic writers have endeavoured to maintain that religious adoration was paid to angels by the faithful sons of God. The two principal instances cited are, first, the case of Abraham bowing down before three men, whom he recognizes as messengers from heaven; and, secondly, the words of Jacob when he gave his benediction to his grandsons.
With regard to the first instance, how very far the prostration of Abraham was in itself from implying an act of religious worship, being as it was the ordinary mode of paying respect to a fellow mortal, is evident from the very words of Scripture. The Hebrew word, which we translate by "bowed himself," and which the Vulgate unhappily renders "adoravit" ("adored"), is, letter for letter, the same in the case of Abraham saluting his three heavenly visitors, and in the case of Jacob saluting his brother Esau. The parallelism of the two passages is very striking.
| GEN. xviii. 2. And he [Abraham] lift up his eyes, and lo! three men stood by him; and when he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent door; and bowed himself toward the ground. | GEN. xxxiii. 1 and 3. And Jacob lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold! Esau came ... And he passed over, and bowed himself to the ground seven times until he came near to his brother. |
By rendering the Hebrew word[10], which means to "bow or bend oneself," by the word "adoravit," which is literally "to pray to," the Latin Vulgate has laid the foundation for much unsound and misleading criticism. But suppose the word had meant, what it does not mean, an act of solemn religious worship; and let it be granted (as I am not only ready to grant, but prepared to maintain) that Abraham paid religious adoration at that time, what inference can fairly and honestly be drawn from that circumstance in favour of the invocation of angels? The ancient writers of the Christian Church, and those whom the Church of Rome habitually holds in great respect, are full and clear in maintaining that the person whom Abraham then addressed, was no created being, neither angel nor seraph; but the Angel of the Covenant; the Word, the eternal Son of God, Himself God[11]. Before the visible and miraculous presence of the God of heaven, who for his own glory and in carrying on the work of man's salvation, sometimes deigned so to reveal Himself, the patriarchs of old bowed themselves to the earth. Can this, with any shadow of reason, be employed to sanction the invocation of Michael and all the myriads of angels who fill the court of heaven?
Footnote 10:[(return)]
Not only is the Hebrew word precisely the same, letter for letter, and point for point, [Hebrew: shahah], but the Septuagint in each case employs the same, [Greek: prosekunaesen]; and the Vulgate in each case renders it by the same word, "adoravit." The Roman Catholic commentator De Sacy renders it in each case, "se prosternavit," which corresponds exactly with our English version. The Douay Bible in each case renders it "adored."
Footnote 11:[(return)]
Many early Christian writers may be cited to the same purpose: it is enough, however, to refer to Justin Martyr and to Athanasius; who are very full and elaborate in maintaining, that the angel here mentioned was no created being, but was the Angel of the Covenant, God, in the fulness of time manifested in the flesh. The passage from Athanasius will be quoted at some length, when we come to examine that father's testimony. For Justin Martyr, see Dial. cum Tryph. ch. 56, &c. p. 150, &c. (Paris, 1742.)
The only other instance to which it will be necessary to call your attention, occurs in the forty-eighth chapter of Genesis. The passage, however, is so palpably and on the very face of it inapplicable, that its examination needs not detain us long. "And he [Jacob] blessed Joseph, and said, God, before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk, the God who fed me all my life long unto this day, the ANGEL which redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads." [Gen. xlviii. 15.] Here the patriarch speaks of God as the Angel, and the Angel as God: being the Angel or Messenger of the Covenant—God manifested to man. He speaks not of Michael or Gabriel, or archangel or seraph, or any created being; but of the Lord Himself, who appeared to him, agreeably to the revelation of God Himself recorded in a previous chapter, and thus communicated by the patriarch to Rachel and Leah: "And the ANGEL of God spake unto me in a dream, saying, Jacob; and I said, Here am I. And he said ... I am the GOD of Bethel, where thou anointedst the pillar, and vowedst a vow unto me." [Gen. xxxi. 11.] The Angel whose blessing he desired for the lads was the God[12], to whom he had vowed a vow in Bethel, the Lord Himself.
Footnote 12:[(return)]
It may not be superfluous to add, that this is the interpretation of the passage adopted by primitive writers, Among others see Eusebius Demonstr. Evan. lib. v. ch. 10: who declares that the Angel spoken of by Jacob was God the Son.
Independently, however, of this conclusive consideration, if the latter member of this sentence had merely expressed a wish, that an angel might be employed as an instrument of good in behalf of Ephraim and Manasseh, I could readily offer such a prayer for a blessing on my own children. My prayer would be addressed to the angel neither immediately nor transitively, but exclusively to God alone, supplicating Him graciously to employ the service of those ministering spirits for our good. Such a prayer every Catholic in communion with the Church of England is taught and directed to offer. Such a prayer is primitive and scriptural; and such is offered in the Church on the anniversary of Saint Michael and all angels:
"O Everlasting God, who hast ordained and constituted the services of angels and men in a wonderful order, mercifully grant that as Thy holy angels alway do Thee service in heaven, so by Thy appointment they may succour and defend us on earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."
Such is the prayer of the Church Catholic, whether of the Roman or the Anglican branch; it is in spirit and in truth a Christian prayer, fit for faithful mortals to offer on earth to the Lord of men and of angels in heaven. Would that the Church of Rome, preserving, as she has preserved, this prayer in all its original purity, had never been successfully tempted to mingle in the same service, supplications, which rob the one only God of his exclusive honour and glory, as the God "who heareth prayer;" and to rob Christ of his exclusive honour and glory, as our only Mediator and Advocate!
Here, though unwilling, by departing from the order of our argument, to anticipate our examination in its place of the Roman ritual, I cannot refrain from contrasting this prayer, the genuine offspring of Christian faith, with some forms of invocation contained in the Roman service on St. Michael's day, in which I could not join, and the adoption of which I deeply lament. The first is appointed to be said at the part of the Mass called "The Secret:" "We offer to Thee, O Lord, the sacrifice of praise, humbly beseeching Thee, That by the intervention of the prayers of the angels for us, Thou, being appeased, mayest both accept the same, and make them profitable for our salvation. Through ..." The second is offered at the Post Communion: "Supported [propped up, suffulti] by the intercession of Thy blessed archangel Michael, we humbly beseech Thee, O Lord, that what with honour we follow[13], we may obtain also in mind. Through ..."
Footnote 13:[(return)]
I do not understand the exact meaning of these words, which however contain no portion of that sentiment, the presence of which in this prayer I deplore. The original is this: "Beati archangeli tui Michaelis intercessione suffulti, supplices te Domine deprecamur, ut quod honore prosequimur, contingamus et in mente. Per ..." Probably the general sense is, that what we reverently seek we may actually realize.
Still, though here the Christian seems to be taught to rest on a broken reed, to support and prop himself up by a staff which must bend and break; yet I acknowledge that so much violence is not done to my Christian principles, nor do my feelings, as a believer in God and his ever-blessed Son, meet with so severe a shock by either of these prayers, as by the invocation addressed to the archangel himself in the "Gradual" on that same day:
"O holy Michael, O archangel, defend us in battle, that we perish not in the dreadful judgment."
Christians of the Church of Rome! for one moment meditate, I beseech you, on this prayer. It is not addressed to God; in it there is no mention made of Christ: having called upon the angels, and on your own soul in the words of the psalmist, to praise the Lord, you address your supplication to Michael himself; not even invoking him for his intercession, but imploring of him his protection. If it be said, that his intercession is all that is meant, with most unfeigned sincerity I request you to judge for yourselves, whether any prayer from poor sinful man, putting his whole trust in the Lord and imploring his help, could be addressed to our God and Saviour more immediate and direct than this? In the place of the name of his servant Michael, substitute the highest and the holiest name ever uttered in heaven or on earth, and can words form a prayer more direct to God? "O Lord God Almighty, O Lord Jesus our only Saviour, defend us in battle, that we perish not in the dreadful judgment. Hallelujah!"—Can this be right? Were the archangel allowed now, by his Lord and ours, to make his voice heard upon earth by Christians offering to him this prayer, would he utter any other words, than the angel, his fellow-servant and ours, once addressed to Saint John, when he fell down to worship before him, "See thou do it not; for I am thy fellow-servant: worship God."
Such then is the evidence borne by the writers of the Old Testament. No prayer to angel or beatified spirit occurs from its first to its last page. The theory which would have us account for the absence of all prayer to the saints before the advent of Messiah, by reason of their not having been then admitted into their everlasting habitations, and the immediate presence of God proves to be utterly groundless. The holy angels were confessedly in heaven [Matt. xviii. 10.], beholding the face of God; but no invocation was ever addressed to them, by patriarch, or prophet, or people, as mediators or intercessors. God, and God alone, the one eternal Jehovah, is proclaimed by Himself throughout, and is acknowledged throughout to be the only object of any kind of spiritual worship; the only Being who heareth prayer, to whom alone therefore all mankind should approach with the words and with the spirit of invocation. It has been argued by some writers, that in the times of the Old Testament, prayer was not offered to God through a mediator at all; and that as the one Mediator was not then revealed in his person and his offices, the subsidiary intercessors could not of course act; and therefore could not be invoked by man. The answer to this remark is conclusive. That Mediator has been revealed in his person and his offices; and has been expressly declared to be the one Mediator between God and man: we therefore seek God's covenanted mercies through Him. Those subsidiary intercessors have never been revealed; and therefore we do not seek their aid. To assure us that it was the mind and will of our Heavenly Father that we should approach Him by secondary and subsidiary mediators and intercessors, the same clear and unquestionable revelation of their persons and their offices as mediators would have been required, as He has vouchsafed of the mediation of his Son. Had God willed that the faithful should approach Him by the intercessions of the saints and martyrs, is it conceivable that He would not have given some intimation of his will in this respect? If believers in the Gospel were to have unnumbered mediators of intercession in heaven, as well as the one Mediator of redemption, would not the Gospel itself have announced it? Could such declarations as these have remained on record without any qualifying or limiting expression, "He[14] is able also to save to the uttermost them who come unto God by Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them." "There is one God, and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus." But this involves the question to which the next section must be devoted. All I would anticipate here is, that if the irresistible argument from the Old Testament is sought to be evaded on the ground that no mediator at all was then revealed, we must require a distinct revelation of the existence and offices of other mediators and intercessors, before we can be justified in applying to them for their intervention in our behalf. And the question now is. Are they so revealed?
Footnote 14:[(return)]
Heb. vii. 25. I Tim. ii. 5.—Unde et salvare in perpetuum potest accedentes per semetipsum ad Deum, semper vivens ad interpellandum pro nobis.—Vulg.
[SECTION IV.]—EVIDENCE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.
Though such is the evidence borne against the invocation of saints and angels by the Old Testament, yet it has been said that we are living neither under the patriarchal, nor the Mosaic dispensation, but under the Gospel, to whom therefore as Christians neither the precepts nor the examples of those ancient times are applicable: the injunctions consequently given of old to preserve the chosen people from idolatry and paganism, cannot be held to prohibit Christians from seeking the aid of those departed saints who are now reigning with Christ. But, surely, those precepts, and denunciations, and commands, are still most strictly applicable, as conveying to us a knowledge of the will of our Heavenly Father, that his sons and daughters on earth should associate no name, however exalted among the principalities and powers in heavenly places, with his own holy name in prayer, and spiritual invocation. I am throughout this address supposing myself to be speaking to those whose heart's desire is to fulfil the will of God in all things; not those who are contented to depart from the spirit of that will, whenever they can devise plausible arguments to countenance such departure.
The cases both of precept and example through the Old Testament affording so stringent and so universal a rule against the association of any name with the name of the Almighty in our prayers; before we can conclude that Christians have a liberty denied to believers under the former dispensations, we must surely produce a declaration to that effect, clear, unequivocal, and precisely in point. Nothing short of an enactment, rescinding in terms the former prohibitory law, and positively sanctioning supplications and prayers to saints and angels, seems capable of satisfying any Christian bent on discovering the will of God, and resolved to worship Him agreeably to the spirit of that will as it has been revealed. But let us read the New Testament from its first to its very last word, and we shall find, that the doctrines, the precepts, and the examples, the pervading reigning spirit of the entire volume, combine in addressing us with voices loud and clear. Pray to God Almighty solely in the name and for the sake of his dear and only Son Jesus Christ our Lord, and offer no prayer, no supplication, no intreaty, to any other being or power, saint or angel, though it be only to ask for their intercession with the great God. But this involves the whole question, and must be sifted thoroughly. Let us then review the entire volume with close and minute scrutiny, and ask ourselves, Is there a single passage, interpreted to the best of our skill, with the aid of those on whose integrity and learning we can rely, which directly and unequivocally sanctions any religious invocation of whatever kind to any being except God alone? And then let us calmly and deliberately resolve this point: In a matter of so vital importance, of so immense interest, and of so sacred a character as the worship of the Supreme Being, who declares Himself to be a jealous God, ought we to suffer any refinements of casuistry to entice us from the broad, clear light of revelation? If it were God's good pleasure to make exceptions to his rule—a rule so repeatedly, and so positively enacted and enforced—surely the analogy of his gracious dealings with mankind would have taught us to look for an announcement of the exceptions in terms equally forcible and explicit. Instead, however, of this, we find no single act, no single word, nothing which even by implication can be forced to sanction any prayer or religious invocation, of whatever kind, to any other being save to God alone.
Let us first look to the language and conduct of our blessed Lord, whose prayers to his Father are upon record for our instruction and comfort, and whose precepts and example form the best rule of a Christian's life. So far from repealing the ancient law, he repeats in his own person its solemn announcement, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord." [Mark xii. 29.] While the same heavenly Teacher commands us with authority, "When thou prayest, pray to thy Father which is in secret, and thy Father, who seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly." [Matt. vi. 6.] No allusion in any word of His do we find to any prayer from a mortal on this earth to an angel or saint in heaven. And yet occasions were multiplied on which a reference to the invocation of angels would have been natural, and apparently called for. He again and again places beyond all doubt the reality of their good services towards mankind, but it is as God's servants, and at God's bidding; not in answer to any supplication or invoking of ours. The parable of the rich man and Lazarus has been cited [Bellarmin, p. 895.] to bear contrary evidence; but, in the first place, that parable does not offer a case in point; in the second place, were it in point, it might be fairly and strongly urged against the practice of invoking the spirit of any departed mortal, even the father of the faithful himself. For what are the circumstances of the parabolic representation? A lost spirit in the regions of torment prays to Abraham in the regions of the blessed, and the spirit of the departed patriarch professes himself to have no power to grant the request of the departed and condemned spirit. [Luke xvi. 19.] The practice indeed of our Roman Catholic brethren would have been exemplified, had our blessed Lord represented the rich man's five brethren still on earth as pious men, and as supplicating Abraham in heaven to pray for themselves, or to mitigate their lost brother's punishment and his woes. But then it would have afforded Christians little encouragement to follow their example, when they found Abraham declaring himself unable to aid them in attaining the object of their prayer, or in any way to assist them at all. Without one single exception, we find our blessed Lord's example, precepts, and doctrines to be decidedly against the practice of invoking saint or angel; whilst not one solitary act or word of His can be cited to countenance or palliate it.
Next it follows, that we inquire into the conduct and the writings of Christ's Apostles and immediate followers, to whom He graciously promised that the Holy Spirit should guide them into all truth. In the Acts of the Apostles, various instances of prayer attract our notice, but not one ejaculation is found there to any other being save God alone. Neither angel nor saint is invoked. The Apostles prayed for guidance in the government of Christ's infant Church, but it was, "Thou, Lord, who knowest the hearts of all men." [Acts i. 24.] They prayed for their own acceptance, but it was "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." [Acts vii. 59.] They prayed for each other, as in behalf of St. Peter when in prison; but we are expressly told, that the prayer which was made without ceasing by the Church for him was addressed to GOD. [Acts xii. 5.]
To deliver St. Peter from his chains, an angel was sent on an especial mission from heaven; but though St. Peter saw him, and heard his voice, and followed him, and knew of a surety that the Almighty had employed the ministration of an angel to liberate him from his bonds, yet we do not hear thereafter of Peter having himself prayed to an angel to secure his good offices, and his intercession with God, nor has he once indirectly intimated to others that such supplications would be of avail, or were even allowable. He exhorts his fellow-Christians to pray, "Watch unto prayer," but it is because "The eyes of the LORD are over the righteous, and his ears are open unto their prayers." [1 Pet. iv. 7; iii. 12.] He Himself prays for them, but it is, that the God of all grace might make them perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle them. He suggests no invocation of saint or angel to intercede with God for them. He bids them cast all their care upon GOD, on the assurance that God Himself careth for them.
Precisely the same result issues from a contemplation of the acts and exhortation of St. Paul. He too experienced in his own person the comfort of an angel's ministration, bidding him cast off all fear when in the extreme of imminent peril. [Acts xxvii. 23, 24.] Many a prayer of that holy Apostle is upon record; many an earnest exhortation to prayer was made by him; we find many a declaration relative to his own habits of prayer. But with him God and God alone is the object of prayer throughout: by him no saint or angel or archangel is alluded to, as one whose intercession might be sought by himself or by us. He could speak in glowing language of patriarchs, prophets, and angels, but unto none of these would he turn. "Be careful for nothing, but in every thing by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God." [Phil. iv. 6.] And let any one receive, in the plain meaning of his words, his prohibitory monition [Col. ii. 18.], and say, could St. Paul have uttered these words without any qualifying expression, had he worshipped angels by invocation, even asking them only to aid him by their prayers. "Let no one beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels; not holding the Head," which Head he had in the first chapter (v. 18) declared to be the dear Son of God, "in whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of our sins."
The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews could bring before our minds with most fervent uplifting eloquence Abel and Abraham and David,—that goodly fellowship of the prophets, that holy army of martyrs; he could speak as though he were an eye-witness of what he describes, of the general assembly and church of the first-born, whose names are written in heaven. And, surely, had the thought of seeking the support or intercession of saint or angel by invocation addressed to them, been familiar to him; had the thought even occurred to his mind with approbation, he would not have allowed such an occasion to pass by, without even alluding to any benefit that might arise from our invoking such friends of God. So far from that allusion, the utmost which he says at the close of his eulogy is this, "These all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise; God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect." [Heb. xi. 39, 40.]
The beloved Apostle who could look forward in full assurance of faith to the day of Christ's second coming, and knew that "when He shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is," has left us this record of his sentiments concerning prayer: "This is the confidence that we have in HIM, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us; and if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him." [1 John v. 14, 15.] St. John alludes to no intercessor, to no advocate, save only that "Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, who is also the propitiation for our sins." [1 John ii. 1.] St. John never suggests to us the advocacy or intercession of saint or angel; with him God in Christ is all in all.
I will only refer to one more example, that of St. James: the instance is equally to the point, and is strongly illustrative of the truth. This Apostle is anxious to impress on his fellow-Christians a due sense of the efficacy of our intercessions: "The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much." [James v. 16.] He instances its power with God by the case of Elijah, a man so holy, that the Almighty suffered him not to pass through the regions of death and the grave, but translated him at once from this life to glory: "Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed that it might not rain; and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months; and he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit." [James v. 17, 18.] And yet St. James is very far from suggesting the lawfulness or efficacy of any invocation to the hallowed spirit of this man, to whose prayer the elements and natural powers of the sky and the earth had been made obedient. He exhorts all men to pray, but it must be to God alone, and directly to God, without applying for the intervention of any mediators or intercessors from among angels or men. "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth liberally to all men, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him; but let him ask in faith, nothing wavering." [James i. 5, 6.] Like the writer to the Hebrews, he would have us come ourselves "boldly" and directly "to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need."
Surely, these Apostles, chosen vessels for conveying the truths of salvation throughout the world, knew well how the Almighty could best be approached by his children on earth; and had the invocation of saint or angel found a place in their creed, they would not have kept so important a truth from us.
Before leaving this part of our inquiry, I would propose the patient and unprejudiced weighing of the import of two passages in the New Testament, often quoted on this subject; one in the Acts of the Apostles, the other in the Apocalypse.
The holy Apostles Barnabas and Paul, by the performance of a striking miracle, had excited feelings of religious reverence and devotion among the people of Lystra, who prepared to offer sacrifice to them as two of their fabled deities. [Acts xiv. 11-18.] The indignant zeal with which these two holy men rushed forward to prevent such an act of impiety, however admirable and affecting, does not constitute the chief point for which reference is here made to this incident. They were men, still clothed with the tabernacle of the flesh, and the weakness of human nature; and the priests and people were ready to offer to them the wonted victims, the abomination of the heathen. Now, I am fully aware of the wide difference, in many particulars, between such an act and the act of a Christian praying to their spirits after their departure hence, and supplicating them to intercede with the true God in his behalf: and on this difference Roman Catholic writers have maintained the total inapplicability of this incident to the present state of things. But, surely, if any such prayer to departed saints had been familiar to their minds, instead of repelling the religious address of the inhabitants of Lystra at once and for ever, they would have altered the tone of their remonstrance, and not have suppressed the truth when a good opportunity offered itself for imparting it. And, supposing that it was part of their commission to announce and explain the invocation of saints at all, on what occasion could an explanation of the just and proper invocation of angels and saints departed have been more appropriate in the Apostles, than when they were denouncing the unjustifiable offering of sacrifice to themselves while living? But whether the more appropriate place for such an announcement were at Lystra, in Corinth, at Athens, or at Rome, it matters not; nor whether it would have been more advantageously communicated by their oral teaching, or in their epistles. Doubtless, had the Apostles, by their example or teaching, sanctioned the invocation of saints and angels, in the course of fifty years or more after our blessed Saviour's resurrection, it would infallibly have appeared in some page or other of the New Testament. Instead of this the whole tenor of the Holy Volume breathes in perfect accordance with the spirit of the apostolical remonstrance at Lystra, to the fullest and utmost extent of its meaning, "We preach unto you that ye should turn from these vanities to serve the living God."
Of the other instance, it well becomes every Catholic Christian to ponder on the weight and cogency. John, the beloved disciple of our Lord, when admitted to view with his own eyes and hear with his mortal ears the things of heaven, rapt in amazement and awe, fell down to worship before the feet of the angel who showed him these things. [Rev. xxii. 8, 9.] If the adoration of angels were ever justifiable, surely it was then; and what a testimony to the end of the world would have been put upon record, had the adoration of an angel by the blessed John at such a moment, when he had the mysteries and the glories of heaven before him, been received and sanctioned. But what is the fact? "Then saith he to me, See thou do it not. I am thy fellow-servant, and of thy brethren the prophets, and of them who keep the sayings of this book. Worship God." I cannot understand the criticism by which the conclusiveness of this direct renouncement of all religious adoration and worship is attempted to be set aside. To my mind these words, uttered without any qualification at such a time, by such a being, to such a man, are conclusive beyond gainsaying. The interpretation put upon this transaction, and the words in which it is recorded, and the inference drawn from them by a series of the best divines, with St. Athanasius at their head, presents so entirely the plain common-sense view of the case to our minds, that all the subtilty of casuists, and all the ingenuity of modern refinements, will never be able to substitute any other in its stead. "The angel (such are the words of that ancient defender of the true faith), in the Apocalypse, forbids John, when desiring to worship him, saying, 'See thou do it not; I am thy fellow-servant, and of thy brethren the prophets, and of them who keep the sayings of this book. Worship God.' Therefore, to be the object of worship belongs to God only; and this even the angels themselves know: though they surpass others in glory, but they are all creatures, and are not among objects of worship, but among those who worship the sovereign Lord." [Athan. Orat. 2. Cont. Ar. vol. i. p. 491.] To say that St. John was too fully illuminated by the Holy Spirit to do, especially a second time, what was wrong; and thence to infer that what he did was right, is as untenable as to maintain, that St. Peter could not, especially thrice, have done wrong in denying our Lord. He did wrong, or the angel would not have chided and warned him. And to say that the angel here forbade John personally to worship him, because he was a fellow-servant and one of the prophets; and thus that the prohibition only tended to exalt the prophetic character, not to condemn the worship of angels, is proved to be also a groundless assumption, from the angel's own words, who reckons himself as a fellow-servant with not St. John only, but all those also who keep the words of the book of God,—thus equally forbidding every faithful Christian to worship their fellow-servants the angels. They are almost the last words in the volume of inspired truth, and to me, together with those last words, they seem with "the voice of a great multitude, and of many waters, and of mighty thunderings," from the very throne itself of the Most High, to proclaim to every inhabiter of the earth, Fall down before no created being; adore no created being; pray to, invoke, call upon no created being, whether saint or angel: worship and adore God only; pray to God only. Trust to his mercy; seek no other mediator or intercessor than his own only and blessed Son. "He who testifieth these things saith, Surely, I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen." [Rev. xxii. 20, 21.]
Thus the New Testament, so far from mitigating the stringency of the former law, so far from countenancing any departure from the obligation of that code which limits religious worship to God alone, so far from suggesting to us invocation to sainted men, and to angels as intercessors with the eternal Giver of all good, reiterates the injunction, and declares, that invocation in order to be Christian must be addressed to God alone; and that there is one and only one Mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ, who is at the right hand of his Father, a merciful High Priest sympathizing with us in our infirmities, ever making intercession for us, able to save to the uttermost those who come unto God through Him.
The present seems to be a convenient place for observing, that however the distinction is strongly insisted upon, or rather implicitly acquiesced in by many, which would admit of a worship or service called dulia (the Greek [Greek: douleia]) to saints and angels, and would limit the worship or service called latria ([Greek: latreia]) to the supreme God only, yet that such distinction has no ground whatever to rest upon beyond the will and the imagination of those who draw it. The two words are used in the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament, and in the original Greek of the New promiscuously, without any such distinction whatever. The word which this distinction would limit to the supreme worship of the Most High, is used to express the bodily service paid by the vanquished to their conquerors, as well as the religious service paid by idolaters to their fabled deities, and by the true worshippers to the Most High. The word which this distinction would reserve for the secondary worship paid to saints and angels, is employed to express not only the service paid by man to man, but also the service and worship paid to God alone, even when mentioned in contradistinction to other worship. It will be necessary to establish this by one or two instances; and first as to "latria." One single chapter in the Book of Deuteronomy supplies us with instances of the word used in the three senses, of service to men, service to idols, and service to God, xxviii. 36. 47, 48: "Because thou servedst [Greek: elatreusas] not the Lord thy God with joyfulness and gladness of heart; Therefore thou shalt serve [Greek: latreuseis] thine enemies which the Lord shall send against thee in hunger and in thirst and nakedness." "The Lord shall bring thee unto a nation which neither thou nor thy fathers have known; and there shalt thou serve [Greek: latreuseis] other gods, wood and stone." Next as to the word "dulia." The First Book of Samuel (called also the First of Kings) alone supplies us with instances of this word being used in each of the same three senses of service from man to man, from man to idols, and from man to his Maker and God. 1 Sam. xvii. 9. "Ye shall be our servants and serve [Greek: douleusite haemin] us." xii. 24. "Only fear the Lord, and serve [Greek: douleusate] him in truth with all your heart." xxvi. 19. "They have driven me out from the inheritance of the Lord, saying, Go, serve[15] other gods."
Footnote 15:[(return)]
[Greek: douleue]. In this case also the Vulgate translates all the three passages alike by the same verb, "servire."
It is worthy of remark, that the same word "dulia[16]" is employed, when the Lord by his prophet speaks of the most solemn acts of religious worship; not in general obedience only, but in the offerings and oblations of their holy things. Ezek. xx. 40. "In mine holy mountain, in the mountain of the height of Israel, saith the Lord God, there shall all the house of Israel, all of them in the land, serve me [Greek: douleusousi. Vulg: serviet.]; there will I accept them, and there will I require your offerings, and the first-fruits of your oblations, with all your holy things." St. Matthew also uses the same word when he records the saying of our blessed Lord, "Ye cannot serve God and mammon." [Matt. vi. 24.; Greek: douleuein. Vulg: servire.]
Footnote 16:[(return)]
It is also remarkable that in all these cases, whether the Septuagint employs the word "dulia," or "latria," the word in the Hebrew is precisely the same, [Hebrew: avad]. That in the fifth century the words were synonymous is evident from Theodoret. I. 319. See Edit. Halle.—Index.
I will only detain you by one more example, drawn from two passages, which seems the more striking because each of the two words "dulia" and "latria" is used to imply the true worship of God in a person, who was changed from a state of alienation to a state of holiness. The first is in St. Paul's 1st Epistle to the Thessalonians, i. 9. "How ye turned to God from idols, to serve [Greek: douleuein theo zonti] the living and true God." The second is in Heb. ix. 14. "How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve[17] the living God."
Footnote 17:[(return)]
[Greek: latoeuein theo zonti.] In each of these two cases the Vulgate uses "servire."
The word "hyperdulia," now used to signify the worship proper to the Virgin Mary, as being a worship of a more exalted character than the worship offered to saints and angels, archangels, and cherubim and seraphim, will not require a similar examination. The word was invented in later times, and has been used chiefly to signify the worship of the Virgin, and is of course found neither in the Scriptures, nor in any ancient classical or ecclesiastical author.
[CHAPTER III.]
[SECTION I.]—THE EVIDENCE OF PRIMITIVE WRITERS.
Before we enter upon the next branch of our proposed inquiry, allow me to premise that I am induced to examine into the evidence of Christian antiquity not by any misgiving, lest the testimony of Scripture might appear defective or doubtful; far less by any unworthy notion that God's word needs the additional support of the suffrages of man[18]. On the contrary, the voice of God in his revealed word is clear, certain, and indisputable, commanding the invocation of Himself alone in acts of religious worship, and condemning any such departure from that singleness of adoration, as they are seduced into, who invoke saints and angels. And it is a fixed principle in our creed, that where God's written word is clear and certain, human evidence cannot be weighed against it in the balance of the sanctuary. When the Lord hath spoken, well does it become the whole earth to be silent before him; when the eternal Judge Himself hath decided, the witness of man bears on its very face the stamp of incompetency and presumption.
Footnote 18:[(return)]
While some authors seem to go far towards the substitution of the fathers for the written word of God, others in their abhorrence of that excess have run into the opposite, fancying, as it would seem, that they exalt the Divine oracles just in the same proportion as they disparage the uninspired writers of the Church. The great body of the Church of England adhere to a middle course, and adopt that golden mean, which ascribes to the written Word its paramount authority, from which is no appeal, and yet honours Catholic tradition as the handmaid of the truth.
For myself I can say (what I have good hope these pages will of themselves evince) that no one can value the testimony of Christian tradition within its own legitimate sphere more sincerely, or more highly, than the individual who is now soliciting your attention to the conclusions which he has himself drawn from it. When Scripture is silent, or where its meaning is doubtful, Catholic tradition is to me a guide, which I feel myself bound to follow with watchful care and submissive reverence.
Now let it be for the present supposed, that instead of the oracles of God having spoken, as we believe them to have spoken, with a voice clear, strong, and uniform against the doctrine and practice of the invocation of saints and angels, their voices had been weak, doubtful, and vague; in other words, suppose in this case the question had been left by the Holy Scriptures an open question, then what evidence would have been deducible from the writings of the primitive Church? What testimony do the first years and the first ages after the canon of Scripture was closed, bear upon this point? And here I would repeat the principle of inquiry, proposed above for our adoption in the more important and solemn examination of the Holy Volume itself.—We ought to endeavour to ascertain what may fairly and honestly be regarded as the real bearing of each author's remains, and not suffer the general tone and spirit of a writer to be counterbalanced by single expressions, which may be so interpreted as to convey an opposite meaning. Rather we should endeavour to reconcile with that general spirit and pervading tendency of a writer's sentiments any casual expressions which may admit of two acceptations. We adopt this principle in our researches into the remains of classical antiquity; we adopt the same principle in estimating the testimony of a living witness. In the latter case, indeed, the ingenuity of the adverse advocate is often exercised in magnifying the discrepancies between some minor facts or incidental expressions with the broad and leading assertions of the witness, with a view to invalidate his testimony altogether, or at least to weaken the impression made by it. But then a wise and upright judge, assured of the truth of the evidence in the main, and of the integrity of the individual, will not suffer unessential, apparent inconsistencies to stifle and bury the body of testimony at large, but will either extract from the witness what may account for them, or show them to be immaterial. Inviting, therefore, your best thoughts to this branch of our subject, I ask you to ascertain, by a full and candid process of induction, this important and interesting point,—Whether we of the Anglican Church, by religiously abstaining from the presentation, in word or in thought, of any thing approaching prayer or supplication, entreaty, request, or any invocation whatever, to any other being except God alone, do or do not tread in the steps of the first Christians, and adhere to the very pattern which they set; and whether members of the Church of Rome by addressing angel or saint in any form of invocation seeking their aid, either by their intercession or otherwise, have not unhappily swerved decidedly and far from those same footsteps, and departed widely from that pattern?
In one point of view it might perhaps be preferable to enter at once upon our investigation, without previously stating the conclusions to which my own inquiries have led; but, on the whole, I think it more fair to make that statement, in order, that having the inferences already drawn placed before the mind, the inquirer may in each case weigh the several items of evidence bearing upon them separately, and more justly estimate its whole weight collectively at the last.
After then having examined the passages collected by the most celebrated Roman Catholic writers, and after having searched the undisputed original works of the primitive writers of the Greek and Latin Churches, the conclusion to which I came, and in which every day of further inquiry and deliberation confirms me more and more in this:—
In the first place, negatively, that the Christian writers, through the first three centuries and more, never refer to the invocation of saints and angels as a practice with which they were familiar: that they have not recorded or alluded to any forms of invocation of the kind used by themselves or by the Church in their days; and that no services of the earliest times contain hymns, litanies, or collects to angels, or to the spirits of the faithful departed.
In the second place, positively, that the principles which they habitually maintain and advocate are irreconcileable with such a practice.
In tracing the history of the worship of saints and angels, we proceed (gradually, indeed, though by no means at all periods, and through every stage, with equal rapidity,) from the earliest custom established and practised in the Church,—of addressing prayers to Almighty God alone for the sake of the merits of his blessed Son, the only Mediator and Intercessor between God and man,—to the lamentable innovation both of praying to God for the sake of the merits, and through the mediation of departed mortals, and of invoking those mortals themselves as the actual dispensers of the spiritual blessings which the suppliant seeks from above. It is not only a necessary part of our inquiry for ascertaining the very truth of the case; it is also curious and painfully interesting, to trace the several steps, one after another, beginning with the doctrine maintained by various early writers, both Greek and Latin, that the souls of the saints are not yet reigning with Christ in heaven, and ending with the anathema of the Council of Trent, against all who should maintain that doctrine; beginning with prayer and thanksgiving to Almighty God alone, and ending with daily prayers both to saints and angels; one deviation from the strict line of religious duty, and the pure singleness of Christian worship, successively gliding into another, till at length the whole of Christendom, with a few remarkable exceptions, was seen to acquiesce in public and private devotions, which, if proposed, the whole of Christendom would once with unanimity have rejected.
Before I offer to you the result of my inquiries as to the progressive stages of degeneracy and innovation in the worship of Almighty God, I would premise two considerations:
First, I would observe, that the soundness of my conclusion on the general points at issue does not depend at all on the accuracy of the arrangement of those stages which I have adopted. Should any one, for example, think there is evidence that two or more of those progressive steps, which I have regarded as consecutive, were simultaneous changes, or that any one which I have ranked as subsequent took rather the lead in order of time, such an opinion would not tend in the least to invalidate my argument; the substantial and essential point at issue being this: Is the invocation of saints and angels, as now practised in the Church of Rome, agreeable to the primitive usage of the earliest Christians?
Secondly, I would observe, that the places and occasions most favourable for witnessing and correctly estimating the changes and gradual innovations in the worship of those early times, are the tombs of the martyrs, and the Churches in which their remains were deposited; and at the periods of the annual celebration of their martyrdom, or in some instances at what was called their translation,—the removal, that is, of their mortal remains from their former resting-place to a church, for the most part dedicated to their memory. On these occasions the most extraordinary enthusiasm prevailed; sometimes the ardour of the worshippers, as St. Chrysostom [St. Chrys. Paris, 1718. Vol. xii. p. 330.] tells us, approaching madness. But even at times of less excitement, by contemplating, immediately after his death, the acts and sufferings of the martyr, and recalling his words, and looks, and stedfast bearing, and exhorting each other to picture to themselves his holy countenance then fixed on them, his tongue addressing them, his sufferings before their eyes, encouraging all to follow his example, they began habitually to consider him as actually himself one of the faithful assembled round his tomb. Hence they believed that he was praying with them as well as for them; that he heard their eulogy on his merits, and was pleased with the honours paid to his memory: hence they felt sure of his goodwill towards them, and his ability, as when on earth, to promote their welfare. Hence they proceeded, by a fatal step, first, to implore him to give them bodily relief from some present sufferings; then invoking him to plead their cause with God, and to intercede for the supply of their spiritual wants, and the ultimate salvation of their souls; and, lastly, they prayed to him generally as himself the dispenser of temporal and spiritual blessings.
The following then is the order in which the innovations in Christian worship seem to have taken place, being chiefly introduced at the annual celebrations of the martyrs:—
1st. In the first ages confession and prayer and praise were offered to the Supreme Being alone, and that for the sake of his Son our only Saviour and Advocate: when mention was made of saint or martyr, it was to thank God for the graces bestowed on his departed holy ones when on earth, and to pray to God for grace that we might follow their good examples, and attain, through Christ, to the same end and crown of our earthly struggles. This act of worship was usually accompanied by a homily setting forth the Christian excellences of the saint, and encouraging the survivors so to follow him, as he followed Christ.
2nd. The second stage seems to have been a prayer to Almighty God, that He would suffer the supplications and intercessions[19] of angels and saints to prevail with him, and bring down a blessing on their fellow-petitioners on earth; the idea having spread among enthusiastic worshippers, as I have already observed, that the spirits of the saints were suffered to be present around their tombs, and to join with the faithful in their addresses to the throne of grace.
Footnote 19:[(return)]
The Greek word [Greek: presbeia], "embassy," employed on such occasions, is still used in some eastern Churches in the same sense.
3rd. The third stage seems to have owed its origin to orators constantly dwelling upon the excellences of the saints in the panegyrics delivered over their remains, representing their constancy and Christian virtues as superhuman and divine, and as having conferred lasting benefits on the Church. By these benefits at first was meant the comfort and encouragement of their good example, and the honour procured to the religion of the cross by their bearing witness to its truth even unto death; but in process of time the habit grew of attaching a sort of mysterious efficacy to their merits; hence this third gradation in religious worship, namely, prayers to God that "He would hear his suppliants, and grant their requests for the sake of his martyred servant, and by the efficacy of that martyr's merits."
4th. Hitherto, unauthorized and objectionable as the two last forms of prayer are, still the petitions in each case were directed to God alone. The next step swerved lamentably from that principle of worship, and the petitioners addressed their requests to angels and sainted men in heaven; at first, however, confining their petitions to the asking for their prayers and intercessions with Almighty God.
5th. The last stage in this progressive degeneracy of Christian worship was to petition the saints and angels, directly and immediately themselves, at first for the temporal, and afterwards for the spiritual benefits which the petitioners desired to obtain from heaven. For it is very curious, but not more curious than evident, that the worshippers seem for some time to have petitioned their saints for temporal and bodily benefits, before they proceeded to ask for spiritual blessings at their hands, or by their prayers. (See Basil. Oral. in Mamanta Martyrem.)
Of these several gradations and stages we find traces in the records of Christian antiquity, after superstition and corruption had spread through Christian worship, and leavened the whole. Of all of them we have lamentable instances in the present ritual of the Church of Rome, as we shall see somewhat at large when we reach that division of our inquiry. But from the beginning it was not so. In the earliest ages we find only the first of these forms of worship exemplified, and it is the only form now retained in the Anglican Ritual; of which, among other examples, the following passage in the prayer for Christ's Church militant on earth supplies a beautiful specimen: "We bless Thy holy name for all Thy servants departed this life in Thy faith and fear; beseeching Thee to give us grace so to follow their good examples, that with them we may be partakers of Thy heavenly kingdom: Grant this, O Father, for Jesus Christ's sake, our only Mediator and Advocate. Amen."
We now proceed to examine the invaluable remains of Christian antiquity, not for the purpose of testing the accuracy of the above catalogue of gradations seriatim and in order of time; but to satisfy ourselves on the question, whether the invocation of saints and angels prevailed from the first in the Christian Church; or whether it was an innovation introduced after pagan superstition had begun to mingle its poisonous corruptions with the pure worship of Almighty God. And here, I conceive, few persons will be disposed to doubt, that if the primitive believers were taught by the Apostles to address the saints reigning in heaven and the holy angels, and the Virgin Mother of our Lord, with adoration and prayers, the earliest Christian records must have contained clear and indisputable references to the fact, and that undesigned allusions to the custom would inevitably be found offering themselves to our notice here and there. I do not mean that we should expect to meet with full and explicit statements either of the doctrine or the practice of the primitive Church in this particular; much less such apologies and elaborate defences of the practice as abound to the overflow in later times. But, what is more satisfactory in proof of the general and established prevalence of any opinions or customs, we should surely find expressions incidentally occurring, which implied an habitual familiarity with such opinions or customs. In every record, for example, of primitive antiquity, from the very earliest of all, expressions are constantly meeting us which involve the doctrine of the ever-blessed Trinity, the atoning sacrifice of Christ's death, the influences of the Holy Spirit; habitual prayer and praise offered to the Saviour of the world, as very and eternal God; the holy Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper; with other tenets and practices of the Apostolic Church. It is impossible to study the remains of Christian antiquity without being assured beyond the reach of doubt, that such were the doctrines and practice of the universal Church from the days of the Apostles. Is the invocation of saints and angels and the blessed Virgin to be made an exception to this rule? Can it stand this test? The great anxiety and labour of Roman Catholic writers to press the authors of every age to bear witness on their side in this behalf, proves that in their judgment no such exception is admissible. It is clearly beyond gainsaying, that if the present doctrine of the Church of Rome, with respect to the worship of angels and saints, as propounded by the Council of Trent; and if her present practice as set forth in her authorized liturgies and devotional services, and professed by her popes, bishops, clergy, and people, had been the doctrine and practice of the primitive Church, we should have found evident and indisputable traces of it in the earliest works of primitive antiquity, in the earliest liturgies, and in the forms of prayer and exhortations to prayer with which those works abound. It by no means follows that if some such allusions were partially discoverable, therefore the doctrines and practice must forthwith be pronounced to be apostolical; but if no such traces can be found, their absence bears witness that neither did those doctrines nor that practice exist. If, for example, through the remains of the first three centuries we could have discovered no trace of the doctrine or practice of holy Baptism and the Eucharist, we must have concluded that the doctrine and the practice were the offspring of later years. But when we read every where, in those remains, exhortations to approach those holy mysteries with a pure heart and faith unfeigned; when we find rules prescribed for the more orderly administration of the rites; in a word, when we perceive throughout as familiar references to these ordinances as could be now made by Catholics either of Rome or of England, while this would not of itself necessarily prove their divine origin, we should with equal plausibility question the existence of Jerusalem or Constantinople, or of David or Constantine, as we should doubt the prevalence both of the doctrine and practice of the Church in these particulars, even from the Apostles' days.
With these principles present to our minds, I now invite you to accompany me in a review of the testimonies of primitive Christian antiquity with regard to supplications and invocations of saints and angels, and of the blessed Virgin Mary.
[SECTION II]—CENTURY I.—THE EVIDENCE OF THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS.
It will be necessary for the satisfaction of all parties, that we examine, in the first place, those ancient writings which are ascribed to an Apostle, or to fellow-labourers of the Apostles; familiarly known as the writings of the Apostolic Fathers. They are five in number, Barnabas, Clement, Hermas, Ignatius, and Polycarp. Many able writers, as well of the Roman as of the Anglican communion, have discussed at large the genuineness of these writings; and have come to very different results. Some critics are of opposite and extreme opinions, others ranging between them with every degree and shade of variation. Some of these works have been considered spurious; others have been pronounced genuine; though, even these have been thought to be, in many parts, interpolated. The question, however, of their genuineness, though deeply interesting in itself, will not affect their testimony with regard to the subject before us[20]. They were all in existence before the Council of Nicæa; and we shall probably not be wrong in assigning to the first two a date at the very lowest computation not less remote than the middle of the second century; somewhere, it may be, at the furthest, about one hundred years after the death of our Lord. (A.D. 130-150.) With all their errors and blemishes and interpolations taken at the worst, after every reasonable deduction for defects in matter, taste, and style, the writings which are ascribed to the Apostolic Fathers are too venerable for their antiquity, too often quoted with reverence and affection by some who have been the brightest ornaments of the Christian Church, and possess too copious a store of genuine evangelical truth, sound principle, primitive simplicity, and pious sentiment, to be passed over with neglect by any Catholic Christian. The few extracts made here will, I am assured, be not unacceptable to any one, who holds dear the religion of Christ[21].
Footnote 20:[(return)]
I do not think it suitable in this address to enter upon the difficult field of inquiry, whether all or which of these works were the genuine productions of those whose names they bear; and whether the Barnabas, Clement, and Hermas to which three of them are ascribed, were the Barnabas, Clement, and Hermas of whom express mention is made in the pages of Holy Scripture. I have determined, in conducting my argument, to affix to them in each case the lowest proposed antiquity. The edition of Archbishop Wake, (who maintains the highest antiquity for these works, though I have not here adopted his translation,) may be consulted with much profit.
Did the question before us relate to the genuineness and dates of these works, they could not, with any approach to fairness, be all five placed without distinction under the same category. The evidence for the genuineness of Clement, Ignatius in the shorter copy, and Polycarp, is too valuable to be confounded with that of the others, which are indisputably subject to much greater doubt. But this question has only an incidental bearing on our present inquiry, and will be well spared.
Footnote 21:[(return)]
The edition of the works of these Apostolic Fathers used here is that of Cotelerius as revised by Le Clerc, Antwerp, 1698.
THE EPISTLE OF ST. BARNABAS.
In the work entitled The Catholic Epistle of Barnabas, which was written probably by a Jew converted to the Christian faith, about the close of the first century, or certainly before the middle of the second[22], I have searched in vain for any thing like the faintest trace of the invocation of saint or angel. The writer gives directions on the subject of prayer; he speaks of angels as the ministers of God; he speaks of the reward of the righteous at the day of judgment; but he suggests not the shadow of a supposition, that he either held the doctrine himself which the Church of Rome now holds, or was aware of its existence among Christians. In his very beautiful but incomplete summary of Christian duty [Sect. 18, 19. p. 50, 51, 52.], which he calls "The Way of Light," we perceive more than one most natural opening for reference to that doctrine, had it been familiar to his mind. In the midst indeed of his brief precepts of religious and moral obligation, he directs the Christian to seek out every day "the persons of the saints," but they are our fellow-believers on earth; those saints or holy ones, for administering to whose necessities, the Scripture assures us that God will not forget our work and labour of love [Heb. vi. 10.]: these the author bids the Christians search out daily, for the purposes of religious intercourse, and of encouragement by the word.
Footnote 22:[(return)]
Archbishop Wake considers this Epistle to have been written by St. Barnabas to the Jews, soon after the destruction of Jerusalem.
The following interesting extracts shall conclude our reference to this work:—
"There are two ways of doctrine and authority, one of light, the other of darkness; and the difference between the two ways is great. Over the one are appointed angels of God, conductors of the light; over the other, angels of Satan: and the one (God) is Lord from everlasting to everlasting; the other (Satan) is ruler of the age of iniquity. The way of light is this ... Thou shalt love Him that made thee; thou shalt glorify Him that redeemed thee from death. Thou shalt be single in heart, and rich in spirit. Thou shalt not join thyself to those who are walking in the path of death. Thou shalt hate to do what is displeasing to God; thou shalt hate all hypocrisy. Thou shalt entertain no evil counsel against thy neighbour. Thou shalt not take away thy hand from thy son or thy daughter, but shalt teach them the fear of the Lord from their youth. Thou shalt communicate with thy neighbour in all things, and call not things thine own. Thou shalt not be of a froward tongue, for the mouth is the snare of death. To the very utmost of thy power keep thy soul chaste. Do not open thine hand to receive, and close it against giving. Thou shalt love as the apple of thine eye every one who speaketh to thee the word of the Lord. Call to remembrance the day of judgment, night and day. Thou shalt search out every day the persons of the saints[23]; both meditating by the word, and proceeding to exhort them, and anxiously caring to save a soul by the word. Thou shalt preserve what thou hast received, neither adding thereto, nor taking therefrom. Thou shalt not come with a bad conscience to thy prayer."
Footnote 23:[(return)]
There is much obscurity in the phraseology of this passage: [Greek: ekzaetaeseis kath hekastaen haemeran ta prosopa ton hagion kai dia logou skopion kai poreuomenos eis to parakalesai, kai meleton eis sosai psuchaen to logo]. In the corresponding exhortation among the Apostolical Constitutions (book vii. ch. 9), the expression is, "Thou shalt seek the person ([Greek: prosopon]) of the saints, that thou mayest find rest (or find refreshment, or refresh thyself) ([Greek: in epanapanae tois logois auton]) in their words." The author seems evidently to allude to the reciprocal advantage derived by Christians from religious intercourse.
The closing sentences contain this blessing: "Now God, who is the Lord of all the world, give to you wisdom, skill, understanding, knowledge of his judgments, with patience. And be ye taught of God; seeking what the Lord requires of you, and do it, that ye may be saved in the day of judgment.... The Lord of glory and of all grace be with your spirit. Amen."
THE SHEPHERD OF HERMAS.
This work, which derives its title from the circumstance of an angelic teacher being represented as a shepherd, is now considered by many to have been the production of Hermas, a brother of Pius, Bishop of Rome[24] though others are persuaded that the work is of a much earlier date[25]. The author speaks of guardian angels and of evil angels, and he speaks much of prayer; but not the faintest hint shows itself throughout the three books, of which the work consists, that he had any idea of prayer being addressed to any created being, whether saint or angel. On the evidence of this writer I will not detain you much longer than by the translation of a passage as it is found in the Greek quotation from Hermas, made by Antiochus (Homil. 85), on a point the most nearly, of all that I can find, connected with the immediate subject of our inquiry. The Latin is found in the second book, ninth mandate. It contains sound spiritual advice, of universal application.
Footnote 24:[(return)]
Ecclesiastical writers refer the appointment of Pius, as Bishop of Rome, to the year 153.
Footnote 25:[(return)]
Archbishop Wake thinks it not improbable that this book was written by the same Hermas, of whom mention is made by St. Paul.
"Let us then remove from us double-heartedness and faint-heartedness, and never at all doubt of supplicating any thing from God; saying within ourselves, 'How can I, who have been guilty of so many sins against Him, ask of the Lord and receive?' But with thine whole heart turn to the Lord, and ask of Him without doubting; and thou shalt know his great mercy, that He will not forsake thee, but will fulfil the desire of thy soul. For God is not as men are, a rememberer of evil, but is Himself one who remembers not evil, and is moved with compassion towards his creature. Do thou, therefore, cleanse thy heart of doubt, and ask of Him, and thou shalt receive thy request. But when thou doubtest, thou shalt not receive. For they who doubt towards God are the double-hearted, and shall receive nothing whatever of their desires. For those who are whole in the faith, ask every thing, trusting in the Lord, and they receive because they ask nothing doubting. [See St. James i. 6.] And if thou shouldest be tardy in receiving, do not doubt in thy mind because thou dost not receive soon the request of thy soul. For the cause of the tardiness of thy receiving is some trial, or some transgression which thou knowest not of. Do thou then not cease to offer the request of thy soul, and thou shalt receive it. But if thou grow faint in asking, accuse thyself, and not the Giver. For double-heartedness is a daughter of the devil, and works much mischief towards the servants of God. Do thou, therefore, take to thyself the faith that is strong."
In the twelfth section of the ninth Similitude, in the third book, in the midst of much to the same import, and of much, too, which is strange and altogether unworthy of the pen from which the previous quotation proceeded, he thus writes, as the Latin records his words, the Greek of this passage having been lost.
"These all are messengers to be reverenced for their dignity. By these, therefore, as it were by a wall, the Lord is girded round. But the gate is the Son of God, who is the only way to God. For no one shall enter in to God except by his Son." [Book iii. Simil. 2.]
On the subject of prayer, I cannot refrain from referring you to a beautiful similitude, illustrative of the powerful and beneficial effects of the intercession of Christians for each other. The author compares a rich man, abounding in deeds of charity, to a vine full of fruit supported by an elm. The elm seems not to bear fruit at all; but by supporting the vine, which, without that support, would bear no fruit to perfection, it may be said to bear fruit itself. So the poor man, who has nothing to give in return for the rich man's fruits of charity, beyond the support which his prayers and praises ascending to God in his behalf will obtain, confers a far more substantial benefit on the rich man than the most liberal outpouring of alms from the rich can confer on the poor. [Ibid.] Yet the writer, who had formed such strong notions of the benefits mutually obtained by the prayers of Christians for each other, says not a word about the intercession of saints and angels, nor of our invoking them. He will not suffer us to be deterred by any consciousness of our own transgressions from approaching God Himself, directly and immediately ourselves; but He bids us draw near ourselves to the throne and mercy seat of our heavenly Father.
ST. CLEMENT, BISHOP OF ROME.
It is impossible to read the testimony borne by Eusebius, and other most ancient writers, to the character and circumstances of Clement, without feeling a deep interest in whatever production of his pen may have escaped the ravages of time. "Third from the Apostles," says Eusebius, "Clement obtained the bishopric of Rome; one who had seen the Apostles and conversed with them, and had still the sound of their preaching in his ears, and their tradition before his eyes;—and not he alone, for many others[26] at that time were still living, who had been taught by the Apostles. In the time of this Clement, no small schism having arisen among the brethren in Corinth, the Church in Rome sent a most important letter to the Corinthians, urging them to return to peace, renewing their faith, and [reminding them of] the tradition which had been so lately received from the Apostles." [Euseb. Eccl. Hist. v. c. 6.]
Footnote 26:[(return)]
See St. Paul to the Philippians, iv. 3. "And I entreat thee also, true yoke-fellow, help those women which laboured with me in the gospel, with Clement also, and with other my fellow-labourers, whose names are in the book of life."
Of the many works which have been attributed to Clement, it is now generally agreed, that one, and only one, can be safely received as genuine, whilst some maintain that even that one is not altogether free from interpolations, if not itself spurious[27]. But though we must believe the other works to have been assigned improperly to Clement; yet I have not thought it safe to pass them by unexamined, both because some of them are held in high estimation by writers of the Church of Rome, and especially because whatever pen first composed them, of their very great antiquity there can be entertained no reasonable doubt. Indeed, the Apostolical Canons, and the Apostolical Constitutions, both ascribed to Clement as their author, acting under the direction of the Apostolic Council, stand first among the records of the Councils received by the Church of Rome.
Footnote 27:[(return)]
Archbishop Wake concludes that this first Epistle was written shortly after the end of Nero's persecution, and before A.D. 70.
To Clement's first Epistle to the Corinthians, now regarded by many as the only genuine work of that primitive writer, the date of which is considered by many to be about A.D. 90, Jerome bears this very interesting testimony in his book on illustrious men:
"He, Clement, wrote in the person of the Church of Rome, to the Church in Corinth, a very useful epistle, which is publicly read in some places; in its character agreeing with St. Paul's Epistle to the Hebrews, not only in the sense, but even in the words: and indeed the resemblance is very striking in each." [Catalogus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum, Jeron., vol. iv, part ii. p. 107, edit. Benedict. Paris, 1706.]
It is impossible to read this Epistle of one of the earliest bishops of Christ's flock in the proper frame of mind, without spiritual edification. A tone of primitive simplicity pervades it, which is quite delightful. His witness to the redemption by the atoning sacrifice of Christ's death, and to the life-giving influences of the Spirit of grace, is clear, repeated, and direct. His familiar acquaintance with the ancient Scriptures is very remarkable; though we might not always acquiesce in the critical accuracy of his application. His reference to the Epistles written by St. Paul to the same Church at Corinth that he was then addressing, affords one of those unobtrusive and undesigned collateral evidences to the Holy Scriptures, which are as abundant in the primitive writings, as they are invaluable. No one can read this Epistle of Clement, without acquiescing in the expression of Jerome, that it is "very admirable."
Perhaps in the present work the Epistle of Clement becomes even more interesting from the circumstance of his having been a bishop of the Church founded by the Apostles themselves in the very place where that Church exists, to whose members this inquiry is more especially addressed. In his writings I have searched diligently for every expression which might throw light upon the opinions and practice either of the author or of the Church in whose name he wrote; of the Church which he addressed, or of the Catholic Church at large to which he refers, on the subject of our inquiry. So far, however, from any word occurring, which could be brought to bear in favour of the adoration of saints and angels, or of any supplication to them for their succour or their prayers, the peculiar turn and character of his Epistle in many parts seems to supply more than negative evidence against the prevalence of any such belief or practice. Clement speaks of angels; he speaks of the holy men of old, who pleased God, and were blessed, and were taken to their reward; he speaks of prayer; he urges to prayer; he specifies the object of our prayers; he particularizes the subjects of our prayers; but there is not the most distant allusion to the saints and angels as persons to whom supplications could be addressed. Pray for yourselves (such are the sentiments of this holy man); pray for your brethren who have fallen from their integrity; pray to God Almighty, for the sake of his Son, and your prayer will be heard and granted. Of any other intercessor or advocate, angel, saint, or Virgin Mother; of any other being to whom the invocations of the faithful should be offered, Clement seems to have had no knowledge. Could this have been so, if those who received the Gospel from the very fountain-head had been accustomed to pray to those holy men who had finished their course on earth, and were gone to their reward in heaven? Clement invites us to contemplate Enoch, and Abraham, and David, and Elijah, and Job, with many of their brethren in faith and holiness; he bids us look to them with reverence and gratitude, but it is only to imitate their good examples. He tells us to think of St. Paul and St. Peter and their brethren in faith and holiness; but it is in order to listen to their godly admonitions, and to follow them in all pious obedience to the will of our heavenly Father, as they followed Christ. I must content myself with a very few brief extracts from this Epistle[28]:
Footnote 28:[(return)]
I am induced to mention here that two Epistles, ascribed to St. Clement, written in Arabic, and now appended to Wetstein's Greek Testament (Amsterdam, 1751), are believed by many to be genuine, whilst others say they are spurious. At all events they are productions of the earliest times. The manuscript was procured at Constantinople. I have examined the Latin translation carefully, and in some points submitted my doubts to a very learned Syriac scholar. The general subject is the conduct of those who have professed celibacy, whilst of the invocation of saints no trace whatever is to be found. The passages most closely bearing on the point before us are to the following effect:
The writer urges Christians to be careful to maintain good works, especially in the cause of charity, visiting the sick and afflicted, praying with them, and praying for them, and persevering always in prayer; asking and seeking of God in joy and watchfulness, without hatred or malice. In the Lord's husbandry, he says, it well becomes us to be good workmen, who are like the Apostles, imitating the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, who are ever anxious for the salvation of men.
"Therefore (he adds, at the close of the first of these Epistles) let us look to and imitate those faithful ones, that we may behave ourselves as is meet in the Lord. So shall we serve the Lord, and please him, in righteousness and justice without a stain. Finally, farewell in the Lord, and rejoice in the Lord, all ye holy ones. Peace and joy be with you from God the Father, by Jesus Christ our Lord."
Ch. 21. "Take heed, beloved, lest the many loving-kindnesses of the Lord prove our condemnation, if we do not live as is worthy of him, nor do with one accord what is good and well-pleasing in his sight.... Let us consider how nigh to us he is, and that nothing of our thoughts or reasonings is concealed from him. Justice it is that we should not become deserters from his will.... Let us venerate the Lord Jesus, whose blood was given for us."
Ch. 29. "Let us then approach him in holiness of soul, lifting up holy and undefiled hands towards him; loving our merciful and tender Father who hath made us a portion of his elect."
Ch. 36. "This is the way, beloved, in which we find Jesus Christ our salvation, the chief-priest of our offerings, our protector, and the succourer of our weakness. By him let us look stedfastly to the heights of heaven; by him let us behold his most high and spotless face: by him the eyes of our heart are opened; by him our ignorant and darkened minds shoot forth into his marvellous light; by him the Supreme Governor willed that we should taste immortal knowledge: who, being the brightness of his magnificence, is so much greater than the angels, as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they."
Ch. 49. "He who hath love in Christ, let him keep the commandments of Christ. Who can tell of the bond of the love of God? The greatness of his goodness who can adequately express?... Love unites us to God.... By love the Lord took us; by the love which he had for us Christ our Lord gave his blood for us by the will of God, and his flesh for our flesh, and his life for our lives."
Ch. 56. "Let us pray for those who are in any transgression, that meekness and humility may be granted to them; that they may submit, not to us, but to the will of God; for thus to them will the remembrance towards God and the saints, with mercies, be fruitful and perfect[29]."
Footnote 29:[(return)]
The original is obscure, and has been variously rendered, [Greek: outos gar estai autois egkarpos kai teleia hae pros ton theon kai tous hagious met oiktirmon mneia.] The Editor refers his readers to Rom. xii. 13. "Distributing to the necessity of saints." The received translation is this, "Sic enim erit ipsis fructuosa et perfecta quæ est apud Deum et sanctos cum misericordia recordatio."
Ch. 58. "The all-seeing God, the Sovereign Ruler of spirits, and the Lord of all flesh, who hath chosen the Lord Jesus, and us through him, to be a peculiar people; grant to every soul that calleth on his glorious and holy name, faith, fear, peace, patience, long-suffering, self-control, purity, and temperance, to the good pleasure of his name, through our high-priest and protector Jesus Christ; through whom to him be glory and majesty, dominion and honour, now and for ever and ever, world without end. Amen."
SAINT IGNATIUS.
This martyr to the truth as it is in Jesus sealed that truth with his blood about seventy years after the death of our Lord. From Antioch in Syria, of which place he was bishop, he was sent to the imperial city, Rome; and there he ended his mortal career by a death which he had long expected, and which he was prepared to meet not only with resignation to the Divine will, but even with joy and gladness. His Epistles are written with much of the florid colouring of Asiatic eloquence; but they have all the raciness of originality, and they glow with that Christian fervour and charity which compels us to love him as a father and a friend, a father and friend in Christ. The remains of this apostolic father I have carefully studied, with the single view of ascertaining whether any vestige, however faint, might be traced in him of the invocation of saints and angels; but I can find none. Neither here, nor in the case of any of the apostolical fathers, whose remains we are examining, have I contented myself with merely ascertaining that they bear no direct and palpable evidence; I have always endeavoured to find, and then thoroughly to sift, any expressions which might with the slightest plea of justification be urged in testimony of primitive belief and practice sanctioning the invocation of saints. I find none. Brethren of the Church of Rome, search diligently for yourselves; "I speak as to wise men: Judge ye what I say."
The remains of Ignatius offer to us many a passage on which a Christian pastor would delight to dwell: but my province here is not to recommend his works to the notice of Christians; I am only to report the result of my inquiries touching the matter in question; and as bearing on that question, the following extracts will not be deemed burdensome in this place:—
In his Epistle to the Ephesians, exhorting Christians to united prayer, he says, "For if the prayer of one or two possesses such strength, how much more shall the prayer both of the bishop and of the whole Church?" [Page 13. § 5-7.] "For there is one physician of a corporeal and a spiritual nature, begotten and not begotten; become God in the flesh, true life in death, both from Mary and from God; first liable to suffering, and then incapable of suffering." [In the majority of the manuscripts the reading is, "in an immortal true life.">[
Here we must observe that these Epistles of Ignatius have come down to us also in an interpolated form, abounding indeed with substitutions and additions, but generally resembling paraphrases of the original text. Of the general character of that supposititious work, two passages corresponding with our quotations from the genuine productions of Ignatius may give a sufficiently accurate idea. The first passage above quoted is thus paraphrased: "For if the prayer of one or two possesses such strength that Christ stands among them, how much more shall the prayer both of the bishop and of the whole Church, ascending with one voice to God, induce him to grant all their requests made in Jesus Christ?" [Page 47. c. 5.] The paraphrase of the second is more full: "Our physician is the only true God, ungenerated and unapproachable; the Lord of all things, but the Father and Generator of the only-begotten Son. We have also as our physician our Lord God, Jesus Christ, who was before the world, the only-begotten Son and the Word, but also afterwards man of the Virgin Mary; 'for the Word was made flesh.' He who was incorporeal, now in a body; he who could not suffer, now in a body capable of suffering; he who was immortal in a mortal body, life in corruption—in order that he might free our immortal souls from death and corruption, and heal them, diseased with ungodliness and evil desires as they were." [Page 48. c. 7.]
It must here be observed, that though these are indisputably not the genuine works of Ignatius, but were the productions of a later age, yet no trace is to be found in them of the doctrine, or practice, of the invocation of saints. In this point of view their testimony is nothing more nor less than that of an anonymous paraphrast, who certainly had many opportunities of referring to that doctrine and practice; but who by his total silence seems to have been as ignorant of them as the author himself whose works he is paraphrasing.
To return to his genuine works: In his Epistle to the Magnesians we find these expressions: "For as the Lord did nothing without the Father, being one with him, neither by himself, nor by his Apostles; so neither do ye any thing without the bishop and priests, nor attempt to make any thing appear reasonable to yourselves individually. But at one place be there one prayer, and one supplication, one mind, one hope in love, in blameless rejoicing: Jesus Christ is one; than which nothing is better. All, then, throng as to one temple, as to one altar, as to one Jesus Christ, who proceeded from one Father, and is in one, and returned to one." [Page 19. § 7.] Again he says, "Remember me in your prayers, that I may attain to God. I am in need of your united prayer in God, and of your love."
In his Epistle to the Trallians, he expresses himself in words to which no Anglican Catholic would hesitate to respond: "Ye ought to comfort the bishop, to the honour of God, and of Jesus Christ, and of the Apostles." [Page 25. § 12.] He speaks in this Epistle with humility and reverence of the powers and hosts of heaven; but he makes no allusion to any religious worship or invocation of them.
The following extract is from his Epistle to the Philadelphians: "My brethren, I am altogether poured forth in love for you; and in exceeding joy I make you secure; yet not I, but Jesus Christ, bound in whom I am the more afraid, as being already seized[30]; but your prayer to God will perfect me, that I may obtain the lot mercifully assigned to me. Betaking myself to the Gospel as to the flesh of Jesus, and to the Apostles as the presbytery of the Church; let us also love the prophets, because they also have proclaimed the Gospel, and hoped in him, and waited for him; in whom also trusting, they were saved in the unity of Jesus Christ, being holy ones worthy of love and admiration, who have received testimony from Jesus Christ, and are numbered together in the Gospel of our common hope." [Page 32. § 5.]
Footnote 30:[(return)]
This clause is very obscure, and perhaps imperfect.
I am induced to add the paraphrase on this passage also. "My brethren, I am very much poured out in loving you, and with exceeding joy I make you secure; not I, but by me, Jesus Christ, in whom bound I am the more afraid. For I am yet not perfected, but your prayer to God will perfect me; so that I may obtain that to which I was called, flying to the Gospel as the flesh of Jesus Christ, and to the Apostles as the presbytery of the Church. And the prophets also I love, as persons who announce Christ, as partaking of the same spirit with the Apostles. For just as the false prophets and false apostles have drawn one and the same wicked and deceitful and seducing spirit, so also the prophets and the apostles, one and the same holy spirit, good, leading, true, and instructing. For one is the God of the Old and the New Testament. One is Mediator between God and man, for the production of the creatures endued with reason and perception, and for the provision of what is useful, and adapted to them: and one is the Comforter who wrought in Moses and the prophets and the apostles. All the saints therefore were saved in Christ, hoping in him, and waiting for him; and through him they obtained salvation, being saints worthy of love and of admiration, having obtained a testimony from Jesus Christ in the Gospel of our common hope." [Page 81. § 5.]
In his Epistle to the Romans he speaks to them of his own prayer to God, and repeatedly implores them to pray for him. "Pray to Christ for me, that by these instruments [the teeth of the wild beasts] I may become a sacrifice of God. I do not, as Peter and Paul, command you: they were Apostles, I am a condemned man. They were free; but I am still a servant. Yet if I suffer, I shall become the freedman of Jesus Christ, and shall rise again free: and now in my bonds I learn to covet nothing." [Page 28. § 4.] Again he says, "Remember the Church in Syria in your prayers." [Page 30. § 9.] He prays for his fellow-labourers in the Lord: he implores them to approach the throne of grace with supplications for mercy on his own soul. Of prayer to saint or angel he says nothing. Of any invocation offered to them by himself or his fellow-believers, Ignatius appears entirely ignorant.
SAINT POLYCARP.
The only remaining name among those, whom the Church has reverenced as apostolical fathers, is the venerable Polycarp. He suffered martyrdom by fire, at a very advanced age, in Smyrna, about one hundred and thirty years after his Saviour's death. Of Polycarp, the apostolical bishop of the Catholic Church of Smyrna, only one Epistle has survived. It is addressed to the Philippians. In it he speaks to his brother Christians of prayer, constant, incessant prayer; but the prayer of which he speaks is supplication addressed only to God[31]. He marks out for our imitation the good example of St. Paul and the other Apostles; assuring us that they had not run in vain, but were gone to the place prepared for them by the Lord, as the reward of their labours. But not one word does he utter bearing upon the invocation of saints in prayer; he makes no allusion to the Virgin Mary.
Footnote 31:[(return)]
[Greek: deaesesin aitoumenoi ton pantepoptaen Theon.] Sect 7.
Before we close our examination of the recorded sentiments of the apostolical fathers on the immediate subject of our inquiry, we must refer, though briefly, to the Epistle generally received as the genuine letter from the Church of Smyrna to the neighbouring Churches, narrating the martyrdom of Polycarp. It belongs, perhaps, more strictly to this place than to the remains of Eusebius, because, together with the sentiments of his contemporaries who witnessed his death and dictated the letter, it purports to contain the very words of the martyr himself in the last prayer which he ever offered upon earth. With some variations from the copy generally circulated, this letter is preserved in the works of Eusebius. [Euseb. Paris, 1628, dedicated to the Archbishop by Franciscus Vigerus.] On the subject of our present research the evidence of this letter is not merely negative. So far from countenancing any invocation of saint or martyr, it contains a remarkable and very interesting passage, the plain common-sense rendering of which bears decidedly against all exaltation of mortals into objects of religious worship. The letter, however, is too well known to need any further preliminary remarks; and we must content ourselves with such references and extracts as may appear to bear most directly on our subject.
"The Church of God, which is in Smyrna, to the Church in Philomela, and to all the branches [Greek: paroikais] of the holy Catholic Church dwelling in any place, mercy, peace, and love of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ be multiplied." [Book i. Hist. iv. c. xv. p. 163.]
"The Proconsul, in astonishment, caused it to be proclaimed thrice, Polycarp has confessed himself to be a Christian. On this they all shouted, that the Proconsul should let a lion loose on Polycarp. But the games were over, and that could not be done: they then with one accord insisted on his being burnt alive."
Polycarp, before his death, offered this prayer, or rather perhaps we should call it this thanksgiving, to God for his mercy in thus deeming him worthy to suffer death for the truth, "Father of thy beloved and blessed Son Jesus Christ, by whom we have received our knowledge concerning thee, the God of angels and power, and of the whole creation, and of the whole family of the just, who live before thee; I bless thee because thou hast deemed me worthy of this day and this hour to receive my portion among the number of the martyrs, in the cup of Christ, to the resurrection both of soul and body in the incorruption of the Holy Ghost; among whom may I be received before thee this day in a rich and acceptable sacrifice, even as thou, the true God, who canst not lie, foreshowing and fulfilling, hast beforehand prepared. For this, and for all I praise thee, I bless thee; I glorify thee, through the eternal high-priest Jesus Christ thy beloved Son, through whom to thee, with him in the Holy Ghost, be glory both now and for future ages. Amen."
(I cannot help suggesting a comparison between the prayer of this primitive martyr bound to the stake, with the prayer of Thomas Becket, of Canterbury, as stated in the ancient services for his day, when he was murdered in his own cathedral, to which we shall hereafter refer at length. The comparison will impress us with the difference between religion and superstition, between the purity of primitive Christian worship, and the unhappy corruptions of a degenerate age. "To God and the Blessed Mary, and Saint Dionysius, and the holy patrons of this Church, I commend myself and the Church.")
After his death, the narrative proceeds, "But the envious adversary of the just observed the honour put upon the greatness of his testimony, [or of his martyrdom [Greek: to megethos autou taes marturias],] and his blameless life from the first, and knowing that he was now crowned with immortality, and the prize of undoubted victory, resisted, though many of us desired to take his body, and have fellowship with his holy flesh. Some then suggested to Nicetes, the father of Herod, and brother of Dalce, to entreat the governor not to give his body, 'Lest,' said he, 'leaving the crucified One they should begin to worship this man [Greek: sebein];' and this they said at the suggestion and importunity of the Jews, who also watched us when we would take the body from the fire. This they did, not knowing that we can never either leave Christ, who suffered for the salvation of all who will be saved in all the world, or worship any other." [The Paris translation adds "ut Deum.">[ "For him being the Son of God we worship [Greek: proskunumen], but the martyrs, as disciples and imitators of our Lord, we worthily love[32], because of their pre-eminent [Greek: anuperblaeton] good-will towards their own king and teacher, with whom may we become partakers and fellow-disciples."
Footnote 32:[(return)]
[Greek: axios agapomen]. Ruffinus translates it by "diligimus et veneramur," and it is so quoted by Bellarmin.
"The centurion, seeing the determination of the Jews, placed him in the midst, and burnt him as their manner is. And thus we collecting his bones, more valuable than precious stones, and more esteemed than gold, we deposited them where it was meet. There, as we are able, collecting ourselves together in rejoicing and gladness, the Lord will grant to us to observe the birth-day of his martyrdom, for the remembrance of those who have before undergone the conflict, and for exercise and preparation of those who are to come." [Greek: hos dunaton haemin sunagomenois en agalliasei kai chara parexei ho Kurios epitelein taen tou martyriou autou haemeran genethlion, eis te ton proaethlaekoton mnaemaen, kai ton mellonton askaesin te kai hetoimasian.]
In this relic of primitive antiquity, we have the prayer of a holy martyr, at his last hour, offered to God alone, through Christ alone. Here we find no allusion to any other intercessor; no commending of the dying Christian's soul to saint or angel. Here also we find an explicit declaration, that Christians offered religious worship to no one but Christ, whilst they loved the martyrs, and kept their names in grateful remembrance, and honoured even their ashes when the spirit had fled. Polycarp pleads no other merits; he seeks no intercession; he prays for no aid, save only his Redeemer's. Here too we find, that the place of a martyr's burial was the place which the early Christians loved to frequent; but then we are expressly told with what intent they met there,—not, as in later times, to invoke the departed spirit of the martyr, but to call to mind, in grateful remembrance, the sufferings of those who had already endured the awful struggle; and by their example to encourage and prepare other soldiers of the cross thereafter to fight the good fight of faith; assured that they would be more than conquerors through Him who loved them.
We have now examined those works which are regarded by us all, whether of the Roman or Anglican Church, as the remains of apostolical fathers,—Christians who, at the very lowest calculation, lived close upon the Apostles' time, and who, according to the firm conviction of many, had all of them conversed with the Apostles, and heard the word of truth from their mouths. I do from my heart rejoice with you, that these holy men bear direct, clear, and irrefragable testimony to those fundamental truths which the Church of Rome and the Church of England both hold inviolate—the doctrine of the ever-blessed Trinity, with its essential and inseparable concomitants, the atonement by the blood of a crucified Redeemer, and the vivifying and sanctifying influences of the Holy Spirit.
Supposing for a moment no trace of such fundamental doctrines could be discovered in these writings, would not the absence of such vestige have been urged by those who differ from us, as a strong argument that the doctrine of the ever-blessed Trinity was an innovation of a later date; and would not such an argument have been urged with reason? How, in plain honesty, can we avoid coming to the same conclusion on the subject of the invocation of saints? If the doctrine and the practice of praying to saints, or to angels, for their succour, or even their intercession, had been known and recognised, and approved and acted upon by the Apostles, and those who were the very disciples of the Apostles, not only deriving the truth from their written works, but having heard it from their own living tongue,—in the nature of things would not some plain, palpable, intelligible, and unequivocal indications of it have appeared in such writings as these; writings in which much is said of prayer, of intercessory prayer, of the one object of prayer, of the subjects of prayer, of the nature of prayer, the time and place of prayer, the spirit in which we are to offer prayer, and the persons for whom we ought to pray? Does it accord with common sense, and common experience, with what we should expect in other cases, with the analogy of history, and the analogy of faith, that we should find a profound and total silence on the subject of any prayer or invocation to saints and angels, if prayer or invocation of saints and angels had been recognised, approved, and practised by the primitive Church?
At the risk of repetition, or surplusage, I would beg to call your attention to one point in this argument. I am far from saying that no practice is apostolical which cannot be proved from the writings of these apostolical fathers: that would be a fallacy of an opposite kind. I ground my inference specifically and directly on the fact, that these writers are full, and copious, and explicit, and cogent on the nature and duty of prayer and supplications, as well for public as for private blessings; and of intercessions by one Christian for another, and for the whole race of mankind no less than for mercy on himself; and yet though openings of every kind palpably offered themselves for a natural introduction of the subject, there is in no one single instance any reference or allusion to the invocation of saint or angel, as a practice either approved or even known.
When indeed I call to mind the general tendency of the natural man to multiply to himself the objects of religious worship, and to create, by the help of superstition, and the delusive workings of the imagination, a variety of unearthly beings whose wrath he must appease, or whose favour he may conciliate; when I reflect how great is the temptation in unenlightened or fraudulent teachers to accommodate the dictates of truth to the prejudices and desires of those whom they instruct, my wonder is rather that Christianity was so long preserved pure and uncontaminated in this respect, than that corruptions should gradually and stealthily have mingled themselves with the simplicity of Gospel worship. That tendency is plainly evinced by the history of every nation under heaven: Greek and Barbarian, Egyptian and Scythian, would have their gods many, and their lords many. From one they would look for one good; on another they would depend for a different benefit, in mind, body, and estate. Some were of the highest grade, and to be worshipped with supreme honours; others were of a lower rank, to whom an inferior homage was addressed; whilst a third class held a sort of middle place, and were approached with reverence as much above the least, as it fell short of the greatest. In the heathen world you will find exact types of the dulia, the hyperdulia, and the latria, with which unhappily the practical theology of modern Christian Rome is burdened. Indeed, my wonder is, that under the Christian dispensation, when the household and local gods, the heathen's tutelary deities, and the genii, had been dislodged by the light of the Gospel, saints and angels had not at a much earlier period been forced by superstition to occupy their room.
We shall be led to refer to some passages in the earliest Christian writers, especially in Origen, which bear immediately on this point, representing in strong but true colours the futility of deeming a multitude of inferior divinities necessary for the dispensation of benefits throughout the universe, whose good offices we must secure by acts of attention and worship. I anticipate the circumstance in this place merely to show that the tendency of the human mind, clinging to a variety of preternatural protectors and benefactors, was among the obstacles with which the first preachers of the Gospel had to struggle. In the proper place I shall beg you to observe how hardly possible it would have been for those early Christian writers, to whom I have referred above, to express themselves in so strong, so sweeping, and so unqualified a manner, had the practice of applying by invocation to saints and angels then been prevalent among the disciples of the Cross.
We may, I believe, safely conclude, that in these primitive writings, which are called the works of the Apostolical Fathers, there is no intimation that the present belief and practice of the Church of Rome were received, or even known by Christians. The evidence is all the other way. Indeed, Bellarmin, though he appeals to these remains for other purposes, and boldly asserts that "all the fathers, Greek and Latin, with unanimous consent, sanction and teach the adoration of saints and angels," yet does not refer to a single passage in any one of these remains for establishing this point. He cites a clause from the spurious work strangely ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite, which was the forged production, as the learned are all agreed, of some centuries later; and he cites a pious sentiment of Ignatius, expressing his hope that by martyrdom he might go to Christ, and thence he infers that Ignatius believed in the immediate transfer of the soul from this life to glory and happiness in heaven, though Ignatius refers there distinctly to the resurrection. [Epist. ad Rom. c. iv. See above, p. 90.] But Bellarmin cites no passage whatever from these remains to countenance the doctrine and practice of the adoration of saints and angels.
[CHAPTER IV.]
[SECTION I.]—THE EVIDENCE OF JUSTIN MARTYR.
Justin, who flourished about the year 150, was trained from his early youth in all the learning of Greece and of Egypt. He was born in Palestine, of heathen parents; and after a patient examination of the evidences of Christianity, and a close comparison of them with the systems of philosophy with which he had long been familiar, he became a disciple of the Cross. In those systems he found nothing solid, or satisfactory; nothing on which his mind could rest. In the Gospel he gained all that his soul yearned for, as a being destined for immortal life, conscious of that destiny, and longing for its accomplishment. His understanding was convinced, and his heart was touched; and regardless of every worldly consideration, and devoted to the cause of truth, he openly embraced Christianity; and before kings and people, Jews and Gentiles, he pleaded the religion of the crucified One with unquenchable zeal and astonishing power. The evidence of such a man on any doctrine connected with our Christian faith must be looked to with great interest.
In the volumes which contain Justin's works we find "Books of Questions," in which many inquiries, doubts, and objections, as well of Jews as of Gentiles, are stated and answered. It is agreed on all sides that these are not the genuine productions of Justin, but the work of a later hand. Bellarmin appeals to them, acknowledging at the same time their less remote origin. The evidence, indeed, appears very strong, which would lead us to regard them as the composition of a Syrian Christian, and assign to them the date of the fifth century; and as offering indications of the opinions of Christians at the time of their being put together, they are certainly interesting documents. When fairly quoted, the passages alleged in defence of the invocation of saints, so far from countenancing the practice, assail irresistibly that principle, which, with other writers, Bellarmin himself confesses to be the foundation of that doctrine. For these Books of Questions assert that the souls of the faithful are not yet in glory with God, but are reserved in a separate state, apart from the wicked, awaiting the great day of final and universal doom. In answer to Question 60, the author distinctly says:—"Before the resurrection the recompense is not made for the things done in this life by each individual." [Quæstiones et Responsiones ad Orthodoxos, p. 464.]
In reply to the 75th Question, inquiring into the condition of man after death, this very remarkable answer is returned:—
"The same relative condition which souls have with the body now, they have not after the departure from the body. For here all the circumstances of the union are in common to the just and the unjust, and no difference is in them in this respect,—as to be born and to die, to be in health and to be in sickness, to be rich and to be poor, and the other points of this nature. But after the departure from the body, forthwith takes place the distinction of the just and the unjust: for they are conducted by the angels to places corresponding with their deserts: the souls of the just to paradise, where is the company and the sight of angels and archangels, and also, by vision, of the Saviour Christ, according to what is said, 'Being absent from the body, and present with the Lord;' and the souls of the unjust to the places in hades, according to what is said of Nebucodonosor king of Babylon, 'Hades from beneath hath been embittered, meeting thee.'—And in the places corresponding with their deserts they are kept in ward unto the day of the resurrection and of retribution." [Page 469.]
I much regret to observe that Bellarmin omits to quote the latter part of this passage, stopping short with an "&c." at the words hades, or inferorum loca, although the whole of the writer's testimony in it turns upon the very last clause. [Bellarmin, c. iv. p. 851. "Improborum autem ad inferorum loca.">[
The next question (76) runs thus: "If the retribution of our deeds does not take place before the resurrection, what advantage accrued to the thief that his soul was introduced into paradise; especially since paradise is an object of sense, and the substance of the soul is not an object of sense?
"Answer. It was an advantage to the thief entering into paradise to learn by fact the benefits of the faith by which he was deemed worthy of the assembly of the saints, in which he is kept till the day of judgment and restitution; and he has the perception of paradise by that which is called intellectual perception, by which souls see both themselves and the things under them, and moreover also the angels and demons. For a soul doth not perceive or see a soul, nor an angel an angel, nor a demon a demon; except that according to the said intellectual perception they see both themselves and each other, and moreover also all corporeal objects." [Page 470.]
On this same point I must here subjoin a passage from one of Justin's own undisputed works. In his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, sect. 5, he says, "Nevertheless I do not say that souls all die; for that were in truth a boon to the wicked. But what? That the souls of the pious remain somewhere in a better place, and the unjust and wicked in a worse, waiting for the time of judgment, when it shall be: thus the one appearing worthy of God do not die any more; and the others are punished as long as God wills them both to exist and to be punished." [Page 107.]
Not only so; Justin classes among renouncers of the faith those who maintain the doctrine which is now acknowledged to be the doctrine of the Church of Rome, and to be indispensable as the groundwork of the adoration of saints. In his Trypho, sect. 80, he states his sentiment thus strongly: "If you should meet with any persons called Christians, who confess not this, but dare to blaspheme the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, and say there is no resurrection of the dead ([Greek: nekron]), but that their souls, at the very time of their death, are taken up into heaven; do not regard them as Christians." [Page 178.]
This, according to Bellarmin's own principle, is fatal evidence: if the redeemed and the saints departed are not in glory with God already, they cannot intercede with him for men. On the subject, however, of worship and prayer, Justin Martyr has left us some testimonies as to the primitive practice, full of interest in themselves, independently of their bearing on the points at issue. At the same time I am not aware of a single expression which can be so construed as to imply the doctrine or practice among Christians of invoking the souls of the faithful. He speaks of public and private prayer; he offers prayer, but the prayer of which he speaks, and the prayer which he offers are to God alone; and he alludes to no advocate or intercessor in heaven, except only the eternal Son of God himself. In his first Apologia (or Defence addressed to the Emperor Antoninus Pius) he thus describes the proceedings at the baptism of a convert:—
"Now, we will explain to you how we dedicate ourselves to God, being made new by Christ.... As many as are persuaded, and believe the things which by us are taught and declared to be true, and who promise that they can so live, are taught to pray and implore, with fasting, forgiveness of God for their former sins, we ourselves joining with them in fasting and prayer; and then they are taken by us to a place where there is water, and by the same manner of regeneration as we ourselves were regenerated, they are regenerated; for they undergo this washing in the water in the name of God the Father and Lord of all, and of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Ghost." [Apol. i. sect 61, page 79.]
The following is his description of the Christian Eucharist, subsequently to the baptism of a convert: "Afterwards we conduct him to those who are called brethren, where they are assembled together to offer earnestly our united prayers for ourselves and for the enlightened one [the newly baptized convert], and for all others every where, that we, having learned the truth, may be thought worthy to be found in our deeds good livers, and keepers of the commandments, that we may be saved with the everlasting salvation. Having ceased from prayers, we salute each other with a kiss; and then bread is brought to him who presides over the brethren, and a cup of water and wine; and he taking it, sends up prayer and praise to the Father of all, through the name of the Son and the Holy Spirit; and offers much thanksgiving for our being thought by him worthy of these things. When he has finished the prayers and thanksgivings, all the people present respond, saying, 'Amen.' Now, Amen in the Hebrew tongue means, 'So be it.' And when the presider has given thanks, and all the people have responded, those who are called Deacons among us give to every one present to partake of the bread and wine and water that has been blessed, and take some away for those who were not present." [Sect. 65. p. 82.]
The following is Justin's account of their worship on the Lord's day: "In all our oblations we bless the Creator of all things, through his Son Jesus Christ, and through the Holy Spirit. And upon the day called Sunday, there is an assembly of all who dwell in the several cities or in the country, in one place where the records of the apostles, or the writings of the prophets are read, as time allows. When the reader has ceased, the presider makes a discourse for the edification of the people, and to animate them to the practice of such excellent things [or the imitation of such excellent persons]. At the conclusion we all rise up together and pray; and, as we have said, when we have ceased from prayer, the bread and wine and water are brought forward, and the presider sends up prayer and thanksgiving alike, to the utmost of his power. And the people respond, saying, Amen. And then is made to each the distribution and participation of the consecrated elements ([Greek: eucharistauthenton]). And of those who have the means and will, each according to his disposition gives what he will; and the collected sum is deposited with the presider, and he aids the orphans and widows, and those who through sickness or other cause are in need, and those in bonds, and strangers; and, in a word, he becomes the reliever of all who are in want." [Sect. 67. p. 83.]
In Justin Martyr I am unable to find even a single vestige of the invocation of Saints. With regard to Angels, however, there is a very celebrated passage, to which Bellarmin and others appeal, as conclusive evidence that the worship of them prevailed among Christians in his time, and was professed by Justin himself.
Justin, in his first Apology, having stated that the Christians could never be induced to worship the demons, whom the heathen worshipped and invoked, proceeds thus[33]: "Whence also we are called Atheists, [men without God]; and we confess that with regard to such supposed gods we are atheists, but not so with regard to the most true God, the Father of justice and temperance, and of the other virtues without any mixture of evil. But both HIM and the SON, who came from Him, and taught these things to us, and THE HOST OF THE OTHER GOOD ANGELS ACCOMPANYING AND MADE LIKE, and THE PROPHETIC SPIRIT, we reverence and worship, honouring them in reason and truth; and without grudging, delivering the doctrine to every one who is willing to learn as we were taught." [Page 47.] Governing the words "the host of the other good angels," as much as the words "Him" and "His Son," and "the prophetic Spirit," by the verbs "we reverence and worship," Bellarmin and others[34] maintain, that Justin bears testimony in this passage to the worship of angels. That this cannot be the true interpretation of Justin's words will be acknowledged, I think, by every Catholic, whether Anglican or Roman, when he contemplates it in all its naked plainness; all will revolt from it as impious and contrary to the principles professed by the most celebrated and honoured among Roman Catholic writers. This interpretation of the passage, when analysed, implies the awful thought, that we Christians pay to the host of angels, God's ministers and our own fellow-servants, the same reverence, worship, and honour which we pay to the supreme Father, and his ever-blessed Son, and the Holy Spirit, without any difference or inequality. No principles of interpretation can avoid that inference.
Footnote 33:[(return)]
The genuineness of this passage has been doubted. But I see no ground for suspicion that it is spurious. It is found in the manuscripts of Justin's works; of which the most ancient perhaps are in the King's Library in Paris. I examined one there of a remote date.
Footnote 34:[(return)]
The Benedictine Editor puts this note in the margin, "Justin teaches that angels following the Son are worshipped by Christians."—Preface, p. xxi.
"Him the most true Father of righteousness we reverence and worship, honouring him in reason and truth."
"The Son who came from him, and taught us these things, we reverence and worship, honouring him in reason and truth."
"The army of the other good angels accompanying and assimilated, we reverence and worship, honouring them in reason and truth."
"The Prophetic Spirit we reverence and worship, honouring him in reason and truth."
Is it possible to conceive that any Christian would thus ascribe the same religious worship to a host of God's creatures, which he would ascribe to God, as GOD? "We are accused," said Justin, "of being atheists, of having no God. How can this be? We do not worship your false gods, but we have our own most true God. We are not without a God. We have the Father, and the Son, and the Good Angels, and the Holy Spirit." If Justin meant that they honoured the good angels, but not as GOD, that would be no answer to those who called the Christians atheists. The charge was, that "they had no God." The answer is, "We have a God;" and then Justin describes the God of Christians. Can the army of angels be included in that description? If they are, then they are made to share in the adoration, worship, homage, and reverence of the one only God Most High; if they are not, then Justin does not answer the objectors[35].
Footnote 35:[(return)]
And surely if Justin had intended to represent the holy angels as objects of religious worship, he would not so violently have thrust the mention of them among the Persons of the ever-blessed Trinity, assigning to them a place between the second and third Persons of the eternal hypostatic union.
To evade this charge of impiety, some writers (among others, M. Maran, the Benedictine editor of Justin,) have attempted to draw a distinction between the two verbs in this passage, alleging that the lower degree of reverence expressed by the latter applies to the angels; whilst the former verb, implying the higher degree of worship, alone relates to the Godhead. But this distinction rests on a false assumption; the two words being used equally to convey the idea, of the highest religious worship[36].
Footnote 36:[(return)]
For example, the first word ([Greek: sebometha]), "we reverence," is used to mean the whole of religious worship, as well with regard to the true God, as with reference to Diana [Acts xviii. 7. 13; xix. 27.]; whilst the second word ([Greek: proskunoumen]), "we worship," is constantly employed in the same sense of divine worship, throughout the Septuagint [Exod. xxxiv. 14. Ps. xciv. (xcv.) 6. I Sam. (1 Kings) xv. 25. 2 Kings (4 Kings) xvii. 36. Heb. i. 6.], (with which Justin was most familiar,) and is used in the Epistle to the Hebrews to signify the worship due from the angels themselves to God, "Let all the angels of God worship him." The very same word is also soon after employed by Justin himself (sect. xvi. p. 53) to mean the whole entire worship of the Most High God: "That we ought to worship ([Greek: proskumein]) God alone, Christ thus proves," &c. Moreover, the word which Justin uses at the close of the sentence, "honouring them" ([Greek: timontes]), is the identical word four times employed by St. John [John v. 23.], in the same verse, to record our Saviour's saying, "That all men might honour the Son, even as they honour the Father; he that honoureth not the Son, honoureth not the Father, who hath sent him."
But in determining the true meaning of an obscure passage, grammatically susceptible of different acceptations, the author himself is often his own best interpreter. If he has expressed in another place the same leading sentiment, yet without the same obscurity, and free from all doubt, the light borrowed from that passage will frequently fix the sense of the ambiguous expression, and establish the author's consistency. On this acknowledged principle of criticism, I would call your attention to a passage in the very same treatise of Justin, a few pages further on, in which he again defends the Christians against the same charge of being atheists, and on the self-same ground, "that they worship the Father who is maker of all; secondly, the Son proceeding from Him; and thirdly, the Holy Spirit." In both cases he refers to the same attributes of the Son as the teacher of Christian truth, and of the Holy Ghost, as the Prophetic Spirit. His language throughout the two passages is remarkably similar, and in the expressions on the true meaning of which we have already dwelt, it is most strikingly identical; but by omitting all allusion to the angels after the Son, his own words proving that the introduction of them could have no place there, (for he specifies that the third in order was the Holy Spirit,) Justin has left us a comment on the passage under consideration conclusive as to the object of religious worship in his creed. The whole passage is well worth the attention of the reader. The following extracts are the only parts necessary for our present purpose:—
"Who of sound mind will not confess that we are not Atheists, reverencing as we do the Maker of the Universe.... and Him, who taught us these things, and who was born for this purpose, Jesus Christ, crucified under Pontius Pilate.... instructed, as we are, that He is the Son of the True God, and holding Him in the second place; and the Prophetic Spirit in the third order, we with reason honour." [Sect. xiii. p. 50.]
The impiety apparently inseparable from Bellarmin's interpretation has induced many, even among Roman Catholic writers, to discard that acceptation altogether, and to substitute others, which, though involving no grammatical inaccuracy, are still not free from difficulty.[37] After weighing the passage with all the means in my power, and after testing the various interpretations offered by writers, whether of the Church of Rome or not, by the sentiments of Justin himself, and others of the same early age, I am fully persuaded that the following is the only true rendering of Justin's words:
"Honouring in reason and truth, we reverence and worship HIM, the Father of Righteousness, and the Son (who proceeded from Him, and instructed in these things both ourselves and the host of the other good angels following Him and being made like unto Him), and the Prophetic Spirit."
Footnote 37:[(return)]
Le Nourry (Apparatus ad Bibliothecam Maximam Veterum Patrum. Paris, 1697. vol. ii. p. 305), himself a Benedictine, rejects Bellarmin's and his brother Benedictine Maran's interpretation, and conceives Justin to mean, that the Son of God not only taught us those truths to which he was referring, with regard to the being and attributes of God, but also taught us that there were hosts of spiritual beings, called Angels; good beings, opposed to the demons of paganism. Bishop Kaye, in his excellent work on Justin Martyr, which the reader will do well to consult (p. 53), tells us he was sometimes inclined to think that Justin referred to the host of good angels who should surround the Son of God when he should come to judge the world. The view adopted by myself here was recommended by Grabe and by Langus, called The Interpreter of Justin; whilst Petavius, a Jesuit, though he does not adopt it, yet acknowledges that the Greek admits of our interpretation. Any one who would pursue the subject further may with advantage consult the preface to the Benedictine edition referred to in this work. Lumper Hist. Part ii. p. 225. Augustæ Vindelicorum, 1784. Petavius, Theologicorum Dogmatum tom. vi. p. 298. lib. xv. c. v. s. 5. Antwerp, 1700.
The whole passage is thus rendered by Langus (as read in Lumper), "Verum hunc ipsum, et qui ab eo venit, atque ista nos et aliorum obsequentium exæquatorumque ad ejus voluntatem bonorum Angelorum exercitura docuit, Filium, et Spiritum ejus propheticum, colimus et adoramus."
This interpretation is strongly confirmed by the professed sentiments both of Justin and of his contemporaries, with regard to the Son of God and the holy angels.
It was a principle generally received among the early Christians, that whatever the Almighty did, either by creation or by the communication of his will, on earth or in heaven, was done by the Eternal Word. It was God the Son, the Logos, who created the angels[38], as well as ourselves; it was He who spoke to Moses, to Abraham, and to Lot; and it was He who conveyed the Supreme will, and the knowledge of the only true God, to the inhabitants of the world of spirits. Agreeably to this principle, in the passage under consideration, Justin affirms (not that Christians revered and worshipped the angels, but), that God the Son, whom Christians worshipped as the eternal Prophet, Angel, and Apostle, of the Most High, instructed not only us men on earth, but also the host of heavenly angels[39], in these eternal verities, which embrace God's nature and the duty of his creatures. [Trypho, § 141. p. 231.]
Footnote 38:[(return)]
Thus Tatian (p. 249 in the same edition of Justin), "Before men were prepared, the Word was the Maker of angels."
Footnote 39:[(return)]
"The OTHER good angels." Justin (Apol. i. sect. lxiii. p. 81.) reminds us that Christ, the first-begotten of the Father, Himself God, was also an Angel (or Messenger), and an Apostle; and here Christ, as the Angel of the Covenant and the chief Apostle, is represented as instructing THE OTHER ANGELS in the truths of the economy of grace, just as he instructed his Apostles on earth,—"As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you."
It is evident that Justin himself considered the host of angels to be equally with ourselves in a state of probation, requiring divine instruction, and partaking of it. It is also evident that many of his contemporaries entertained the same views; among others, Irenæus and Origen. [Irenæus, book ii. c. 30. p. 163. Origen, Hom. xxxii. in Joann. § 10. vol. iv. p. 430.] I will not swell this dissertation by quoting the passages at length; though the passages referred to in the margin will well repay any one's careful examination. But I cannot refrain from extracting the words in which each of those writers confirms the view here taken of Justin's sentiments.
Irenæus, for example, says distinctly, "The Son ever, anciently and from the beginning co-existing with the Father, always reveals the Father both to angels and archangels, and powers, and excellencies, and to all to whom God wishes to make a revelation[40]." And not less distinctly does Origen assert the same thing,—"Our Saviour therefore teaches, and the Holy Spirit, who spake in the prophets, teaches not only men, but also angels and invisible excellencies."
Footnote 40:[(return)]
So far did some of the early Christians include the hosts of angels within the covenant of the Gospel, that Ignatius (Epist. ad Smyrn. § 6. p. 36.) does not hesitate to pronounce that the angels incur the Divine judgment, if they do not receive the doctrine of the atonement: "Let no one be deceived. The things in heaven, and the glory of angels, and the powers visible and invisible, if they do not believe on the blood of Christ—for them is judgment." They seem to have founded their opinion on the declaration of St. Paul (Eph. iii. 10): "That now to the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be made known through the Church the manifold wisdom of God."
I will only add one more ancient authority, in confirmation of the view here taken of Justin's words. The passage is from Athenagoras[41] and seems to be the exact counterpart of Justin's paragraph.
Footnote 41:[(return)]
Athenagoras presented his defence, in which these words occur, to the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, and his son Commodus, in the year 177.
"Who would not wonder on hearing us called Atheists? we who call the Father God, and the Son God, and the Holy Ghost, showing both their power in the unity, and their distinction in order. Nor does our theology rest here; but we say, moreover, that there is a multitude of angels and ministers whom God, the Maker and Creator of the world, BY THE WORD PROCEEDING FROM HIM, distributed and appointed, both about the elements, and the heavens, and the world, and the things therein, and the good order thereof." [Sect. 10. p. 287. edit. Just. Mart.]
I have already stated my inability to discover a single word in Justin Martyr which could be brought to sanction the invocation of saints; but his testimony is far from being merely negative. He admonishes us strongly against our looking to any other being for help or assistance, than to God only. Even when speaking of those who confide in their own strength, and fortune, and other sources of good, he says, in perfect unison with the pervading principles and associations of his whole mind, as far as we can read them in his works, without any modification or any exception in favour of saint or angel: "In that Christ said, 'Thou art my God, go not far from me,' He at the same time taught, that all persons ought to hope in God, who made all things, and seek for safety and health from Him alone" [Trypho, § 102, p. 197.]
[SECTION II.]—IRENÆUS.
Justin sealed his faith by his blood about the year 165; and next to him, in the noble army of martyrs, we must examine the evidence of Irenæus, Bishop of Lyons. Of this writer's works a very small proportion survives in the original Greek; but that little is such as might well make every scholar and divine lament the calamity which theology and literature have sustained by the loss of the author's own language. It is not perhaps beyond the range of hope that future researches may yet recover at least some part of the treasure. Meanwhile we must avail ourselves with thankfulness of the nervous though inelegant copy of that original, which the Latin translation affords; imperfect and corrupt in many parts, as that copy evidently is. This, however, is not the place for recommending a study of the remains of Irenæus; and every one at all acquainted with the literature of the early Church, knows well how valuable a store of ancient Christian learning is preserved even in the wreck of his works.
On the subject of the invocation of saints, an appeal has been made only to a few passages in Irenæus. With regard, indeed, to one section, I would gladly have been spared the duty of commenting upon the unjustifiable mode of citing his evidence adopted by Bellarmin. It forces upon our notice an example either of such inaccuracy of quotation as would shake our confidence in him as an author, or of such misrepresentation as must lower him in our estimation as a man of integrity.
Bellarmin asserts, building upon it as the very foundation-stone of his argument for the invocation of saints, that the souls of the saints are removed immediately on their dissolution by death, without waiting for the day of judgment, into the presence of God, and the enjoyment of HIM in heaven. This point, he says, must first be established; for if they are not already in the presence of God, they cannot pray for us, and prayer to them would be preposterous. [Bell. lib. i. c. 4. vol. ii. p. 851.] Among the authorities cited by him to establish this point is the evidence of Irenæus (book i. c. 2). [See Benedictine ed, Paris, 1710. book i. c. 10. p. 48.] Bellarmin quotes that passage in these words: "To the just and righteous, and to those who keep his commandments, and persevere in his love, some indeed from the beginning but some from repentance, he giving life CONFERS by way of gift incorruption, and CLOTHES them with eternal glory." To the quotation he appends this note "Mark 'to some' that is, to those who presently after baptism die, or who lay down their life for Christ; or finally to the perfect is given immediately life and eternal glory; to others not, except after repentance, that is, satisfaction made in another world[42]."
Footnote 42:[(return)]
Agreeably to the principles laid down in my preface, I will not here allude to the doctrine of purgatory, on which Bellarmin considers this passage to bear; nor will I say one word on the intermediate state of the soul between death and the resurrection, on which I am now showing that the words of Irenæus cannot at all be made to bear.
Here I am compelled to confess that I never found a more palpable misquotation of an author than this. I will readily grant that Bellarmin may have quoted from memory, or have borrowed from some corrupt version of the passage; and that he has unintentionally changed the moods of two verbs from the subjunctive to the indicative, and inadvertently changed the entire construction and the sense of the passage. But then what becomes of his authority as a writer citing testimony?
Irenæus in this passage is speaking not of what our Lord does now, but what he will do at the last day; he refers only to the second coming of Christ to judgment at the final consummation of all things, not using a single expression which can be made by fair criticism to have any reference whatever to the condition of souls on their separation from the body. I have consulted the old editions, some at least published before the date of Bellarmin's work; the suggestion offering itself to my mind, that perhaps the ancient translation was in error, from which he might have quoted. But I cannot find that to have been the case. The old Latin version of this passage agreeing very closely with the Greek still preserved in Epiphanius, and quoted by Roman Catholic writers as authentic, conveys this magnificent though brief summary of the Christian faith:
"The Church spread throughout the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, received both from the Apostles and their disciples that faith which is in one God omnipotent, who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all things therein, and in one Jesus Christ, the Son of God, for our salvation made flesh, and in the Holy Ghost, who by the prophets announced the dispensations (of God[43]), and the Advent, and the being born of a Virgin, and the suffering, and the resurrection from the dead, and the bodily ascension into heaven of the beloved Jesus Christ our Lord, and his coming from heaven in the glory of the Father for the consummation of all things, and for raising again all flesh of the human race, THAT, in order that ([Greek: ina]), to Christ Jesus our Lord and God, and Saviour and King, according to the good pleasure of the invisible Father, every knee should bow of things in heaven and in earth, and under the earth, and that every tongue should confess to Him, and that he should execute just judgment on all: that he should send the spirits of wickedness, and the transgressing and rebel angels, and the impious and unjust, and wicked and blaspheming men into eternal fire; but to the just and righteous, and to those who keep his commandments, and persevere in his love,—some indeed from the beginning, and some from their repentance,—he granting life, by way of gift, SHOULD CONFER incorruption, and SHOULD CLOTHE them with eternal glory." [Hæres. xxxi. c. 30.]
Footnote 43:[(return)]
The words "of God" are in the Latin, but not in the Greek.
The words, "some from the beginning," "others from their repentance," can refer only to the two conditions of believers; some of whom have grace to keep the commandments, and persevere in the love of God from the beginning of their Christian course, whilst others, for a time, transgress and wax cold in love, but by repentance, through God's grace, are renewed and restored to their former state of obedience and love. On both these classes of Christians, according to the faith as here summed up by Irenæus, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, when He comes in glory for the consummation of all things, and for the resurrection of the dead, will confer glory and immortality. No ingenuity of criticism can extract from this passage any allusion to the intercession of saints, or to their being with God before the end of the world[44]. But I am not here condemning Bellarmin's untenable criticism: what I lament is the negligence or the disingenuousness with which he misquotes the words of Irenæus, and makes him say what he never did say. To extract from an author's words, correctly reported, a meaning which he did not intend to convey, however reprehensible and unworthy a follower of truth, is one act of injustice: to report him, whether wilfully or carelessly, as using words which he never did use, is far worse.
Footnote 44:[(return)]
It will be well to see the words of Bellarmin and those of the translation side by side:
(Transcriber's note: They are shown here one after the other.)
Bellarmin lib. i. c. iv. p. 851.
"Quartus Irenæus, lib. i. c. 2. 'Justis, inquit, et æquis, et præcepta ejus servantibus et in dilectione perseverantibus, quibusdam quidem ab initio, quibusdam autem ex poenitentia, vitam donans, incorruptelam loco muneris CONFERT, et claritatem æternam CIRCUMDAT.' Nota 'quibusdam,' id est, iis qui mox a Baptismo moriuntur, vel qui pro Christo vitam ponunt; vel denique perfectis statim donari vitam et claritatem æternam; aliis non nisi post poenitentiam, id est, satisfactionem in futuro sæculo actam."
Latin Translation.
"Et de coelis in gloria Patris adventum ejus ad recapitulanda universa et resuscitandam omnem carnem humani generis, UT Christo Jesu Domino nostro et Deo, et Salvatori, et Regi, secundum placitum Patris invisibilis, 'omne genu curvet coelestium, et terrestrium, et infernorum, et omnis lingua confiteatur ei,' et judicium justum in omnibus faciat; spiritalia quidem nequitiæ, et angelos transgresses, atque apostatas factos, et impios et injustos et iniquos, et blasphemos homines in æternum ignem mittat;—Justis autem et æquis et præcepta ejus servantibus et in dilectione ejus perseverantibus, quibusdam quidem ab initio, quibusdam autem ex poenitentia, vitam donans, incorruptelam loco muneris CONFERAT, et claritatem æternam CIRCUMDET."—Irenæi liber i. cap. x. p. 48. Interpretatio Vetus.
Another expression of Irenæus is appealed to by Bellarmin, and continues to be cited at the present day in defence of the invocation of saints; the precise bearing of which upon the subject I confess myself unable to see, whilst I am very far from understanding the passage from which it is an extract. Bellarmin cites the passage not to show that the saints in glory pray for us,—that argument he had dismissed before,—but to prove that they are to be invoked by us. The insulated passage as quoted by him is this: "And as she (Eve) was induced to fly from God, so she (Mary) was persuaded to obey God, that of the Virgin Eve the Virgin Mary might become the advocate." After the quotation he says, "What can be clearer?" [Benedict, lib. v. cap. xix. p. 316.]
In whatever sense we may suppose Irenæus to have employed the word here translated "advocata," it is difficult to see how the circumstance of Mary becoming the advocate of Eve, who lived so many generations before her, can bear upon the question, Is it lawful and right for us, now dwelling on the earth, to invoke those saints whom we believe to be in heaven? I will not dwell on the argument urged very cogently by some critics on this passage, that the word "advocata," found in the Latin version of Irenæus, is the translation of the original word, now lost [Greek: paraklaetos]—paraclete], which, by the early writers, was used for "comforter and consoler," or "restorer;" because, as I have above intimated, whatever may have been the word employed by Irenæus, the passage proves nothing as to the lawfulness of our praying to the saints. If the angels at God's bidding minister unto the heirs of salvation; or further, if they plead our cause with God, that would be no reason why we should invoke them and pray to them. This distinction between what they may do for us, and what we ought to do with regard to them, is an essential distinction, and must not be lost sight of. We shall have occasion hereafter to refer to it repeatedly, especially in the instances of Origen and Cyprian. I will now do no more than copy in a note the entire passage from which the sentence now under consideration has been extracted, that the reader may judge whether on such a passage, the original of which, in whatever words Irenæus may have expressed himself, is utterly lost, any reliance can satisfactorily be placed.
("Manifeste itaque in sua propria venientem Dominum et sua propria eum bajulantem conditione quæ bajulatur ab ipso, et recapitulationem ejus quæ in ligno fuit inobedientiæ per eam quæ in ligno est obedientiam facientem, et seductionem illam solutam qua seducta est male illa, quæ jam viro destinata erat virgo Eva, per veritatem evangelizata est bene ab angelo jam sub viro virgo Maria. Quemadmodum enim illa per angeli sermonem seducta est ut effugeret Deum prævaricata verbum ejus, ita et hæc per angelicum sermonem evangelizata est ut portaret Deum obediens ejus verbo. Et si ea inobedierat Deo, sed hæc suasa est obedire Deo, uti virginis Evæ virgo Maria fieret advocata. Et quemadmodum astrictum est morti genus humanum per virginem, salvatur per virginem, æqua lance disposita virginalis inobedientia per virginalem obedientiam. Adhuc enim protoplasti peccatum per correptionem primogeniti emendationem accipiens, et serpentis prudentia devicta in columbæ simplicitate, vinculis autem illis resolutis, per quæ alligati eramus morti." St. Augustin (Paris, 1690. vol. x. p. 500.) refers to the latter part of this passage, as implying the doctrine of original sin; but since his quotation does not embrace any portion of the clause at present under our consideration, no additional light from him is thrown on the meaning of Irenæus.)
But passages occur in Irenæus, which seem to leave doubt, that neither in faith nor in practice would he countenance in the very lowest degree the adoration of saints and angels, or any invocation of them.
For example, in one part of his works we read, "Nor does it [the Church] do any thing by invocations of angels, nor by incantations, nor other depraved and curious means, but with cleanliness, purity, and openness, directing prayers to the Lord who made all things, and calling upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, it exercises its powers for the benefit, and not for the seducing, of mankind." [Benedictine Ed. lib. ii. c. 32. § 5. p. 166.] It has been said that, by angelic invocations, Irenæus means the addresses to evil angels and genii, such as the heathen superstitiously made. Be it so; though that is a mere assumption, not warranted by the passage or its context. But, surely, had Irenæus known that Christians prayed to angels, as well as to their Maker and their Saviour, he would not have used such an unguarded expression; he would have cautioned his readers against so serious, but so natural, a misapprehension of his meaning.
With one more reference, we must bring our inquiry into the testimony of Irenæus to a close. The passage occurs in the fifth book, chapter 31. [Benedict. lib. v. c. 32. § 2. p, 331.] The principal and most important, though not the longest, part of the passage is happily still found in the original Greek, preserved in the "Parallels" of Damascenus. In its plain, natural, and unforced sense, this passage is so decidedly conclusive on the question at issue, that various attempts have been made to explain away its meaning, so as not to represent Irenæus as believing that the souls of departed saints, between their death and the day of judgment, exist otherwise than in bliss and glory in heaven. But those attempts have been altogether unsuccessful. I believe the view here presented to us by the plain and obvious sense of the words of Irenæus, is the view at present acquiesced in by a large proportion of our fellow-believers. The Anglican Church has made no article of faith whatever on the subject. The clause within brackets is found both in the Latin and the Greek.
"Since the Lord[45] in the midst of the shadow of death went where the souls of the dead were, and then afterwards rose bodily, and after his resurrection was taken up, it is evident that of his disciples also, for whom the Lord wrought these things, [the souls go into the unseen[46] place assigned to them by God, and there remain till the resurrection, waiting for the resurrection; afterwards receiving again their bodies and rising perfectly [Greek: holoklaeros], perfecte], that is, bodily, even as the Lord also rose again, so will they come into the presence of God.] For no disciple is above his master; but every one that is perfect shall be as his master. As, therefore, our Master did not immediately flee away and depart, but waited for the time of his resurrection appointed by his Father (which is evident, even by the case of Jonah); after the third day, rising again, he was taken up; so we too must wait for the time of our resurrection appointed by God, and fore-announced by the prophets; and thus rising again, be taken up, as many as the Lord shall have deemed worthy of this."
Footnote 45:[(return)]
Bellarmin, rather than allow the testimony of Irenæus to weigh at all against the doctrine which he is defending, seems determined to combat and challenge that father himself. "Non ausus est dicere," "He has not dared to say, that the souls go to the regions below," &c.
Footnote 46:[(return)]
There is no word in the Greek copy corresponding with the Latin "invisibilem."
[SECTION III.]—CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA—ABOUT THE YEAR 180.
Contemporary with Irenæus, and probably less than twenty years his junior, was Clement, the celebrated Christian philosopher of Alexandria. I am not aware that any Roman Catholic writer has appealed to the testimony of Clement in favour of the invocation of saints, nor have I found a single passage which the defenders of that practice would be likely to quote; and yet there are many passages which no one, anxious to trace the Catholic faith, would willingly neglect. The tendency of Clement's mind to blend with the simplicity of the Gospel of Christ the philosophy in which he so fully abounded, renders him far less valuable as a Christian teacher; but his evidence as to the matter of fact, is even rendered more cogent and pointed by this tendency of his mind. I would willingly have transferred to these pages whole passages of Clement, but the very nature of my address forbids it. Some sentences bearing on the subject immediately before us, we must not omit.
Clement has left on record many of his meditations upon the efficacy, the duty, and the blessed comfort of prayer. When he speaks of God, and of the Christian in prayer, (for prayer he defines to be "communion or intercourse with God,") his language becomes often exquisitely beautiful, and sometimes sublime. It is impossible by a few detached passages to convey an adequate estimate of the original; and yet a few sentences may show that Clement is a man whose testimony should not be slighted.
"Therefore, keeping the whole of our life as a feast every where, and on every part persuaded that God is present, we praise him as we till our lands; we sing hymns as we are sailing. The Christian is persuaded that God hears every thing; not the voice only, but the thoughts.... Suppose any one should say, that the voice does not reach God, revolving as it does in the air below; yet the thoughts of the saints cut not only through the air, but the whole world. And the divine power like the light is beforehand in seeing through the soul.... He" (the Christian whom he speaks of throughout as the man of divine knowledge) "prays for things essentially good.
"Wherefore it best becomes those to pray who have an adequate knowledge of God, and possess virtue in accordance with Him—who know what are real goods, and what we should petition for, and when, and how in each case. But it is the extreme of ignorance to ask from those who are not gods as though they were gods.... Whence since there is one only good God, both we ourselves and the angels supplicate from Him alone, that some good things might be given to us, and others might remain with us. In this way he (the Christian) is always in a state of purity fit for prayer. He prays with angels, as being himself equal with angels; and as one who is never beyond the holy protecting guard. And if he pray alone he has the whole choir of angels with him." [Stromata, lib. vii. § 7. p. 851, &c.; Section xii. p. 879.]
Clement has alluded to instances alleged by the Greeks of the effects of prayer, and he adds, "Our whole Scripture is full of instances of God hearing and granting every request according to the prayers of the just." [Lib. vi. § iii. p. 753.]
Having in the same section referred to the opinion of some Greeks as to the power of demons over the affairs of mortals, he adds, "But they think it matters nothing whether we speak of these as gods or as angels, calling the spirits of such 'demons,' and teaching that they should be worshipped by men, as having, by divine providence, on account of the purity of their lives, received authority to be conversant about earthly places, in order that they may minister to mortals." [Lib. vi. § iii. p. 755.]
Is it possible to suppose that this teacher in Christ's school had any idea of a Christian praying to saints or angels? In the last passage, the language in which he quotes the errors of heathen superstition to refute them, so nearly approaches the language of the Church of Rome when speaking of the powers of saints and angels to assist the suppliant, that if Clement had entertained any thought whatever of a Christian praying for aid and intercession to saint or angel, he must have mentioned it, especially after the previous passage on the absurdity and gross ignorance of praying for any good at the hands of any other than the one true God.
In common with his contemporaries, Clement considered the angels to be, as we mortals are, in a state requiring all the protection and help to be obtained by prayer; he believed that the angels pray with us, and carry our prayers to God: but the thought of addressing them by invocation does not appear to have occurred to his mind. At the close of his Pædagogus he has left on record a form of prayer to God alone very peculiar and interesting. He closes it by an ascription of glory to the blessed Trinity. But there is no allusion to saint, or angel, or virgin mother.
[SECTION IV.]—TERTULLIAN.
Tertullian, of Carthage, was a contemporary of Clement of Alexandria, and so nearly of the same age, that doubts have existed, which of the two should take priority in point of time. There is a very wide difference in the character and tone of their works, as there was in the frame and constitution of their minds. The lenient and liberal views of the erudite and accomplished master of the school of Alexandria, stand out in prominent and broad contrast with the harsh and austere doctrines of Tertullian.
Tertullian fell into errors of a very serious kind by joining himself to the heretic Montanus; still on his mind is discoverable the working of that spirit which animated the early converts of Christianity; and his whole soul seems to have been filled with a desire to promote the practical influence of the Gospel.
Jerome, the oracle on such subjects, from whom the Roman Catholic Church is unwilling to allow any appeal, expressly tells us that Cyprian[47], who called Tertullian the Master, never passed a single day without studying his works; and that after Tertullian had remained a presbyter of the Church to middle age, he was driven, by the envy and revilings of the members of the Roman Church, to fall from its unity, and espouse Montanism. Bellarmin calls him a heretic, and says he is the first heretic who denied that the saints went at once and forthwith to glory. [Hieron. edit. 1684. tom. i. p. 183.]
Footnote 47:[(return)]
The words of Jerome, who refers to the circumstance more than once, are very striking: "I saw one Paulus, who said that he had seen the secretary (notarium) of Cyprian at Rome, who used to tell him that Cyprian never passed a single day without reading Tertullian; and that he often said to him, 'Give me the Master,' meaning Tertullian."—Hieron. vol. iv. part ii. p. 115.
A decided line of distinction is drawn by Roman Catholic writers between the works of Tertullian written before he espoused the errors of Montanus, and his works written after that unhappy step. The former they hold in great estimation, the latter are by many considered of far less authority. I do not see how such a distinction ought to affect his testimony on the historical point immediately before us. If indeed he had held the doctrine of the invocation of saints whilst he continued in the full communion of the Church, and rejected it afterwards, no honest and sensible writer would quote his later opinions against the practice. But we are only seeking in his works for evidence of the matter of fact,—Is there any proof in the works of Tertullian that the invocation of saints formed a part of the doctrine and practice of the Catholic Church in his time[48]? His works will be found in the note, arranged under those two heads, as nearly as I can ascertain the preponderating sentiments of critics[49].
Footnote 48:[(return)]
The reader, who may be induced to consult the work of the present Bishop of Lincoln, entitled, "The Ecclesiastical History of the second and third Centuries, illustrated from the writings of Tertullian," will there find, in the examination and application of Tertullian's remains, the union of sound judgment, diligence in research, clearness of perception, acuteness in discovery, and great erudition mingled with charity.
Footnote 49:[(return)]
Works of Tertullian before he became a Montanist:—
Adversus Judæos.
The Tract ad Martyres.
The two Books ad Nationes.
The Apology, and the Tract de Præscriptione Hæreticorum.
The Tract de Testimonio Animæ.
The Tracts de Patientia, de Oratione, de Baptismo, de Poenitentia.
The two books ad Uxorem.
Works written after he espoused Montanism:—
The Tracts de Spectaculis and de Idololatria, though others say these should be ranked among the first class.
The Tracts de Corona, and de Fuga in persecutione, Scorpiace, and ad Scapulam.
The Tracts de Exhortatione Castitatis, de Monogamia, de Pudicitia, de Jejuniis, de Virginibus Velandis, de Pallio, the five books against Marcion, the Tracts adversus Valentinianos, de Carne Christi, de Resurrectione Carnis, adversus Hermogenem, de Anima, adversus Praxeam, de Cultu Foeminarum.
I will detain you only by a very few quotations from this father.
In his Apology, sect. 30, we read this very remarkable passage, "We invoke the eternal God, the true God, the living God, for the safety of the emperor.... Thither (heavenward) looking up, with hands extended, because they are innocent; with our head bare, because we are not ashamed; in fine, without a prompter, because it is from the heart; we Christians pray for all rulers a long life, a secure government, a safe home, brave armies, a faithful senate, a good people, a quiet world.... For these things I cannot ask in prayer from any other except Him from whom I know that I shall obtain; because both He is the one who alone grants, and I am the one whom it behoveth to obtain by prayer;—his servant, who looks to him alone, who for the sake of his religion am put to death, who offer to him a rich and a greater victim, which He has commanded; prayer from a chaste frame, from a harmless soul, from a holy spirit.... So, let hoofs dig into us, thus stretched forward to God, let crosses suspend us, let fires embrace us, let swords sever our necks from the body, let beasts rush upon us,—the very frame of mind of a praying Christian is prepared for every torment. This do, ye good presidents; tear ye away the soul that is praying for the emperor." [Page 27.]
In the opening of his reflections on the Lord's Prayer, he says,—
"Let us consider therefore, beloved, in the first place, the heavenly wisdom in the precept of praying in secret, by which he required, in a man, faith to believe that both the sight and the hearing of the Omnipotent God is present under our roofs and in our secret places; and desired the lowliness of faith, that to Him alone, whom he believed to hear and to see every where, he would offer his worship." [Page 129.]
The only other reference which I will make, is to the solemn declaration of Tertullian's Creed; the last clause of which, though in perfect accordance with the sentiments of his contemporaries, seems to have been regarded with hostile eyes by modern writers of the Church of Rome, because it decidedly bids us look to the day of judgment for the saints being taken to the enjoyment of heaven; and consequently implies that they cannot be properly invoked now.
"To profess now what we defend: By the rule of our faith we believe that God is altogether one, and no other than the Creator of the world, who produced all things out of nothing by his Word first of all sent down. That that Word, called his Son, was variously seen by the patriarchs in the name of God; was always heard in the prophets; at length, borne by the spirit and power of God the Father into the Virgin Mary, was made flesh in her womb, was born of her, and was Jesus Christ. Afterwards He preached a new law and a new promise of the kingdom of heaven; wrought miracles, was crucified, rose again the third day, and, being taken up into heaven, sat on the right hand of the Father; and He sent in his own stead the power of the Holy Ghost, to guide believers; that He shall come with glory to take the saints to the enjoyment of eternal life and the heavenly promises, and to condemn the impious to eternal fire, making a reviving of both classes with the restoration of the body." [De Præscriptione Hæreticorum, § 13. p. 206.]
Some notice must here be taken of METHODIUS, a pious Christian, of the third century. A work (Methodius, Gl. Combes. Paris, 1644) formerly attributed to him has been quoted in proof of the early invocation of saints; but the work, among many others, has been long ago allowed by the best Roman Catholic critics to be the production of a later age. (Fabricius, vol. vii. p. 268, and vol. x. p. 241.) Many homilies, purporting to have been delivered on the festival of our Lord's presentation in the temple, at so early a period, must be received as the works of a later age, because that feast began to be observed in the Church so late as the fifteenth year of Justinian, in the sixth century. Evidently, moreover, the theological language of the homily is of a period long subsequent to the date assigned to Methodius. In speaking of our blessed Saviour, for example, he employs expressions to guard against the Arian heresy, and makes extracts apparently from the Nicene creed, "God of himself, and not by grace," "Very God of very God, very light of very light, who for us men and our salvation, &c." The general opinion indeed seems to be that this, and many other writings formerly ascribed to the first Methodius, were written by persons of a subsequent age, who either were of the same name or assumed his. Even were the work genuine, it would afford just as strong a demonstration that Methodius believed that the city of Jerusalem could hear his salutation, as that the saints could hear his prayer; for he addresses the same "Hail" to Mary, Symeon, and the Holy City alike, calling it the "earthly heaven." [Greek: Chairois hae polis, ho epigeios ouranos.]
[SECTION V.]—THE EVIDENCE OF ORIGEN.
Jerome informs us that Tertullian, whose remains we have last examined, lived to a very advanced age. Long, therefore, before his death flourished Origen, one of the most celebrated lights of the primitive Church. He was educated a Christian. Indeed his father is said to have suffered martyrdom about the year 202. Origen was a pupil of Clement of Alexandria. His virtues and his labours have called forth the admiration of all ages; and though he cannot be implicitly followed as a teacher, what still remains of his works will be delivered down as a rich treasure to succeeding times. He was a most voluminous writer; and Jerome asked the members of his church, "Who is there among us that can read as many books as Origen has composed?" [Vol. iv. epist. xli. p. 346.] A large proportion of his works are lost; and of those which remain, few are preserved in the original Greek. We are often obliged to study Origen through the medium of a translation, the accuracy of which we have no means of verifying. A difficult and delicate duty also devolves upon the theological student to determine which of the works attributed to Origen are genuine and which are spurious; and what parts, moreover, of the works received on the whole as genuine came from his pen. Of the spurious works, some are so palpably written in a much later age, and by authors of different religious views, that no one, after weighing the evidence, can be at a loss what decision to make concerning them; in the case of others, claims and objections may appear to be more evenly balanced. I trust on the one hand to refer to no works for Origen's testimony which are not confessedly his, nor on the other to exclude any passage which is not decidedly spurious; whilst in one particular case more immediately connected with our subject, I am induced to enter further in detail into a critical examination of the genuineness and value of a passage than the character of this work generally requires. The great importance attached to the testimony of that passage by some defenders of the worship paid to angels, may be admitted to justify the fulness of the criticism. Lest, however, its insertion in the body of the work might seem inconveniently to interfere with the reader's progress in our argument, I have thought it best to include it in a supplementary section at the close of our inquiry into the evidence of Origen.
Coccius, in his elaborate work, quotes the two following passages as Origen's, without expressing any hesitation or doubt respecting their genuineness, in which he is followed by writers of the present day. The passages are alleged in proof that Origen held and put in practice the doctrine of the invocation of saints; and they form the first quotations made by Coccius under the section headed by this title: "That the saints are to be invoked, proved by the testimony of the Greek Fathers."
The first passage is couched in these words: "I will begin to throw myself upon my knees, and pray to all the saints to come to my aid; for I do not dare, in consequence of my excess of wickedness, to call upon God. O Saints of God, you I pray with weeping full of grief, that ye would propitiate his mercies for me miserable. Alas me! Father Abraham, pray for me, that I be not driven from thy bosom, which I greatly long for, and yet not worthily, because of the greatness of my sins."
Coccius cites this passage as from "Origen in Lament," and it has been recently appealed to under the title of "Origen on the Lamentations." Here, however, is a very great mistake. Origen's work on the Lamentations, called also "Selecta in Threnos," and inserted in the Benedictine edition (Vol. iii. p. 321.), is entirely a different production from the work which contains the above extract. This apocryphal work, on the other hand, does not profess to be the comment of Origen on the Lamentations, but the Lament or Wailing of Origen himself; or, as it used to be called, the Penitence of Origen. (In the Paris edition of 1519 it is called "Planctus, seu Lamentum Origenis." Pope Gelasius refers to it as "Poenitentia Origenis.") That this work has no pretensions whatever to be regarded as Origen's, has been long placed beyond doubt. Even in the edition of 1545, this treatise is prefaced by Erasmus in these words, "This Lamentation was neither written by Origen nor translated by Jerome, but is the fiction of some unlearned man, who attempted, under colour of this, to throw disgrace upon Origen." [Basil, 1545. vol. i. p. 498.] In the Benedictine edition (Paris, 1733.) no trace of this work is to be found. They do not admit it among the doubtful, or even the spurious works; they do not so much as give room for it in the appendix; on the contrary, they drop it altogether as utterly unworthy of being any longer preserved. Instead, however, of admitting the work itself, these editors have supplied abundant reason for its exclusion, by inserting the sentiments of Huetius, or Huet, the very learned bishop of Avranches. He tells us, that formerly to Origen's work on Principles used to be appended a treatise called, the Lament of Origen, the Latin translation of which Guido referred to Jerome. After quoting the passage of Erasmus (as above cited from the edition of 1545) in proof of its having been "neither written by Origen nor translated by Jerome, but the fabrication of some unlearned man, who attempted, under colour of this, to throw disgrace on Origen, just as they forged a letter in Jerome's name, lamenting that he had ever thought with Origen," Huet proceeds thus: "And Gelasius in the Roman Council writes, 'The book which is called The Repentance of Origen, apocryphal.' It is wonderful, therefore, that without any mark of its false character, it should be sometimes cited by some theologians in evidence. Here we may smile at the supineness of a certain heterodox man of the present age, who thought the 'Lament,' ascribed to Origen, to be something different from the Book of Repentance." [Vol. iv. part ii. p. 326.]
The Decree here referred to of Pope Gelasius, made in the Roman Council, A.D. 494, by that pontiff, in conjunction with seventy bishops, contains these strong expressions, before enumerating some few of the books then condemned: "Other works written by heretics and schismatics, the Catholic and Apostolic Church by no means receives; of them we think it right to subjoin a few which have occurred to our memory, and are to be avoided by Catholics." [Conc. Labb. vol. iv. p. 1265.] Then follows a list of prohibited works, among which we read, "the book called The Repentance of Origen, apocryphal," the very book which Huet identifies with the "Lament of Origen," still cited as evidence even in the present day. (See Appendix A.)
The second passage cited by Coccius, and also by writers of the present time, as Origen's, without any allusion to its spurious and apocryphal character, is from the second book of the work called Origen on Job. The words cited run thus: "O blessed Job, who art living for ever with God, and remainest conqueror in the sight of the Lord the King, pray for us wretched, that the mercy of the terrible God may protect us in all our afflictions, and deliver us from all oppressions of the wicked one; and number us with the just, and enrol us among those who are saved, and make us rest with them in his kingdom, where for ever with the saints we may magnify him."
This work, like the former, has no claim whatever to be regarded as Origen's. It has long been discarded by the learned. Indeed so far back as 1545, Erasmus, in his Censura, proved that it was written long after the time of Origen by an Arian. (Basil, 1545. vol. i. p. 408; and "Censura.") By the Benedictine editors it is transferred to an appendix as the Commentary of an anonymous writer on Job; and they thus express their judgment as to its being a forgery: "The Commentary of an anonymous writer on Job, in previous editions, is ascribed to Origen; but that it is not his, Huet proves by unconquerable arguments. This translation is assigned to Hilary, the bishop; but although it is clear from various proofs of Jerome, that St. Hilary translated the tracts or homilies of Origen on Job, yet there is no reason why that man who wrote with the highest praise against the Arians, should be considered as the translator of this work, which is infected with the corruption of Arianism, and which is not Origen's." [Vol. ii. p. 894.] Erasmus calls the prologue to this treatise on Job "the production of a silly talkative man, neither learned nor modest."
It is impossible not to feel, with regard to these two works, the sentiments which, as we have already seen, the Bishop of Avranches has so strongly expressed on one. "It is wonderful, that they should be sometimes cited in evidence by some theologians, without any mark of their being forgeries."
Proceeding with our examination of the sentiments of Origen, I would here premise, that not the smallest doubt can be entertained that Origen believed the angels to be ministering spirits, real, active, zealous workmen and fellow-labourers with us in the momentous and awful business of our eternal salvation. He represents the angels as members of the same family with ourselves, as worshippers of the same God, as servants of the same master, as children of the same father, as disciples of the same heavenly teacher, as learners of one and the same heavenly doctrine. He contemplates them as members of our Christian congregations, as joining with us in prayer to our heavenly Benefactor, as taking pleasure when they hear in our assemblies what is agreeable to the will of God, and as being present too not only generally in the Christian Church, but also with individual members of it[50]. But does Origen, therefore, countenance any invocation of them? Let us appeal to himself.
Footnote 50:[(return)]
One or two references will supply abundant proof of this: "I do not doubt that in our congregation angels are present, not only in general to the whole Church, but also individually with those of whom it is said, 'Their angels do always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven.' A twofold Church is here: one of men, the other of angels. If we say any thing agreeably to reason and the mind of Scripture, the angels rejoice to pray with us." And a little above, "Our Saviour, therefore, as well as the Holy Spirit, who spoke by the prophets, instructs not only men, but angels and invisible powers."—Hom, xxiii. in Luc. vol. iii. p. 961.
"Whoever, therefore, confessing his sins, repents, or confesses Christ before men in persecutions, is applauded by his brethren. For there is joy and gladness to the angels in heaven over one sinner that repenteth. By them, therefore, as by brethren (for both men and angels are sons of the same Creator and Father) they are praised."—In Genes. Hom. xvii. p. 110.
Celsus accused the Christians of being atheists, godless, men without God, because they would not worship those gods many and lords many, and those secondary, subordinate, auxiliary, and ministering divinities with which the heathen mythology abounded: Origen answers, we are not godless, we are not without an object of our prayer; we pray to God Almighty alone through the mediation only of his Son.
"We must pray to God alone ([Greek: Mono gar proseukteon to epi pasi Theo]), who is over all things; and we must pray also to the only-begotten and first-born of every creature, the Word of God; and we must implore him as our High Priest to carry our prayer, first coming to him, to his God and our God, to his Father and the Father of those who live agreeably to the word of God." [Cont. Cels. § 8. c. xxvi. vol. i. p. 761.]
But Celsus, in this well representing the weakness and failings of human nature, still urged on the Christian the necessity, or at all events the expediency, of conciliating those intermediate beings who executed the will of the Supreme Being, and might haply have much left at their own will and discretion to give or to withhold; and therefore the desirableness of securing their good offices by prayer. To this Origen answers:
"The one God ([Greek: Hena oun ton epi pasi theon haemin exenmenisteon])—the God who is over all, is to be propitiated by us, and to be appeased by prayer; the God who is rendered favourable by piety and all virtue. But if he (Celsus) is desirous, after the supreme God, to propitiate some others also, let him bear in mind, that just as a body in motion is accompanied by the motion of its shadow, so also by rendering the supreme God favourable, it follows that the person has all his (God's) friends, angels, souls, spirits, favourable also; for they sympathize with those who are worthy of God's favour; and not only do they become kindly affected towards the worthy, but they also join in their work with those who desire to worship the supreme God; and they propitiate him, and they pray with us, and supplicate with us; so that we boldly say, that together with men who on principle prefer the better part, and pray to God, ten thousands of holy powers join in prayer UNASKED ([Greek: aklaetoi])," [UNBIDDEN, UNCALLED upon.] [Cont. Cels. lib. viii. § 64. vol. i. p. 789.]
What an opportunity was here for Origen to have stated, that though Christians do not call upon demons and the subordinate divinities of heathenism to aid them, yet that they do call upon the ministering spirits, the true holy angels, messengers and servants of the most High God! But whilst speaking of them, and magnifying the blessings derived to man through their ministry, so far from encouraging us to ask them for their good offices, his testimony on the contrary is not merely negative; he positively asserts that when they assist mankind, it is without any request or prayer from man. Could this come from one who invoked angels?
Another passage, although it adds little to the evidence of the above extract, I am unwilling to pass by, because it beautifully illustrates by the doctrine and practice of Origen the prayer, the only one adopted by the Anglican Church, offered by the Church to God for the succour and defence of the holy angels. Speaking of the unsatisfactory slippery road which they tread, who either depend upon the agency of demons for good, or are distressed by the fear of evil from them, Origen adds, "How far better ([Greek: poso Beltion]) were it to commit oneself to God who is over all, through Him who instructed us in this doctrine, Jesus Christ, and OF HIM to ask for every aid from the holy angels and the just, that they may rescue us from the earthly demons." [Cont. Cels. lib. viii. § 60. vol. i. p. 786.]
In the following passage Origen answers the question of Celsus: "If you Christians admit the existence of angels, tell us what you consider their nature to be?" [Cont. Cels. lib. v. § 4. p. 579.]
"Come," replies Origen, "let us consider these points. Now we confessedly say, that the angels are ministering spirits, and sent to minister on account of those who are to be heirs of salvation; that they ascend, bearing with them the supplications of men into the most pure heavenly places of the world; and that they again descend from thence, bearing to each in proportion to what is appointed by God for them to minister to the well-doers. And learning that these are, from their work, called angels ([Greek: aggeloi], messengers, ministers sent to execute some commission), we find them, because they are divine, sometimes called even gods in the Holy Scriptures; but not so, as for any injunction to be given to us to worship and adore, instead of God, those who minister, and bring to us the things of God. For every request and prayer, and supplication and thanksgiving, must be sent up to Him who is God above all, through the High Priest, who is above all angels, even the living Word of God. And we also make our requests to the Word, and supplicate Him, and moreover offer our prayer to Him; if we can understand the difference between the right use and the abuse of prayer. For it is not reasonable for us to call upon angels, without receiving a knowledge concerning them which is above man. But supposing the knowledge concerning them, wonderful and unutterable as it is, had been received; that very knowledge describing their nature, and those to whom they are respectively assigned, would not give confidence in praying to any other than to Him who is sufficient for every thing, God who is above all, through our Saviour, the Son of God, who is the word, and wisdom, and the truth, and whatsoever else the writings of the prophets of God, and the Apostles of Jesus say concerning Him. But for the angels of God to be favourable to us, and to do all things for us, our disposition towards God is sufficient; we copy them to the utmost of human strength, as they copy God. And our conception concerning his Son, the Word, according to what is come to us, is not opposed to the more clear conception of the holy angels concerning Him, but is daily approximating towards it in clearness and perspicuity."
Again, he thus writes: "But Celsus wishes us to dedicate the first-fruits unto the demons; but we to Him who said, Let the earth bring forth grass, &c. But to whom we give the first-fruits, to him we send up also our prayers; having a great High Priest who is entered into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God; and this confession we hold fast as long as we live, having God favourable unto us, and his only-begotten Son being manifested among us, Jesus Christ. But if we wish to have a multitude favourable unto us, we learn that thousand thousands stand by Him, and ten thousand thousands minister unto Him; who, regarding those as kinsfolks and friends who imitate their piety to God, work together for the salvation of them who call upon God and pray sincerely; appearing also, and thinking that they ought to listen to them, and as if upon one watchword to go forth for the benefit and salvation of those who pray to God, to whom they also pray." [Cont. Cels. lib. viii. § 34. (Benedict, p. 766.)]
After these multiplied declarations of Origen, not only confessing that Christians did not pray to the angels, but vindicating them from the charge of impiety brought against them by their enemies for their neglect of the worship of angels, is it possible to regard him as a witness in favour of prayer to angels?
But it has been said that Origen in another passage (Cont. Cels. lib. viii. § 13. p. 751.) plainly implies, that he would not be unwilling to discuss the question of some worship being due to angels and archangels, provided the idea of that worship, and the acts of the worshippers, were first cleared of all misapprehension. And I would not that any Catholic, whether in communion with the Church of England or of Rome, should make any other answer than Origen here gave to Celsus. Let me speak freely on this point. I should not respect the memory of Origen as I do, had he taught differently. The word which he uses is the Greek word "therapeusis," precisely the same word with that which the learned in medicine now use to describe the means of healing diseases. It is a word of very wide import. It signifies the care which a physician takes of his patient; the service paid to a master; the attention given to a superior; the affectionate attendance of a friend; the allegiance of a subject; the worship of the Supreme Being. Origen says, Provided Celsus will specify what kind of "therapeusis" he would wish to be paid to those angels and archangels whose existence we acknowledge, I am ready to enter upon the subject with him. This is all he says. And we of the Anglican Church are ready from our hearts to join him. Call it by what name we may, we are never backward in acknowledging ourselves bound to render it. We pay to the angels and archangels, and all the company of heaven, the homage of respect, and veneration, and love. They are indeed our fellow-servants; they are, like ourselves, creatures of God's hand; but they are exalted far above us in nature and in office. By the grace of God, we would daily endeavour to become less distant from them in purity, in zeal, in obedience. Origen here speaks not one word of adoration, of invocation, of prayer. He speaks of a feeling and a behaviour, which the Greeks called "therapeusis," and which we best render by "respect, veneration, and love." Far from us be the thought of lowering the holy angels in the eyes of our fellow-creatures; equally far from us be the thought of invoking them, of asking them even for their prayers. They are holy creatures and holy messengers: we will think and speak of them with reverence, and gratitude, and affection; but they are creatures and messengers still, and when we think or speak of the object of prayer, we think and speak solely and exclusively of God.
With regard to Origen's opinion, as to the invocation of the souls of saints departed, a very few words will suffice. He clearly records his opinion that the faithful are still waiting for us, and that till we all rejoice together, their joy will not be full: he leaves among the mysteries not to be solved now the question whether the departed can benefit the human race at all; and he has added reflections, full of edifying and solemn admonition, which would dissuade his fellow-believers from placing their confidence in any virtues, or intercessions, or merits of saints, and in any thing except the mere mercy of God, through Jesus Christ, and our own individual labour in the work of the Lord.
In his seventh homily on Leviticus, in a passage partly quoted by Bellarmin, we read[51]—"Not even the Apostles have yet received their joy, but even they are waiting, in order that I also may become a partaker of their joy. For the saints departing hence do not immediately receive all the rewards of their deserts; but they wait even for us, though we be delaying and dilatory[52]. For they have not perfect joy as long as they grieve for our errors, and mourn for our sins." Then, having quoted the Epistle to the Hebrews, he proceeds,—"You see, therefore, that Abraham is yet waiting to obtain those things that are perfect; so is Isaac and Jacob; and so all the prophets are waiting for us, that they might obtain eternal blessedness with us. Wherefore, even this mystery is kept, to the last day of delayed judgment."
Footnote 51:[(return)]
Vol. ii. p. 222. Nondum enim receperunt lætitiam suam, ne apostoli quidem, &c. But see Huetius on Origen, lib. ii. q. 11. No. 10.
Footnote 52:[(return)]
He thinks it probable, that the saints departed feel an interest in the welfare of men on earth. See vol. iv. p. 273.
Modern Roman Catholic writers tell us, that we must consider Origen here as only referring to the reunion of the soul with the body; but his words cannot be so interpreted. The cause of the saints still waiting for their consummation of bliss, is stated to be the will of God, that all the faithful should enter upon their full enjoyment of blessedness together.
Again: it may be asked, whether the following passage could have come from the pen of one who prayed to the saints, as already reigning with Christ in heaven.
"But now whether the saints who are removed from the body and are with Christ, act at all, and labour for us, like the angels who minister to our salvation; or whether, again, the wicked removed from the body act at all according to the purpose of their own mind, like the bad angels, with whom, it is said by Christ, that they will be sent into eternal fires;—let this too be considered among the secret things of God, mysteries not to be committed to writing." [Epist. ad Rom. lib. ii. (Benedict. vol. iv. p. 479.) "Jam vero si etiam," &c.]
In a passage found in Origen's Comment on Ezekiel's text, "Though Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they should deliver neither son nor daughter, they should deliver only their own souls by their righteousness," [Hom. iii. vol. iii. p. 372.] independently of the testimony borne to the point before us, we read a very interesting and awakening lesson of general application:—
"First, let us expound the passage agreeably to its plain sense, in consequence of the ignorance of some who maintain the ideas of their own mind to be the truth of God, and often say, 'Every one of us will be able by his prayers to snatch whomsoever he will from hell,' and introduce iniquity to the Lord; not seeing that the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him; so that each shall die in his own sin, and each live in his own person. My father being a martyr profits me nothing, if I shall not live well, and adorn the nobleness of my race,—that is, his testimony and confession, by which he was glorified in Christ. It profiteth not the Jews to say, 'We were not born of fornication, we have one father, the Lord;' and, a little after, 'Abraham is our father.' Whatever they may say, whatever they will assume, if they have not the faith of Abraham they make their boast in vain; for they will not be saved on account of their being children of Abraham. Since, therefore, some have formed incorrect notions, we have necessarily brought in the plain sense of the passage as to the letter, saying, Noah, Daniel, and Job will not rescue sons or daughters; they only will be saved. Let no one of us put his trust in a just father, a holy mother, chaste brethren. Blessed is the man who hath his hope in himself, and in the right way. But to those who place confident trust in the saints, we bring forward no improper example,—'Cursed is the man whose hope is in man;' and again, 'Trust ye not in man.' And this also, 'It is good to trust in the Lord rather than in princes[53].' If we must hope in some object, leaving all others, let us hope in the Lord, saying, 'Though a host of men were set against me, yet shall not my heart be afraid.'"
Footnote 53:[(return)]
These observations may perhaps refer more especially to the saints still on earth; but they apply to all helpers, save God alone.
He finishes the homily thus: "The righteous see three periods; the present, the period of change when the Lord will judge, and that which will be after the resurrection,—that is, the eternity of life in heaven in Jesus Christ, to whom be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen."
Can this confessor of the Christian faith have ever taught his fellow-believers to plead the merits of the saints, or to pray for their intercessions? How strongly are the above sentiments contrasted with a passage in the third of the spurious homilies called In Diversos; the first clause of which is referred to by Bellarmin, as containing Origen's approbation of giving honour to the saints[54].
Footnote 54:[(return)]
I hardly need detain the reader by any proof of the spuriousness of this passage; the whole work from which it is taken is rejected altogether by the Benedictine editors: "Reliqua ejusmodi spuria omittenda censuimus, qualia sunt ... Homiliæ in diversos;" and they have not allowed a single line of it to appear in their volumes, not even in the small character.—Vol. iv. p. 1.
"The memory of these (the Innocents) is always celebrated, as is right, in the Churches. These, therefore, since they were unjustly or impiously put to death in peace and rest, having suffered much for the name of the Lord, were taken from this world, to remain in the eternal Church for ever in Christ. But their parents for the merits of their suffering will receive a worthy recompense of reward from the just and eternal Lord God." Here we have strongly marked indeed the difference between Origen himself, and the errors fastened upon him by the design or ignorance of subsequent times.
Were not his testimony a subject of great moment, I should plead guilty to having detained my readers too long on Origen; and yet I cannot dismiss him without first refreshing our minds with the remembrance of some of his beautiful reflections on a Christian's prayer. We need not read them with a controversial eye, and they may be profitable to us all.
"I think, then, (says this early teacher in Christ's school) that when proceeding to prayer, a Christian will be more readily disposed, and be in a better tone for the general work of prayer, if he will first tarry a little, and put himself into the right frame, casting off every distracting and disturbing thought, and with his best endeavour recalling to mind the vastness of HIM to whom he is drawing near, and how unholy a thing it is to approach him with a carelessness and indifference, and, as it were, contempt; laying aside also every thing foreign to the subject;—so to come to prayer as one who stretcheth forth his soul first, before his hands; and lifts up his mind first, before his eyes, to God; and before he stands up, raising from the ground the leading principle of his nature, and lifting that up to the Lord of all. So far casting away all remembrance of evil towards any of those who may seem to have injured him, as he wishes God not to remember evil against him, who has himself been guilty, and has trespassed against many of his neighbours, or in whatever he is conscious to have done contrary to right reason." [De Oratione, vol. i. § 31. p. 267.]
"Having divided prayer into its several parts" (he continues), "I may bring my work to a close. There are then four parts of prayer requiring description, which I have found scattered in the Scriptures, all of which every one should embody in his prayer:—
"First, we must offer glory (doxologies) to the best of our ability in the opening and commencement of our prayer, to God through Christ who is glorified with Him in the Holy Spirit, who is praised together. After this each person should offer general thanksgivings both for the blessings granted to all, and for those which he has individually obtained from God. After the thanksgiving, it appears to me right, that becoming, as it were, a bitter accuser of his own sins to God, he should petition first of all for a remedy to release him from the habit which impels him to transgress, and then for remission of the past. And after the confession, I think he ought in the fourth place, to add a supplication for great and heavenly things, both individual and universal, and for his relations and friends. After all, he should close his prayer with an ascription of glory to God through Christ in the Holy Ghost." [Sect. 33. p. 271.]
[SECTION VI.]—SUPPLEMENTARY SECTION ON ORIGEN.
I have above intimated my intention of reserving for a separate section our examination of a passage ascribed to Origen, in which he is represented as having invoked an angel to come down from heaven, to succour him and his fellow-creatures on earth. The passage purports to be part of Origen's comment on the opening verse of the prophecy of Ezekiel, "The heavens were opened." After the fullest investigation, and patient weighing of the whole section, I am fully persuaded, first, that the passage is an interpolation, never having come from the pen of Origen; and secondly, that, whoever were its author, it can be regarded only as an instance of those impassioned apostrophes, which are found in great variety in the addresses of ancient Christian orators. But since some of the most respected writers of the Church of Rome have regarded it as genuine, and deemed it worthy of being cited in evidence, I feel it incumbent to state at length, for those readers who may desire to enter at once fully into the question, the reasons on which my judgment is founded; whilst others, who may perhaps consider the discussion of the several points here as too great an interruption to the general argument, may for the present pass this section, and reserve it for subsequent inquiry.
It will be, in the first place, necessary to quote the whole passage entire, however long; for the mere extract of that portion which is cited as Origen's prayer to an angel, might leave a false impression as to the real merits of the case.
"The heavens are opened. The heavens were closed, and at the coming of Christ they were opened, IN ORDER THAT THEY BEING LAID OPEN THE HOLY GHOST MIGHT COME UPON HIM in the appearance of a dove. For he could not come to us unless he had first descended on one who partook of his own nature. Jesus ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, he received gifts for men. He who descended is the same who ascended above all heavens, that he might fill all things; and he gave some as apostles, some as prophets, some as evangelists, some as pastors and masters, for the perfecting of the saints." [Vol. iii. p. 358. Hom. i. in Ezek.]
"[The heavens were opened. It is not enough for one heaven to be opened: very many are opened, that not from one, but from all, angels may descend to those who are to be saved; angels who ascended and descended upon the Son of man, and came to him, and ministered to him. Now the angels descended because Christ first descended, fearing to descend before the Lord of all powers and things commanded. But when they saw the chieftain of the army of heaven dwelling in earthly places, then they entered through the opened road, following their Lord, and obeying his will, who distributes them as guardians of those that believe on his name. Thou yesterday wast under a devil, to-day thou art under an angel. Do not ye, saith the Lord, despise one of the least of those who are in the Church? Verily, I say unto you, that their angels through all things see the face of the Father who is in heaven. The angels attend on thy salvation; they were granted for the ministry of the Son of God, and they say among themselves, If he descended, and descended into a body, if he is clothed in mortal flesh, and endured the cross, and died for man, why are we resting idle? Why do we spare ourselves? Haste away! Let all of us angels descend from heaven! Thus also was there a multitude of the heavenly host praising and blessing God when Christ was born. All things are full of angels. COME, ANGEL, take up one who by the word is converted from former error, from the doctrine of demons, from iniquity speaking on high, and taking him up like a good physician, cherish him, and instruct him. He is a little child, to-day he is born, an old man again growing young; and undertake him, granting him the baptism of the second regeneration; and summon to thyself other companions of thy ministry, that you all may together train for the faith those who have been sometime deceived. For there is greater joy in heaven over one sinner repenting, than over ninety and nine just persons who need no repentance. Every creature exults, rejoices with, and with applause addresses those who are to be saved; for the expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. And although those who have interpolated the apostolical writings are unwilling that such passages should be in their books as may prove Christ to be the Creator, yet every creature waiteth for the sons of God when they shall be freed from sin, when they shall be taken away from the hand of Zabulon[55], when they shall be regenerated by Christ. But now it is time that we touch somewhat on the present place. The Prophet sees not a vision, but visions of God. Why did he see not one, but many visions? Hear the Lord promising and saying, I have multiplied visions. 8. 'The fifth month.' This was the fifth year of the captivity of king Joachim. In the thirtieth year of Ezekiel's age, and the fifth of the captivity of Joachim, the prophet is sent to the Jews. The most merciful Father did not despise the people, nor leave them a long time unadmonished. It is the fifth year. How much time intervened? Five years elapsed since they were captives in bondage.]
(The portion between brackets is what I regard as an interpolation.)
Footnote 55:[(return)]
This word is frequently used for "Diabolum." Thus in a hymn used in the Roman ritual on Michaelmas-day we read, "Michaelem in virtute conterentem Zabulum."
"Immediately the Holy Spirit descends. He opened the heavens, that they who were oppressed by the yoke of bondage might see those things which were seen by the prophet. For when he says, The heavens were opened, in some measure they see with the eyes of their heart what he had seen even with the eyes of his flesh."
Now the question is, Can this apostrophe to an angel be admitted as evidence that Origen held, and in his own person acted upon the doctrine of the Invocation of Angels?
The nature of the present work precludes us from entering at length on the broad question, how far we can with safety regard the several writings which now purport to be translations of Origen's compositions, as on the whole the works of that early Christian writer. A multitude of those works which, until almost the middle of the sixteenth century, were circulated as Origen's, have long been by common consent excluded from the catalogue of his works[56]. On this subject I would refer any one, who desires to enter upon the inquiry, to the several prefaces of the Benedictine editors, who point out many sources of information, as well from among their friends as from those with whom they differ. Our inquiry must be limited within far narrower bounds, though I trust our arguments may assist somewhat in establishing the principles on which the student may at first guide himself in the wider range of investigation.
Footnote 56:[(return)]
See preface to vol. iv. of the Benedictine edition.
We will first look to the external evidence bearing on the passage in question, and then to the internal character of the passage itself.
Origen's Commentaries on Ezekiel were divided into no fewer than twenty-five volumes, which he is said to have begun in Cæsarea of Palestine, and to have finished in Athens. Of these only one single fragment remains, namely, part of the twenty-first volume[57]. Jerome says that he translated fourteen of Origen's homilies on Ezekiel. Of these not one passage in the original language of Origen is known to be in existence. We must now, therefore, either receive the existing translations generally as Origen's, (whether they are Jerome's translations or not,) or we must consider Origen's homilies on Ezekiel as altogether lost to us. But supposing that we receive these works as containing, on the whole, traditionary translations of Origen, the genuineness of any one passage may yet become the subject of fair criticism. And whilst some persons reject whole masses of them altogether, the history of his works cannot but suggest some very perplexing points of suspicion and doubt.
Footnote 57:[(return)]
See Benedictine edition, vol. iii. p. 351. and Eusebius, Eccl. Hist. lib. vi. c. 6. there referred to.
The great body of his homilies, Origen probably delivered extempore in the early part of his ministry to the Christians of Cæsarea. Eusebius tells us, that not before Origen had reached his sixtieth year did he sanction the notaries (persons well known to history and corresponding to the short-hand writers[58] of the present day) in publishing any of his homilies. [Eccles. Hist. lib. vi. c. 36.] But the Benedictine editor, De la Rue, conceives that those men might surreptitiously and against the preacher's wishes have published some of Origen's homilies. Be this as it may. Suppose that the homilies on Ezekiel were published by Origen himself, and were translated by Jerome himself, our doubts are not removed even by that supposition. The same editor in the same preface tells us, "It is known to the learned that it was Jerome's habit, in translating Greek, sometimes to insert some things of his own[59]." Not that I for a moment conceive the passage under consideration to have come in its Latin dress from the pen of Jerome; for my conviction being that it is an interpolation of a much later date, I mention the circumstance to show, that even when Jerome, with his professed accuracy, is the translator, we can in no case feel sure that we are reading the exact and precise sentiments of Origen.
Footnote 58:[(return)]
The Latin word "notarius" (notary) does not come so near as our own English expression, "short-hand writer," to the Greek word used by Eusebius,—"tachygraphus," "quick-writer." The report of Eusebius as to the homilies of Origen having been delivered extempore, and taken down by these "quick-writers," is confirmed by Pamphilus the martyr, as quoted by Valesius, in the annotations on this passage of Eusebius.—Apol. Orig. lib. i.
Footnote 59:[(return)]
Cui in vertendis Græcis sciunt eruditi solemne esse nonnulla interdum de suo inserere.
Ruffinus, his celebrated contemporary, accused Jerome of many inaccuracies in his translations; and yet what were the principles of translation adopted by Ruffinus himself, as his own, we are not left to infer; for we learn it from his own pen. His voluntary acknowledgment in the peroration which he added to Origen's Comment on the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans, strongly and painfully exhibits to us how little dependence can safely be placed on such translations whenever the original is lost; how utterly insufficient and unsatisfactory is any evidence drawn from them, as to the real genuine sentiments and expressions of the author. Ruffinus informs us, that with regard to many of the various works of Origen, he changed the preacher's extemporary addresses, as delivered in the Church, into a more explanatory form, "adding, supplying, filling up what he thought wanting[60]."
Footnote 60:[(return)]
Dum supplere cupimus ea quæ ab Origene in auditorio Ecclesiæ extempore (non tam explanationis quam ædificationis intentione) perorata sunt.... Si addere quod videar, et explere quæ desunt.—Orig. vol. iv. p. 688.
Moreover, he proceeds so far as to tell us[61] that his false friends had remonstrated with him for not publishing the works under his own name, instead of retaining Origen's, his changes having been so great; a point, which he was far from unwilling to acknowledge. This must appear to every one unsatisfactory in the extreme, and to shake one's confidence in any evidence drawn from such a source. Indeed, the Benedictine editor, with great cause and candour, laments this course of proceeding on the part of Ruffinus, as throwing a doubt and uncertainty, and suspicion, over all the works so tampered with. "This one thing (observes that honest editor) would the learned desire, that Ruffinus had spared himself the labour of filling up what he thought deficient. For since the Greek text has perished, it can scarcely with certainty be distinguished, where Origen himself speaks, or where Ruffinus obtrudes his own merchandise upon us." This is more than enough to justify our remarks. I must, however, refer to the conduct of another editor and translator of Origen, of a similar tendency. It unhappily shows the disposition to sacrifice every thing to the received opinions of the Church of Rome, rather than place the whole evidence of antiquity before the world, and abide by the result. How many works this principle, in worse hands, may have mutilated, or utterly buried in oblivion, and left to perish, it is impossible to conjecture; that the principle is unworthy the spirit of Christianity will not now be questioned. That editor and translator, in his advertisement on the Commentary upon St. John, thus professes the principles which he had adopted: "Know, moreover, that I have found nothing in this book which seemed to be inconsistent with the decrees of holy Mother Church: for had I found any, I would not have translated the book, or would have marked the suspected place." [Quoted by the Benedictine, vol. iv. p. viii.] The Benedictine proceeds to say, that the writer had not kept his word, but had allowed many heterodox passages to escape, whilst he had deliberately withdrawn others.
Footnote 61:[(return)]
His words, as indicative of his principles of translation, and bearing immediately on the question, as to the degree of authority which should be assigned to the remains of Origen, when the original is lost, deserve a place here: "I am exposed to a new sort of charge at their hands; for thus they address me,—In your writings, since very many parts in them (plurima in eis) are considered to be of your own production, give the title of your own name, and write, for example, The Books of Explanations of Ruffinus on the Epistle to the Romans,—but the whole of this they offer me, not from any love of me, but from hatred to the author. But I, who consult my conscience more than my fame, even if I am seen to add some things, and to fill up what are wanting, or to shorten what are too long, yet I do not think it right to steal the title of him, who laid the foundations of the works, and supplied the materials for the buildings. Yet, in truth, it may be at the option of the reader, when he shall have approved of the work, to ascribe the merits to whom he will."
Many works probably, of the earliest ages, have been wholly or in part lost to us from the working of the same principle in its excess. Rather than perpetuate any sentiments at variance with the received doctrines of the Church, it was considered the duty of the faithful to let works, in themselves valuable, but containing such sentiments, altogether perish, or to exclude the objectionable passages.
I would now invite you to examine the passage itself, and determine whether it does not bear within it internal evidence of its having been altogether interpolated.
In the first place, on the words upon which it professes to be a comment, the author had already given his comment, and assigned to them another meaning. "The heavens were opened," he says: "Before the time of Christ the heavens were shut; but at his advent they were opened, THAT THE HOLY SPIRIT MIGHT DESCEND FIRST ON HIM;" quoting also among others the passage which speaks of Christ taking captivity captive. And then after the passage in question, in which he assigns a totally different reason for the opening of the heavens; without any allusion to the intervening ideas, he carries on, and concludes the comment which he had begun,—in words which fit on well with the close of that comment, but which, as they stand now at the close of the intervening passage about the angels, are abrupt and incoherent—"Forthwith the Holy Spirit descended;" recurring also again to the idea which he had before introduced of Christ benefiting those who were in captivity. A passage which affixes to the words commented upon, a different interpretation from one already given in the same paragraph; and which forces itself abruptly and incoherently in the middle of a brief comment, must offer itself to our examination under strong grounds of suspicion, that it has been interpolated. But when we examine the substance of the passage, its sentiments, the ideas conveyed, and the associations suggested, and then think of the author to whom it is ascribed, few probably will be disposed to regard it as a faithful mirror in which to contemplate the real sentiments of Origen.
How utterly unworthy of the sublime burst of Christian eloquence which now delights us in undoubted works of Origen, is this strange and degrading fiction! The true Origen THERE represents the tens of thousands of angelic spirits ten thousand times told, as ever surrounding the throne of God, and ministering for the blessing of those in whose behalf God himself wills them to serve. [Vol. i. p. 767. Contr. Cels. viii. 34.] Here he represents the revelation of the holiest of holies as a throwing open of the various divisions or compartments of the celestial kingdom for all the angels to hasten forth together, from their several places of indolence and carelessness and self-indulgence, (for such he represents their state to have been,) to visit this earth. Surely such a comment would better suit the mythology of the cave and dens of Æolus and his imprisoned winds (velut agmine facto qua data porta ruunt) than the awfully sublime revelation vouchsafed to the prophet Ezekiel. And how unworthy and degrading is that representation of the heavenly host, resting inactive, and sparing themselves from toil, until they witnessed Christ's descent and humiliation; and then when chid and put to shame and rebuke, and mutually roused to action by their fellows, coming down to visit this earth, and rushing through the opened portals of heaven.
Again, we see how incoherent is the whole section which contains the alleged prayer to angels: "Thou wast yesterday under a demon, to-day thou art under an angel: the angels minister to thy salvation; they are granted for the ministry of the Son of God, &c. All things are full of angels. Come, Angel, take up one who is converted from his ancient error, &c. And call to thee other companions of thy ministry, that all of you alike may train up to the faith those who were once deceived." Indeed the passage seems to carry within itself its own condemnation so entirely, that what we have before alleged, both of internal and external evidence, may appear superfluous. Surely the conceit of a preacher of God's word addressing an angel, (which of them he thus individually addresses does not appear; for he says not "My Angel," as though he were appealing to one whom he regarded as his guardian, the view gratuitously suggested in the marginal note of the Benedictine editor, "the invocation of a guardian angel,") and bidding some one angel, as a sort of summoner, to go and call to himself all the angels of heaven to come in one body, and instruct those who are in error, is, even as a rhetorical apostrophe, as unworthy the mind of a Christian philosopher, as it is in the light of a prayer totally inconsistent with the plain sentiments of Origen on the very subject of angelic invocation. Even had Origen not left us his deliberate opinions in works of undoubted genuineness, such a strange, incoherent, and childish rhapsody could never be relied upon by sober and upright men as a precedent sanctioning a Christian's prayer to angels; no one would rely upon such evidence in points of far less moment, even were it uncontradicted by the same witness.
[SECTION VII.]—ST. CYPRIAN.
In the middle of the third century, Cyprian [Jerom, vol. iv. p. 342.], a man of substance and a rhetorician of Carthage, was converted to Christianity. He was then fifty years of age; and his learning, virtues, and devotedness to the cause which he had espoused, very soon raised him to the dignity, the responsibility, and, in those days, the great danger, of the Episcopate. (Cyprian is said to have been converted about A.D. 246, to have been consecrated A.D. 248, and to have suffered martyrdom A.D. 258.) Many of his writings of undoubted genuineness are preserved, and they have been appealed to in every age as the works of a faithful son of the Catholic Church. On the subject of prayer he has written very powerfully and affectingly; but I find no expression which can by possibility imply that he practised or countenanced the invocation of saints and angels. I have carefully examined every sentence alleged by its most strenuous defenders, and I cannot extract from them one single grain of evidence which can bear the test of inquiry. Even did the passages quoted require to be taken in the sense affixed to them by those advocates, they prove nothing; they do not bear even remotely upon the subject, whilst I am persuaded that to every unprejudiced mind a meaning will appear to have been attached to them which the author did not intend to convey.
The first quotation to which our attention is called is from the close of his treatise De Habitu Virginum, which contains some very edifying reflections. In the last clause of that treatise the advocates for the invocation of saints represent Cyprian as requesting the virgins to remember him in their prayers at the throne of grace when they shall have been taken to heaven. "As we have borne the image of Him who is of the earth, let us also bear the image of him who is from heaven. This image the virgin-state bears,—integrity bears it, holiness and truth bear it; rules of discipline mindful of God bear it, retaining justice with religion, firm in the faith, humble in fear, strong to endure all things, gentle to receive an injury, readily disposed to pity, with one mind and with one heart in brotherly peace. All which ye ought, O good virgins, to observe, to love and fulfil; ye who, retired for the service of God and Christ, with your greater and better part are going before towards the Lord to whom you have devoted yourselves. Let those who are advanced in age exercise rule over the younger; ye younger, offer to your equals a stimulus; encourage yourselves by mutual exhortations; by examples emulous of virtue invite each other to glory; remain firm; conduct yourselves spiritually; gain the end happily. Only remember us then, when your virgin-state shall begin to be honoured." [Tantum mementote tunc nostri, cum incipiet in vobis virginitas honorari.—Page 180.]
The second instance, from the close of his letter to Cornelius, puts before us a beautiful act of friendship and brotherly affection worthy of every Christian brother's and friend's imitation. But how it can be applied in supporting the cause of the invocation of saints, I cannot see. The supporters of that doctrine say that Cyprian suggests to his friend, still living on earth, that whichever of the two should be first called away, he should continue when in heaven to pray for the survivor on earth. Suppose it to be so. That has not any approximation to our praying to one who is already dead and gone to his reward. But Cyprian surely intended to convey a very different meaning, namely this, that the two friends should continue to pray, each in his place, mutually for each other and for their friends, and relieve each other's wants and necessities whilst both survived; and whenever death should remove the one from earth to happiness, the survivor should not forget their bond of friendship, but should still continue to pray to God for their brothers and sisters. The passage translated to the letter, runs thus: "Let us be mutually mindful of each other, with one mind and one heart. On both sides, let us always pray for each other; let us by mutual love relieve each other's pressures and distresses; and if either of us from hence, by the speed of the Divine favour, go on before the other, let our love persevere before the Lord; for our brothers and sisters with the Father's mercy let not prayer cease. My desire, most dear brother, is that you may always prosper." [Epist. 57. Benedict, p. 96.—Memores nostri invicem simus concordes atque unanimes: utrobique pro nobis semper oremus, pressuras et angustias mutua caritate relevemus, et si quis istinc nostrum prior divinæ dignationis celeritate præcesserit, perseveret apud Dominum nostra dilectio; pro fratribus et sororibus nostris apud misericordiam Patris non cesset oratio. Opto te, frater carissime, semper bene valere.—This epistle is by some editors numbered as the 60th, by others as the 61st, the 7th, and the 69th, &c.]
Whether the above view of this passage be founded in reason or not, it matters little to the point at issue. Let both these passages be accepted in the sense assigned to them by some Roman Catholic writers, yet there is not a shadow of analogy between the language and conduct of Cyprian, and the language and conduct of those who now invoke saints departed. In each case Cyprian, still in the body, was addressing fellow-creatures still sojourning on earth. The very utmost which these passages could be forced to countenance would be, that the righteous, when in heaven, may be mindful in their prayers of their friends, who are still exposed to the dangers from which they have themselves finally escaped, and who, when both were on earth, requested them to remember the survivors in their prayers. But this is a question totally different from our addressing them in supplication and prayer; a difference which I am most anxious that both myself and my readers should keep in mind throughout.
In the extract from Cyprian's letter, a modern author having rendered the single word "utrobique," by the words "in this world and the next" I am induced to add a few further observations on the passage. (The Latin original and the version here referred to, will be placed side by side in the Appendix.) It will, I think, appear to most readers on a careful examination of the passage, that the expression "utrobique[62]" "on both sides," or "on both parts," whatever be its precise meaning, so far from referring to "this world and the next," must evidently be confined to the condition of both parties now in this life, because it stands in direct contradistinction to what follows, the supposed case of the death of either of the two; and because it applies no less to the mutual relief of each other's sufferings and afflictions during their joint lives, than to their mutual prayers: it cannot mean that all the mutual benefits to be derived from their mutual remembrance of each other, were to come solely through the means of their prayers. They were doubtless mutually to pray for each other; but, in addition to their prayers, they were also to relieve each other's pressures and difficulties with mutual love, and that too before the event afterwards contemplated, namely, the removal of one of them by death.
Footnote 62:[(return)]
Utrobique is rendered by Facciolati [Greek: hekaterothi]—"in utraque parte, utrimque."
Bishop Fell thus comments on the passage: "The sense seems to be, When either of us shall die; whether I, who preside at Carthage, or you, who are presiding at Rome, shall be the survivor, let the prayer to God of him whose lot shall be to remain the longest among the living, persevere, and continue." "Meanwhile," continues the Bishop[63], "we by no means doubt that souls admitted into heaven apply to God, the best and greatest of Beings, that he would have compassion on those who are dwelling on the earth. But it does not thence follow, that prayers should be offered to the saints. THE MAN WHO PETITIONS THEM MAKES THEM GODS (Deos qui rogat ille facit)." [Oxford, 1682, p. 143.] Rigaltius, himself a Roman Catholic, doubts whether, when Cyprian wrote this letter, he had any idea before his mind of saints departed praying for the living. He translates "utrobique" very much as I have done, "with reciprocal love, with mutual charity." His last observations on this passage are very remarkable. After having confessed the sentiments to be worthy of a Christian, that the saints pray for us, and having argued that Cyprian could not have thought it necessary to ask a saint to retain his brotherly kindness in heaven, for he could not be a saint if he did not continue to love his brethren, he thus concludes: "In truth it is a pious and faithful saying, That of those who having already put off mortality are made joint-heirs with Christ, and of those who surviving on earth will hereafter be joint-heirs with Christ, the Church is one, and is by the Holy Spirit so well joined together as not to be torn asunder by the dissolution of the body. They pray to God for us, and we praise God for them, and thus with mutual affection (utrobique) we always pray for each other." [Paris, 1666. p. 92.]
Footnote 63:[(return)]
See the note of the Benedictine editors on this passage (p. 467), in which they refer to the sentiments of Rigaltius, Pamelius, and Bishop Fell, whom they call "the most illustrious Bishop of Oxford."
I will detain you only by one or two more extracts from Cyprian; one forming part of the introduction to his Comment on the Lord's Prayer, which is fitted for the edification of Christians in every age; the other closing his treatise on Mortality, one of those beautiful productions by which, during the plague which raged at Carthage in the year 252, he comforted and exhorted the Christians, that they might meet death without fear or amazement, in sure and certain hope of eternal blessedness in heaven. The sentiments in the latter passage will be responded to by every good Catholic, whether in communion with the Church of Rome or with the Church of England; whilst in the former we are reminded, that to pray as Cyprian prayed, we must address ourselves to God alone in the name and trusting to the merits only of his blessed Son.
"He who caused us to live, taught us also to pray, with that kindness evidently by which He deigns to give and confer on us every other blessing; that when we speak to the Father in the prayer and supplication which his Son taught, we might the more readily be heard. He had already foretold, that the hour was coming when the true worshippers should worship the Father in spirit and in truth; and He fulfilled what He before promised, that we, who have received the spirit and truth from his sanctification, may from his instruction offer adoration truly and spiritually. For what prayer can be more spiritual than that which is given to us by Christ, by whom even the Holy Spirit is sent to us? What can be a more true prayer with the Father than that which came from the lips of the Son, who is Truth? So that to pray otherwise than He taught, is not only ignorance, but a fault; since He has himself laid it down and said, Ye reject the Commandment of God to establish your own traditions. Let us pray then, most beloved brethren, as our teacher, God, has instructed us. It is a welcome and friendly prayer to petition God from his own, to mount up to his ears by the prayer of Christ. Let the Father recognize the words of his Son. When we offer a prayer let Him who dwelleth inwardly in our breast, Himself be in our voice; and since we have Him as our advocate with the Father for our sins, when as sinners we are petitioning for our sins let us put forth the words of our Advocate." [De Orat. Dom. p. 204.]
"We must consider, (he says at the close of his treatise on the Mortality [Page 236.],) most beloved brethren, and frequently reflect that we have renounced the world, and are meanwhile living here as strangers and pilgrims. Let us embrace the day which assigns each to his own home ... which restores us to paradise and the kingdom of heaven, snatched from hence and liberated from the entanglements of the world. What man, when he is in a foreign country, would not hasten to return to his native land?... We regard paradise as our country.... We have begun already to have the patriarchs for our parents. Why do we not hasten and run that we may see our country, and salute our parents? There a large number of dear ones are waiting for us, of parents, brothers, children; a numerous and full crowd are longing for us; already secure of their own immortality, and still anxious for our safety. To come to the sight and the embrace of these, how great will be the mutual joy to them and to us! What a pleasure of the kingdom of heaven is there without the fear of dying, and with an eternity of living! How consummate and never-ending a happiness! There is the glorious company of the apostles; there is the assembly of exulting prophets; there is the unnumbered family of martyrs crowned for the victory of their struggles and suffering; there are virgins triumphing, who, by the power of chastity, have subdued the lusts of the flesh and the body; there are the merciful recompensed, who with food and bounty to the poor have done the works of righteousness, who keeping the Lord's commands have transferred their earthly inheritance into heavenly treasures. To these, O most dearly beloved brethren, let us hasten with most eager longing; let us desire that our lot may be to be with these speedily; to come speedily to Christ. Let God see this to be our thought; let our Lord Christ behold this to be the purpose of our mind and faith, who will give more abundant rewards of his glory to them, whose desires for himself have been the greater."
Such is the evidence of St. Cyprian.
[SECTION VIII.]—LACTANTIUS.
Cyprian suffered martyrdom about the year 260. Towards the close of this century, and at the beginning of the fourth, flourished Lactantius. He was deeply imbued with classical learning and philosophy. Before he became a writer (as Jerome informs us [Jerom, vol. iv. part ii. p. 119. Paris, 1706]) he taught rhetoric at Nicomedia; and afterwards in extreme old age he was the tutor of Cæsar Crispus, son of Constantine, in Gaul. Among many other writings which Jerome enumerates, he specifies the book, "On the Anger of God," as a most beautiful work. Bellarmin, however, speaks of him disparagingly, as one who had fallen into many errors, and was better versed in Cicero than in the Holy Scriptures. His testimony is allowed by the supporters of the adoration of spirits and angels to be decidedly against them; they do not refer to a single passage likely to aid their cause; and they are chiefly anxious to depreciate his evidence. I will call your attention only to two passages in his works. The one is in his first book on False Religion: "God hath created ministers, whom we call messengers (angels);... but neither are these gods, nor do they wish to be called gods, nor to be worshipped, as being those who do nothing beyond the command and will of God." [Vol. i. p. 31.]
The other passage is from his work on a Happy Life: "Nor let any one think that souls are judged immediately after death. For all are kept in one common place of guard, until the time come when the great Judge will institute an inquiry into their deserts. Then those whose righteousness shall be approved, will receive the reward of immortality; and those whose sins and crimes are laid open shall not rise again, but shall be hidden in the same darkness with the wicked—appointed to fixed punishments." [Chap. xxi. p. 574.]
This composition is generally believed to have been written about the year 317.
[SECTION IX.]—EUSEBIUS.
The evidence of Eusebius, on any subject connected with primitive faith and practice, cannot be looked to without feelings of deep interest. He flourished about the beginning of the fourth century, and was Bishop of Caesarea, in Palestine. His testimony has always been appealed to in the Catholic Church, as an authority not likely to be gainsaid. He was a voluminous writer, and his writings were very diversified in their character. Whatever be our previous sentiments we cannot too carefully examine the remains of this learned man. But in his writings, historical, biographical, controversial, or by whatever name they may be called, overflowing as they are with learning, philosophical and scriptural, I can find no one single passage which countenances the decrees of the Council of Trent; not one passage which would encourage me to hope that I prayed as the primitive Church was wont to pray, if by invocation I requested an angel or a saint to procure me any favour, or to pray for me. The testimony of Eusebius has a directly contrary tendency.
Among the authorities quoted by the champions of the invocation of saints, I can find only three from Eusebius; and I sincerely lament the observations which truth and justice require me to make here, in consequence of the manner in which his evidence has been cited. The first passage to which I refer is quoted by Bellarmin from the history of Eusebius, to prove that the spirit of a holy one goes direct from earth to heaven. This passage is not from the pen of Eusebius; and if it were, it would not bear on our inquiry. The second is quoted by the same author, from the Evangelica Præparatio, to prove that the primitive Christians offered prayers to the saints. Neither is this from the pen of Eusebius. The third Extract, from the account of the martyrdom of Polycarp, is intended to prove that the martyrs were worshipped. Even this, one of the most beautiful passages in ancient history, as it is represented by Bellarmin and others, is interpolated.
The first passage, which follows a description of the martyr Potamiæna's sufferings, is thus quoted by Bellarmin: "In this manner the blessed virgin, Potamniæna, emigrated from earth to heaven." [Hoc modo beata Virgo emigravit e terris ad coelum. Vol. ii. p. 854.] And such, doubtless, is the passage in the translation of Eusebius, ascribed to Ruffinus [Basil, 1535. p. 134]; but the original is, "And such a struggle was thus accomplished by this celebrated virgin;" ([Greek: kai ho men taes aoidimou koraes toioutos kataegoisisto athlos]; Tale certamen ab hac percelebri et gloriosa virgine confectum fait.); and such is the Parisian translation of 1581.
The second misquotation is far more serious. Bellarmin thus quotes Eusebius: "These things we do daily, who honouring the soldiers of true religion as the friends of God, approach to their respective monuments, and make OUR PRAYERS TO THEM, as holy men, by whose intercession to God, we profess to be not a little aided." [Hæc nos, inquit, quotidie factitamus qui veras pietatis milites ut Dei amicos honorantes, ad monumenta quoque eorum accedimus, votaque ipsis facimus tanquam viris sanctis quorum intercessione ad Deum non parum juvari profitemur.—p. 902. He quotes it as c. 7.]
By one who has not by experience become familiar with these things it would scarcely be believed, that whilst the readers of Bellarmin have been taught to regard these as the words of Eusebius, in the original there is no mention whatever made of the intercession of the saints; that there is no allusion to prayer to them; that there is no admission even of any benefit derived from them at all. This quotation Bellarmin makes from the Latin version, published in Paris in 1581, or from some common source: it is word for word the same. We must either allow him to be ignorant of the truth, or to have designedly preferred error. The copy which I have before me of the "Evangelica Præparatio," in Greek and Latin, was printed in 1628, and dedicated by Viger Franciscus, a priest of the order of Jesuits, to the Archbishop of Paris.
Eusebius, marking the resemblance in many points between Plato's doctrine and the tenets of Christianity, on the reverence which, according to Plato, ought to be paid to the good departed, makes this observation: "And this corresponds with what takes place on the death of those lovers of God, whom you would not be wrong in calling the soldiers of the true religion. Whence also it is our custom to proceed to their tombs, and AT THEM [the tombs] to make our prayers, and to honour their blessed souls, inasmuch as these things are with reason done by us." [Greek: kai tauta de armozei epi tae ton theophilon teleutae ous stratiotas taes alaethous eusebeius ouk an hamartois eipon paralambanesthai othen kai epi tas thaekas auton ethos haemin parienai kai tas euchas para tautais poieisthai, timan te tas makarias auton psychas, os eulogos kai touton uph haemon giguomenon.] This translation agrees to a certain extent with the Latin of Viger's edition ("Quæ quidem in hominum Deo carissimorum obitus egregie conveniunt, quos veræ pietatis milites jure appellaris. Nam et eorum sepulchra celebrare et preces ibi votaque nuncupare et beatas illorum animas venerari consuevimus, idque a nobis merito fieri statuimus"); though the translator there has employed words more favourable to the doctrine of the saints' adoration, than he could in strictness justify.
The celebrated letter from the Church of Smyrna (Euseb. Cantab. 1720. vol. i. p. 163), relating the martyrdom of Polycarp, one of the most precious relics of Christian antiquity, has already been examined by us, when we were inquiring into the recorded sentiments of Polycarp; and to our reflections in that place we have little to add. The interpolations to which we have now referred, are intended to take off the edge of the evidence borne by this passage of Eusebius against the invocation of saints. First, whereas the Christians of Smyrna are recorded by Eusebius to have declared, without any limitation or qualification whatever, that they could never worship any fellow-mortal however honoured and beloved, the Parisian edition limits and qualifies their declaration by interpolating the word "as God," implying that they would offer a secondary worship to a saint. Again, whereas Eusebius in contrasting the worship paid to Christ, with the feelings of the Christians towards a martyr, employs only the word "love," Bellarmin, following Ruffinus, interpolates the word "veneramur" after "diligimus," a word which may be innocently used with reference to the holy saints and servants of God, though it is often in ancient writers employed to mean the religious worship of man to God. Still how lamentable is it to attempt by such tampering with ancient documents to maintain a cause, whatever be our feelings with regard to it!
With two more brief quotations we will close our report of Eusebius. They occur in the third chapter of the third book of his Demonstratio Evangelica, and give the same view of the feelings and sentiments of the primitive Christians towards the holy angels, which we have found Origen and all the other fathers to have acknowledged.
"In the doctrine of his word we have learned that there exists, after the most high God, certain powers, in their nature incorporeal and intellectual, rational and purely virtuous, who ([Greek: choreuousas]) keep their station around the sovereign King,—the greater part of whom, by certain dispensations of salvation, are sent at the will of the Father even as far as to men; whom, indeed, we have been taught to know and to honour, according to the measure of their dignity, rendering to God alone, the sovereign King, the honour of worship." ([Greek: gnorizein kai timain kata to metron taes axias edidachthaemen, mono toi pambasilei Theoi taen sebasmion timaen aponemontes]) Again: "Knowing the divine, the serving and ministering powers of the sovereign God, and honouring them to the extent of propriety; but confessing God alone, and Him alone worshipping." ([Greek: theias men dynameis hypaeretikas tou pambasileos Theou kai leitourgikas eidotes, kai kata to prosaekon timontes monon de Theon homologountes, kai monon ekeinon sebontes]) [Demonst. Evang. Paris, 1628. p. 106.; Præpar. Evang. lib. vii. c. 15. p. 237.]
[SECTION X.]—APOSTOLICAL CANONS AND CONSTITUTIONS.
The works known by the name of the Apostolical Constitutions and Apostolical Canons, though confessedly not the genuine productions of the Apostles, or of their age, have been always held in much veneration by the Church of Rome. The most learned writers fix their date at a period not more remote than the beginning of the fourth century. (See Cotelerius; vol. i. p. 194 and 424. Beveridge, in the same vol. p. 427. Conc. Gen. Florence, 1759, tom. i. p. 29 and 254.) I invite the reader to examine both these documents, but especially the Constitutions, and to decide whether they do not contain strong and convincing evidence, that the invocation of saints was not practised or known in the Church when they were written. Minute rules are given for the conducting of public worship; forms of prayer are prescribed to be used in the Church, by the bishops and clergy, and by the people; forms of prayer and of thanksgiving are recommended for the use of the faithful in private, in the morning, at night, and at their meals; forms, too, there are of creeds and confessions;—but not one single allusion to any religious address to angel or saint; whilst occasions most opportune for the introduction of such doctrine and practice repeatedly occur, and are uniformly passed by. Again and again prayer is directed to be made to the one only living and true God, exclusively through the mediation and intercession of the one only Saviour Jesus Christ. Honourable mention is made of the saints of the Old Testament, and the apostles and martyrs of the New; directions are also given for the observance of their festivals [Book viii. p. 415]; but not the shadow of a thought appears that their good offices could benefit us; much less the most distant intimation that Christians might invoke them for their prayers and intercessions. There is indeed very much in these early productions of the Christian world to interest every Catholic Christian; and although a general admiration of the principles for the most part pervading them does not involve an entire approbation of them all, yet perhaps few would think the time misapplied which they should devote to the examination of these documents.
In book v. c. 6. of the Constitutions, the martyr is represented as "trusting in the one only true God and Father, through Jesus Christ, the great High Priest, the Redeemer of souls, the Dispenser of rewards; to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen." [Cotel. vol. i. p. 304.]
In the same book and in the following chapter we find an exceedingly interesting dissertation on the general resurrection, but not one word of saint or martyr being beforehand admitted to glory; on the contrary, the declaration is distinct, that not the martyrs only, but all men will rise. Surely such an opportunity would not have been lost of stating the doctrine of martyrs being now reigning with Christ, had such been the doctrine of the Church at that early period.
In the eighth chapter is contained an injunction to honour the martyrs in these words: "We say that they should be in all honour with you, as the blessed James the bishop and our holy fellow-minister Stephen were honoured with us. For they are blessed by God and honoured by holy men, pure from all blame, never bent towards sins, never turned away from good,—undoubtedly to be praised. Of whom David spake, 'Honourable before God is the death of his saints;' and Solomon, 'The memory of the just is with praise.' Of whom the prophet also said, 'Just men are taken away.'" [p. 309.]
And in book viii. c. 13. we read this exhortation,—"Let us remember the holy martyrs, that we may be counted worthy to be partakers of their conflict." [p. 404.]
Does this sound any thing at all like adoration or invocation? The word which is used in the above passage, honour [Greek: timê] p. 241], is employed when (book ii. c. 28.) the respect is prescribed which the laity ought to show to the clergy.
To the very marked silence as to any invocation or honour, to be shown to the Virgin Mary, I shall call your attention in our separate dissertation on the worship now offered to her.
[SECTION XI.]—SAINT ATHANASIUS.
The renowned and undaunted defender of the Catholic faith against the errors which in his day threatened to overwhelm Gospel-truth, Athanasius (the last of those ante-Nicene writers into whose testimony we have instituted this inquiry), was born about the year 296, and, after having presided in the Church as Bishop for more than forty-six years, died in 373, on the verge of his eightieth year. It is impossible for any one interested in the question of primitive truth to look upon the belief and practice of this Christian champion with indifference. When I first read Bellarmin's quotations from Athanasius, in justification of the Roman Catholic worship in the adoration of saints, I was made not a little anxious to ascertain the accuracy of his allegations. The inquiry amply repaid me for my anxiety and the labour of research; not merely by proving the unsoundness of Bellarmin's representation, but also by directing my thoughts more especially, as my acquaintance with his works increased, to the true and scriptural views taken by Athanasius of the Christian's hope and confidence in God alone; the glowing fervour of his piety centering only in the Lord; his sure and certain hope in life and in death anchored only in the mercies of God, through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ alone.
Bellarmin, in his appeal to Athanasius as a witness in behalf of the invocation of saints, cites two passages; the one of which, though appearing in the edition of the Benedictines, amongst the works called doubtful, has been adjudged by those editors [Vol. ii. p. 110 and 122] to be not genuine; the other is placed by them among the confessedly spurious works, and is treated as a forgery.
The first passage is from a treatise called De Virginitate, and even were that work the genuine production of Athanasius, would make against the religious worship of the saints rather than in its favour, for it would show, that the respect which the author intended to be paid to them, was precisely the same with what he would have us pay to holy men in this life, who might come to visit us. "If a just man enter into thine house, thou shalt meet him with fear and trembling, and shalt worship before his feet to the ground: for thou wilt not worship him, but God who sent him."
The other passage would have been decisive as to the belief of Athanasius, had it come from his pen. "Incline thine ear, O Mary, to our prayers, and forget not thy people. We cry to thee. Remember us, O Holy Virgin. Intercede for us, O mistress, lady, queen, and mother of God." [Vol. ii. p. 390-401.]
Had Bellarmin been the only writer, or the last who cited this passage as the testimony of St. Athanasius, it would have been enough for us to refer to the judgment of the Benedictine editors, who have classed the homily containing these words among the spurious works ascribed to Athanasius; or rather we might have appealed to Bellarmin himself. For it is very remarkable, that though in his anxiety to enlist every able writer to defend the cause of the invocation of saints, he has cited this passage in his Church Triumphant as containing the words of Athanasius, without any allusion to its decided spuriousness, or even to its suspicious character; yet when he is pronouncing his judgment on the different works assigned to Athanasius, declaring the evidence against this treatise to be irresistible, he condemns it as a forgery. [Bellarm. de Scriptoribus Ecclesiasticis, Cologne, 1617, vol. vii. p. 50.]
Since, however, this passage has been cited in different Roman Catholic writers of our own time as containing the words of Athanasius, and in evidence of his genuine belief and practice, and that without an allusion even to any thing doubtful and questionable in its character, it becomes necessary to enter more in detail into the circumstances under which the passage is offered to our notice.
The passage is found in a homily called The Annunciation of the Mother of God. How long this homily has been discarded as spurious, or how long its genuineness had been suspected before the time of Baronius, I have not discovered; but certainly two centuries and a half ago, and repeatedly since, it has been condemned as totally and indisputably spurious, and has been excluded from the works of Athanasius as a forgery, not by members of the Reformed Church, but by most zealous and steady adherents to the Church of Rome, and the most strenuous defenders of her doctrines and practice.
The Benedictine editors[64], who published the remains of St. Athanasius in 1698, class the works contained in the second volume under two heads, the doubtful and the spurious; and the homily under consideration is ranked, without hesitation, among the spurious. In the middle of that volume they not only declare the work to be unquestionably a forgery, assigning the reasons for their decision, but they fortify their judgment by quoting at length the letter written by the celebrated Baronius, more than a century before, to our countryman, Stapleton. Both these documents are very interesting.
Footnote 64:[(return)]
Here I would observe, that though the Benedictine editors differ widely from each other in talent, and learning, and candour, yet, as a body, they have conferred on Christendom, and on literature, benefits for which every impartial and right-minded man will feel gratitude. In the works of some of these editors, far more than in others, we perceive the same reigning principle—a principle which some will regard as an uncompromising adherence to the faith of the Church; but which others can regard only in the light of a prejudice, and a rooted habit of viewing all things through the eyes of Rome.
The Benedictine editors begin their preface thus: "That this discourse is spurious, there is NO LEARNED MAN WHO DOES NOT NOW ADJUDGE ... The style proves itself more clear than the sun, to be different from that of Athanasius. Besides this, very many trifles show themselves here unworthy of any sensible man whatever, not to say Athanasius ... and a great number of expressions unknown to Athanasius ... so that it savours of inferior Greek. And truly his subtle disputation on the hypostasis of Christ, and on the two natures in Christ, persuades us, that he lived after the councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon; of which councils moreover he uses the identical words, whereas his dissertation on the two wills in Christ seems to argue, that he lived after the spreading of the error of the Monothelites. But (continue these Benedictine editors) we would add here the dissertation of Baronius on this subject, sent to us by our brethren from Rome. That illustrious annotator, indeed, having read only the Latin version of Nannius, which is clearer than the Greek, did not observe the astonishing perplexity of the style[65]."
Footnote 65:[(return)]
Even in the Bibliotheca Patrum Concionatoria the homily is declared to be not the work of Athanasius, but to have been written after the sixth general council. "It is evident," say the editors, "that it is the monument of a very learned man, though he has his own blemishes, on which, for the most part, we have remarked in the margin." Paris, 1662. p. 336.
The dissertation which the Benedictine editors append, was contained in a letter written by Baronius to Stapleton, in consequence of some animadversions which Stapleton had communicated to Cardinal Allen on the judgment of Baronius. The letter is dated Rome, November, 1592. The judgment of Baronius on the spurious character of this homily had been published to the world some time previously; for after some preliminary words of kindness and respect to his correspondent, Baronius proceeds to say, that when he previously published his sentiments on this homily, it was only cursorily and by the way, his work then being on another subject. Nevertheless he conceived, that the little he had then stated would be sufficient to show, that the homily was not the production of Athanasius, and that all persons of learning, WHO WERE DESIROUS OF THE TRUTH, would freely agree with him; nor was he in this expectation disappointed; for very many persons expressed their agreement with him, congratulating him on separating legitimate from spurious children. He then states the arguments which the Benedictine editors adopted after him, and which we need not repeat. But he also urges this fact, that though Cyril had the works of Athanasius in his custody, and though both the disputing parties ransacked every place for sentiments of Athanasius countenancing their tenets, yet neither at Ephesus nor at Chalcedon was this homily quoted, though it must have altogether driven Eutyches and Nestorius from the field, so exact are its definitions and statements on the points then at issue. Baronius then adds, that so far from reversing the judgment which he had before passed against the genuineness of this homily, he was compelled in justice to declare his conviction, that it could not have been written till after the heresy of the Monothelites had been spread abroad. This we know would fix its date, at the very earliest, subsequently to the commencement of the SEVENTH century, three hundred years after Athanasius attended the Council of Nice. Among the last sentiments of Baronius in this letter, is one which implies a principle worthy of Christian wisdom, and which can never be neglected without injury to the cause of truth. "These sentiments concerning Athanasius I do not think are affirmed with any detriment to the Church; for the Church does not suffer a loss on this account; who being the pillar and ground of the truth, very far shrinks from seeking, like Æsop's Jackdaw, helps and ornaments which are not her own: the bare truth shines more beautiful in her own naked simplicity." Were this principle acted upon uniformly in our discussions on religious points of faith or practice, controversy would soon be drawn within far narrower limits; and would gradually be softened into a friendly interchange of sentiments, and would well-nigh be banished from the world. No person does the cause of truth so much injury, as one who attempts to support it by arguments which will not bear the test of full and enlightened investigation. And however an unsound principle may be for a while maintained by unsound arguments, the momentary triumph must ultimately end in disappointment.
Coccius also cites two passages as conveying the evidence of Athanasius on this same point; one from the spurious letter addressed to Felix, the pope; the other from the treatise to Marcellus, on the interpretation of the Psalms. On the former, I need not detain you by any observation; it would be fighting with a shadow. The latter, which only recognises what I have never affirmed or denied here,—the interest in our welfare taken by holy souls departed, and their co-operation with us when we are working out our own salvation,—contains a valuable suggestion on the principles of devotion.
"Let no one, however, set about to adorn these Psalms for the sake of effect with words from without, [artificial and secular phrases,] nor transpose, nor alter the expressions. But let every one inartificially read and repeat what is written, that those holy persons who employed themselves in their production, recognising their own works, may join with us in prayer; or rather that the Holy Spirit, who spake in those holy men, observing the words with which his voice inspired them, may assist us. For just as much as the life of those holy men is more pure than ours, so far are their words preferable to any production of our own."
But whilst there is not found a single passage in Athanasius to give the faintest countenance to the invocation of saints, there are various arguments and expressions which go far to demonstrate that such a belief and such practices as are now acknowledged and insisted upon by the Church of Rome, were neither adopted nor sanctioned by him. Had he adopted that belief and practice for his own, he would scarcely have spoken, as he repeatedly has, of the exclusion of angels and men from any share in the work of man's restoration, without any expressions to qualify it, and to protect his assertions from being misunderstood. Again, he bids us look to the holy men and holy fathers as our examples, in whose footsteps we should tread, if we would be safe; but not a hint escapes him that they are to be invoked.
I must detain you by rather a long quotation from this father, and will, therefore, now do nothing more than refer you to two passages expressive of those sentiments to which I have above alluded. In the thirteenth section of his Treatise on the Incarnation of the Word of God, he argues, that neither could men restore us to the image of God, nor could angels, but the word of God, Jesus Christ, &c. [Vol. i. part i. p. 58.] In his Epistle to Dracontius, he says, "We ought to conduct ourselves agreeably to the principles of the saints and fathers, and to imitate them,—assured that if we swerve from them, we become alienated also from their communion." [Vol. i. part i, p. 265.]
The passage, however, to which I would invite the reader's patient and impartial thoughts, occurs in the third oration against the Arians, when he is proving the unity of the Father and the Son, from the expression of St. Paul in the eleventh verse of the third chapter of his first Epistle to the Thessalonians.
"Thus then again ([Greek: outo g' oun palin]), when he is praying for the Thessalonians, and saying, 'Now our God and Father himself and the Lord Jesus Christ direct our way to you,' he preserves the unity of the Father and the Son. For he says not 'may THEY direct ([Greek: kateuthunoien]),' as though a twofold grace were given from Him AND Him, but 'may HE direct ([Greek: katenthunai]),' to show that the Father giveth this through the Son. For if there was not an unity, and the Word was not the proper offspring of the Father's substance, as the eradiation of the light, but the Son was distinct in nature from the Father,—it had sufficed for the Father alone to have made the gift, no generated being partaking with the Maker in the gifts. But now such a giving proves the unity of the Father and the Son. Consequently, no one would pray to receive any thing from God AND the angels, or from any other created being; nor would any one say 'May God AND the angels give it thee;' but from the Father and the Son, because of their unity and the oneness of the gift. For whatever is given, is given through the Son,—nor is there any thing which the Father works except through the Son; for thus the receiver has the gracious favour without fail. But if the patriarch Jacob, blessing his descendants Ephraim and Manasseh, said, 'The God who nourished me from my youth unto this day, the Angel who delivered me from all the evils, bless these lads;' he does not join one of created beings, and by nature angels, with God who created them; nor dismissing Him who nourished him, God, does he ask the blessing for his descendants from an angel, but by saying 'He who delivered me from all the evils,' he showed that it was not one of created angels, but the WORD OF GOD; and joining him with the Father, he supplicated him through whom also God delivers whom he will. For he used the expression, knowing him who is called the Messenger of the great counsel of the Father to be no other than the very one who blessed and delivered from evil. For surely he did not aspire to be blessed himself by God, and was willing for his descendants to be blessed by an angel. But the same whom he addressed, saying, I will not let Thee go, except thou bless me (and this was God, as he says, 'I saw God face to face'), Him he prayed to bless the sons of Joseph. The peculiar office of an angel is to minister at the appointment of God; and often he went onwards to cast out the Amorite, and is sent to guard the people in the way; but these are not the doings of him, but of God, who appointed him and sent him,—whose also it is to deliver whom he will." [Vol i. p. 561.]
"For this cause David addressed no other on the subject of deliverance but God Himself. But if it belongs to no other than God to bless and deliver, and it was no other who delivered Jacob than the Lord Himself, and the patriarch invoked for his descendants Him who delivered him, it is evident that he connected no one in his prayer except His Word, whom for this reason he called an angel, because he alone reveals the Father."
"But this no one would say of beings produced and created; for neither when the Father worketh does any one of the angels, or any other of created beings, work the things; for no one of such beings is an effective cause, but they themselves belong to things produced. The angels then, as it is written, are ministering spirits sent to minister; and the gifts given by Him through the Word they announce to those who receive them."
Now if the invocation of angels had been practised by the Church at that time, can it be for a moment believed, that a man of such a mind as was the mind of Athanasius, a mind strong, clear, logical, cultivated with ardent zeal for the doctrines of the Church, and fervent piety, would have suffered such passages as these to fall from him, without one saving clause in favour of the invocation of angels? He tells us in the most unqualified manner, that they act merely as ministers; ready indeed, and rejoicing to be employed on errands of mercy, but not going one step without the commands of the Lord, or doing one thing beyond his word. Had the idea been familiar to the mind of Athanasius, of the lawfulness, the duty, the privilege, the benefit of invoking them, would he have avoided the introduction of some words to prevent his expressions from being misunderstood and misapplied, as subsequent writers did long before the time when the denial of the doctrine might seem to have made such precaution more necessary?
I close then the catalogue of our witnesses before the Council of Nicæa with the testimony of St. Athanasius; whose genuine and acknowledged works afford not one jot or tittle in support of the doctrine and practice of the invocation of angels and saints, as now insisted upon by the Church of Rome; and the direct tendency of whose evidence is decidedly hostile both to that doctrine and that practice.
I have seen it observed by some who are satisfied, that the records of primitive antiquity do not contain such references to the invocation of saints and angels, as we might have expected to find had the custom then prevailed, that the earliest Christians kept back the doctrine and concealed it, though they held it; fearing lest their heathen neighbours should upbraid them with being as much polytheists as themselves[66]. This is altogether a gratuitous assumption, directly contrary to evidence, and totally inconsistent with their conduct. Had those first Christians acted upon such a debasing principle, they would have kept back and concealed their worship of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, as exposing them to a similar charge. They were constantly upbraided with worshipping a crucified mortal; but instead of either meeting that charge by denying that they worshipped Jesus as their God, or of concealing the worship of Him, lest they should expose themselves again to such upbraidings, they publicly professed, that He whom the Jews had murdered, they believed in as the Son of God, Himself their God. They gloried in the doctrine of the ever-blessed Trinity, and did not fear what men might do to them, or say of them in consequence. Had they believed in the duty of invoking saints and angels, the high principle of Christian integrity would not have suffered them to be ashamed to confess it, or to practise openly what they believed.
Footnote 66:[(return)]
Bishop Morley, (London, 1683,) in a letter written whilst he was in exile at Breda, to J. Ulitius, refers to Cardinal Perron, "Réplique à la Resp. du Roy de la Grande Bret." p. 1402 and 4, for this sentiment: "The Fathers do not always speak what they think, but conceal their real sentiments, and say that which best serves the cause which they sustain, so as to protect it against the objections of the gentiles. The Fathers, as much as in them lies, and as far as they can, avoid and decline all occasions of speaking about the invocation of saints then practised in the Church, fearing lest to the gentiles there might appear a sort of similarity, although untrue and equivocal, between the worship paid to the saints by the Church, and by the Pagans to their false divinities; and lest the Pagans might thence seize a handle, however unfair, of retorting upon them that custom of the Church." Had a member of the Anglican Church thus spoken of the Fathers, and thus pleaded in their name guilty of subterfuge and duplicity, he would have been immediately charged with irreverence and wanton insult, and that with good reason. These sentiments of the Cardinal are in p. 982 of the Paris edition of 1620.