3.
If this is a faithful account of the conduct of the Church towards Apollinaris, no one can accuse its rulers of treating him with haste or harshness; still they accompanied their tenderness towards him personally with a conscientious observance of their duties to the Catholic Faith, to which our Protestants are simply dead. Who now in England, except very high churchmen, would dream of putting a man out of the Church for what would be called a mere speculative or metaphysical opinion? Why could not Apollinaris be a "spiritual man," have "a justifying faith," "apprehend" our Lord's merits, have "a personal interest in redemption," be in possession of "experimental religion," and be able to recount his "experiences," though he had some vagaries of his own about the nature of our Lord's soul? But such ideas did not approve themselves to Christians of the fourth century, who followed up the anathemas of Holy Church with their own hearty adhesion to them. Epiphanius speaks thus mournfully:—
"That aged and venerable man, who was ever so singularly dear to us, and to the holy Father, Athanasius, of blessed memory, and to all orthodox men, Apollinaris, of Laodicea, he it was who originated and propagated this doctrine. And at first, when we were assured of it by some of his disciples, we disbelieved that such a man could admit such an error into his path, and patiently waited in hope, till we might ascertain the state of the case. For we argued that his youths, who came to us, not entering into the profound views of so learned and clear-minded a master, had invented these statements of themselves, not gained them from him. For there were many points in which those who came to us were at variance with each other: some of them ventured to say that Christ had brought down His body from above (and this strange theory, admitted into the mind, developed itself into worse notions); others of them denied that Christ had taken a soul; and some ventured to say that Christ's body was consubstantial with the Godhead, and thereby caused great confusion in the East"—Hær. lxxvii. 2.
He proceeds afterwards:—
"Full of distress became our life at that time, that between brethren so exemplary as the forementioned, a quarrel should at all have arisen, that the enemy of man might work divisions among us. And great, my brethren, is the mischief done to the mind from such a cause. For were no question ever raised on the subject, the matter would be most simple (for what gain has accrued to the world from such novel doctrine, or what benefit to the Church? rather has it not been an injury, as causing hatred and dissension?): but when the question was raised, it became formidable; it did not tend to good; for whether a man disallows this particular point, or even the slightest, still it is a denial. For we must not, even in a trivial matter, turn aside from the path of truth. No one of the ancients ever maintained it—prophet, or apostle, or evangelist, or commentator—down to these our times, when this so perplexing doctrine proceeded from that most learned man aforesaid. His was a mind of no common cultivation; first in the preliminaries of literature in Greek education, then as a master of dialectics and argumentation. Moreover, he was most grave in his whole life, and reckoned among the very first of those who ever deserved the love of the orthodox, and so continued till his maintenance of this doctrine. Nay, he had undergone banishment for not submitting to the Arians;—but why enlarge on it? It afflicted us much, and gave us a sorrowful time, as is the wont of our enemy."—Ibid. 24.
St. Basil once got into trouble from a supposed intimacy with Apollinaris. He had written one letter to him on an indifferent matter, in 356, when he himself was as yet a layman, and Apollinaris orthodox and scarcely in orders. This was magnified by his opponent Eustathius into a correspondence and intercommunion between the archbishop and heresiarch. As in reality Basil knew very little even of his works, the description which the following passages give is valuable, as being, in fact, a sort of popular opinion about Apollinaris, more than an individual judgment. Basil wrote the former of the two in defence of himself; in the latter, other errors of Apollinaris are mentioned, besides those to which I have had occasion to allude, for, as I have said, errors seldom are found single.
"For myself," says Basil, "I never indeed considered Apollinaris as an enemy; nay, there are respects in which I reverence him; however, I did not so connect myself with him as to make myself answerable for his alleged faults, considering, too, that I have a complaint of my own against him, on reading some of his compositions. I hear, indeed, that he is become the most copious of all writers; yet I have fallen in with but few of his works, for I have not leisure to search into such, and besides, I do not easily form the acquaintance of recent writers, being hindered by bodily health from continuing even the study of inspired Scripture laboriously, and as is fitting."—Ep. 244, § 3.
The other passage runs thus:—
"After Eustathius comes Apollinaris; he, too, no slight disturber of the Church; for, having a facility in writing and a tongue which served him on every subject, he has filled the world with his compositions, despising the warning, 'Beware of making many books,' because in the many are many faults. For how is it possible, in much speaking, to escape sin?"—Ep. 263, § 4.
And then he goes on to mention some of the various gross errors, to which by that time he seemed to be committed.
Lastly, let us hear Vincent of Lerins about him:—
"Great was the heat and great the perplexity which Apollinaris created in the minds of his auditory, when the authority of the Church drew them one way, and the influence of their teacher drew them the other, so that, wavering and hesitating between the two, they could not decide which was to be chosen. You will say, he ought at once to have been put aside; yes, but he was so great a man, that his word carried with it an extraordinary credence. Who indeed was his superior in acumen, in long practice, in view of doctrine? As to the number of his volumes against heresies, I will but mention as a specimen of them that great and noble work of his against Porphyry, in not less than thirty books, with its vast collection of arguments. He would have been among the master-builders of the Church, had not the profane lust of heretical curiosity incited him to strike out something new, to pollute withal his labours throughout with the taint of leprosy, so that his teaching was rather a temptation to the Church than an edification."—Ch. 16.
It is a solemn and pregnant fact, that two of the most zealous and forward of Athanasius's companions in the good fight against Arianism, Marcellus and Apollinaris, fell away into heresies of their own; nor did the Church spare them, for all their past services. "Let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall"[missing a "."?]
"Alas, my brother! round thy tomb,
In sorrow kneeling, and in fear,
We read the pastor's doom,
Who speaks and will not hear.
"The gray-haired saint may fail at last,
The surest guide a wanderer prove;
Death only binds us fast
To the bright shore of love."