In the course of the second century, this original spontaneity of utterance died almost entirely away. It may almost be said to have died a violent death. The dominant parties in the Church set their faces against it. The survivals of it in Asia Minor were formally condemned. The Montanists, as they were called, who tried to fan the lingering sparks of it into a flame, are ranked among heretics. And Tertullian is not even now admitted into the calendar of the Saints, because he believed the Montanists to be in the right.
It was inevitable that it should be so. The growth of a confederation of Christian communities necessitated the definition of a basis of confederation. Such a definition, and the further necessity of guarding it, were inconsistent with that free utterance of the Spirit which had existed before the confederation began. Prophesying died when the Catholic Church was formed.
In place of prophesying came preaching. And preaching is the result of the gradual combination of different elements. In the formation of a great institution it is inevitable that, as time goes on, different elements should tend to unite. To the original functions of a bishop, for example, were added by degrees the functions—which had originally been separate—of teacher.[194] In a similar way were fused together, on the one hand, teaching—that is, the tradition and exposition of the sacred books and of the received doctrine; and, on the other hand, exhortation—that is, the endeavour to raise men to a higher level of moral and spiritual life. Each of these was a function which, assuming a certain natural aptitude, could be learned by practice. Each of them was consequently a function which might be discharged by the permanent officers of the community, and discharged habitually at regular intervals without waiting for the fitful flashes of the prophetic fire. We consequently find that with the growth of organization there grew up also, not only a fusion of teaching and exhortation, but also the gradual restriction of the liberty of addressing the community to the official class.
It was this fusion of teaching and exhortation that constituted the essence of the homily: its form came from the sophists. For it was natural that when addresses, whether expository or hortatory, came to prevail in the Christian communities, they should be affected by the similar addresses which filled a large place in contemporary Greek life. It was not only natural but inevitable that when men who had been trained in rhetorical methods came to make such addresses, they should follow the methods to which they were accustomed. It is probable that Origen is not only the earliest example whose writings have come down to us, but also one of the earliest who took into the Christian communities these methods of the schools. He lectured, as the contemporary teachers seem to have lectured, every day: his subject-matter was the text of the Scriptures, as that of the rhetoricians and sophists by his side was Homer or Chrysippus: his addresses, like those of the best professors, were carefully prepared: he was sixty years of age, we are told, before he preached an extempore sermon.[195]
When the Christian communities emerge into the clearer light of the fourth century, the influence of the rhetorical schools upon them begins to be visible on a large scale and with permanent effects. The voice of the prophet had ceased, and the voice of the preacher had begun. The greatest Christian preachers of the fourth century had been trained to rhetorical methods, and had themselves taught rhetoric. Basil and Gregory Nazianzen studied at Athens under the famous professors Himerius and Prohæresius: Chrysostom studied under the still more famous Libanius, who on his death-bed said of him that he would have been his worthiest successor “if the Christians had not stolen him.”[196] The discourses came to be called by the same names as those of the Greek professors. They had originally been called homilies—a word which was unknown in this sense in pre-Christian times, and which denoted the familiar intercourse and direct personal addresses of common life. They came to be called by the technical terms of the schools—discourses, disputations, or speeches.[197] The distinction between the two kinds of terms is clearly shown by a later writer, who, speaking of a particular volume of Chrysostom’s addresses, says, “They are called ‘speeches’ (λόγοι), but they are more like homilies, for this reason, above others, that he again and again addresses his hearers as actually present before his eyes.”[198] The form of the discourses tended to be the same: if you examine side by side a discourse of Himerius or Themistius or Libanius, and one of Basil or Chrysostom or Ambrose, you will find a similar artificiality of structure, and a similar elaboration of phraseology. They were delivered under analogous circumstances. The preacher sat in his official chair: it was an exceptional thing for him to ascend the reader’s ambo, the modern “pulpit:”[199] the audience crowded in front of him, and frequently interrupted him with shouts of acclamation. The greater preachers tried to stem the tide of applause which surged round them: again and again Chrysostom begs his hearers to be silent: what he wants is, not their acclamations, but the fruits of his preaching in their lives.[200] There is one passage which not only illustrates this point, but also affords a singular analogy to the remonstrance of Epictetus which was quoted just now:
“There are many preachers who make long sermons: if they are well applauded, they are as glad as if they had obtained a kingdom: if they bring their sermon to an end in silence, their despondency is worse, I may almost say, than hell. It is this that ruins churches, that you do not seek to hear sermons that touch the heart, but sermons that will delight your ears with their intonation and the structure of their phrases, just as if you were listening to singers and lute-players. And we preachers humour your fancies, instead of trying to crush them. We act like a father who gives a sick child a cake or an ice, or something else that is merely nice to eat—just because he asks for it; and takes no pains to give him what is good for him; and then when the doctors blame him says, ‘I could not bear to hear my child cry.’.... That is what we do when we elaborate beautiful sentences, fine combinations and harmonies, to please and not to profit, to be admired and not to instruct, to delight and not to touch you, to go away with your applause in our ears, and not to better your conduct. Believe me, I am not speaking at random: when you applaud me as I speak, I feel at the moment as it is natural for a man to feel. I will make a clean breast of it. Why should I not? I am delighted and overjoyed. And then when I go home and reflect that the people who have been applauding me have received no benefit, and indeed that whatever benefit they might have had has been killed by the applause and praises, I am sore at heart, and I lament and fall to tears, and I feel as though I had spoken altogether in vain, and I say to myself, What is the good of all your labours, seeing that your hearers don’t want to reap any fruit out of all that you say? And I have often thought of laying down a rule absolutely prohibiting all applause, and urging you to listen in silence.”[201]
And there is a passage near the end of Gregory Nazianzen’s greatest sermon, in which the human nature of which Chrysostom speaks bursts forth with striking force: after the famous peroration in which after bidding farewell one by one to the church and congregation which he loved, to the several companies of his fellow-workers, and to the multitudes who had thronged to hear him preach, he turns to the court and his opponents the Arian courtiers—
“Farewell, princes and palaces, the royal court and household—whether ye be faithful to the king I know not, ye are nearly all of you unfaithful to God.” (There was evidently a burst of applause, and he interrupts his peroration with an impromptu address.) “Yes—clap your hands, shout aloud, exalt your orator to heaven: your malicious and chattering tongue has ceased: it will not cease for long: it will fight (though I am absent) with writing and ink: but just for the moment we are silent.” (Then the peroration is resumed.) “Farewell, O great and Christian city....”[202]
I will add only one more instance of the way in which the habits of the sophists flowed into the Christian churches. Christian preachers, like the sophists, were sometimes peripatetic; they went from place to place, delivering their orations and making money by delivering them. The historians Socrates and Sozomen[203] tell an instructive story of two Syrian bishops, Severianus of Gabala and Antiochus of Ptolemais (St. Jean d’Acre). They were both famous for their rhetoric, though Severianus could not quite get rid of his Syrian accent. Antiochus went to Constantinople, and stayed there a long time, preaching frequently in the churches, and making a good deal of money thereby. On his return to Syria, Severianus, hearing about the money, resolved to follow his example: he waited for some time, exercised his rhetoric, got together a large stock of sermons, and then went to Constantinople. He was kindly received by the bishop, and soon became both a great popular preacher and a favourite at court. The fate of many preachers and court favourites overtook him: he excited great jealousy, was accused of heresy and banished from the city; and only by the personal intercession of the Empress Eudoxia was he received back again into ecclesiastical favour.