(2) There was another feature of early Christian life which probably contributed more than anything else to strengthen this tendency. It was the habit of intercourse and intercommunion. Christians, like Jews, travelled widely—more for trade and commerce than for pleasure. The new brotherhood of Christians, like the ancient brotherhood of the Jews, gave to all the travelling brethren a welcome and hospitality. A test had been necessary in the earliest times in regard to the prophets and teachers. It is mentioned in the Teaching of the Apostles. But the test was of moral rather than of intellectual teaching. “Whoever comes to you and teaches you all these things” (i.e. the moral precepts of the “Two Ways”), “receive him. But in case he who teaches, himself turns and teaches you another teaching[722] so as to destroy (this teaching), listen not to him: but if he teaches you so as to add to your righteousness and knowledge of the Lord, receive him as the Lord.”[723] So of the prophets: “Not every one who speaks in the spirit is a prophet, but only he who has the moral ways of the Lord (τοὺς τρόπους Κυρίου): by these ways shall be known the false prophet and the true prophet.... Every prophet who teaches the truth, if he does not what he teaches, is a false prophet.”[724] So also of the travelling brethren: “Let every one who comes in the name of the Lord be received; afterwards ye shall test him and find out.... If he wish to settle among you and is a craftsman, let him work and so eat. If he be not a craftsman, provide some way of his living among you as a Christian, but not being idle. If he be unwilling so to do, he is χριστέμπορος—making a gain of godliness.”[725]
The test here also is a test of character and not of belief. But when the intellectual elements had asserted a prominence in Christianity, and when the acceptance of the baptismal formula had been made a test of admission to a Christian community, it gradually became a custom to make the acceptance of that formula also a condition of admission to hospitality.[726] It was, so to speak, a tessera or pass-word. By being a pass-word to hospitality, it became also a form which a man might easily strain his conscience to accept, and in religion no less than in politics there are no such strenuous upholders of current opinion as those who are hypocrites. The importance of the formula as a passport attached not only to individuals, but also to whole communities.[727] The fact that the Teaching of the Apostles makes the test personal and individual, shows that in the country and at the time when that book was written the later system had not yet begun to prevail. This later system was for a community to furnish its travelling members with a circular letter of recommendation. Such a letter served as a passport. The travelling Christian who brought it received an immediate and ungrudging hospitality. But when churches had wide points of difference, they would not receive each other’s letters. The points of difference which thus led to the renunciation of fellowship, related in the first instance to discipline or practice. They came to relate to belief. Points of doctrine, no less than points of discipline, came to be discussed at the meetings of the representatives of the churches in a district, concerning which I spoke in the last Lecture. Doctrine came to be thus co-ordinate with character as the basis on which the churches joined together in local or general confederations, and accepted each other’s certificates. The hierarchical tendency grew with it and out of it. The position of the bishops, which had grown out of the assumed desirability of guarding the tradition of truth, tended to emphasize that tradition. It gave to tradition not only a new importance, but also a new sanction. It rested belief upon living authority. Men were no longer free to interpret for themselves.
This elevation of doctrine to a co-ordinate position with life in the Christian communities was the effect of causes internal to those communities. Those causes were in themselves the effects of other causes, the influence of which I have traced in previous Lectures: but in their direct operation within the churches they were altogether internal. But that which gave importance to their operation was not internal, but external. It was the interposition of the State. The first instance of that interposition was in the days of Aurelian, in the case of Paul of Samosata. The principle which was then established has been of enormous importance to the Christian communities ever since. It is clear that confederation of churches was so far established in Syria in the middle of the third century, that the bishops of a district claimed a right to interfere in the affairs of a neighbouring church. There was not yet the complete confederation, on the basis of the organization of the Empire, which we find after the Nicene Council; it was a question only of neighbourhood. The Bishop of Antioch, Paul of Samosata, who was a statesman as well as a theologian, had a difference of opinion with the leading bishops of Syria on one of the new questions of the metaphysical theology, which was forcing its way into the Christian churches. Meetings were held, at the first of which there appears to have been a compromise. At the second, Paul was condemned. He was formally deposed from his see. He refused to recognize the authority of the meeting, and probably with the support of his people, remained in possession of the church-buildings. An appeal as of “civil right” was made by his opponents to the Emperor. The answer of the Emperor determined the principle already referred to. The tenant of the buildings held them on condition of being a Christian. The Emperor did not determine what Christianity was. But he determined that whatever was taught by the bishops of Italy might be properly taken as the standard. This determined Roman policy, and it went far to determine Christian doctrine for the future.
When Christianity came to be recognized by the State, Constantine adopted the plan of assembling the bishops on his own authority, and of giving whatever sanction the State could give to their resolutions. He said in effect, “I, as Emperor, cannot determine what Christian doctrine is, but I will take the opinion of the majority, and I will so far recognize that opinion that no one shall have the privileges of Christians, a right to hold property and an exemption from civil burdens, who does not assent to that opinion.” The succeeding Christian Emperors followed in his track. The test of being a Christian was conformity to the resolutions of the Councils. One who accepted them received immunity and privileges. One who did not was liable to confiscation, to banishment, to death. I need hardly draw out for you, who know what human nature is, the importance which those resolutions of the Councils assumed.
Against this whole transformation of the basis of union there were two great lines of reaction.
1. The one was the reaction of the Puritan party in the Church—the conservative party, which was always smouldering, and sometimes burst forth into flame. The most important of such reactionary outbursts were those of the Novatians in the third century, and of the Donatists in the fourth. I will speak now only of the former. Its first cause was the action of the Roman bishop, Callistus, who allowed the return to the Church of those who had been excluded on account of sins of the flesh, and of return to idolatry. The policy was continued. In 250, a determined stand was made against it. The election of a bishop who belonged to the lax party forced on a schism. The schism was strong. It had sympathizers all over the Christian world—in Egypt, in Armenia, in Asia Minor, in Italy and Spain. It involved the whole theory of the Church—the power of the Keys. It lasted long. It was so strong that the State had to recognize it. It did not die out until at least five centuries after its birth. It lingered on in detached communities, but it ceased to be a power. The majority, with the support not only of the State, but also of human nature, dominated the Christian world.
2. The other reaction was stronger and even more permanent. It consisted of the formation within the Christian community of an inner class, who framed for themselves and endeavoured to realize a higher than the common ideal. They stood to the rest of the community as the community itself stood to the rest of the world. The tendency itself came, as I have tried to point out in a previous Lecture,[728] mainly from the Greek philosophical schools, and was fostered to a large extent by the influence on the main body of Christians of the philosophic parties upon its borders. But it asserted its place as a permanent element in the Christian world mainly as a reaction against the change of the basis of the Christian communities, and the lowering of the current standard of their morality. Henceforward there was, side by side with the τάγμα τῶν κληρικῶν and the τάγμα τῶν λαϊκῶν, a third rank, τάγμα τῶν ἀσκητῶν. The ideal has been obscured by its history: but that ideal was sublime. It was impracticable and undesirable; and yet sometimes in human life room must be found for impossible ideals. And the blurred and blotted picture of it which has survived to our own times, cannot take the place of the historical fact that it began as a reaction against Christianity as it was and as it is—an effort to regenerate human society. But Monachism, by the very fact of its separation, did not leaven the Church and raise the current morality. The Church became, not an assembly of devout men, grimly earnest about living a holy life—its bishops were statesmen; its officers were men of the world; its members were of the world, basing their conduct on the current maxims of society, held together by the loose bond of a common name, and of a creed which they did not understand. In such a society, an intellectual basis is the only possible basis. In such a society also, in which officialism must necessarily have an important place, the insistence on that intellectual basis comes from the instinct of self-preservation. But it checked the progress of Christianity. Christianity has won no great victories since its basis was changed. The victories that it has won, it has won by preaching, not Greek metaphysics, but the love of God and the love of man. Its darkest pages are those which record the story of its endeavouring to force its transformed Greek metaphysics upon men or upon races to whom they were alien. The only ground of despair in those who accept Christianity now, is the fear—which I for one cannot entertain—that the dominance of the metaphysical element in it will be perpetual.