Paul taught that Christ was born of woman, under the law; and Ignatius, that he was "truly of the race of David, according to the flesh." (Letter to the Eph., sec. 1.)
The letters of Polycarp and Ignatius seemed a kind of a free commons where forgeries might be committed by all; and they have been so often used for this purpose, in order to secure the authority of their names to the doctrines of the day, that there is very little of the originals left. All parties were engaged in the practice; and each charged his adversary with doing the very thing that he was doing himself.
As we read whole pages in Irenaeus, charging his adversaries with forgeries and false interpolations, we smile at the impudence and audacity of the man, who has done more to pollute the pages of history than any other, and whose foot-prints we can follow through the whole century, like the slime of a serpent.
Speaking of the forgeries of this century, Casaubon says: "And in the last place, it mightily affects me to see how many there were in the earliest times of the church, who considered it a capital exploit to lend to heavenly truth the help of their own inventions, in order that the new doctrine might be more readily allowed by the wise among the Gentiles. These officious lies, they were wont to say, were devised for a good end; from which source, beyond question, sprang nearly innumerable books, which that and the following age saw published by those who were far from being bad men (for we are not speaking of the books of the heretics), under the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and of the Apostles, and of other saints." (Casaubon, quoted by Lardner.) Lardner is forced to admit "that Christians of or the Enigmas of Christianity, all sorts were guilty of this fraud—indeed, we may say it was one great fault of the times." (Vol. iv. page 54.)
In an age where falsehood was esteemed a merit, the truth cannot be expected. Before we close what we have to say on the third period of Christianity, we cannot fail to notice what a wide gulf has grown up between the religious faith of Paul and his followers, and those who gave their assent to the doctrines of the fourth Gospel. But, wide as is the gulf, those who call themselves Christians can stand on the opposite banks and clasp hands as believers in a common faith. Why is this? Skilful artisans, in the second century and subsequent ages, have been busy in bridging over this vast abyss, by adding to and taking away from what Paul taught, until to cross over is neither difficult nor dangerous.
CHAPTER XV.
The Trinity, or fourth period of Christianity.
If we may judge of the opposition made to the doctrines of the fourth Gospel by the vehemence and bad feeling with which they were defended, we conclude that if they were not successfully refuted, they did not escape just and severe criticism. The sudden change from the Logos of Philo to the hypostasis of John—from Christ a spirit who had descended from Heaven and taken up a temporary abode in the human form, and a Christ who was born a God, lived and remained such through death and the resurrection—was too great a change to be suddenly taken, without provoking the sneers and animadversions of the enemies of the new faith, who were on the lookout to expose its weaknesses, and ridicule its inconsistencies. What gave force and point to their attacks was, that the change from the Logos of the Synoptics to that of the fourth Gospel was one of necessity, forced upon Christians by the tactics of the Gnostics, in order to maintain a principle which lay at the foundation of their religion: that is, the atonement.
In the war waged between them and their enemies, Christians found it a source of great relief and satisfaction, to learn that the doctrines of John's Gospel, which were announced in the first verses of the first chapter, were in harmony with the theology of Plato. Whatever inconsistencies might be imputed to them on account of the change of their ideas as to the nature of Christ, their present views were the same as those held by the great philosopher of Greece, whose wisdom had entitled him to be called Plato the Divine. The study of the works of the Athenian by Christians of this period was the natural result of this feeling, and we discover a constant increase of this admiration until his ascendency is complete, and the nature of the Godhead determined by his genius. The followers of Plato were no less gratified to find that the doctrines of the fourth Gospel were in harmony with the school of their great teacher; so much so that it removed, the prejudice, and reduced the distance which formerly separated them from the Christians.*