Hermes makes no mention of a Trinity nor of the Incarnation, and, though he speaks of the Son of God, this Son of God seems to be the same as the Holy Spirit. Of the man Jesus he makes no mention. When the Arians appealed to this book its reputation sank with the orthodox party. About the year 494 it was condemned in the decree of Pope Gelasius, and from that time it has declined in public favor. Jerome, who in his Chronicon had lauded it, in his commentary on Habakkuk taxes it with stultia foolishness. And not unjustly. Its visions are almost as fantastic as those recorded in the Apocalypse. Its divine revelations are about on a level with the maudlin platitudes uttered through the lips of spiritist trance mediums. Although so highly appreciated by the primitive Christians, there are few among the moderns who would not find his vagaries puerile and unreadable. He has a complete system of angelology. "There are two angels with a man—one of righteousness, and the other of iniquity—" (Commandment Sixth, chap, ii., p. 359,) and these originate all evil and all good. There is even an angel over the beasts. Hermes is acquainted with this angel's name. It is Thegri (Vision iv., 2, p. 346). From these angels he receives much valueless information. Mosheim says of his work: "It seems to have been written by a man scarcely sane, since he thought himself at liberty to invent conversations between God and angels, for the sake of giving precepts, which he considered salutary, a more ready entrance into the minds of his readers. But celestial spirits with him talk greater nonsense than hedgers, or ditchers, or porters among ourselves" (Ec. Hist., pt. ii., chap, ii., sec. 21; vol. i., p. 69,1863). If we bear in mind that this book was the most popular among the primitive Christians, we shall have a good idea of the extent of their attainments. In his work on Christian affairs before the time of Constantine, Mosheim gives his opinion of this Father that "he knowingly and wilfully was guilty of a cheat." "At the time when he wrote," continues Mosheim, "it was an established maxim with many of the Christians, that it was pardonable in an advocate for religion to avail himself of fraud and deception, if it were likely that they might conduce towards the attainment of any considerable good" (vol. i., p. 285; Vidal tr., 1813). He has also been deemed the forger of the Sibylline oracles. It is curious that in his second vision he confounds an old woman, who is said to represent the Church, with the Sibyl (Ch. iv., p. 331). Neither his reputation for veracity nor the value of his ethical teaching, as given by angels, is enhanced by his statement that when commanded to love the truth he said to his angelic messenger: "I never spoke a true word in my life, but have ever spoken cunningly to all, and have affirmed a lie for the truth to all; and no one ever contradicted me, but credit was given to my words." Whereupon the divine visitor informs him that if he keeps the commandments now, "even the falsehoods which you formerly told in your transactions may come to be believed through the truthfulness of your present statements. For even they can become worthy of credit" (Commandment Third, p. 351).
The testimony of such a man would be of very little value indeed, but it is certain that he gives none whatever to the New Testament, and this, although his writings are the most extensive of any of the Apostolic Fathers. Dr. Teschendorf even does not suggest that Hermas gives any indication of acquaintance with our Gospels, and although Canon Westcott, who admits "it contains no definite quotation from either Old or New Testament" (on the Canon, p. 200, 1881), strives to show that some of his similitudes, such as that of the Church to a tower, may have been derived from the New Testament, Canon Sanday, another Christian apologist, admits that these references are very doubtful. The only direct quotation from Scripture is from a part which is not included in our Holy Bible, and which, indeed, is no longer extant. In the Second Vision, chap. iii., he says: "The Lord is near to them who return unto Him, as it is written in Eldad and Modat, who prophesied to the people in the wilderness." In Numbers xi, 26, 27, we read of Eldad and Medad who prophesied in the camp, and a book under their name appears in the Stichometria of Nicephorus among the apocrypha of the Old Testament.
Having thus cursorily reviewed the writings of the first five Fathers, who are usually, though unwarrantably, denominated "Apostolic," we will briefly examine
THEIR TESTIMONY TO THE GOSPELS.
The matter indeed might be summarily dismissed with the remark that they afford no testimony to the Gospels whatever. But so much stress is laid upon them in this respect by orthodox writers (and necessarily so, for if the so-called Apostolical Fathers testify not of the Gospels, there is no evidence of their existence until the latter half of the second century) that we must pause and examine how far they bear the burden that is laid upon them.
We have already seen that both the age and the authorship of every one of these works is of a most doubtful character. The names of every one of the twelve apostles, of Paul, of Ignatius, of Polycarp, of the Diognetus mentioned in Acts xvii, 34, of Clement, of Linus, and of other early Christians of repute, have been appended to the most unblushing forgeries. Among these so-called genuine remains, as found in Archbishop Wake's version and the Ante-Nicene Christian Library, those attributed to Barnabas and Hermas are almost as certainly forged. Of the epistles assigned to Ignatius, Professor Andrews Norton says: "There is, as it seems to me, no reasonable doubt that the seven shorter epistles ascribed to Ignatius are, equally with all the rest, fabrications of a date long subsequent to his time" ("The Evidence of the Genuineness of the Gospels," p. 350, vol. i., 2nd ed., 1847). The second of the epistles attributed to Clement is recognised by most scholars as spurious. The only remaining documents which we can at all allow to be genuine are the first epistle of Clement and that of Polycarp. Even these have not been undisputed. The former has been challenged as a forgery by Mr. J. M. Cotterill, in a curious work, entitled "Peregrinus Proteus," published by T. and T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1879; and the latter by Blondel, Schwegler, Hilgenfeld, Tayler, and others, and it is generally allowed to be interpolated.
Dr. Giles ("Christian Records," p. 109, 1877,) says: "The writings of the Apostolical Fathers labor under a more heavy load of doubt and suspicion than any other ancient compositions either sacred or profane. In former times, when the art of criticism was in its infancy, these writings were ten times as extensive as they are now, and they were circulated without the slightest doubt of their authenticity. But, as the spirit of inquiry grew, and the records of past time were investigated, the mists which obscured the subject were gradually dispersed, and the light of truth began to shine where there had previously been nothing but darkness. Things which had chained and enslaved the mind for ages, dissolved and faded into nothing at the dawn of day, and objects that once held the most unbounded sway over the belief, proved to be unreal beings, creatures of superstition, if not of fraud, placed like the lions in the path of the pilgrim, to deter him from proceeding on the way that leads to the heavenly city of truth."
In another place Dr. Giles remarks in regard to the question of the age and authorship of the these Fathers: "The works which have been written on this question are almost as numerous as those which concern the age, authorship, and authenticity of the Gospels themselves, but the general issue of the inquiries which have been instituted, has been unfavorable to the antiquity of these works as remains of writers who were contemporary with the Apostles, but favorable to the theory that they are productions of the latter half of the second century. That was the time when so many Christian writings came into existence, and all the records of our religion were sedulously sought out, because tradition was then becoming faint, original and even secondary witnesses had gone off the stage, and the great increase of the Christian community gave birth to extended curiosity about its early history, whilst it furnished greater safety to those who employed themselves in its service" ("Christian Records," chap, xi., p. 89).
If the Gospels were written by eye-witnesses of the miracles, and these so-called Apostolic Fathers had conversed with them, it is scarcely credible that they would have omitted to name the actual books themselves which possessed such high authority. This is the only way in which their evidence could be of real service to support the authenticity of the New Testament writings as being the work of Apostles. But this they fail to supply. There is not a single sentence in all their remaining works in which an unmistakeable allusion to the Gospels, as we have them, is to be found. It is in vain that Christian evidence-mongers appeal to their citations of certain sayings of Jesus or certain doctrines of Christianity. No one disputes that these were in general vogue early in the second century. But the point to be proved to the Rationalist is that the supernatural events of the four Gospels were testified to by eye-witnesses, who published their accounts at the time and in the place where the alleged supernatural occurrences took place. And of this the Apostolic Fathers afford no scrap of evidence. Of the supernatural history of Jesus they know no more than Paul. They neither mention his immaculate conception nor his miracles; nor do they refer to any of the circumstances connected with his alleged material resurrection. This especially applies to the possibly genuine writings of Clement and Polycarp. Hermas, as we have mentioned, has no reference to any of the acts of Jesus. Barnabas has an allusion to "great signs and wonders which were wrought in Israel," but he does not say what they were nor when they happened. Ignatius alone, in a probably spurious epistle to the Ephesians, chap, xix, alludes to the virginity of Mary, her offspring, and the death of the Lord as "three mysteries of renown;" but the details he gives concerning the brilliant star which appeared, and how all the rest of the stars and the sun and moon formed a chorus to this star, and its light was exceedingly "great above them all," and how "every kind of magic was destroyed, and every bond of wickedness disappeared," show that the writer referred to other sources of information than those found in Matthew and Luke. In the full part of the ninth chapter of the epistle to the Trallians,' he gives almost the whole of the Apostles creed. This in itself would be sufficient evidence of its spuriousness.