The Great Apostasy, Considered in the Light of Scriptural and Secular History

by James E. Talmage

9. Milner, who quotes approvingly the severe arraignment of the Church in the third century as given above, cannot be charged with bias against Christian institutions, inasmuch as his declared purpose in presenting to the world an additional "History of the Church of Christ" was to give due attention to certain phases of the subject slighted or neglected by earlier authors, and notably to emphasize the piety, not the wickedness, of the professed followers of Christ. This author, avowedly friendly to the Church and her votaries, admits the growing depravity of the Christian sects, and declares that toward the end of the third century the effect of the Pentecostal outpouring of the Holy Spirit had become exhausted, and that there remained little proof of any close relationship between Christ and the Church.

10. Note his summary of conditions: "The era of its actual declension must be dated in the pacific part of Diocletian's reign. During this whole century the work of God, in purity and power, had been tending to decay. The connection with philosophers was one of the principal causes. Outward peace and secular advantages completed the corruption. Ecclesiastical discipline, which had been too strict, was now relaxed exceedingly; bishops and people were in a state of malice. Endless quarrels were fomented among contending parties, and ambition and covetousness had in general gained the ascendency in the Christian Church. * * * The faith of Christ itself appeared now an ordinary business; and here terminated, or nearly so, as far as appears, the first great effusion of the Spirit of God, which began at the day of Pentecost. Human depravity effected throughout a general decay of godliness; and one generation of men elapsed with very slender proofs of the spiritual presence of Christ with His Church."—(Milner, "Church History," Cent. III, ch. 17.)

11. If further evidence be wanted as to the fires of disaffection smoldering within the Church, and so easily fanned into destructive flame, let the testimony of Eusebius be considered with respect to conditions characterizing the second half of the third century. And, in weighing his words, let it be remembered that he had expressly recorded his purpose of writing in defense of the Church, and in support of her institutions. He bewails the tranquillity preceding the Diocletian outbreak, because of its injurious effect upon both officers and members of the Church. These are his words: "But when by excessive liberty we have sunk into indolence and sloth, one envying and reviling another in different ways, and we were almost, as it were, on the point of taking up arms against each other, and were assailing each other with words, as with darts and spears, prelates inveighing against prelates, and people rising up against people, and hypocrisy and dissimulation had arisen to the greater heights of malignity, then the divine judgment, which usually proceeds with a lenient hand, whilst the multitudes were yet crowding into the Church, with gentle and mild visitations began to afflict its episcopacy; the persecution having begun with those brethren that were in the army. * * * But some that appeared to be our pastors, deserting the law of piety, were inflamed against each other with mutual strifes, accumulating quarrels and threats, rivalry, hostility, and hatred to each other, only anxious to assert the government as a kind of sovereignty for themselves."—(Eusebius, "Ecclesiastical History," Book VIII, ch. 1. See note 4, end of chapter.)

12. As further illustrative of the decline of the Christian spirit toward the end of the third century, Milner quotes the following observation of Eusebius, an eye-witness of the conditions described: "The heavy hand of God's judgment began softly, by little and little, to visit us after His wonted manner; * * * but we were not at all moved with His hand, nor took any pains to return to God. We heaped sin upon sin, judging like careless Epicureans, that God cared not for our sins, nor would ever visit us on account of them. And our pretended shepherds, laying aside the rule of godliness, practiced among themselves contention and division." He adds that the "dreadful persecution of Diocletian was then inflicted on the Church as a just punishment, and as the most proper chastisement for their iniquities."—(Milner, "Church History," Cent. III, ch. 17.)

13. It will be remembered that the great change whereby the Church was raised to a place of honor in the state, occurred in the early part of the fourth century. It is a popular error to assume that the decay of the Church as a spiritual institution dates from that time. The picture of the Church declining as to spiritual power in exact proportion to her increase of temporal influence and wealth has appealed to rhetoricians and writers of sensational literature; but such a picture does not present the truth. The Church was saturated with the spirit of apostasy long before Constantine took it under his powerful protection by according it official standing in the state. In support of this statement, I quote again from Milner, the avowed friend of the Church: "I know it is common for authors to represent the great declension of Christianity to have taken place only after its external establishment under Constantine. But the evidence of history has compelled me to dissent from this view of things. In fact, we have seen that for a whole generation previous to the [Diocletian] persecution, few marks of superior piety appeared. Scarce a luminary of godliness existed; and it is not common in any age for a great work of the Spirit of God to be exhibited but under the conduct of some remarkable saints, pastors, and reformers. This whole period as well as the whole scene of the persecution is very barren in such characters. * * * Moral and philosophical and monastical instructions will not effect for men what is to be expected from evangelical doctrine. And if the faith of Christ was so much declined (and its decayed state ought to be dated from about the year 270), we need not wonder that such scenes as Eusebius hints at without any circumstantial details, took place in the Christian world. * * * He speaks also of the ambitious spirit of many, in aspiring to the offices of the Church, the ill judged and unlawful ordinations, the quarrels among confessors themselves, and the contentions excited by young demagogues in the very relics of the persecuted Church, and the multiplied evils which their vices excited among Christians. How sadly must the Christian world have declined which could thus conduct itself under the very rod of divine vengeance? Yet let not the infidel or the profane world triumph. It was not Christianity, but the departure from it, which brought on these evils."—(Milner, "Church History," Cent. IV, ch. 1. The italics are introduced by the present writer. See also Note 5, end of chapter.)

14. The foregoing embodies but a few of the many evidences that could be cited in demonstration of the fact that during the period immediately following the apostolic ministry—the period covered by the persecutions of the Christians by the heathen nations,—the Church was undergoing internal deterioration, and was in a state of increasing perversion. Among the more detailed or specific causes of this ever widening departure from the spirit of the gospel of Christ, this rapidly growing apostasy, the following may be considered as important examples:

(1). The corrupting of the simple principles of the gospel by the admixture of the so-called philosophic systems of the times.

(2). Unauthorized additions to the ceremonies of the Church, and the introduction of vital changes in essential ordinances.

(3). Unauthorized changes in Church organization and government.

15. We shall consider in due order each of the three causes here enumerated. It may appear that the conditions set forth in these specifications are more properly to be regarded as effects or results, than as causes, incident to the general apostasy,—that they are in the nature of evidences or proofs of a departure from the original constitution of the Church, rather than specific causes by which the fact of apostasy is to be explained or accounted for. Cause and effect, however, are sometimes very intimately associated, and resulting conditions may furnish the best demonstration of causes in operation. Each of the conditions given above as a specific cause of the progressive apostasy was, at its inception, an evidence of existing unsoundness, and an active cause of the graver results that followed. Each succeeding manifestation of the spirit of apostasy was at once the result of earlier disaffection, and the cause of later and more pronounced developments.