To the Moral doctrine which, in our view, the Gospel conjoins with this religious system, it is impossible for us at present to advert. Suffice to say that, with Paul, we exclaim, "not Law, but Love":—love to God, to Christ, not simply for what they have done for us, but chiefly for what they are in themselves;—nothing like the narrow-hearted gratitude for an exclusive salvation, but a moral affection awakened by their holiness, rectitude, truth, and mercy,—by the sublimity and spirituality of their designs, and the sanctity and fidelity of their execution: love also to man, looking to him not merely as a sentient being who is to be made happy, but as a child of God, who is to be raised into some likeness to the Divine image; as a brother spirit, noble in nature, even though sinful in fact, glorious as an immortal in the eye of God, though disfigured by this world's hardship or contempt.
Does any one ask, where we get our system of faith and morals? What are the principles of reasoning which we apply to nature and Scripture to extract it thence? The reply would require a volume of exposition. Suffice it to say, that we think we have full warrant for this belief from the Scriptures of the New Testament, with which alone we conceive that Christians have any practical concern; that, in interpreting these Scriptures, we follow the same rules which we should apply to any other books; that not even could their instructions make us false to that sense of right and wrong which God has breathed into us; that if they taught respecting him anything unjust or unholy, we should not accept it, but reject them; and that, as to the points of faith on which we have dwelt, some receive these truths because they were taught by Christ; others receive Christ because he taught these truths.
On this faith we desire to take our stand, with the firmness, but without the ferocity, of the first Reformers. Opposing churches tell us, we "are so frigid"! Why, it is the very thing our own hearts had often said to us; for there is nothing that so promptly rebukes the coldness of our nature as the warmth of our faith. We do not, however, much admire this mutual criticism of each other's temperature; and strongly suspect the reality of that earnestness which prides itself on its own intensity. We must not propose to assume any artificial heats, in order to spite and disprove this frequent accusation; but be resolved, in an age diseased with pretence, to remain realities, to profess nothing which we do not believe, to withhold nothing whereon we doubt, to affect nothing which we do not feel, to promise nothing which we will not do; holding, with Paul, that simplicity and sincerity are truly the godliest of things. With Heaven's good help, may we bear our testimony thus; deeming it a small thing to be judged by man's judgment; and, with such light and heat as God shall put into our hearts, delivering over our portion of truth to generations that will give it a more genial welcome. There is greatness in a faith, when it can win a wide success or make rapid conquest over submissive minds. There is a higher greatness in a faith that, when God ordains, can stand up and do without success;—unmoved amid the pitiless storms of a fanatic age; with foot upon the rock of its own fidelity, and heart in the serene Infinite above the canopy of cloud and tempest.
[CREED AND HERESIES OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY.]
1. Ωριγενους Φιλοσοφουμενα η κατα πασων αιρεσεων ελεγχος. Origenis Philosophumena sive omnium hæresium refutatio. E codice Parisino nunc primum edidit Emmanuel Miller. Oxonii: e Typographeo Academico. 1851.
2. Hippolytus and his Age; or the Doctrine and Practice of the Church of Rome under Commodus and Alexander Severus; and Ancient and Modern Christianity and Divinity compared. By Christian Charles Josias Bunsen, D.C.L. In Four Volumes. London. 1852.
When a stranger knocks at the gate of the Clarendon Printing-house, and presents his petition for aid, the University of Oxford maintains its national character for good-natured opulence,—gives its money and signs its name, without very close inquiry into the case. The documents are really so respectable that there cannot be much amiss; and a venerable institution, well known to be fond of the house, cannot be expected to go trudging through the back-lanes of history, and exposing its nostrils in the purlieus of heresy, in order to identify a literary petitioner, evidently above all common imposture. So it supplies all his wants upon the spot, dresses him handsomely, and sends him out into the world as its worthy (though eccentric) friend, the catechist of Alexandria. The introduction, being left at the Prussian Legation, falls into the hands of no stay-at-home benefactor, but of one who knows the by-ways of human life, and has an ear for the dialects of many a place. M. Bunsen—as Oxford might have remembered—is not unacquainted with Egypt; and no sooner does he raise his eyes from the credentials to the person of the stranger, than he discovers him to be no disciple of the Alexandrine Clement; recognizes the accent of the West; is reminded of the voice of Irenæus; and, finally, being even more familiar with the Tiber than the Nile, detects a Roman beneath the mask of Origen. We do not in the least grudge the friend of Niebuhr the honor of a discovery which no one could turn to more effectual account; but every English scholar must feel mortified that the Imprimatur of our great Ecclesiastical University should appear on a title-page manifestly false; that the first reader should see at a glance what the learned proprietors had missed; and that their Editio Princeps of a recovered monument of Church antiquity should be superseded within a year or two of its publication. They are not principals, it is true, but only secondaries to the Editor, in the commission of this error: still, a lay bibliographer might reasonably expect, in resorting for aid to so renowned and reverend a body, that his own judgment would be kept in check; and their very consent to issue the work implies some critical opinion of its value, as derived from age and authorship. Whether they are called upon to adopt at once M. Bunsen's proposed title-page, and substitute the name of Hippolytus for that of Origen, we will not say; but that the present title gives the book to the wrong author, seems placed beyond the reach of doubt.
M. Emmanuel Miller, one of the curators of the National Library in Paris, was the first to make himself acquainted with the contents of this work, and to appreciate their importance. Among the manuscripts under his care was one on cotton paper of the fourteenth century, which had been brought from Mount Athos in 1842, by M. Mynoïdes Mynas, a Greek agent employed by the French government to search the neglected treasures of that celebrated spot. The superscription, "On all Heresies," was not inviting; but on turning over the leaves, some lines, unknown before, of Pindar and of another lyric poet, were found and copied; and the value of these excerpts being ascertained, M. Miller's attention was directed to the body of the treatise containing them. The treatise had already been described, in the Moniteur of the 5th of January, 1844, as a Refutation of all Heresies, in ten books, but with the first three missing, as well as the conclusion of the whole; and he soon became aware, that, of the three missing books, the first already existed, and had been printed under the name of "Philosophumena," in the editions of Origen's works. Its very title is found in the manuscript at the end of the fourth book, and denotes that the portion of the work there concluded completes the sketch of philosophical systems, which the author prefixes to his account of ecclesiastical aberrations; and there are mutual references, backwards and forwards, between the printed book and the manuscript, which leave no doubt that the latter is a sequel to the former. The Editor, therefore, has very properly reprinted the "Philosophumena" as the commencement of the newly recovered work; which thus exhibits a regular plan, and consists of two parts, viz.: first, four books,—of which the second and third are lost,—expounding the Pagan philosophies, especially the Greek, from which, the author contends, the various heresies of Christendom are mere plagiarisms; then six books, containing an account, in an order prevailingly historical, of thirty or thirty-two heresies, supported by extracts from their standard writings, and wound up in the recapitulary book at the end by the writer's own profession of faith. Now who is the author?
Not Origen; for, as Huet had already remarked respecting the "Philosophumena," the writer speaks of himself in terms implying an episcopal position; and, in the ninth book, he gives an account of transactions in Rome, extending over many years, in which he was evidently an eyewitness and an actor. While the scene is thus laid at a distance from Origen's sphere, and the date also of the personal matter runs back into his boyhood, the cast of the theological doctrine is wholly different from his; for instance, in a certain "Treatise on the Universe," to which the author refers as his own, and of which a fragment is preserved, the penal condition of the wicked after death is said to be immutable;[26] but Origen, it is well known, taught a doctrine of final restoration. Add to this, that no such work as the present is attributed to Origen by any ancient witness, and the case against his name may be regarded as complete.