The Formation of Christendom, Volume II

by T. W. Allies

Here a writer, calling himself a disciple of Apostles, describes to us, at the beginning of the second century, what the apostolic age of seventy years had wrought. He puts his finger just upon [pg 319] the marvel which we are contemplating. Fifty years later, at the moment the empire was culminating under the serene rule of Antoninus, a convert from heathenism, a philosopher who had spent his life in examining all the sects and races of the empire, and who afterwards became a martyr, said of Christians that being “quarried out of the side of Christ, they were the true Israelitic race,” “altogether being called the body, for both people and church, being many in number, are called by one name as one thing;” they are in fact “as one man before the Maker of all things, through the name of His first-born Son,” the High-priest gathering up first in the prophetical vision and then in the real fact “the true high-priestly race”[274] in His own Person. Thus Justin pointed out this conception of the Christian people to the Jew of his time as both foretold in prophecy and exhibited in fact. The longer that such a people as this endured, the greater would be the marvel.

A hundred years after this, Origen uses the same language and points to the same marvel. He had in the year 249, at the entreaty of a friend and pupil, set himself in the maturity of life, and of a renown which filled the Church as no man's before had filled it, to answer the attack of a heathen philosopher, Celsus, upon Christianity. He [pg 320] was writing just at the end of the longest period of peace which is found during those three centuries. From the death of the Emperor Septimius Severus in 211 to that of the Emperor Philip in this year 249, there had been, with the exception of a short attack from Maximin, to which his death put a stop, no general persecution of Christians. Thus thirty-eight years had passed of such tranquillity as it was ever in those times the lot of Christians to obtain. The mother of one emperor had been Origen's disciple, and the emperor actually reigning was a Christian, however unworthy of such a profession. Now in this work Origen speaks of the superiority of the Christian churches in each several place, as, for instance, at Athens, Corinth, Alexandria, to the heathen assemblies, and of the Christian rulers to the heathen. He puts it as a mark of divine power that God sending His Son, “a God come in human soul and body,”[275] should have established everywhere churches offering the contrast of their polity to the assemblies of the superstitious, the impure, and the unjust. He considers that Christians do a greater benefit to their country than all other men by teaching them piety to the one God, and “gathering up into a certain divine and heavenly city those who have lived well in the smallest cities.”[276] “We,” he says, “knowing that there is in each city another fabric [pg 321] of a country, founded by the word of God, call those who are powerful in word and of a virtuous life to the government of churches: we do not accept the covetous to such a place, but force it against their will upon those who in their moderation would decline taking on them this general care of the Church of God.”[277] And the compulsion thus exercised is that “of the great King, whom we are persuaded to be the Son of God, God the Word.” But this other form of country which he saw in each city is “the whole Church of God, which the divine scriptures assert to be the Body of Christ, animated by the Son of God, while the limbs of this Body are particular believers; for as the soul quickens and moves the body, whose nature it is not to have the movement of life from itself, so the Word moving to what is fitting, and energising in the whole Body, the Church, moves likewise each member of it, who does nothing without the Word.”[278] And he completes this view in another beautiful passage wherein he describes Christ as the high-priest Aaron, who has received upon his single body the whole chrism, from whom it flows down upon his beard, the symbol of the complete man, and on to the utmost skirt of his raiment. Every one who partakes of Him, partakes likewise of his chrism, because Christ is the head of the Church, and the Church and Christ [pg 322] one Body.[279] We have here in Origen's thought one and the same divine power, proceeding forth from the Incarnation, which forms first the Body of the Lord, and then gathers into this Body every individual as a copy of the Christ. The heathen scoffer had objected: why send forth one spirit into one corner of the earth? It was needed to breathe that spirit into many bodies, and to send them forth into all the world. Nay, replied Origen, “the whole Church of God—animated by the Son of God as the soul quickens and moves the body—was enough. It needed not that there should be many bodies and many souls, like that of Jesus, in the way you suppose, for the one Word as the sun of righteousness rising from Judea was sufficient to send forth rays that should reach every soul that would receive him.” He has done far more than you suggest: every member of that one Body has received according to his measure a due portion of anointment: after the model of the Christ, they too are Christs; “so that beginning in the body He should dawn in power and in spirit upon the universe of souls which would no longer be destitute of God.”

In Origen's mind, then, the greatness of the King lies specifically in this, that out of confusion He draws unity, out of those who were no people He forms a people, out of nations and tribes at enmity He moulds an indivisible kingdom, and [pg 323] from His own Body a Body which shall embrace a universe of souls, instinct with one life, and that His own. This was Origen's view of the work and triumph of Christ, as he saw it before him, at the eve of the great Decian persecution in 249.

Origen was writing this at a moment of great interest. It was the last year which preceded those two generations, in the course of which five great persecutions should be directed by the emperors against the Church. He was then a man of sixty-four. The son of a martyr, he had when a youth of eighteen beheld his father imprisoned for the faith, and had encouraged him to suffer the loss of all his goods, and death itself, without regarding that large family which must be left in penury, of whom Origen was the eldest. He was burning himself to share his father's sufferings. In the persecution of which this was the opening Eusebius tells us that seven of his disciples were martyrs: and, lastly, he was to undergo such cruelties himself in the persecution of Decius, then on the eve of breaking out, that he is believed to have died of their results. Now it is in this work that he speaks of the remarkable providence of God in preserving Christians, who by their religion were bound not to defend themselves, against the attacks of their enemies, for God, he says, had fought for them, and from time to time had stopped those who had risen up with the purpose of destroying them. Few and easily numbered were those who [pg 324] hitherto had suffered death for the Christian Faith, samples chosen by God as champions to encourage the rest, while He prevented their whole nation from being rooted out: for it was His purpose that this nation should be firmly rooted and consolidated, and the whole world be filled with its saving doctrine and discipline.[280] Thus it was by His will alone that He scattered every plot directed against them, so that neither emperors, nor local governors, nor the people should be able to indulge their wrath beyond a certain point. Origen, when he thus wrote, could look back on a period of thirty-eight years, during which, with the exception of the severe but passing storm raised by the Emperor Maximin, peace had reigned: years which he had himself employed in unwearied labours of teaching, writing, and converting; in which he had directed and advised an emperor's mother, and seen a Christian emperor; in which he had witnessed a wonderful increase of the Christian people, and indeed of this increase his words above cited convey a faithful picture. He knew [pg 325] not the fearful trials which were to be encountered before that triumph of the truth which he already anticipated should be attained: or that God was about to accept from the grayhaired man the sacrifice which the impetuous youth had affronted without success. For scarcely has he written this book when he has to fly for his life before the edict of Decius, who will attempt to destroy the Christian religion, and to whose anger Pope S. Fabian falls a victim. Amid great peril after long delay the next Pope Cornelius is chosen. And now for the first time a new danger from within assaults the Church. Novatian, a Roman presbyter of great repute, attempts after the due election and consecration of Cornelius to usurp his place, and to divide the one flock of Christ. Under circumstances so wholly altered from those in which Origen above was writing, we come to our next witness, the man in all the Western Church the most renowned, as Origen was in the Eastern.

For it was on occasion of the first antipope, an effort, that is, within the See of Peter itself to arm the episcopal power at its very source against itself, to set an altar up against the legitimate altar, and to divide the sacraments of the Church from the Bride whose dowry they are, that S. Cyprian wrote his treatise on the Unity of the Church. “It was for the purpose of reminding his brethren that unity is the first element of the Christian state, and that those who break off from the [pg 326] principle of unity, which is lodged in the episcopate, even though they be confessors and martyrs, have no portion in the hopes of the gospel.”[281] This definite purpose, so unlike that state of leisure and tranquillity in which Origen answered by thought and learning a speculative attack, will account for the very remarkable precision and force of S. Cyprian's language.

“The enemy,” he says, “detected and down-fallen by the advent of Christ, now that light is come to the nations—seeing his idols left—has made heresies and schisms, wherewith to subvert faith, to corrupt truth, and to rend unity.” But this will all be in vain if men will look to the Head, and keep to the doctrine of the Master. For the truth may be quickly stated.[282] “The Lord saith unto Peter: I say unto thee that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound also in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. To him again, after His resurrection, He says: Feed my sheep. Upon him, being one, He builds His Church; and though He gives to all the Apostles an equal power, and says: As my Father sent Me, even so send I you; receive ye [pg 327] the Holy Ghost: whosesoever sins ye remit, they shall be remitted to him, and whosesoever sins ye retain, they shall be retained;—yet in order to manifest unity, He has by His own authority so placed the source of the same unity as to begin from one. Certainly the other Apostles also were what Peter was, endued with an equal fellowship both of honour and power; but a commencement is made from unity, that the Church may be set before us as one: which one Church in the Canticle of Canticles doth the Holy Spirit design and name in the Person of our Lord: My dove, my spotless one is but one; she is the only one of her mother, elect of her that bare her.

“He who holds not this unity of the Church, does he think that he holds the faith? He who strives against and resists the Church, is he assured that he is in the Church? For the blessed Apostle Paul teaches this same thing, and manifests the sacrament of unity thus speaking: There is one Body and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one Hope of your calling; one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God. This unity firmly should we hold and maintain, especially we bishops, presiding in the Church, in order that we may approve the Episcopate itself to be one and undivided. Let no one deceive the brotherhood by falsehood; no one corrupt the truth of our faith by a faithless treachery. The Episcopate is one, of which a part is held by each without division [pg 328] of the whole. The Church is likewise one, though she be spread abroad, and multiplies with the increase of her progeny: even as the sun has rays many, yet one light, and the tree boughs many, yet its strength is one, seated in the deep-lodged root; and as, when many streams flow down from one source, though a multiplicity of waters seems to be diffused from the bountifulness of the overflowing abundance, unity is preserved in the source itself. Part a ray of the sun from its orb, and its unity forbids this division of light; break a branch from the tree, once broken it can bud no more; cut the stream from its fountain, the remnant will be dried up. Thus the Church, flooded with the light of the Lord, puts forth her rays through the whole world, with yet one light, which is spread upon all places, while its unity of body is not infringed. She stretches forth her branches over the universal earth, in the riches of plenty, and pours abroad her bountiful and onward streams; yet is there one head, one source, one mother, abundant in the results of her fruitfulness.

“It is of her womb that we are born; our nourishing is from her milk, our quickening from her breath. The Spouse of Christ cannot become adulterate; she is undefiled and chaste; owning but one home, and guarding with virtuous modesty the sanctity of one chamber. She it is who keeps us for God, and appoints unto the kingdom the sons she has borne. Whosoever parts company [pg 329] with the Church and joins himself to an adulteress, is estranged from the promises of the Church. He who leaves the Church of Christ, attains not to Christ's rewards. He is an alien, an outcast, an enemy. He can no longer have God for a Father who has not the Church for a mother. If any man was able to escape who remained without the ark of Noah, then will that man escape who is out of doors beyond the Church. The Lord warns us and says: He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who gathereth not with Me, scattereth. He who breaks the peace and concord of Christ, sets himself against Christ. He who gathers elsewhere but in the Church, scatters the Church of Christ. The Lord says: I and the Father are one; and again of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost it is written: And these three are one. And does anyone think that oneness, thus proceeding from the divine immutability, and cohering in heavenly sacraments, admits of being sundered in the Church, and split by the divorce of antagonist wills? He who holds not this unity holds not the law of God, holds not the faith of Father and Son, holds not the truth unto salvation.

“This sacrament of unity, this bond of concord inseparably cohering, is signified in the place in the Gospel where the coat of our Lord Jesus Christ is in nowise parted or cut, but is received a whole garment, by them who cast lots who should rather wear it, and is possessed as an inviolate [pg 330] and individual robe. The divine scripture thus speaks: But for the coat, because it was not sewed, but woven from the top throughout, they said one to another, Let us not rend it, but cast lots whose it shall be. It has with it a unity descending from above, as coming, that is, from heaven and from the Father; which it was not for the receiver and owner in anywise to sunder, but which he received once for all and indivisibly as one unbroken whole. He cannot own Christ's garment who splits and divides Christ's Church. On the other hand, when on Solomon's death his kingdom and people were split in parts, Ahijah the prophet, meeting King Jeroboam in the field, rent his garment into twelve pieces, saying: Take thee ten pieces; for thus saith the Lord: Behold, I will rend the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon, and will give ten tribes to thee; and two tribes shall be to him for my servant David's sake, and for Jerusalem, the city which I have chosen, to place my name there. When the twelve tribes of Israel were torn asunder, the prophet Ahijah rent his garment. But because Christ's people cannot be rent, His coat, woven and conjoined throughout, was not divided by those to whom it fell. Individual, conjoined, coentwined, it shows the coherent concord of our people who put on Christ. In the sacrament and sign of His garment, He has declared the unity of His Church.

“Who, then, is the criminal and traitor, who so inflamed by the madness of discord, as to think aught can rend, or to venture on rending God's unity, the Lord's garment, Christ's Church? He Himself warns us in His Gospel and teaches, saying: And there shall be one Fold and one Shepherd.... Think you that any can stand and live who withdraws from the Church, and forms for himself new homes and different domiciles?... Believers have no house but the Church only. This house, this hostelry of unanimity, the Holy Spirit designs and betokens in the Psalms, thus speaking: God who makes men to dwell with one mind in a house. In the house of God, in the Church of Christ, men dwell with one mind, and persevere in concord and simplicity.” To this he adds: “There is one God, and one Christ, and His Church one, and the Faith one, and one the people joined into the solid unity of a body by the cement of concord. Unity cannot be sundered, nor can one body be divided by a dissolution of its structure, nor be severed into pieces with torn and lacerated vitals. Parted from the womb nothing can live and breathe in its separated state: it loses its principle of health;” for “charity will ever exist in the kingdom; she will abide evermore in the unity of a brotherhood which entwines itself around her.”