As long as the persecution lasted, anything like regularity and completeness in a work like that of Origen was clearly impossible. But a persecution at Alexandria, though generally furious as long as it lasted, happily seldom lasted very long. Popular opinion was, no doubt, very bitter against Christianity. But popular opinion was one thing; the will of the prince-governor another. Moreover, the popular opinion of the Greek philosophers was generally diametrically opposed to that of their Roman masters, and the beliefs and traditions of the Rhacôtis tended to the instant extermination of the Jews; and though these four antagonistic elements could, upon occasion, so far forget their differences as to unite in an onslaught against the Christians, yet, before long, quarrels arose and riots ensued among the allied parties to such an extent that the legionaries had no choice but to clear the streets in the most impartial manner. Again, it is quite certain that the Christian party included in it not a few men of rank; and, what is more important, of power and authority. This we know from the trouble St. Dionysius, one of Origen's scholars, afterward had with many such persons who had "lapsed" in the Decian persecution. As everything, therefore, depended on the humor of the governor, and as the governor was, as other men, liable to be influenced by bribes suggestions, and caprice, a furious persecution might suddenly die out, and the Church begin to enjoy comparative peace at the very time when things looked worst. Until the year 211, "Adamantius" taught, studied, prayed, and fasted amidst disturbance, martyrdoms, and fleeings from house to house; but that year wrought a change, not only in Alexandria, but over the whole world. It was simply the year of the death of Septimus Severus at York, and of the accession of Caracalla and Geta; but this was an event which, if precedents were to be trusted, invited all the nations that recognized the Roman eagle to be ready for any change, however unreasonable, beginning with the senate, and ending with the Christians. It was, probably, in this same year, 211, that Origen took advantage of the restoration of tranquillity to visit the city and Church of Rome. It would seem that this episode of his journey to Rome has not been sufficiently considered in the greater part of the accounts of his life. Protestant writers, as may be expected, pass it over quietly, either barely mentioning it, or, if they do put a gloss upon it, confining themselves to generalities about the interchange of ideas or the antiquity and renown of the Roman Church. But there is evidently more in it than this. Origen was just twenty-six years of age: though so young, he was already famous as a teacher and a holy liver in the most learned of cities, and one of the most ascetical of churches. His work was immense, and daily increasing. On the cessation of the persecution, the great school was to be reorganized, and put once more into that thorough working order which had made it so effective under Pantaenus and Clement. Yet, just at this busy crisis, he hurries off to Rome, stays there a short time, and hurries back again. In the first place, why go at all? What could Rome or any other church give him that he had not already at Alexandria? Not scientific learning, certainly; not a systematic [{732}] organization of work; not reverence for Holy Scripture; not the method of confuting learned philosophy. Again: why go specially to Rome? Was there not a high road, easy and comparatively short, to Caesarea of Palestine, and would he not find there facilities enough for the "interchange of thought?" For there, about fifteen years before, had assembled one of the first councils ever held since the council of Jerusalem. Was there not Jerusalem, the cradle of the Church? It was then, indeed, shorn of its glory, both spiritual and historical; for it was subject, at least not superior, to Caesarea, and was known to the empire by the name of Aelia Capitolina; but its aged bishop was a worker of miracles. Was there not Antioch, the great central see of busy, intellectual Syria, the see of St. Theophilus, wherein saintly bishops on the one hand, and Marcionite heresy and Paschal schism on the other, kept the traditions of the faith bright and polished? Were there not the Seven Churches? Was there not many a "mother-city" between the Mediterranean and the mountain ranges where apostolic teachings were strong yet, and apostolic men yet ruled? Origen's motive in going to "see Rome" is given us by himself, or, rather, by his biographer in his words; but, unfortunately, in such an ambiguous way that it is almost useless as an argument; he wished, says Eusebius, "to see the very ancient Church of Rome." The word we have translated "very ancient" (
.) may also mean, as we need not say, "first in dignity." It is hardly worth while to argue upon it, but it will not fail to strike the reader that Jerusalem and Antioch, not to mention other sees, were both older than Rome, if age was the only recommendation. Origen's visit to Rome, then, is a very remarkable event in his life, for it shows undoubtedly that the chief of the greatest school of the Church found he required something which could only be obtained in Rome, and that something can only have been an approach to the chief and supreme depositary of tradition. He was at the very beginning of his career, and he could begin no better than by invoking the blessing of that rock of the Church of whom his master, Clement, had taught him to think so nobly and lovingly. We shall see that, many a year after this, in the midst of troubles and calumnies, when his great life was nearly closed, the same see of Peter received the professions and obedience of his failing voice, as it had witnessed and blessed the ardor of his youth. He was not, indeed, the first who, though already great in his own country, had been drawn toward a greatness which something told them was without a rival. Three-quarters of a century before Rome had attracted from far-off Jerusalem that great St. Hegesippus, the founder of church history, whose works are lost, but whose fame remains. A convert from Judaism, he left his native city, travelled to Rome, and sojourned there for twenty years, busily learning and committing to writing those practices and traditions of the Roman Church which he afterward appears to have disseminated all over the East, and which he conveyed, toward the end of his life, to his own Jerusalem, where he died. From Assyria and beyond the Tigris the "perfume of Rome" had enticed the great Tatian—happy if, on his return, he had still kept pure that faith which, at Rome, he defended so well against Crescens the cynic. A great mind and a widely cultivated genius found the sphere of its rest in Rome, when St. Justin finished his wanderings there and sealed the workings of his active intellect by shedding his blood at the bidding of the ruling clique of Stoics—"philosophus et martyr" as the old martyrologies call him. A famous name, too, is that of Rhodon, of Asia, well known for his steady and able defence of the faith against Marcionites and other heretics. These, and such as these, had come from the world's ends to visit the great apostolic see before Origen's day dawned. But there were others, and as great, whom [{733}] he may actually have met in the city, either on a visit like himself, or because they were members of the Roman clergy. There was the great Carthaginian, Tertullian, who, for many years, lived, learned, and wrote in Rome; his works show how well he knew the Roman Church, and how often afterward he had occasion, in his polemical battles, to allude to the "Ecclesia transmarina" as Africa called Rome. A meeting between Origen and Tertullian is a very suggestive idea; the only misfortune is, that we have no warrant whatever for supposing it beyond the bare possibility. But by naming Tertullian we suggest one view, at least, of the ecclesiastical society which Origen would meet when he visited Rome. Another celebrated man, whom there is more likelihood that Origen did meet, is the convert Roman lawyer, Minucius Felix, who employed his recognized talents and trained skill in vigorous apologetic writings, one of which we still possess. A third was the priest Caius, one of the Roman clergy, famed as the adversary of Proclus the Montanist, unless he had already started on his missionary career as regionary bishop. Finally, there was St. Hippolytus, who, like Caius, was from the school of St. Irenaeus, and had come from Lyons to Rome, where he seems to have been no unworthy representative of his teacher's zeal against heretics. Nearly every step of the life of St. Hippolytus is encumbered by the ruin of a learned theory or the useless rubbish of an abandoned position; but he as far as we can conjecture, the chief scientific adviser of the Roman pontiffs in the measures they took at this time regarding Easter and against the Noetians. Until scientific men have settled their disputes as to who was the author of the Philosophumena, or Treatise against All Heresies, little more can be said about St. Hippolytus. The Treatise itself, however, whose recovery some twenty years ago excited so much interest, must have had an author, and it is nearly certain the author must have been one of the Roman clergy at this very time. It is still more certain that the matters therein discussed must represent very completely one view of Church matters at Rome in the early part of the third century; and, therefore, even if Origen did not meet the author in person, he must have met many who thought as he did. Now it is rather interesting to read the Philosophumena in this light, and to conjecture what Origen would think of some of its views. The leading idea of the work, which is not even yet extant complete, is to prove that all heresies have sprung from Greek philosophy. This it attempts to do by detailing, first, the systems of the philosophers, then those of the heretics, and showing their mutual connection. The scandalous attack on St. Callistus, in the ninth book, may or may not be an interpolation by a later hand; if not, the author must have been much more ingenious than reputable. There is no denying the historical and literary value of the Treatise; but where it professes to draw deductions and to give philosophical analyses of systems, it seems of comparatively moderate worth. For instance, the author's analysis and appreciation of the philosophy of Aristotle is little better than a libel on the great "maestro di lor chi sanno;" and Basilides, though doubtless a clever personage in his way, can hardly have taken the trouble to go so far for the small amount of philosophy that seasons his fantastical speculations. But a general opinion resembling the opinion maintained in the Treatise seems to have been common in the West; and when Tertullian says of the philosophy of Plato that it was "haereticorum omnium condimentarium," he was doubtless expressing the idea of many beside himself. To Origen, fresh from the school of Clement and the atmosphere of Alexandria, such language must have sounded startling, to say the least, and we cannot help feeling he would be rather [{734}] sorry, if not indignant, to hear the great names he had been taught to think of with so much admiration and compassion unfeelingly caricatured into a relationship of paternity with such men as the founders of Gnosticism. He does not appear to have been very familiar yet with the Greek systems; they had not come specially in his way, though he had heard of them in the Christian schools, and there is little doubt that he had already seen the necessity of studying them more closely, as he actually did on his return to Alexandria. What effect the views of the Western Church had on his teaching, and how he treated the philosophers, we shall have to consider in the sequel. Meanwhile, his stay at Rome was over; he had studied the faith and heresy, discipline and schism, church organization and sectarian rebellion, in the most important centre of the whole Church, and his school at Alexandria was awaiting him, to reap the benefit of his journey.
On the return of Origen to Alexandria, it would almost appear as if he had wished to decline, for a time, the office of chief of the Catechisms. The historian tells us that he only resumed it at the strongly expressed desire of his bishop, Demetrius, who was anxious for the "profit and advantage of the brethren." Perhaps he wished for greater leisure than such a post would permit of, in order to carry into execution certain projects that were forming in his mind. But neither the patriarch nor his scholars would hear of his giving up, and so he had to settle to his work again; "which he did," says Eusebius, "with the greatest zeal," as he did everything. From this time, with one or two short interruptions, he lived and taught in Alexandria for twenty years. His life as an authoritative teacher and "master in Israel" may be said to commence from this point. It was an epoch resembling in some degree that other epoch, thirty years before, when Pantaenus had been called upon to take the charge of chief teacher in the Alexandrian Church. Now, as then, the winter of a persecution had passed, and the season was sunny and promising. Now, as then, men were high in hope, and set to work with valiant hearts to repair the breaches the straggle had left, and to restore to the rock-built fortress that glory and comeliness that became her so well; but with which, if need was, she could securely dispense. But there was no slight difference between 180 and 211. The tide of Christianity had risen perceptibly all over the Church; most of all on the shores of its greatest scientific centre. The possibility of appealing to those who had heard the apostles had long been past, but now even the disciples of Polycarp, Simeon, and Ignatius had disappeared; instead of Irenaeus there was Hippolytus, and Demetrius of Alexandria was the eleventh successor of St. Mark. Heretics had multiplied, questions had been asked, tradition was developing itself, dogma was being fixed. The form of teaching was, therefore, in process of change as other things changed. Greater precision, more "positive theology," a more constant look-out for what authority had said or might say—these necessities would make the teacher's office more difficult, even if more definite. The position of the Church toward its enemies, also, was sensibly changing. The "gain-sayers" were not of the same class as had been addressed by St. Theophilus or St. Justin. The state of things had grown more distinctly marked. Christianity was no longer an idea that might, in a burst of noble rhetoric, be made to set on fire, for a moment, even the camp of the enemy. It was now known to the Gentile world as a stern and unyielding praxis; susceptible, perhaps, of scientific and literary treatment, but quite distinct from both science and letters. Enthusiastic but timid dilettanti had lost their enthusiasm, and gave full scope to their fears. Amiable philosophers took back the right hand of fellowship, and retreated behind those who, by a [{735}] special instinct, had always refused to be amiable, and now thought themselves more justified than ever. On the Christian side the war had lost much of the adventure which accompanies the first dashing inroads into an enemy's country. Surprises were not so easy, systematic opposition was frequent, and their writers were obliged to fight by tactics, and in the prosaic array of argument for argument. Documents, moral testimony, institutions, were the objects of attack from without. The apostles were vilified, faith was proved to be irrational, the Bible was ranked with Syrian impostures and Jewish charm-books. And here, in the matter of the Bible, was a mighty enterprise for the Christian teacher. The canon had not yet been officially promulgated. A generation that would despise an apocryphal book of Homer or a false Orphic hymn would not be easily satisfied with the credentials of a religion. Great, then, would be that Christian teacher who should at once teach the faithful, and yet not "take away from" the faith; win the philosophers, and yet fight them hand to hand; and give to the world a critical edition of the Bible, yet hold fast to ancient tradition. Such was the work of Origen.
He began by external organization; he divided the multitudes that flocked to the Catechisms into two grand classes; one of those who were commencing, another of those who were more advanced. The former class he gave to his first convert, Heraclas; the latter he kept to himself. Heraclas was "skilled in theology," and "in other respects a very eloquent man;" and, moreover, he was "fairly conversant with philosophy," three qualifications in an Alexandrian catechist none of which could be dispensed with. In any case, the division was a matter of absolute necessity, for these extraordinary Alexandrian scholars, models and patterns that deserve to be imitated more extensively than they have been, gave him no respite and kept no regular school-hours, but crowded in and out "from morning till night;" "not even a breathing-space did they afford him," says his biographer. In such circumstances theological study and scriptural labors were out of the question, even if he had been the man of adamant that his admirers, with the true Alexandrian passion for nicknames, had already begun to call him. He therefore looked about among "his familiars," those of his disciples who had attached themselves to him and lived with him a life of study and asceticism; and from them he chose out Heraclas, the brother of the martyred Plutarchus, to be the chief associate of his work.
It need not be again mentioned that Origen's work, as that of Pantaenus and of Clement before him, had three classes of persons to deal with—catechumens, heretics, and philosophers. His dealings with the heretics and philosophers will be treated of more appropriately when we come to consider his journeys, the most important of which occurred after the expiration of the twenty years with which we are now concerned. As the school of Alexandria was chiefly and primarily connected with the catechumens, the account of the twenty years of his presidency will naturally be concerned chiefly and primarily with the latter, that is to say, with those whom that great school undertook to instruct in faith and discipline. And here we approach and stand close beneath one side of that monumental fane that bears upon it for all generations the name of Origen. The neophytes of Alexandria were chiefly taught out of one book; it was the custom handed from teacher to teacher; each held up the book and explained it, according to the "unvarying tradition of the ancients." For two hundred and ten years the work had gone on; but time has destroyed nearly every trace of what was written and spoken. For the first time since St. Mark wrote the gospel, Alexandria speaks now in history with a voice that shall commence a new era in the history of [{736}] Holy Scripture. Pantaemus had written "Commentaries" on the whole of the Bible; Clement had left, in the Hypotyposes, a summary exposition of all the canonical Scripture, not forgetting a glance at the "Contradictions" of heretics. Both these writings have perished long ago. When Origen came, in his turn, to take the same work in hand, a pressing want soon forced itself upon his mind. There was no authentic version of the sacred Word. The New Testament canon was still uncertain, one Church upholding a greater number of books, another less. The Roman canon was, indeed, from the first identical with the Tridentine (see Perrone, "De Locis Theologicis"). But the Church of Antioch, e.g., ignored no less than five of the canonical books. Alexandria, well supplied with learned expositors, and not a little influenced by the native Alexandrian instinct for criticism and grammar, had got further in the development of the canon than the majority of its sisters. Yet, so far, there had hardly been any distinct interference on the part of authority, and though, as we shall see, Origen's New Testament canon was the same as that of the Council of Trent, yet there were not wanting private writers who expressed doubts about the Epistle to the Hebrews or the Apocalypse. One thing, however, is very clear in all these somewhat troublesome disputes about the canon; whether we turn to Tertullian in Africa, to St. Jerome in Italy, to St. Irenaeus in the West, or to Clement and Origen in the East, we find one grand and large criterion put forth as the test of all authenticity, viz., the tradition of the ancients. "Go to the oldest churches," says St. Irenaeus. "The truest," says Tertullian, "is the oldest; the oldest is what always was; what always was is from the apostles; go therefore to the churches of the apostles, and find what is there held sacred." "We must not transgress the bounds set by our fathers," says Origen. It took several centuries to complete this process; but the principle was a strong and a living one, and its working out was only a matter of time. It was worked out something in this fashion. A provincial presbyter, we will say from Pelusium, or Syene, or Arsinoe, came up to Alexandria (he may easily have done so, thanks to the police arrangements and engineering enterprise of Ptolemy Philadelphus); having much ecclesiastical news to communicate, and perhaps important business to arrange on the part of his bishop, he would be thrown into close contact with the presbytery of the metropolitan Church. Let us suppose that, in order to support some point of practical morality, touching the "lapsed" or the converts, he quoted Hermas' "Shepherd" as canonical Scripture. The archdeacon with whom he was arguing would demur to such an authority; let him quote Paul, or Jude, or Peter, or John, but not Hernias; Hernias was not in the canon. The presbyter from the provinces would be a little amazed and even ruffled; how could he say it was not in the canon when he himself had heard it read on the Lord's day before the sacred mysteries in the patriarchal Church, in the presence of the very patriarch himself, seated on his throne, and surrounded by the clergy? A canonical book meant a book within the Church's general rule (
), and the rule of the Church was that a book read at such a time was thereby declared true Scripture. The archdeacon would reply that the presbyter was right in the main, both as to facts and principles; but would point out that at Alexandria they had a set of books which were read at the solemn time he mentioned, beside regular Scripture; and if he had known their usages better, or if he had asked any of the clergy, or the patriarch, he would be aware that such writings were only read to the people as pious exhortations, not defined as the repository of the faith. The presbyter would consider this inconvenient, and would doubtless be right in thinking so. The practice was [{737}] condemned by various councils in the next century. But he would at once admit that if the tradition were so, then the Alexandrian Church certainly appeared to reject Hernias. But he would have another difficulty. Did not Clement, of blessed memory, consider Hernias as authentic, or, at any rate, the Epistle of Barnabas, which was quite a parallel case? And did not Origen (whom we suppose to be then teaching) call the "Shepherd" "divinely inspired?" It was true, the archdeacon would rejoin, that both Clement in former years and Origen then spoke very highly of several writings of this class; but he must refer him once more to the authoritative tradition of the Alexandrian Church, to be learned, in the last instance, from the lips of Demetrius himself: this would at once show that Clement and Origen could not mean to put Hernias on a level with Paul, and Origen himself would certainly admit so much, if he were asked. The presbyter would inquire, during his stay, of the heads of the Catechetical school, of the ancient priests, and of the patriarch; he would be satisfied that what the archdeacon said was true; and he would return to his city on the Red Sea, or at the extremity of the Thebaid, or on the north-western coast of the continent, with authentic intelligence that the Apostolic Church of Alexandria rejected Hermas from the Scripture canon, and that, therefore, it certainly ought to be rejected by his own Church. He would, perhaps, in addition to this, bring the information that the metropolitan Church, so he had found out in his researches, upheld the Epistle to the Hebrews, or the Apocalypse of the Apostle John, to be true and genuine Scripture; would it not, therefore, be well to consider whether these also should not be admitted by themselves? In this way, or in some way analogous, the Churches that lay within the "circumscription" of a patriarchal or apostolic see would by degrees be led to conform their canon to the canon of the principal Church. As time went on, the great metropolitan sees themselves became grouped round the three grand centres of Alexandria, Antioch, and Rome; and, finally, in the process of the development of tradition, at least as early as A.D. 800, the whole Church had adopted the canon as approved by Rome in the decretal of Innocent I. It is, therefore, a remarkable fact that Origen quotes the canon of the New Testament precisely as it now stands in the Vulgate. It would hardly be true to say that he formally states as exclusively authentic the complete list of the Catholic canon; but that he does enumerate it is certain. Moreover, in addition to the remarkable correctness of his investigations on the canon, Origen did much, in other ways, for a book that was emphatically the textbook of his school. The exemplars in general use were in a most unsatisfactory state: there were hardly two alike. Writers had been careless, audacious innovators had inserted their interpolations, honest but mistaken bunglers had added and taken away whenever the sense seemed to require it. It is Origen himself who makes these complaints, and nobody had better occasion to know how true they were. The manuscript used in the great Church probably differed from that used by the chief catechist; his, again, differed from every one of those brought to class by the wealthier of his scholars. One would bring up a copy of St. Matthew's Gospel, which, on investigation, would turn out to be full of Nazarite or Ebionite "improvements"—another would have an Acts of the Apostles, which had been bequeathed to him by some venerable Judaizant, and wherein St. James of Jerusalem would be found to have assumed more importance than St. Luke was generally supposed to have given him. A third would have a copy so full of monstrous corruptions in the way of mutilation and deliberate heretical glossing, that the orthodox ears of the [{738}] master would certainly have detected a quotation from it in two lines: it would be one of Valentine's editions. A fourth, newly arrived from some place where Tertullian had never been heard of, would appear with a bulky set of volumina, which Origen would find to his great disgust to be the New Testament "according to Marcion." That first and chief of reckless falsifiers had "circumcised" the New Testament, as St. Irenaeus calls it, to such an extent that he had to invent a quantity of new Acts and Apocalypses to keep up appearances, and what he retained he had freely cut and tortured into Marcionism; for he said openly that the apostles were moderately well-informed, but that his lights were far in advance of them. Such examples as these are, of course, extremes; but even in orthodox copies there must have been a bewildering number of variantes. Origen's position would bring him into contact with exemplars from many distant churches. The work of copying fresh ones for the "missions," or to supply the wants of the provinces, would necessitate some choice of manuscripts; and in a matter so important, we may be sure that his catechists, fellow-townsmen of Aristarchus, rather enjoyed than otherwise the vigorous critical disputes which the collation of MSS. has a special tendency to engender. It is nearly established—indeed, we may say, it is certain—that Origen wrote a copy of the New Testament with his own hand. It was not a new edition, apparently, but a corrected copy of the generally received version. He corrected the blunders of copyists; he struck out of the text everything that was evidently a mere gloss; he re-inserted what had clearly dropped out by mischance, and adopted a few readings that were unmistakable improvements. But he made no alteration of the text on mere conjecture. However faulty a reading might seem, he never changed it without authority; he had too much reverence for Holy Scripture, and probably, also, too bitter an experience of conjectural emendations, to sanction such dangerous proceedings by his own practice. This precious copy, the fruit of his labors and study, the depositary of his wide experience, and the record of his "adamantine" industry, was apparently the one from which he himself always quoted, and, therefore, we may conclude, which he always used. It lay, after his death, in the archives of Caesarea of Palestine, with his other Biblical MSS. Pamphilus the Martyr is related to have copied it; and in the time of Constantine, Eusebius sent many transcripts of it to the imperial city. Eusebius himself copied it with all the reverence he would necessarily feel for his hero, Origen; and by means of his copy, or of copies made by his direction, it became the basis of that recension of the New Testament known as the Alexandrine. St. Jerome was well acquainted with the library of Caesarea, and often mentions the "Codices Adamantii" which he was privileged to consult there; and we need not remind the reader of the well-known agreement of the Latin versions with those of Palestine and Alexandria. Now Palestine meant—first, Jerusalem, where was the celebrated library formed by St. Alexander, Origen's own college friend and an Alexandria man, as we should say, and partly under Origen's influence; and, secondly, Caesarea, which inherited Origen's traditions and teaching, at least equally with Alexandria, as we shall see later on, and in which the originals of his works were preserved with religious veneration, until war and sack of Persian or Moslem destroyed them. Thus the work of Origen on the New Testament, begun and mainly carried out during those twenty years at Alexandria, is living and active at this very day.
But if the New Testament needed setting to rights, it was correct and accurate in comparison with the Old. How he treated the Septuagint, and how the Hexapla and the Tetrapla grew under nimble hands and learned heads, we must for the present defer to tell.