§ iv. 14. the expression; "Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered" (not enjoined) "you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so." (14.) For an illustration of the other kind of moral accommodation, we may refer to St. Augustin, de Mendacio1. "Whereas it is written, that God dealt bountifully with the Hebrew midwives, and with Rahab, the harlot of Jericho; that was not because of the falsehoods they uttered, but because of the kindness they showed to the people of GOD. It was not then their deceit which received a reward, but their good and dutiful affection.... For as it would not appear strange nor unreasonable, should GoD in consideration of their later good works be willing to forgive certain evil works formerly committed by them; so neither is it any thing wonderful, if God at one time and in one transaction beholding both, a deed of mercy and one of deceit,-did not only reward the one as good, but also with a view to that goodness did forgive the other which was evil. . . We may understand then that to those women, to the one in Egypt, to the other in Jericho, was rendered according to their humanity and mercy a reward, of this world indeed, but such as might also in prophetic shadow represent, unknown to themselves, something eternal. But whether at any time it be right to tell a lie, even for the sake of saving a man; this being a question, the solution of which even the most learned find a weary task, was of course far beyond the compass of ordinary women, dwelling where they did, and with the tone of morals they were used to. Accordingly, this ignorance of theirs, as also their equal blindness in many other things, things which are reserved to be known by the children not of this world but of the next; this ignorance, I say, the long suffering of God endured.... As to Rahab, when she did that deed,-good and laudable, considering her state of life,-she was not yet such as that one should require of her, Let your conversation be, Yea, yea, Nay, nay.' But we, in our inquiries whether any kind of lie can ever suit a good man, have an eye to the case not of an Egyptian, not of one appertaining to 1 § 32. t. vii. p. 341. E, Jericho or Babylon, nor of one who is still a denizen of the § iv. 15. earthly Jerusalem, which is in bondage with her children; but of a citizen of that city which is above, our mother eternal in the heavens," (15.) Hitherto those cases only have been considered, in which the approbation of Holy Writ is express; let us now proceed to those which may seem to be left doubtful, being simply recorded, with no clear precept or commendation. And here it will be obvious to the most cursory examiner, that amidst great individual diversity, the Fathers, as a body, in discussing such cases, almost always lean to the favourable side. They do so in a degree, which to persons with mere modern associations may often appear extravagant, sometimes even shocking. In this they might be suspected of merely indulging, perhaps unknown to themselves, the very natural wish, of being always on the side, as it were, of those whom they believed and knew for certain to be on God's side. One might be tempted to allow a good deal for such partiality, were it not that the Fathers have themselves explained, fully and frankly, the principles on which they so acted. Those principles are mainly two: the one, a hearty sense of the Communion of Saints, as a still subsisting bond of union between them and the Patriarchal and Mosaical ages; the other (which shall be first exemplified) a deep and reverential sense of God's peculiar Presence and Interference through the whole of this history; a trembling consciousness that they were near the invisible line which separates His agency from that of His rational creatures; which thought, wherever it becomes habitual, will necessarily make a religious man slow to censure, lest he be found blaming his Maker's work unawares. count of those passages of the Fathers, in which, considering the mystical meaning as undoubted, they seem to allege it as stopping the mouths of gainsayers. To do any thing like justice to their view, we must copy the acute reasoning of St. Augustin him self'.. This is the ac "I lay down this first of all, that not only the tongues of those 1 Contr. Faust. xxii. 24. § iv. 15. men, but their very lives also, were prophetical; that the whole kingdom of the Hebrews was as it were a great prophet, great because He is great who was the subject of the prophecy. Wherefore in regard of those among them, whose hearts were trained in the wisdom of GOD, we must look for prophecies of the CHRIST who should come, and of His Church, not only in what they said, but also in what they did; in regard of other individuals, and of the whole nation collectively, the field of prophecy lies rather in what God did with them and for them. For all these things,' as the Apostle says, 'were our ensamples,' our types or figures. "And whereas the Manichæans in certain actions, the depth of which they are far from comprehending, blame what they call the sensuality of the prophets; this is no more than parallel to the reproaches which are cast by certain sacrilegious heathens on our LORD Himself, for folly, or rather for madness, in seeking fruit on a tree at an unseasonable time of year, or for a sort of childish simplicity, in stooping His head and writing on the ground, and after His answer to certain questions beginning to do the same again. For why? they have no wisdom, no sense to perceive that in great souls certain excellences resemble certain blemishes in the mean and worthless; there is some slight show, but no real fairness, in the comparison. And they who find such fault with the nobler sort are like untutored boys in school, who having learned for a great discovery that singular nouns require singular verbs, criticise the most skilful of Latin authors for the phrase, 'Pars in frusta secant.' 'For,' say they, 'he should have written secat.' "On which one might perhaps without absurdity remark, that the verbal turns and figures of learned men are not further distant in their kind from the ungrammatical and barbarous phraseology of the ignorant, than are the figurative deeds of the Prophets from the sensual enormities of bad men. By which rule, as a boy, who should plead Virgil's figure by way of excuse for bad grammar, would be presently beaten with rods; so should any person guilty of adultery with his servant plead Abraham's example, who raised up seed of Hagar, good were it for that man to meet with some severer chastisement, and not I to be eternally punished with other adulterers. I grant that of § iv. 16. (16.) St. Irenæus more briefly had taught the same doctrine long before, vindicating the harmony of the two Testaments against the Gnostics, who were in fact but an earlier development of the Manichæan school. "The great Revealer '," says he, "is the SON of the FATHER, as being from the beginning with the FATHER. By Him accordingly prophetic visions, and differences of gifts, His own ministeries and the FATHER'S glory, have been manifested to the race of man, in a certain train and regular system, at such time as was expedient. For where things follow each other in order, there is consistency and harmony; and where there is harmony, there each thing is suited to the time; and where there is such suitableness, there is true expediency." (This is the same principle as was before observed on in Augustin, that GOD's eternal law measures alike all dispensations, but that part of that law is a certain equitable consideration of circumstances; and so far Irenæus too admits a kind of accommodation or moral economy.) He goes on. "For this cause the WORD became Dispenser, Steward, Distributer of the FATHER'S grace, according to the needs of mankind, for whose sake He contrived so vast arrangements." He proceeds to explain, that one of these arrangements or providences was, for the prophets of old time, announcing as they did the future vision of Almighty God, to see Him, see both the FATHER and the Son, not properly, but "so far as might practise and mould men's thoughts to receive that glory, which is hereafter to be revealed to all who love GOD. For not by discourse alone did the Fathers prophesy, but also by vision, and conversation, and acts which they wrought, 1 Lib. iv. § 37, p. 333, lin. 32. ed. Grabe. § iv. 17. after the suggestion of the SPIRIT. In this sense then they beheld the invisible GoD: ... in this sense again they beheld the Son of God, who is Man, conversing with men ; . . . and the several progressive portions of that work by which He sums up all, they partly beheld in vision, declared partly in words, and partly signified as in type by action; with their eyes beholding what God would have seen, by their discourse proclaiming what He would have heard, by their acts fulfilling what He would have done; in all, as prophets delivering their message." (17.) The instance of revelation by action, which Irenæus selects, is the marriage of the prophet Hosea, one of the cases on which the adversaries had taken occasion to speak reproachfully'. "CHRIST showed Himself to the prophets in their typical actions, so as by them to prefigure and show forth things to come. Thus the prophet Hosea took to him a wife of whoredoms;' by that act prophesying that the earth should commit great whoredom, departing from the LORD; meaning the men who are on the earth; and that out of such men God would be well pleased to take to Himself a Church, to be sanctified by participation of His Son, as she was sanctified by communion with the prophet." That which Scripture here affirms of the marriage of Hosea, viz., both its mystical purport, and its having been contracted by Divine order, the Fathers consider to be implied generally in the histories of the marriages of Prophets and Patriarchs; and surely they had warrant for their opinion, in St. Paul's commentary on the narrative concerning Abraham and Hagar, which is quoted by Origen (amongst others) for this argument: "That the Scriptural histories of brides and handmaids should be referred to the mystical meaning, is no doctrine of ours, but received of wise teachers from the beginning; one of whom thus expressed himself, awakening the hearer's mind to the mystical sense, Tell me, ye that desire,'" &c., (quoting the whole passage:) and then he subjoins: "Whoever will take up the Epistle to the Galatians will know how the allegory is employed in what relates to the marriages [of the Patriarchs] and their unions with their handmaids; not as though it were the purport of God's Word. 1 Iren. iv. 37, p. 336. 26. 2 Contr. Cels. iv. 43. t. i. p. 537. C. |