CHAP. I. His Cross, and Death, and Resurrection, and the Faith through Him'.' (2) the gradual perception of the doctrine of Inspiration, which follo wed from It cannot, however, be denied, that the idea of the Inspiration of the New Testament, in the sense in which it is maintained now, was the growth of time. Distance is a necessary condition if we are to estimate rightly any object of vast proportions. The history of any period will furnish illustrations of this truth; and the teaching of God through man always appears to be subject to the common laws of human life and thought. If it be true that a prophet is not received in his own country, it is equally true that he is not received in his own age. The sense of his power is vague even when it is deepest. Years must elapse before we can feel that the words of one who talked with men were indeed the words of God. The successors of the Apostles did not, we the relation admit, recognize that the written histories of the of the Apo stles to their first suc cessors. Lord, and the scattered epistles of His first dis 1 Ad Philad. viii. The passage is beset with many difficulties, but the translation which I have ventured to give seems to remove many of them. Пpokeîσbaι is continually used of a question in debate: Plat. Euthyd. 279 D. καταγέλαστον δήπου ὁ πάλαι πρόκειται τοῦτο πάλιν Tроτidéval. Resp. viii. 533 E. etc. In place of ἐν τοῖς ἀρε χαίοις we may read ἐν τοῖς ἀρχείοις, according to Voss conjecture. The sense would be unchanged. The sudden burst of feeling (époì dé K. T. λ.) is characteristic of Ignatius. ciples, would form a sure and sufficient source and test of doctrine, when the current tradition had grown indistinct or corrupt. Conscious of a life in the Christian body, and realizing the power of its Head, as later ages cannot do, they did not feel that the Apostles were providentially charged to express once for all in their writings the essential forms of Christianity, even as the Prophets had foreshadowed them. The position which they held did not command that comprehensive view of the nature and fortunes of the Christian Church by which the idea is suggested and confirmed. But they had certainly an indistinct sense that their work was essentially different from that of their predecessors. They declined to perpetuate their title, though they may have retained their office. They attributed to them power and wisdom to which they themselves made no claim. Without any exact sense of the completeness of the Christian Scriptures, they still drew a distinct line between them and their own writings. As if by some providential instinct, each one of those teachers who stood nearest to the writers of the New Testament plainly contrasted his writings with theirs, and definitely placed himself on a lower level. The fact is most significant; for it shows in what way the formation of the Canon was an act of the intuition of the Church, derived from F CHAP. I. extent and CHAP. 1. basis and moulded the expression of the comIts great local mon creed. They recognize the fitness of a importance. Canon, and indicate the limits within which it must be fixed. And their evidence is the more important when it is remembered that they speak to us from four great centres of the ancient Church-from Antioch and Alexandria, from Ephesus and Rome. One Church alone is silent. The Christians of Jerusalem contribute nothing to this written portraiture of the age. The peculiarities of their belief were borrowed from a conventional system destined to pass away, and did not embody the permanent characteristics of any particular type of Apostolic doctrine. The Jewish Church at Pella was an accommodation, if we may use the word, and not a form of Christianity. How far its principles influenced the Church of the next age will be seen in the following Chapter1. Papias might, perhaps, have been noticed in this Chapter, but I believe that he belongs properly to the next generation. The testimony to the Gospel of St Mark, which he quotes from the Presbyter John, must, however, be considered as drawn from the Apostolic age. It will be convenient to notice this when speaking of Papias (c. ii. § 1.) CHAPTER II. THE AGE OF THE GREEK APOLOGISTS. A.D. 120-170. Οὐ σιωπῆς μόνον τὸ ἔργον, ἀλλὰ μεγέθους ἐστιν ὁ CHAP. II. scope of the Literature of this period THE writings of the Apostolic age were all the wide moulded in the same form, and derived from Christian the same relation of Christian life. As they represented the mutual intercourse of believers, so they rested on the foundation of a common rule and showed the peculiarities of a common dialect. The literature of the next age was widely different both in scope and character'. It included almost every form of prose composition -letters, chronicles, essays, apologies, visions, tales and answered to the manifold bearings of Christianity in the world. The Church had occasioned by then to maintain its ground amid systematic tion of the persecution, organized heresies and philosophic controversy. The name of the Christian had the Empire, already become a by-word; and it was evident 1 Cf. Möhler, ss. 179 ff. 2 It is probable that some of the Christian parts of the Sibylline Oracles (Libb. vi., vii.) also fall within this period. Cf. Friedlieb, Oracula Sibyllina, Einleit. ss. Lxxi., Lii. Very little is known of the prophecies of Hystaspes. Cf. Lücke, Comm. ü. d. Schriften des Ev. Johannes, iv. 1. ss. 45 f. 3 Just. Mart. Ap. i. 4. (p. 10, n. 4. Otto.) the new rela Church to CHAP. II. that they were free alike from Jewish super Heresies, stition and Gentile polytheism1: they were no longer sheltered by the old title of Jews, and it became needful that they should give an account of the faith for which they sought protection. The Apostolic tradition was insufficient to silence or condemn false teachers who had been trained in the schools of Athens or Alexandria; but now that truth was left to men it Philosophy. was upheld by wisdom. New champions were raised up to meet the emergency; and some of these did not scruple to maintain the doctrines of Christianity in the garb of philosophers. The remains of it are, how But although the entire literature of the age ever, scanty. was thus varied, the fragments of it which are left scarcely do more than witness to its extent. The letter to Diognetus, and some of the writings of Justin, alone survive in their original form. In addition to these there is the Latin translation of the Shepherd of Hermas, and a series of precious quotations from lost books, due mainly to the industry of Eusebius. The 1 Ep. ad Diogn. i.: ὁρῶ . . . . ὑπερσπουδακότα σε τὴν θεοσέ βειαν τῶν Χριστιανῶν μαθεῖν.... τίνι τε Θεῷ πεποιθότες, καὶ πῶς θρησκεύοντες . . . . οὔτε τοὺς νομιζομένους ὑπὸ τῶν ̔Ελλήνων θεοὺς λογίζονται, οὔτε τὴν Ἰουδαίων δεισιδαιμονίαν φυλάσσουσι. .... The whole passage is very interesting as showing how the object and form of Christian worship, and the character of the Christian life, would strike a thoughtful man at the time. 2 Collected by Routh, Relliquiæ Sacræ, (Ed. 2. Oxon. 1846). |