intellects and theological attainments a Procrustes-bed, by which to measure those of all others. This lesson we derive not simply from the evils of bigotry and exclusiveness, of which it furnishes so many revolting pictures, but, what is more pleasing, from examples of liberty, from the latitude of opinion and of discussion, which was allowed in what are usually considered as among the purest and best ages of Christianity. This liberty (of individual opinion) continued in the church, though not without being subject to occasional attack, for about three centuries. Origen and his school furnish the most striking illustrations and most splendid examples of it. The fame of this Father was great in the East, and the influence of his name and writings secured the existence of freedom of thought and speculation in the church, long after it would otherwise have become extinct. With the decline of his school in the East, and the triumph of the Athanasians and Augustinians in the West, all liberty of opinion died out, and the world was reduced to a state of spiritual bondage, from which it is yet but partially emancipated.

Of the latitude of thought and discussion, allowed in those times, I will produce two or three specimens, which contrast strangely with the narrowness of subsequent ages.

I will take as my first the manner in which the Fathers of the period alluded to were accustomed to express themselves in regard to the Old Testament writings.

I will not insist on the example of the Manicheans, because they were reputed heretics, though on certain difficult points they scarceley expressed themselves with more freedom than the Fathers deemed orthodox, and there were among them some of the best and noblest spirits and finest geniuses of the age; and many of them possessed no ordinary degree of critical sagacity and skill. They were among the Spiritualists of the day, and the Materialism of the Old Testament was one of the circumstances which inspired in their minds a disgust for it. It contains, say they, no revelation of eternal life, and the temporal promises, of which it is full, are suited only to nurture men's worldly and sensual propensities. They complained, too, that the ideas of the Deity taught in the sacred books of the Jews were impure, and in some respects false and injurious to the Divine Being; that the morality of these books was imperfect; that the Mosaic worship and ceremonies were unworthy of God; the history of the Creation and Fall, false and absurd; and fiVOL. XXXIII. - 3D S. VOL. XV. NO. I.

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nally, that it is not true that the Hebrew prophets uttered any predictions of the Christian Saviour.*

These were Manichean opinions. But on several of the points involved some of the most eminent of the Fathers, whose orthodoxy passed unquestioned in their day, were almost equally latitudinarian.

How, ask the Manicheans, are we to attribute anger, revenge, jealousy, repentance, and similar passions and affections, to the one infinite and all-perfect Being? How could an evil spirit come from him, the source of all good, to trouble Saul? How could he command the Hebrews, under a false pretence, to borrow and carry off the jewels and vestments of the Egyptians; or to massacre the inhabitants of Canaan without distinction of age or sex? A multitude of other difficulties were suggested by free inquirers and heretics. And how did Christians treat them? There were some, it appears, who, to dispose of all objections at once, contended for the right of purifying the record, on the ground that Moses did not write the law, that he only delivered his precepts orally to the chiefs of the people, and that, both before and after they were reduced to writing, some things were changed, and not a few were added, and falsehood became blended with truth.t

I am not aware that this hypothesis was assumed by any of the more eminent of the Fathers, certainly not without very important modifications. But Origen expresses views which, traced to their consequences, will to some appear little less startling, when he says, speaking of the Jewish laws, that if we take the language in which they are delivered in its literal sense, or as it is commonly understood, and as the Jews interpret it, that is, if we do not explain it by allegory, or some rule of mystical interpretation, he must blush to own that God had given such laws to the Israelites; that the laws of the Romans, the Athenians, and the Lacedemonians were more rational. This same Father, who was the great doctor of the East, and the flail of heretics, as he was called, pronounces the Mosaic account of the Creation and Paradise, taken to the letter, too absurd for belief. "What man of sense," says he, "will ever persuade himself that there was a first, a second, and third day, each having its morning and evening, when there

a

* Beausobre, Histoire de Manichée et du Manicheisme, T. I. p. 270. † Clement. Hom. I and II. Hom. in Levit. vii. n. 5.

was neither sun, moon, nor stars? And who so foolish as to believe that God, like a husbandman, planted a garden in Eden, and placed in it a tree of life, a visible and palpable tree, so that he who should eat of its fruit, with his bodily teeth, would receive life?" The account of the Temptation and Fall is with him a sublime apologue.

The severe, the rigid Augustine treads in his steps. Writing against the Manicheans, after he had forsaken their ranks, he does not think it safe to insist on the literal and historical meaning of the first three chapters of Genesis, lest in so doing he should attribute to them a sense unworthy of God and offensive to piety. To preserve the credit of Moses and his history, he says, we must have recourse to allegory and enigmatical interpretations, there being no other escape from impiety and profaneness. Truly this, as it has been said, is virtually to abandon both Moses and the Old Testament, though such was not the good Father's intention; nor was it Origen's.

Such freedom was then taken with the Mosaic narrative. Yet all this and much more passed without censure, such was the liberty of speculation and inquiry in those days. No one was thought any the worse Christian for so expressing himself.

Take one or two other points; the question of human inspiration, for example. On this subject the language of the Fathers is not very precise, and it is difficult always to ascertain with certainty their meaning; but it is easy to see that they did not confine inspiration within any very narrow limits. They attribute it, in fact, to every pure mind, heathen and Christian.

The universality of divine illumination, in some sense, indeed, is an old doctrine, and was long anterior to Christianity. The Christian Fathers held the same, somewhat modified by Jewish ideas. They spoke of the human reason as an emanation of the Divinity, and a partaker of the divine reason, or logos, which lightens every man that comes into the world. So far did the Fathers go on this subject, as almost totally to annihilate the distinction between natural religion and revealed. Justin Martyr says, that Christ was "in part known to Socrates," because he is that light which is in all men. He speaks of

* De Princ. L. iv. n. 16.

† De Genesi ad Manichæos, L. II. c. 2. et Retract. L. I. c. 18. + Apol. II.

him as the logos, or "reason of which the whole human family participates." "All who have lived according to reason," he tells us, "were Christians, though reputed atheists, as Socrates, Heraclitus," + and others; and he says the same of those then living," they are Christians," a very liberal definition, certainly, liberal enough, I suppose, to satisfy any one of us.

This reason, or logos, the same, he says, which inspired the Jewish prophets, and imparted to the Gentile philosophers whatever right notions they possessed of God and of human nature, in the relation in which it stands to him, Justin calls the "seed of reason implanted in the whole race of man," ‡ the implanted," or inborn, "reason,' “the divine seminal reason,' "whence come the germs of truth to all." §

The Gentiles enjoyed the higher as well as the lower, or common inspiration. There were genuine prophets among them. So taught Justin, and generally the more eminent of the early Fathers. Nor did they hesitate to assert, what indeed was implied in their views of the inspiring reason, that Christianity was as old as the creation.||

Again, in regard to the nature of God, history shows us that the early Christian Fathers were as far from being unanimous as we moderns are. The philosophical converts to Christianity appear to have retained, in a great measure, the views of their heathen masters on the subject. The corporeity of God was openly asserted.

It is confidently affirmed, as you know, that Descartes was the first who distinctly taught the strict immateriality of the thinking principle. Before his time, it has been said, that all, whether philosophers or theologians, regarded the soul as having body and extension. They attributed them to God himself. Parts

* Apol. I.

+ Apol. I. ‡ Apol. II. § Apol. I.

This Clement of Alexandria is at great pains to show, in opposition to the objection, which was frequently urged, that it was new, the mushroom growth of yesterday, - an institution which had suddenly sprung up, and which now showed its arrogance by boldly attacking the time-honored religions and philosophy of the old world. Not so, says Clement, - Christianity is not new, - it dates far back in the ages, - before the birth of the oldest of the sages, or of the world itself. A portion of its rays had flowed in upon the minds of the Greeks, imparting to them some knowledge of the truth, "for a certain divine effluence distils upon all men, but chiefly those who employ themselves in rational inquiry."-- See Christian Examiner, Vol. V. pp. 142--145, 3d series.

of this statement seem a little too broad.* Augustine at least, among the Fathers, would appear to have been an exception. Yet certain it is, that the notion of a purely immaterial substance was not familiar to the ancient Christians.† Tertullian believed God to possess body and form, and so did many others, perhaps most Christians of his time. Melito wrote a treatise, now lost, with the title, "God is Corporeal.” Origen, in some parts of his writings at least, goes with Tertullian. The term incorporeal, he observes, is not found in the Scriptures.§ Those passages in the Bible which teach that God is a spirit, so far from proving that he is absolutely incorporeal, in the opinion of some of that age, proved directly the reverse. The observation of the Saviour, "God is a spirit," is one of the passages they quote to prove him corporeal,|| for however inconsistent with the modern idea, it was then believed that all spirit had body and shape, -length, breadth, and height, — not body composed of gross, earthly particles, but of a subtile, attenuated substance, somewhat resembling air, ether, or fire. Such was all spirit. Such a substance was God, infinitely extended, according to some, while human souls and angels had only finite extension. The difficulty of forming a conception of a purely spiritual substance, which the Cartesians acknowledged, and which, I suppose, all, who have speculated or thought much on the subject, must have felt, seems to have

* Cudworth (Intell. Syst. p. 767, et seq. ed. 1678) has brought together a variety of passages from the philosophers, having a bearing, more or less intimate, on this subject; but the result is unsatisfactory. So also Stewart's Elements, Vol. I. p. 449, ed. Bost., and Diss. I. Part I. p. 138. Hallam, Hist. Lit. Vol. III. p. 141. Beausobre, Hist. Man. T. I. p. 481, et seq. Petavius has also treated of the subject in his Dogmata Theologica. Priestley will not allow that even Descartes taught the strict immateriality of the soul, but thinks that he finds the first direct assertion of it in Sir Kenelm Digby. Disquisitions relating to Matter and Spirit, Vol. I. p. 259.

I am not aware that the Docete were an exception. There is no evidence, I believe, that their idea of spirit was more refined than that of others of their age, or who preceded or followed them, whether philosophers or Christians.

"Quis enim negabit Deum corpus esse?" Adv. Prax. c. VII. § De Princ. Præf. || De Princ. L. I. c. I.

"In

¶ Still God was frequently said to be incorporeal. It is difficult to say precisely what idea was meant to be conveyed by this term. the language of the philosophers," and of course, of the philosophical Christians, this word, says Beausobre “excludes neither extension, nor body, taken in a philosophical sense."