Studies in church history. The rise of the temporal power.--Benefit of clergy.--Excommunication.--The early church and slavery

Front matter

CORNELi: UNIVERSITY

LIBRARY

Cornell University Library BX946 .L43 1883 olln

Preface

rpiIE first of the following essays lias already appeared, in a -*- less extended form, in the North American Review. It records the establisliment of principles of which the subsequent development is traced in the two succeeding essays. Throughout the whole I have sought rather to present facts than to draw inferences, and I have endeavored to confine myself to points which illustrate the temporal aspect of ecclesiastical liistory, showing liow the church, in meeting the successive crises of its career, succeeded in establishing the absolute theocratic despotism which diverted it so strangely from its spiritual functions.

If in this I have appeared to dwell too exclusively on the faults and wrong-doing of the cliurch, it lias arisen from no lack of appreciation of the services rendered to liumanity by the organization wliich in all ages has assumed for itself the monopoly of tlie heritage of Christ. Yet if we ask what would have been the condition of the world if tliat organization had not succeeded in bearing the ark of Christianity through the wilderness of the first fifteen centuries, in summing up the benefits which man has derived through the church, we may also not unreasonably inquire how much greater would have been our advance in all that renders us worthy of the precepts of the Gospel had that church always been true to its momentous trust.

Lactantius, rejoicing over the conversion of Constantine, in-

IV PREFACE.

dulges in glowing anticipations of the approaching regeneration of mankind, when the false gods shall all be overthrown, and he alone be worshipped whose temples are not of clay or of stone, but are men fashioned in the image of their Creator: "If God alone were worshipped, then would war and dissensions be no more, for men would know that they are all children of the same Divine Father. Bound together in the sacred and inviolable bonds of heavenly truth, they would no more plot in secret against each other, when they would know the punishments prepared for the slayers of souls by an omniscient God, to whom all hidden evil and the innermost secrets of their hearts are revealed. Fraud and rapine would be no more, for men would have learned of God to be content with what they have, and to seek for the lasting gifts of heaven rather than for the perishable things of earth. Adultery and prostitution would cease when they were taught that God had forbidden disorderly appetites ; nor would woman be forced to sell her virtue for a wretched subsistence, when men would control their passions, and charity would minister to all the wants of the poor. These evils would vanish from the earth if all were brought unto the law of God, and all should do what now our people alone are found to do. How blessed would be that golden age among men if throughout the world were love and kindness and peace and innocence and justice and temperance and faith ! There would then be no need of many and subtle laws, where innocence would need only the one law of God. Neither prisons nor the sword of the judn-e would be wanted, when the hearts of men, glowing with the divine precepts, would of themselves seek the works of justice. If they are evil now, it is through ignorance of right and truth. "^

' Firm. Lactant. Divin. Instit. Lib. v. cap. viii.

PREFACE. V

Read after the lapse of fifteen centuries, crowded witli crime and misery, these glowing day-dreams of a Christian who looked for their speedy realization may excite the sneer of the cynic or the smile of the unbeliever ; but no one who feels the sublime beauty and truth of the precepts of Christ can fail to mark with sorrow the immeasurable distance which has ever separated Christendom from the ideal of its aspirations. That our imperfect nature should be able to attain this ideal is of course impossible, but that we should still be so hopelessly afar from it may not unreasonably be attributed to that organization which assumed to be gifted with supernatural powers as the direct representative of Christ, and in His name sought and obtained complete authority over the souls and consciences of men. Had it been true to the law which it professed to administer ; had it spurned the vulgar ambitions of power and wealth, and had it taught by precept and example the evangel of love, Christendom would not now, in the nineteenth century after the birth of the Redeemer, be groping as blindly as ever over the yet insoluble problems of existence.

Philadelphia, November, 1869.

In reprinting this volume occasional additions have been made which serve to illustrate still further the statements in the text. I have also appended a short essay on the relations of the early church towards slavery — a sphere of action in which it was more nearly true to its principles than in those discussed in the earlier sections of the volume.