Early church history to A.D. 313

Front matter

Cornell University Library

The original of tliis book is in tlie Cornell University Library.

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Preface

In the present work the writer's aim is to trace the growth of Christianity in its connexion with the general history of the time, indicating the lines of thought, and noting the forces that made for change, but without any attempt to give an exhaustive account. For this reason the subjects are taken in a roughly chronological order ; and since the history concerns the general reader as well as the student of Theology, the original languages are almost entirely excluded from the text, and only a few books are named after each chapter for further study. In a word, the work is a narrative, not a repertory of facts and writers on the facts like von Schubert's excellent Kirchengeschichte.

No attempt has been made to conceal personal opinions. The mere annalist may be able to do it, but the historian cannot, unless he accepts theories of determinism which turn Universal Law into universal nonsense by refusing to recognize the plainest facts of universal experience. Lord Acton himself — and we have seen no more impartial man viii CHURCH HISTORY

in our time — very plainly shewed his personal opinions. Events, and still more men, cannot be understood without imagination and sympathy ; and imagination and sympathy involve opinions which (whether true or false) can always be disputed. Since then such opinions must of necessity colour the narrative, they are better frankly stated than silently taken for granted. Impartiality does not consist in a refusal to form opinions, or in a futile concealment of them under a lofty affectation of treating history scientifically, but in forming them by a single-hearted efi'ort to realize the lives of men and think their thoughts again, and understand their whole environment. Our power is strictly measured by our sympathy. The demand of some that personal opinions should not be discoverable means the abolition of everything that can reasonably be called history ; or else it is the suppression of some other men's opinions — for these writers are often far from reticent about their own.

The writer has not hesitated to repeat certain passages of his earlier works, though never without careful revision. In this connexion he has to acknowledge the courtesy of the Syndics of the University Press, in allowing him to take for the basis of Ch. III. an article he wrote for them on the Eoman Empire as far back as 1889. Other obligations are too numerous and too intricate to be enumerated :

PREFACE ix

but all books mentioned have been found useful, and many others also.

It remains for him to give his best thanks to his wife and to Mr. H. F. Stewart of St. John's College for their care in looking over the proofs, and to Mr. T. K. Glover of St. John's College for many valuable suggestions in addition.

Grange over Sands, June 28, 1909.

Chapter I Church History In General

The history of the Church of God is in its widest compass coextensive with the history of the universe itself. It reaches backward to the timeless state before the dawn of life, and forward to the timeless state where there shall be no more death. The foundations and the completion of the City of God are not of this creation. From a far past on which the astronomer himself must speak with bated breath, and onward to a future far beyond the brightest visions of apocalyptic trance, the vast evolution forms a single and organic whole, and every part of it is meaningless without the rest. If it was not fitting that the Son of God should come on earth and dwell among us till the work of all but everlasting ages had prepared the earth for man, and man himself had learned his weakness in centuries of waning hope and conscious failure, neither was it fitting that the earth should be so prepared for man, and man himself condemned to restlessness and inward strife by the instinct for things divine implanted in him, if his noblest aspirations were never to be consecrated and fulfilled by the incarnate Lord of all.

VOL. I I B

Even in a narrower sense than this, Church History is still a subject of gigantic range. It is the spiritual side of universal history since man's appearance on the earth. It is not to be limited to the outward fortunes of sects and churches, or to the growth of institutions and forms of thought. It must rise above the disputes of parties, churches, and religions, and look beyond the broadest differences of race and civilization to the spiritual life of mankind, for it is the working-out in time of God's eternal thought of mercy. We cannot set aside the pagan and the heretic, for he that knows not God is known of God, and the Spirit of God strives with him as with ourselves.

It is more than the history of religion. The Lord came not to found a religion, but to be Himself the revelation. Two simple rites excepted, we cannot trace to Him any ceremony of worship, or even any definite command to hold common worship at all. He did not even come to teach morality, but to reveal the love of God by words and deeds and loving signs, and to give His life in life and death for every man. So the Person of the Lord is itself the revelation, and the historic facts through which we know Him constitute the Gospel. The dogmas of churches are their interpretations by men, representing all degrees of certainty from the Lord's divinity down to transubstantiation. Thus all specifically Christian theology is an expansion of " He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father," and all purely Christian ethics can be reduced to an argument from Christ's example. If our Lord was pure and true, what manner of men ought we to be ? If then the Gospel is a revelation of the eternal through facts of time, it cannot be

I CHURCH HISTORY IN GENERAL 3

treated simply as one religion among others. Given the revelation of God, comparative religion may help to shew us how the forces of human nature clothed it with religions of men ; but the application of comparative religion to the revelation itself is a fundamental error.

We therefore start from the position that Church history is simply the spiritual side of universal history, just as Economic History is its economic side. Everything belongs to it which has ever influenced the development of the spiritual life of men. Some ages or some countries may seem as remote from the central revelation as they are from the general course of history ; yet even these must have their bearing on it if history is, as it must be, one organic whole. Christianity is an aggressive faith, whatever else it be ; and the power which long ago subdued Greece and Rome and England is not likely to be finally defeated in India or China, or even by the stubborn unbelief of Israel. To the student who is willing to remember that men are men, and that even the revelation through the Christ must work on men through men, the advance of Christianity in our own time by settlements, by missions, and by general influence is even more impressive and suggestive of living power than the conversion of the Eoman Empire. Truly very much remains to be done, even among Christian peoples. A world of armed peace and tariff wars, of brutal militarism and godless competition, of cruel selfishness and recrudescent superstition, is not yet become the kingdom of our God. Yet for all this, the Gospel has tightened its hold on each successive age of the world, and most of all on our own age. There is not the smallest sign that its ancient might is failing, or that the unrest and blatant unbelief around us are anything more than the unsettlement we see in every age of change. Sooner or later the ends of the earth will surely blend their history with ours, and have churches of their own as richly gifted as any of their teachers.

Nevertheless, it is usually convenient to narrow again the meaning of Church history by leaving out of its direct purview everything that took place before the coming of the Lord, or outside the visible societies which trace their origin to him ; and this is the common use of the term. By thus limiting the subject we give it more unity, and cut off some of the isolated matters which few students can discuss at first hand. Yet even so, it is the spiritual side of the history of civilized peoples ever since our Master's coming. Whatever was carried over from the past of Greece and Eome, it is abundantly clear that modern civilization owes everything to Christianity, which delayed the fall of the Empire and saved whatever was saved from the wreck of ancient culture, trained the northern nations for the work of a new age, gave the guiding thoughts to science, and in the Reformation put new life into the conscience of the Western nations.

Our own purpose, however, is subject to a still further limitation. Of the three great periods of Church history — the early, the mediaeval, and the modern — we are concerned only with the first, and only with the earlier part of that. We have to do with still earlier times only so far as they may help to explain our own period, with later times only sa far as we may find it useful to mention the results

I CHURCH HISTORY IN GENERAL 5

of causes which lie before us. Our proper subject belongs to the history of the Church in the ancient world before it passed into the mediaeval. Now, though we get a fairly clear break at the Edict of Milan in 313, we have no sharp division there. Even the persecutions are not quite ended, and Julian is still unborn. The struggle with heathenism went on for another century ; and when the victory seemed finally won, the contest was renewed inside the Church. The christening of the Palace and the Empire, the splendour of the churches, the noise of councils, and the change from an age of martyrs to an age of martyr - worshippers, blind us to the continuity of common Christian thought and life between the third and fifth centuries. The undogmatic, almost Deist Christianity so common in the Nicene age is deeply rooted in the time before it ; and the growing superstition of the declining Empire is due to heathen conceptions of religion which are almost as clear in Cyprian as in Gregory the Great. Victi victores, as of old. Upon the whole, however, the Edict of Milan is the most convenient landmark we can find. The defeat of heathenism was undeniable ; and though some hoped or feared that victory might still come round again to the side of the immortal gods, each passing year seemed to seal afresh the triumph of the Gospel. So when the last imperial champion of the gods lay dying in his tent, far out beyond the Eastern frontier of the Empire, the romancers were not far wrong who placed on his lips the cry Vicisti Galilaee !

So if we take the Edict of Milan for our Terminus, we shall do so under no delusion that it marks a rigid separation from later times. We draw no hard and fast line. We are not bound to do more than sketch such beginnings of later developments as we can find before 312, and we are not prevented from glancing at survivals of earlier history as late as we can find them.

We shall begin with the destruction of Jerusalem in 70, or perhaps rather with the Neronian persecution of 64, which first brought Christianity prominently before the world. We cannot of course omit the preparation for the Gospel and its early spread ; but it will be more convenient to leave the detailed treatment of them to New Testament scholars. In these pages nothing more than the barest outline is attempted.

Church history has not always had a bad name in England. It was as respectable as any other till it was covered with reproach by the partizanship and credulity of the Tractarians. Whatever service they did by calling attention to the subject was far outweighed by the scandal of their uncritical methods and unhistorical dogmas. The reproach is not yet done away, for the literature with which the successors of that school have flooded the country is little better than a dream. Its writers often have their merit ; but their fundamental dogmas compel them systematically to set aside the plainest facts of history and human nature. So the outsiders who take their ideas of the subject from its professed experts are still too much inclined either to set it aside with sarcastic politeness, or by way of reaction to rush into excesses of scepticism. In truth, the Church historian is like any other historian. His material is the same, for all the facts of universal history

> CHURCH HISTORY IN GENERAL 7

concern him. His purpose is the same, for he has to sift out those facts and trace a certain line of growth, like the political, the constitutional, or the economic historian. The facts are the same for all of them, and only their points of view are different, so that what occupies the foreground for one may be less conspicuous to another. Above all, his methods are the same. He has to decipher his authorities, to compare them and estimate their value for the question in hand, and to study their thoughts and feelings in the same way as other historians. He has no special calculus of his own distinct from the usual methods of historical criticism, for the divine guidance we are bound to confess in all history does not make that of the visible Church an enchanted ground on which we are dispensed from the laws of evidence and common sense. On the other hand, belief in the Gospel is no more a prejudice than unbelief The most complete devotion to Christ our Saviour as the supreme and final guide of life, the deepest conviction of the transcendent importance of the Gospel as the clue to all history, need not hinder our confession that its working in the world is subject to the common laws of God in history and nature. And if some historians in all ages are unworthy of their high calling, it does not follow that Church history is made up of idle tales. If the Lives of the saints are not pure truth, neither are the letters of the diplomatists ; yet political history is not therefore summarily condemned by reasonable men.

The (ifficulties of the subject are the usual difficulties of historical study. The materials are often scanty or of bad quality. For example, Christian literature before the Nicene age belongs chiefly to the period 180-260, so that contemporary information is scanty for the subapostolic age and for the last forty years of the third century. Many men have to be judged like Marcion from the accounts of their enemies ; and great subjects are often obscure, like the common life of common Christians in the second century, or the early history of the Churches in Spain and Britain, or even in Rome and Africa. In general, however, the materials of ecclesiastical history compare fairly well with those of secular. Of course their quality varies. One writer is inaccurate, another is too fond of gossip, another is full of prejudice. Church writers diflfer in value much like others ; and if none of them in the early period come up to the high level of Tacitus or Ammianus, there is still a vast range downward from the impartial good sense of Socrates and the accurate learning of Eusebius and Irenseus to the romances of the Clementines and the stupid blundering of Epiphanius. But we shall not ourselves meet the worst of these difficulties, for every Christian writer of the first three centuries appears to be quite truthful and at least fairly intelligent. At worst, the difficulties are those familiar to the secular historian. The Christians had no monopoly of credulity and prejudice, nor were they the only exhibitors of relics and purveyors of romance and superstition. If Clement believes in the Phoenix, so does Tacitus ; and the romance of Leucius Charinus, discipulus diaboli, is equal to that of Philostratus. Eelic for relic, the true cross is as good as the staff of Agamemnon, and the bones of a saint may be as authentic as the bones of Pelops which Pausanias found at Olympia. Eusebius is vastly better than the writers of the Historia

I CHURCH HISTORY IN GENERAL 9

Augusta, and even the lives of the hermits are quite as edifying as the Golden Ass of Apuleius, besides being rather more decent. The superiority, both literary and critical, is altogether on the Christian side when the age of Tacitus is past, and the standard remains at a fairly high level for the next three centuries. The Christians wrote not for the drawing-room cliques, but because they had something to say. Not one of them piles up blunders like Solinus, or catalogues omens with the omnivorous credulity of the Scriptores Historiae Augustae. It is mere prejudice if we let a few bad mistakes conceal from us the generally sound criticism of men like Irenseus and Eusebius. When Irenseus is discussing the origin of the Gospels, he sees exactly what he has to prove, and goes to work in the right way to prove it. Origen in his reply to Celsus throws out modem thoughts, and brings us into the thick of modem objections to the Resurrection. Eusebius has a broader conception of history than Polybius, and all antiquity can shew no finer piece of criticism than the discussion of the authorship of the Apocalypse by Dionysius of Alexandria. The charge of stupid uncriticism against such writers as these only recoils on its authors. However, the historian knows how to deal with unsatisfactory authorities. He can detect forgery, allow for prejudice, and trace out inaccuracy by comparison, and in this way generally comes to a fairly certain conclusion. If the Church historian is willing to use the same method with the same diligence and impartiality, there is no reason why his results should not be equally definite and certain.

But the Catholic (Roman and Anglo-) writers are lo CHURCH HISTORY chap.

not the only sinners against history, though they are much the worst. The perversions of the Protestants were less serious, and we are now in more danger of slighting the truth they stand for than of being led away by them. The other main attack is from the side of scepticism. By far the strongest blow yet struck at Christianity is Lessing's dictum, that events of time cannot prove eternal truth. Its tone of reverence for the eternal contrasts well with the vulgar clap-trap of, Miracles do not happen now, and attracts a more serious class of thinkers ; yet it is at bottom no better logic than the other. It of course carries a direct denial of the claim which the Gospel makes to be a revelation of eternal truth through certain events of time ; but its own validity depends on the substantially atheistic assumption that there is no God who guides the course of such events. Without this assumption the dictum falls to the ground at once, for if such a God exists, this guidance must reflect his character, so that events of time cannot but reveal eternal truth ; and if the existence of such a God is uncertain, the dictum, will be uncertain too. And if we make the atheistic assumption, the Gospel will not be an alleged fact disproved by the dictum,, but an idea ruled out in limine as unlawful, so that any attempt to disprove it by the dictum, is an argument in a circle.

It would be absurd to say that all who accept Lessing's dictum deliberately make this assumption ;. but they deal with history in a way which cannot be justified without it, and in a way which leads to no little misunderstanding. True, it is not a systematic endeavour to force facts into accordance with a false theory — to make "history give place to

I CHURCH HISTORY IN GENERAL ii

dogma." Put in its broadest, and what we may ask leave to call its most insolent form, Lessing's dictum becomes. Philosophy ignores history. The philosopher, that is to say, will not distort history like the dogmatist, but simply set it aside. Qua philosopher, it is quite true, he has nothing to do with it. Unfortunately, philosophers cannot always limit themselves to the study of philosophy ; and, when they come down to mere events of time, this maxim brings them into difficulties at once. If there be such a thing as divine guidance in history its traces may be obscure, but we shall be on safe ground so far as we are able to follow them. We may make mistakes, but we shall do no worse, whereas, if we ignore such guidance, we shall be working on a false principle. No order will then be possible but a logical development working by necessity, and we shall be tempted to undervalue the decisive action of personal character in history, from Jesus of Nazareth downward, to force on its events a meaning predetermined by our logical theory, and to see in its documents no more than a series of literary problems to be discussed with little or no regard to the probabilities of human nature. These temptations may be studied at large in many schools of history, and most conveniently in some of those which are most anxious to claim for themselves the name of Critical.

1. Authorities (as) Collections : Lightfoot, Apostolic Fathers ; Otto, Corpus Apologetarum ; Vienna Corpus for Latin Writers ; Berlin Corpus for Greek Writers ; Ante- Niosne Christian Library for English translations. (&) Selections : Gwatkin, Selections ; Preuschen, Analecta ; Gebhardt, Acta Martyrum Selecta ; Lietzmann's Materials (English Editions of most), (c) Dictionaries : Diet, of Chr. Biography ; Diet, of Chr. Antiquities ; EeaUneyclopddie fur prot. Theologie.

12 CHURCH HISTORY chap, i

2. Books coveking the Whole Pkkiod, or a Large Part of It (* is prefixed to foreign works which have been translated. )

Chapter II The Decay Of Ancient Religion

Christ our Saviour did not come down from heaven suddenly. Ages of ages were needed to make ready for the Gospel, and the slow course of centuries is only now beginning to reveal the unimagined fulness of its meaning. Obscure as its beginnings were, it soon became the guiding force in history. It overcame the Empire, it subdued the northern nations, and its present supremacy in the civilized world is hardly questioned. Of serious men who reject its claims, few dispute the surpassing excellence of its moral teaching, and fewer still deny that it has been and still remains by far the mightiest of historic' influences on the thoughts and acts of men. Somehow or other, modern history radiates as visibly from Jesus of Nazareth as ancient history converges on Him. Explain it as we may, something came into the world with Him which has caused a revolution of a higher order than the migrations of the nations and the rise and fall of empires. The systems of men may have their day, but the majestic course of ages gathers round that Son of Man who claimed to be Himself the final truth of earth and heaven. Now that the unreasoning assent of past time has given place to noisy questioning, we see that the doubt is not so much of historical or moral difficulties in the Gospel, as whether it must not be summarily rejected for claiming to be a revelation. But if the powers of unbelief speak louder than they used to do, there is no reason to think them any stronger than they were, and there is no sign yet that they will ever win the battle ; and till they have won it, Jesus of Nazareth remains the natural centre of the spiritual development of mankind. Be he the Son of God, or be he " that deceiver," it is hardly possible to deny that He is more and more the Light of the World, and more and more draws all men to Himself

So far as regards the purely natural circumstances which favoured the spread of Christianity, there is not much room for controversy. The dispersion of the Jews, the decay of ancient worship, and the establishment of the Empire are matters of history. But whatever weight we give to those and such-like facts, it is also matter of history that Christianity was not set on the throne of the world as a matter of course, but had formidable powers arrayed against it, and fought its way through conflicts as arduous as any that history records. It must, therefore, have had some internal source of strength. Some will find this, and not without reason, in its lofty moral teaching, and in the enthusiastic purity and self-devotion of the Christians. True, their purity and self-devotion do explain the matter ; but they do not explain it finally. They must have some historic cause themselves, and only one such cause is imaginable. The work of disciples cannot be more than secondary ; only personal influence is immediate. It would be a new thing on the face of the earth if mere disciples could have put together in their n THE DECAY OF ANCIENT RELIGION 15

massive unity the boldest words that ever fell from human lips, or if Saul of Tarsus could have diverted the enthusiasm of his converts from his own living self to one Jesus who was dead forsooth. This teaching and this self-devotion cannot be anything else than the impress of the Founder's personality. As soon as the Gospel is fairly started, it works under natural law, so that " natural causes " will explain the rest. But " natural causes " will not explain its origin. We believe it is historically certain that Jesus of Nazareth claimed to be in the fullest sense the Son of God ; and we accept that claim as true because we cannot refuse it without raising moral dilemmas before which the physical difficulties of the Incarnation and the Eesurrection sink to insignificance.

But if the Son of Man came down from heaven, and indeed is ever coming down and ever giving life to the world,^ He is also the culmination of a long development upon the earth. Two great lines of evolution stand out clear in history. The Jew was trained by a special and progressive revelation through men, while the Gentile was left to work out the general revelation through Nature. In one case as it were, God was seeking man ; in the other, man was feeling after God. While the Jew was slowly turned from idols to the God of Israel, and then guided on from the limitations of a nation towards the unity of mankind, the Gentile was led by the majestic order of Nature towards the unity of God : and then in the fulness of time came the Incarnation to consecrate and complete the work of both by revealing the higher unity of God and man in Christ.

1 John vi. 33.

If neither the one training nor the other was a success in the sense of compelling the unwilling to acknowledge him, each of them did its proper work of enabling true-hearted men to see in him something that more than fulfilled the noblest aspirations of both Jew and Gentile. There is nothing in history more suggestive than the convergence of the best ideals of all nations on that which was real in Jesus of Nazareth.

Beginning with the Jew, we notice that the broad outline of his history is not greatly changed by any serious criticism. First a clan is called out from the idol-worships of Ur of the Chaldees, and flourishes in the midst of the tribes of Canaan. Then the main part of it goes down into Egypt ; and when it comes up again a nation is formed on the hills of Canaan, just above and just aside from the great commercial route between Egypt and Assyria which ran along the Philistrue coast. Henceforth Israel's history is one long prophecy of a Messiah. It may be that very little of the Law can be traced back to Moses ; but even so, he still stands out as the first and greatest of the prophets. The glory of the monarchy, and still more its shortcomings, pointed to a nobler king than David. The fall of Solomon's dominion and the subjection to Assyria opened out a higher mission than that of worldly empire. The hollow prosperity of Jehu's dynasty led the prophets to exchange the violent methods and more than half political leadership of Elijah and Elisha for the spiritual work of teaching a rebellious people : and the opposition they met with gradually brought out the idea of a sufi'ering servant of the Lord. Then the moral gains of the captivity were immense. The destruction of the Temple, the

II THE DECAY OF ANCIENT RELIGION 17

exile from Jerusalem, the reaction from Babylonish immorality, the purer influence of Persia — all contributed new life and spirituality to the old religion ; and the rise of synagogues gave permanence to the result. During the obscure Persian period the idols were forgotten, and the cessation of prophecy left the scribes supreme as teachers of the people. Indeed the Law which they interpreted was the only centre left for the nation's life now that the dispersion had broken up its political unity. Thus the tendency was in Judaea to a stricter and minuter observance of it ; in the dispersion to a looser one, and to modes of life much influenced by the ideas of the surrounding heathen. These tendencies were both intensified by the Greek domination. Alexander's conquests and the policy of his successors threw open the Greek world to Jewish settlement, and further scattered the dispersion over all the East. Henceforth Greece began to act on Israel. The Alexandrian translation introduced the Jewish sacred books to the Greek Uterary world, while the Maccabsean war was needed to check the spread of heathen fashions in Judaea, and further to confirm the supremacy of the Law. Thus Jewish piety was degenerating at home into Pharisaism, and evaporating abroad into a vague monotheism deeply coloured by Greek philosophy. Then came the Komans. If they destroyed the independence of Judaea, they opened the West to Jewish trade, and put an end to the wars of nations which interrupted it. This was the great age of Jewish missionary work, when the church of Israel seemed becoming a light to lighten the Gentiles. But the hard government of Eome and the misconduct of her ofiicials embittered the spirit of the nation. The Pharisee who cased VOL. I c himself in pride and hatred of the Gentile was the holy man of Israel, and the Barabbas who made insurrection was the idol of the people. Even the Messianic hope became a curse when Israel's mission to be the light of the world was forgotten in fierce longings to see confusion, wrath, and vengeance poured out upon the heathen.