Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine — CHAPTER VIII. Application of the Third: its Assimilative Power, Part 2

§ 2. _The Assimilating Power of Sacramental Grace.

_ There is in truth a certain virtue or grace in the Gospel which changes the quality of doctrines, opinions, usages, actions, and personal characters when incorporated with it, and makes them right and acceptable to its Divine Author, whereas before they were either infected with evil, or at best but shadows of the truth.

This is the principle, above spoken of, which I have called the Sacramental.

"We know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness," is an enunciation of the principle;--or, the declaration of the Apostle of the Gentiles, "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away, behold all things are become new."

Thus it is that outward rites, which are but worthless in themselves, lose their earthly character and become Sacraments under the Gospel; circumcision, as St. Paul says, is carnal and has come to an end, yet Baptism is a perpetual ordinance, as being grafted upon a system which is grace and truth.

Elsewhere, he parallels, while he contrasts, "the cup of the Lord" and "the cup of devils," in this respect, that to partake of either is to hold communion with the source from which it comes; and he adds presently, that "we have been all made to drink into one spirit."

So again he says, no one is justified by the works of the old Law; while both he implies, and St. James declares, that Christians are justified by works of the New Law.

Again he contrasts the exercises of the intellect as exhibited by heathen and Christian.

"Howbeit," he says, after condemning heathen wisdom, "we speak wisdom among them that are perfect, yet not the wisdom of this world;" and it is plain that nowhere need we look for more glowing eloquence, more distinct profession of reasoning, more careful assertion of doctrine, than is to be found in the Apostle's writings.

2. In like manner when the Jewish exorcists attempted to "call over them which had evil spirits the Name of the Lord Jesus," the evil spirit professed not to know them, and inflicted on them a bodily injury; on the other hand, the occasion of this attempt of theirs was a stupendous instance or type, in the person of St. Paul, of the very principle I am illustrating.

"God wrought special miracles by the hands of Paul, so that from his body were brought unto the sick handkerchiefs and aprons, and the diseases departed from them, and the evil spirits went out of them."

The grace given him was communicable, diffusive; an influence passing from him to others, and making what it touched spiritual, as enthusiasm may be or tastes or panics.

Parallel instances occur of the operation of this principle in the history of the Church, from the time that the Apostles were taken from it.

St. Paul denounces distinctions in meat and drink, the observance of Sabbaths and holydays, and of ordinances, and the worship of Angels; yet Christians, from the first, were rigid in their stated fastings, venerated, as St. Justin tells us, the Angelic intelligences,[369:1] and established the observance of the Lord's day as soon as persecution ceased.

3. In like manner Celsus objects that Christians did not "endure the sight of temples, altars, and statues;" Porphyry, that "they blame the rites of worship, victims, and frankincense;" the heathen disputant in Minucius asks, "Why have Christians no altars, no temples, no conspicuous images?"

and "no sacrifices;" and yet it is plain from Tertullian that Christians had altars of their own, and sacrifices and priests.

And that they had churches is again and again proved by Eusebius who had seen "the houses of prayer levelled" in the Dioclesian persecution; from the history too of St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, nay from Clement.

[370:1] Again, St. Justin and Minucius speak of the form of the Cross in terms of reverence, quite inconsistent with the doctrine that external emblems of religion may not be venerated.

Tertullian speaks of Christians signing themselves with it whatever they set about, whether they walk, eat, or lie down to sleep.

In Eusebius's life of Constantine, the figure of the Cross holds a most conspicuous place; the Emperor sees it in the sky and is converted; he places it upon his standards; he inserts it into his own hand when he puts up his statue; wherever the Cross is displayed in his battles, he conquers; he appoints fifty men to carry it; he engraves it on his soldiers' arms; and Licinius dreads its power.

Shortly after, Julian plainly accuses Christians of worshipping the wood of the Cross, though they refused to worship the _ancile_.

In a later age the worship of images was introduced.

[370:2] 4. The principle of the distinction, by which these observances were pious in Christianity and superstitious in paganism, is implied in such passages of Tertullian, Lactantius, and others, as speak of evil spirits lurking under the pagan statues.

It is intimated also by Origen, who, after saying that Scripture so strongly "forbids temples, altars, and images," that Christians are "ready to go to death, if necessary, rather than pollute their notion of the God of all by any such transgression," assigns as a reason "that, as far as possible, they might not fall into the notion that images were gods."

St. Augustine, in replying to Porphyry, is more express; "Those," he says, "who are acquainted with Old and New Testament do not blame in the pagan religion the erection of temples or institution of priesthoods, but that these are done to idols and devils.

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True religion blames in their superstitions, not so much their sacrificing, for the ancient saints sacrificed to the True God, as their sacrificing to false gods."

[371:1] To Faustus the Manichee he answers, "We have some things in common with the gentiles, but our purpose is different."

[371:2] And St. Jerome asks Vigilantius, who made objections to lights and oil, "Because we once worshipped idols, is that a reason why we should not worship God, for fear of seeming to address him with an honour like that which was paid to idols and then was detestable, whereas this is paid to Martyrs and therefore to be received?"

[371:3] 5. Confiding then in the power of Christianity to resist the infection of evil, and to transmute the very instruments and appendages of demon-worship to an evangelical use, and feeling also that these usages had originally come from primitive revelations and from the instinct of nature, though they had been corrupted; and that they must invent what they needed, if they did not use what they found; and that they were moreover possessed of the very archetypes, of which paganism attempted the shadows; the rulers of the Church from early times were prepared, should the occasion arise, to adopt, or imitate, or sanction the existing rites and customs of the populace, as well as the philosophy of the educated class.

St. Gregory Thaumaturgus supplies the first instance on record of this economy.

He was the Apostle of Pontus, and one of his methods for governing an untoward population is thus related by St. Gregory of Nyssa.

"On returning," he says, "to the city, after revisiting the country round about, he increased the devotion of the people everywhere by instituting festive meetings in honour of those who had fought for the faith.

The bodies of the Martyrs were distributed in different places, and the people assembled and made merry, as the year came round, holding festival in their honour.

This indeed was a proof of his great wisdom .

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for, perceiving that the childish and untrained populace were retained in their idolatrous error by creature comforts, in order that what was of first importance should at any rate be secured to them, viz.

that they should look to God in place of their vain rites, he allowed them to be merry, jovial, and gay at the monuments of the holy Martyrs, as if their behaviour would in time undergo a spontaneous change into greater seriousness and strictness, since faith would lead them to it; which has actually been the happy issue in that population, all carnal gratification having turned into a spiritual form of rejoicing."

[372:1] There is no reason to suppose that the licence here spoken of passed the limits of harmless though rude festivity; for it is observable that the same reason, the need of holydays for the multitude, is assigned by Origen, St. Gregory's master, to explain the establishment of the Lord's Day also, and the Paschal and the Pentecostal festivals, which have never been viewed as unlawful compliances; and, moreover, the people were in fact eventually reclaimed from their gross habits by his indulgent policy, a successful issue which could not have followed an accommodation to what was sinful.

6. The example set by St. Gregory in an age of persecution was impetuously followed when a time of peace succeeded.

In the course of the fourth century two movements or developments spread over the face of Christendom, with a rapidity characteristic of the Church; the one ascetic, the other ritual or ceremonial.

We are told in various ways by Eusebius,[373:1] that Constantine, in order to recommend the new religion to the heathen, transferred into it the outward ornaments to which they had been accustomed in their own.

It is not necessary to go into a subject which the diligence of Protestant writers has made familiar to most of us.

The use of temples, and these dedicated to particular saints, and ornamented on occasions with branches of trees;

incense, lamps, and candles; votive offerings on recovery from illness;

holy water; asylums; holydays and seasons, use of calendars, processions, blessings on the fields; sacerdotal vestments, the tonsure, the ring in marriage, turning to the East, images at a later date, perhaps the ecclesiastical chant, and the Kyrie Eleison,[373:2] are all of pagan origin, and sanctified by their adoption into the Church.

7. The eighth book of Theodoret's work _Adversus Gentiles_, which is "On the Martyrs," treats so largely on the subject, that we must content ourselves with only a specimen of the illustrations which it affords, of the principle acted on by St. Gregory Thaumaturgus.

"Time, which makes all things decay," he says, speaking of the Martyrs, "has preserved their glory incorruptible.

For as the noble souls of those conquerors traverse the heavens, and take part in the spiritual choirs, so their bodies are not consigned to separate tombs, but cities and towns divide them among them; and call them saviours of souls and bodies, and physicians, and honour them as the protectors and guardians of cities, and, using their intervention with the Lord of all, obtain through them divine gifts.

And though each body be divided, the grace remains indivisible; and that small, that tiny particle is equal in power with the Martyr that hath never been dispersed about.

For the grace which is ever blossoming distributes the gifts, measuring the bounty according to the faith of those who come for it.

"Yet not even this persuades you to celebrate their God, but ye laugh and mock at the honour which is paid them by all, and consider it a pollution to approach their tombs.

But though all men made a jest of them, yet at least the Greeks could not decently complain, to whom belonged libations and expiations, and heroes and demi-gods and deified men.

To Hercules, though a man .

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and compelled to serve Eurystheus, they built temples, and constructed altars, and offered sacrifices in honour, and allotted feasts; and that, not Spartans only and Athenians, but the whole of Greece and the greater part of Europe."

8. Then, after going through the history of many heathen deities, and referring to the doctrine of the philosophers about great men, and to the monuments of kings and emperors, all of which at once are witnesses and are inferior, to the greatness of the Martyrs, he continues: "To their shrines we come, not once or twice a year or five times, but often do we hold celebrations; often, nay daily, do we present hymns to their Lord.

And the sound in health ask for its preservation, and those who struggle with any disease for a release from their sufferings; the childless for children, the barren to become mothers, and those who enjoy the blessing for its safe keeping.

Those too who are setting out for a foreign land beg that the Martyrs may be their fellow-travellers and guides of the journey; those who have come safe back acknowledge the grace, not coming to them as to gods, but beseeching them as divine men, and asking their intercession.

And that they obtain what they ask in faith, their dedications openly witness, in token of their cure.

For some bring likenesses of eyes, others of feet, others of hands; some of gold, others of silver; and their Lord accepts even the small and cheap, measuring the gift by the offerer's ability.

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Philosophers and Orators are consigned to oblivion, and kings and captains are not known even by name to the many; but the names of the Martyrs are better known to all than the names of those dearest to them.

And they make a point of giving them to their children, with a view of gaining for them thereby safety and protection.

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Nay, of the so-called gods, so utterly have the sacred places been destroyed, that not even their outline remains, nor the shape of their altars is known to men of this generation, while their materials have been dedicated to the shrines of the Martyrs.

For the Lord has introduced His own dead in place of your gods; of the one He hath made a riddance, on the other He hath conferred their honours.

For the Pandian festival, the Diasia, and the Dionysia, and your other such, we have the feasts of Peter, of Paul, of Thomas, of Sergius, of Marcellus, of Leontius, of Panteleëmon, of Antony, of Maurice, and of the other Martyrs; and for that old-world procession, and indecency of work and word, are held modest festivities, without intemperance, or revel, or laughter, but with divine hymns, and attendance on holy discourses and prayers, adorned with laudable tears."

This was the view of the "Evidences of Christianity" which a Bishop of the fifth century offered for the conversion of unbelievers.

9. The introduction of Images was still later, and met with more opposition in the West than in the East.

It is grounded on the same great principle which I am illustrating; and as I have given extracts from Theodoret for the developments of the fourth and fifth centuries, so will I now cite St. John Damascene in defence of the further developments of the eighth.

"As to the passages you adduce," he says to his opponents, "they abominate not the worship paid to our Images, but that of the Greeks, who made them gods.

It needs not therefore, because of the absurd use of the Greeks, to abolish our use which is so pious.

Enchanters and wizards use adjurations, so does the Church over its Catechumens; but they invoke devils, and she invokes God against devils.

Greeks dedicate images to devils, and call them gods; but we to True God Incarnate, and to God's servants and friends, who drive away the troops of devils."

[376:1] Again, "As the holy Fathers overthrew the temples and shrines of the devils, and raised in their places shrines in the names of Saints and we worship them, so also they overthrew the images of the devils, and in their stead raised images of Christ, and God's Mother, and the Saints.

And under the Old Covenant, Israel neither raised temples in the name of men, nor was memory of man made a festival; for, as yet, man's nature was under a curse, and death was condemnation, and therefore was lamented, and a corpse was reckoned unclean and he who touched it; but now that the Godhead has been combined with our nature, as some life-giving and saving medicine, our nature has been glorified and is trans-elemented into incorruption.

Wherefore the death of Saints is made a feast, and temples are raised to them, and Images are painted.

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For the Image is a triumph, and a manifestation, and a monument in memory of the victory of those who have done nobly and excelled, and of the shame of the devils defeated and overthrown."

Once more, "If because of the Law thou dost forbid Images, you will soon have to sabbatize and be circumcised, for these ordinances the Law commands as indispensable; nay, to observe the whole law, and not to keep the festival of the Lord's Pascha out of Jerusalem: but know that if you keep the Law, Christ hath profited you nothing.

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But away with this, for whoever of you are justified in the Law have fallen from grace."

[377:1] 10. It is quite consistent with the tenor of these remarks to observe, or to allow, that real superstitions have sometimes obtained in parts of Christendom from its intercourse with the heathen; or have even been admitted, or all but admitted, though commonly resisted strenuously, by authorities in the Church, in consequence of the resemblance which exists between the heathen rites and certain portions of her ritual.

As philosophy has at times corrupted her divines, so has paganism corrupted her worshippers; and as the more intellectual have been involved in heresy, so have the ignorant been corrupted by superstition.

Thus St. Chrysostom is vehement against the superstitious usages which Jews and Gentiles were introducing among Christians at Antioch and Constantinople.

"What shall we say," he asks in one place, "about the amulets and bells which are hung upon the hands, and the scarlet woof, and other things full of such extreme folly; when they ought to invest the child with nothing else save the protection of the Cross?

But now that is despised which hath converted the whole world, and given the sore wound to the devil, and overthrown all his power; while the thread, and the woof, and the other amulets of that kind, are entrusted with the child's safety."

After mentioning further superstitions, he proceeds, "Now that among Greeks such things should be done, is no wonder; but among the worshippers of the Cross, and partakers in unspeakable mysteries, and professors of such morality, that such unseemliness should prevail, this is especially to be deplored again and again."

[378:1] And in like manner St. Augustine suppressed the feasts called Agapæ, which had been allowed the African Christians on their first conversion.

"It is time," he says, "for men who dare not deny that they are Christians, to begin to live according to the will of Christ, and, now being Christians, to reject what was only allowed that they might become Christians."

The people objected the example of the Vatican Church at Rome, where such feasts were observed every day; St. Augustine answered, "I have heard that it has been often prohibited, but the place is far off from the Bishop's abode (the Lateran), and in so large a city there is a multitude of carnal persons, especially of strangers who resort daily thither."

[378:2] And in like manner it certainly is possible that the consciousness of the sanctifying power in Christianity may have acted as a temptation to sins, whether of deceit or of violence; as if the habit or state of grace destroyed the sinfulness of certain acts, or as if the end justified the means.

11. It is but enunciating in other words the principle we are tracing, to say that the Church has been entrusted with the dispensation of grace.

For if she can convert heathen appointments into spiritual rites and usages, what is this but to be in possession of a treasure, and to exercise a discretionary power in its application?

Hence there has been from the first much variety and change, in the Sacramental acts and instruments which she has used.

While the Eastern and African Churches baptized heretics on their reconciliation, the Church of Rome, as the Catholic Church since, maintained that imposition of hands was sufficient, if their prior baptism had been formally correct.

The ceremony of imposition of hands was used on various occasions with a distinct meaning; at the rite of Catechumens, on admitting heretics, in Confirmation, in Ordination, in Benediction.

Baptism was sometimes administered by immersion, sometimes by infusion.

Infant Baptism was not at first enforced as afterwards.

Children or even infants were admitted to the Eucharist in the African Church and the rest of the West, as now in the Greek.

Oil had various uses, as for healing the sick, or as in the rite of extreme unction.

Indulgences in works or in periods of penance, had a different meaning, according to circumstances.

In like manner the Sign of the Cross was one of the earliest means of grace;

then holy seasons, and holy places, and pilgrimage to them; holy water;

prescribed prayers, or other observances; garments, as the scapular, and sacred vestments; the rosary; the crucifix.

And for some wise purpose doubtless, such as that of showing the power of the Church in the dispensation of divine grace, as well as the perfection and spirituality of the Eucharistic Presence, the Chalice is in the West withheld from all but the celebrant in the Holy Eucharist.

12. Since it has been represented as if the power of assimilation, spoken of in this Chapter, is in my meaning nothing more than a mere accretion of doctrines or rites from without, I am led to quote the following passage in further illustration of it from my "Essays," vol. ii.

p. 231:-- "The phenomenon, admitted on all hands, is this:--That great portion of what is generally received as Christian truth is, in its rudiments or in its separate parts, to be found in heathen philosophies and religions.

For instance, the doctrine of a Trinity is found both in the East and in the West; so is the ceremony of washing; so is the rite of sacrifice.

The doctrine of the Divine Word is Platonic; the doctrine of the Incarnation is Indian; of a divine kingdom is Judaic; of Angels and demons is Magian; the connexion of sin with the body is Gnostic; celibacy is known to Bonze and Talapoin; a sacerdotal order is Egyptian; the idea of a new birth is Chinese and Eleusinian; belief in sacramental virtue is Pythagorean; and honours to the dead are a polytheism.

Such is the general nature of the fact before us; Mr. Milman argues from it,--'These things are in heathenism, therefore they are not Christian:' we, on the contrary, prefer to say, 'these things are in Christianity, therefore they are not heathen.'

That is, we prefer to say, and we think that Scripture bears us out in saying, that from the beginning the Moral Governor of the world has scattered the seeds of truth far and wide over its extent; that these have variously taken root, and grown up as in the wilderness, wild plants indeed but living;

and hence that, as the inferior animals have tokens of an immaterial principle in them, yet have not souls, so the philosophies and religions of men have their life in certain true ideas, though they are not directly divine.

What man is amid the brute creation, such is the Church among the schools of the world; and as Adam gave names to the animals about him, so has the Church from the first looked round upon the earth, noting and visiting the doctrines she found there.

She began in Chaldea, and then sojourned among the Canaanites, and went down into Egypt, and thence passed into Arabia, till she rested in her own land.

Next she encountered the merchants of Tyre, and the wisdom of the East country, and the luxury of Sheba.

Then she was carried away to Babylon, and wandered to the schools of Greece.

And wherever she went, in trouble or in triumph, still she was a living spirit, the mind and voice of the Most High; 'sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions;' claiming to herself what they said rightly, correcting their errors, supplying their defects, completing their beginnings, expanding their surmises, and thus gradually by means of them enlarging the range and refining the sense of her own teaching.

So far then from her creed being of doubtful credit because it resembles foreign theologies, we even hold that one special way in which Providence has imparted divine knowledge to us has been by enabling her to draw and collect it together out of the world, and, in this sense, as in others, to 'suck the milk of the Gentiles and to suck the breast of kings.'

"How far in fact this process has gone, is a question of history; and we believe it has before now been grossly exaggerated and misrepresented by those who, like Mr. Milman, have thought that its existence told against Catholic doctrine; but so little antecedent difficulty have we in the matter, that we could readily grant, unless it were a question of fact not of theory, that Balaam was an Eastern sage, or a Sibyl was inspired, or Solomon learnt of the sons of Mahol, or Moses was a scholar of the Egyptian hierophants.

We are not distressed to be told that the doctrine of the angelic host came from Babylon, while we know that they did sing at the Nativity; nor that the vision of a Mediator is in Philo, if in very deed He died for us on Calvary.

Nor are we afraid to allow, that, even after His coming, the Church has been a treasure-house, giving forth things old and new, casting the gold of fresh tributaries into her refiner's fire, or stamping upon her own, as time required it, a deeper impress of her Master's image.

"The distinction between these two theories is broad and obvious.

The advocates of the one imply that Revelation was a single, entire, solitary act, or nearly so, introducing a certain message; whereas we, who maintain the other, consider that Divine teaching has been in fact, what the analogy of nature would lead us to expect, 'at sundry times and in divers manners,' various, complex, progressive, and supplemental of itself.

We consider the Christian doctrine, when analyzed, to appear, like the human frame, 'fearfully and wonderfully made;' but they think it some one tenet or certain principles given out at one time in their fulness, without gradual enlargement before Christ's coming or elucidation afterwards.

They cast off all that they also find in Pharisee or heathen;

we conceive that the Church, like Aaron's rod, devours the serpents of the magicians.

They are ever hunting for a fabulous primitive simplicity; we repose in Catholic fulness.

They seek what never has been found; we accept and use what even they acknowledge to be a substance.

They are driven to maintain, on their part, that the Church's doctrine was never pure; we say that it can never be corrupt.

We consider that a divine promise keeps the Church Catholic from doctrinal corruption; but on what promise, or on what encouragement, they are seeking for their visionary purity does not appear."

FOOTNOTES:

[359:1] Justin, Apol.

ii.

10, Tryph.

121. [360:1] Europ.

Civ.

p. 56, tr.

[360:2] p. 58. [363:1] De Virg.

Vol. 1. [364:1] Hist.

t. 3, p. 312. [364:2] Mem.

Eccl.

t. 6, p. 83. [366:1] Galland.

t. 3, p. 673, note 3. [366:2] Vid.

Preface to Oxford Transl.

of Tertullian, where the character of his mind is admirably drawn out.

[369:1] Infra, pp. 411-415, &c. [370:1] Orig.

c.

Cels.

vii.

63, viii.

17 (vid.

not.

Bened.

in loc.

), August.

Ep.

102, 16; Minuc.

F.

10, and 32; Tertull.

de Orat.

fin.

ad Uxor.

i.

fin.

Euseb.

Hist.

viii.

2; Clem.

Strom.

vii.

6, p. 846. [370:2] Tertull.

de Cor.

3; Just.

Apol.

i.

65; Minuc.

F.

20; Julian ap.

Cyr.

vi.

p. 194, Spanh.

[371:1] Epp.

102, 18. [371:2] Contr.

Faust.

20, 23. [371:3] Lact.

ii.

15, 16; Tertull.

Spect.

12; Origen, c. Cels.

vii.

64-66, August.

Ep.

102, 18; Contr.

Faust.

xx.

23; Hieron.

c.

Vigil.

8. [372:1] Vit.

Thaum.

p. 1006. [373:1] V.

Const.

iii.

1, iv.

23, &c. [373:2] According to Dr. E.

D.

Clarke, Travels, vol. i.

p. 352. [376:1] De Imag.

i.

24. [377:1] Ibid.

ii.

11. 14. [378:1] Hom.

xii.

in Cor.

1, Oxf.

Tr.