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from him." Guizot, who is less interested in the advocacy of the "three orders," and not concerned for the admission that the Christian fathers drank of the streams of the Neo-Platonic philosophy, takes a different view from that of the Abbé Darboy; "Neo-Platonism," he says "when forsaken and abandoned by princes, decried and persecuted, had no other alternative than to lose itself in the bosom of the enemy." Brucker's opinion is nearly the same. "The works of S. Dionysius introduced Alexandrian Platonism into the West, and laid the foundation of that mystical system of theology, which afterwards so greatly prevailed." He then describes it as "a philosophical enthusiasm, born in the East, nourished by Plato, educated in Alexandria, matured in Asia, and introduced under the pretence and authority of an Apostolic man into the Western Church."

Before the Reformation the genuineness of these writings was an open question in the Catholic Church, and to some extent it is so still. At the Council of Trent they were appealed to as genuine. From that time many Catholic theologians have considered their doctrines in harmony with the teaching of the Church.

We have already seen how Plato's Alexandrian disciples conceived a universe of being, in which were all grades of existence from the primal One to that which was nothing. We have seen how Porphyry and Proclus filled up the immediate spaces between that which was above and that which was below being, with hypostases of the Trinity, gods, genii, demons, heroes, men, animals, vegetables and unformed matter; all of which had, in God whatever of true existence they possessed. S. Dionysius, as a Christian, had to expel all the gods and demons from this Pagan totality of being; and, as a good churchman, to fill their places with more orthodox existences. Instead of a chain, beginning at God, or a pyramid of which the top was primal Unity, S. Dionysius conceived a central and special dwelling of the Eternal, around which were arranged, in consecutive circles, all the orders of being from the highest to the meanest. First, there were Cherubim, Seraphim and Thrones. Behind them Dominions, Virtues, Powers. Then Principalities, Archangels, and Angels. Of the heavenly hierarchy, the ecclesiastical was a copy; bishops, priests, deacons. The" threes" of Pagan Proclus, were beautiful triads, with the Christian Dionysius. Were not all things trinities in unity? The supreme One was a Trinity. Each grade was a trinity. The ecclesiastical hierarchy a trinity.

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GOD NOT TO BE NAMED.

Outside of the heavenly that is, immediately behind the angels, is the order of beings gifted with intellect such as men; then those which have feeling but not reason; and lastly, creatures that simply exist. Light and wisdom, grace and knowledge, emanate from the Supreme, and spread through all ranks of being. Divinity permeates all. The supreme One has called them in their several degrees and according to their several capacities to be sharers of His existence. His essence is the being of all beings, so far as they exist. Even things inanimate partake of Divinity. Those that merely live partake of this naturally vital energy, which is superior to all life, because it embraces all life. Reasonable and intelligent beings partake of the wisdom which surpasses all wisdom; and which is essentially and eternally perfect. Higher beings are united to God by the transcendent contemplation of that divine Pattern, and in reaching the source of light they obtain superabundant treasures of grace, and in a manner express the majesty of the infinite Nature. All these orders gaze admiringly upwards. Each is drawn to the Supreme, and each draws towards itself the rank next below it; and thus a continual progress of lower being towards that which is higher, and a continual descent of the Divine, elevating all ranks and helping them in their progress towards God. The Divinity surpasses all knowledge. He is above all thought and all substance. As the sensible cannot understand the intelligible; as the multiple cannot understand the simple and immaterial, as the corporeal cannot understand the incorporeal, so the finite cannot understand the Infinite. He remains superior to all being.-a Unity which escapes all conception and all expression. He is an existence unlike all other existences; the Author of all things, and yet not any one thing; for He surpasses all that is. We ought therefore to think and speak of God only as the Holy Scriptures have spoken, and they have declared Him unsearchable. Theologians call Him infinite and incomprehensible, and yet they vainly try to sound the abyss, as if they could fathom the mysterious and infinite depths of Deity. We cannot understand Him, yet He gives us a participation of his being. He draws from His exhaustless treasures and over all things He diffuses the riches of His divine splendors.

S. Dionysius anticipates an objection, that if God thus exceeds words, thoughts, knowledge, and being, if He eternally embraces and penetrates all things, if He is absolutely incomprehensible, how can we speak of the Divine Names?

He

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answers, first, that in order to extol the greatness of God and to show that He is not to be identified with any particular being He must be called by no name. And then, secondly, we must call Him by all names. I AM, Life and Truth, God of gods, Lord of lords, Wisdom, Being, Eternal, Ancient of Days. He dwells in the heart, in the body, in the soul; He is in heaven and upon earth, and yet he never moves. He is in the world, around it and beyond it. He is above the heaven and all being, yet He is in the sun, the moon, the stars, the water, the wind and the fire. He is the dew and the vapours. He is all that is and yet nothing of it all. In the infinite riches and simplicity of his nature, He has eternally seen and embraced all things; so that whatever reality is in anything may be affirmed of Him As, by lines drawn from the centre of a circle to the circumference, so are even the meanest existences united to God. "The blessed Hierotheos," says S. Dionysius, "has taught that the Divinity of Jesus Christ is the cause and complement of all things. It keeps all in harmony without being either all or a part; and yet it is all and every part, because it comprehends al, and from all eternity has possessed all, and all parts. Augjust Substance! it penetrates all substances, without defiling its purity, and without descending from its sublime elevation. It determines and classifies the principles of things, and yet remains pre-eminently beyond all principle and all classification. Its plenitude appears in that which creatures have not; and its superabundance shines in that which they have." "As in. universal nature," says the Areopagite," the different principles of each particular nature are united in a perfect and harmonious unity-as in the simplicity of the soul the multiplied faculties which serve the wants of each part of the body are united, so we may regard all things, all substances, even the most opposite in themselves as united in the indivisible Unity." From it they all proceed. The Eternal has produced this participation of being. It has an existence which is comprised in Him, but He is not comprised in it. It partakes of Him, but He does not partake of it; for He precedes all being and all duration. From His life flows all life. Whatever now exists has existed in its faithful simplicity in Him. The Areopagite anticipated an objection from the existence of evil. He obviated it, as all his predecessors and successors who felt the same difficulty have done, by denying its existence. Not that he said there was no evil in the world, but that it was not a real being, and, consequently, could not emanate from being. It is only an accident of good, having an existence nowhere.

On the impossibility of knowing the Infinite, S. Dionysius and Plotinus entirely agree. All things speak of God, but nothing speaks the fulness of His perfections. We know both by our knowledge and by our ignorance. God is accessible to reason through all His works; and we discern Him by imagination, by feeling, and by thought; yet He is incomprehensible and ineffable, to be named by no name. He is nothing of that which is, and nothing of that which enables us to comprehend Him. He is in all things and yet, essentially, He is not one of them. All things reveal Him, but none sufficiently declare Him. We may call Him by the names of all realities, for they have some analogy with Him who produced them; but the perfect knowledge of God emerges from a sublime ignorance of Him which we reach by an incomprehensible union with Him. Then we feel how unsearchable He is; then the soul forgets itself and is plunged into the eternal ocean of Deity; then does it receive light among the billows of the Divine glory, and is radiated among the shining abysses of unfathomable wisdom. *

The authorities for this chapter are Dorner on the Person of Christ, Neander's Church History, the works of Origen and Synesius, S. Dionysius on the Divine Names and the Heavenly Hierarchies, with the Introduction of the Abbé Darboy, and Bunsen's Hippolytus. The reader who is interested in the relations of philosophy to Christianity in the fifth Century will not omit to read Mr. Kingsley's charming Romance Hypatia.

*It is not necessary to our argument to follow the history of the Dionysian writings. At the Council of Constantinople, in the year 533, where they were first cited, the Orthodox at once refused their authority. In the seventh century, a Presbyter, named Theodorus, composed a work in defence of their genuineness; but long before this their influence was widely spread, or to speak more correctly, the influence in which they originated. Neander says, "In the last times of the fifth century, a cloister at Edessa, in Mesopotamia, had for its head, an abbot by the name of Bar Sudaili. who had busied himself in various ways with that mystic theology which always formed one of the ground-tendencies of the Oriental Monachism, and from which had proceeded the writings fabricated in the name of Dionysius the Areopagite; as in fact he appeals to the writings of a certain Hierotheos, whom the PseudoDionysius calls his teacher. He stood at first on intimate terms with the most eminent Monophysite teachers, and was very highly esteemed by them. But, as his mystic theology came into conflict with the church doctrine, he drew upon himself the most violent attacks. Espousing the peculiar views of Monophysitism, and more particularly as they were apprehended by the party of Xenayas, he maintained that as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, are one divine essence, and as the humanity formed one nature with the godhead in Christ, and his body became of like essence to the divinity, (was deified) so through Him all fallen beings should also be exalted to unity with God, in this way would become one with God; so that God, as Paul expresses it, should be all in all. If it is true, as it is related, that on the walls of his cell were found

BY

CHAPTER VII.

HERESY.

Y heresy we are to understand the doctrines of sects outside of the Church; or doctrines that the Church has openly condemned. Catholic theologians say that Pantheism is the

written the words, All creatures are of the same essence with God;' we must suppose that he extended this assertion so as to include not only all rational beings, but all creatures of every kind, and that his theory was-as all existence proceeded by an original emanation from God, so by redemption all existence, once more refined and enobled, would return back to Him. But the question then arises, whether he understood this, after the Pantheistic manner, as a return to the divine essence with the loss of all self-subsistent, individual existence; (as it has often been observed, that mysticism runs into Pantheism; or whether he supposed that, with the coming into existence of finite beings sin also necessarily made its appearance, but that by the redemption this contrariety was removed, and now at length the individual existence of the creature should continue to subsist, as such in union with God. Our information is too scanty to enable us to decide this question." In another place speaking of the development of doctrine in the Greek Church Neander says, "The monk Maximus, distinguished by his acute and profound intellect, appeared in the seventh century, as the representative of this dialectic contemplative disposition. It appears from his works, that the writings of Gregory of Nyssa, and of the pseudo-Dionysius, had exercised great influence on his theological views. We may trace the main lineaments of a connected system in his writings. Christianity, as seen in the doctrine of the Trinity, seemed to him to form the right medium between the too contracted view of the idea of God in Judaism, and the too diffuse notion exhibited in the nature-deifying system of Heathenism. He considered the highest aim of the whole creation to be the inward union into which God enters with it through Christ; whilst, without injury to His unchangeableness He brings humanity into personal union with Himself in order to deify man; whence God becomes man without change of essence; and human nature is taken into union with Him without losing aught of its peculiar character. To be able to keep a firm hold of these opinions, it was of importance to him to possess distinct notions on the union of the two natures, still retaining their particular properties unaltered. The object of redemption is not only to purify human nature from sin, but to exalt it to a higher state than that which it originally enjoyed-to an unchangeable and divine life. Thus the history of creation becomes divided into two great parts; the one exhibiting the preparation for the assumption of human nature by God; the other, the progressively developed deification of man's nature, commencing with that act, and carried on in those who are fitted for it by a right will, till the end is attained in their perfect salvation. Hence he often speaks of a continued humanizing of the Logos in believers, in so far as the human life is taken into communion with Christ, and is imbued with his own divine principle of life; and he regards the soul of him who is the source of so divine a life a bearer of God.""