Page images
PDF
EPUB

effeminacy, and indolence; after they had, by their vices, become, in their turn, a prey to the barbarians they had formerly subdued; after the empire came to be torn to pieces by Goths, Vandals, Huns, and Lombards; when the sun of science was now set, and the night of ignorance, superstition, and barbarism, was fast advancing; that out of the ruins of every thing great and venerable, there should spring a new species of despotism never heard of, or imagined before, whose means of conquest and defence were neither swords nor spears, fortifications nor warlike engines, but definitions and canons, sophisms and imprecations, and that by such weapons, as by a kind of magick, there should actually be reared a second universal monarchy, the most formidable the world ever knew, will, to latest ages, afford matter of astonishment to every judicious inquirer.

Of the numerous controversies wherewith the church was, for several ages, pestered, some related only to things ceremonial. Of this sort was the contention about the time of the observance of Easter, which, so early as the second century, raised a flame in the church. Others, doubtless, concerned essential articles in the christian theology. Such were the Arian controversy and the Pelagian. Whether Jesus Christ was a divine person, and existed from eternity, or a mere 'creature, and had a beginning; whether by grace in scripture we are to understand advantages with regard to us properly external, such as the remission of sins, the revelation of God's will by his Son, the benefit of the examples of Christ, and his apostles, the promises of the gospel, and the gifts of Providence, or whether we ought also to comprehend, under that name, as things equally real, certain internal benefits conferred on the mind by the invisible operation of the Holy Spirit; are momentous questions, which nearly affect the substance of christian doctrine.

: But from this fund many other questions may, by men more curious than wise, be easily started, which no modest man will think himself capable of answering, and no pious. man will think it his duty to pry into. Such are some of those that have been moved in regard to the manner of the spirit's operation, in regard to the generation of the second person of the trinity, and the procession of the third. To this class may be added, those impertinent inquiries which have sometimes produced as great a ferment as the most momentous would have done. Of this sort is the question concerning the natural corruptibility of the body of Christ, and that about the palpability of the bodies of the saints after the resurrec

tion.

There is a fourth set of questions, which are mere logomachies, in regard to which the different combatants have either no fixed meaning to the words they employ, or mean precisely the same thing under different expressions. In this last case, the controversy is either absolutely nonsensical, or purely verbal. Nor has this been the least fruitful source of contention in the church. What could be a more flagrant example of this than the question which created, in the time of pope Hormisdas and some of his successours, so much animosity and strife? The point was, whether we ought to say, "One of the trinity suffered in the flesh," or, "One person of "the trinity suffered in the flesh." On this pretty puzzle there were four different opinions. One set approved both expressions, a second condemned both, a third maintained the former expression to be orthodox, the latter heterodox, and a fourth affirmed the reverse. In this squabble, emperours, popes, and patriarchs, engaged with great fury. The then reigning emperour Justinian was as mere a dotard on all the sophistical trash then in vogue among the theologians, as any scholastick recluse, who had been inured to wrangling from his cradle, and had nothing else to mind. Luckily, however, no council was convened to discuss the point, and give it sufficient importance. In consequence of this cruel neglect it died away.

The dispute with Nestorius, though equally frivolous, being treated differently, took deeper root. The point in debate at first was, Whether the Virgin Mary might be denominated more properly the mother of God, or the mother of him that is God? It is plain, that there could not arise a question which might be more justly said to turn merely on grammatical propriety. Both sides admitted, that Jesus Christ is God as well as man; both sides admitted, that his human nature was born of the Virgin, and that his divine nature existed from eternity; both sides admitted the distinction between the two natures, and their union in the person of Christ. Where then lay the difference? It could be no where but in phraseology. Yet this notable question raised a conflagration in the church, and proved, in the east, the source of infinite mischief, hatred, violence, and persecution. It is reported of Constantine Copronymus, in the eighth century, that he one day asked the patriarch, "What harm would there be in "calling the Virgin Mary the mother of Christ?" God preserve your majesty, answered the patriarch, with great emotion, from entertaining such a thought. Do you not see how Nestorius is anathematized for this by the whole church? “I "only asked for my own information," replied the emperour,

"but let it go no farther." A few emphatical strokes like this are enough to make the people of that age appear to those of the present as not many removes from idiocy. Had Nes torius, whose correctness of taste (for opinion is out of the question) made him sensible of the irreverence of an expression, which seemed greatly to derogate from the divine ma jesty, and tended manifestly to corrupt the religious sentiments of the vulgar, who are incapable of entering into metaphysical distinctions; been but a better politician, (for to do him justice, Rome herself cannot accuse him of the most unclerical sin of moderation) and, consequently, had he been a more equal match for his adversary St. Cyril, the decision of the church had infallibly been the reverse of what it was, and we should at this day find Cyrilianism in the list of heresies, and a St. Nestorius in the kalendar of the beatified. On such accidental circumstances it often depended, whether a man should be deemed an heresiarch or a saint, a devil or an angel. "I shall only remark," says a modern Roman Catholick author, (Richard Simon, not Father Simon of the Oratory, Des cérémonies et coutumes des chrétiens orientaux, Ch. 7,) "that some might infer, that nestorianism is "but a nominal heresy, and that if Nestorius and St. Cyril "had understood one another, they might have reconciled "their opinions, and prevented a great scandal in the church. But the Greeks were always keen disputants, and it was by "them that most of the first heresies were broached. "monly their disputes consisted in a sort of metaphysical chicanery on ambiguous phrases. Hence they drew infer"ences after their manner, and from inferences, proceeded to "personal abuse, until the parties at last became irreconcile"able enemies. Had they but coolly explained their thoughts, "they would have found that, in most cases, there was no "scope for the imputation of heresy on either side. This is "what some allege to have happened in the affair of Nestorius "and St. Cyril." True, indeed, Mr. Simon, and for a specimen of their spirit and coolness, let us but hear the final judgment of the council of Ephesus in this famous cause. "Our Lord Jesus Christ, against whom the most wicked "Nestorius has levelled his blasphemies, declares him, by the "mouth of this council, deprived of the episcopal dignity, and "cut off from the communion of the episcopal order." The note bearing this sentence was thus directed:"To Nestorius, a second Judas." In every thing they were guided by Cyril, whom, in respect of meekness, they might, with equal truth, have denominated a second Moses.

66

Com

Nobody is at a loss to perceive the opinion of the French author above quoted in regard to this affair. Yet we may ob serve in passing, in what an indirect manner he is obliged to express it. Some might infer and some allege. And no wonder that he should take this method of suggesting a principle totally subversive of the doctrine of the infallibility, wheresoever placed; a doctrine which now, among the learned of that com munion, seems to be regarded as purely of the exoterick kind, that is, as proper, whether true or false, to be inculcated on the people, as an useful expedient in governing them. This Frenchman's principle plainly subverts the pope's pretensions ; for Celestine freely acceded to the sentence, condemning Ne storius as a most pestilent heretick. It subverts the pretensions of an ecumenical council, which that of Ephesus, however disorderly and tumultuous, has always been acknowledged by the Romanists to be. It subverts the pretensions of the church collectively, which did, for many ages, universally (the not very numerous sect of Nestorius only excepted) receive the decrees of that synod. This Ephesian council was one of the four, concerning which pope Gregory, who is also called St. Gregory, and Gregory the Great, declared, that he receiv ed them with as much veneration as he did the four gospels..

Yet so little of consistency in speculations of this sort is to be expected from either popes or councils, that when so late as the pontificate of Clement the eleventh, in the beginning of the present century, some affected to style St. Ann the grandmother of God, (no doubt, with the pious view of conferring an infinite obligation on her) his holiness thought fit to sup press the title, as being, in his judgment, offensive to pious ears. Yet it is impossible for one, without naming Nestorius, to give a clearer decision in his favour. For what is the meaning of grandmother? Is it any more than saying, in one word, what mother's mother, or father's mother, expresses in two? To say then of Ann, that she was the mother of the mother of God, which they admit, and to say that she was God's grandmother, which they reject, are absolutely the same. The sole spring of offence is in the first step, if that be admitted, the propriety of such expressions, as God's grandmother or grandfather, uncle, aunt, or cousin, follows of course. The second council of Nice, with greater consistency, in quoting the epistle of James, do not hesitate to style the writer God's brother, Kala τον αδελφόθεον Ιακωβον, are their very words. Only from this more recent circumstance, we may warrantably conclude, that if the phrase, mother of God, had never been heard till the time of Clement the eleventh, it had fared well with the author, if he had not been pronounced both a blasphemer and a heretick. F f

What made the case of Nestorius the harder was, that he was, in no respect, the innovator. He was only shocked at the innovations in language, if not in sentiments, of the new-fangled phrases introduced by others, such as this, of the mother of God, and the eternal God was born; the impassible suffered; the immortal and only true God expired in agonies. I have seen a small piece, called, if I remember right," Godly riddles," by the late Mr. Ralph Erskine, one of the apostles and founders of the Scotch secession, written precisely in the same taste. "There is nothing new," says Solomon, "under the sun." In the most distant ages and remote countries, kindred geniüses may be discovered, wherein the same follies and absurdities, as well as vices, spring up and flourish. To men of shallow understandings, such theologick paradoxes afford a pleasure not unlike that which is derived from being present at the wonderful feats of jugglers. In these, by mere sleight of hand, one appears to do what is impossible to be done; and in those, by mere sleight of tongue, (in which the judgment has no part) an appearance of meaning and consistency is given to terms the most self contradictory, and the incredible seems to be rendered worthy of belief. To set fools a staring, is alike the aim of both. I shall only observe, that of the two kinds of artifice, the juggler's and the sophister's the former is much the more harmless.

To proceed; the contention that arose soon after, on occasion of the doctrine of Eutyches, appears to have been of the same stamp. The whole difference terminated in this, that the one side maintained, that Christ is of two natures, the other, that he is of and in two natures, both agreeing, that in one person he is perfect God and perfect man. Yet this dispute was, if possible, conducted with more fury and rancour than the former. Much need, in those days, had the rulers of the church, who called themselves the followers and ministers of the meek and humble Jesus, to go and learn what this meaneth, (2 Tim. ii, 14,) Charge them before the Lord, that they strive not about words to no profit, but to the subverting of the hearers. They acted, on the contrary, as if they could not conceive another purpose for which a revelation had been given them, but to afford matter of endless wrangling, and to foster all the most malignant passions of human nature. Had they so soon forgotten the many warnings they had received from inspiration, of the mischievous tendency of such a conduct, that profane and vain babblings would increase to more ungodliness, that their pitiful logomachies, their oppositions of science, falsely so called, their foolish and unedifying ques tions and vain janglings, could only gender strife? Is it possible

« PreviousContinue »