examined the various systems of the ancient philosophers, now recollected with pleasure those pure religious ideas which rose above the popular superstition, and proceeded from the religious consciousness as developed by philosophy. From the central point of Christianity they could now recognise what bore an affinity to it in all the scattered traces of truth, and separated them from the falsehood with which they were mixed. As Clement of Alexandria expresses himself, "They bound together the portions of truth separated by human error into one harmonious whole, and thus recognised the truth without danger."

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Yet certainly there was some truth at the foundation, when Tertullian, a man of practical life rather than a philosopher, was disposed to see in all mental culture (what can be only affirmed of what was not true), a falsifier of the original truth, a corruption of nature; and hence, instead of going to the schools of the philosophers, in which he often found the voice of Nature suppressed, he rather appealed to the involuntary utterance of this voice in the unguarded expressions of spontaneous feeling by simple uneducated men. He wished to show that even the predominance of delusion could not altogether suppress the original consciousness of God. I summon thee, oh soul!" he says, "not such as when, trained in the schools, exercised in libraries, nourished in the academies and porches of Athens, thou utterest thy crude wisdom. I address thee as simple and rude, unpolished and unlearned, such as they have thee who have only thee; the very and entire thing that thou art in the road, in the highway, in the weaver's factory. I have need of thy inexperience, since in thy experience, however small, no one puts faith. I demand of thee those truths which thou bringest with thyself to man, which thou hast learnt to know either from thyself, or from the author of thy being We hear thee saying openly and with full liberty, not allowed to us, both at home and abroad, Which God grant,' and If God will.' By this language thou testifiest the being of a God; thou ascribest all power to him, to whose will thou makest reference; thou deniest also the being of other gods, since thou callest these by their particular names. Also what we say of the nature of God is not hidden from thee; it is thy language, The good God,'' God gives what is good.' In fact, thou addest, but man is evil.'

VIEWS OF TERTULLIAN AND MARCION.

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Thou indicatest by this contrast, that man is evil, because he has estranged himself from the good God. Also in what we regard as the holiest foundation of doctrine and practice, in the belief that God alone is the source of good for man, we agree. Thou sayest, God bless thee' as easily as it is necessary for a Christian to say it. God sees all things;' 'I commend the matter to God.' 'God will recompense it;' God will judge between us.' Whence these expressions of those who are not Christians; yes, even while they are worshipping false gods." He calls these expressions of the soul conscious of God, "the doctrine of original nature, intrusted in silence to the innate consciousness." “What wonder," he says, "if being derived from God, it expresses the same truths which God has communicated to his own people." In his apology he calls these involuntary expressions of mankind "the witness of the soul which is Christian by nature." (Testimonium animæ naturaliter Christianæ.) And in pronouncing these words he says, "It looks not to the capitol, but to heaven, for it knows the dwelling-place of the living God; from him and thence it descended. Although shut up in the prison of the body, although taken captive by bad instruction, although enervated by lusts and pleasures, although the slave of false gods, yet when it comes to its senses as out of a fit, a sleep, or an illness, and attains a feeling of soundness, it names God with that name only which is peculiar to the true God."

While Tertullian justly acknowledged in Christianity the revelation of that God who is never wholly hidden, is never altogether wanting to man, who always lets himself be recognised and perceived, to whom our whole being bears witness, and in whom it rests, who need not be proved to exist since he is proved by the fact that he cannot be denied ;-on the other hand the warm heart of Marcion was so captivated by the glory of the revelation of God in Christ, that he exclaimed: "The God of holiness and love, whom I find in the gospel, was hitherto wholly strange to the world; neither Nature nor Reason could point to him; the God whom Nature and Reason announced. Is not the most high God revealed in Christ? In the limited weak nature of man there is nothing akin to this Almighty One, the God of holy love; Christianity has first communicated to man a divine life, flowing from this God, by which he is raised above the whole finite creation to

communion with this infinite Being of holiness and love." Although truth and falsehood are here mingled, yet we perceive from it how extraordinary and new the knowledge of God which Christianity communicated to men, and its operation on humanity, appeared to the mind of a heathen deeply impressed by the power of the gospel; how he, when he compared the world to which Christianity had transported him, with the world in which he had lived before, which was all around him, and presented itself to his view in antiquity, could not believe in the possibility of any common bond between these two worlds.

We learn from these examples how easily a partial apprehension of truth, combined with deep religious feeling, leads into error; how easily, when a revolution takes place in deeply-seated feelings, error mingles with truth. And when we compare these two men, who resembled one another in ardent love and violent antipathy, and both deeply penetrated by Christianity, we perceive how easily it happens that those persons who, if they look into the recesses of each other's hearts, would embrace one another as brethren, conduct themselves as strangers, and even as enemies, because their dispositions are manifested only through the enigmatical medium of language and the imperfect vehicle of notions.

CHAPTER III.

THE RELATION OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH TO THE HEATHEN WORLD.

A RELIGION destined to satisfy the constant and everabiding religious wants of human nature, and hence suited for men under every variety of circurastances, and elevated above all earthly forms of mental culture; the idea of such a religion of humanity was totally unknown to antiquity. And though to every one who knows what religion is, and who is aware that no other power can compensate for its absence, it must be evident that the religious sentiment, in itself, must be the same in the learned and the unlearned, the

CHRISTIANITY UNIVERSAL. NOT NATIONAL.

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civilized and the uncivilized; still, since either the essential in religion is confounded with what is only deducible from it, or something quite different is substituted in the place of religion, the error is ever renewed, that religion must be different according to the various stages of mental culture.

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Celsus, the opponent of Christianity, says: 'He must be void of understanding who can believe that Greeks and barbarians, in Asia, Europe, and Libya, all nations to the ends of the earth, can unite in the reception of one and the same religious doctrine." All the ancient religions were national and state religions, and this was especially the case with the Romans, among whom the political point of view predominated in everything, not excepting religion. public apostacy of citizens from the state religion, and the introduction of a foreign religion, or a new one not legalized by the state (religio illicita), appeared as an act of high treason. In this light was regarded the conversion of Roman citizens or subjects to Christianity. "Your religion is illegal" (non licet esse vos), was the reproach commonly cast on Christians, without referring to the contents of their religion; to this was added the striking difference between Christianity and all that had hitherto been denominated religion. Thus it was said to Christians, While all other religions are as so many sanctuaries for distinct nations handed down from a venerable antiquity, on the contrary, your religion existed from the first with disturbance; it was a revolt against the religion of the Hebrews, which was venerable for its antiquity, though blameworthy for its intolerance; that was its origin, and now it threatens to overturn everywhere the established sanctuaries, and the order of things confirmed by sacred customs and usages. Only see how your religion is distinguished from everything which has hitherto received the name; no temple, no altar, no image, no sacrifice! How can such a religion, which presents nothing for the senses, suit men living in a world of sense, and though a purely spiritual religion may be adapted for a few philosophers, how can it be so for the rude, unreasoning people?" The positivism which was zealous for what was established, and the prejudice in favour of ancient tradition which condemned everything new from the first as false, were opposed to the power which threatened to unhinge the whole ancient world. Accusations and reasons such as in later times have been urged by the

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Romish Church against Protestantism, were then brought forward from the stand-point of heathenism against Christianity. The multitude of sects opposed to one another which had arisen from the fermentation caused by Christianity in the human mind was adduced as a proof, that mankind, having once lost their respect for ancient tradition, would become a prey to the caprice of contending opinions, and on this the hope was founded that Christianity would perish in the warfare of opinion, and Christians themselves destroy one another. And yet the multitude of various heresies at this time bears witness to the power with which Christianity, condescending, as it did, to the lowest, and rising to the highest, could attract minds of the most different structure, each in its own way; for it was because men of the most opposite stand-points could not withstand the attractive power of Christianity, and yet were too much entangled in their respective stand-points to surrender themselves without reserve to the Divine, that this multitude of heresies arose. Clement of Alexandria, in order to remove this stigma, appeals to what our Lord himself had prophetically uttered, in his parable of the wheat and the tares, and alleges as the general cause, that everywhere the bad follows the good; according to the significant old German proverb, 'Wherever God has a temple, the devil builds a chapel near it;' or as Agricola expresses it a little differently in his collection of German proverbs, 'Wherever our Lord God builds a church, the devil sets up an ale-house.' He also quotes the words ascribed to our Lord by an ancient tradition, in which he enjoins his disciples to be skilful money-changers, and learn to distinguish between genuine and base coin. On account of heresies,” he says,* “ men must submit to

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* Επαποδυτέον ἄρα τῷ πόνῳ τῆς εὑρέσεως διὰ τὰς αἱρέσεις, ἀλλ ̓ οὐ τέλεον ἀποστατέον· οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐπώσας παρακειμένης, τῆς μὲν αληθοῦς καὶ ὡρίμου, τῆς δὲ ἐκ κηροῦ ὡς ὅτι μάλιστα ἐμφεροῦς πεποιημένης, διὰ τὴν ὁμοιότητα ἀμφοῖν αφεκτέον· διακριτέον δὲ ὁμοῦ τε τῇ καταληπτική θεωρίᾳ, καὶ τῷ κυριωτάτῳ λογισμῷ το ἀληθὲς ἀπὸ του φαινομένου. Καὶ ὥσπερ ὁδοῦ μιᾶς μὲν τῆς βασιλικῆς τυγχανουσης, πολλῶν δὲ καὶ ἄλλων, τῶν μὲν ἐπί τινα κρημνὸν, τῶν δὲ ἐπὶ ποταμὸν ῥοώδη ἢ θαλασσαν ἀγχιβαθῆ φερουσῶν, οὐκ ἄν τις ὀκνήσαι διὰ τὴν διαφωνίαν ὁδεῦσαι, χρήσαιτο δ ̓ ἂν τῇ ἀκινδύνῳ καὶ βασιλικῇ καὶ λεωφορῳ· οὕτως ἄλλα ἄλλων περὶ ἀληθείας λεγόντων, οὐκ ἀποστατέον, ἐπιμελέστερον δὲ θηρατέον τὴν ἀκριβεστάτην περὶ αὐτῆς γνῶσιν. Clem, Alexand. Strom. vii. 754. (Pott. 888.)