The Secret Vault presents: The Christian and Pagan Creeds Collated. Rev. Robert Taylor, A. B. & M. R. C. S.
By the Rev. Robert Taylor, A. B. & M. R. C. S.
The Apostolic Fathers, is the honourable distinction given to those orthodox professors of the Christian religion, who are believed to have lived and written at sometime within the first hundred years, so as to stand within a conceivable probability of having seen or conversed with some or other of the twelve apostles, and to have received their doctrine thus immediately from the fountain heads.
There are upwards of seventy claimants of this honour, exclusive of such as the pseudo Linus, and Abdias, bishop of Babylon, who pretends to have seen Christ himself, though no such person, no such bishop, and no such bishopric ever existed. The majority of these are mere imaginary names of imaginary persons, whose various actions and sufferings are altogether the creation of romance. The historians of the first three centuries of Christianity have taken so great a licence in this way, as that no one alleged fact standing on their testimony can be said to have even a probable degree of evidence. The most candid and learned even of Christian inquirers, have admitted, that antiquity is most deficient just exactly where it is most important; that there is absolutely nothing known of the church history in those times on which a rational man could place any reliance; and that the epoch when Christian truth first dawned upon the world, is appropriately designated as the Age of Fable. [Rerum gestarum fides exinde graviter laboraverit nee orbis terrarum tantum sed et Dei ecclesia de teuiporibus suis mysticis merito queratur. - Dr Fell. Bishop of Oxford.] [LN., Fell, John, 1625 to 1686, he was an English churchman and influential academic, he served as Dean of Christ Church, later as Bishop of Oxford.]
The title of Apostolic Fathers, is given only to the five individuals, St. Barnabas, St. Clement, St. Hermas, St. Ignatius, and St. Poly carp, of whom the three former, have honourable mention in the New Testament; the two latter are believed to have suffered martyrdom, and each is supposed to be the author of the respective epistles which have come down to us under their names, which, notwithstanding, the church has seen reason to take for no better than they are - supernumerary forgeries. Had they, however, been retained in the canon of sacred Scripture, we should have had folios of evidence in demonstration of their authenticity; and withal the demonstration (which all religionists appeal to whenever they can) of penalties, fines, imprisonment, and infinite persecution, on all who had understanding and integrity to treat them with the contempt which everything of the kind merits.
St. Barnabas - Bishop of Milan,
Was a Levite of the country of Cyprus, and one of those Christians who, having land, sold it, and brought the money and laid it at the apostles' feet; whereupon they changed his name from Joses into Barnabas, which signifies the son of consolation. So that he literally bought his apostleship; and having gratified the avarice of the holy conclave, their historian bears him the honourable testimony, that he was a good man, full of the Holy Ghost and of faith. (Acts 11-24.) St. Clement of Alexandria has often quoted the epistle that goes under his name as the composition of an inspired apostle. In the catalogue of Dorotheus it is said, "Barnabas was a minister of the word together with Paul; he preached Christ first at Rome and was afterwards made bishop of Milan:" and in the translator's preface to that catalogue, it is asserted, on I know not what authority, that Barnabas had a rope tied about his neck, and was therewith pulled to the stake and burned. We have no account of any miracles which Barnabas wrought in his lifetime, which seems rather hard dealing with him on the part of the apostolic firm, since he had paid a very handsome consideration to be admitted into full partnership. The 'amende honourable' was made to his relics in after ages; they became wonderfully efficacious in healing all manner of diseases. His dead body had the distinguished honour of giving a certificate to the genuineness of the gospel of St. Matthew, which was found lying upon his breast, written in his own hand, when his body was dug up in the island of Cyprus, so late as the year of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, 489; [A] so rapidly was the Christian faith, and consequently the efficacy of the relics of the saints, extending. [A] Sigebertum Gemblacensem ad A.C. 489, itemque alios legas sub Zenonis imperio in insula Cypro repertum S. Barnabse corpus, et super pectore ejus, Evangelium S. Matthew [GK] - Fabricii, tom. 1, p. 341.]
"Anyone who reads the Epistle of Barnabas with but a small degree of attention," says Dr Lardner, "will perceive in it many Pauline phrases and reasonings. To give the character of the author of it, in one word, he resembles St. Paul, as his fellow labourer, without copying him." [LN., Lardner, Nathaniel, 1684 to 1768, an English theologian.]
Paley quotes only the single passage from the apocryphal epistle, which, he says, is probably genuine, ascribed to the apostle Barnabas, containing the words, "Finally teaching the people of Israel, and doing many wonders and signs among them; he (Christ) preached to them, and showed the exceeding great love, which he bore towards them." [Paley's Evid. vol. 1, p. 119.] [LN., Paley, William 1743 to 1805, Christian Apologist, philosopher and Utilitarian. Best known for his work 'Natural Theology or evidences of the existence and attributes of the Deity.']
To so clear and distinct a testimony to Christ and his miracles, I subjoin an equally sublime specimen of this apostle's inspired reasoning, from Archbishop Wake's translation: -
" Understand therefore, my children, these things more fully, that Abraham, who was the first that brought in circumcision, looking forward in the spirit to Jesus crucified, received the mystery of three letters; for the Scripture says, that Abraham circumcised three hundred and eighteen men of his house. But what, therefore, was the mystery that was made known unto him? Mark, first, the eighteen, and next the three hundred: for the numeral letters of ten and eight are I H, and these denote Jesus; and because the cross was that whereby we were to find grace, therefore, he adds three hundred, the note of which is T; wherefore, by two letters he signifies Jesus, and by the third, his cross.
"He who has put the engrafted gift of his doctrine within us, knows that I never taught to any one a more certain truth than this; but I trust that ye are worthy of it." [Barnabas's Catholic Epist. in Wake, p 176.] [LN., Wake, William. 1657 to 1737, a Church of England priest and Archbishop of Canterbury from 1716 till death.]
"Consider how God has joined both the cross and the water together; for thus he saith, blessed are they who put their trust in the cross and descend into the water. [Ibid. p. 180.]
"Jesus Christ is the heifer; the wicked men who were to offer it, were those sinners who brought him to death.
"But why were there three young men appointed to sprinkle? Why, to denote Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And why was the wool put upon a stick? Why, but because the kingdom of Jesus Christ was founded upon wood. [Ibid. p. 174.] Blessed be our Lord, who has given us this wisdom, and a heart to understand his secrets." [Ibid. p. 169.]
Saint Clement, 96AD. Bishop of Rome.
St. Clement is with great confidence considered to be the individual honourably mentioned by St. Paul in those words, " help those women which laboured with me in the Gospel, with Clement also, and with other my fellow labourers whose names are in the book of life." [Phil. iv. 3.] He is ordinarily called Clemens Romanus, as having been bishop of Rome, in the first century, to distinguish him from the no less illustrious Clemens Alexandrinus, who was bishop of Alexandria, about a hundred years after. In the Chronography generally attached to Evagrius's Ecclesiastical History, his name is arranged as third in succession of the bishops of Rome from St. Peter, the order standing thus: St. Peter, St. Linus, St. Annicctus, or Ancncletus, St. Clement. [b] There is but one ancient manuscript of his writings in existence: [Lardner, vol. l, p. 290.] his first epistle only is held to be genuine. Measureless are the forgeries which Christian piety and conscientiousness had for ages put upon the world under his name.
It is not without shrewd reason that the epistle which Paley quotes has been rejected from the place which it for many ages held in the volume of the New Testament itself. [b] "He had been first bishop of Sardis and was afterwards translated to the more lucrative see of Rome." - Dorotheus. So early was the office of a bishop a good thing. [LN., Dorotheus of Tyre, around 255 to 362AD, he was reported to be a learned priest of Antioch, and by tradition is said to have written the Acts of the Seventy Apostles?]
The passage, however, generally adduced from this epistle to prove the martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul, is too brief, and too evidently itself taken from some other authority, to admit of the fact being received on the evidence of this one single sentence, in one solitary manuscript of an author upon whom so many Christian forgeries have been committed.
Clement evidently refers to some existing and generally received accounts of the martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul, of which accounts his Philippian converts must have been in possession ere they could be thus loosely and generally called on to "take them as examples."
Of the martyrdom of St. Paul, not the least account is traceable in the New Testament; but the very reverse of the probability of such a consummation of his history is indicated in the last allusion to him which the sacred text contains: "And Paul dwelt two whole years in his own hired house, and received all that came in unto him, preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ with all confidence, no man forbidding him." - Acts 28-31.
This, in Rome - this, under the reign of the tyrant Nero - this, when the tyrant Nero was not only reigning, but resident in Rome, unquestionably looks much askew on the probability of those horrible stories of peaceably and quietly conducted Christians being put to such horrible torments, as the interest of those who would harrow up our feeling's, with those stories, requires us to believe.
Of the martyrdom of St. Peter, in like manner, the only authentic record in the case deposes not a syllable. The last mention of his name in the Canonical Acts of the Apostles informs us, that after having successfully set the power of the magistrates at defiance, burst out of chains that "fell off from his hands" and passed through an iron gate, which opened to him of his own accord, he went down from Judea to Caesarea, and there, abode." [ Acts 12.] This is the scriptural account of the matter; and though no story in the Arabian Nights Entertainments could possibly be more absurd, yet nothing in ecclesiastical history could be more authentic.
On what authority, then, can St. Clement be supposed to remind the Philippians, that "Peter, by unjust envy, underwent not one or two, but many sufferings, till at last, being martyred, he went to the place of glory that was due unto him;" and that "Paul, in like manner, at last suffered martyrdom by the command of the governors, and departed out of the world, and went unto his holy place, being become a most eminent pattern of patience unto all ages?" Surely the modernism of this manner of description must strike almost the dullest apprehension. Here are neither place, nor time, nor circumstance specified, as we should look for them in an historical statement. And "by the command of the governors," forsooth! Oh, yes; any governors you please: Bonaparte, or the Great Mogul, I suppose. It is outrageous romance!
The merit of the invention, however, belongs to other hands. It will be found, on a critical investigation, that the source from whence Clement drew, and from which is derived also the common belief that the apostles suffered martyrdom, is the Famous and Renowned Apostolic History of Abdias, the first bishop of Babylon, who (if we will believe,) had been ordained immediately by the apostles themselves, and who with his own eyes had seen the Lord.
These ten books of Abdias, though rejected entirely by the shrewder prudence of modern Christianity, contain the continuance of that broken and irregular jumble of the real journal of some Egyptian missionaries with the fabulous adventures of imaginary apostles, which the church retains under the name of the Acts of the Apostles.
Nothing can be more sophisticated than the whole plan of reasoning, and system of exhibition observed throughout the laborious volumes of Lardner. His method is to sift the works of these Faibers for any expression of similar character or cast of thought to such as are found in the New Testament, upon which similarity he would draw the inference that they must have read the New Testament and have held it in the light of a divine revelation; while he passes over the egregious anachronisms, the gross blunders, and the monstrous absurdities, which show those writings to be such, as anyone who sincerely wished to serve the Christian cause would wish had never existed. As they appear in Lardner's management, the reader is deceived into an apprehension that they were at least respectable.
St. Paul's 1st Epistle to the Corinthians is the only book of the New Testament quoted by Clement. As a parallel to 1 Cor. 15-20, "But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept" Dr Lardner quotes from the 24th chapter of the first of Clement, the words, "Let us consider, beloved, how the Lord does continually show us that there shall be a resurrection, of which he has made the Lord Jesus Christ the first fruits, having raised him from the dead;" where, in the same chapter of Clement, follows an argument from seeds, resembling St. Paul's, 1 Cor. 15. 36, 37, 38; but where Dr Lardner wholly omits to let us know that Clements main argument for the resurrection is not taken from the celebrated 15th chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, but from the no less celebrated and far more entertaining 15th book of Ovid's Metamorphoses, [a] where is the whole story of the phoenix regenerating itself from its own ashes, and returning every five hundred years, to die and revive again in the flames upon the idolatrous altars of the temple of the sun: - an argument which it is utterly impossible that St. Clement could have used, had the gospels then in existence been considered as of higher credibility than the stories of Ovid, or had he himself believed that the resurrection of Christ was more probable than the fable of the phoenix.
[note. [a] Hec tamen ex aliis ducunt primordia rebus; Una est quae reparet seque ipsa reseminet, ales: Assyrii Phoenicia vocant. Ovid Metamorph. lib. 15, line 391.] [LN., Ovid, Publius Ovidius Naso, 43BC. To 17-8AD. He was a Roman poet.]
Saint Hermas, 100AD. Bishop of Philipolis
Who is saluted by St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Romans, and whose work entitled The Pastor, or Shepherd, was, in the time of Eusebius, publicly read in the churches, [Lardner, vol. 1, p. 305. f Ibid. p. 551.] and in the judgment of Origen was held to be divinely inspired,] deserves all the respect due to an author who confesses himself to be a wilful asserter of known falsehood. Lardner, who makes large extracts from his writings, to prove thereby the credibility of the gospel history; has the dis-in-genuineness to conceal, and pass over entirely unnoticed, this characteristic feature of an authority that serves him well enough, at the time, to support his gospel credibility, leaving the character of the holy Father out of all weight in the consideration of his testimony.
I cannot send this apostolic father and his divinely inspired book to their eternal rest, in the judgment of my readers, with greater fairness, than by presenting them with a chapter as a specimen. The annexed is the whole of the fourth chapter of the second book, from Archbishop Wake's translation: -
"1. Moreover, the angel said unto me, Love the truth, and let all the speech be true which proceeds out of thy mouth, that the spirit which the Lord hath given to dwell in thy flesh, may be found true towards all men, and the Lord be glorified, who hath given such a spirit unto thee; because God is true in all his words, and in him there is no lie; they, therefore, that lie, deny the Lord, and become robbers of the Lord, not rendering to God what they received from him: for they received the spirit free from lying; if, therefore, they make that a liar, they defile what was committed to them by the Lord and become deceivers. When I heard this, I wept bitterly; and when the angel saw me weeping, he said unto me, Why, weeps thou? And I said, Because, sir, I doubt whether I can be saved. He asked me, Wherefore? I replied, Because, sir, I never spoke a true word in my life, but always lived in dissimulation, and affirmed a lie for truth to all men, and no man contradicted me, but all gave credit to my word; how then can I live, seeing I have done in this manner? And the angel said unto me, thou think well and truly; for thou ought, as the servant of God, to have walked in the truth, and not have joined an evil conscience with the spirit of truth, nor have grieved the holy and true Spirit of God. And I replied unto him, Sir, I never before hearkened so diligently unto these things. He answered me, now thou hear them, take care from henceforth, that even those things which thou hast formerly spoken falsely for the sake of thy business, may by thy present truth receive credit; for even those things may be credited, if, for the time to come, thou shalt speak the truth; - and by so doing thou mayest attain unto life. And whosoever shall hearken unto this command and do it, and shall depart from all lying, he shall live unto God."
St. Hermas was evidently a Gnostic, or one of the knowing ones. "His principle," says Beausobre, "was, that faith was only fit for the rabblement, but that a wise man should conduct himself by his knowledge only." [a] He seems to have escaped martyrdom. [a] Hermes Gnostique. Son principe est que la foi ne convien; qu au peup que le sage se conduit par la science. - Beaus. tom. 2, p. 731.] [LN., Beausobre, de Isaac, 1659 to 1738, was a French protestant churchman, now best remembered for his book the History of Manichaeism, 'Histoire de Manicheisme'. Manichaeism or Manes was a major religious movement founded by the Iranian prophet Mani, around 216 to 276AD.]
St. Polycarp, 108AD. Bishop of Smyrna.
"It is a thing confessed and lamented by the gravest divines of the Roman Catholic communion, that the names and worship of many pretended saints, who never had a real existence, had been fraudulently imposed upon the church," [Dr Middleton's Preface to his Letter from Rome, p. 59.] I commend not my suspicions that this Polycarp may be one of the unreal order, but leave the reader to give all the respect he can afford to the testimony that would subdue our reason to a belief that a venerable inoffensive old man, who, after having lived in undisturbed tranquillity in his bishopric under a Nero and Domitian, should have been dragged, in the 86th year of his age, to the cruel death of fire under the government of the philosophic Antoninus, and by the magistracy, to be sure, of that old rascal again, Herod, I dare say the same who slew the children in Bethlehem: for chronology has nothing to do with matters of faith. "Then came there a voice from heaven," so runs the sacred story,
"Saying, be of good cheer, Polycarp, and play the man."
[LN., Hugh Latimer was burned at the stake with Nicholas Ridley in 1555. He is quoted as having said to Ridley: Play the man, Master Ridley; we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.]
"The proconsul demanded of him, whether he was that Polycarp, beckoning that he should deny it, and adding,
'Consider thine age - swear by the fortune of Caesar:
repent thee of what is past; say,
Remove the wicked.'
But Polycarp exclaimed,
O Lord, remove these wicked;
and, after concluding a mystical prayer with the usual doxology at the end of a modern sermon, he was committed to the flames; but the flaming fire framing itself after, the form of a vault, or sail of a ship, refused to burn so good a man; upon which a tormentor was ordered to be fetched,
to whom they gave charge to lance him in the
side with a spear,
which, when he had done, such a stream
of blood issued out of his body,
that the fire was therewith quenched
["Who would have thought that the old man had had so much blood in him?" - Shakespeare's, Macbeth.]
So that the whole multitude marvelled such a pre-eminence to be granted and difference to be shown between the infidel and the faithful and elect people of God, of which number this Polycarpus was one, a right apostolic and prophetical doctor of our time, bishop of the catholic church of Smyrna.
But the Devil procured that his body should not be found, for many endeavoured and fully purposed to hold communion with his blessed flesh. But certain men suggested to Nicetas, the father of Herod, and his brother Dalces, to move the proconsul not to give up his body, lest the Christians, as they said, should leave the crucified, and begin to worship Polycarp. It is added, that he suffered with twelve others who came out of Philadelphia. There has been a great deal of the well-known Unitarian tact of reducing to probability, practised upon our records of the martyrdom of Polycarp.
The original story unquestionably ran, that upon the piercing of the martyr's breast, a dove was seen to fly out of his body. - See the text of Cotelerius, in his Apostolic Fathers; and the remarks of Dr Middleton, in his Free Inquiry. The important fact is exscinded from its place in Eusebius, for a sufficiently surmise-able purpose. It served its turn, while it would serve its turn; but it has become necessary that the evidences of the Christian religion should make some sort of peace with reason, and the most entertaining passages of sacred history are consequently to be sacrificed. Some divines are even for expunging the improbable parts of the New Testament itself. Alas, what would they reduce it to!
In the teeth of such self-evident proof of a fictions character, and a fictious martyrdom, Dr Lardner, coolly tell us, that the relation of the martyrdom of Polycarp, written by the church of Smyrna, of which he was bishop, is an excellent piece, which may be read with pleasure by the English reader, in Archbishop Wake's Collection of the Lives of the Apostolic Fathers. The name of Polycarp, his bishopric, his martyrdom, are entirely unknown to rational or credible history. [LN., Middleton, Dr Conyer, 1683 to 1750, he was an English clergyman, whose life was full of controversy.]
St. Ignatius, 107AD
Is believed to have been bishop of Antioch in Syria, in the latter part of the first and beginning of the second century, [Lardner, vol. 1, p. 313.] and is believed to have succeeded Euodius, who had been the first bishop of that see. The name Euodius occurs in the list of persons saluted by St. Paul, and this seems to be the reason of Eusebius for making a bishop of him, though nothing is known of him but the name.
"Beside the bishopric," says Lardner, "the martyrdom of this good man, Ignatius, is another of those few things concerning him which are not contradicted." Basnage, however, puts the year of Ignatius's death among the obscurities of chronology. Indeed, those learned men who have attempted to fix the time, have no other grounds than the testimony of Malala a barbarian of the sixth century, and the Acts or Martyrdom of Ignatius, the genuineness of which Lardner himself admits may be well disputed. He concludes, however, that "as the epistles we now have of Ignatius are allowed to be genuine by a great number of learned men whose opinion I think to be founded upon probable arguments.) I now proceed to quote them as his." [Lardner's words, vol. 1. p. 316.] [LN., Basnage De Beauval, Jacques. 1653 to 1723, a renowned French Protestant, preacher and linguist.]
The name of Ignatius is only twice mentioned by Origen, and that in so cursory a manner as to preclude any inference that Origen himself had any certain knowledge of his history. The whole story of his martyrdom is so utterly incongruous with time and circumstance, as to lead to no other rational conclusion than the probability that he is altogether the figment of that pious romance in which ecclesiastical historians have ever delighted - another name to be added to the long list of saints and martyrs, which even the more intelligent of Roman Catholic writers have been constrained to admit never existed at all, but were the baseless fabric of a vision, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone. The epistles ascribed to Ignatius are admitted by all parties to have been most extensively altered from the first or earlier drafts of them; but such as they are, even on a momentary reverie of their suppose-able genuineness, they afford no testimony to any one of the essential facts of the Christian story written whenever, or by whomsoever we suppose them to be, it is certain that the writer held out nothing so little as the notion that the events on which the Gospel is founded, had ever really happened. Let his mode of reasoning tell its own story! This it is.
"Ignatius, which is called Theophorus, [Theophorus, i.e. one who carries God within him - a name of the same stock ae Praise- God Barebone, - another edition of Polycarp's intercostal pigeon.] to the church which is at Ephesus in Asia, most deservedly happy, being blessed through the greatness and fullness of God the Father, and predestined before the world began, that it should be always unto an enduring and unchangeable glory, being united and chosen through his true passion, according to the will of the Father, and Jesus Christ our God; all happiness by Jesus Christ and his undefiled grace.
"There is one physician, both fleshly and spiritual, made and not made - God incarnate, true life in death, both of Mary and of God - first passible, then impassable, even Jesus Christ.
"My soul be for yours; and I myself the expiatory offering for your church of Ephesus, so famous throughout the world."
19th Chapter. - "Now the virginity of Mary, and he who was born of her, was kept in secret from the prince of this world, as was also the death of our Lord: three of the mysteries the most spoken of throughout the world yet done in secret by God. How then was our Saviour manifested to the world? A star shone in heaven beyond all the other stars, and its light was inexpressible, and its novelty struck terror into, men's minds; all the rest of the stars, together with the sun and moon, were the chorus to this star; but this star sent out its light exceedingly above them all, and men began to be troubled to think whence this new star came, so unlike to all the others. Hence all the power of magic became dissolved, and every bond of wickedness was destroyed; men's ignorance was taken away, and the old kingdom abolished; God himself appearing in the form of a man, for the renewal of eternal life. From thence began what God had prepared, from thenceforth things were disturbed, forasmuch as he designed to abolish death."
Thus far from Archbishop Wake's English translation. Among the passages which Lardner extracts are, from his Epistle to the Philadelphians, the following: -
"Behold, I have heard of some who say, Unless I find it in the ancients, I will not believe in the Gospel; and I said unto them, it is written: they answered me, it is not mentioned. But to me, instead of all ancients, is Jesus Christ; and the un-interpolated antiquities are his cross, and his death and resurrection, and the faith which is by him."
Archbishop Wake's Collection, in English, and Mr. Hone's Apocryphal New Testament, supply the reader with so many of the epistles of Ignatius as it suited the purpose of Dr Lardner to recognize. We have, however, a 'billet-doux' of this holy father written to the Virgin Mary, and her answer to it, of equal authenticity to any other writings of the first century, and even in some respects of superior evidence.
The learned and ingenuous Peter Stalloixus, who had for some time, through the craft and subtlety of Satan, been tempted to doubt the genuineness of this correspondence, subsequently avows his repentance of that dangerous scepticism, and declares that the arguments of that serious writer, Flavius Dexter, had so convinced his mind, that he dared no longer hold their claims as questionable. [This divine was one of the thousands who reason that there can be no danger in believing too much, belief being at any rate the safe side; for if the moon after all should prove to be made of a green cheese, what will become of philosophers?]
They are as follows: -
The Epistle of the blessed Ignatius, to the holy Virgin Mary, Mother of our Lord Jesus Christ. [a]
"To the Christ-bearing Maria, her own Ignatius sends his compliments.
"You ought to comfort and console me, who am a new convert and a disciple of your friend John; for I have learned things wonderful to be told concerning your Jesus and am astonished at the hearing; but I desire from my very soul to be certified immediately by yourself, who was always familiar and conjoined with him, and privy to his secrets, concerning the things I have heard. I have written to you other epistles also and have asked concerning the same things. - Farewell; and let the new converts who are with me be comforted by thee, and from thee, and in thee. Amen."
The blessed Virgin's Answer.
"To Ignatius, the beloved fellow disciple, the humble handmaid of Christ Jesus sends her compliments. [b]
"The things which you have heard and learned from John concerning Jesus are true; believe them, cleave to them - hold fast the vow you have made to the Christianity which you have embraced and conform your life and manners to that vow; and I and John will come together to visit you. Stand firm in the faith; act manfully, nor let the sharp severity of persecution move you. But may your soul fare well and rejoice in God your Saviour. Amen."
1. [a] Christiferae Maria? suus Ignatius! Me neophytum Johannisque tui discipulum, confortare et consolari debueras. De Jesu enim tuo percepi mira dictu, et stupefa ctus sum ex auditu. A te autem quae semper ei fuisti familiaris et conjuncta, et secretorum ejus conscia, deaidero ex animo fieri certior de auditis. Scripsi tibi etiam alias, et rogavi de eisdem. Valeas: et neophyti qui mecum sunt ex te et per te, et in te confortentur. Amen.
2. [b] Ignatio delecto condiscipulo humilis ancilla Christi Jesu. De Jesu quae a Johanna? audisti et didicisti, vera sunt. Ilia credas: illis inhaereas et Christianitis susceptae votum firmiter teneas, et mores et vitam voto conformes. Veniam antern cum Johanne, te et qui tecum sunt visere. Sta in fide, et viriliter age, nee te commoveat persecutionis austeritas sed valeat et exsultet spiritus tuns in Deo Salutari uo. Amen. - Fabricii, Cod. Apoc. tom. 2, p. 841.]
[LN., it has thought by myself that the prayer ending Amen, was originally from the Egyptian Amun or Amon?]
To be sure these precious epistles were not forthcoming before the faith of the church was ripe to receive them; being first published at Paris in the year 1495, but they are none the less genuine on that account; nor is there a single argument that can be urged against them but what, in parity of application, would be fatal to the credibility of either of our four gospels. Nothing hinders but that these jewels might have lain hid under the miraculous keeping of divine providence, till the proper time was arrived for their being brought to light and set to shine in the bright diadem of Christian evidences. And as for all arguments drawn from chronology, geography, and other profane sciences, Christians have ever found their best policy to consist in regarding those who adduced them as objects of contempt, in committing their writings unread to the flames, and themselves unheard to gaols and dungeons. It may, however, be a profitable exercise for the ingenuity of believers to try if they can imagine or invent a single sentiment of hostility, expression of scorn, or action of cruelty, that could be justly merited by the rejecters of the writings contained in the New Testament, that would not, but a few years back, have seemed with equal justice to be merited by the impugners of the epistles of Ignatius.
Result.
Here ends the utmost extent of testimony to the facts of the Christian history to be derived from the apostolic Fathers, - that is, from all who can be pretended to have written or lived at any time within a hundred years of the birth of Christ. It is not possible to produce so much as one single sentence or manner of expression from any one, friend or enemy, historian or divine, maintainer or impugner of the Christian doctrines, within the first century; the like of which we can conceive to have been used by any person who had been witness of the facts on which the doctrines are founded, or contemporary of those who had been witnesses, or who had believed that those facts had really happened, or had so much as heard that there were any persons on earth that had seriously asserted that they had happened. The language of these Fathers, who are accounted orthodox, to say nothing of what we may hereafter gather from heretical information, is everywhere the language of a religious fatuity, childish beyond all names of childishness - foolish as folly itself. We should just as well find evidence and authentication to Magna Charta in the scribblings of an idiot on a wall or make out the particulars of the Punic wars from the records of a baby-house, as discover a trace of testimony to fact in any documents of the Fathers of the first century. It remains only for those who, after an elapse of eighteen centuries, have moulded or new-fangled to themselves a system which they would now have us consider as a worthy of all acceptation," to show how that which had so little evidence at first, could come to have more afterwards; or how what was never known nor spoken of but as a matter of imagination, conceit, and faith, in the first century, should come to have a right to be put on the score of historical evidence at any later period.
The orthodox Fathers (as far as doctrine is concerned with orthodoxy) seem only to be distinguished from the heretics, in that they occasionally use a strength of language in their descriptions of allegorical figments, which might seem to approximate to the style of history, and might make what they only intended as emblems, pass for actual circumstances. Yet against such an acceptation of such occasional over-driving's of the allegory, we have to consider that we are in possession, not only of the argument arising from the natural improbability of such allegorical exaggerations when mistaken for facts, and the total absence of all corroborative and coincident testimony which could by no possibility be conceived to have been wanting if such facts had ever happened; but we have the concurrent, and it may be called unanimous consent of the whole body of Christian dissenters (that is, in the church term, the heretics), who from the very first, and all along, never ceased to maintain and teach, that no such a person as Jesus Christ ever existed, and that all the evangelical statements of his miracles, actions, sufferings, birth, death, and resurrection, were to be understood in a high and mystical sense, and not, according to the letter as facts that had ever happened ; and this, too, confirmed by admissions of those who are called orthodox themselves, in many positive passages ; unabated by so much as a single sentence that can be produced from any one writer within the first hundred years, which is such as he would have written, or would have suited his character to write, had he believed that the Gospel had been founded upon historical fact. And absolutely the only difference between Paganism and Christianity - Christians themselves being judges - was the difference between the allegorical fictions in which the one or the other couched the same physical theorems: as is demonstrated, without need of further comment, by the juxta-position of their respective texts:
Julius Firmicius,
in description of the Pagan Mysteries, quotes Pagan Priests. Beausobre,
in description of the Christian Mysteries,
quotes Christian Fathers.
[a] But in those funerals and lamentations which are annually celebrated in honour of
Osiris, their defenders wish to pretend a physical reason; they call the seeds of fruit, Osiris, the earth, Isis, the natural heat, Typhon; and because the fruits are ripened by the natural heat, are collected for the life of man,
and are separated from their matrimony to the earth, and arc sown again when winter approaches, this they would have to be the death of Osiris; but when the fruits, by the genial fostering of the earth, begin again to be generated by a new procreation, this is the finding of Osiris. [b] In one word, the suffering Jesus is nothing else than what the Manichaeans called the members of God; that is to say, the celestial substance, or the souls which have descended from heaven. The earth is the Virgin; the
heavenly substance which is in the earth, is the substance of the Virgin, of which Jesus Christ
was formed; the Holy Ghost is the natural heat, by whose virtue the earth conceived him; and he becomes an infant in being made to pass through the plants, and from thence again
into heaven.
[a] Sed in his funeribus et luctibus,
defensores eorum volunt addere physiciam rationem. Fiugum semina Osirim dicentes esse, Isim terrain, Typhonem calorem. Et quia maturatae fruges calore, ad vitam hominis colliguntur, et a terrse consortio separantur, et rursus appropinquante hyeme seminantur: hanc volant esse mortem Osiridis, cum fruges
redduntur: inventionem vero, cum fruges genitali terra? fomento conceptse, nova rursus, caeperint procreatione generari. - Be Errore Profanarum Religionum, p. 6 [b] En un mot, le Jesu Passible, n'est autre chose que les Manicheens appelloient les membres de Dieu, e'est a dire la substance celeste, ou les ames qui sont descendues du ciel. - Beausobre Histoire des Dogmes de Manichee, liv. 8, c. 4, torn. 2, p. 556. La terre est la Vierge, la substance celeste, qui est dans la terre, est la substance Virginale qui compose Jesus; S. Esprit est Pagent par la virtue du
quel la terre le congoit, est l'enfante en
le faisant passer dans les plantes, et dela
dans le ciel.
With more than the significance that will strike one at the first sight, has the learned Montfaucon [LN., Montfaucon, Bernard de, 1655 to 1741, he was a French Benedictine monk, and astute scholar.], observed that "when once a man begins to use his own judgment in matters of religion, it is no wonder that he should frequently be in error, since all things are uncertain, when once we depart from what the church has decreed:" [Cum quis eo devenit ut fidei dogmata ex sui judicii arbitrio definiat, nihil mirum est si frequenter aberret: omnia quippe sunt incerta, cum semel ab ecclesiae, statutis discessum est. - Montfaucon in prolegom. ad Euseb. Comment in Psalmos.] -that is, in other words, there is no other real argument for the truth of the Christian religion than "He that believeth not shall be damned!" - Mark 16-16. [LN., Beausobre, de Isaac, 1659 to 1738, was a French protestant churchman, now best remembered for his book the History of Manichaeism, 'Histoire de Manicheisme'. Manichaeism or Manes was a major religious movement founded by the Iranian prophet Mani, around 216 to 276AD.]
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next Chapter 41. The Fathers of the Second Century.