Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

two eloquent and learned ecclesiastics, though they continued in their own church, mended and improved the Arians not a little, and brought them nearer to the Consubstantialists. Both sides wanted mending very much, and to be taught to differ and dispute at least like Christians, and not to pull out one another's eyes.

b

The Arians and the Consubstantialists both laid claim to Origen, as favouring their systems, and neither side wanted arguments drawn from his writings; for, on the one hand, Origen admitted the eternity of the Aóyos; and, on the other hand, he said many things concerning the Aoyos, which seemed agreeable to the Semi-Arian doctrines.

Origen was a Platonic Christian, and a Platonist would have readily allowed that the Aóyos was an eternal emanation or production from the First Cause,' the To “E».

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

Cudworth hath made it probable that some notion of a Trinity obtained in the Pagan world. It is to be found even amongst the Chinese, if the accounts given us of that nation may be credited. Whence had the Pagans this notion? From the first chapter of Genesis,' say some persons. Let them by all means enjoy their opinion, if they can refrain from anathematizing those who differ from them, and not imitate the sage council of Sirmium, which anathematized all those who should dare to deny that God the Father spake to his Son, when he said, "Let us make man,' &c. Socrates H. E. ii. 80.

The Platonic philosophers, when they considered the visible, and vital, and intellectual system, found that, besides sluggish and inanimate matter, which has a shadowy being, and is a small remove above nothing, there existed in the universe, life and active power;' above that, reason, understanding, wisdom;' above that, goodness,' above which there could be no imaginable perfection. The same things they found in every man who acts according to his nature, namely, life, reason, and goodness.' Tracing effects up to their causes, and proceeding in the ascending scale, above all other beings, they placed as Principles, a Ψυχή, above that a Λόγος, and above both a Τὸ Ἓν καὶ

One part of them, I mean; for others condemned him as a father of Arianism.

'Ayabor. These notions the Platonics ascribed to their Αγαθόν. Master; but it must be confessed that Plato talks C very obscurely' upon the subject.

The emperor Julian, who rejected Christ, did not reject the notion of a Aoyos. His Aoyos was 'the Sun,' whom he accounted to be the visible image of the invisible God, whilst he perversely shut his eyes against the Sun of righteousness' that arose on a benighted world with salvation in

his rays.

[ocr errors]

Erasmus was one of those who had a high esteem for Origen. Plus me docet,' says he, Christianæ philosophiæ unica Origenis pagina, quam decem Augustini.' This is an honourable testimony for Origen; it is laudari a viro laudato.'

GREGORY, called Thaumaturgus, a disciple of Origen, is said to have wrought many miracles; but Eusebius, who makes honourable mention of him, says not a word concerning them; which is remarkable: and some of them are of a very suspicious kind, as his writing Laconic epistles to Satan, and laying commands upon him, which were punctu ally obeyed. This is full as probable as that the bones of Babylas drove the devil from Daphne; though both these ingenious stories, with others of the same kind, are defended by Tillemont, and by Father Baltus, and the latter by Cave, and by many other writers. The relators of Gregory's miracles lived when romancing was much in fashion, as Socrates, Theodoret, Rufinus; and also Gregory of Nyssa who wrote his life, and this Gregory's brother Basil, who had learned many of these stories from their grand-mother Macrina. Gregory Nyssen says also that the apostle St. John, at the request of the Virgin Mary, presented Thaumaturgus with a b Creed, which the Saint wrote down immediately, and ever after made use of, as well he might, and transmitted it to posterity. The story seems to have been borrowed from the transactions between Numa and the goddess Egeria; and both are equally credible. This διοπετὲς ἄγαλμα, ' this symbol dropt from the clouds,

See Waterland's Importance, &c. p. 232. Berriman's Hist. Acc. of the Trin. Contr.' p. 138. 141. Middleton's Inquiry, p. 148:

which must needs be a wonderful curiosity, is still extant, to our great benefit, and may be seen, though it cannot be warranted free from interpolations, in Fabricius, Bibl. Græc. v. p. 249. or in Cave's Life of Gregory. Here arises no small difficulty, the solution of which shall be left to those whom it concerns: If the Christians of the fourth and following centuries were satisfied with the truth of this narration, they should certainly have drawn up no new Creeds, but have rested contented with a truly 'Apostolical Symbol,' and not have had the vanity to think that they could compose a better than St. John's.

Many of these celestial gifts were bestowed in better days upon mortal men. Pachomius, a monk of the fourth century, received from an angel a table of brass, containing rules for the monastic order. The fact is related by Cyril of Alexandria, by Palladius Lausiac. 38. by Sozomen iii. 14. and by Gennadius Vit. Patr. Be it as it will,' says. Du Pin; for although this story be reported by many authors, I cannot think that we are absolutely obliged to believe it.' Saint Pacome.

6

In the eighth century some monks pretended that the angel Gabriel had brought twelve articles from heaven, one of which was that ecclesiastics must not marry. A thir teenth should have been added, that they might keep concubines.' Bibl. Univers. xii. p. 376.

[ocr errors]

In the twelfth century an angel brought from heaven a book of prophecies upon copper plates, and gave it to a priest called Cyril, who gave it to abbot Joachim. Bibl. Univ. xi. p. 13.

In Fabricius there is an epistle of Jesus Christ which was said to fall from heaven. Cod. Apocr. N. T. p. 307. But this is an imposture too profane to be laughed at.

Not only the antient Pagan legislators, but the heretics also had the start of the Catholics in this curious device. An obscure sect of men called Helcesaitæ, βίβλον τινὰ φέρ ρουσιν, ἣν λέγουσιν ἐξ οὐρανοῦ καταπεπτωκέναι, produce a “ book, which they affirm to have fallen from heaven,' says Origen apud Euseb. vi. 38.

* See more of these Christian frauds in Beausobre, Hist. de Manich. i. p. 338.

VOL. II.

I

It is affirmed, and there is no reason to reject it, that when Gregory was made bishop, Neocæsarea and its neighbourhood consisted almost entirely of Pagans, and that when he died he left it as full of Christians, whom he had converted, and who retained a great and lasting respect for his memory, which was honoured, says Socrates, in Athens, Berytus, Pontus, and indeed in all the earth.

IN the third century began the Manichæan heresy, of which I shall give an account extracted from Beausobre, who has fully discussed the subject in his History of Manichæism, and cleared it from abundance of lies and forgeries.

THE Manichæans fell into great errors, and strangely corrupted the Christian faith; but they were much misrepresented, and cruelly treated by their adversaries, which probably was the case of many other antient heretics.

The Christians of every sect and denomination, the eastern Pagans, the Mahometans, and the Jews, have all agreed in hating the Manichæans.

Their books are lost; for it was an old custom with the Christians to burn heretical writings, and to forbid the reading of them.

The accounts therefore which we have of antient heretics are usually very imperfect, and not to be depended upon; for the orthodox, either through resentment or ignorance, have not done them justice.

Manichæus pretended to be an apostle of Jesus Christ, and a prophet illuminated by the Paraclete, to reform all religions, and to reveal those truths which our Saviour thought it not proper to commit to his first disciples. This was his imposture, or his fanaticism; for he pretended not himself to be the Holy Ghost, though he has been accused of it.

By virtue of this divine mission, he rejected the Old and reformed the New Testament. He pretended either that the Gospels were not the work of apostles or apostolical men whose names they bare, or that if they were, they had been falsified by Judaizing Christians: but it appears not that he or his followers took upon them to curtail or interpolate the New Testament.

Having denied the inspiration, or at least the superior authority of the Hebrew prophets, he opposed to them other prophets, whose books the eastern nations pretended to have preserved. He affirmed that every nation had been favoured with prophets, and that the Christian church, being chiefly composed of Gentiles, ought to be guided by those illuminated Gentile teachers, and not by Hebrew in

structors.

He admitted the authority of apocryphal books composed to maintain the heresies of the Docetæ and of the Encratites, whose notions he also adopted, those of the former, who held that Christ had only the appearance of a man, and those of the latter, who condemned marriage and the use of animal food.

Manichæus believed that the divine nature was extended and limited but as he limited not the divine perfections, his error was the less noxious, nor were some of the fa thers free from it.

He held a Trinity, and the consubstantiality of the Persons, but he thought them as really distinct as three men. We must not hence charge him with Tritheism, unless we would involve in the same charge many of the most illustrious fathers, who were in the same sentiment.

He acknowledged only one God, to whom he ascribed all the attributes that seemed to him to belong to a Being supremely perfect. Having no idea of a substance without place and extension, he conceived the Divinity to be a living immaterial Light, which had resided from all eternity in the highest heaven, accompanied with pure and immortal spirits, whom he called ons, and who were emanations of the divine essence. This was a Platonic notion. Yet were these Æons infinitely beneath their Author, and not, properly speaking, Gods.

The highest heaven and the intelligent agents who inhabit it, compose the intellectual world, which is eternal. The luminous substance, of which heaven is formed, is coeternal with God; it is also self-existent, since from nothing nothing can proceed: but the heaven and the Æons have only a secondary eternity, since they have a cause, which is God; yet as this cause hath operated from all

« ForrigeFortsæt »