which dominated the whole life of the people, it is not to be won- dered at that the Christians of the second and subsequent cen- turies, who were men of their time, were not always able to hold the poise which Paul gave them in the great words: "We know that no idol is anything in the world, and that there is no God but one." Accordingly, as Harnack points out, "from Justin downwards, Christian literature is crowded with allusions to exorcisms, and ev- ery large church, at any rate, had exorcists" (p. 162). But this is no proof that miracles were wrought, except this great miracle, that, in its struggle against the deeply rooted and absolutely pervasive superstition — "the whole world and the circumambient atmos- phere," says Harnack (p. 161), "were filled with devils; not merely idolatry, but every phase and form of life was ruled by them: they sat on thrones; they hovered over cradles; the earth was liter- ally a hell" — Christianity won, and expelled the demons not only from the tortured individuals whose imagination was held captive by them, but from the life of the people, and from the world. The most accessible discussion of the subject (written, of course, from his own point of view) may be found in Harnack, op. cit., vol. I, pp. 152-180. An article really on the Christian doctrine of angels has somehow strayed into the bounds of the comprehensive article, "Demons and Spirits," in Hastings's Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, and thus deprived the reader of the description which he would naturally look for in that place of the ideas of demons and spirits which have been prevalent among Christians.
22. Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, ed. 1884, vol. II, 117 ff., sums up the testimony of this period as follows: "It is remarkable that the genuine writings of the ante-Nicene church are more free from miraculous and superstitious elements than the annals of the Nicene age and the Middle Ages. . . . Most of the statements of the apologists are couched in general terms, and refer to the extraordinary cures from demoniacal possession ... and other diseases. . . . Justin Martyr speaks of such oc- currences as frequent . . . and Origen appeals to his own personal observation, but speaks in another place of the growing scarcity of miracles. . . . Tertullian attributes many if not most of the con- versions of his day to supernatural dreams and visions, as does also Origen, although with more caution. But in such psychological phenomena it is exceedingly difficult to draw the line of demarca- tion between natural and supernatural causes, and between provi- dential interpositions and miracles proper. The strongest passage on this subject is found in Irenaeus, who, in contending against the heretics, mentions, besides the prophecies and miraculous cures of
240 NOTES TO LECTURE I
demoniacs, even the raising of the dead among contemporary events taking place in the Catholic Church; but he specifies no particular case or name; and it should be remembered also, that his youth still bordered almost on the Johannean age."
When Schaff cites Origen as speaking of a "growing scarcity of miracles," his language is not exact. What Origen says, is: "But there were signs from the Holy Spirit at the beginning of Christ's teaching, and after His ascension He exhibited more, but subse- quently fewer. Nevertheless, even now still there are traces of them with a few who have had their souls purified by the gospel." Here, there is a recognition of the facts that miracles were relatively few after the Apostolic age, and that in Origen's day there were very few indeed to be found. But there is no assertion that they had gradually ceased; only an assertion that they had practically ceased. "The age of miracles, therefore," comments Harnack justly, "lay for Origen in earlier days." "Eusebius is not the first (in the third book of his History) to look back upon the age of the Spirit and of power as the bygone heroic age of the church, for Origen had already pronounced this judgment on the past from an impoverished present." (The Expansion of Christianity, as cited, p. 257, and note 2.)
23. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chap, xv, § in, ed. Smith, 1887, vol. II, pp. 178 ff.
24. These points are accordingly duly intimated by Milman in his note on Gibbon's passage. For the former of them he appeals to Middleton (Works, I, p. 59) as sponsor; for the latter to Douglas (Criterion, p. 389).
25. H. E., Ill, 39, 9.
26. Bernard, op. cit., p. 159, remarks justly that Papias "vir- tually implies that he himself never saw any such occurrence, his only knowledge of 'miracles' of this kind being derived from hearsay."