St. Paul declares all such subservience to the angels to be a false humility, inasmuch as it detracts from the true reverence due to Christ alone, Avho is the Head of the angels, Mhose power over the world, moreover. He has broken by His Cross, by dying on which He annulled the bond they held against men in the Law (Col 2^'^^^).
LiTERATrrRE. — A. Ritschl, The Christian Doctrine of Justifica- tion and Reconciliation, Eng. tr., 1900, p. 632 ; W. Herrmann. The Communion of the Christian with God, Eng. tr., 1906, p. 267; E. Hatch, Memorials, 1S90, pp. 137, 213; H. P. Liddon, Sermons preached before the University of Oxford, 1st ser., 1S(;9, p. 139, 2nd ser., Isi'O, p. IS ; W. R. Inge, Faith and Knowledge, 1904, p. 107 ; J. Warschauer, The IKay of Under- standing, 1913, p. 140. R. s. Franks.
HUSBAND.— See Family, Marriage.
HYACINTH.— See Jacinth.
HYMEN^IUS. — Hymengeus is a heretic men- tioned in 1 Ti 1"" in conjunction with Alexander {q.v.) as one who had made shipwreck of the faith and, therefore, had been delivered to Satan. He is also mentioned in 2 Ti 2''' in conjunction with Philetns as teaching a doctrine which ate into the body of the Church like a gangrene — the doctrine that the resurrection was past already. Nothing further is known of the three teachers mentioned in the two texts, and their sole importance to the student lies in the nature of their doctrine. It came from the masters of Gnosticism, who from Simon Magus onwards bad taught the inferior or evil character of matter, in opposition to the fathers of the Catholic Church, who assigned to the world a sacramental character. According to Irenseus {adv. Hcer. II. xxxi. 2), the followers of Simon and Carpocrates taught that ' the resurrec- tion from the dead was simply an acquaintance with that truth which they proclaimed.' Ter- tuUian [de Res. Cam. xix.) charged his adversaries with alleging that even death itself was to be understood in a spiritual sense, since death was not the separation of body and soul, but ignorance of God, by reason of which man is dead to God, and is not less buried in error than he would be in the grave.
590
HYMXS
HYMNS
'Wherefore that also must be held to be the resurrection, when a man is re-animated by access to the truth, and having dispersed the death of inrnorance, and being endowed with new life by God, has burst forth from the sepulchre of the old man, even as the Lord likened the Scribes and Pharisees to " whited sepulchres " (Mt 23-'^). Whence it follows that they who have by faith attained to the resurrection are with the Lord after they have once put Him on in their baptism.'
The ground for this spiritualizing of death is given in a homily of Valentinus quoted by Clement Alex. (Strom. \v. 13) :
'Ye are originally immortal, and children of aeonian life, and ye willed that death should be your portion, that you might exhaust it and consume it, so that death might die in you and through you. For, when you release the world, you yourselves are not undone, but are lords over creation and over all corruption.'
According to Clement, Basilides also held that a ' saved race ' had come down from above in order to remove death, and that the origin of this deatli was to be sought in the Demiurge. And a little later in the same chapter Clement tells us tliat the followers of Valentinus called the Catholics 'psychical,' as did the 'Phrygians,' the implica- tion being that the Catholics thought, when death was mentioned, of the death of the body, and the Gnostics of tiie death of the soul. A further im- plication is that the moment of regeneration, or of passing through the third gate, overshadowed in the Gnostic mind the incident of physical death, as not merely giving a change of status, but as being an actual admission into the Divine world, and therefore into a world over which physical death had no jurisdiction. With this should be compared the passage in Rev 20^- ^ which speaks of ' the first resurrection ' and of the blessed and holy state of him who had part in it. ' It is " the souls" of the martyrs that St. John sees alive; the resurrection is clearly spiritual and not cor- poreal' (H. B. Swete, Apocalypse of St. John?, 1907, p. 266). In agreement with this we have Jn 5-^ which says that both Father and Son quicken the dead and raise them up ; and v.^"*, wliich declares that he who has come to put his trust in the Son hath passed out of death into life. (The clause which refers the resurrection to the last day in Jn 6^"- **• ^ may be suspected, with J. Kreyenblihl [Das Evang. der Wahrheit, Berlin, 1905, ii. 52], to be an interpolation.)
The delivering of Hymenaius and Alexander to Satan is to be understood as an excommunication from the fold of grace and safety, and a conse- quent transition into the world outside the Church where Satan has his throne — the world of suffering, disease, and death. It is not impossible that ' Hymenfeus ' is an ironical nickname denoting that the bearer was one who shared the Gnostic dislike of marriage, or else scoffing at the Gnostic doctrine of the mystic marriage of the soul with the spirit. Cf. Antipas, Balaam, Nicolaitans.