and finish of his style, but still more on account of hav- ing made himself the advocate and propagator of the great moral truth of Christianity, while carefidly avoid- ing all dogmatic speculation; thus also did Cicero advo- cate all the great practical truths of the best ])hilosoph- ical systems of antiquity, but set little store bj' what- ever was purely metaphysical.
In learning and cidture Lactantius excelled all the men of his time; in the words of Jerome, he was "om- nium suo tempore eruditissiraus." His writings betray a noble unconsciousness which forgets itself in striving to reach its lofty aim. The modesty of his claims and of his estimate of himself is exhibited and embodied in the facts of his life. Although at the coiu-t of the great- est prince on earth, and by his position invited to luxu- rious indulgence, he voluntarily preferred a pjoverty which not only excluded superfluities, but also often dis- pensed with the necessaries of life. Some have repre- senteil that he pushed his austerities even to an unau- thorized extreme. '■ I shall tliink that I have sufficiently lived," he writes, " and tliat I have sufficiently fulfilled the office of a man, if my labor shall have freed any from their errors, and directed them in the way to heaven."
Lactantius was a layman and a rhetorician, and yet he displays in his writings in general — and they were not few — such a depth and extent of theological knowl- edge as could scarcely have been expected. It is sur- prising with what penetration and precision he handles man}^ intricate subjects. Warmth of feeluig, richness of thought, and clearness of apprehension are impressed upon all his literary productions. His expressions arc always lucid, considerate, and well arranged. Nowhere does tlie reader feel an unpleasant tone of pedantrj' or affectation ; everywhere he is attracted by the impress of genuine learning and eloquence. In harmony and purity of style, in beauty and elegance of expression, he excels aU the fathers of Christian antiquity, if we except Ambrose in some of his letters, and Sidpicius Severus. His reputation in this respect was so celebrated in the earliest times that men loved to call him the Christian Cicero. So much for form and diction. The case is quite othenvise with the exposition of the pecuhar doc- trines of Christianity in detail. In the midst of admi- rable philosophical developments, as with other writers of this class, we meet Avith many mistakes, many crrd- neous views and half-truths, for which Gelasius classed his writings with the ApocrA-jiha. If the jnrigment above expressed is thus, in some measure, modilitd, yet is his merit not much diminished. That is to say, there are at bottom almost entirely such anomalies as he met in the older A\Titers liefore him, and ■\\hich the Church had not yet distinctly excluded bj' a more precise defi- nition of the doctrines in question. What strikes us more unpleasantly is that we miss the establishment of Christianity by proof from its own dogmas, which he himself had promised to give; we sympathize with Je- rome in the wish, '• L^tinam tarn nostra contuTuare potu- isset, quam facile aliena distinxit."
Dr. Schaff gives the following summary- of the doc- trinal vie\vs of Lactantius {Church Jlist. iii, 057) : " His mistakes and errors in the exposition of points of Chris- tian doctrine do not amount to heresies, but are mostly due to the crude and unsettled state of the Church doc- trine at the time. In the doctrine of sin he borders upon j\Ianicha?ism. In anthropology and soteriology lie follows tlie synergism which, until Augustine, was al- most imiversal. In the doctrine of the Trinity he was, like most of the ante-Nicene fathers, a subordinatimiist. He taught a duplex nativitas of Christ, one at the crea- tion, and one at the incarnation. Christ went forth from God at the creation as a word from the mouth, yet hypostaticaUy."
Worls. — We will briefly notice his works in order : 1. Divinarum Ijistitutiimniii, libri vii (Divine Institutes, seven books), a comprehensive apology for the Christian religion, which, on account of the elegant style in which
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it is written, has been favorite reading, and is said to have appeared ia more tlian a hundred editions. His motive for writing this work he thus assigns himself: Since men, by their own fault bewildered, can no longer find the Avay back to trutli, his object is to point it out to them, and, at the same time, to confirm in it those ■\vlio have already reached it. He feels himself the more impelled to this because his jjredecessors in this field— and he names particularly Tertullian and Cyprian — liad not, in liis opinion, satisfied the requirements of the case on all sides, and had performed their task nei- ther with the requisite learning and thoroughness, nor with tlie suitable adornment of art and scientific deptli. To this unfortunate circumstance he ascribes it that the Christian religion was held in such contempt, and with the educated classes was as good as totally unkno\vn. ■ When, with all the power of language and genius which he eminently possessed, Lactantius promises to make a ilofence of the faith, the precedence in this respect must by all means be conceded to him ; in bcautj' of form and splendor of diction he surpasses all ; but Jerome justly refuses to admit the same in respect to the weight of the contents and the solidit^ of the proofs. The work is dedicated to Constantine the Great — if the passage is not an interpolation — whom he extols with the liighest reverence, and praises as the first Christian prince, and the restorer of righteousness. Consequently, it was written at the time when lie, advanced in years, was al- ready at court; but the Church was still sighing under a severe persecution, evidently that of Licinlus, since the author refers to that of Diocletian as liaving long since died out. This brings us to the year 320, although he had, as elsewhere appears from his own words, formed the purpose and tlie plan at a nnich earlier jjeriod. Some suppt)se that the work wan commenced in Bithynia and completed in Gaul after a lapse of twenty years. Oth- ers, from an allusion Avhich it contains to the Diocletian persecution — '■Spectatio sunt enini spectanturque adhuc per orbem poena; cultorum Dei," etc. (v, 17, § 5), suppose it to have been written before Lactantius went to Gaul.