1. Apostolic Period. — As regards the extent of apos- tolic ethics, it encompasses pretty much all departments of life, and the duties and virtues corresponding with them. Yet in this province such are made partic- ularly consjjicuous and praiseworthy as are natural to the spirit of Christianity. For while all antiquity had made the sovereign good consist in escape from pain, either by virtue or by pleasure, Christianity, by the mystery of the passion, announced the divinity of sor- row, and the most characteristic element in Christian virtue to be love. Hence the apostolic writers gave spe- cial prominence to those Cliristian ideals of faith, hope, love, prayer, mercy, chastity, martyrdom, and the like, which are the characteristic elements of perfect char- ity, and which, if realized, must absorb like ethics and politics in a higher science. The vacillation on some single moral questions and principles observable in the writings of these early Christian fathers gradu- ally died out as a more profound and comprehensive Christian consciousness spread in the Church. As re- gards the manner of treatment of this subject, most apostolic writings deal with it in a way serviceable mainly to devotional purposes. " Their basis," it has been well said, " remained from the first rather religious than speculative, notwithstanding the persuasion that in the reason enlightened by the Word there was given a ground of union between objective revelation and subjective knowledge." Even among those contribu- tions to this field, in that period, which rise above the sphere then usually occupied, only a few maintain a strictly scientific character. Earliest among the pro- ductions of that age stand the writings of the cele- brated disciple of the apostle Paul, Clement of Rome, whose epistle to the Christian congregation at Corinth is one of the finest monuments of Christian antiquity. Its especial object was, however, to reconcile tlie dis- sensions and factions which had arisen in that congre- gation, and it contains therefore mainly admonitions to concord and peace. INIore noteworthy in this depart- ment of Christian ethics are the productions of Ignatius (q. v.), who wrote six epistles to diverse congregations, and one to Polycarp ; they were penned on his way to the lions of the Colosseum, and breathe the spirit of a man who had beheld John, and, fidl of faith, is ready to meet his Lord and Master. The moral precepts and admonitions of the Ignatian epistles are mostly pas- sages quoted from the N. T., or sentiments in accord with its contents, expressed with fervency as well as simplicity. A remarkable feature in them is the empha- sis with which their author insists on the propriety to belong publicly and externally to the Church, though he by no means forgets its value in the sight of God as con- sisting in the communion with Christ and in the sin- cere search for union with God. We learn to recognise ecclesiastical consociation, the alliance of so many thou- sands by unity of faith and love, as something grand, the true obedience to the officers of the Chiurch (elders) as something inseparable from Christian life. This de- cidedly ecclesiastical disposition is also shared by Poly-
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carp (q. V.) himself in his epistle to the congregation at Philippi. Above all things, he desires that attachment to pure unadulterated faith be strengthened ; like Igna- tius, he establishes Christian ethics on Christian Church creed. His moral precepts are rightly denominated " apostolic grains of gold." But really the most emi- nent attemjjt to reconcile Christian ideas with the forms and views of ancient philosophy, especially those of its latest etHorescence — New Platonism — was made in the mj'stic speculations of the Areopagite Dionysius, in ■which the Christian scientific spirit aims at an inner- most comprehension of itself, for this end calling in the support of traditional knowledge. No other product of mind has exercised a deeper or more powerful influ- ence upon the development of Christian mysticism — the culminating-point of ecclesiastical ethics — than his writings, in which the several dispersed rays of mys- tical ideas and views, such as here and there glim- mer in Clemens Alexandrinus, Augustine, Macarius, and others, converge as in a focus, and form one of the 1 strongest links comiecting the period of which we are speaking with the subseciuent ones. To these relics of spiritual treasures of the apostolic fathers we join three com])ositions, two of which plainly show spurious au- th()rshi|), and a third gives no clew at all. They are the Epistle of ]5arnabas, the Shepherd of llermas, and the Ejiistlc to Diognetus. The author of the lirst-namcd work calls his moral precepts the road of light, in con- trast with the crot)ked road of darkness, as he designates sinful life. Tlie Shepherd is divided into three sections, the second of which deals entirely with ethics. The let- ter to Diognetus, as already stated, comes from an un- known hand. The principal interest which attaches to this ancient Christian memorial lies in the excellent de- scription which the author gives of tlie life and morals of the early Christians. Here, also, two other %vritings adorned with the name of apostles deser^'e to be men- tioned— namely, " The Apostolic Constitutions" and " The Apostolic Canons." Both collections, as to their origin, it is true, come far short of reaching up to the apostolic age, but they deserve a place here because Romanists as- sert " that they exhibit a picture of the most primajval condition of Christian manners and ecclesiastical disci- pline." They are certainly worthy of attention on ac- count of the treasure of tradition they furnish; still more, the peculiarity of their moral character renders them notable and significant, this character being wholly catholic, mingling severity with mildness, keeping the right medium between laxity and rigor.