It does not appear to have been a question in this con- troversy whether God in his Word commands sinners to repent and believe in Christ, nor whether he prom- ises life to believers and threatens death to unbelievers ; but whether it be the Gospel under the form of a new law that thus commands or threatens, or the moral law on its behalf, and whether its promises to believing ren- der such believing a condition of the things promised. In another controversy, however, which arose after- wards among the same people, in the Assembly of 1720, it became a question whether God did by his Word, call it law or Gospel, command luiregenerate sinners to repent and believe in Christ, or do anything else which is spiritually good. Of those who took the af- firmative side of this question one party maintained it on the ground of the Gospel being a new law, consist- ing of commands, promises, and threatenings, the terms or conditions of which were repentance, faith, and sin- cere obedience. But those who first engaged in the controversy, though they alloAved the encouragement to repent and believe to arise merely from the grace of the Gospel, j-et considered the formal obligation to do so as arising merely from the moral law, which, requir- ing supreme love to God, requires acquiescence in any revelation which he shall at any time make known. The Hopkinsians of America are believed in their teach- ings to espouse the same views. Not onlj- do they fear- lessly set forth the extent, spirituality, and unflinching demands of the law ; they think it necessary also to urge upon sinners the letjal dispensation, if we may so speak, of the Gospel. See Watson, Diet, of Theohuy, s. v. ; Hagenbach, Hist, of Doctrines, 11,^51; Chauncey, Neonomianism Uiimasked; Huch&n&n, Doctrine of Jus- tification; Hetherington, Hist, of the Church of Scot- land, p. 341 (on the anti-Neonoraian side). See Mod-
ERATKS.
XEOPIIYTE
938
NEO-PLATOXISM
Neophyte (from vioc, new, and (pvruv, a plant), [ apparently by a third writer of the same name. SeeCo- i. p. ncir/i/ planted, was a word used in the Eleusinian telerius, /. c, and notes in col. G78, 679 ; Du Cange, Glos- anil other mysteries to desis^nate a person recently ini- sarium Med. et Inf. Grcecitatis; Index Auctorum, p. 29; fiated. In the early Cliurch it was the name given to Fabricius, Bibliotheca Gracu, v, 738; viii, GGl, 6G2; xi, converts to Christianity who had just received baptism. 339, etc. ; Cave, Hist. Lift, ad ann. 1190, ii, 251 (ed. Ox- After that solemn ceremony they wore white garments ford, 1740, 1742); Smith, Vict. Greek and Rom. Biog. for eight days, from Easter eve until the Sunday after and Mijthol. s. v.
Easter, which \vas hence called Dominica in ulbis, i. e. Neo-Platonism, an eclectic philosophy nearly the Sundav in white. (These garments were usually coeval in origin with Christianity, but developed in made of wiiitc linen, but sometimes of more costly ma- an anti-Christian and pantheistic direction. The terra, terials.) They were also subject to a strict discipline or taken in the wider sense, may be defined as that form probation for a much longer period. At first they were or method of ijhilosophizing which, recognising or considered unfit for the priestly oflice, on the grounds j claiming Plato as leader, incorporated with his views of 1 Tim. iii, 6, where the word is rendered "novice," other, especially Oriental, conceptions, and sought by and explained by Gregory the (ircat to have been used means of such composite or eclectic philosophical re- in allusion to "their being newly planted in the faith" suits to harmonize or, at the least, to reconcile the (l-:pp. G, V ; Ep. 51). Xeoi)l)ytes ditfered from catechu- | teachings of the various ancient schools of philosophy; mens (4. v.), inasmuch as the persons were supposed to , in the narrow, and perhaps the more common accepta- have not only embraced the doctrines of the Church, but , tion, it is applied to tlie doctrinal system of the philo- also to have received baptism. I'aul, in the jiassage re- sophical school founded at Alexandria, in I'^gypt, by forred to, directs Timothy not to promote a neophyte to
tlie episcopate ; and this prohibition was generally mani- tained. The duration of this exclusion was left for a time to the discretion of bishops, but several of the an- cient synods legislated regarding it. The third council of Aries (524) and the third of Orange (538) Wk a year as the least limit of probation. Ecclesiastical history offers, however, a few instances in which this rule was
Ammonius Saccas, in the first half of the 3d century after Christ, and continued by his pu])ils and successors not only in the city of its origin, but also in other places. Plotinus, one of the earliest and most eminent of its disciples and masters, taught at Home, and the term Romano-Alexandrian is sometimes applied to it.
JIany of the early Cliristian writers advocated the employment of the philosophical methods to elucidate
departed from, as in the appointment of Ambrosius as and establish the doctrines of the Gospel, and were, con- hishop; but these exceptions were not frequent. In ! seqnently, to a greater or less extent imbued with the the modern Homan Catholic Cliurch the same discipline ! spirit and favored the professed objects of the Nco-l'la-