ion of the approaching council. But after he had been condemned and excluded from the Church, together with his adherents, he thought there could be no sin in his taking the oversight of his own company. The in- vidious representations of this affair by Cornelius cannot at this day be refuted, owing to the want of documents ; yet, as they come from an enemy, they are not to be re- ceived implicitly hy those who would judge equitably" {Hist, of Christianity in the First Three Centuries, ii, 60 sq.). From the account Cornelius gives of Novatian, the latter appears to have been of a melancholy tempera- ment, and consequently gloomy, austere, and fond of re- tirement. Those who forsook him and came back to the Romish Church said they found in the man what Cor- nelius calls (ap. Eusebium, p. 242) t))v aK0ivujr7j<Tiav /cat \vK0(pi\iai' ■, which Valerius translates, '* abhorrentem ab omni societate feritatem, et lupinam quamdam ami- citiam." He therefore shunned society, and was wolfish towards even his friends; i. e. he was harsh, austere, and ungracious in his intercourse (p. 515). That these things were objected to him with truth is reasonable ; for manners like these are entirely accordant with his principles. He was led to embrace Christianity by a deep melancholy into which he had fallen, and from which he hoped to be recovered by the Cliristians. At least so appears what Cornelius has stated (nor will any who are familiar with the opinions and phraseologj^ of the ancient Christians understand Cornelius differently) : 'Acpopjxi) rov TTia-tvaai ■ykyovtv 6 'S.aravaq, (poiriiaat; tiQ avTov Kfli oiKiiaaQ iv uv-Cb \puvov 'iKavuv ("Caus- sam atque initium credendi ipsi Satanas in ipsuni in- gressus atque in ipso aliquamdiu commoratus"). This, in our style and mode of speaking, would be : "A deep and settled melancholy had fastened on his mind ; and the Christians who knew him said that an evil spirit had got possession of him, and that if he would profess Christ the evil spirit would go out of him ; so, from a hope of recov- ering his health, he professed Christianity." Perhaps his melancholy was attended with convulsions. This may strike some as a hasty and unwarrantable construc- tion of the statement ; but it is not credible that Nova- tian himself, being a Stoic philosopher, woidd refer his malady to an evil spirit. This notion was instilled into him by the Christians ; who, undoubtedly, were desirous of bringing a man of such correct morals to become a Christian ; and they gradually made him a convert to their faith. Impatient of his malady, Novatian yielded to their exhortations. By the regulations of the ancient Church, he could not, however, be baptized so long as he appeared to be under the power of an evil spirit. Exorcists were therefore sent to him, to expel the foul daemon by their prayers. But they failed of success; and Novatian, at length being seized with a threatening disease while under tlieir operations, was baptized in his bed, when apparently about to die. On recovering from the attack, he seems to have hesitated whether he should in health confirm what he had done in his sickness, and thus persevere in the Christian religion; for, as Cornelius invidiously says of him, he could not be persuaded to submit to the other rites prescribed by the Church, and be confirmed by the bishop, or be signed, as the term used expresses it. For this pertinacity and disregard of the Christian regulations, unquestionably the only assignable cause must have been that his mind was fluctuating between the philosophy he had before followed and the Christian religion which he had em- braced from a hope of recovering his health. Nor cau we wonder at this dubitation ; for the Christians had as- sured him of the restoration of his health by the exor- cists who had failed in the undertaking. Nevertheless the bishop, Fabius perhaps, a while after, made him a presbyter in his Church, contrary to the wishes of the whole body of priests and of a large part of the Church. (See Cornelius, ap. Eusebius, I. c. p. 245.) It was alto- gether irregular and contrary to ecclesiastical rules to admit a man to the priestly office who had been bap- tized in bed ; that is, who had been merely sprinkled,
novatia:^^
210
NOVATIAN
and had not (p. 51G) been wholly immersed in water in the ancient method. For bj' many, and especially by the Roman Christians, the baptism of clinics (so they called those who, lest they should die out of the Church, were baptized on a sick-bed) was accounted less perfect, and indeed less valid, and not sufficient for the attain- ment of salvation. This also was even more strange and unheard of, that a man should be admitted among the teachers and leaders of the Christian people who disregarded the laws of the Church, and pertinaciously rejected the authority and confirmation of the bishop. The belief of that age was that the Holy Spirit was im- parted by the confirmation or sirpniuj of the bishop; so that all those lacked the Holy Spirit whose baptism had not been approved and ratified by the bishop, bj' prayers, imposition of hands, and other rites. Ample pr<iof of this is given by Cornelius, who expressly states that Novatian was destitute of the Holy Spirit because he neglected the signing of the bishop. The Roman bishop, therefore, committed a great fault by conferring the honored office of a presbyter on a man who resisted the laws of the Church, and whom he knew to be desti- tute of the Holy Spirit, unless he did so, as it really appears, to save Novatian from the errors of Stoicism, to which, if neglected by the Church, he was sure to revert. (Comp. Cornelius's [ap. Eusebius, p. 245] statement that Novatian was raised to the rank of a presbyter immediately after receiving baptism: Wiartv- aac KaTij^uoS>7] rov Trpecrjivrfpiov Kara xapiv tov iiri- OKoTtov [which is not badly translated by Valesius : "Post susceptum baptismura" — properly, "«s soon as he had believed" — "presbytori gradum fuerat consecutus, idque per gratiam episcopi"], very possibly said to be by the favor of the bishop ; for it was an irregular elevation certainly, as Novatian had not yet been made deacon.) The truth, then, it would seem, is rather that Novatian was hurriedly put into places of responsibility, in order to save him from apostasy; and, once iu the Church, he contended zealously for her purity; and that in his endeavor to save the Church from irregularities he opposed Cornelius, and was thus driven on against his natural inclination "to contend for what he conceived to be the purity of the Church." Cleared from the im- putations of Cornelius and his friends, Novatian rises up before us like some old prophet, solemnly denouncing the hideous corruptions of the Church, yet unable with his small band to make head against that ecclesiastical tyranny which had planted its throne in Italy. "The Catholic Church," he says, "transmitted by the suc- cession of bishops, ceases to be truly catholic as soon as it becomes stained and desecrated through the fellow- ship of unworthy men." One feels that it is not going too far to affirm that whatever of heavenly vitality there was in the Church in those days was among the " schismatic" Novatianists. Rome's policy was to con- foiuid the distinction between the visible and the invis- ible Church, and so to rule without Christ, and without the Spirit, and without the Gospel. Novatian and his brave few, taught out of the book of God and not by man's traditions, protested against such confusion, and maintained the cause of the living against the dead. They were suppressed. The attempt to reform failed. The Spirit was (pienched; and Rome (piietly reseated itself iu its old paganism under a Christian nomencla- ture, having at length succeeded in throwing off as un- congenial the last relics, if not of apostolic faith, at least of apostolic life.