1. The Phrygian enthusiasm, like the convulsionism of Paris [413] in the last century, was a phenomenon not to be trifled with; especially when it began to threaten the West. This work was produced to meet so great an emergency.
2. "Fire fights fire," and prophesyings are best met by prophesyings. These were rare among the Orthodox, but Hermas undertook to restore those of the apostolic age; and I think this is what is meant by the tradita verba of the old poem, i.e., words "transmitted or bequeathed traditionally" from the times of Clement. Irenæus, the contemporary of this Hermas, had received the traditions of the same age from Polycarp: hence the greater probability of my conjecture that the brother of Pius compiled many traditional prophesyings of the first age.
3. Supposing the work to be in fact what it is represented to be in fiction, we have seen that it abounds with anachronisms. As now explained, we can account for them: the second Hermas forgets himself, like other poets, and mixes up his own period with that which he endeavours to portray.
4 and 5. Written in Greek, its circulation in the West was necessarily limited; but, as the plague of Montanism was raging in the East, its Greek was a godsend, and enabled the Easterns to introduce it everywhere as a useful book. Origen values it as such; and, taking it without thought to be the work of the Pauline Hermas, attributes to it, as a fancy of his own, [414] that kind of inspiration which pertained to early "prophesyings." This conjecture once started, "it satisfied curiosity," says Westcott, "and supplied the place of more certain information; but, though it found acceptance, it acquired no new strength." [415]
6. Eusebius and Jerome [416] merely repeat the report as an on dit, and on this slender authority it travelled down. The Pauline Hermas was credited with it; and the critics, in their researches, find multiplied traces of the one mistake, as did the traveller whose circuits became a beaten road under the hoofs of his own horse.
If the reader will now turn back to the Introductory Note of the Edinburgh editors, he will find that the three views of which they take any serious notice are harmonized by that we have reached. (1) The work is unquestionably, on its face, the work of the Pauline Hermas. (2) But this is attributable to the fact that it is a fiction, or prose poem. (3) And hence it must be credited to the later Hermas, whose name and authorship are alone supported by external testimony, as well as internal evidence.
II.
(Similitude Ninth, cap. xi. p. 47, [3]note 1.)
Westcott is undoubtedly correct in connecting this strange passage with one of the least defensible experiments of early Christian living. Gibbon finds in this experiment nothing but an opportunity for his scurrility. [417] A true philosopher will regard it very differently; and here, once and for all, we may speak of it somewhat at length. The young believer, a member, perhaps, of a heathen family, daily mixed up with abominable manners, forced to meet everywhere, by day, the lascivious hetæræ of the Greeks or those who are painted by Martial among the Latins, had no refuge but in flying to the desert, or practising the most heroic self-restraint if he remained with the relations and companions of his youth. If he went to the bath, it was to see naked women wallowing with vile men: if he slept upon the housetop, it was to throw down his mat or rug in a promiscuous stye of men and women. [418] This alike with rich and poor; but the latter were those among whom the Gospel found its more numerous recruits, and it was just these who were least able to protect themselves from pollutions. Their only resource was in that self-mastery, out of which sprung the Encraty of Tatian and the Montanism of Tertullian. Angelic purity was supposed to be attainable in this life; and the experiment was doubtless attended with some success, among the more resolute in fastings and prayer. Inevitably, however, what was "begun in the spirit," ended "in the flesh," in many instances. To live as brothers and sisters in the family of Christ, was a daring experiment; especially in such a social atmosphere, and amid the domestic habits of the heathen. Scandals ensued. Canonical censures were made stringent by the Church; and, while the vices of men and the peril of persecution multiplied the anchorites of the desert, this mischief was crushed out, and made impossible for Christians. "The sun-clad power of chastity," which Hermas means to depict, was no doubt gloriously exemplified among holy men and women, in those heroic ages. The power of the Holy Ghost demonstrated, in many instances, how true it is, that, "to the pure, all things are pure." But the Gospel proscribes everything like presumption and "leading into temptation." The Church, in dealing with social evils, often encouraged a recourse to monasticism, in its pure form; but this also tended to corruption. To charge Christianity, however, with rash experiments of living which it never tolerated, is neither just nor philosophical. We have in it an example of the struggles of individuals out of heathenism,--by no means an institution of Christianity itself. It was a struggle, which, in its spirit, demands sympathy and respect. The Gospel has taught us to nauseate what even a regenerated heathen conceived to be praiseworthy, until the Christian family had become a developed product of the Church. [419]
The Gospel arms its enemies against itself, by elevating them infinitely above what they would have been without its influences. Refined by its social atmosphere, but refusing its sanctifying power, they gloat over the failures and falls of those with whom their own emancipation was begun. Let us rather admire those whom she lifted out of an abyss of moral degradation, but whose struggles to reach the high levels of her precepts were not always successful. Yet these very struggles were heroic; for all their original habits, and all their surroundings, were of the sort "which hardens all within, and petrifies the feeling."
The American editor has devoted more than his usual amount of annotation to Hermas, and he affectionately asks the student not to overlook the notes, in which he has condensed rather than amplified exposition. It has been a labour of love to contribute something to a just conception of The Shepherd, because the Primitive Age has often been reproached with its good repute in the early churches. So little does one generation comprehend another! When Christians conscientiously rejected the books of the heathen, and had as yet none of their own, save the Sacred Scriptures, or such scanty portions of the New Testament as were the treasures of the churches, is it wonderful that the first effort at Christian allegory was welcomed, especially in a time of need and perilous temptation?
[410] Tom. i. pp. 393-434.
[411] On the Canon, p. 235. Ed. 1855.
[412] Such as Lightfoot, Westcott, Canon Cook, and others.
[413] Candidly treated by Guettée, L'Eglise de France, vol. xii. p. 15. See also Parton's Voltaire, vol. i. pp. 260-270.
[414] Comment., book x. sec. 31, as quoted in Westcott, p. 219.
[415] I subjoin Westcott's references: Clem. Alex., Stromata, i. 17, sec. 85; Ibid., i. 29, sec. 29; Ibid., ii. 1, sec. 3. Also Ibid., ii. 12, sec. 55; iv. 9. sec. 76; vi. 6, sec. 46. Also Tertull., Pudicitia, capp. 10 and 20. These I have verified in Ed. Oehler, pp. 468, 488. I add De Oratione, capp. xvi. p. 311. Let me also add Athanasius, De Incarnatione, p. 38; Contra Hæresim Arian., p. 369; Ibid., 380. To the testimony of this great Father and defender of the faith I attach the greatest importance; because his approval shows that there was nothing in the book, as he had it in its pure text, to justify the attempts of moderns to disprove its orthodoxy. Athanasius calls is "a most useful book," and quotes it again ("although that book is not in the Canon") with great respect. Ed. Paris, 1572. Modern theories of inspiration appear to me untenable, with reference to canonical Scripture; but they precisely illustrate the sort of inspiration with which these prophesyings were probably first credited. The human element is largely intermixed with divine suggestions; or you may state the proposition conversely.
[416] Eusebius, iii. 3, and Hieronym., catal. x. See Westcott, p. 220.
[417] Milman's Gibbon, vol. i. p. 550. The editor's notes are not over severe, and might be greatly strengthened as refutations.
[418] Van Lennep, Bible-lands, p. 440.
[419] See Vision iii. cap. 8, for the relation of encraty to faith, in the view of Hermas; also (cap. 7 and passim) note his uncompromising reproofs of lust, and his beautiful delineations of chastity. The third canon of the Nicene Synod proscribed the syneisactæ, and also the nineteenth of Ancyra, adopted at Chalcedon into the Catholic discipline.
Tatian's Address to the Greeks
[Translated by J. E. Ryland]
Introductory Note
to
Taitian the Assyrian
[Translated by J. E. Ryland.]
[a.d. 110-172.] It was my first intention to make this author a mere appendix to his master, Justin Martyr; for he stands in an equivocal position, as half Father and half heretic. His good seems to have been largely due to Justin's teaching and influence. One may trust that his falling away, in the decline of life, is attributable to infirmity of mind and body; his severe asceticism countenancing this charitable thought. Many instances of human frailty, which the experience of ages has taught Christians to view with compassion rather than censure, are doubtless to be ascribed to mental aberration and decay. Early Christians had not yet been taught this lesson; for, socially, neither Judaism nor Paganism had wholly surrendered their unloving influences upon their minds. Moreover, their high valuation of discipline, as an essential condition of self-preservation amid the fires of surrounding scorn and hatred, led them to practice, perhaps too sternly, upon offenders, what they often heroically performed upon themselves,--the amputation of the scandalous hand, or the plucking out of the evil eye.
In Tatian, another Assyrian follows the Star of Bethlehem, from Euphrates and the Tigris. The scanty facts of his personal history are sufficiently detailed by the translator, in his Introductory Note. We owe to himself the pleasing story of his conversion from heathenism. But I think it important to qualify the impressions the translation may otherwise leave upon the student's mind, by a little more sympathy with the better side of his character, and a more just statement of his great services to the infant Church.
His works, which were very numerous, have perished, in consequence of his lapse from orthodoxy. Give him due credit for his Diatessaron, of which the very name is a valuable testimony to the Four Gospels as recognised by the primitive churches. It is lost, with the "infinite number" of other books which St. Jerome attributes to him. All honour to this earliest harmonist for such a work; and let us believe, with Mill and other learned authorities, that, if Eusebius had seen the work he censures, he might have expressed himself more charitably concerning it.
We know something of Tatian, already, from the melancholy pages of Irenæus. Theodoret finds no other fault with his Diatessaron than its omission of the genealogies, which he, probably, could not harmonize on any theory of his own. The errors into which he fell in his old age [420] were so absurd, and so contrary to the Church's doctrine and discipline, that he could not be tolerated as one of the faithful, without giving to the heathen new grounds for the malignant slanders with which they were ever assailing the Christians. At the same time, let us reflect, that his fall is to be attributed to extravagant ideas of that encraty which is a precept of the Gospel, and which a pure abhorrence of pagan abominations led many of the orthodox to practice with extreme rigidity. And this is the place to say, once for all, that the figures of Elijah upon Mt. Carmel and of John Baptist in the wilderness, approved by our Lord's teachings, but moderated, as a lesson to others, by his own holy but less austere example, justify the early Church in making room for the two classes of Christians which must always be found in earnest religion, and which seem to have their warrant in the fundamental constitution of human nature. There must be men like St. Paul, living in the world, though not of it; and there must be men like the Baptist, of whom the world will say, "he hath a devil." Marvellously the early Catholics were piloted between the rocks and the whirlpools, in the narrow drift of the Gospel; and always the Holy Spirit of counsel and might was their guardian, amid their terrible trials and temptations. This must suggest, to every reflecting mind, a gratitude the most profound. To preserve evangelical encraty, and to restrain fanatical asceticism, was the spirit of early Christianity, as one sees in the ethics of Hermas. But the awful malaria of Montanism was even now rising like a fog of the marshes, and was destined to leave its lasting impress upon Western Christianity; "forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats." Our author, alas, laid the egg which Tertullian hatched, and invented terms which that great author raised to their highest power; for he was rather the disciple of Tatian than of the Phrygians, though they kindled his strange fire. After Tertullian, the whole subject of marriage became entangled with sophistries, which have ever since adhered to the Latin churches, and introduced the most corrosive results into the vitals of individuals and of nations. Southey suggests, that, in the Roman Communion, John Wesley would have been accommodated with full scope for his genius, and canonized as a saint, while his Anglican mother had no place for him. [421] But, on the other hand, let us reflect that while Rome had no place for Wiclif and Hus, or Jerome of Prague, she has used and glorified and canonized many fanatics whose errors were far more disgraceful than those of Tatian and Tertullian. In fact, she would have utilized and beatified these very enthusiasts, had they risen in the Middle Ages, to combine their follies with equal extravagance in persecuting the Albigenses, while aggrandizing the papal ascendency.