Part 47

“In the fourth century were held thirteen Councils against Arius, fifteen for him, and seventeen for the Semiarians; in all forty-five.[492]

“How could the Arians, in the time of Constantius and Valens, bring themselves to such an un-christian persecuting temper? How could they oppress their fellow-Christians, the Consubstantialists, who, supposing them to have been in error, fell into it through a religious fear of ascribing too little to their Redeemer, and of not paying him sufficient honour? Can a man love his saviour, and hate his brother for a mistake of this kind?

“And how could the Consubstantialists persuade themselves that an Arian, who perhaps had suffered for professing Christianity in times of distress, who believed Christ to be his Maker, his Saviour, his King, and his Judge, would choose to detract from his dignity, and to offend him in whom he placed all his hopes of salvation? Human nature is not capable of this folly; and if the man were in an error, yet in such a person the error must have been involuntary, a mere defect of the understanding, and not a fault of the will.

“A Christian and a lover of peace, who lived in obscurity, and whose name I cannot tell, stood up and said:—‘My brethren, the things to be believed are few, the things to be done are many: but you behave yourselves as if the reverse of this were true. St. Paul tells you, “The grace of God that bringeth Salvation hath appeared to all men; teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world, looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearance of the great God, and (of) our Saviour, Jesus Christ.” Concerning the nature of _Jesus_ you can dispute incessantly, and concerning the word _Grace_, you will probably dispute no less; but the rest of the sentence you disregard as of small consequence or importance. What, I beseech you, must the Jews and the Pagans conceive of you and of your religion? And what do the holy angels think, who look down upon your contentions? Those blessed and compassionate spirits pity you, and think you mere children. But when from contending you proceed to beating your fellow-servants, to persecuting and destroying, they consider you as most malicious and wicked children; their pity is changed into indignation, and they would strike you dead, if the Supreme Governor did not stay their hand, and remind them that such disorders must needs arise, and shall one day be rectified.’

“So said this _Unknown_; but behold the consequence! The Consubstantialists called him an Arian, and the Arians called him a Consubstantialist.

“The Nicene Fathers having anathematized the Arians, the Emperor seconded them, and banished Arius and the bishops who sided with him, and ordered the books of Arius to be burnt; and added, ‘If any man be found to have concealed a copy of those books, and not to have instantly produced it and thrown it into the fire, he shall be put to death. The Lord be with you all!’”[493]—(_Eccles. Hist._ vol. ii. p. 205.)

I shall now summon two authorities, the one Cudworth, the other Jortin, to prove that the Nicene Fathers had no knowledge of the present doctrine of the Trinity, and that they believed Christ to be the same with God, not numerically, but as partaking of the same nature, belonging to the same class of beings:—“Wherefore it seemeth to be unquestionably evident, that when the ancient orthodox Fathers of the Christian Church maintained against Arius, the Son to be Co-essential or Consubstantial with the Father, though the word be thus interpreted, _of the same essence or substance_, yet they universally understood thereby, not a _sameness of singular and numerical_, but of common or universal essence only; that is the generical or specifical Essence of the Godhead; that the Son was no _Creature_, but truly and properly God.” * * *

“We have now given a full account of the true and genuine _Platonic_ Trinity; from which it may clearly appear, how far it either agreeth or disagreeth with the _Christian_. First, therefore, though some of the later Platonists have partly misunderstood, and partly adulterated that ancient _Cabala_ of the Trinity, as was before declared, confounding therein the _differences_ between God and the Creature, and thereby laying a foundation for infinite Polytheism; yet did _Plato himself_ and some of his genuine followers, (_though living before Christianity_,) approach so near to the doctrine thereof, as in some manner to correspond therewith.” ... “From whence it may be concluded, that as _Arianism_ is commonly supposed to approach nearer to the truth of Christianity than Photinianism, so is _Platonism_ undoubtedly more agreeable thereunto than Arianism, it being a certain middle thing, betwixt that and Sabellianism, _which in general_ was that mark that the Nicene Council also aimed at.”

This is more fully explained in the next extract:—

“Athanasius in sundry places still further supposes those _three divine hypostases_ to make up one entire divinity, after the same manner as the _Fountain_ and the _Stream_ make up one entire _river_; or the _root_, and the _stock_, and the _branches_, one entire tree. And in this sense also is the whole Trinity said by him to be one Divinity, and one Nature, and one Essence, and one God. And accordingly, the word Homoousios (Consubstantial) seems here to be taken by Athanasius in a further sense besides that before mentioned; not only for things agreeing in one common and general essence, as _Three individual men_ are co-essential with one another; but also for such as concurrently together, make up one entire thing, and are therefore jointly essential thereunto.—In all which doctrine of his there is nothing but what a true and genuine Platonist would readily subscribe to. From whence it may be concluded, that the right Platonic Trinity differs not so much from the doctrine of the Ancient Church, as some late writers have supposed.”—(_Intellec. Sys._ p. 591, 608, 619-20.)[494]

“But here it will be asked, perhaps, what was the doctrine of the Nicene Fathers, and what did they mean by Consubstantiality. It is impossible to answer this question without using logical and metaphysical terms.

“By the word _Consubstantial_, they meant not of the same numerical, or individual substance, but of the same generical substance or subsistence. As, amongst men, a son is _consubstantial_ with his father; so, in their opinion, the Son of God is consubstantial with the Father, that is, of the same divine nature.

“By this word therefore they intended to express _the same kind of nature_, and so far, _a natural equality_. But according to them, this natural equality excluded not a relative inequality; a _majority_ and _minority_, founded upon the everlasting difference between _giving_ and _receiving_, _causing_, and being _caused_.

“They had no notion of distinguishing between _person_ and _being_, between an _intelligent agent_, and an intelligent active substance, subsistence, or entity.

“When they said that the Father was _God_, they meant that he was God of _himself, originally, and underived_.

“When they said that the Son was _God_, they meant that he was God by _generation_ or _derivation_.

“The Unity of God they maintained, and they defended it, first, by considering the Father as the First Cause, the only underived and self-existing; secondly, by supposing an intimate, inseparable, and incomprehensible union, connection, indwelling, and co-existence, by which the Father was in the Son, and the Son in the Father; and thirdly, by saying that in the Father and the Son there was an unity of will, design, and consent, and one divine power and dominion, originally in the Father, and derivatively in the Son.

“In process of time, Christians went into a notion that the Son was ‘of the same individual substance with the Father, and with the Holy Spirit,’ and they seem to have done this with a view to secure the doctrine of the _Unity_.

“The schoolmen took up the subject, and treated it in their way, which they call _explaining_, and which men of sense call _impenetrable jargon_.”—(_Jortin, Eccles. Hist._ vol. ii. p. 202.)

You will observe, that so far no mention had been made of the separate deity of the Holy Spirit. The original Nicene Creed is silent upon the subject. It was a question that grew out of the deity of Christ. The philosophy of the times, no less than the reluctance to be deemed the followers of a crucified man, led to the deification of Jesus, and afterwards, from the personifications of the Holy Spirit, in such expressions as “I will send unto you the Comforter, even the Spirit of Truth,” and from its frequent connection with the name and mission of Christ, arose the idea of a separate divinity, a third person in the Trinity. The Platonic Trinity would indeed have naturally led the early Fathers to the conception of a third principle, and in some of the Anti-Nicene Writers this conception appears; but the Controversy was carried on with almost exclusive reference to the deity of Christ, which independent of the general burden of their writings, clearly appears from the fact, that when defending themselves against the charge of violating the Unity of God, they always state the objection, so as to show that the accusation against them was that they were “introducing a _second_ God.”

Accordingly it was after the Council at Nice, when the deity of the Son was established, that orthodoxy took a second and consequent step, and proceeded to establish the deity of the third person in the Trinity.[495]

This was effected towards the close of the fourth century, A.D. 381, by the Second General Council, that of Constantinople, when the following addition was made to the previously deficient orthodoxy of the Nicene Creed. The Nicene Creed had simply stated, “We believe in the Holy Ghost.” The Council of Constantinople rectified the error thus: “We believe in the Holy Ghost, _the Lord and Giver_ of life; who proceedeth from the Father; who with the Father and Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spake by the prophets.” Still, however, the adjustments were not correct, nor the formula of perfect orthodoxy. It occurred to the Church, centuries after, that the Holy Spirit was described in the Scriptures as being dependent not upon the Father alone, but as being “sent” by the Son; and that therefore the Third Person must hold that relation to the Second which the Second did to the Third, and must therefore be derived not from the Father alone, but from the Father and Son together.[496] Accordingly this new idea, essential to Salvation, was included in the formula so long in this respect defective, with what fatal consequences we are not told; and at last, in the ninth century, a perfectly accurate and saving description of the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son was embodied in the Nicene Creed, some five hundred years after its first construction. So slowly did the “unimproved and unimprovable revelation” of dogmatic divines advance to its perfection. Yet we are gravely told of the faith of the Church,—a faith human all over; and of the traditions of Christian antiquity,—traditions whose origin we can trace at a great distance from apostolic times, and whose constant increase, in proportion as we recede from those times, would seem to imply that the further Councils of the Church were removed from the Apostles the more they knew about them—the accuracy of inspired Tradition differing, as of course it should, from common Memory and common History, by being in an inverse ratio to the distance. This is no subject for ridicule; but only the sacred feelings and high themes that are necessarily associated with such extravagance, have so long saved it from the most merciless exposure. Those solemn themes, the awe and loveliness of which Ecclesiastical History has done its best to lower and degrade, have yet repaid the disservice by dropping something of their own solemnity on its unworthy pages, and by taking every thing that is associated with God and Christ within the protection of the sentiment of reverence, have shielded Ecclesiastical History from that unsparing criticism which perhaps would have been more serviceable to Truth, and productive of a reverence higher and more profitable towards both Christ and God.

In the history of the doctrine of the Trinity, the settlement of one Controversy always gave birth to another, in the progressive attempt to make mysteries intelligible. The deity of Christ naturally gave rise to some curiosity respecting the humanity of Christ. Hitherto all parties, Arians, Athanasians, and Unitarians, according to their respective views, had for the most part agreed that the Christ consisted of one body and one spirit; and their controversies related simply to the rank and nature of that spirit. The Arians believed the soul of Jesus to be the first of created intelligences, the highest Emanation from God. The Platonic Christians thought that the Logos used instrumentally the body of Jesus, and supplied the place of a human soul. When the Council of Nice, however, established that the spirit of Jesus was _consubstantial_ with that of God, the idea naturally presented itself that, since Jesus expired upon the cross, this was to represent the divine nature as capable of suffering and death. Now those who were the most orthodox, whose views and language receded to the extremest distance from those of the heretical Arians, would necessarily fall into modes of conception and expression which implied this revolting extravagance. Accordingly Apollinaris, one of the most zealous Athanasians, and the bitter enemy of Arius, freely, and unconscious of heresy, followed out his principles with perverse consistency, and openly spoke of the Logos of God supplying the place of a human soul in the body of Christ; and, of course, undergoing all that a spirit, so situated, could suffer.[497] But so narrow is the way of orthodoxy, that the zealous Father was made quickly to discover that by starting aside from one heresy, only a little too sharply, he had immediately fallen into another; for the pitfalls of damnable error lie upon each side of the hair-breadth way of Salvation. By pursuing too exclusively the deity of Christ, Apollinaris overlooked his humanity, and taught the heresy of “one incarnate nature,” and the consequent sufferings and death of God. This impious extreme, being condemned by the Asiatic Church, though popular in Egypt, orthodoxy naturally took a rebound; and Apollinaris, having confused the two natures into one, Nestorius separated them into two, to such an extent, as virtually to destroy the mystical union. Here was another and an opposite heresy equally fatal to the orthodoxy of the Church and the salvation of mankind; for if such was the loose connection of the two natures, then, God being incapable of suffering, only the human nature of Jesus underwent crucifixion and death. But, on the other hand, if this was so, then the sufferings of Christ were only those of a _man_; and all the mystery of the Incarnation was dissipated, and became ineffectual for any theological purpose.

A new controversy consequently arose, respecting the right adjustments of these saving connections between the humanity and the deity of the Christ. “Before this time,” says Mosheim, “it had been settled by the decrees of former Councils, that Christ was truly God and truly man; but there had as yet been no controversy, and no decision of any council, concerning the mode and effect of the union of the two natures in Christ. In consequence, there was a want of agreement among the Christian Teachers in their language concerning this mystery.” This controversy, which, for some time had been carried on without attracting towards it definitively the public authorities of the Church, drew at last the eager notice of all Christendom; when Nestorius, the Prelate of Constantinople, carried the distinction between the two natures to so definite a point as to deny that the Virgin Mary could, with any propriety, be denominated the “Mother of God;” and that her titles should be limited to that of “Mother of Christ” or “Mother of Man.” This was regarded, by the orthodox, as reducing the death of Christ to that of a mere man, and the mystery of the Incarnation to little better than a trick of words. It was no easy matter in those times to avoid, on the one hand, confounding the two natures; and, on the other, separating them so distinctly as to destroy the whole theological value of the mystical combination: nor have modern Theologians been more successful in adjusting this puzzle than their perplexed and perplexing predecessors.

The chief alarmist upon this occasion of the heresy of Nestorius was Cyril, the Patriarch of Alexandria, an arrogant and aspiring man, who gladly seized upon a tempting opportunity to humble his rival, the bishop of Constantinople. “Some jealousy which at that time subsisted respecting the relative dignity of the two sees, probably heightened the contention, and is believed by some to have caused it. Whether that be or not, the two Patriarchs anathematized each other with mutual violence; and such troubles were raised that the Emperor (Theodosius the younger) deemed it necessary to convoke a General Council for the purpose of appeasing them. It was assembled at Ephesus A.D. 431, and stands in the annals of the Church as the THIRD GENERAL COUNCIL. Cyril was appointed to preside, and consequently to judge the cause of his adversary: and he carried into this office such little show of impartiality, that he refused even to wait for the arrival of the bishop of Antioch and others, who were held friendly to Nestorius, and proceeded to pronounce sentence, while the meeting was yet incomplete. To secure or prosecute his advantages, he had brought with him from Egypt a number of robust and daring fanatics, who acted as his soldiery; and it had been skilfully arranged that Ephesus should be chosen for the decision of a difference respecting the dignity of the Virgin; since popular tradition had buried her in that city, and the imperfect Christianity of its inhabitants had readily transferred to her the worship which their ancestors had offered to Diana.”[498]

Such are the assemblies from which our Creeds date their birth; by whose authority the Rule of Faith was determined; and whose character is described in the words of the Emperor Theodosius when dismissing this very Council of Ephesus—“God is my witness, that I am not the author of this confusion. His providence will discern and punish the guilty. Return to your provinces; and may your private virtues repair the mischief and scandal of your meeting.” At this council it was decreed, by bishops who could not write their own names,[499] that the Union of the human and divine nature in Christ was so intimate that Mary might properly be called the Mother of God. The influence of Cyril prevailed chiefly by intimidating the bishops and bribing the imperial household. “Thanks to the purse of St. Cyril,” says Le Clerc, “the Romish Church which regards Councils as infallible, is not, at the present day, Nestorian.” “The Creeds of _Protestants_ are equally indebted to St. Cyril for their purity.”[500]

The triumphant opponents of Nestorius, as is invariably found in the history of Church Controversies, pushed their triumph to such an excess, as to fall into the opposite error, and revived the formerly condemned heresy of Apollinaris, of the incarnation of but one nature. Eutyches the friend of St. Cyril and the bitter enemy of Nestorius, openly preached “that in Christ there was but one nature, that of the incarnate Word.” The Church was again in a blaze, and again the Emperor summoned a Council at Ephesus, A.D. 449, over which presided Dioscorus, the successor of St. Cyril as Patriarch of Alexandria. Here the sentence of the last Council was reversed, and Orthodoxy was pronounced to be the doctrine of one divine nature in Christ, and only one. This Council, however, owing principally to the opposition made to it by the Bishop of Rome, was never authoritatively recognized by the Church, and such was its character for tumult and brutality that it is marked in Ecclesiastical History by the expressive name of the Assembly of Banditti.

Speedily then was this heresy, inconveniently sanctioned by a Council of the Church, of only one nature in Christ, which in effect represented God as subject to suffering and death, replaced by the orthodoxy of two natures in one person, which was attended, however, with the opposite difficulty of so separating the God from the Man as to nullify the mystical efficacy of his sufferings.[501] But who will devise a form of words in which irreconcilable ideas shall be reconciled, and no weak point be exposed in the skilful statement of a fiction? THE FOURTH GENERAL COUNCIL of the Church was held at Chalcedon, A.D. 451. There are two things most remarkable respecting this Council; first—that it declared Jesus to be of the same essence with God as to his divine nature, only in the sense in which he was of the same essence with other men as to his human nature, thus denying his _numerical_ oneness with God, and merely referring him to the same class of Beings, making him generically one, as two men are;[502] and secondly—that though the majority of the Bishops favoured the doctrine of one nature, they were obliged by the obstinacy of the Emperor Marcian, in conjunction with the Bishop of Rome, to reverse at one of their sittings their decision at a former, and finally to decree that orthodoxy consisted in believing “Jesus Christ to be one person in two distinct natures, without any confusion or mixture.” “It was in vain,” says Gibbon, “that a multitude of episcopal voices (the advocates for only one nature) repeated in chorus ‘The definition of the Fathers is orthodox and immutable! The heretics are now discovered! Anathema to the Nestorians! Let them depart from the synod! Let them repair to Rome!’ The Legates threatened, the Emperor was absolute, and a committee of eighteen bishops prepared a new decree, which was imposed on the reluctant assembly. In the name of the fourth general Council, the Christ in one person, but _in_ two natures, was announced to the Catholic world: an invisible line was drawn between the heresy of Apollinaris and the faith of St. Cyril; and the road to paradise, a bridge as sharp as a razor, was suspended over the abyss by the master hand of the theological artist. During ten centuries of blindness and servitude, Europe received her religious opinions from the Oracle of the Vatican; and the same doctrine, already varnished with the rust of antiquity, was admitted without dispute into the creed of the Reformers, who disclaimed the supremacy of the Roman pontiff. The synod of Chalcedon still triumphs in the Protestant churches; but the ferment of controversy has subsided, and the most pious Christians of the present day are ignorant, or careless, of their own belief concerning the mystery of the incarnation.”[503]