Admiration

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

Page 282 of 288 · 20 per page

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  They must stand or fall together. But they will stand. They represent, indeed, an advanced state of christological and ecclesiological knowledge in the apostolic age, but they have their roots in the older Epistles of Paul, and are brimful of his spirit. They were called forth by a new phase of error, and brought out new statements of truth with new words and phrases adapted to the case. They contain nothing that Paul could not have written consistently with his older Epistles, and there is no known pupil of Paul who could have forged such highly intellectual and spiritual letters in his name and equalled, if not out-Pauled Paul.1170 The external testimonies are unanimous in favor of the Pauline authorship, and go as far back as Justin Martyr, Polycarp, Ignatius, and the heretical Marcion (about 140), who included both Epistles in his mutilated canon.1171 The difficulties which have been urged against their Pauline origin, especially of Ephesians, are as follows: 1. The striking resemblance of the two Epistles, and the apparent repetitiousness and dependence of Ephesians on Colossians, which seem to be unworthy of such an original thinker as Paul.1172 But this resemblance, which is more striking in the practical than in the doctrinal part, is not the resemblance between an author and an imitator, but of two compositions of the same author, written about the same time on two closely connected topics; and it is accompanied by an equally marked variety in thought and language. 2. The absence of personal and local references in Ephesians. This is, as already remarked, sufficiently explained by the encyclical character of that Epistle. 3. A number of peculiar words not found elsewhere in the Pauline Epistles.1173 But they are admirably adapted to the new ideas, and must be expected from a mind so rich as Paul’s. Every Epistle contains some hapaxlegomena. The only thing which is somewhat startling is that an apostle should speak of "holy apostles and prophets" (Eph. 3:5), but the term "holy" (a{gioi) is applied in the New Testament to all Christians, as being consecrated to God (aJgiasmevnoi, John 17:17), and not in the later ecclesiastical sense of a spiritual nobility. It implies no contradiction to Eph. 3:8, where the author calls himself "the least of all saints" (comp. 1 Cor. 15:9, "I am the least of the apostles").

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Eusebius was a witness of this persecution in Caesura, Tyre, and Egypt, and saw, with his own eyes, as he tells us, the houses of prayer razed to the ground, the Holy Scriptures committed to the flames on the market places, the pastors hunted, tortured, and torn to pieces in the amphitheatre. Even the wild beasts, he says, not without rhetorical exaggeration, at last refused to attack the Christians, as if they had assumed the part of men in place of the heathen Romans; the bloody swords became dull and shattered; the executioners grew weary, and had to relieve each other; but the Christians sang hymns of praise and thanksgiving in honor of Almighty God, even to their latest breath. He describes the heroic sufferings and death of several martyrs, including his friend, "the holy and blessed Pamphilus," who after two years of imprisonment won the crown of life (309), with eleven others—a typical company that seemed to him to be "a perfect representation of the church." Eusebius himself was imprisoned, but released. The charge of having escaped martyrdom by offering sacrifice is without foundation.51 In this, as in former persecutions, the number of apostates who preferred the earthly life to the heavenly, was very great. To these was now added also the new class of the traditores, who delivered the holy Scriptures to the heathen authorities, to be burned. But as the persecution raged, the zeal and fidelity of the Christians increased, and martyrdom spread as by contagion. Even boys and girls showed amazing firmness. In many the heroism of faith degenerated to a fanatical courting of death; confessors were almost worshipped, while yet alive; and the hatred towards apostates distracted many congregations, and produced the Meletian and Donatist schisms. The number of martyrs cannot be estimated with any degree of certainty. The seven episcopal and the ninety-two Palestinian martyrs of Eusebius are only a select list bearing a similar relation to the whole number of victims as the military lists its of distinguished fallen officers to the large mass of common soldiers, and form therefore no fair basis for the calculation of Gibbon, who would reduce the whole number to less than two thousand. During the eight years52 of this persecution the number of victims, without including the many confessors who were barbarously mutilated and condemned to a lingering death in the prisons and mines, must have been much larger. But there is no truth in the tradition (which figures in older church histories) that the tyrants erected trophies in Spain and elsewhere with such inscriptions as announce the suppression of the Christian sect.53

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  These are Continental judgments. English divines are equally strong in praise of this Epistle. Coleridge calls it "the sublimest composition of man;" Alford: "the greatest and most heavenly work of one whose very imagination is peopled with things in the heavens;" Farrar: "the Epistle of the Ascension, the most sublime, the most profound, and the most advanced and final utterance of that mystery of the gospel which it was given to St. Paul for the first time to proclaim in all its fulness to the Gentile world." Theme: The church of Christ, the family of God, the fulness of Christ.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  A few weeks before his fifth and last journey to Jerusalem, Paul sent, as a forerunner of his intended personal visit, a letter to the Christians in the capital of the world, which was intended by Providence to become the Jerusalem of Christendom. Foreseeing its future importance, the apostle chose for his theme: The gospel the power of God unto salvation to every believer, the Jew first, and also the Gentile (Rom. 1:16, 17). Writing to the philosophical Greeks, he contrasts the wisdom of God with the wisdom of man. To the world-ruling Romans he represents Christianity as the power of God which by spiritual weapons will conquer even conquering Rome. Such a bold idea must have struck a Roman statesman as the wild dream of a visionary or madman, but it was fulfilled in the ultimate conversion of the empire after three centuries of persecution, and is still in the process of ever-growing fulfilment. In the exposition of his theme the apostle shows: (1) that all men are in need of salvation, being under the power of sin and exposed to the judgment of the righteous God, the Gentiles not only (1:18–32), but also the Jews, who are still more guilty, having sinned against the written law and extraordinary privileges (2:1–3:20); (2) that salvation is accomplished by Jesus Christ, his atoning death and triumphant resurrection, freely offered to all on the sole condition of faith, and applied in the successive acts of justification, sanctification, and glorification (3:21–8:17); (3) that salvation was offered first to the Jews, and, being rejected by them in unbelief, passed on to the Gentiles, but will return again to the Jews after the fulness of the Gentiles shall have come in (Rom. 9–11); (4) that we should show our gratitude for so great a salvation by surrendering ourselves to the service of God, which is true freedom (Rom. 12–16). The salutations in Rom. 16, the remarkable variations of the manuscripts in 15:33; 16:20, 24, 27, and the omission of the words "in Rome," 1:7, 15, in Codex G, are best explained by the conjecture that copies of the letter were also sent to Ephesus (where Aquila and Priscilla were at that time, 1 Cor. 16:19, and again, some years afterwards, 2 Tim. 4:19), and perhaps to other churches with appropriate conclusions, all of which are preserved in the present form.1142

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Nicolas I. is the greatest pope, we may say the only great pope between Gregory I. and Gregory VII. He stands between them as one of three peaks of a lofty mountain, separated from the lower peak by a plane, and from the higher peak by a deep valley. He appeared to his younger contemporaries as a "new Elijah," who ruled the world like a sovereign of divine appointment, terrible to the evil-doer whether prince or priest, yet mild to the good and obedient. He was elected less by the influence of the clergy than of the emperor Louis II., and consecrated in his presence; he lived with him on terms of friendship, and was treated in turn with great deference to his papal dignity. He anticipated Hildebrand in the lofty conception of his office; and his energy and boldness of character corresponded with it. The pope was in his view the divinely appointed superintendent of the whole church for the maintenance of order, discipline and righteousness, and the punishment of wrong and vice, with the aid of the bishops as his executive organs. He assumed an imperious tone towards the Carolingians. He regarded the imperial crown a grant of the vicar of St. Peter for the protection of Christians against infidels. The empire descended to Louis by hereditary right, but was confirmed by the authority of the apostolic see. The pontificate of Nicolas was marked by three important events: the controversy with Photius, the prohibition of the divorce of King Lothair, and the humiliation of archbishop Hincmar. In the first he failed, in the second and third he achieved a moral triumph. Nicolas and Photius. Ignatius, patriarch of Constantinople, of imperial descent and of austere ascetic virtue, was unjustly deposed and banished by the emperor Michael III. for rebuking the immorality of Caesar Bardas, but he refused to resign. Photius, the greatest scholar of his age, at home in almost every branch of knowledge and letters, was elected his successor, though merely a layman, and in six days passed through the inferior orders to the patriarchal dignity (858). The two parties engaged in an unrelenting warfare, and excommunicated each other. Photius was the first to appeal to the Roman pontiff. Nicolas, instead of acting as mediator, assumed the air of judge, and sent delegates to Constantinople to investigate the case on the spot. They were imprisoned and bribed to declare for Photius; but the pope annulled their action at a synod in Rome, and decided in favor of Ignatius (863). Photius in turn pronounced sentence of condemnation on the pope and, in his Encyclical Letter, gave classical expression to the objections of the Greek church against the Latin (867). The controversy resulted in the permanent alienation of the two churches. It was the last instance of an official interference of a pope in the affairs of the Eastern church. Nicolas and Lothair.

• From The Work of Theology (2015)

  The challenge before us, a challenge Alex has written his book to meet, is to get us over our love affair with stories. Alex recognizes, however, that he is in a difficult position because he must tell a story about the triumph of science to defeat the necessity of telling stories about our world.10 I call attention to Alex Rosenberg’s argument not only because I admire his candor but, more important, because I think he gets the fundamental challenge right, that is, whether the world as we know it can be narrated. What we believe as Christians, I think, is quite basic and even simple. But because it is so basic we can lose any sense of the extraordinary nature of Christian beliefs and practices — beliefs so basic, for example, that we assume we can tell a story about ourselves and the world in which we find ourselves. In this book I will revisit some of what I have thought in the past in an attempt to recover at least for myself, and hopefully for anyone kind enough to read what I have written, a sense of the oddness of what we believe as Christians. How The Work of Theology Works The Work of Theology is an unusual book for me. It is not a collection of random essays, but neither is it a book. At least it is not a book in which chapters are conceived to follow from one another in such a way that you can only understand the next chapter because you have just read the previous chapter. I do think, however, if you read the chapters in the order they now stand you may well find the book has an organization to it. The first four chapters, for example, tend to be more theologically and methodologically oriented than the later chapters. But that too is a generalization that is not quite right. The first chapter sets the theme for the rest of the book, that is, how theology conceived as an exercise in practical reason informs all the chapters that follow. Chapter Seven, “How to Write a Theological Sentence,” may seem to be less theological than some of the other chapters, but I hope readers will find my presentation of Jenson’s great sentence will make anyone think twice about that judgment. That chapter has an “Appendix” I wrote for an event at Cardoza Law School celebrating the life and work of Stanley Fish. I thought it a pretty good piece, but I could not get anyone to publish it. So I decided to publish it on my own. I hope you like it. I certainly think it is a nice accompaniment to “How to Write a Theological Sentence.” The second chapter, “How the Holy Spirit Works,” is perhaps more recognizable as “theology,” but I hope the reader will find these two chapters interrelated in quite interesting ways.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Augustine, the man with upturned eye, with pen in the left hand, and a burning heart in the right (as he is usually represented), is a philosophical and theological genius of the first order, towering like a pyramid above his age, and looking down commandingly upon succeeding centuries. He had a mind uncommonly fertile and deep, bold and soaring; and with it, what is better, a heart full of Christian love and humility. He stands of right by the side of the greatest philosophers of antiquity and of modern times. We meet him alike on the broad highways and the narrow footpaths, on the giddy Alpine heights and in the awful depths of speculation, wherever philosophical thinkers before him or after him have trod. As a theologian he is facile princeps, at least surpassed by no church father, scholastic, or reformer. With royal munificence he scattered ideas in passing, which have set in mighty motion other lands and later times. He combined the creative power of Tertullian with the churchly spirit of Cyprian, the speculative intellect of the Greek church with the practical tact of the Latin. He was a Christian philosopher and a philosophical theologian to the full. It was his need and his delight to wrestle again and again with the hardest problems of thought, and to comprehend to the utmost the divinely revealed matter of the faith.2160 He always asserted, indeed, the primacy of faith, according to his maxim: Fides praecedit intellectum; appealing, with theologians before him, to the well-known passage of Isaiah vii. 9 (in the LXX.): "Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis." But to him faith itself was an acting of reason, and from faith to knowledge, therefore, there was a necessary transition.2161 He constantly looked below the surface to the hidden motives of actions and to the universal laws of diverse events. The metaphysician and the Christian believer coalesced in him. His meditatio passes with the utmost ease into oratio, and his oratio into meditatio. With profundity he combined an equal clearness and sharpness of thought. He was an extremely skilful and a successful dialectician, inexhaustible in arguments and in answers to the objections of his adversaries. He has enriched Latin literature with a greater store of beautiful, original, and pregnant proverbial sayings, than any classic author, or any other teacher of the church.2162 He had a creative and decisive hand in almost every dogma of the church, completing some, and advancing others. The centre of his system is the free redeeming grace of God in Christ, operating through the actual, historical church. He is evangelical or Pauline in his doctrine of sin and grace, but catholic (that is, old-catholic, not Roman Catholic) in his doctrine of the church. The Pauline element comes forward mainly in the Pelagian controversy, the catholic-churchly in the Donatist; but each is modified by the other.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Nine of the original Twelve, including Matthias, who was chosen in the place of Judas, labored no doubt faithfully and effectively, in preaching the gospel throughout the Roman empire and to the borders of the barbarians, but in subordinate positions, and their labors are known to us only from vague and uncertain traditions.235 The labors of James and Peter we can follow in the Acts to the Council of Jerusalem, A.D. 50, and a little beyond; those of Paul to his first imprisonment in Rome, A.D. 61–63; John lived to the close of the first century. As to their last labors we have no authentic information in the New Testament, but the unanimous testimony of antiquity that Peter and Paul suffered martyrdom in Rome during or after the Neronian persecution, and that John died a natural death at Ephesus. The Acts breaks off abruptly with Paul still living and working, a prisoner in Rome, "preaching the kingdom of God and teaching the things concerning the Lord Jesus Christ, with all boldness, none forbidding him." A significant conclusion. It would be difficult to find three men equally great and good, equally endowed with genius sanctified by grace, bound together by deep and strong love to the common Master, and laboring for the same cause, yet so different in temper and constitution, as Peter, Paul, and John. Peter stands out in history as the main pillar of the primitive church, as the Rock-apostle, as the chief of the twelve foundation-stones of the new Jerusalem; John as the bosom-friend of the Saviour, as the son of thunder, as the soaring eagle, as the apostle of love; Paul as the champion of Christian freedom and progress, as the greatest missionary, with "the care of all the churches" upon his heart, as the expounder of the Christian system of doctrine, as the father of Christian theology. Peter was a man of action, always in haste and ready to take the lead; the first to confess Christ, and the first to preach Christ on the day of Pentecost; Paul a man equally potent in word and deed; John a man of mystic contemplation. Peter was unlearned and altogether practical; Paul a scholar and thinker as well as a worker; John a theosophist and seer. Peter was sanguine, ardent, impulsive, hopeful, kind-hearted, given to sudden changes, "consistently inconsistent" (to use an Aristotelian phrase); Paul was choleric, energetic, bold, noble, independent, uncompromising; John some what melancholic, introverted, reserved, burning within of love to Christ and hatred of Antichrist. Peter’s Epistles are full of sweet grace and comfort, the result of deep humiliation and rich experience; those of Paul abound in severe thought and logical argument, but rising at times to the heights of celestial eloquence, as in the seraphic description of love and the triumphant paean of the eighth chapter of the Romans; John’s writings are simple, serene, profound, intuitive, sublime, inexhaustible.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  He taught the purest doctrine, as a direct revelation of his heavenly Father, from his own intuition and experience, and with a power and authority which commanded unconditional trust and obedience. He rose above the prejudices of party and sect, above the superstitions of his age and nation. He addressed the naked heart of man and touched the quick of the conscience. He announced the founding of a spiritual kingdom which should grow from the smallest seed to a mighty tree, and, working like leaven from within, should gradually pervade all nations and countries. This colossal idea, had never entered the imagination of men, the like of which he held fast even in the darkest hour of humiliation, before the tribunal of the Jewish high-priest and the Roman governor, and when suspended as a malefactor on the cross; and the truth of this idea is illustrated by every page of church history and in every mission station on earth. The miracles or signs which accompanied his teaching are supernatural, but not unnatural, exhibitions of his power over man and nature; no violations of law, but manifestations of a higher law, the superiority of mind over matter, the superiority of spirit over mind, the superiority of divine grace over human nature. They are all of the highest moral and of a profoundly symbolical significance, prompted by pure benevolence, and intended for the good of men; in striking contrast with deceptive juggler works and the useless and absurd miracles of apocryphal fiction. They were performed without any ostentation, with such simplicity and ease as to be called simply his "works." They were the practical proof of his doctrine and the natural reflex of his wonderful person. The absence of wonderful works in such a wonderful man would be the greatest wonder. His doctrine and miracles were sealed by the purest and holiest life in private and public. He could challenge his bitterest opponents with the question: "Which of you convinceth me of sin?" well knowing that they could not point to a single spot.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  He began his public ministry in the thirtieth year of his age, after the Messianic inauguration by the baptism of John, and after the Messianic probation in the wilderness—the counterpart of the temptation of the first Adam in Paradise. That ministry lasted only three years—and yet in these three years is condensed the deepest meaning of the history of religion. No great life ever passed so swiftly, so quietly, so humbly, so far removed from the noise and commotion of the world; and no great life after its close excited such universal and lasting interest. He was aware of this contrast: he predicted his deepest humiliation even to the death on the cross, and the subsequent irresistible attraction of this cross, which may be witnessed from day to day wherever his name is known. He who could say, "If I be lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men unto myself,"100 knew more of the course of history and of the human heart than all the sages and legislators before and after him. He chose twelve apostles for the Jews and seventy disciples for the Gentiles, not from among the scholars and leaders, but from among the illiterate fishermen of Galilee. He had no home, no earthly possessions, no friends among the mighty and the rich. A few pious women from time to time filled his purse; and this purse was in the bands of a thief and a traitor. He associated with publicans and sinners, to raise them up to a higher and nobler life, and began his reformation among them lower classes, which were despised and neglected by the proud: hierarchy of the day. He never courted the favor of the great, but incurred their hatred and persecution. He never flattered, the prejudices of the age, but rebuked sin and vice among the high and the low, aiming his severest words at the blind leaders of the blind, the self-righteous hypocrites who sat on Moses’ seat. He never encouraged the carnal Messianic hopes of the people, but withdrew when they wished to make him a king, and declared before the representative of the Roman empire that his kingdom was not of this world. He announced to his disciples his own martyrdom, and promised to them in this life only the same baptism of blood. He went about in Palestine, often weary of travel, but never weary of his work of love, doing good to the souls and bodies of men, speaking words of spirit and life, and working miracles of power and mercy.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The idea of a common humanity, which underlies all the distinctions of race, society and education, began to dawn in the heathen mind, and found expression in the famous line of Terentius, which was received with applause in the theatre: "Homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto." This spirit of humanity breathes in Cicero and Virgil. Hence the veneration paid to the poet of the Aeneid by the fathers and throughout the middle ages. Augustine calls him the noblest of poets, and Dante, "the glory and light of other poets," and "his master," who guided him through the regions of hell and purgatory to the very gates of Paradise. It was believed that in his fourth Eclogue he had prophesied the advent of Christ. This interpretation is erroneous; but "there is in Virgil," says an accomplished scholar,84 "a vein of thought and sentiment more devout, more humane, more akin to the Christian than is to be found in any other ancient poet, whether Greek or Roman. He was a spirit prepared and waiting, though he knew it not, for some better thing to be revealed." The civil laws and institutions, also, and the great administrative wisdom of Rome did much for the outward organization of the Christian church. As the Greek church rose on the basis of the Grecian nationality, so the Latin church rose on that of ancient Rome, and reproduced in higher forms both its virtues and its defects. Roman Catholicism is pagan Rome baptized, a Christian reproduction of the universal empire seated of old in the city of the seven hills. § 13. Judaism and Heathenism in Contact. The Roman empire, though directly establishing no more than an outward political union, still promoted indirectly a mutual intellectual and moral approach of the hostile religious of the Jews and Gentiles, who were to be reconciled in one divine brotherhood by the supernatural power of the cross of Christ.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Having conquered the world by the sword, they organized it by law, before whose majesty every people had to bow, and beautified it by the arts of peace. Philosophy, eloquence, history, and poetry enjoyed a golden age under the setting sun of the republic and the rising sun of the empire, and extended their civilizing influence to the borders of barbarianism. Although not creative in letters and fine arts, the Roman authors were successful imitators of Greek philosophers, orators, historians, and poets. Rome was converted by Augustus from a city of brick huts into a city of marble palaces.79 The finest paintings and sculptures were imported from Greece, triumphal arches and columns were erected on public places, and the treasures of all parts of the world were made tributary to, the pride, beauty, and luxury of the capital. The provinces caught the spirit of improvement, populous cities sprung up, and the magnificent temple of Jerusalem was rebuilt by the ambitious extravagance of Herod. The rights of persons and property were well protected. The conquered nations, though often and justly complaining of the rapacity of provincial governors, yet, on the whole, enjoyed greater security against domestic feuds and foreign invasion, a larger share of social comfort, and rose to a higher degree of secular civilization. The ends of the empire were brought into military, commercial, and literary communication by carefully constructed roads, the traces of which still exist in Syria, on the Alps, on the banks of the Rhine. The facilities and security of travel were greater in the reign of the Caesars than in any subsequent period before the nineteenth century. Five main lines went out from Rome to the extremities of the empire, and were connected at seaports with maritime routes. "We may travel," says a Roman writer, "at all hours, and sail from east to west." Merchants brought diamonds from the East, ambers from the shores of the Baltic, precious metals from Spain, wild animals from Africa, works of art from Greece, and every article of luxury, to the market on the banks of the Tiber, as they now do to the banks of the Thames. The Apocalyptic seer, in his prophetic picture of the downfall of the imperial mistress of the world, gives prominence to her vast commerce: "And the merchants of the earth," he says, "weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more: merchandise of gold, and silver, and precious stone, and pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet; and all thine wood, and every vessel of ivory, and every vessel made of most precious wood, and of brass, and iron, and marble; and cinnamon, and spice, and incense, and ointment, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and cattle, and sheep; and merchandise of horses and chariots and slaves; and souls of men. And the fruits that thy soul desired are departed from thee, and all things which were dainty and sumptuous are perished from thee, and men shall find them no more at all."80

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Canon James C. Robertson of Canterbury (Prof. of Church History in King’s College, d. 1882) brings his History of the Christian Church from the Apostolic Age down to the Reformation (A.D. 64–1517). The work was first published in four octavo volumes (1854 sqq.) and then in eight duodecimo volumes (Lond. 1874), and is the best, as it is the latest, general church history written by an Episcopalian. It deserves praise for its candor, moderation, and careful indication of authorities. From Charles Hardwick (Archdeacon of Ely, d. 1859) we have a useful manual of the Church History of the Middle Age (1853, 3d ed. by Prof. W. Stubbs, 1872), and another on the Reformation (1856, 3d ed. by W. Stubbs, London, 1873). His History of the Anglican Articles of Religion (1859) is a valuable contribution to English church history. Dr. Trench, Archbishop of Dublin, has published his Lectures on Mediaeval Church History (Lond. 1877), delivered before the girls of Queen’s College, London. They are conceived in a spirit of devout churchly piety and interspersed with judicious reflections. Philip Smith’s History of the Christian Church during the First Ten Centuries (1879), and during the Middle Ages (1885), in 2 vols., is a skilful and useful manual for students.39 The most popular and successful modern church historians in the English or any other language are Dean Milman of St. Paul’s, Dean Stanley of Westminster Abbey, and Archdeacon Farrar of Westminster. They belong to the broad church school of the Church of England, are familiar with Continental learning, and adorn their chosen themes with all the charms of elegant, eloquent, and picturesque diction. Henry Hart Milman (d. 1868) describes, with the stately march of Gibbon and as a counterpart of his decline and fall of Paganism, the rise and progress of Ancient and Latin Christianity, with special reference to its bearing on the progress of civilization.40 Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (d. 1881) unrolls a picture gallery of great men and events in the Jewish theocracy, from Abraham to the Christian era, and in the Greek church, from Constantine the Great to Peter the Great.41 Frederic W. Farrar (b. 1831) illuminates with classical and rabbinical learning, and with exuberant rhetoric the Life of Christ, and of the great Apostle of the Gentiles, and the Early Days of Christianity.42 (d) American works. American literature is still in its early youth, but rapidly growing in every department of knowledge. Prescott, Washington Irving, Motley, and Bancroft have cultivated interesting portions of the history of Spain, Holland, and the United States, and have taken rank among the classical historians in the English language. In ecclesiastical history the Americans have naturally so far been mostly in the attitude of learners and translators, but with every prospect of becoming producers. They have, as already noticed, furnished the best translations of Mosheim, Neander, and Gieseler.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Ernest Renan, the celebrated Orientalist and member of the French Academy, prepared from the opposite standpoint of sceptical criticism, and mixing history with romance, but in brilliant, and fascinating style, the Life of Christ, and the history of the Beginnings of Christianity to the middle of the second century.36 (c) English works. English literature is rich in works on Christian antiquity, English church history, and other special departments, but poor in general histories of Christianity. The first place among English historians, perhaps, is due to Edward Gibbon (d. 1794). In his monumental History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (finished after twenty years’ labor, at Lausanne, June 27,1787), he notices throughout the chief events in ecclesiastical history from the introduction of the Christian religion to the times of the crusades and the capture of Constantinople (1453), with an accurate knowledge of the chief sources and the consummate skill of a master in the art of composition, with occasional admiration for heroic characters like Athanasius and Chrysostom, but with a keener eye to the failings of Christians and the imperfections of the visible church, and unfortunately without sympathy and understanding of the spirit of Christianity which runs like a golden thread even through the darkest centuries. He conceived the idea of his magnificent work in papal Rome, among the ruins of the Capitol, and in tracing the gradual decline and fall of imperial Rome, which he calls "the greatest, perhaps, and most awful scene in the history of mankind," he has involuntarily become a witness to the gradual growth and triumph of the religion of the cross, of which no historian of the future will ever record a history of decline and fall, though some "lonely traveller from New Zealand," taking his stand on "a broken arch" of the bridge of St. Angelo, may sketch the ruins of St. Peter’s.37 Joseph Milner (Vicar of Hull, d. 1797) wrote a History of the Church of Christ for popular edification, selecting those portions which best suited his standard of evangelical orthodoxy and piety. "Nothing," he says in the preface, "but what appears to me to belong to Christ’s kingdom shall be admitted; genuine piety is the only thing I intend to celebrate. He may be called the English Arnold, less learned, but free from polemics and far more readable and useful than the German pietist. His work was corrected and continued by his brother, Isaac Milner (d. 1820), by Thomas Grantham and Dr. Stebbing.38 Dr. Waddington (Dean of Durham) prepared three volumes on the history of the Church before the Reformation (1835) and three volumes on the Continental Reformation (1841). Evangelical.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Protestant Germany is richer than any other country in, manuals and compends of church history for the use of students. We mention Engelhardt (1834), Niedner (Geschichte der christl. Kirche, 1846, and Lehrbuch, 1866), Hase (11th ed. 1886), Guericke (9th ed. 1866, 3 vols.), Lindner (1848–’54), Jacobi (1850, unfinished), Fricke (1850), Kurtz (Lehrbuch, 10th ed. 1887, in 2 vols., the larger Handbuch, unfinished), Hasse (edited by Köhler, 1864, in 3 small vols.), Köllner (1864), Ebrard (1866) 2 vols.), Rothe (lectures edited by Weingarten, 1875, 2 vols.), Herzog (1876–’82, 3 vols.), H. Schmid (1881, 2 vols.). Niedner’s Lehrbuch (1866) stands first for independent and thorough scholarship, but is heavy. Hase’s Compend is unsurpassed for condensation, wit, point, and artistic taste, as a miniature picture.32 Herzog’s Abriss keeps the medium between voluminous fulness and enigmatic brevity, and is written in a candid Christian spirit. Kurtz is clear, concise, and evangelical.33 A new manual was begun by Möller, 1889. The best works on doctrine history (Dogmengeschichte) are by Münscher, Geiseler, Neander, Baur, Hagenbach, Thomasius, H. Schmid, Nitzsch, and Harnack (1887). It is impossible to do justice here to the immense service which Protestant Germany has done to special departments of church history. Most of the fathers, popes, schoolmen and reformers, and the principal doctrines of Christianity have been made the subject of minute and exhaustive historical treatment. We have already mentioned the monographs of Neander and Baur, and fully equal to them are such masterly and enduring works as Rothe’s Beginnings of the Christian Church, Ullmann’s Reformers before the Reformation, Hasse’s Anselm of Canterbury, and Dorner’s History of Christology. (b) French works. Dr. Etienne L. Chastel (Professor of Church History in the National Church at Geneva, d. 1886) wrote a complete Histoire du Christianisme (Paris, 1881–’85, 5 vols.). Dr. Merle D’aubigné (Professor of Church History in the independent Reformed Seminary at Geneva, d. 1872) reproduced in elegant and eloquent French an extensive history both of the Lutheran and Calvinistic Reformation, with an evangelical enthusiasm and a dramatic vivacity which secured it an extraordinary circulation in England and America (far greater, than on the Continent), and made it the most popular work on that important period. Its value as a history is somewhat diminished by polemical bias and the occasional want of accuracy. Dr. Merle conceived the idea of the work during the celebration of the third centenary of the German Reformation in 1817, in the Wartburg at Eisenach, where Luther translated, the New Testament and threw his inkstand at the devil. He labored on it till the year of his death.34 Dr. Edmund De Pressensé (pastor of a free church in Paris, member of the National Assembly, then senator of France), and able scholar, with evangelical Protestant convictions similar to those of Dr. Merle, wrote a Life of Christ against Renan, and a History of Ancient Christianity, both of which are translated into English.35

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Ferdinand Christian Baur (Prof. of Church History in Tübingen, d. 1860) must be named alongside with Neander and Gieseler in the front rank of German church historians. He was equal to both in independent and thorough scholarship, superior in constructive criticism and philosophical generalization, but inferior in well-balanced judgment and solid merit. He over-estimated theories and tendencies, and undervalued persons and facts. He was an indefatigable investigator and bold innovator. He completely revolutionized the history of apostolic and post-apostolic Christianity, and resolved its rich spiritual life of faith and love into a purely speculative process of conflicting tendencies, which started from an antagonism of Petrinism and Paulinism, and were ultimately reconciled in the compromise of ancient Catholicism. He fully brought to light, by a keen critical analysis, the profound intellectual fermentation of the primitive church, but eliminated from it the supernatural and miraculous element; yet as an honest and serious sceptic he had to confess at last a psychological miracle in the conversion of St. Paul, and to bow before the greater miracle of the resurrection of Christ, without which the former is an inexplicable enigma. His critical researches and speculations gave a powerful stimulus to a reconsideration and modification of the traditional views on early Christianity. We have from his fertile pen a general History of the Christian Church, in five volumes (1853–1863), three of which were, published after his death and lack the originality and careful finish of the first and second, which cover the first six centuries; Lectures on Christian Doctrine History (Dogmengeschichte), published by his son (1865–’67, in 3 volumes), and a brief Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, edited by himself (1847, 2d ed. 1858). Even more valuable are his monographs: on St. Paul, for whom he had a profound veneration, although he recognized only four of his Epistles as genuine (1845, 2d ed. by E. Zeller, 1867, 2 vols., translated into English, 1875); on Gnosticism, with which he had a strong spiritual affinity (Die christliche Gnosis oder die christliche Religionsphilosophie, 1835); the history of the Doctrine of the Atonement (1838, 1 vol.), and of the Trinity and Incarnation (1841–’43, in 3 vols.), and his masterly vindication of Protestantism against Möhler’s Symbolik (2d ed. 1836).29 Karl Rudolph Hagenbach (Professor of Church History at Basel, d. 1874) wrote, in the mild and impartial spirit of Neander, with poetic taste and good judgment, and in pleasing popular style, a general History of the Christian Church in seven volumes (4th ed. 1868–’72),30 and a History of Christian Doctrines, in two volumes (1841, 4th ed. 1857).31

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  From J. C. L. Gieseler (Professor of Church History in Göttingen, d. 1854), a profoundly learned, acute, calm, impartial, conscientious, but cold and dry scholar, we have a Textbook of Church History from the birth of Christ to 1854.28 He takes Tillemont’s method of giving the history in the very words of the sources; only he does not form the text from them, but throws them into notes. The chief excellence of this invaluable and indispensable work is in its very carefully selected and critically elucidated extracts from the original authorities down to the year 1648 (as far as he edited the work himself). The skeleton-like text presents, indeed, the leading facts clearly and concisely, but does not reach the inward life and spiritual marrow of the church of Christ. The theological views of Gieseler hardly rise above the jejune rationalism of Wegscheider, to whom he dedicated a portion of his history; and with all his attempt at impartiality he cannot altogether conceal the negative effect of a rationalistic conception of Christianity, which acts like a chill upon the narrative of its history, and substitutes a skeleton of dry bones for a living organism. Neander and Gieseler matured their works in respectful and friendly rivalry, during the same period of thirty years of slow, but solid and steady growth. The former is perfectly subjective, and reproduces the original sources in a continuous warm and sympathetic composition, which reflects at the same time the author’s own mind and heart; the latter is purely objective, and speaks with the indifference of an outside spectator, through the ipsissima verba of the same sources, arranged as notes, and strung together simply by a slender thread of narrative. The one gives the history ready-made, and full of life and instruction; the other furnishes the material and leaves the reader to animate and improve it for himself. With the one, the text is everything; with the other, the notes. But both admirably complete each other, and exhibit together the ripest fruit of German scholarship in general church history in the first half of the nineteenth century.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  August Neander. (Professor of Church History in Berlin, d. 1850), the "father of modern church history," a child in spirit, a giant in learning, and a saint in piety, led back the study of history from the dry heath of rationalism to the fresh fountain of divine life in Christ, and made it a grand source of edification as well as instruction for readers of every creed. His General History of the Christian Religion and Church begins after the apostolic age (which he treated in a separate work), and comes down to the Council of Basle in 1430, the continuation being interrupted by his death.26 It is distinguished for thorough and conscientious use of the sources, critical research, ingenious combination, tender love of truth and justice, evangelical catholicity, hearty piety, and by masterly analysis of the doctrinal systems and the subjective Christian life of men of God in past ages. The edifying character is not introduced from without, but naturally grows out of his conception of church history, viewed as a continuous revelation of Christ’s presence and power in humanity, and as an illustration of the parable of the leaven which gradually pervades and transforms the whole lump. The political and artistic sections, and the outward machinery of history, were not congenial to the humble, guileless simplicity of Neander. His style is monotonous, involved, and diffuse, but unpretending, natural, and warmed by a genial glow of sympathy and enthusiasm. It illustrates his motto: Pectus est quod theologum facit. Torrey’s excellent translation (Rose translated only the first three centuries), published in Boston, Edinburgh, and London, in multiplied editions, has given Neander’s immortal work even a much larger circulation in England and America than it has in Germany itself. Besides this general history, Neander’s indefatigable industry produced also special works on the Life of Christ (1837, 4th ed. 1845), the Apostolic Age (1832, 4th ed. 1842, translated by J. E. Ryland, Edinburgh, 1842, and again by E. G. Robinson, N. York, 1865), Memorials of Christian Life (1823, 3d ed. 1845, 3 vols.), the Gnostic Heresies (1818), and biographies of representative characters, as Julian the Apostate (1812), St. Bernard (1813, 2d ed. 1848), St. Chrysostom (1822, 3d ed. 1848), and Tertullian (1825, 2d ed. 1849). His History a Christian Doctrines was published after his death by Jacobi (1855), and translated by J. E. Ryland (Lond., 1858).27

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  A new path was broken by Gottfried Arnold (d. 1714), in his, Impartial History of the Church and Heretics to A.D. 1688.23 He is the historian of the pietistic and mystic school. He made subjective piety the test of the true faith, and the persecuted sects the main channel of true Christianity; while the reigning church from Constantine down, and indeed not the Catholic church only, but the orthodox Lutheran with it, he represented as a progressive apostasy, a Babylon full of corruption and abomination. In this way he boldly and effectually broke down the walls of ecclesiastical exclusiveness and bigotry; but at the same time, without intending or suspecting it, he opened the way to a rationalistic and sceptical treatment of history. While, in his zeal for impartiality and personal piety, he endeavored to do justice to all possible heretics and sectaries, he did great injustice to the supporters of orthodoxy and ecclesiastical order. Arnold was also the first to use the German language instead of the Latin in learned history; but his style is tasteless and insipid. J. L. von Mosheim (Chancellor of the University at Göttingen, d. 1755), a moderate and impartial Lutheran, is the father of church historiography as an art, unless we prefer to concede this merit to Bossuet. In skilful construction, clear, though mechanical and monotonous arrangement, critical sagacity, pragmatic combination, freedom from passion, almost bordering on cool indifferentism, and in easy elegance of Latin style, he surpasses all his predecessors. His well-known Institutiones Historiae Ecclesiasticae antiquae et recentioris (Helmstädt, 1755) follows the centurial plan of Flacius, but in simpler form, and, as translated and supplemented by Maclaine, and Murdock, is still used extensively as a text-book in England and America.24 J. M. Schröckh (d. 1808), a pupil of Mosheim, but already touched with the neological spirit which Semler (d. 1791) introduced into the historical theology of Germany, wrote with unwearied industry the largest Protestant church history after the Magdeburg Centuries. He very properly forsook the centurial plan still followed by Mosheim, and adopted the periodic. His Christian Church History comprises forty-five volumes, and reaches to the end of the eighteenth century. It is written in diffuse but clear and easy style, with reliable knowledge of sources, and in a mild and candid spirit, and is still a rich storehouse of historical matter.25 The very learned Institutiones Historiae Ecclesiasticae V. et N. Testamenti of the Dutch Reformed divine, H. Venema (d. 1787), contain the history of the Jewish and Christian Church down to the end of the sixteenth century (Lugd. Bat. 1777–’83, in seven parts). H. P. C. Henke (d. 1809) is the leading representative of the rationalistic church historiography, which ignores Christ in history. In his spirited and able Allgemeine Geschichte der christlichen Kirche, continued by Vater (Braunschweig, 1788–1820, 9 vols.), the church appears not as the temple of God on earth, but as a great infirmary and bedlam.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Protestant church historiography has thus far flourished most on German soil. A patient and painstaking industry and conscientious love of truth and justice qualify German scholars for the mining operations of research which bring forth the raw material for the manufacturer; while French and English historians know best how to utilize and popularize the material for the general reader. The following are the principal works: Matthias Flacius (d 1575), surnamed Illyricus, a zealous Lutheran, and an unsparing enemy of Papists, Calvinists, and Melancthonians, heads the list of Protestant historians with his great Eccelesiastica Historia Novi Testamenti, commonly called Centuriae Magdeburgenses (Basle, 1560–’74), covering thirteen centuries of the Christian era in as many folio volumes. He began the work in Magdeburg, in connection with ten other, scholars of like Spirit and zeal, and in the face of innumerable difficulties, for the purpose of exposing the corruptions and, errors of the papacy, and of proving the doctrines of the Lutheran Reformation orthodox by the "witnesses of the truth" in all ages. The tone is therefore controversial throughout, and quite as partial as that of the Annals of Baronius on the papal side. The style is tasteless and repulsive, but the amount of persevering labor, the immense, though ill-digested and unwieldy mass of material, and the boldness of the criticism, are imposing and astonishing. The "Centuries" broke the path of free historical study, and are the first general church history deserving of the name. They introduced also a new method. They divide the material by centuries, and each century by a uniform Procrustean scheme of not less than sixteen rubrics: "de loco et propagatione ecclesiae; de persecutione et tranquillitate ecclesiae; de doctrina; de haeresibus; de ceremoniis; de politia; de schismatibus; de conciliis; de vitis episcoporum; de haereticis; de martyribus; de miraculis et prodigiis; de rebus Judaicis; de aliis religionibus; de mutationibus politicis." This plan destroys all symmetry, and occasions wearisome diffuseness and repetition. Yet, in spite of its mechanical uniformity and stiffness, it is more scientific than the annalistic or chronicle method, and, with material improvements and considerable curtailment of rubrics, it has been followed to this day. The Swiss, J. H. Hottinger (d. 1667), in his Historia Ecclesiastica N. Testamenti (Zurich, 1655–’67, 9 vols. fol.), furnished a Reformed counterpart to the Magdeburg Centuries. It is less original and vigorous, but more sober and moderate. It comes down to the sixteenth century, to which alone five volumes are devoted. From Fred. Spanheim of Holland (d. 1649) we have a Summa Historia Ecclesiasticae (Lugd. Bat. 1689), coming down to the sixteenth century. It is based on a thorough and critical knowledge of the sources, and serves at the same time as a refutation of Baronius.