tradition preserved by Jerome' bears also the impress of the apostle's spirit. When the venerable John could no longer walk to the meetings of the church, but was borne thither by his disciples, he always uttered the same address to the church; he reminded them of that one commandment which he had received from Christ himself as comprising all the rest, and forming the distinction of the New Covenant, My children, love one another." And when asked why he always repeated the same thing, he replied, "That if this one thing were attained, it would be enough."

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Thus the aged apostle laboured to the close of the first century; and the spirit that diffused itself from the churches of Lesser Asia during the first half of the second century, testifies of his protracted ministry in those regions. The Lord made use of his instrumentality to prevent the foundation of the faith here laid by the apostle Paul from being buried under a heap of heterogeneous speculations—and to preserve the unity of the Christian faith and life from being distracted by various extravagances; that the glorious body of the Christian church might not be divided into a multitude of sects and schools, and especially that a schism might not be produced by the increasing opposition of the Judaizing and Hellenistic elements. His peculiar tendency, which served to exhibit rather the fulness and depth of a heart filled with the spirit of Christ, than the sharpness and distinctness of doctrinal ideas, was adapted, while it rejected with ardent love whatever threatened to endanger the foundation of faith in the Son of God, to conciliate subordinate differences, and to promote the formation of a universal Christian communion out of heterogeneous elements. The extent of his influence is marked by the simple practical spirit, the spirit of zealous love to the Lord, and the spirit of Christian fidelity in firmly adhering to the original fidence in the magical effects of baptism, and to set in a clear light the truth, that every one after obtaining baptism needed so much the greater watchfulness over himself-and partly to counterwork the opinion of the Rigorists on the nature of Repentance, that whoever violated the baptismal covenant by peccata mortalia, could not again receive forgiveness of sins. But at all events, this narrative, which is free from all colouring of the miraculous, gives the impression of a matter of fact lying at its basis.

1 Comment. in Ep. ad Galat. c. vi.

apostolic traditions, even though not perfectly understood, which distinguished the Christian teachers of Lesser Asia in their conflict with the Gnosticism which was then beginning to prevail.

With John the apostolic age of the church naturally closes. The doctrine of the gospel which by him had been still exhibited in its original purity was now exposed, without the support of apostolic authority, to a conflict with a host of opponents, some of whom had already made their appearance; the church was henceforth left to form itself to maturity without any visible human guidance, but under the invisible protection of the Lord and finally, after a full and clear development of opposing influences, it was destined to attain the higher and conscious unity which distinguished the spirit of the apostle John.

We wish now to contemplate more closely the development of the Christian doctrine in its original form, and to observe how the unity of the Spirit exhibited itself in the manifoldness of the natural varieties animated by that Spirit, and in the various modes of conception which proceeded from those varieties.

BOOK VI.

THE APOSTOLIC DOCTRINE.

THE doctrine of Christ was not given as a rigid dead letter, in one determinate form of human character, but it was announced as the word of spirit and of life with a living flexibility and variety, by men enlightened by the Divine Spirit, who received and appropriated it in a living manner, in accordance with their various constitutional qualities, and the difference of their course of life and education. This difference served to manifest the living unity, the riches and the depth of the Christian spirit in the manifoldness of the forms of conception, which unintentionally illustrated each other and supplied their mutual deficiencies. Christianity, indeed, was designed and adapted to appropriate and elevate the various tendencies of human character, to blend them by means of a higher unity, and, agreeably to the design of the peculiar fundamental tendencies of human nature, to operate through them for the realization of the ideal of Man, and the exhibition of the kingdom of God in the human race through all ages.

In the development of the original Christian doctrine, we can distinguish three leading tendencies, the Pauline, the Jacobean (between which the Petrine forms an intermediate link), and the Johannean.' We wish first to review the Pauline form of doctrine, since in this we find the fullest and most complete development of Christian truth, which will best serve as the basis of comparison in tracing the leading tendencies of the other apostles.

1 Dr. Nitzsch, in reference to the various forms of apostolic doctrine, admirably remarks,—" To disown them in favour of a one-sided dogmatism, is to abandon that completeness and solidity which these modes of contemplating the Christian faith impart, while they reciprocally complete one another; it is to slight that by which scripture tr th maintains its elevation above all conflicting systems."-See Die Theologische Zeitschrift, edited by Schleiermacher, De Wette, and Lücke. not. 3. part 68.

CHAPTER I.

THE PAULINE DOCTRINE.

In order to develop from its first principles the peculiar system of this apostle, we must take into consideration the peculiar qualities of his ardent and profound mind-his peculiar education, how he was formed in the Pharisaic schools to a dialectic and systematic development of his acquirementsthe peculiar manner in which he was led from the most rigorous Judaism to faith in the gospel, by a powerful inpression on his soul which formed a grand crisis in his history. We must recollect the peculiarity of his sphere of action as an apostle, in which he had to oppose an adulteration of Christianity arising from a mixture of those views which he himself had held before his conversion. In reference to the sources from which he derived his knowledge of the Christian doctrine, we must also bear in mind what he says respecting his independence and separate standing as a teacher of the gospel. There is no doubt, for he occasionally alludes to it, that he had met with a traditionary record of the sayings, actions, and precepts of Christ, and these formed the materials for the development of his Christian knowledge, (ante, p. 95); but the Spirit promised by Christ to his disciples, who was to disclose to them the whole meaning and extent of the truth announced by him, enlightened Paul in an independent manner, so as to develop the truths of which the germ was contained in those traditions, and form them into one whole with the earlier divine revelations, and with the truths implanted in the original constitution of man as a religious being. Those who blamed him for blending foreign Jewish elements with Christianity, entirely misconceived the views of that apostle. who most clearly apprehended and most fully developed the points of opposition between Judaism and Christianity. Nor does it in the least justify their censures that he made use of certain Jewish elements, which contained nothing at variance with Christianity, but rather served as the groundwork of the new dispensation. A comparison of the Pauline leading

ideas with the words of Christ as reported by Matthew and Luke, proves that the germs of the former are contained in

the latter.

That which constituted the preparative standing-point for Paul's whole Christian life, and determined his transition from Judaism to Christianity, laid also the foundation for the peculiar form in which the latter was received and intellectually apprehended by him. Here we find the natural central-point, from which we proceed in the development of his doctrine. The ideas of vóμos and dikaιoσúvn form the connexion as well as the opposition of his earlier and later standing-point. The term dikalooúvn in the Old Testament sense, designates the theocratic way of thinking and life, and also that unrestricted theocratic right of citizenship which entitled to a participation in the temporal goods of the community, and to eternal felicity. According to his former views, Paul believed that he had acquired a title to the epithet of diraus by the strict observance of the law; as, in truth, the Pharisees, to whom he belonged, placed their confidence and indulged their pride in that observance, while they guarded against the violation of the law by a variety of prohibitions. He was, as he himself asserts (Philip. iii.), blameless as far as related to this legal righteousness. And now from his Christian standing-point the epithet of dikatos,' was in his esteem the highest that could be given to a human being, and dikawoσúvn expressed complete fitness for participation in all the privileges and blessings of the theocracy, and consequently of salvation, wi. AikαLouv and on were always in his mind correlative ideas. But his conceptions of the nature of this Sukatoon had undergone a total revolution since he was convinced of the insufficiency and nullity of that which he had before distinguished by this name. That δικαιοσύνη νομική he now regarded as only an apparent righteousness, which might satisfy human requirements, but could not, however plausible, deceive a holy God, and therefore was of no avail in reference to the king

1 Paul was very far from employing the word dikaloσúvn merely to designate a subordinate moral standing-point like the later anti-Jewish Gnostics, for he always proceeded on the theocratical principles of the Old Testament. I cannot therefore admit that, in Rom. v. 7, a higher degree of morality is intended by the word ayaòs than by dikaios. The opposite is evident, from the manner in which Paul places these words together in Rom. vii. 12.