THE CLEMENTINE HOMILIES.

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naturalism. Thus it is said, that the truth implanted in us by God, contains the seeds of all Truth. It is only covered or revealed by the hand of God.* It does not follow from this, that there is no supernatural Revelation whatever, but only that the Revelation cannot be efficient without the presupposition of this susceptible medium in our own minds. By Revelation we become conscious of the hidden seed within us. An original Revelation is admitted, which was transmitted from Adam, but has not remained pure, and is alloyed with many human errors. Hence we must distinguish in the Old Testament the original Judaism, which is pure truth, from the errors that have been added to it; and a purification of religious knowledge by the renewal of the original Revelation, is requisite, and has been effected, at various times, by Moses and by Christ. The mixture of truth and falsehood in the original records of Religion, will serve to test men's capability for the reception of truth. The Clementines accordingly make Religion, as far as it contains the seeds of truth, the Judge of this external Revelation as it exists in the Sacred Writings, in order to separate from it the original Revelation. The notion of a mixture of truth and falsehood in the original records of Religion, appears in other phenomena of this age-last of all in Manicheism. MANI proceeds on the assumption, that the Original Religion as given in the teaching of Christ was not pure, but mixed with Jewish elements. Hence the Manicheans subjected the writings of the New Testament to a criticism of which Reason was to furnish the criterion. FAUSTUS of Mileve, a Manichean who lived at the end of the fourth Century, says, “There are many tares in every part of Holy Writ, and therefore a sifting is needed." From the standpoint of the Catholic Church, he thus addresses the Christian, "Thou who blindly believest everything, who banishest from Humanity Reason that gift of Nature, who scruplest to judge respecting truth and falsehood, and art as much afraid of separating the good from its opposite, as children are of ghosts."+

The Alexandrian School agrees with other Church teachers

.....

* Hom. xvii. c. 18.—ἐν γὰρ τῇ ἐν ἡμῖν ἐν Θεοῦ τεθείση σπερματικῶς πᾶσα ἔνεστιν ἡ ἀλήθεια, Θεοῦ δὲ χειρὶ σκέπεται καὶ ἀποκαλύπ Schliemann and Dressel fill up the hiatus by xapdía. Neander thinks anɛia preferable.-JACOBI.

τεται.

Aug. c. Faust lib. xviii. c. 3.

in their recognition of a supernatural Revelation, and of the two sources of religious knowledge, Holy Writ and Tradition. Yet it is evident from the ideas of the Alexandrians respecting the relation of tioris and yvãois, that they differed from other parties in their manner of extracting knowledge from these sources. Irenæus says,*" The object of knowledge in Religion is, that which is unquestionably stated in Holy Writ as well as what can be derived from Tradition, and beyond this we cannot pass;" but the Alexandrian Gnosis did not keep within these limits. Although it set out from the letter of the Bible, it was not in general content to stop there. Origen says,† "We have in Holy Writ only some elements of Gnosis; the whole of Holy Writ is no more than a very brief and slight introduction to it, and when the Gnostic has acquired an accurate knowledge of it, he must go up to Jesus himself, to receive from him the fountain of water that springeth up to life eternal," Thus the Gnostic rises above Scripture, which forms for him only the first point of connexion.

3. THE DOCTRINE OF INSPIRATION (THEOPNEUSTIA A).

During this period we find no coherent and systematic doctrine respecting Inspiration. Two elements met in the development of the idea. It started from the consideration of the Old Testament, since that was first of all received as the original record of Religion. Hence the Christian Fathers accepted it according to the Jewish mode of conceiving it, which represented the human mind as entirely passive in it. We have an example of this in the Alexandrian Jewish legend of the formation of the Septuagint Version, namely, that the seventy translators though occupying separate cells, agreed exactly in in their translations. Philo also maintains such a verbal Inspiration, in which the Writers of the Old Testament were only the passive organs of the Holy Spirit. He after expresses himself in such a manner as to set in contrast the state of sound selfconsciousness with that in which the Holy Spirit takes

* Adv. Hær. ii. 27.

+ In Joann. tom. xiii. 95.—οίμαι τῆς ὅλης γνώσεως στοιχεῖά τινα, ἐλαχίστας καὶ βραχυτάτας εἶναι εἰσαγωγὰς ὅλας γραφάς, καν πάνυ νοηθῶσιν ἀκριβῶς.—§ 6. εἰσαγωγαὶ οὖν εἰσιν αἱ γραφαί, ἀφ ̓ ὧν ἀκριβῶς νενοημένων, νῦν ὀνομαζομένων πηγῆς τοῦ ̓Ιακώβ, ἀνέλθετέον πρὸς τὸν Ἰησοῦν, ἵν ̓ οὖν ἡμῖν χαρίσηται πηγὴν τοῦ ἀλλομένου ὕδατος εἰς ζωὴν αἰώνιον.

INSPIRATION AND THE GNOSTICS.

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possession of the human soul, the iviaur siva contrasted with the θεοφορεῖσθαι when the vos is inactive, ἔκστασις is supreme, and the human spirit is only a blind organ of the Divine. His unhistorical Interpretation of the Scriptures is quite in accordance with this idea of Inspiration. This Jewish idea agrees with the legal standpoint of Judaism, in which the operation of the divine was supposed to be connected with the total suspension of action on the part of Man. It is otherwise in Christianity, according to which the disunion between the divine and the human is removed, and Man becomes a free Organ of God. When this traditionary idea was applied to the New Testament, a different element was added. For another relation was formed by the greater analogy which the Apostolic writings bore to the consciousness of Christians. Hence many a remark on the Writers of the New Testament occurred to the Teachers of the Church, which was based on another idea of Inspiration.

First of all, the Idea of Inspiration had to be developed in reference to the Old Testament, against the Gnostics. It was necessary to maintain against them the divine Origin of the Old Testament, not as if they ascribed it to a merely human source, but they imagined that the Being who spoke and acted was not the most High God, but the Demiurgos. It was, therefore, to be proved that the Old Testament proceeded from the same God as the New. But the views of the Gnostics respecting the relation of the Old Testament to the New, were not always the same, though the Church Teachers who knew not how to discriminate the various shades of thought presented in the peculiar Gnostic terminology, spoke of only one Gnostic idea. Two modifications, depending on different representations of the Demiurgos, are of special importance. Those who, like Marcion, regarded the Demiurgos as the enemy of God, a being standing in no connexion with him, admitted, of course, of no connexion between the Old and New Testaments; others who regarded him as a subordinate and limited God, but not hostile to the Supreme, as one who served for an Organ of the Ideas imparted by God, but not conscious of them till the appearance of Christ rendered his consciousness of God clear, admitted that this God inspired the Sacred Writers of the Old Testament with the Ideas which proceeded from the Supreme God, but in an imperfect form.

They recognised in the Prophets the higher Pneumatic Nature, which had not yet attained to consciousness. On this stand

point a peculiar idea of Inspiration in relation to the Old Testament was formed. A distinction was made between what inspired men said with clear consciousness, and the pneumatic meaning not yet clearly developed which lay in their words. They acted as Organs not yet conscious, in pointing to Christianity. They expressed, in the garb of the views of their age, the truth which the Holy Spirit communicated through them, and which Christianity brought into clear consciousness. Consequently, a peculiar view was formed of the connexion of the Old and New Testaments, and the germ of a correct historical Interpretation. The Gnostics here anticipatad what has been generally developed at a later period. Their opponents, who were unable to separate the true from the false, in this view, now turned on the contrary to the Alexandrian idea of Inspiration, and maintained, like Irenæus and others, that the Prophets spoke in a state of unconsciousness. This view bore some resemblance to the common heathen representation, according to which, the Divine, like one of the powers of Nature, forcibly carried men away, as in the instances of the Pythoness, the Incubations in the temple of Esculapius, and the like. Hence the Jewish-Christian Clementine homilies* repudiated this idea of Inspiration as heathenish; and they held the Prophecy of the Old Testament not to be true prophecy; because the human and the divine, in the language of the Prophets, could not be distinguished in the alternations of the ecstatic and common state. But they carried the idea of Inspiration to another extreme; among the marks of a true Prophet they reckoned an everpresent higher knowledge combined with clearness and self-consciousness-the constant indwelling of the divine Spirit and his illumination in reference both to Past and Future. It was the same higher Spirit which dwelt in Adam, Moses, and Christ, in order to bring

* Hom. iii. 13.—προφήτης γὰρ ἂν ἄπταιστος, ἀπείρῳ ψυχῆς ὀφθαλμῷ πάντα κατοπτεύων ἐπίσταται λανθάνων· εἰ δὲ παραδεξόμεθα ἡμεῖς, ὡς οἱ πολλοί, ὅτι καὶ ὁ ἀληθὴς προφήτης οὐ πάντοτε, ἀλλ' ἐνίοτε, ὅτε ἔχει τὸ πνεῦμα, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο προγινώσκει, ὁπότε δὲ οὐκ ἔχει, ἀγνοεῖἐὰν οὕτως ὑπολάβωμεν, καὶ ἑαυτοὺς ἀπατῶμεν καὶ ἄλλους ἐνεδρεύσομεν τὸ γὰρ τοιοῦτον μανικῶς ἐνθουσιώντων ἐστὶν ὑπὸ πνεύματος ἀταξίας, τῶν παρὰ βωμοῖς μεθυόντων καὶ κνίσσης ἐμφορουμένων.

MONTANIST IDEA OF INSPIRATION.

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forth the original religion.* Hence their homilies adopted a singular notion of amoxáλus. The form of vision and dream is considered as very inferior, in which God stands in a mere outward relation to the soul. The highest form was the Revelation of God without outward instruction, when a new light of divine truth dawns on man in immediate self-consciousness. Hence Peter thus expresses himself respecting the revelation made to him (mentioned in Matt. xvi. 13.) As soon as the Lord had asked, 'Whom do men say that I am?' it rose in my heart, and I said, I know not how, Thou art the Son of the living God!' But he, when he had blessed me, showed me that it was the Father who had revealed it to me; but I have since experienced that Revelation is to learn without teaching, visions, or dreams." +

66

Montanism maintained the idea of ecstatic Inspiration without any modification. This was in harmony with its general character, with the contrast between the Divine and the Human, which forms its groundwork, and according to which the human is always in a passive relation to the Omnipotence of the Divine. It is set down, therefore, as the mark of a true Prophet, that he has no power over himself, as it is said in a Montanist Oracle, "God alone is awake-Man sleeps."‡ Tertullian gives as a mark of the highest prophetical state, the excidere sensui.§ This one-sided conception of the Divine led to dangerous consequences; natural feeling mixed itself with the work of the Divine Spirit, in peculiar modes of excitement, and was taken for something divine. Here we meet with states that are allied to certain phenomena in the sphere of Natural Religion. During public worship, Montanist Virgins fell into a kind of somnambulism, and in that state administered remedies for diseases. But these extravagances rendered their views suspicious, and the controversy with the Montanists led

* Hom. iii. 20.

+ Lib. 1. xvii. 18.

* Epiph. Hær. xlviii. 4.—Εὐθὺς γὰρ ὁ Μοντανός φησιν, ἰδοὺ ἄνθρωπος ὡσεὶ λύρα, κἀγὼ ἵπταμαι ὡσεὶ πλῆκτρον· ὁ ἄνθρωπος κοιμᾶται, κἀγὼ γρηγορῶ· ἰδοὺ κύριός ἐστιν ὁ ἐκστάνων καρδίας ἀνθρώπων καὶ διδοὺς καρδίας ἀνθρώποις.

§ Contra Marcion iv. 22.-Ratione, quam defendimus in causa novæ prophetiæ, gratiæ ecstasin, id est amentiam convenire? In spiritu enim homo constitutus, præsentim cum gloriam Dei conspicit, vel cum per ipsum Deus loquitur, necesse est excidat sensu, obumbratus scilicet virtute divinâ, de quo inter nos et psychicos quæstio est.