Chapter XI: Part 11

[25] Perhaps we should rather say, "they cannot be alien to our nature." The word _personality_ is used by philosophical writers to denote that which is _peculiar_, as well as essential, to our individual self. In this strict sense the moral and spiritual affections are _impersonal_, according to the doctrine of the context, which treats them as constituting a participation in the Divine nature. The metaphysical reader will perhaps perceive here a resemblance to the theory of Victor Cousin, who maintains that the _will--the free and voluntary activity_--of the human being is the specific faculty in which alone consists his _personality_; and that the intuitive reason by which we have knowledge of the unlimited and absolute Cause, as well as of ourselves and the universe as related effects, is independent and impersonal,--a faculty not peculiar to the subject, but "from the bosom of consciousness extending to the Infinite, and reaching to the Being of beings." "Reason," observes this philosopher, "is intimately connected with personality and sensibility, but it is neither the one nor the other: and precisely because it is neither the one nor the other, because it is in us without being ourselves, does it reveal to us that which is not ourselves,--objects beside the subject itself, and which lie beyond its sphere." At the opposite pole to this doctrine, which makes the perceptions of "Reason" a part of the activity of God, lies the system of Kant and Fichte, which represents God as an ideal formation,--it may be, therefore, a _fiction_,--arising from the activity of the "Reason." This faculty is treated by these German philosophers as merely _subjective and personal_; its perceptions, even when they seem to go beyond itself, are known only as internal conditions and results of self-activity; its beliefs, though inevitable to itself, are simply relative, and have no objective validity. The faiths and affections which this system regards as purely human, are considered by the other as divine. The doctrine maintained above, though resembling that of Kant in one or two of its phrases, far more nearly approaches that of Cousin in its spirit. It is scarcely necessary to observe that, in this note, the word "Reason" is used, not as equivalent to "Understanding," but in the German sense so long rendered familiar to the English reader by the writings of Mr. Coleridge. It includes, therefore, (in its two senses of "_Speculative_" and "_Practical_,") the "Moral Perceptions" and "Primitive Faiths of the Conscience," spoken of in the text.

CREED AND HERESIES OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY.

1. Ωριγενους Φιλοσοφουμενα η κατα πασων αιρεσεων ελεγχος.
_Origenis Philosophumena sive omnium hæresium refutatio. E codice
Parisino nunc primum edidit_ Emmanuel Miller. Oxonii: e
Typographeo Academico. 1851.

2. _Hippolytus and his Age; or the Doctrine and Practice of the
Church of Rome under Commodus and Alexander Severus; and Ancient
and Modern Christianity and Divinity compared._ By CHRISTIAN
CHARLES JOSIAS BUNSEN, D.C.L. In Four Volumes. London. 1852.

When a stranger knocks at the gate of the Clarendon Printing-house, and presents his petition for aid, the University of Oxford maintains its national character for good-natured opulence,--gives its money and signs its name, without very close inquiry into the case. The documents are really so respectable that there cannot be much amiss; and a venerable institution, well known to be fond of the house, cannot be expected to go trudging through the back-lanes of history, and exposing its nostrils in the purlieus of heresy, in order to identify a literary petitioner, evidently above all common imposture. So it supplies all his wants upon the spot, dresses him handsomely, and sends him out into the world as its worthy (though eccentric) friend, the catechist of Alexandria. The introduction, being left at the Prussian Legation, falls into the hands of no stay-at-home benefactor, but of one who knows the by-ways of human life, and has an ear for the dialects of many a place. M. Bunsen--as Oxford might have remembered--is not unacquainted with Egypt; and no sooner does he raise his eyes from the credentials to the person of the stranger, than he discovers him to be no disciple of the Alexandrine Clement; recognizes the accent of the West; is reminded of the voice of Irenæus; and, finally, being even more familiar with the Tiber than the Nile, detects a Roman beneath the mask of Origen. We do not in the least grudge the friend of Niebuhr the honor of a discovery which no one could turn to more effectual account; but every English scholar must feel mortified that the _Imprimatur_ of our great Ecclesiastical University should appear on a title-page manifestly false; that the first reader should see at a glance what the learned proprietors had missed; and that their _Editio Princeps_ of a recovered monument of Church antiquity should be superseded within a year or two of its publication. They are not principals, it is true, but only secondaries to the Editor, in the commission of this error: still, a lay bibliographer might reasonably expect, in resorting for aid to so renowned and reverend a body, that his own judgment would be kept in check; and their very consent to issue the work implies _some_ critical opinion of its value, as derived from age and authorship. Whether they are called upon to adopt at once M. Bunsen's proposed title-page, and substitute the name of Hippolytus for that of Origen, we will not say; but that the present title gives the book to the wrong author, seems placed beyond the reach of doubt.

M. Emmanuel Miller, one of the curators of the National Library in Paris, was the first to make himself acquainted with the contents of this work, and to appreciate their importance. Among the manuscripts under his care was one on cotton paper of the fourteenth century, which had been brought from Mount Athos in 1842, by M. Mynoïdes Mynas, a Greek agent employed by the French government to search the neglected treasures of that celebrated spot. The superscription, "On all Heresies," was not inviting; but on turning over the leaves, some lines, unknown before, of Pindar and of another lyric poet, were found and copied; and the value of these excerpts being ascertained, M. Miller's attention was directed to the body of the treatise containing them. The treatise had already been described, in the _Moniteur_ of the 5th of January, 1844, as a Refutation of all Heresies, in ten books, but with the first three missing, as well as the conclusion of the whole; and he soon became aware, that, of the three missing books, the first already existed, and had been printed under the name of "Philosophumena," in the editions of Origen's works. Its very title is found in the manuscript at the end of the fourth book, and denotes that the portion of the work there concluded completes the sketch of philosophical systems, which the author prefixes to his account of ecclesiastical aberrations; and there are mutual references, backwards and forwards, between the printed book and the manuscript, which leave no doubt that the latter is a sequel to the former. The Editor, therefore, has very properly reprinted the "Philosophumena" as the commencement of the newly recovered work; which thus exhibits a regular plan, and consists of two parts, viz.: first, four books,--of which the second and third are lost,--expounding the Pagan philosophies, especially the Greek, from which, the author contends, the various heresies of Christendom are mere plagiarisms; then six books, containing an account, in an order prevailingly historical, of thirty or thirty-two heresies, supported by extracts from their standard writings, and wound up in the recapitulary book at the end by the writer's own profession of faith. Now who is the author?

Not Origen; for, as Huet had already remarked respecting the "Philosophumena," the writer speaks of himself in terms implying an episcopal position; and, in the ninth book, he gives an account of transactions in Rome, extending over many years, in which he was evidently an eyewitness and an actor. While the scene is thus laid at a distance from Origen's sphere, and the date also of the personal matter runs back into his boyhood, the cast of the theological doctrine is wholly different from his; for instance, in a certain "Treatise on the Universe," to which the author refers as his own, and of which a fragment is preserved, the penal condition of the wicked after death is said to be immutable;[26] but Origen, it is well known, taught a doctrine of final restoration. Add to this, that no such work as the present is attributed to Origen by any ancient witness, and the case against his name may be regarded as complete.

The evidence which disappoints this claim narrows also our choice of others. The personal transactions to which we have referred took place at Rome, while Zephyrinus and his successor, Callistus, presided over the Christian community there, that is, during the first twenty years of the third century. We must, therefore, look for our author among the metropolitan clergymen of that period. Still closer is the circle drawn by the fact, that the writer largely borrows from the treatise of Irenæus on the same subject; and, though vastly improving on that foolish production, and copiously contributing fresh materials, betrays the general affinity of thought which unites the stronger disciple with the feebler master.

The problem then being to find a pupil of the Bishop of Lyons among the ecclesiastics of Rome, at the beginning of the third century, two names are given in as answering the conditions,--those of Hippolytus, a suburban clergyman, and of Caius, whose charge lay within the city itself. In order to vindicate the claim of the first, it has been necessary for M. Bunsen to prove that his locality is right; and that the "Portus Romæ," of which he was bishop, was not, as Le Moyne and Cave had groundlessly supposed, the Arabian "Portus Romanus" of the district of Aden, but the new harbor made, or at least enlarged, by Trajan, on the northern bank of the Tiber, immediately opposite to Ostia. That he suffered martyrdom there, and was buried in a cemetery on the Tiburtine road, is generally admitted, on the evidence of Prudentius, who has left a poem describing his memorial chapel on that spot, and of a statue of him, seated in a cathedra, which was dug up there three hundred years ago, and now stands in the library of the Vatican. It is certainly perplexing to find Jerome avowing ignorance of the see over which he presided, if, for a quarter of a century, he was active at the centre of the Christian world; and not less so to discover in Rome itself, nay, in a Pope, or his transcriber, at the end of the fifth century, the impression that his scene of labor had been in Arabia; and under the influence of these facts it has been supposed that though, coming to Italy, he had fallen among the martyrs of the West, he ought to be reckoned among the bishops of the East. On the whole, however, the reasons preponderate in favor of his residence, as "Episcopus Portuensis," within the presbytery of Rome. The title itself is an old one, still always assigned to some dignitary of the curia, and, no doubt, deriving its origin from the time when the Northern Harbor of the Tiber--of which in the ninth century, scarce a trace was left--was a flourishing emporium. The name of Hippolytus is associated by tradition with the spot; it is given, our author assures us, to a certain tower, near Fiumicino; and in the eighth and ninth centuries, a basilica of St. Hippolytus was restored at Portus by Leo III. and IV. An episcopal palace still remains. By acute and skilful combinations, effected with evidence scanty as a whole, and suspicious in every part, M. Bunsen has endeavored to reproduce the historical image of Hippolytus. His office of "bishop" implied simply the charge of the single congregation at Portus; the members of that congregation were the "plebs" committed to his supervision; the city or village in which they lived was his diocese. His vicinity to the great capital drew him, however, into a wider circle of duties. For while Rome itself was divided into several ecclesiastical districts, each of which had its own clergyman and lay deacons, the suburban bishops were associated with these officers to form a committee of management, or presbytery, presided over by the metropolitan. By his seat at this board, he was kept in living contact with all the most stirring interests of Christendom, which, wherever their origin might be, found their way to the imperial city, and more and more sought their equilibrium there. At a commercial seaport, his own congregation would largely consist of temporary settlers and mercantile agents, Greek brokers, Jewish bankers, African importers, to whom Italy was a lodging-house rather than a home; and by the continual influx of foreigners he would hear tidings of the remotest churches, and carry to the clerical meetings in the city the newest gossip of all the heresies. Possibly this position, with its opportunities of various intercourse, may have contributed to form in him the agreeable address, and faculty of eloquent speech, which tradition ascribes to him; and induced him to commence the practice of writing with studious care the homilies which were to be delivered in the congregation. At all events he is the first of whom we distinctly hear as a great preacher. His period extends, it is supposed, from the reign of Commodus (180-193) to the first year of Maximin (235-6); and so brought him into the same presbytery-room with five popes,--Victor (187-198); Zephyrinus (201-218); Callistus (219-222); Urbanus (223-230); and Pontianus (230-235); with the last of whom he shared, in the last year of his life, a cruel exile to Sardinia, and returned only to fall a victim to fresh informations, and suffer martyrdom by drowning in a canal. It cannot be denied that, in order to recover this picture of Hippolytus, and still more in order to fix his literary position, the materials of evidence have to be dealt with in somewhat arbitrary fashion, and their _lacunæ_ to be filled by conjecture. Prudentius, for instance, is called as an historical witness, yet convicted of fable in much of what he says. His poem declares that at one time Hippolytus had supported Novatus in his attempt to close the gates of repentance against the _Lapsi_, but had been reconciled to the catholic doctrine before he died. He must in this case have joined in the opposition raised by Novatianus (in 251) to the election of Cornelius to the papacy, and have died in the Decian persecution, which continued till the year 257. Moreover, the painting seen by the Spanish versifier on the walls of the memorial chapel introduces us to so ridiculous a story, as only to show how completely the martyrological legends had already escaped all the restraints of history. In this fresco the mythical fate of Hippolytus, the son of Theseus, is transferred to the Roman presbyter: he is represented as torn to pieces by horses; while the faithful follow to pick up his limbs and hair, and sponge away the blood upon the ground. If the sanctuary exhibiting this scene received the martyr's remains from their original resting-place as early as the time of Constantine,--and such is our author's opinion,--into what a state of degradation had the history of Hippolytus sunk in three quarters of a century! And if already memorial painting could thus impudently lie, how can we better trust the statue, admitted to be later still? Yet this statue, on whose side is a list of the writings of Hippolytus, is appealed to in determining the martyr's written productions, as the painted chapel in evidence of facts in his personal career. We fully admit the success of M. Bunsen in eliciting a possible result from a mass of intricate and tangled conditions, and presenting us with a highly interesting personage. But perhaps, as the venerable image of the good bishop has grown in clearness before his eye, and attracted his affection more and more, the very vividness of the conception may have rendered him insensible to the precariousness of the proof. Ecclesiastical fancy, in its unrestrained career, has torn his personality to pieces, and left the _disjecta membra_ so rudely scattered on the strand of history, that we almost doubt the power of any critical Æsculapius to restore him to the world again.

At the same board of church councillors with Hippolytus sat another λογιωτατος ανηρ,[27] the presbyter Caius; and as an urban clergyman, he would be more constantly there than his suburban brother, separated by a distance of eighteen miles. To form any living image of him from the scanty notices of him which begin with Eusebius and end with Photius, is quite impossible. In one respect only do the personal characteristics attributed to him distinguish him from the bishop of Portus. He was a strenuous opponent of the peculiarities favored by the Christians of Lesser Asia, and especially of the claims to prophetic gifts, and the appeal to clairvoyant skill, by Montanus and his followers. With one of these, by name Proclus, he held a disputation; from which Eusebius has preserved a passage or two, showing, in conjunction with the title, not very intelligibly assigned to him, of "Bishop of the Gentiles," that he belonged to the most advanced anti-Jewish party in the Church, lamented the grossness of the popular millenarian dreams, vindicated the apostolic dignity of the Roman against the pretensions of the Eastern Christianity, and disowned the Epistle to the Hebrews. This feature in the figure of Caius, though constituting the distinction, does not, however, necessarily _oppose_ him to Hippolytus, whose attitude towards the Montanists may not have been very different, but only less positively marked. Still the suspicions directed against the two men are of an opposite kind: with Hippolytus, the difficulty is to set him clear of sympathy with Montanism;[28] with Caius, to prevent his being classed with its unmeasured opponents, the Alogi.[29] And a report even reaches us, that among the Chaldean Christians there exists, or did exist in the fourteenth century, a controversial treatise of Hippolytus against Caius.[30]

Between these two men, so similar in position, and not, perhaps, unused to sharp argument face to face, springs up, at the end of all these ages, a rival claim to property in the "Refutation of all the Heresies." The chief counsel for Hippolytus, besides our author, are the eminent Professors Jacobi, Duncker, and Schneidewin,--all, we believe, belonging to the Neander school of theology; and as the last two are about to edit the work anew, and probably to give it its final form, their opinion of its authorship may be expected to prevail. The other side, however, advocated by Dr. Fessler, is sustained by perhaps the greatest of living historical critics, F. C. Baur, representative of the much-abused Tübingen school. Into so intricate a question we might be excused for inviting our readers, had we anything fresh to offer towards its solution; but the chief impression we have brought from its study is one of astonishment at the extreme positiveness with which the learned men on either side affirm their own conclusion. A more equal balance of evidence we never remember to have met with in any similar research; and the faint and slender preponderance which alone the scale can ever exhibit, amusingly contrasts with the triumphant assertion, of both sets of disputants, that not a reasonable doubt remains. The leading points of M. Bunsen's case are these. A work "On all Heresies" is attributed to Hippolytus, and in no instance to Caius, by Eusebius, Jerome, Epiphanius, and Peter of Alexandria, at the beginning of the fourth century. Such a book was still extant in the ninth century; for Photius, the celebrated patriarch of Constantinople, has given us an account of its contents in the journal and epitome of his studies which he has left us. On comparing his report with the newly discovered book, the identity of the two works is established in some important respects: the _number_ and _concluding term_ of the series of heresies are the same; they both of them include materials taken from Irenæus, while reversing his order of treatment. Further, in the newly found treatise reference is made by the author to other works of his, in which he has discussed certain points of early Hebrew chronology in proving the antiquity of the Abrahamic race. Now, Eusebius was acquainted with a certain "Chronicle" of Hippolytus, brought down to the first year of Alexander Severus; and such a chronicle, in a Latin translation, is found in Fabricius's edition of Hippolytus, only that its list of Roman emperors terminates, not with the beginning, but with the end, of Severus's reign. It has, however, in common with our work, a peculiar number of tribes,--viz. seventy-two, derived from Noah. Thus, the author of the "Heresies" and of the "Chronicle" would appear to be the same, and, according to Eusebius, to be Hippolytus. Lastly, both in our new work, and also in a book called the "Labyrinth," written against some Unitarians of the second century, reference is made to a treatise "On the Universe," which the author mentions as his own production. By printing a fragment of this last in his edition of "Hippolytus," Fabricius has shown to what name all three should, in his judgment, be set down; and that they cannot be given to Caius is rendered evident by the occurrence, in the fragment, of certain Apocalyptic fictions inconsistent with his rejection of the Book of Revelations. Moreover, the list of works on the statue of Hippolytus includes a disquisition "Against the Greeks and against Plato, or _Respecting the Universe_."

What can be said to weaken so strong a case? Two doubts at once arise upon it, which we find it by no means easy to set aside. Granted, Hippolytus wrote a book "On all Heresies"; is it the same which is now delivered into our hands? One medium of comparison we possess, enabling us to place the original and the present book, for a short space, side by side. The very Peter of Alexandria who is one of the early witnesses called on Hippolytus's behalf has handed down to us a passage or two (preserved in the Paschal Chronicle) from the book which he attests, with a distinct reference to the place where they are to be found. We turn to the right chapter, and the passages are _not there_. Nor is it a mere want of verbal agreement which we have to regret; the same topic--the controversy about the time of Easter--is treated; the same side--that of the Western Church--is taken, in both instances; but the arguments are different, and so far irreconcilable, that no one who had command of that which Peter gives would ever resort to the feebler one which our work contains. With the dauntless ingenuity of German criticism M. Bunsen makes a virtue of necessity, and endeavors to convert this unfortunate discrepancy into a fresh proof of identity. He thinks that, in this and some other parts, our work is but a clumsy abstract of Hippolytus's original, which the citations of Peter enable us to recover and complete. This, however, is a plea which, it strikes us, damages his case as much by success as it could by failure. For if the book presented to us by the Clarendon Press reflects the original no better than would appear from this only sample which it is in our power to test, it may indeed be a degenerate descendant from the pen of Hippolytus; but all reliable identity is lost, and the traces of his hand are no longer recoverable. The second doubt is this:--Is the work which Photius read the same that has now been rescued? Of the few descriptive marks supplied by the patriarch, there are as many absent from our work as present in it. The treatise which he read was a "_little book_" or "_tract_," as Lardner calls it (βιβλιδαριον), a word which can scarcely apply to a volume extending (as ours would, if complete) to four hundred and twenty octavo pages. M. Bunsen cuts down this number to two hundred and fifty, by supposing Photius to have only the last six books, containing the historical survey, without the groundwork of the philosophical deduction, of the heresies. The curtailment, if conceded, seems scarcely adequate to its purpose, and appears to us a very questionable conjecture. The manuscript, stripped of the first four books, would want the very basis of the whole argument; and, if such a mutilation were conceivable, it is impossible that Photius should fail to observe and mention it; for the fifth book opens, not like an independent treatise, but with a summary statement of what has been accomplished "_in the four books preceding this_." Again, Photius mentions the _Dositheans_ as the first set of heretics discussed; whereas their name does not occur at all, if we remember right, in our work, and their place is occupied by the "Ophites." M. Bunsen treats this as a mere inaccuracy of expression on the part of Photius, who meant, by the name "Dositheans," to indicate the same "earliest Judaizing schools" that are better described as "Ophites." The name, however, is so unsuitable to this purpose, that it would be a strange wilfulness in the learned patriarch to substitute it for the language of the author he describes. He could not be ignorant that Dositheus, Simon, Menander, were the three founders of the Samaritan sect, exponents of the same doctrine, if not even reputed _avatars_ of the same divine essence;[31] and if he had applied the name _Dositheans_ to any of the heretics enumerated in our work, it would assuredly have been to the _followers of Simon_, who stand _fourth_ in the series of thirty-two, and not to Phrygian serpent-worshippers, who commence the list. Further, the author whom Photius read stated that his book was a synopsis of the Lectures of Irenæus. In our work no such statement occurs; and the use made of Irenæus does not agree, either in quantity or character, with the substance of the assertion. And, lastly, the patriarch's Hippolytus said "some things which are not quite correct; for instance, that the Epistle to the Hebrews is not by the Apostle Paul." In our work there is no such assertion; and when M. Bunsen suggests that perhaps its place might be in the lost books, he forgets that, according to his own conjecture, these books were no more in Photius's hands than in ours, and that he cannot first cut them off in order to make a βιβλιδαριον, and then restore them, to provide a locus for a missing criticism on the Epistle to the Hebrews. The identity of our "Philosophumena" with the treatise which Photius read and Hippolytus wrote, appears, therefore, to be extremely problematical.

One fixed point, however, is gained in the course of the argument, and gives an acknowledged position from which the opposite opinions are willing to set out. Whoever wrote the disquisition "On the Universe" wrote also our work. This fact rests on the assertion of the author himself; yet, if the author be Hippolytus, and our "Philosophumena" be his "Refutation of all Heresies," it is strange that no list of his writings mentions _both_ books: the catalogues of Eusebius and Jerome naming the "Heresies" without the essay "On the Universe"; and the engraving on the statue giving the essay "On the Universe" without the "Heresies." How can we explain it, that these ecclesiastical writers, in knowing our work, did not know what is contained in it about the authorship of the other book; and that this book should have wandered _anonymously_ about down to the ninth century, side by side with an acknowledged writing of Hippolytus, which all the while was proclaiming the solution of the question? We should certainly expect that the book of avowed authorship would convey the name of Hippolytus to the companion production for which it claims the same paternity; but, instead of this, it not only leaves its associate anonymous for six hundred years, but afterward assumes the modest fit, and becomes anonymous itself. Even if no previous reader had sense enough to put the two things together, and pick out the testimony of the one book to the origin of the other, are we to charge the same stupidity on the erudite Photius, who had both books in his hand, and has given his report of both? In his account of Hippolytus's treatise, he nowhere tells us that it contains a reference to the essay "On the Universe," as being from the same pen; and that he found no such reference is certain; for he actually discusses the question, "Who wrote the essay on the Universe?" without ever mentioning Hippolytus at all. Just such a reference, however, as he did _not_ find in Hippolytus, he _did_ find in _another_ work, of which he speaks under the title of "The Labyrinth"; and, strange to say, it was at the _end_ of the work,[32] precisely where it stands in our "Philosophumena." Who can resist the suspicion, that the anonymous "Labyrinth" of Photius is no other than our anonymous "Philosophumena"? This conviction forced itself upon us on first weighing the evidence collected by M. Bunsen, in support of his different conclusion; and we observe that it is the opinion sustained by the great authority of Baur,[33] who even finds a trace in our work of the very _title_ given by Photius; the writer observing, at the beginning of the tenth book, "The _Labyrinth of Heresies_ we have not broken through by violence, but have resolved by refutation alone with the force of truth; and now we come to the positive exposition of the truth." At all events, the difference of title in the case of a work having probably more names than one, is of no weight in disproof of identity. With this new designation in our possession, we may return to search for our book in the records of ecclesiastical antiquity; and we have not far to go, before we alight on traces affording hopes of a result. No "Labyrinth," indeed, turns up in the literary history of earlier centuries than Photius; but a "_Little_ Labyrinth" is mentioned by Theodoret,[34] as sometimes ascribed to Origen, but as evidently not his; and from his account of it, confirmed by the matter which he borrows from it, we learn that it was a controversial book, against a set of Unitarians in Rome, followers of Theodotus. It so happens that the very passage from this tract which Theodoret has used appears also, with others from the same source, in Eusebius, only quoted under another title,--the book being called a "Work against the Heresy of Artemon" (who was another teacher of the same school in the same age). The extracts thus preserved to us are not found in our work; which, therefore, if it be the "Labyrinth," is a distinct production from the "Little Labyrinth"; but they are so manifestly from the same pen, occupied in the same task, as to render it perfectly conceivable that the two books might receive the same name, with only a diminutive epithet to distinguish the lesser from the greater. Nor are we left, as Baur has shown, without a distinct assertion by our "great unknown," that he had already composed a smaller treatise on the same subject; for, in the introduction to the "Philosophumena," he says of the heretics, "We have before given a brief exposition of their opinions, refuting them in the gross, without presenting them in detail." This shorter work would naturally treat of the particular forms of error most immediately present and mischievous before the author's eyes; and if he dwelt especially on the doctrines of Theodotus and Artemon, it is just what we should expect from an orthodox Roman. This essay, on a limited range of heresy, would naturally be issued at first with the special title by which Eusebius refers to it. But if it led the author to execute afterwards a much enlarged design, to which, from its intricate extent, he gave, on its completion, the fanciful designation of "The Labyrinth," he might naturally carry the name back to the earlier production, and, to mark the relation between the two, issue this in future as "The Little Labyrinth." Photius speaks of the tract against the heresy of Artemon as a separate work from "The Labyrinth,"[35] and says the same thing of the latter[36] that Theodoret had remarked of the former, that by some it was ascribed to Origen. The result to which we are thus led is the following. Our newly found work is not Hippolytus's βιβλιδαριον "On all Heresies," but the book known to Photius as "The Labyrinth"; the author of which had previously produced two other works, viz. "The Little Labyrinth" mentioned by Theodoret, and quoted under another name by Eusebius, and the "Treatise on the Universe," whose contents Photius reports. Whatever, therefore, fixes the authorship of any of these, fixes the authorship of all.

Notwithstanding, however, our threefold chance, we have only a solitary evidence on this point. Attached to Photius's copy of the "Treatise on the Universe" was a note, to the effect that the book was not (as had been imagined) by Josephus, but by Caius, the Roman presbyter, who also composed the "Labyrinth."[37] In the absence of other external testimony, this judgment appears entitled to stand, unless the books themselves disclose some features at variance with the known character of Caius.

But, it is said, such variance we do actually find. For while our work expressly appeals to the Apocalypse as the production of John, we know from Eusebius that Caius ascribed it to Cerinthus, and, in opposing himself to Montanism, rejected the millenarian doctrine which is taught in the Revelations. This argument, we admit, would be decisive if its allegations were indisputable. It is curious, however, that the one _locus classicus_,[38] from which is inferred the presbyter's repudiation of the Apocalypse, is confessedly ambiguous; and the charge it prefers against Cerinthus may amount to either of these two propositions; that he had composed the Book of Revelations and palmed it on the world as the production of the Apostle John; or, that he had given himself the air of a great Apostle, and published accordingly some revelations affecting to be imparted, like those of John, by angels. According to this last interpretation, the work of Cerinthus would be a book distinct from our Apocalypse, written in imitation of it, and seeking to share its authority. The contents of the production are briefly described by Caius; but they present such a mixture of agreement and disagreement with our canonical book, as to leave the ambiguity unresolved. They affirm, that after the resurrection will follow an earthly kingdom of Christ, in which the lower nature of man will, in Jerusalem, be again in servitude to passion and pleasure; and that the number of a thousand years are to be spent in the indulgence of sense. So far as the _place_ and the _duration_ of the kingdom are concerned, our Apocalypse might here be referred to; but it has nothing answering to the description of a gross and luxurious millennium. Taking the passage in conjunction with the similar statement of Theodoret, that "Cerinthus invented certain revelations, pretending that they were given in vision to himself," we think it unlikely that our Apocalypse can be meant; and conceive the indictment to be, that Cerinthus had put forth a set of apocryphal visions, in which he abused the style and corrupted the teachings of a great Apostle to the purposes of a sensual fanaticism. This is a charge which Caius might bring, in consistency with the fullest acceptance of the Apocalypse as authentic and true. It was not the doctrine of a reign of Christ on earth, not the millenarian period assigned to it, to which he objected in Cerinthus; but the coarse and demoralizing picture given of its employments and delights. In proportion to his respect for the real Apocalypse and its teachings, would he be likely to resent such a miserable parody on its lofty theocratic visions. His opposition to the Montanists in no way pledged him to renounce the eschatological expectations which they were distinguished from other Christians not by entertaining, but by exaggerating. If our work, in its notice of their heresy, passes by in silence this particular element of the system, and treats their claim to special gifts of prophecy with less contemptuous emphasis than might be looked for in the antagonist of Proclus, there is nothing that ought really to surprise us in this. It does not follow that, because in our scanty knowledge we have only one idea about an historical personage, the man himself never had another. Caius did not live in a perpetual platform disputation with Proclus; and either before that controversy had waked him up, or after it was well got over, he might naturally enough dismiss the Montanists with very cursory notice; in the one case, because they had not yet adequately provoked his antipathy; in the other, because they had already had enough of it.[39]

Nothing therefore presents itself in our work which should deter us from attributing it to Caius; and the more we ponder the evidence, the more do we incline to believe it his. This result is to us an unwelcome one; both because we know how strong the presumption must be against a critical judgment condemned by the masterly genius of M. Bunsen, and because he has really made us in love with his ecclesiastical hero,--has put such an innocent and venerable life into that old effigy, that after wandering with him about the quays of Portus, and entering with listening fancy into the Basilica[40] where he preached, it is hard to return him into stone, and think of him only as a dead bishop who made a bad almanac. Should our readers have contracted no such ideal attachment, we fear that this discussion of authorship may appear as trivial as it is tedious. Somebody wrote the "Philosophumena," and whether we call him Hippolytus or Caius, whether we lodge him on the Tiber within sight of the _Pharos_, or of the _Milliarium Aureum_, may seem a thing indifferent, so long as the elements of the personal image do not materially change. This utilitarian impression is by no means just, and indeed is at variance with all true historical feeling. But it is time that we should give it its fair rights, and turn from the name upon our new book to its substances and significance.

Many sensible persons are at a loss, we believe, to understand why this refutation of thirty-two extinct heresies should be regarded with so much interest. Is it so well done, then? they ask. Far from it: better books are brought out every year; and such a controversial argument offered in manuscript to Mr. Longman or Mr. Parker to-morrow, would hardly be deemed worth the cost of printing. Does it add materially to our knowledge of the early heresies? Something of this kind it certainly contributes; but the gain is not large, and will make no essential change in the conclusions of any competent historical inquirer. Is any light thrown by it on the authenticity of our canonical books? This can hardly be expected from a production of the third century; and M. Bunsen's application of it to this purpose appears to us, for reasons which we shall assign, extremely precarious. Perhaps it supplies the want which every student of that period must have felt, and organically joins ecclesiastical to civil history, so that they no longer remain apart,--the one as the stage for saints and martyrs, bishops and books, the other for soldiers and senators, emperors and paramours,--but mingle in the common life of humanity. When we think how the author was placed, it is impossible not to go to him with an eager hope of this nature. He lived at the centre of the vast Roman world, and felt all the pulsations and paroxysms of that mighty heart. He witnessed the ominous decline of every traditional maxim and national reverence in favor of imported superstitions and degenerate barbarities. Under Commodus he saw the ancient Mars superseded by the Grecian Hercules, and Hercules represented by an emperor who sunk into a prize-fighter, and the administration of the empire in the wanton hands of a Phrygian slave, who was only less brutal than his master. In the midst of pestilence, which had become chronic in Italy from the time of M. Antoninus, and of which a Christian bishop could not but know more than others, the city was still adding to its semblance of splendor and salubrity; and the magnificent baths and grounds that were opened to the public service at the Porta Capena, with the multiplied festivities and donatives, attested how little mere physical attention to the people can arrest the miseries of a moral degradation. Nor could the Christians of that age be wholly without insight into the habits of the highest class in Rome, for, in that great _colluvies_ of heterogeneous faiths, the caprice of taste, if not some better impulse, determined now and then an inmate of the palace to favor the religion of Christ; and the favorite mistress of Commodus, who ruled him while she could, and then had him drugged and strangled in his sleep, is the very Marcia whom our presbyter describes as φιλοθεος and at whose intervention the Christian exiles were released from their banishment in Sardinia. If he was at home when the excellent Pertinax was murdered, and cared to know what tyrant was to have the world instead, he was perhaps in the throng that ran to the Quirinal, and heard the Prætorians shout from their ramparts that the empire was for sale, and saw the bargain with the foolish senator below, who bought it with his money, and paid for it with his head. Caius and his people had reason to tremble when they saw in Septimius Severus not only the implacable conqueror who suffered no political opponent to live, but the worshipper of demons, the gloomy and fitful devotee of astrology and magic, pliant only to sacerdotal hate; and when the young Origen came to be their guest awhile, and told of the terror in Alexandria which had joined his father to the band of martyrs, the post that just then brought the news of the Emperor's death in Britain would seem to take off a weight of fear; especially as one son at least of the two inheritors of the empire had in childhood been committed to a Christian nurse, and been said to shrink and turn away from the savage spectacles of the amphitheatre. They were doomed to be disappointed, if they had placed any hope in Caracalla, and to find that what they had taken in the boy for the nobleness of grace, was but the timidity of nature; the murder, before his mother's face, of his only brother, and then of his best counsellor, for refusing to justify the fratricide, would soon make them ashamed of remembering that he had ever heard the name of Christ. It would be curious to know how the Christians comported themselves when the Priest of the Sun became monarch of the world, and seemed intent on dethroning every divinity to enrich the homage to his own. The grand temple on the Palatine, which he built for the god of Emesa, every passer-by must have seen as it rose from its foundations. And when the black stone was paraded on its chariot through the streets, and the elder deities were compelled to leave their shrines and attend in escort to the Eastern idol, or when the nuptials were celebrated between the Syrian divinity and the goddess of Carthage, and Baal-peor and Astarte succeeded to the honors of Jove, no Christian presbyter could fail to witness the gorgeous and humiliating procession,--renewed as it was year by year,--or to ask himself into what deeper abomination the city of the Scipios must sink, ere the catastrophe of judgment made a sudden end. The orgies of Helagabalus were more insulting to the elder Paganism of Rome than injurious to the new faith, which equally detested both; and the offended moral feeling of the city reacted perhaps in favor of the Christian cause, and prepared the way for that more public teaching of the religion, in buildings avowedly dedicated to the purpose, which was first permitted in the succeeding reign. The natural recoil in the imperial family itself from the degradation of the court tended, perhaps, in the same direction, and drove the astute Mamæa to seek, amid the universal corruption, for some school of discipline which might save the young Alexander Severus from the ignominy of her sister's son. Whether from this motive, or from suspicion of the growing force of Christianity as a social power, she had sent for Origen, and had an interview with him at Antioch; and the Roman disciples had reason to rejoice that her intellectual impressions of their system should have been derived from such a man, and her political estimate of it formed in the East, where the crisis of conflict between the dying and the living faiths was more advanced than in the West, and afforded a less disguised augury of the result. From their fellow-believers trading with the Levant, or arriving thence, the pastors of the metropolis would learn the propitious temper of the young Cæsar and his mother; and would feel no surprise, when he succeeded to the palace of his cousin, that he not only swept out the ministers of lust and luxury, but in his private oratory enshrined, among the busts of Pagan benefactors, the images also of Abraham and of Christ. They could not, however, but observe how little the morals of the court and the wisdom of the government could now avail to arrest the progress of decay, and reach in detail the vices and miseries of a degenerate state. When they passed the door of the palace, they heard the public crier's voice proclaim, "Let only purity and innocence enter here"; they visited a Christian tradesman in a neighboring street, and found him just seized by a nobleman whom he had dunned for an outstanding debt, charged with magic or poisoning, doomed to pine in prison till he gave release, and no redress or justice to be had. The Emperor who, gazing in his chapel on the features of Christ, recognized a religion human and universal, was the first under whom a visible badge was put upon the slave, and a distinctive servile dress adopted; the slave markets were still in consecrated spots, the temple of Castor and the Via Sacra; and if ever some captive Onesimus, recommended by letters from the East to the brethren in Rome, was brought to the metropolis for sale, thither must the deacon or the pastor go to find how the auction disposes of their charge, and learn _which_ among the chalked feet it is that are "shod with the preparation of the Gospel of peace." The commonwealth had never boasted of so many great jurists as in the age of Papinian and Paulus; but as the science of Law was perfected, the power of Law declined; and Alexander Severus, the justest of emperors, was unable to protect Ulpian, the greatest of civilians, from military assassination in the palace itself, or to punish the perpetrators of this outrage on popular feeling as well as public right. The three days' tumult, in which this master of jurisprudence fell the victim of Prætorian licentiousness, our presbyter Caius must have witnessed; and countless other momentous scenes, during a generation painfully affluent in vicissitude, must have passed before his eyes; and had he but known of what value his reports would be to this age of ours, he would have said more of the life he saw, and less of the speculations he denounced. To us it would have been worth anything to know just what was too close to him to catch his eye;--how the Christians lived in such a world; what thoughts stirred in them as they walked the streets and heard the news; what happened and was said when they met together, and how this could adjust itself with the real facts of an inconsistent and tyrannical present; and how, as the corrupted State became ever more incapable of vindicating moral ends, the rising Church undertook the secret governance of life, and penetrated with its authority into recesses beyond the reach, not of the arm of administration only, but of the definitions of the widest code. But in this respect also our author fails to realize our hopes. He gives us a book of fancies rather than of facts, and instead of painting existence, which is transient, and must be caught as it flies, occupies himself in describing nonsense, which is always to be had. The enormities of Helagabalus, though staring him in the face, are nothing to him in comparison with heresy in Lesser Asia, which keeps Easter on a wrong day. He is shut up within the interior circle of the community of believers, and gives but a single glimpse beyond; and builds for us no bridge to abolish the mysterious separation of ecclesiastical and ideal from civil and real existence in the early ages of our faith. He is not peculiar in this defect. We all of us live in the midst of history without knowing it, and ourselves _make_ history without feeling it; and that which will most clearly paint us in the thought of other times, which will seem our _power_ to them, our romance and nobleness, with which, therefore, they will most crave to satiate their eye, is precisely what is least consciously present to us,--the natural spirit and daily spring of our common being, through which not the will of man, but the providence of God, works its appointed ends. At all events, the insight which we should be best pleased to gain into the life of the third century is not given even incidentally, except in the scantiest measure, by the "Philosophumena," which we must rank, in this respect, below the Apologies, and with the writings of Irenæus and Epiphanius. The book is dogmatic and controversial, and the interest attached to it arises entirely from its being a _register of opinion_, a new witness to the thoughts about divine things, which the Christianity of its period owned and disowned. For those who care at all to know the state of belief a century before the Council of Nice, the work possesses a high value. But the worth of this sort of information is itself a thing disputed, at least its _religious_ worth; and will be very differently estimated, according to the preconception which occupies us as to the nature of Divine Revelation, and the sources open to us for the attainment of sacred truth. Here it is that we find M. Bunsen's great and peculiar strength. His religious philosophy, taken by itself, brings us occasionally to a pause of doubt. His historical criticism is not always convincing. But his doctrine of the _relation between_ religion and history, of the mingling of divine and human elements in the theatre of time, and of the special agency of Christianity in the spiritual education of mankind, appears to us profoundly true and beautiful. This it is that makes him attach so much importance to the creed of the second and third centuries, and to the new light now thrown upon it; an importance which, from every ordinary point of view, can scarcely fail to appear fanciful and exaggerated.