The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries

by Adolph (von) Harnack
translated and edited by James Moffatt
Second, enlarged and revised English edition;
London: Williams and Norgate / New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1908 (from the 2nd German edition)..
Theological Translation Library, volumes 19-20

From the German, Die Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten (1902, revised 1906, 1915, and finally 1924)

[[in addition to the 1908 ET in electronic form, an updated version is being prepared which incorporates changes in the 4th German edition and other revisions by RAK for use in 2004 America; see the end of the Table of Contents file  for editing instructions and stages; this 1908 version of "book 2" has been scanned and edited largely by Amna Khawar, with chapter 7 edited by Virginia Wayland, and final standardizing and editing by Francisco Lameiro (for English materials) and RAK (for Greek and Latin); remaining tasks include resolving queries noted by "[[[" markers, and updating identification systems for such authors as Hippolytus, Hermas, Josephus, and the like. Also, decide how to display footnotes. Simplify things for the English reader!]]

[[84]]
BOOK 2

THE MISSION-PREACHING IN WORD AND DEED

The unity and the variety which characterized the preaching of Christianity from the very first constituted the secret of its fascination and a vital condition of its success. On the one hand, it was so simple that it could be summed up in a few brief sentences and understood in a single crisis of the inner life; on the other hand, it was so versatile and rich, that it vivified all thought and stimulated every emotion. It was capable, almost from the outset, of vying with every noble and worthy enterprise, with any speculation, or with any cult of the mysteries. It was both new and old; it was alike present and future. Clear and transparent, it was also profound and full of mystery. It had statutes, and yet rose superior to any law. It was a doctrine and yet no doctrine, a philosophy and yet something different from philosophy. Western Catholicism, when surveyed as a whole, has been described as a complexio oppositorum, but this was also true of the Christian propaganda in its earliest stages. Consequently, to exhibit the preaching and labors of the Christian mission with the object of explaining the amazing success of Christianity, we must try to get a uniform grasp of all its component factors.

We shall proceed then to describe:--

1. The religious characteristics of the mission-preaching.

2. The gospel of salvation and of the Savior.

3. The gospel of love and charity. [[85]]

4. The religion of the Spirit and power, of moral earnestness and holiness.

5. The religion of authority and of reason, of mysteries and transcendentalism.

6. The message of a new People and of a Third race (or the historical and political consciousness of Christendom).

7. The religion of a Book, and of a historical realization.

8. The conflict with polytheism and idolatry.

In the course of these chapters we hope to do justice to the wealth of the religion, without impairing or obscuring the power of its simplicity.\1/ One point must be left out, of course: that is, the task of following the development of Christian doctrine into the dogmas of the church's catechism, as well as into the Christian philosophy of religion propounded by Origen and his school. Doctrine, in both of these forms, was unquestionably of great moment to the mission of Christianity, particularly after the date of its earliest definition (relatively speaking) about the middle of the third century. But such a subject would require a book to itself. I have endeavored, in the first volume of my History of Dogma (third edition)  to deal with it, and to that work I must refer any who may desire to see how the unavoidable gaps of the present volume are to be filled up.\2/

\1/ At the Scilitan martyrdom the proconsul remarks; "Et nos religiosi sumus, et simplex est religio nostra" ("We also are religious, and our religion is simple"). To which Speratus the Christian replies: "Si tranquillas praebueris aures tuas, dico mysterium simplicitatis" ("If you give me a quiet hearing, I shall tell you the mystery of simplicity").

\2/ Cp. my Grundriss der Dogmengeschichte (4th ed., 1905).

[[86]]

CHAPTER 1

RELIGIOUS CHARACTERISTICS OF THE MISSION-PREACHING

"Missionary Preaching" is a term which may be taken in a double sense. Its broader meaning covers all the forces of influence, attraction, and persuasion which the gospel had at its command, all the materials that it collected and endowed with life and power as it developed into a syncretistic religion during the first three centuries. The narrower sense of the term embraces simply the crucial message of faith and the ethical requirements of the gospel. Taking it in the latter sense, we shall devote the present chapter to a description of the fundamental principles of the missionary preaching. The broader conception has a wide range. The Old Testament and the new literature of Christianity, healing and redemption, gnosis and apologetic, myth and sacrament, the conquest of demons, forms of social organization and charity -- all these played their part in the mission-preaching and helped to render it impressive and convincing. Even in the narrower sense of the term, our description of the mission-preaching must be kept within bounds, for the conception of the crucial message of faith and its ethical requirements is bound up naturally with the development of dogma, and the latter (as I have already remarked) cannot be exhibited without over-stepping the precincts of the present volume. At the same time, these limitations are not very serious, since, to the best of our knowledge, mission-preaching (in the narrower sense of the term) was fairly extinct after the close of the second century. Its place was taken by the instruction of catechumens, by the training of the household in and for the Christian faith, and by the worship of the church. Finally, we must eschew the error of imagining that everyone who came over to Christianity was won [[87]] by a missionary propaganda of dogmatic completeness. So far as our sources throw light on this point, they reveal a very different state of things, and this applies even to the entire period preceding Constantine. In countless instances, it was but one ray of light that wrought the change. One person would be brought over by means of the Old Testament, another by the exorcising of demons, a third by the purity of Christian life; others, again, by the monotheism of Christianity, above all by the prospect of complete expiation, or by the prospect which it held out of immortality, or by the profundity of its speculations, or by the social standing which it conferred. In the great majority of cases, so long as Christianity did not yet propagate itself naturally, one believer may well have produced another, just as one prophet anointed his successor; example (not confined to the case of the martyrs) and the personal manifestation of the Christian life led to imitation. A complete knowledge of Christian doctrine, which was still a plant of very tender growth in the second century, was certainly the attainment of a small minority. "Idiotae, quorum semper maior pars est," says Tertullian [where??] ("The uneducated are always in a majority with us"). Hippolytus bewails the ignorance even of a Roman bishop [where??]. Even the knowledge of the Scriptures, though they were read in private, remained of necessity the privilege of an individual here and there, owing to their extensiveness and the difficulty of understanding them.\1/

\1/ Bishops and theologians, in the West especially, are always bewailing the defective knowledge of the Bible among the laity, and even among the clergy. Cp. also Clement of Alexandria [where??].

The earliest mission-preaching to Jews ran thus: "The kingdom of God is at hand; repent."\2/ The Jews thought they knew what was the meaning of the kingdom of heaven and of its advent; but they had to be told the meaning of the repentance that secured the higher righteousness, so that "God's kingdom" also acquired a new meaning. [[88]]

\2/ The earliest mission-preaching (Matt.10.7 f.) with which the disciples of Jesus were charged, ran: κηρύσσετε λέγοντες ὅτι ῎Ηγγικεν ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν. Although repentance is not actually mentioned, it is to be supplied from other passages. The prospect of power to do works of healing is also held out to them (ἀσθενοῦντας θεραπεύετε, νεκροὺς ἐγείρετε, λεπροὺς καθαρίζετε, δαιμόνια ἐκβάλλετε).

The second stage in the mission-preaching to Jews was determined by this tenet: "The risen Jesus is the Messiah [cp. Matt.10.32], and will return from heaven to establish his kingdom."\3/

\3/ Cp. the confession of the resurrection common to primitive Christianity, in 1 Cor. 15.4 f.

The third stage was marked by the interpretation of the Old Testament as a whole (i.e., the law and the prophets) from the standpoint of its fulfillment in Jesus Christ, along with the accompanying need of securing and formulating that inwardness of disposition and moral principle which members of the Messianic church, who were called and kept by the Holy Spirit, knew to be their duty.\4/ This must have made them realize that the observance of the law, which had hitherto prevailed, was inadequate either to cancel sin or to gain righteousness; also that Jesus the Messiah had died that sins might be forgiven (γνωστὸν ἔστω ὑμῖν,  ὅτι διὰ τούτου ὑμῖν ἄφεσις ἁμαρτιῶν καταγγέλλεται ἀπὸ πάντων ὧν οὐκ ἠδυνήθητε ἐν νόμῳ Μωϋσέως δικαιωθῆναι).\5/ [[89]]

\4/ To "imitate" or "be like" Christ did not occupy the place one would expect among the ethical counsels of the age. Jesus had spoken of imitating God and bidden men follow himself, whilst the relationship of pupil and teacher readily suggested the formula of imitation. But whenever he was recognized as Messiah, as the Son of God, as Savior, and as Judge, the ideas of imitation and likeness had to give way, although the apostles still continued to urge both in their epistles, and to hold up the mind, the labors, and the sufferings of Jesus as an example. In the early church the imitation of Christ never became a formal principle of ethics (to use a modern phrase) except for the virtuoso in religion, the ecclesiastic, the teacher, the ascetic, or the martyr; it played quite a subordinate role in the ethical teaching of the church. Even the injunction to be like Christ, in the strict sense of the term, occurs comparatively seldom. Still, it is interesting to collect and examine the passages relative to this point; they show that whilst a parallel was fully drawn between the life of Christ and the career and conduct of distinguished Christians such as the confessors, the early church did not go the length of drawing up general injunctions with regard to the imitation of Christ. For one thing, the Christology stood in the way, involving not imitation but obedience; for another thing, the literal details of imitation seemed too severe. Those who made the attempt were always classed as Christians of a higher order (though even at this early period they were warned against presumption), so that the Catholic theory of "evangelic counsels" has quite a primitive root.

\5/ Acts 13.38; up to this point, I think, the Jewish Christian view is clearly stated in the address of Paul at Antioch, but the further development of the idea ἐν τούτῳ πᾶς ὁ πιστεύων δικαιοῦται  ("by whom everyone who believes is justified ") is specifically Pauline. Taken as a whole, however, the speech affords a fine example of missionary preaching to the Jews. From 1 Cor. 15.3 it follows that the tenet, "Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures," was not simply Pauline, but common to Christianity in general. Weizsacker (op. cit,, [[89b]] pp. 60 f.; Eng. trans., 1.74 f.) rightly lays great stress on the fact that previous to Paul and alongside of him, even within Jewish Christian circles (as in the case of Peter), the view must have prevailed that the law and its observance were not perfectly adequate to justification before God, and that a sotereological significance attached to Jesus the Messiah or to his death.

"You know that when you were pagans you were led away to dumb idols" (1 Cor. 12.2). "You turned to God from idols, to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, who delivers us from the wrath to come''' (1 Thess. 1.9-10). Here we have the mission-preaching to pagans in a nutshell. The "living and true God" is the first and final thing; the second is Jesus, the Son of God, the judge, who secures us against the wrath to come, and who is therefore "Jesus the Lord." To the living God, now preached to all men, we owe faith and devoted service; to God's Son as Lord, our due is faith and hope.\6/

\6/ When questioned upon the "dogma" of Christians, Justin answered: ῞Οπερ εὐσεβοῦμεν εἰς τὸν τῶν Χριστιανῶν θεόν, ὃν ἡγούμεθα ἕνα τούτων ἐξ ἀρχῆς ποιητὴν καὶ δημιουργὸν τῆς πάσης κτίσεως, ὁρατῆς τε καὶ ἀοράτου, καὶ κύριον ᾿Ιησοῦν Χριστὸν παῖδα θεοῦ, ὃς καὶ προκεκήρυκται ὑπὸ τῶν προφητῶν μέλλων παραγίνεσθαι τῷ  γένει τῶν ἀνθρώπων σωτηρίας κῆρυξ καὶ διδάσκαλος καλῶν μαθημάτων (Acts of Justin 2.5 [B recension] = "It is that whereby we worship the God of the Christians, whom we consider to be One from the beginning, the maker and fashioner of the whole creation, visible and invisible, and also the Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God, whom the prophets foretold would come to the race of men, a herald of salvation and a teacher of good disciples").

The contents of this brief message -- objective and subjective, positive and negative -- are inexhaustible. Yet the message itself is thoroughly compact and complete. It is objective and positive as the message which tells of the only God, who is spiritual, omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, the creator of heaven and earth, the Lord and Father of men, and the great disposer of human history;\7/ furthermore, it is the message which tells of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who came from heaven,[[90]] made known the Father, died for sins, rose, sent the Spirit hither, and from his seat at God's right hand will return for the judgment;\8/ finally, it is the message of salvation brought by Jesus the Savior, that is, freedom from the tyranny of demons, sin, and death, together with the gift of life eternal.

\7/ In this respect the speech put by Luke (Acts 17.22-30) into the mouth of Paul at the Areopagus is typical and particularly instructive. It exhibits, at the same time, an alliance with the purest conceptions of Hellenism. We must combine this speech with First Thessalonians, in order to understand how the fundamentals of mission-preaching were laid before pagans, and also in order to get rid of the notion that Galatians and Romans are a model of Paul's preaching to pagan audiences. The characteristic principles of the mission-preaching (both negative and positive) are also preserved, with particular lucidity, in the fragmentary Kerugma Petri, an early composition which, as the very title indicates, was plainly meant to be a compendium of doctrine for missionary purposes.

\8/ Thaddaeus announces to Abgar a missionary address for  the next day, and gives the following preliminary outline of its contents (Eus. H.E. 1.13.20): κηρύξω καὶ σπερῶ ἐν αὐτοῖς τὸν λόγον τῆς  ζωῆς, περί τε τῆς ἐλεύσεως τοῦ ᾿Ιησοῦ καθὼς ἐγένετο, καὶ περὶ τῆς ἀποστολῆς αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἕνεκα τίνος ἀπεστάλη ὑπὸ τοῦ πατρός, καὶ περὶ τῆς δυνάμεως καὶ τῶν ἔργων αὐτοῦ καὶ μυστηρίων ὧν ἐλάλησεν ἐν κόσμῳ, καὶ ποίᾳ δυνάμει ταῦτα  ἐποίει, καὶ περὶ τῆς καινῆς αὐτοῦ κηρύξεως, καὶ περὶ τῆς  μικρότητος καὶ περὶ τῆς ταπεινώσεως, καὶ πῶς ἐταπείνωσεν  ἑαυτὸν καὶ ἀπέθετο καὶ ἐσμίκρυνεν αὐτοῦ τὴν θεότητα, καὶ ἐσταυρώθη, καὶ κατέβη εἰς τὸν ῎Αιδην, καὶ διέσχισε φραγμὸν τὸν ἐξ αἰῶνος μὴ σχισθέντα, καὶ ἀνήγειρεν νεκροὺς καὶ κατέβη μόνος, ἀνέβη δὲ μετὰ πολλοῦ ὄχλου πρὸς τὸν πατέρα αὐτοῦ ("I will preach and sow the word of God, concerning the advent of Jesus, even the manner of his birth: concerning his mission, even the purpose for which the Father sent him: concerning the power of his works and the mysteries he uttered in the world, even the nature of this power: concerning his new preaching and his abasement and humiliation, even how he humbled himself and died and debased his divinity and was crucified and went down to Hades and burst asunder the bars which had not been severed from all eternity, and raised the dead, descending alone but rising with many to his Father").

Then it is objective and negative, since it announces the vanity of all other gods, and forms a protest against idols of gold and silver and wood, as well as against blind fate and atheism.

Finally, it is subjective, as it declares the uselessness of all sacrifice, all temples, and all worship of man's devising, and opposes to these the worship of God in spirit and in truth, assurance of faith, holiness and self-control, love and brotherliness, and lastly the solid certainty of the resurrection and of life eternal, implying the futility of the present life, which lies exposed to future judgment.

This new kind of preaching excited extraordinary fears and hopes: fears of the imminent end of the world and of the great reckoning, at which even the just could hardly pass muster; hopes of a glorious reign on earth, after the denouement, and of a paradise which was to be filled with precious delights and overflowing with comfort and bliss. Probably no religion had ever proclaimed openly to men such terrors and such happiness.

To wide circles this message of the one and almighty God no [[91]] longer came as a surprise. It was the reverse of a surprise. What they had vaguely divined, seemed now to be firmly and gloriously realized. At the same time, as "Jesus and the Resurrection" were taken for new daemons in Athens (according to Acts 17.18), and considered to be utterly strange, this doctrine must have been regarded at first as paradoxical wherever it was preached. This, however, is not a question into which we have here to enter. What is certain is, that "the one living God, as creator," "Jesus the Savior,"\9/ "the Resurrection"  (ἡ ἀνάστασις), and ascetic "self-control"  (ἡ ἐγκρατεία)  formed the most conspicuous articles of the new propaganda. Along with this the story of Jesus must have been briefly communicated (in the statements of Christology), the resurrection was generally defined as the resurrection of the flesh, and self-control primarily identified with sexual purity, and then extended to include renunciation of the world and mortification of the flesh.\10/ [[92]]

\9/ One of the distinctive ideas in Christianity was the paradox that the Savior was also the Judge, an idea which gave it a special pre-eminence over other religions. -- "Father and Son," or "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit": the dual and the triple formula interchange, but the former is rather older, though both can be traced as far back as Paul. Personally I should doubt if it was he who stamped the latter formula. Like the "Church," "the new People," "the true Israel," "apostles, prophets, and teachers," "regeneration," etc., it was probably created by the primitive circle of disciples. -- The preaching of Jesus was combined with the confession of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and with the church, the forgiveness of sins, and the resurrection of the body. The Roman symbol is our earliest witness to this combination, and it was probably the earliest actual witness; it hardly arose out of the work of missions, in the narrower sense of the term, but out of the earlier catechetical method.

\10/ Hermas 26.1 (Mand. 1):  Πρῶτον πάντων πίστευσον ὅτι εἷς ἐστιν ὁ θεός, ὁ τὰ πάντα κτίσας καὶ καταρτίσας, κτλ.  ("First of all, believe that God is one, even he who created and ordered all things," etc.), is a particularly decisive passage as regards the first point (viz., the one living God); see Praedic. Petri in Clem., Strom. 5.6.48, 6.5.39, 6.6.48 (the twelve disciples dispatched by Jesus with the charge to preach to all the inhabitants of the world, that they may know God is one;  εὐαγγελίσασθαι τοὺς κατὰ τὴν οἰκουμένην ἀνθρώπους, γινώσκειν ὅτι εἷς θεός ἐστιν). In Chap. 2 of his Apology, Aristides sets forth the preaching of Jesus Christ; but when he has to summarize Christianity, he is contented to say that "Christians are those who have found the one true God." Cp., e.g., Chap. 15: "Christians . . . have found the truth. . . . They know and trust in God, the creator of heaven and earth, through whom and from whom are all things, beside whom there is none other, and from whom they have received commandments which are written on their hearts and kept in the faith and expectation of the world to come." (Cp. also the Apology of pseudo-Melito.) The other three points are [[92b]] laid down with especial clearness in the Acta Theclae, where Paul is said (1.5) to have handed down πάντα τὰ λόγια κυρίου καὶ τῆς γεννήσεως καὶ τῆς ἀναστάσεως τοῦ ἠγαπημένου ("all the sayings of the Lord and of the birth and resurrection of the Beloved"), and where the contents of his preaching are described as λόγος θεοῦ περὶ ἐγκρατείας καὶ ἀναστάσεως ("the word of God upon self-control and the resurrection"). The last-named pair of ideas are to be taken as mutually supplementary; the resurrection or eternal life is certain, but it is conditioned by ἐγκρατεία, which is therefore put first. Cp., for example, Vita Polycarpi 14: ἔλεγεν τὴν ἁγνείαν πρόδρομον εἶναι τῆς μελλούσης ἀφθάρτου βασιλείας  ("he said that purity was the precursor of the incorruptible kingdom to come").

The most overwhelming element in the new preaching was the resurrection of the flesh, the complete "restitutio in integrum," and the kingdom of glory. Creation and resurrection were the beginning and the end of the new doctrine. The hope of resurrection which it aroused gave rise to a fresh estimate of the individual value, and at the same time to quite inferior and sensuous desires. Faith in the resurrection of the body and in the millennium soon appeared to pagans to be the distinguishing feature of this silly religion. And the pagans were right. It was the distinguishing feature of Christianity at this period. Justin explains that all orthodox Christians held this doctrine and this hope. "Fiducia christianorum resurrectio mortuorum, illa credentes sumus," Tertullian writes (de Resurr. 1 [[[ET??]]), adding (in ch. 21) that this must not be taken allegorically, as the heretics allege, since "verisimile non est, ut ea species sacramenti, in quam fides tota committitur, in quam disciplina tota conititur, ambigue annuntiata et obscura proposita videatur" ([[[ET??]] the gospel is too important to be stated ambiguously; see further what follows). The earliest essays of a technical character by the teachers of the Catholic church were upon the resurrection of the flesh. It was a hope, too, which gave vent to the ardent desires of the oppressed, the poor, the slaves, and the disappointed upon earth: "We want to serve no longer, our wish is to reign soon" (Tert., de Orat. 5). "Though the times of this hope have been determined by the sacred pen, lest it should be fixed previous, I think, to the return of Christ, yet our prayers pant for the close of this age, for the passing of this world to the great day of the Lord, for the day of wrath and retribution" (Cum et tempora totius spei fida sunt sacrosancto stilo, ne liceat eam ante constitui quam in adventum, opinor, Christi, vota [[93]] nostra suspirant in saeculi huius occasum, in transitum mundi quoque ad diem domini magnum, diem irae et retributionis.-- Tert., de Resurr. 22). "May grace come and this world pass away! The Lord comes!" is the prayer of Christians at the Lord's Supper (Did. 10). In many circles this mood lasted even after the beginning of the third century, but it reached its height during the reign of Marcus Aurelius.\11/

\11/ Origen (de Princ. 2.11.2) has described in great detail the views of the chiliasts, whom he opposed as, even in his day, a retrograde party. His description proves that we cannot attribute too [[[ie overemphasize??]] sensuous opinions to them. They actually reckoned upon "nuptiarum conventiones et filiorum procreationes." [[[ET??]] Compare the words of Irenaeus in the fifth book of his large work upon the millennium, where he follows "apostolic tradition" and attaches himself to Papias. ***

From the outset "wisdom," "intelligence," "understanding," and "intellect" had a very wide scope. Indeed, there was hardly mission propaganda of any volume which did not over-flow into the "gnostic" spirit, i.e., the spirit of Greek philosophy. The play of imagination was at once unfettered and urged to its highest flights by the settled conviction (for we need not notice here the circles where a different view prevailed) that Jesus, the Savior, had come down from heaven. It was, after all, jejune to be informed, "We are the offspring of God" (Acts 17.28); but to be told that God became man and was incarnate in order that men might be divine -- this was the apex and climax of all knowledge. It was bound up with the speculative idea (1) that, as the incarnation was a cosmic and divine event, it must therefore involve a reviving and heightened significance for the whole creation; and (2) that the soul of man, hitherto divided from its primal source in God by forces and barriers of various degrees, now found the way open for its return to God, while every one of those very forces which had formerly barred the path was also liberated and transformed into a step and intermediate stage on the way back. Speculations upon God, the world, and the soul were inevitable, and they extended to the nature of the church. Here, too, the earthly and historical was raised to the level of the cosmic and transcendental.

At first the contrast between a "sound" gnosis and a heretical only emerged by degrees in the propaganda, although from the very outset it was felt that certain speculations seemed to imperil [[94]] the preaching of the gospel itself.\12/ The extravagances of the "gnosis" which penetrated all the syncretistic religion of the age, and issued in dualism and docetism, were corrected primarily by a "sound" gnosis, then by the doctrine of Christian freedom, by a sober, rational theology and ethics, by the realism of the saving facts in the history of Jesus, by the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, but ultimately and most effectively by the church prohibiting all "innovations" and fixing her tradition. From this standpoint Origen's definition of gospel preaching (Hom. in Joh. 32.9) is extremely instructive. After quoting Hermas 26 = Mand. 1 (the one God, the Creator), he adds: "It is also necessary to believe that Jesus Christ is Lord, and to believe all the truth concerning his deity and humanity, also to believe in the Holy Spirit, and that as free agents we are punished for our sins and rewarded for our good actions."

\12/ One of the most remarkable and suggestive phenomena of the time is the fact that wherever a ''dangerous" speculation sprang up, it was combated in such a way that part of it was taken over. For example, contrast Ephesians and Colossians with the "heresies" which had emerged in Phrygia (at Colosse); think of the "heresies" opposed by the Johannine writings, and then consider the Gnostic contents of the latter; compare the theology of Ignatius with the "heresies attacked in the Ignatian epistles"; think of the great gnostic systems of the second century, and then read their opponent Irenseus. "Vincendi vincentibus legem dederunt"! Such was the power of these Hellenistic, syncretistic ideas! It looks almost as if there had been a sort of disinfectant process, the "sound" doctrine being inoculated with a strong dilution of heresy, and thus made proof against virulent infection.

By the second century Christianity was being preached in very different ways. The evangelists of the Catholic church preached in one way throughout the East, and in another throughout the West, though their fundamental position was identical; the Gnostics and Marcionites, again, preached in yet another way. Still Tertullian was probably not altogether wrong in saying that missions to the heathen were not actively promoted by the latter; the Gnostics and the Marcionites, as a rule, confined their operations to those who were already Christians. After the gnostic controversy, the anti-gnostic rule of faith gradually became the one basis of the church's preaching. The ethical and impetuous element retreated behind [[95]] the dogmatic, although the emphasis upon self-control and asceticism never lost its vogue.

At the transition from the second to the third century, theology had extended widely, but the mission-preaching had then as ever to remain comparatively limited. For the "idiotae" it was enough, and more than enough, to hold the four points which we have already mentioned. Scenes like those described in Acts (8.26-38) were constantly being repeated, mutatis mutandis, especially during the days of persecution, when individual Christians suffered martyrdom joyfully; and this, although an orthodox doctrine of considerable range was in existence, which (in theory, at any rate) was essential. For many the sum of knowledge amounted to nothing more than the confession of the one God, who created the world, of Jesus the Lord, of the judgment, and of the resurrection; on the other hand, some of the chief arguments in the proof from prophecy, which played so prominent a part in all preaching to Jews and pagans (see Chapter 8), were disseminated far and wide; and as the apologists are always pointing in triumph to the fact that "among us," "tradesmen, slaves, and old women know how to give some account of God, and do not believe without evidence," the principles of the Christian conception [[96]] of God must have been familiar to a very large number of people.\13/

\13/ Together with the main articles in the proof from prophecy (i.e., a dozen passages or so from the Old Testament), the corresponding parts of the history of Jesus were best known and most familiar. An inevitable result of being viewed in this light and along this line was that the history of Jesus (apart from the crucifixion) represents almost entirely legendary materials (or ideal history) to a severely historical judgment. Probably no passage made so deep an impression as the birth-narratives in Matthew and especially in Luke. The fact that the story of the resurrection did not in its details prove a similar success, was due to a diversity of the narratives in the authoritative scriptures, which was so serious that the very exegetes of the period (and they were capable of almost anything!) failed to give any coherent or impressive account of what transpired. Hence the separate narratives in the gospels relating to the resurrection did not possess the same importance as the birth-narratives. "Raised on the third day from the dead, according to the scripture" : this brief confession was all that rivaled the popularity of Luke 1-2. and the story of the wise men from the East. The notion that the apostles themselves compiled a quintessence of Christian doctrine was widely current; but the greatest difference of opinion prevailed as to what the quintessence consisted of. The Didache marks the beginning of a series of compositions which were supposed to have been written by the apostles collectively, or to contain an authoritative summary of their regulations.

These four points, then -- the one living God, Jesus our Savior and Judge, the resurrection of the flesh, and self-control -- combined to form the new religion. It stood out in bold relief from the old religions, and above all from the Jewish; yet in spite of its hard struggle with polytheism, it was organically related to the process of evolution which was at work throughout all religion, upon the eastern and the central coasts of the Mediterranean. The atmosphere from which those four principles drew their vitality was the conception of recompense -- i.e., the absolute supremacy of the moral element in life on the one hand, and the redeeming cross of Christ upon the other. No account of the principles underlying the mission-preaching of Christianity is accurate, if it does not view everything from the standpoint of this conception : the sovereignty of morality, and the assurance of redemption by the forgiveness of sins, based on the cross of Christ.\14/ "Grace,''' i.e., forgiveness, did play a leading role, but grace never displaced recompense. From the very first, morality was inculcated within the Christian churches in two ways: by the Spirit of Christ and by the conception of judgment and of recompense. Yet both were marked by a decided bent to the future, for the Christ of both was "he who was to return." To the mind of primitive Christianity the "present" and the "future" were sharply opposed to each [[97]] other,  and it was this opposition which furnished the principle of self-control with its most powerful motive.\15/ It became, indeed, with many people a sort of glowing passion. The church which prayed at every service, "May grace come and this world pass away: maranatha," was the church which gave directions like those which we read in the opening parable of Hermas.\16/ "From [[98]] the lips of all Christians this word is to be heard: The world is crucified to me, and I to the world" (Celsus, cited by Origen, 5.64).\17/

\14/ Redemption by the forgiveness of sins was, strictly speaking, considered to take place once and for all. The effects of Christ's death were conferred on the individual at baptism, and all his previous sins were blotted out. Many teachers, like Paul, presented the cross of Christ as the content of Christianity. Thus Tertullian (de Carne 5), protesting against the docetism of Marcion, which impaired the death of Christ upon the cross, calls out, "O spare the one hope of the whole world" (parce unicae spei totius orbis). The cross exerts a protective and defensive influence over the baptized (against demons), but it does not bestow any redeeming deliverance from sin. Speculations on the latter point do not arise till later. As a mystery, of course, it is inexhaustible, and therefore it is impossible to state its influence. Pseudo-Barnabas and Justin are already mystagogues of the cross; cp. Ep. Barn. 11-12, and Justin's Apol. 1.55, where he triumphantly claims that "the wicked demons never imitated the crucifixion, not even in the case of any of the so-called sons of Zeus" (οὐδαμοῦ οὐδ’ ἐπί τινος τῶν λεγομένων υἱῶν τοῦ Διὸς τὸ σταυρωθῆναι ἐμιμήσαντο).  Cp, further Minucius, Octav. 29; Tert, ad. Nat. 1.12, etc.

\15/ Cp. 2 Clem., ad Cor. 6.3-6:  ἔστιν δὲ οὗτος ὁ αἰὼν καὶ ὁ μέλλων δύο ἐχθροί.  (4.)  οὗτος λέγει μοιχείαν καὶ φθορὰν καὶ φιλαργυρίαν καὶ ἀπάτην, ἐκεῖνος δὲ τούτοις ἀποτάσσεται.  (5.)  οὐ δυνάμεθα οὖν τῶν δύο φίλοι εἶναι· δεῖ δὲ ἡμᾶς τούτῳ ἀποταξαμένους ἐκείνῳ χρᾶσθαι. (6.)  οἰόμεθα, ὅτι βέλτιόν ἐστιν τὰ ἐνθάδε μισῆσαι, ὅτι μικρὰ καὶ ὀλιγοχρόνια καὶ φθαρτά, ἐκεῖνα δὲ ἀγαπῆσαι, τὰ ἀγαθὰ τὰ ἄφθαρτα ("This age and the future age are two enemies. The one speaks of adultery, corruption, avarice, and deceit; the other bids farewell to these. We cannot, therefore, be friends of both; we must part with the one and embrace the other. We judge it better to hate the things which are here, because they are small and transient and corruptible, and to love the things that are yonder, for they are good and incorruptible").

\16/ Here is the passage (Hermas 50 = Sim. 1); it will serve to represent a large class. "You know that you servants of God dwell in a foreign land, for your city is far from this city. If, then, you know the city where you are to dwell, why provide yourselves here with fields and expensive luxuries and buildings and chambers to no purpose? He who makes such provision for this city has no mind to return to his own city. Foolish, double-minded, wretched man! Seest thou not that all these things are foreign to thee and controlled by another? For the lord of this city shall say, 'I will not have thee in my city; leave this city, for thou keepest not my laws.' Then, possessor of fields and dwellings and much property besides, what wilt thou do with field, and house, and all thine other gains, when thou art expelled by him? For the lord of this land has a right to tell thee, 'Keep my laws, or leave my land.' What then shalt thou do, thou who hast already a law over thee in thine own city? For the sake of thy fields and other possessions wilt thou utterly repudiate thy law and follow the law of this city? Beware! It may be unwise for thee to repudiate thy law. For shouldst thou wish to return once more to thy city, thou shalt not be allowed in: thou shalt be shut out, because thou didst repudiate its law. So beware. Dwelling in a foreign land, provide thyself with nothing more than a suitable competency; and whenever the master of this city expels thee for opposing his law, be ready to leave his city and seek thine own, keeping thine own law cheerfully and unmolested. So beware, you that serve God and have him in your heart; perform his works, mindful of his commandments and of the promises he has made, in the faith that he will perform the latter if the former be observed. Instead of fields, then, buy souls in trouble, as each of you is able; visit widows and orphans, and neglect them not; expend on such fields and houses, which God has given to you [i.e., on the poor], your wealth and all your pains. The Master endowed you with riches that you might perform such ministries for him. Far better is it to buy fields, possessions, houses of this kind; thou wilt find them in thine own city when thou dost visit it. Such expenditure is noble and cheerful; it brings joy, not fear and sorrow. Practise not the expenditure of pagans, then: that ill becomes you, as God's servants. Practise your proper expenditure, in which you may rejoice. Do not stamp things falsely; [[98b]] never touch other people's property, nor lust after it, for it is evil to lust after what belongs to other people. Do thine own task and thou shalt be saved." For all the rigor of his counsel, however, it never occurs to Hermas that the distinction of rich and poor should actually cease within the church. This is plain, if further proof be needed, from the next parable. The progress of thought upon this question in the church is indicated by the tractate of Clement of Alexandria entitled "Quis dives salvetur?" Moreover, the saying already put into the lips of Jesus in John 12.8 ("the poor ye have always with you"), a saying which was hardly inserted without some purpose, shows that the abolition of the distinction between rich and poor was never contemplated in the church.

\17/ The pessimistic attitude of the primitive Christians towards the world cannot be too strongly emphasised. (Marcion called his fellow-confessors συνταλαίπωροι καὶ συμμισούμενοι, "partners in the suffering of wretchedness and of hatred." -- Tert., adv. Marc. 4.9). This is confirmed by the evidence even of Tertullian, and of Origen himself. Let one instance suffice. In Hom. 8 ad. Levit., t. 9 pp. 316 f., Origen remarks that in the Scriptures only worldly men, like Pharaoh and Herod, celebrate their birthdays, whereas "the saints not only abstain from holding a feast on their birthdays, but, being filled with the Holy Spirit, curse that day" (Sancti non solum non agunt festivitatem in die natali suo, sed a spiritu sancto repleti exsecrantur hunc diem). The true birthday of Christians is the day of their death. Origen recalls Job, in this connection; but the form which his pessimism assumes is bound up, of course, with special speculative ideas of his own.

This resolute renunciation of the world was really the first thing which made the church competent and strong to tell upon the world. Then, if ever, was the saying true : "He who would do anything for the world must have nothing to do with it." Primitive Christianity has been upbraided for being too un-worldly and ascetic. But revolutions are not effected with rosewater, and it was a veritable revolution to overthrow polytheism and establish the majesty of God and goodness in the world -- for those who believed in them, and also for those who did not. This could never have happened, in the first instance, had not men asserted the vanity of the present world, and practically severed themselves from it. The rigor of this attitude, however, hardly checked the mission-preaching; on the contrary, it intensified it, since instead of being isolated it was set side by side with the message of the Savior and of salvation, of love and charity. And we must add, that for all its trenchant forms and the strong bias it imparted to the minds of men towards the future, the idea of recompense was saved from harshness and [[99]] inertia by its juxtaposition with a feeling of perfect confidence that God was present, and a conviction of his care and of his providence. No mode of thought was more alien to early Christianity than what we call deism. The early Christians knew the Father in heaven; they knew that God was near them and guiding them; the more thoughtful were conscious that he reigned in their life with a might of his own. This was the God they proclaimed. And thus, in their preaching, the future became already present; hard and fast recompense seemed to disappear entirely, for what further "recompense" was needed by people who were living in God's presence, conscious in every faculty of the soul, aye, and in every sense of the wisdom, power, and goodness of their God? Moods of assured possession and of yearning, experiences of grace and phases of impassioned hope, came and went in many a man besides the apostle Paul. He yearned for the prospect of release from the body, and thus felt a touching sympathy for everything in bondage, for the whole creation in its groans. But it was no harassing or uncertain hope that engrossed all his heart and being; it was hope fixed upon a strong and secure basis in his filial relationship to God and his possession of God's Spirit.\18/

\18/ It was only in rare cases that the image of Christ's person as a whole produced what may be termed a "Christ-emotion," which moved people to give articulate expression to their experiences. Ignatius is really the only man we can name alongside of Paul and John. Yet in how many cases of which we know nothing, this image of Christ must have been the dominating power of human life! In some of the dying confessions of the martyrs, and in the learned homilies of Origen, it emerges in a very affecting way.

It is hardly necessary to point out that, by proclaiming repentance and strict morals on the one hand, and offering the removal of sins and redemption on the other hand, the Christian propaganda involved an inner cleavage which individual Christians must have realized in very different ways. If this removal of sins and redemption was bound up with the sacrament or specifically with the sacrament of baptism, then it came to this, that thousands were eager for this sacrament and nothing more, satisfied with belief in its immediate and magical efficacy, and devoid of any serious attention to the moral law. Upon the other hand, the moral demand could weigh so heavily on [[100]] the conscience that redemption came to be no more than the reward and prize of a holy life. Between these two extremes a variety of standpoints was possible. The propaganda of the church made a sincere effort to assign equal weight to both elements of its message; but sacraments are generally more welcome than moral counsels, and that age was particularly afflicted with the sacramental mania. It added to the mysteries the requisite quality of naivete, and at the same time the equally requisite note of subtlety.

CHAPTER 2

THE GOSPEL OF THE SAVIOR AND OF SALVATION\1/

\1/ This chapter is based on a fresh revision of Section 6 in my study on "Medicinisches aus der ältesten Kirchengeschichte" (Texte and Unters. 8, 1892).

The gospel, as preached by Jesus; is a religion of redemption, but it is a religion of redemption in a secret sense. Jesus proclaimed a new message (the near approach of God's kingdom, God as the Father, as his Father), and also a new law, but he did his work as a Savior or healer, and it was amid work of this kind that he was crucified. Paul, too, preached the gospel as a religion of redemption.

Jesus appeared among his people as a physician. "The healthy need not a physician, but the sick" (Mark 2.17, Luke 5.31). The first three gospels depict him as the physician of soul and body, as the Savior or healer of men. Jesus says very little about sickness; he cures it. He does not explain that sickness is health; he calls it by its proper name, and is sorry for the sick person. There is nothing sentimental or subtle about Jesus; he draws no fine distinctions, he utters no sophistries about healthy people being really sick and sick people really healthy. He sees himself surrounded by crowds of sick folk; he attracts them, and his one impulse is to help them. Jesus does not distinguish rigidly between sicknesses of the body and of the soul; he takes them both as different expressions of the one supreme ailment in humanity. But he knows their sources. He knows it is easier to say, "Rise up and walk," than to say, "Thy sins are forgiven thee" (Mark 2.9).\2/ [[102]] And he acts accordingly. No sickness of the soul repels him -- he is constantly surrounded by sinful women and tax-gatherers. Nor is any bodily disease too loathsome for Jesus. In this world of wailing, misery, filth, and profligacy, which pressed upon him every day, he kept himself invariably vital, pure, and busy.

\2/Or are we to interpret the passage in another way? Is it easier to say, "Thy sins are forgiven thee"? In that case, "easier" evidently must be taken in a different sense.

In this way he won men and women to be his disciples. The circle by which he was surrounded was a circle of people who had been healed.\3/ They were healed because they had believed on him, i.e., because they had gained health from his character and words. To know God meant a sound soul. This was the rock on which Jesus had rescued them from the shipwreck of their life. They knew they were healed, just because they had recognized God as the Father in his Son. Henceforth they drew health and real life as from a never-failing stream.

\3/ An old legend of Edessa regarding Jesus is connected with his activity as a healer of men. At the close of the third century the people of Edessa, who had become Christians during the second half of the second century, traced back their faith to the apostolic age, and treasured up an alleged correspondence between Jesus and their King Abgar. This correspondence is still extant (cp. Euseb., H.E. 1.13). It is a naïve romance. The king, who is severely ill, writes thus "Abgar, toparch of Edessa, to Jesus the excellent Savior, who has appeared in the country of Jerusalem; greeting. I have heard of thee and of thy cures, performed without medicine or herb. For, it is said, thou makest the blind to see, and the lame to walk; thou cleansest lepers, thou expellest unclean spirits and demons, thou healest those afflicted with lingering diseases, and thou raisest the dead. Now, as I have heard all this about thee, I have concluded that one of two things must be true: either thou art God, and, having descended from heaven, doest these things, or else thou art a son of God by what thou doest. I write to thee, therefore, to ask thee to come and cure the disease from which I am suffering. For I have heard that the Jews murmur against thee, and devise evil against thee. Now, I have a very small, yet excellent city, which is large enough for both of us." To which Jesus answered: "Blessed art thou for having believed in me without seeing me. For it is written concerning me that those who have seen me will not believe in me, while they who have not seen me will believe and be saved. But as to thy request that I should come to thee, I must fulfill here all things for which I have been sent, and, after fulfilling them, be taken up again to him who sent me. Yet after I am taken up, I will send thee one of my disciples to cure thy disease and give life to thee and thine." The narrative then goes on to describe how Thaddaeus came to Edessa and cured the king by the laying on of hands, without medicine or herbs, after he had confessed his faith. "And Abdus, the son of Abdus, was also cured by him of gout."

"Ye will say unto me this parable: Physician, heal thyself" (Luke 4.23). He who helped so many people, seemed himself [[103]] to be always helpless. Harassed, calumniated, threatened with death by the authorities of his nation, and persecuted in the name of the very God whom he proclaimed, Jesus went to his cross. But even the cross only displayed for the first time the full depth and energy of his saving power. It put the copestone on his mission, by showing men that the sufferings of the just are the saving force in human history.

"Surely he hath borne our sickness and carried our sorrows; by his stripes we are healed."\4/ This was the new truth that issued from the cross of Jesus. It flowed out, like a stream of fresh water, on the arid souls of men and on their dry morality. The morality of outward acts and regulations gave way to the conception of a life which was personal, pure, and divine, which spent itself in the service of the brethren, and gave itself up ungrudgingly to death. This conception was the new principle of life. It uprooted the old life swaying to and fro between sin and virtue; it also planted a new life whose aim was nothing short of being a disciple of Christ, and whose strength was drawn from the life of Christ himself. The disciples went forth to preach the tidings of "God the Savior," of that Savior and physician whose person, deeds, and sufferings were man's salvation.\5/ Paul was giving vent to no sudden or extravagant emotion, but expressing with quiet confidence what he was fully conscious of at every moment, when he wrote to the Galatians (2.20), "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. For the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave up himself for me." Conscious of this, the primitive Christian missionaries were ready to die daily. And that was just the reason why their cause did not collapse.

\4/ Cp. 1 Pet. 2.24, οὗ τῷ μώλωπι αὐτοὶ ἰάθητε. [[[ET, text var?]]

\5/ Luke 2.11, ἐτέχθη ὑμῖν σωτὴρ, ὅς ἐστιν Χριστὸς κύριος ; John 4.42, οἴδαμεν ὅτι οὗτός ἐστιν ἀληθῶς ὁ σωτὴρ τοῦ κόσμου; Tit. 2.11,  ᾿Επεφάνη ἡ χάρις τοῦ θεοῦ σωτήριος πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις; Tit. 3.4, ἡ χρηστότης καὶ ἡ φιλανθρωπία ἐπεφάνη τοῦ σωτῆρος ἡμῶν θεοῦ. By several Christian circles, indeed, the title "Savior" was reserved for Jesus and for Jesus only. Irenaeus (1.1.3) reproaches the Valentinian Ptolemaeus for never calling Jesus κύριος but only σωτήρ, and, as a matter of fact, in the epistle of Ptolemaeus to Flora, Jesus is termed σωτήρ exclusively.

In the world to which the apostles preached their new [[104]] message, religion had not been intended originally for the sick, but for the sound. The Deity sought the pure and sound to be his worshippers. The sick and sinful, it was held, are a prey to the powers of darkness; let them see to the recovery of health by some means or another, health for soul and body -- for until then they are not pleasing to the gods. It is interesting to observe how this conception is still dominant at the close of the second century, in Celsus, the enemy of Christendom (Orig., c. Cels. 3.59 f.). "Those who invite people to participate in other solemnities, make the following proclamation: 'He who hath clean hands and sensible speech (is to draw near)'; or again, 'He who is pure from all stain, conscious of no sin in his soul, and living an honorable and just life (may approach).' Such is the cry of those who promise purification from sins.\6/ But let us now hear what sort of people these Christians invite. 'Anyone who is a sinner,' they say, 'or foolish, or simple-minded -- in short, any unfortunate will be accepted by the kingdom of God.' By 'sinner' is meant an unjust person, a thief, a burglar, a poisoner, a sacrilegious man, or a robber of corpses. Why, if you wanted an assembly of robbers, these are just the sort of people you would summon!"\7/ Here Celsus has stated, as lucidly as one could desire, the cardinal difference between Christianity and ancient religion.\8/

\6/ The meaning is that even to mysteries connected with purification those only were bidden who had led upon the whole a good and a just life.

\7/ Porphyry's position is rather different. He cannot flatly set aside the saying of Christ about the sick, for whose sake he came into the world. But as a Greek he is convinced that religion is meant for intelligent, just, and inquiring people. Hence his statement on the point (in Mac. Magnes, 4.10) is rather confused.

\8/ Origen makes a skillful defense of Christianity at this point. "If a Christian does extend his appeal to the same people as those addressed by a robber-chief, his aim is very different. He does so in order to bind up their wounds with his doctrine, in order to allay the festering sores of the soul with those remedies of faith which correspond to the wine and oil and other applications employed to give the body relief from pain" (3.60). "Celsus misrepresents facts when he declares that we hold God was sent to sinners only. It is just as if he found fault with some people for saying that some kind and gracious [φιλανθρωπότατος, an epithet of Aesculapius] monarch had sent his physician to a city for the benefit of the sick people in that city. God the Word was thus sent as a physician for sinners, but also as a teacher of divine mysteries for those who are already pure and sin no more" (3.61).

But, as we have already seen (Book 1, Chapter 3), the [[105]] religious temper which Christianity encountered, and which developed and diffused itself very rapidly in the second and third centuries, was no longer what we should term "ancient." Here again we see that the new religion made its appearance "when the time was fulfilled." The cheerful, naive spirit of the old religion, so far as it still survived, lay a-dying, and its place was occupied by fresh religious needs. Philosophy had set the individual free, and had discovered a human being in the common citizen. By the blending of states and nations, which coalesced to form a universal empire, cosmopolitanism had now become a reality. But there was always a reverse side to cosmopolitanism, viz., individualism. The refinements of material civilization and mental culture made people more sensitive to the element of pain in life, and this increase of sensitiveness showed itself also in the sphere of morals, where more than one Oriental religion came forward to satisfy its demand. The Socratic philosophy, with its fine ethical ideas, issued from the heights of the thinker to spread across the lowlands of the common people. The Stoics, in particular, paid unwearied attention to the "health and diseases of the soul," moulding their practical philosophy upon this type of thought. There was a real demand for purity, consolation, expiation, and healing, and as these could not be found elsewhere, they began to be sought in religion. In order to secure them, people were on the look-out for new sacred rites. The evidence for this change which passed over the religious temper lies in the writings of Seneca, Epictetus, and many others; but a further testimony of much greater weight is afforded by the revival which attended the cult of Aesculapius during the Imperial age.\9/ As far back as 290 B.C.E., Aesculapius of Epidaurus had been summoned to Rome on the advice of the Sibylline books. He had his sanctuary on the island in the Tiber, and close to it, just as at the numerous shrines of Asclepius in Greece, there stood a sanatorium in which sick persons waited for the injunctions [[106]] which the god imparted during sleep. Greek physicians followed the god to Rome, but it took a long time for either the god or the Greek doctors to become popular. The latter do riot seem at first to have recommended themselves by their skill. "In 219 B.C.E. the first Greek surgeon became domiciled in Rome. He actually received the franchise, and was presented by the State with a shop 'in compito Acilio.' But this doctor made such unmerciful havoc among his patients by cutting and cauterizing, that the name of surgeon became a synonym for that of a butcher."\10/ Things were different under the Caesars. Though the Romans themselves still eschewed the art of medicine, considering it a kind of divination, skilled Greek doctors were in demand at Rome itself, and the cult of that "deus clinicus," Aesculapius, was in full vogue. From Rome his cult spread over all the West, fusing itself here and there with the cult of Serapis or some other deity, and accompanied by the subordinate cult of Hygeia and Salus, Telesphorus and Somnus. Furthermore, the sphere of influence belonging to this god of healing widened steadily; he became "savior" pure and simple, the god who aids in all distress, the "friend of man" (φιλανθρωπότατος).\11/ The more men sought deliverance and healing in religion, the greater grew this god's [[107]] repute. He belonged to the old gods who held out longest against Christianity, and therefore he is often to be met with in the course of early Christian literature. The cult of Aesculapius was one of those which were most widely diffused throughout the second half of the second century, and also during the third century. People traveled to the famous sanatoria of the god, as they travel today to baths. He was appealed to in diseases of the body and of the soul; people slept in his temples, to be cured; the costliest gifts were brought him as the ΘΕΟΣ  ΣΩΤΗΡ ("God the Savior"); and people consecrated their lives to him, as innumerable inscriptions and statues testify. In the case of other gods as well, healing virtue now became a central feature. Zeus himself and Apollo (cp., e.g., Tatian, Orat. 8) appeared in a new light. They, too, became "saviors." No one could be a god any longer, unless he was also a savior.\12/ Glance over Origen's great reply to Celsus, and you soon discover that one point hotly disputed by these two remarkable men was the question whether Jesus or Aesculapius was the true Savior. Celsus champions the one with as much energy and credulity as Origen the other. The combination of crass superstition and sensible criticism presented by both men is an enigma to us at this time of day. We moderns can hardly form any clear idea of their mental bearings. In 3.3 Origen observes: "Miracles occurred in all lands, or at least in many places. Celsus himself admits in his book that, Esculapius healed diseases and revealed the future in all cities that were devoted to him, such as Tricca, Epidaurus, Cos, and Pergamum." According to 3.22 Celsus charged the Christians with being unable to make up their minds to call Aesculapius a god, simply because he had been first a man. Origen's retort is that the Greek tradition made Zeus slay Aesculapius with a thunderbolt. Celsus (3.24) declared it to be an authentic fact that a great number of Greeks and barbarians had seen, and still saw, no mere wraith of Aesculapius, but the god himself engaged in healing and helping man, whereas the disciples of Jesus had merely seen a phantom. Origen is very indignant at this, but his counter-assertions are [[108]] weak. Does Celsus also appeal to the great number of Greeks and barbarians who believe in Aesculapius? Origen, too, can point to the great number of Christians, to the truth of their scriptures, and to their successful cures in the name of Jesus. But then he suddenly alters his defense, and proceeds (3.25) to make the following extremely shrewd observation: "Even were I going to admit that a demon named Aesculapius had the power of healing bodily diseases, I might still remark to those who are amazed at such cures or at the prophecies of Apollo, that such curative power is of itself neither good nor bad, but within reach of godless as well as of honest folk; while in the same way it does not follow that he who can foretell the future is on that account an honest and upright man. One is not in a position to prove the virtuous character of those who heal diseases and foretell the future. Many instances may be adduced of people being healed who did not deserve to live, people who were so corrupt and led a life of such wickedness that no sensible physician would have troubled to cure them. . . The power of healing diseases is no evidence of anything specially divine." From all these remarks of Origen, we can see how high the cult of Aesculapius was ranked, and how keenly the men of that age were on the lookout for "salvation."

\9/ For the cult of Aesculapius, see von Wilamowitz-Moellendorf's Isyllos von Epidauros (1886), pp. 36 f., 44 f., 116 f., and Usener's Gotternamen (1896), pp. 147 f., 350, besides Ilberg's study of Aesculapius in Teubner's Neuen Jahrbuchern, 2, 1901, and the cautious article by Thramer in Pauly-Wissowa's Real. Encykl. (2.1642 f.).

\10/ Preller-Jordan, Rom. Mythologie, 2. p. 243. Pliny observes: "Mox a saevitia secandi urendique transisse nomen in carnificem et in taedium artem omnesque medicos" ("Owing to cruelty in cutting and cauterizing, the name of surgeon soon passed into that of butcher, and a disgust was felt for the profession and for all doctors").

\11/ The cult was really humane, and it led the physicians also to be humane. In a passage from the Παραγγελίαι of pseudo-Hippocrates we read : "I charge you not to show yourselves inhuman, but to take the wealth or poverty (of the patient) into account, in certain cases even to treat them gratis" -- the repute of the ἰατροὶ ἀνάργυροι  is well known -- "and to consider future gratitude more than present fame. If, therefore, the summons for aid happens to be the case of an unknown or impecunious man, he is most of all to be assisted; for wherever there is love to one's neighbor, it means readiness to act" (9.258 Littré,  3.321 Erm.; a passage which Ilberg brought under my notice, cp. also the Berl. Philol. Wochenschrift for March 25, 1893). How strongly the Christians themselves felt their affinity to humane physicians is proved by a striking instance which Ilberg quotes (loc. cit., from 6.90 Littré, 2.123 Erm.). Eusebius writes (H. E. 10.4.11) that Jesus, "like some excellent physician, in order to cure the sick, examines what is repulsive, handles sores, and reaps pain himself from the sufferings of others." This passage is literally taken from the treatise of pseudo-Hippocrates περὶ φυσῶν  ὀ μὲν γὰρ ἰητρὸς ὁρεῖ τε δεινά, θιγγάνει τε ἀηδέων ἐπ’ ἀλλοτρίῃσί δὲ ξυμφορῇσιν ἰδίας καρποῦται λύπας.

\12/ Corresponding to this, we have Porphyry's definition of the object of philosophy as ἡ τῆς ψυχῆς σωτηρία  (the salvation of the soul).

Into this world of craving for salvation the preaching of Christianity made its way. Long before it had achieved its final triumph by dint of an impressive philosophy of religion, its success was already assured by the fact that it promised and offered salvation -- a feature in which it surpassed all other religions and cults. It did more than set up the actual Jesus against the imaginary Aesculapius of dreamland. Deliberately and consciously it assumed the form of "the religion of salvation or healing," or "the medicine of soul and body," and at the same time it recognized that one of its chief duties was to care assiduously for the sick in body.\13/ We shall now select one or two examples out of the immense wealth of material, to throw light upon both of these points.

\13/ The New Testament itself is so saturated with medicinal expressions, employed metaphorically, that a collection of them would fill several pages. [[[add bibliog note??]]

Take, first of all, the theory. Christianity never lost hold [[109]] of its innate principle; it was, and it remained, a religion for the sick. Accordingly it assumed that no one, or at least hardly any one, was in normal health, but that men were always in a state of disability. This reading of human nature was not confined to Paul, who looked on all men outside of Christ as dying, dying in their sins; a similar, though simpler, view was taught by the numerous unknown missionaries of primitive Christianity. The soul of man is sick, they said, a prey to death from the moment of his birth. The whole race lies a-dying. But now "the goodness and the human kindness of God the Savior" have appeared to restore the sick soul.\14/ Baptism was therefore conceived as a bath for regaining the soul's health, or for "the recovery of life";\15/ the Lord's Supper was valued as "the potion of immortality,"\16/ and penitence was termed "vera de satisfactione medicina" (the true medicine derived from the atonement, Cypr., de Lapsis 15). At the celebration of the sacrament, thanks were offered for the "life" therein bestowed (Did. 9-10). The conception of "life" acquired a new and deeper meaning. Jesus had already spoken of a "life" beyond the reach of death, to be obtained by the sacrifice of a man's earthly life. The idea and the term were taken up by Paul and by the fourth evangelist, who summed up in them the entire blessings of religion. With the tidings of immortality, the new religion confronted sorrow, misery, sin, and death. So much, at least, the world of paganism could understand. It could understand the promise of bliss and immortality resembling that of the blessed gods. And not a few pagans understood the justice of the accompanying condition that one had to submit to the regime of the religion, that the soul had to be pure and holy before it could become immortal. Thus they grasped the message of a great Physician who preaches "abstinence" and bestows the gift of "life."\17/ [[110]] Anyone who had felt a single ray of the power and glory of the new life reckoned his previous life to have been blindness, [[111]] disease, and death --  a view attested by both the apostolic fathers and the apologists.\18/ "He bestowed on us the light, he spoke to us as a father to his sons, he saved us in our lost estate….Blind were we in our understanding, worshipping stones and wood and gold and silver and brass, nor was our whole life aught but death."\19/ The mortal will put on, nay, has already put on, immortality, the perishable will be robed in the imperishable: such was the glad cry of the early Christians, who took up arms against a sea of troubles, and turned the terror of life's last moment into a triumph. "Those miserable people," says Lucian in the Proteus Peregrinus, "have got it into their heads that they are perfectly immortal." He would certainly have made a jest upon it had any occurred to his mind; but whenever this nimble scoffer is depicting the faith of Christians, there is a remarkable absence of anything like jesting.

\14/ Tit. 3.4 : ἡ χρηστότης καὶ ἡ φιλανθρωπία ἐπεφάνη τοῦ σωτῆρος ἡμῶν θεοῦ ... ἔσωσεν ἡμᾶς. See the New Testament allusions to σωτήρ.

\15/ Tert., de Baptism. 1, etc., etc.; Clement (Paedag. 1.6.29) calls baptism παιωνίον φαρμάκον. Tertullian describes it as "aqua medicinalis."

\16/ Ignatius, Justin, and Irenaeus.

\17/ Clement of Alexandria opens. his Paedagogus by describing his Logos as the physician who heals suffering (1.1.1., τὰ πάθη ὁ παραμυθητικὸς λόγος ἰᾶται). He [[110b]] distinguishes the λόγος προτρεπτικός, ὑποθετικός, and παραμυθητικός,  to which is added further ὁ διδακτικός. And the Logos is Christ. Gregory Thaumaturgus also calls the Logos a physician, in his panegyric on Origen (16). In the pseudo-Clementine homilies, Jesus, who is the true prophet, is always the physician; similarly Peter's work everywhere is that of the great physician who, by the sole means of prayer and speech, heals troops of sick folk (see especially Bk. 7). Simon Magus, again, is represented as the wicked magician, who evokes disease wherever he goes. Origen has depicted Jesus the physician more frequently and fully than anyone else. One at least of his numerous passages on the subject may be cited (from Hom. 8, in Levit., ch. 1. vol. 9. pp. 312 f): "Medicum dici in scripturis divinis dominum nostrum Jesum Christum, etiam ipsius domini sententia perdocemur, sicut dicit in evangeliis [here follows Matt. 9.12 f.]. Omnis autem medicus ex herbarum succis vet arborurn vet etiam metallorum venis vel animantium naturis profectura corporibus medicamenta componit. Sed herbas istas si quis forte, antequam pro ratione artis componantur, adspiciat, si quidem in agris aut montibus, velut foenum vile conculcat et praeterit. Si vero eas intra medici scholam dispositas per ordinem viderit, licet odorem tristem, fortem et austerum reddant, tamen suspicabitur eas curae vel remedii aliquid continere, etiamsi nondurn quae vel qualis sit sanitatis ac remedii virtus agnoverit. Haec de communibus medicis diximus. Veni nunc ad Jesum coelestem medicum, intra ad hanc stationem medicinae eius ecclesiam, vide ibi languentium iacere multitudinem. Venit mulier, quae et partu immunda effecta est, venit leprosus, qui extra castra separatus est pro immunditia leprae, quaerunt a medico remedium, quomodo sanentur, quomodo mundentur, et quia Jesus hic, qui medicus est, ipse est et verbum dei, aegris suis non herbarum succis, sed verborum sacramentis medicamenta conquirit. Quae verborum medicamenta si quis incultius per libros tamquam per agros videat esse dispersa, ignorans singulorum dictorum virtutem, ut vilia haec et nullum sermonis cultum habentia praeteribit. Qui sero ex aliqua parte didicerit animarum apud Christum esse medicinam, intelliget profecto ex hic libris, qui in ecclesiis recitantur, tamquam ex agris et montibus, salutares herbas adsumere unumquemque debere, sermonum dumtaxat vim, ut si quis illi est in anima languor, non tam exterioris frondis et corticis, quam succi interioris hausta virtute sanetur" ("The Lord himself teaches us, in the gospels, that our Lord Jesus Christ is called a physician in the Holy Scriptures. Every physician compounds his medicines for the good of the body from the juices of herbs or trees, or even from the veins of metals or living creatures. Now, supposing that anyone sees these herbs in their natural state, ere they are prepared by skill of art, he treads on them like common straw and passes by them, on mountain or field. But if he chances to see them arranged in the laboratory of a herbalist or physician, he will suspect that, for all their bitter and heavy and unpleasant odors, they have some healing and healthful virtue, though as yet he does not know the nature or the quality of this curative element. So much for our ordinary physicians. Now look at Jesus the heavenly physician. Come inside his room of healing, the church. Look at the multitude of impotent folk lying there. Here comes a woman unclean from childbirth, a leper expelled from the camp owing to his unclean disease; they ask the physician for aid, for a cure, for cleansing; and because this Jesus the Physician is also the Word of God, he [[111b]] applies, not the juices of herbs, but the sacraments of the Word to their diseases. Anyone who looked at these remedies casually as they lay in books, like herbs in the field, ignorant of the power of single words, would pass them by as common things without any grace of style. But he who ultimately discovers that Christ has a medicine for souls, will find from these books which are read in the churches, as he finds from mountains and fields, that each yields healing herbs, at least strength won from words, so that any weakness of soul is healed not so much by leaf and bark as by an inward virtue and juice").

\18/ That the vices were diseases was a theme treated by Christian teachers as often as by the Stoics. Cp., e.g., Origen, in Ep. ad Rom, Bk. 2. (Lommatzsch, 6.91 f.) : "Languores quidem animae ab apostolo in his (Rom. 2.8) designantur, quorum medelam nullus inveniet nisi prius morborum cognoverit causas et ideo in divinis scripturis aegritudines animae numerantur et remedia describuntur, ut hi, qui se apostolicis subdiderint disciplinis, ex his, quae scripta sunt, agnitis languoribus suis curati possint dicere : 'Lauda anima mea dominum, qui sanat omnes languores tuos'" ("The apostle here describes the diseases of the soul; their cure cannot be discovered till one diagnoses first of all the causes of such troubles, and consequently Holy Scripture enumerates the ailments of the soul, and describes their remedies, in order that those who submit to the apostolic discipline may be able to say, after they have been cured of diseases diagnosed by aid of what is written: 'Bless the Lord, O my soul, who healeth all thy diseases'").

\19/ 2 Clem. [[[title??], Ep. ad Cor. 1. Similar expressions are particularly common in Tatian, but indeed no apology is wholly devoid of them.

While the soul's health or the new life is a gift, however, it is a gift which must be appropriated from within. There was a great risk of this truth being overlooked by those who were accustomed to leave any one of the mysteries with the sense of [[112]] being consecrated and of bearing with them super mundane blessings as if they were so many articles. It would be easy also to show how rapidly the sacramental system of the church lapsed into the spirit of the pagan mysteries. But once the moral demand, i.e., the purity of the soul, was driven home, it proved such a powerful factor that it held its own within the Catholic church, even alongside of the inferior sacramental system. The salvation of the soul and the lore of that salvation never died away; in fact, the ancient church arranged all the details of her worship and her dogma with this end in view. She consistently presented herself as the great infirmary or the hospital of humanity: pagans, sinners, and heretics are her patients, ecclesiastical doctrines and observances are her medicines, while the bishops and pastors are the physicians, but only as servants of Christ, who is himself the physician of all souls.\20/ Let me give one or two instances of this. "As the good of the body is health, so the good of the soul is the knowledge of God," says Justin.\21/ "While we have time to be healed, let us put ourselves into the hands of God the healer, paying him recompense. And what recompense? What but repentance from a sincere heart" (2 Clem., ad Cor. 9). "Like some excellent physician, in order to cure the sick, Jesus examines what is repulsive, handles sores, and reaps pain himself from the sufferings of others; he has himself saved us from the very jaws of death -- us who were not merely diseased and suffering from terrible ulcers and wounds already mortified, but were also lying already among the dead . . .; he who is the giver of life and of light, our great physician,\22/ king and [[113]] lord, the Christ of God."\23/ "The physician cannot introduce any salutary medicines into the body that needs to be cured, without having previously eradicated the trouble seated in the body or averted the approaching trouble. Even so the teacher of the truth cannot convince anyone by an address on truth, so long as some error still lurks in the soul of the hearer, which forms an obstacle to his arguments" (Athenagoras, de resurr. 1). "Were we to draw from the axiom that 'disease is diagnosed by means of medical knowledge,' the inference that medical knowledge is the cause of disease, we should be making a preposterous statement. And as it is beyond doubt that the knowledge of salvation is a good thing, because it teaches men to know their sickness, so also is the law a good thing, inasmuch as sin is discovered thereby."\24/

\20/ Celsus, who knew this kind of Christian preaching intimately, pronounced the Christians to be quacks. "The teacher of Christianity," he declares, "acts like a person who promises to restore a sick man to health and yet hinders him from consulting skilled physicians, so as to prevent his own ignorance from being exposed." To which Origen retorts, "And who are the physicians from whom we deter simple folk?" He then proceeds to show that they cannot be the philosophers, and still less those who are not yet emancipated from the coarse superstition of polytheism (3.74).

\21/ Fragm. 9 (Otto, Corp. Apol. 3, p. 258). Cp. also the beautiful wish expressed at the beginning of 3 John: περὶ πάντων εὔχομαί σε εὐοδοῦσθαι καὶ ὑγιαίνειν, καθὼς εὐοδοῦταί σου ἡ ψυχή (ver. 2).

\22/ Cp. Ep. ad Diogn. 9.6, pseudo-Justin, de Resurr. 10: "Our physician, Jesus Christ"; Clem., Paedag. 1.2.6.1: "The Logos of the Father is the only [[113b]] Paeonian physician for human infirmities, and the holy charmer (ἐπῳδὸς ἅγιος) for the sick soul" (whereupon he quotes Ps. 82.2-3): "The physician's art cures the diseases of the body, according to Democritus, but wisdom frees the soul from its passions. Yet the good instructor, the Wisdom, the Logos of the Father, the creator of man, cares for all our nature, healing it in body and in soul alike -- he  ὁ πανακὴς τῆς ἀνθρωπότητος ἰατρός. ῾Ο σωτὴρ (the all-sufficient physician of humanity, the Savior)," whereupon he quotes Mark 2.2. See also ibid., 1.6.36, and 1.12.100. "Hence the Logos also is called Savior, since he has devised rational medicines for men; he preserves their health, lays bare their defects, exposes the causes of their evil affections, strikes at the root of irrational lusts, prescribes their diet, and arranges every antidote to heal the sick. For this is the greatest and most royal work of God, the saving of mankind. Patients are irritated at a physician who has no advice to give on the question of their health. But how should we not render thanks to the divine instructor," etc. (Paedag. 1.8.64-65).

\23/ Eus., H.E. 5.4.11 (already referred to on p. 106). Cp. also the description of the Bible in Aphraates as "the books of the wise Physician," and Cypr., de Op. 1: "Christ was wounded to cure us of our wounds. . . . When the Lord at his coming had healed that wound which Adam caused," etc. Metaphors from disease are on the whole very numerous in Cyprian; cp., e.g., de Habitu 2; de Unitate 3; de Lapsis 14, 34.

\24/ Origen, opposing the Antinomians in Comm. in Rom. 3.6 (Lommatzsch, 6. p. 195), Hom. in Jerem. 19.3. Similarly Clem., Paedag. 1.9.88: "As the physician who tells a patient that he has fever is not an enemy to him -- since the physician is not the cause of the fever but merely detects it (οὐκ αἴτιος, ἀλλὰ ἔλεγχός) neither is one who blames a diseased soul ill-disposed to that person." Cp. Methodius (Opp. 1. p. 52, Bonwetsch): "As we do not blame a physician who explains how a man may become strong and well," etc.; see also 1.65: "For even those who undergo medical treatment for their bodily pains do not at once regain health, but gladly bear pain in the hope of their coming recovery."

As early as 2 Tim. 2.17, the word of heretics is said to eat [[114]] "like a gangrene." This expression recurs very frequently, and is elaborated in detail. "Their talk is infectious as a plague" (Cyprian, de Lapsis, 34). "Heretics are hard to cure," says Ignatius (ad Ephes. 7, δυσθεράπευτος), " . . . there is but one physician, Jesus Christ our Lord." In the pastoral epistles the orthodox doctrine is already called "sound teaching" as opposed to the errors of the heretics.

Most frequently, however, bodily recovery is compared to penitence. It is Ignatius again who declares that "not every wound is cured by the same salve. Allay sharp pains by soothing fomentations."\25/ "The cure of evil passions," says Clement at the opening of his Paedagogus, "is effected by the Logos through admonitions; he strengthens the soul with benign precepts like soothing medicines; and directs the sick to the full knowledge of the truth."\26/ "Let us follow the practice of physicians (in the exercise of moral discipline), says Origen, "and only use the knife when all other means have failed, when application of oil and salves and soothing poultices leave the swelling still hard."\27/ An objection was raised by Christians who disliked repentance, to the effect that the public confession of sin which accompanied the penitential discipline was at once an injury to their self-respect and a misery. To which Tertullian replies (de Poen. 10): "Nay, it is evil that ends in misery. Where repentance is undertaken, misery ceases, because it is turned into what is salutary. It is indeed a misery to be cut, and cauterized, and racked by some pungent powder; but the excuse for the offensiveness of means of healing that may be unpleasant, is the cure they work." This is exactly Cyprian's [[115]] point, when he writes\28/ that "the priest of the Lord must employ salutary remedies.\29/ He is an unskilled physician who handles tenderly the swollen edges of a wound and allows the poison lodged in the inward part to be aggraved by simply leaving it alone. The wound must be opened and lanced; recourse must be had to the strong remedy of cutting out the corrupting parts. Though the patient scream out in pain, and wail or weep, because he cannot bear it -- afterwards he will be grateful, when he feels that he is cured." But the most elaborate comparison of a bishop to a surgeon occurs in the Apostolic Constitutions (2.41). "Heal thou, O bishop, like a pitiful physician, all who have sinned, and employ methods that promote saving health. Confine not thyself to cutting or cauterizing or the use of corrosives, but employ bandages and lint, use mild and healing drugs, and sprinkle words of comfort as a soothing balm. If the wound be deep and gashed, lay a plaster on it that it may fill up and be once more like the rest of the sound flesh. If it be dirty, cleanse it with corrosive powder, i.e., with words of censure. If it has proud flesh, reduce it with sharp plasters, i.e., with threats of punishment. If it spreads further, sear it, and cut off the putrid flesh -- mortify the man with fastings. And if after all this treatment thou findest that no soothing poultice, neither oil nor bandage, can be applied from head to foot of the patient, but that the disease is spreading and defying all cures, like some gangrene that corrupts the entire member; then, after great consideration and consultation with other skilled physicians, cut off the putrified member, lest the whole body of the church be corrupted. So be not hasty to cut it off, nor rashly resort to the saw of many a tooth, but first use the lancet to lay open the abscess, that the body may be kept free from pain by the removal of the deep-seated cause of the disease. But if thou seest anyone past repentance and (inwardly) past feeling, [[116]] then cut him off as an incurable with sorrow and lamentation."\30/

\25/ Ad Polyc. 2. The passage is to be taken allegorically. It is addressed to Bishop Polycarp, who has been already counselled to"bear the maladies of all" (1); wisely and gently is the bishop to treat the erring and the spiritually diseased. In the garb given it by Ignatius, this counsel recurs very frequently throughout the subsequent literature; see Lightfoot's learned note. Also Clem. Alex., Fragm. (Dindorf, 3.499) : "With one salve shalt thou heal thyself and thy neighbor (who slanders thee), if thou acceptest the slander with meekness"; Clem. Hom. 10.18: "The salve must not be applied to the sound member of the body, but to the suffering"; and Hermes Trismeg., περὶ βοτ. χυλ., p. 331: "Do not always use this salve."

\26/ 1.1.3 [1.9.83.2 !], ἤπια φάρμακα (see Homer).

\27/ In l. Jesu Nave, 8.6 (Lomm. 11.71). Cp. Hom. in Jerem. 16.1.

\29/ Cp. pseudo-Clem., Ep. ad Jac. 2: "The president (the bishop) must hold the place of a physician (in the church), instead of behaving with the violence of an irrational brute."

\30/ Cp. Clem. Alex., Paedag, 1.8.64 f.: "Many evil passions are cured by punishment or by the inculcation of sterner commands. . . .Censure is like a surgical operation on the passions of the soul. The latter are abscesses on the body of the truth, and they must be cut open by the lancet of censure. Censure is like the application of a medicine which breaks up the callosities of the passions, and cleanses the impurities of a lewd life, reducing the swollen flesh of pride, and restoring the man to health and truth once more." Cp. 1.9.83; also Methodius, Opp. 1. 1. p. 115 (ed. Bonwetsch).

It must be frankly admitted that this constant preoccupation with the "diseases" of sin had results which were less favorable. The ordinary moral sense, no less than the aesthetic, was deadened.\31/ If people are ever to be made better, they must be directed to that honorable activity which means moral health; whereas endless talk about sin and forgiveness exercises, on the contrary, a narcotic influence. To say the least of it, ethical education must move to and fro between reflection on the past (with its faults and moral bondage) and the prospect of a future (with its goal of aspiration and the exertion of all one's powers). The theologians of the Alexandrian school had some sense of the latter, but in depicting the perfect Christian or true gnostic they assigned a disproportionate space to knowledge and correct opinions. They were not entirely emancipated from the Socratic fallacy that the man of knowledge will be invariably a good man. They certainly did surmount the "educated" man's intellectual pride on the field of religion and morality.\32/ In Origen's treatise against Celsus, whole sections of great excellence are devoted to the duty and possibility of even the uneducated person acquiring [[117]] health of soul, and to the supreme necessity of salvation from sin and weakness.\33/ Origen hits the nail upon the head when he remarks (7.60) that "Plato and the other wise men of Greece, with their fine sayings, are like the physicians who confine their attention to the better classes and despise the common man, whilst the disciples of Jesus carefully study to make provision for the great mass of men."\34/ Still, Origen's idea is that, as a means of salvation, religion merely forms a stage for those who aspire to higher levels. His conviction is that when the development of religion has reached its highest level, anything historical or positive becomes of as little value as the ideal of redemption and salvation itself. On this level the spirit, filled by God, no longer needs a Savior or any Christ of history at all. "Happy," he exclaims (Comm. in Joh. 1.22 ; Lomm., 1. p. 43), "happy [[[repeated??] are they who need no longer now God's Son as the physician of the sick or as the shepherd, people who now need not any redemption, but wisdom, reason, and righteousness alone." In his treatise against Celsus (3.61 f.) he draws a sharp distinction between two aims and boons in the Christian [[118]] religion, one higher and the other lower. "To no mystery, to no participation in wisdom 'hidden in a mystery,' do we call the wicked man, the thief, the burglar, etc., but to healing or salvation. For our doctrine has a twofold appeal. It provides means of healing for the sick, as is meant by the text, 'The whole need not a physician, but the sick.' But it also unveils to those who are pure in soul and body 'that mystery which was kept secret since the world began, but is now made manifest by the Scriptures of the prophets and the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ.' . . . God the Word was indeed sent as a physician for the sick, but also as a teacher of divine mysteries to those who are already pure and sin no more."\35/

\31/ It was at this that the Emperor Julian especially took umbrage, and not without reason. As a protest against the sensuousness of paganism, there grew up in the church an aesthetic of ugliness. Disease, death, and death's relics -- bones and putrefaction -- were preferred to health and beauty, whilst Christianity sought to express her immaterial spirit in terms drawn from the unsightly remnants of material decay. How remote was all this artificial subtlety of an exalted piety from the piety which had pointed men to the beauty of the lilies in the field! The Christians of the third and fourth centuries actually begin to call sickness health, and to regard death as life.

\32/ Clem. Alex., Strom. 7.7.48.4:  ὡς δὲ ὁ ἰατρὸς ὑγείαν παρέχεται τοῖς συνεργοῦσι πρὸς ὑγείαν, οὕτως καὶ ὁ θεὸς τὴν ἀίδιον σωτηρίαν τοῖς συνεργοῦσι πρὸς γνῶσίν τε καὶ εὐπραγίαν ("Even as the physician secures health for those who cooperate with him to that end, so does God secure eternal salvation for those who cooperate with him for knowledge and good conduct").

\33/ C. Cels. 3.54: "We cure every rational being with the medicine of our doctrine."

\34/ In 7.59. there is an extremely fine statement of the true prophet's duty of speaking in such a way as to be intelligible and encouraging to the multitude, and not merely to the cultured. "Suppose that some food which is wholesome and fit for human nourishment, is prepared and seasoned so delicately as to suit the palate of the rich and luxurious alone, and not the taste of simple folk, peasants, laborers, poor people, and the like, who are not accustomed to such dainties. Suppose again that this very food is prepared, not as epicures would have it, but to suit poor folk, laborers, and the vast majority of mankind. Well, if on this supposition the food prepared in one way is palatable to none but epicures, and left un-tasted by the rest, while, prepared in the other way, it ministers to the health and strength of a vast number, what persons shall we believe are promoting the general welfare most successfully -- those who cater simply for the better classes, or those who prepare food for the multitude? If we assume that the food in both cases is equally wholesome and nourishing, it is surely obvious that the good of men and the public welfare are better served by the physician who attends to the health of the multitude than by him who will merely attend to a few." And Origen was far removed from anything like the narrow-mindedness of orthodoxy, as is plain from this excellent remark in 3.13:  "As only he is qualified in medicine who has studied in various schools and attached himself to the best system after a careful examination of them all . . . so, in my judgment, the most thorough knowledge of Christianity is his who has carefully investigated the various sects of Judaism and of Christianity."

\35/ So Clem. Alex., Paed. 1.1.3.1-3: ῎Ισον δ’ οὐκ ἔστιν ὑγίεια καὶ γνῶσις, ἀλλ’ ἣ μὲν μαθήσει, ἣ δὲ ἰάσει περιγίνεται. (2.) Οὐκ ἂν οὖν τις νοσῶν ἔτι πρότερόν τι τῶν διδασκαλικῶν ἐκμάθοι πρὶν ἢ τέλεον ὑγιᾶναι· οὐδὲ γὰρ ὡσαύτως πρὸς τοὺς μανθάνοντας ἢ κάμνοντας ἀεὶ τῶν παραγγελμάτων ἕκαστον λέγεται, ἀλλὰ πρὸς οὓς μὲν εἰς γνῶσιν, πρὸς οὓς δὲ εἰς ἴασιν. (3.) Καθάπερ οὖν τοῖς νοσοῦσι τὸ σῶμα ἰατροῦ χρῄζει, ταύτῃ καὶ τοῖς ἀσθενοῦσι τὴν ψυχὴν παιδαγωγοῦ δεῖ, ἵν’ ἡμῶν ἰάσηται τὰ πάθη, εἶτα δὲ εἰς διδασκάλου ὃς καθηγήσηται, καθαρὰν πρὸς γνώσεως ἐπιτηδειότητα εὐτρεπίζων τὴν ψυχήν, δυναμένην χωρῆσαι τὴν ἀποκάλυψιν τοῦ λόγου ("Health and knowledge are not alike; the one is produced by learning, the other by healing. Before a sick person, then, could learn any further branch of knowledge, he must get quite well. Nor is each injunction addressed to learners and to patients alike; the object in one case is knowledge, and in the other a cure. Thus, as patients need the physician for their body, so do those who are sick in soul need, first of all, an instructor, to heal our pains, and then a teacher who shall conduct the soul to all requisite knowledge, disposing it to admit the revelation of the Word").

Origen unites the early Christian and the philosophic conceptions of religion. He is thus superior to the pessimistic fancies which seriously threatened the latter view. But only among the cultured could he gain any following. The Christian people held fast to Jesus as the Savior.

No one has yet been able to show that the figure of Christ which emerges in the fifth century, probably as early as the fourth, and which subsequently became the prevailing type in all pictorial representations, was modeled upon the figure of Aesculapius. The two types are certainly similar; the qualities predicated of both are identical in part; and no one has hitherto explained satisfactorily why the original image of the youthful Christ was displaced by the later. Nevertheless, we have no [[119]] means of deriving the origin of the Callixtine Christ from Aesculapius as a prototype, so that in the meantime we must regard such a derivation as a hypothesis, which, however interesting, is based upon inadequate evidence. There would be one piece of positive evidence forthcoming, if the statue which passed for a likeness of Jesus in the city of Paneas (Caesarea Philippi) during the fourth century was a statue of Aesculapius. Eusebius (H.E. 6.18) tells how he had seen there, in the house of the woman whom Jesus had cured of an issue of blood, a work of art which she had caused to be erected out of gratitude to Jesus. "On a high pedestal beside the gates of her house there stands the brazen image of a woman kneeling down with her hands outstretched as if in prayer. Opposite this stands another brazen image of a man standing up, modestly attired in a cloak wrapped twice round his body, and stretching out his hand to the woman. At his feet, upon the pedestal itself, a strange plant is growing up as high as the hem of his brazen cloak, which is a remedy for all sorts of disease. This statue is said to be an image of Jesus. Nor is it strange that the Gentiles of that age, who had received benefit from the Lord, should express their gratitude in this fashion." For various reasons it is unlikely that this piece of art was intended to represent Jesus, or that it was erected by the woman with an issue of blood; on the contrary, the probability is that the statuary was thus interpreted by the Christian population of Paneas, probably at an early period.\36/ If the statue originally represented Aesculapius, as the curative plant would suggest, we should have here at least one step between "Aesculapius the Savior" and "Christ the Savior." But this interpretation of a pagan savior or healer is insecure; and even were it quite secure, it would not justify any general conclusion being drawn as yet upon the matter. At any rate we are undervaluing the repugnance felt even by Christians of the fourth century for the gods of paganism, if we consider ourselves entitled to think of any conscious transformation of the figure of Aesculapius into that of Christ.\37/ [[120]]

\36/ Cp. Hauck, Die Entstehung des Christus-typus (1880), p. 8 f.

\37/ In the eyes of Christians, Aesculapius was both a demon and an idol; no Christian could take him as a model or have any dealings with him. Some  [[120b]] Roman Christians, who were devotees of learning, are certainly reported in one passage (written by a fanatical opponent, it is true) to have worshipped Galen (Eus., H. E. 5.28); but no mention is made of them worshipping Aesculapius. In addition to the passages cited above, in which early Christian writers deal with Aesculapius (who is probably alluded to also as far back as Apoc. 2.23), the following are to be noted : Justin, Apol. 1, 21, 22, 25, 54 (passages which are radically misunderstood when it is inferred from them that Justin is in favor of the god); Tatian, Orat. 21; Theoph., ad Autol. 1.9; Tertull., de Anima 1. (a passage which is specially characteristic of the aversion felt for this god) ; Cyprian's Quod Idola 1; Orig., c. Cels. 3.3, 22-25, 28, 42. Clement explains him in Protr. 2.26.7, after the manner of Euhemerus: Τὸν γὰρ εὐεργετοῦντα μὴ συνιέντες θεὸν ἀνέπλασάν τινας σωτῆρας Διοσκούρους καὶ ῾Ηρακλέα ἀλεξίκακον καὶ ᾿Ασκληπιὸν ἰατρόν ("Through not understanding the God who was their benefactor, they fashioned certain saviors, the Dioscuri . . . and Aesculapius the physician"). A number of passages (e.g., Protr. 2.30.1, ἰατρὸς φιλάργυρος ἦν, "he was an avaricious physician," and 4.52) show how little Clement cared for him.

Hitherto we have been considering the development of Christianity as the religion of "healing," as expressed in parables, ideas, doctrine, and penitential discipline. It now remains for us to show that this character was also stamped upon its arrangements for the care of bodily sickness.

"I was sick and ye visited me. . . . As ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." In these words the founder of Christianity set the love that tends the sick in the center of his religion, laying it on the hearts of all his disciples. Primitive Christianity carried it in her heart; she also carried it out in practice.\38/ Even from the fragments of our extant literature, although that literature was not written with any such intention, we can still recognize the careful attention paid to works of mercy. At the outset we meet with directions everywhere to care for sick people. "Encourage the faint-hearted, support the weak," writes the apostle Paul to the church of Thessalonica (1 Thess. 5.14), which in its excitement was overlooking the duties lying close at hand. In the prayer of the church, preserved in the first epistle of Clement, supplications are expressly offered for those who are sick in soul and body.\39/ "Is any man sick? Let him call for the elders of [[121]] the church," says Jas. 5.14 -- a clear proof that all aid in cases of sickness was looked upon as a concern of the church.\40/ This comes out very plainly also in the epistle of Polycarp (6.1), where the obligations of the elders are displayed as follows: "They must reclaim the erring, care for all the infirm, and neglect no widow, orphan, or poor person." Particulars of this duty are given by Justin, who, in his Apology (ch. 67), informs us that every Sunday the Christians brought free-will offerings to their worship; these were deposited with the president (or bishop), "who dispenses them to orphans and widows, and to any who, from sickness or some other cause, are in want." A similar account is given by Tertullian in his Apology (ch. 39), where special stress is laid on the church's care for old people who are no longer fit for work. Justin is also our authority for the existence of deacons whose business it was to attend the sick.

\38/ Cp. the beautiful sentences of Lactantius, Div. Inst. 6.12 (especially p. 529, Brandt): Aegros quoque quibus defuerit qui adsistat, curandos fovendosque suscipere summae humanitatis et magnae operationis est ("It is also the greatest kindness possible and a great charity to undertake the care and maintenance of the sick, who need some one to assist them").

\39/ 1 Clem. 59: τοὺς ἀσθενεῖς (such is the most probable reading)  ἴασαι, ... ἐξανάστησον τοὺς ἀσθενοῦντας, παρακάλεσον τοὺς ὀλιγοψυχοῦντας ("Heal the sick, . . .. raise up the weak, encourage the faint-hearted"). Cp. the later formulas of prayer for the sick in App. Constit. 8.10 and onwards; cp Binterim, Denkwürdigkeiten, 6.3, pp. 17 f.

\40/ Cp. 1 Cor. 12.26: "If one member suffers, all the members suffer with it."

Not later than the close of the third century, the veneration of the saints and the rise of chapels in honor of martyrs and saints led to a full-blown imitation of the Aeculapius cult within the church. Cures of sickness and infirmities were sought. Even the practice of incubation must have begun by this time, if not earlier; otherwise it could not not have been so widely diffused in the fourth century. The teachers of the church had previously repudiated it as heathenish; but, as often happens in similar circumstances, it crept in, though with some alteration of its ceremonies.

In its early days the church formed a permanent establishment for the relief of sickness and poverty, a function which it continued to discharge for several generations. It was based on the broad foundation of the Christian congregation; it acquired a sanctity from the worship of the congregation; and its operations were strictly centralized. The bishop was the superintendent (Apost. Constit. 3.4), and in many cases, especially in Syria and Palestine, he may have actually been a physician [[122]] himself.\41/ His executive or agents were the deacons and the order of "widows." The latter were at the same time to be secured against want, by being taken into the service of the church (cp. 1 Tim. 5.16). Thus, in one instruction dating from the second century,\42/ we read that, "In every congregation at least one widow is to be appointed to take care of sick women; she is to be obliging and sober, she is to report cases of need to the elders, she is not to be greedy or addicted to drink, in order that she may be able to keep sober for calls to service during the night."\43/ She is to "report cases of need to the elders," i.e., she is to remain an assistant (cp. Syr. Didasc. 15.79 f.). Tertullian happens to remark (de Praescr. 41) in a censure of women belonging to the heretical associations, that "they venture to teach, to debate, to exorcise, to promise cures, probably even to baptize." In the Eastern Church the order of widows seems to have passed on into that of "deaconesses" at a pretty early date, but unfortunately we know nothing about this transition or about the origin of these "deaconesses."\44/

\41/ Achelis (Texte u. Unters. 25.2 [1904], p. 381) attempts to prove that the author of the Syriac Didascalia was at once a bishop and a physician; he shows (p. 383) that similar combinations were not entirely unknown (cp. de Rossi's Roma Sotter., tav. 21.9, epitaph from San Callisto, Διονυσιου ιατρου πρεσβυτερου; Zenobius, physician and martyr in Sidon in the reign of Diocletian, Eus., H.E. 8.13; a physician and bishop in Tiberias, Epiph., Her. 30.4; Theodotus, physician and bishop in Laodicea Syr.; Basilius, episcopus artis inedicinae gnarus, at Ancyra, Jerome, de Vir. Ill. 89; in Can. Hipp. 3.18, the gift of healing is asked for the bishop and presbyter at ordination, while 8.53 presupposes that anyone who possessed this gift moved straightway to be enrolled among the clergy). Cp. Texte u. Unters. 8.4. pp. 1-14 ("Christian doctors").

\42/ Cp. Texte u. Unters. 2.5. p. 23.

\43/ "But thou, O widow, who art shameless, seest the widows, thy comrades, or thy brethren lying sick, yet troublest not to fast or pray for them, to lay hands on them or to visit them, as if thou wert not in health thyself or free" (Syr. Didasc. 15.80).

\44/ They are first mentioned in Pliny's letter to Trajan.

In the primitive church female assistants were quite thrown into the shadow by the men. The deacons were the real agents of charity. Their office was onerous; it was exposed to grave peril, especially in a time of persecution, and deacons furnished no inconsiderable proportion of the martyrs. "Doers of good works, looking after all by day and night" -- such is their description (Texte u. Unters. 2.5, p. 24), one of their [[123]] main duties being to look after the poor and sick.\45/ How much they had to do and how much they did, may be ascertained from Cyprian's epistles and the genuine Acts of the Martyrs.\46/ Nor were the laity to be exempted from the duty of tending the sick, merely because special officials existed for that purpose. "The sick are not to be overlooked, nor is anyone to say that he has not been trained to this mode of service. No one is to plead a comfortable life, or the unwonted character of the duty, as a pretext for not being helpful to other people" -- so runs a letter of pseudo-Justin (c. 17) to Zenas and Serenus. The author of the pseudo-Clementine epistle "de virginitate" brings out with special clearness the fact that to imitate Christ is to minister to the sick, a duty frequently conjoined with that of "visiting orphans and widows" (visitare pupillos et viduas). Eusebius (de mart. Pal. 11.22) bears this testimony to the character of Seleucus, that like a father and guardian he had shown himself a bishop and patron of orphans and destitute widows, of the poor and of the sick. Many similar cases are on record. In a time of pestilence especially, the passion of tender mercy was kindled in the heart of many a Christian. Often had Tertullian (Apolog. 39) heard on pagan lips the remark, corroborated by Lucian, "Look how they love one another!"\47/ [[124]]

\45/ Cp. Ep. pseudo-Clem. ad Jacob. 12: Οἱ μὲν οὖν τῆς ἐκκλησίας διάκονοι τοῦ ἐπισκόπου συνετῶς ῥεμβόμενοι ἔστωσαν ὀφθαλμοί, ἑκάστου τῆς ἐκκλησίας πολυπραγμονοῦντες τὰς πράξεις, {τίς μέλλει ἁμαρτάνειν, ἵνα νουθεσίᾳ καταληφθεὶς ὑπὸ τοῦ προκαθεζομένου τάχα οὐ μὴ τελέσῃ τὸ ἁμάρτημα· (2.) τοὺς λειποτάκτας ἐπιστρεφέτωσαν, τοῦ μὴ ἐπιλείπειν τοὺς συνερχομένους τῶν λόγων ἐπακούειν, ὅπως τὰς ἑκάστοτε τῇ καρδίᾳ προσπιπτούσας ἀθυμίας ἔκ τε βιωτικῶν συνπτώσεων καὶ ὁ μιλιῶν κακῶν λόγῳ ἀληθείας καθαίρεσθαι δύνωνται· ἐπεὶ γὰρ ἂν χρόνῳ πολλῷ χερσεύσωσιν, πυρὸς ἔργον γίνονται.} (3.) τοὺς δὲ καὶ κατὰ σάρκα νοσοῦντας μανθανέτωσαν καὶ τῷ ἀγνοοῦντι πλήθει προσαντιβαλλέτωσαν, ἵν’ ἐπιφαίνωνται, καὶ τὰ δέοντα ἐπὶ τῇ τοῦ προκαθεζομένου γνώμῃ παρεχέτωσαν ("Let the deacons of the church move about intelligently and act as eyes for the bishop, carefully inquiring into the actions of every church member . . . let them find out those who are sick in the flesh, and bring such to the notice of the main body who know nothing of them, that they may visit them and supply their wants, as the president may judge fit").

\46/ In the epistles which he wrote to the church from his hiding-place, he is always reminding them not to neglect the sick.

\47/ I merely note in passing the conflict waged by the church against medical sins like abortion (Did. 2.2; Barn. 19.5; Tert., Apol. 9; Minuc. Felix., 30.2; Athenag.; Suppl. 35; Clem., Paed. 2.10, 96, etc.), and the unnatural morbid vices of paganism. It was a conflict in which the interests of the church were truly human; she maintained the value and dignity of human life, refusing to allow it to be destroyed or dishonored at any stage of its development. With regard to these offences, she also exerted some influence upon the State legislation, in and after the fourth century, although even in the third century the latter had already approximated to her teaching on such points.

As regards therapeutic methods, the case stood as it stands today. The more Christians renounced and hated the world, the more skeptical and severe they were against ordinary means of healing (cp., e.g., Tatian's Oratio 17-18). There was a therapeutic "Christian science," compounded of old and new superstitions, and directed against more than the "daemonic" cures (see the following section). Compare, by way of proof, Tertullian's Scorp. 1: "We Christians make the sign of the cross at once over a bitten foot, say a word of exorcism, and rub it with the blood of the crushed animal." Evidently the sign of the cross and the formula of exorcism were not sufficient by themselves.

CHAPTER 3

THE CONFLICT WITH DEMONS\1/

\1/ Based on the essay from which the previous section has largely borrowed. Cp. on this point Weinel, Die Wirkungen des Geistes und der Geister im nachapost. Zeitalter (1899), pp. 1 f., and the article "Dämonische" in the Protest. Real Encykl., 4 ⁽³⁾, by J. Weiss.

During the early centuries a belief in demons, and in the power they exercised throughout the world, was current far and wide. There was also a corresponding belief in demon possession, in consequence of which insanity frequently took the form of a conviction, on the part of the patients, that they were possessed by one or more evil spirits. Though this form of insanity still occurs at the present day, cases of it are rare, owing to the fact that wide circles of people have lost all belief in the existence and activity of demons. But the forms and phases in which insanity manifests itself always depend upon the general state of culture and the ideas current in the social environment, so that whenever the religious life is in a state of agitation, and a firm belief prevails in the sinister activity of evil spirits, "demon possession" still breaks out sporadically. Recent instances have even shown that a convinced exorcist, especially if he is a religious man, is able to produce the phenomena of  "possession" in a company of people against their will, in order subsequently to cure them. "Possession" is also infectious. Supposing that one case of this kind occurs in a church, and that it is connected by the sufferer himself, or even by the priest, with sin in general or with some special form of sin; supposing that he preaches upon it, addressing the church in stirring language, and declaring that this is really devil's play, then the first case will [[126]] soon be followed by a second and by a third.\2/ The most astounding phenomena occur, many of whose details are still inexplicable. Everything is doubled -- the consciousness of the sufferer, his will, his sphere of action. With perfect sincerity on his own part (although it is always easy for frauds to creep in here), the man is at once conscious of himself and also of another being who constrains and controls him from within. He thinks and feels and acts, now as the one, now as the other; and under the conviction that he is a double being, he confirms himself and his neighbors in this belief by means of actions which are at once the product of reflection and of an inward compulsion. Inevitable self-deception, cunning actions, and the most abject passivity form a sinister combination. But they complete our idea of a psychical disease which usually betrays extreme susceptibility to "suggestion," and, therefore, for the time being often defies any scientific analysis, leaving it open to anyone to think of special and mysterious forces in operation. In this region there are facts which we cannot deny, but which we are unable to explain.\3/ Furthermore, there are "diseases" in this region which only attack superhuman individuals, who draw from this "disease" a new life hitherto undreamt of, an energy which triumphs over every obstacle, and a prophetic or apostolic zeal. We do not speak here of this kind of "possession"; it exists merely for faith --  or unbelief.

\2/ Tertullian (de Anima 9) furnishes an excellent example of the way in which morbid spiritual states (especially visions) which befell Christians in the church assemblies depended upon the preaching to which they had just listened. One sister, says Tertullian, had a vision of a soul in bodily form, just after Tertullian had preached on the soul (probably it was upon the corporeal nature of the soul). He adds quite ingenuously that the content of a vision was usually derived from the scriptures which had just been read aloud, from the psalms, or from the sermons.

The mere message or preaching of Christianity was not of course enough to cure the sick. It had to be backed by a convinced belief or by some person who was sustained by this belief. The cure was wrought by the praying man and not by prayer, by the Spirit and not by the formula, by the exorcist and not by exorcism. Conventional means were of no use except in cases where the disease became an epidemic and almost general, or in fact a conventional thing itself, as we must assume it often to have been during the second century. The exorcist then became a mesmerist, probably also a deluded impostor. But wherever a strong individuality was victimized by the demon of fear, wherever the soul was literally convulsed by the grip of that power of darkness from which it was now fain to flee, the will could only be freed from its bondage by some strong, holy, outside will. Here and there cases occur of what modern observers, in their perplexity, term "suggestion." But "suggestion" was one thing to a prophet, and another thing to a professional exorcist.

In the form in which we meet it throughout the later books of the Septuagint [[[Old Greek], or in the New Testament, or in the Jewish literature of the Imperial age, belief in the activity of demons was a comparatively late development in Judaism. But during [[128]] that period it was in full bloom.\4/ And it was about this time that it also began to spread apace among the Greeks and Romans. How the latter came by it, is a question to which no answer has yet been given. It is impossible to refer the form of belief in demons which was current throughout the empire, in and after the second century, solely to Jewish or even to Christian sources. But the naturalizing of this belief, or, more correctly, the development along quite definite lines of that early Greek belief in spirits, which even the subsequent philosophers (e.g., Plato) had supported --  all this was a process to which Judaism and Christianity may have contributed, no less than other Oriental religions, including especially the Egyptian,  whose priests had been at all times famous for exorcism.\5/ In the second century a regular class of exorcists existed, just as at the present day in Germany there are "Naturarzte," or Nature physicians, side by side with skilled doctors. Still, sensible people remained skeptical, while the great jurist Ulpian refused (at a time when, as now, this was a burning question) to recognize such practitioners as members of the order of physicians. He was even doubtful, of course, whether "specialists" were physicians in the legal sense of the term.\6/ [[129]]

\4/ Cp. the interesting passage in Joseph., Ant. 8.[2.5] 45 f.: παρέσχε δ’ αὐτῷ [i.e. Solomon] μαθεῖν ὁ θεὸς καὶ τὴν κατὰ τῶν δαιμόνων τέχνην εἰς ὠφέλειαν καὶ θεραπείαν τοῖς ἀνθρώποις· ἐπῳδάς τε συνταξάμενος αἷς παρηγορεῖται τὰ νοσήματα καὶ τρόπους ἐξορκώσεων κατέλιπεν, οἷς οἱ ἐνδούμενοι (46.) τὰ δαιμόνια ὡς μηκέτ’ ἐπανελθεῖν ἐκδιώξουσι. καὶ αὕτη μέχρι νῦν παρ’ ἡμῖν ἡ θεραπεία πλεῖστον ἰσχύει ("God enabled [Solomon] to learn the arts valid against demons, in order to aid and heal mankind. He composed incantations for the alleviation of disease, and left behind him methods of exorcism by which demons can be finally expelled from people. A method of healing which is extremely effective even in our own day"). Compare also the story that follows this remark. [[[expand] The Jews must have been well known as exorcists throughout the Roman empire.

\5/ And also the Persian.

\6/ Cp. the remarkable passage in Dig. Leg. 13. c. 1.3: Medicos fortassis quis accipiet etiam eos qui alicuius partis corporis vel certi doloris sanitatem pollicentur: ut puta si auricularis, si fistulae vel dentium, non tamen si incantavit, si inprecatus est si ut vulgari verbo impostorum utar, exorcizavit: non sunt ista medicinae genera, tametsi sint, qui hos sibi profuisse cum praedicatione adfirmant ("Perchance we should admit as physicians those also who undertake to cure special parts of the body or particular diseases, as, for example, the ear, ulcers, or the teeth; yet not if they employ incantations or spells, or -- to use the term current among such impostors -- if they 'exorcise.' Though there are people who loudly maintain that they have been helped thereby.'')

The characteristic features of belief in demons during the second century were as follows.\7/ In the first place, the belief made its way upwards from the obscurity of the lower classes into the upper classes of society, and became far more important than it had hitherto been; in the second place, it was no longer accompanied by a vigorous, naïve, and open religion which kept it within bounds; furthermore, the power of the demons, which had hitherto been regarded as morally indifferent, now came to represent their wickedness; and finally, when the new belief was applied to the life of individuals, its consequences embraced psychical diseases as well as physical. In view of all these considerations, the extraordinary spread of belief in demons, and the numerous outbursts of demonic disease, are to be referred to the combined influence of such well-known factors as the dwindling of faith in the old religions, which characterized the Imperial age, together with the rise of a feeling on the part of the individual that he was free and independent, and therefore flung upon his inmost nature and his own responsibility. Free now from any control or restraint of tradition, the individual wandered here and there amid the lifeless, fragmentary, and chaotic debris of traditions belonging to a world in process of dissolution; now he would pick up this, now that, only to discover, himself at last driven, often by fear and hope, to find a deceptive support or a new disease in the absurdest of them all.\8/

\7/ The scientific statement and establishment of this belief, in philosophy, goes back to Xenocrates; after him Posidonius deserves special mention. Cp. Apuleius, de Deo Socratis.

\8/ Jas. 3.15 speaks of a σοφία δαιμονιώδης.

Such was the situation of affairs encountered by the gospel. It has been scoffingly remarked that the gospel produced the very diseases which it professed itself able to cure. The scoff is justified in certain cases, but in the main it recoils upon the scoffer. The gospel did bring to a head the diseases which it proceeded to cure. It found them already in existence, and intensified them in the course of its mission. But it also cured them, and no flight of the imagination can form any idea of what would have come over the ancient world or the Roman [[130]] empire during the third century, had it not been for the church. Professors like Libanius or his colleagues in the academy at Athens, are of course among the immortals; people like that could maintain themselves without any serious change from century to century. But no nation thrives upon the food of rhetoricians and philosophers. At the close of the fourth century Rome had only one Symmachus, and the East had only one Synesius. But then, Synesius was a Christian.

In what follows I propose to set down, without note or comment, one or two important notices of demon-possession and its cure from the early history of the church. In the case of one passage I shall sketch the spread and shape of belief in demons. This Tertullian has described, and it is a mistake to pass Tertullian by. -- In order to estimate the significance of exorcism for primitive Christianity, one must remember that according to the belief of Christians the Son of God came into the world to combat Satan and his kingdom. The evangelists, especially Luke, have depicted the life of Jesus from the temptation onwards as an uninterrupted conflict with the devil; what he came for was to destroy the works of the devil. In Mark (1.32) we read how many that were possessed were brought to Jesus, and healed by him, as he cast out the demons (1.34). "He suffered not the demons to speak, for they knew him" (see also Luke 4.34, 41). In 1.39 there is the general statement: "He preached throughout all Galilee in the synagogues and cast out the demons." When he sent forth the twelve disciples, he conferred on them the power of exorcising (3.15), a power which they forthwith proceeded to exercise (6.13; for the Seventy, see Luke 10.17); whilst the scribes at Jerusalem declared he had Beelzebub,\9/ and that he cast out demons with the aid of their prince.\10/ The tale of the "unclean spirits" who entered a herd of swine is quite familiar (5.2), forming, as it does, one of the most curious fragments of the sacred story, which has vainly taxed the powers of believing [[131]] and of rationalistic criticism. Another story which more immediately concerns our present purpose is that of the Canaanite woman and her possessed daughter (7.25 f.). Matt. 7.15 f. (Luke 9.38) shows that epileptic fits, as well as other nervous disorders (e.g., dumbness, Matt. 12.22, Luke 11.14), were also included under demon-possession. It is further remarkable that even during the lifetime of Jesus exorcists who were not authorized by him exorcised devils in his name. This gave rise to a significant conversation between Jesus and John (Mark 9.38). John said to Jesus, "Master, we saw a man casting out demons in thy name, and we forbade him, because he did not follow us." But Jesus answered, "Forbid him not. No one shall work a deed of might in my name and then deny me presently; for he who is not against us, is for us." On the other hand, another saying of our Lord numbers people who have never known him (Matt. 7.22) among those who cast out devils in his name. From one woman among his followers Jesus was known afterwards to have cast out "seven demons" (Mark 16.9, Luke 8.2), and among the mighty deeds of which all believers were to be made capable, the unauthentic conclusion of Mark's gospel enumerates exorcism (16.17).\11/

\9/ John the Baptist was also said to have been possessed (cp. Matt. 11.18).

\10/ Jesus himself explains that he casts out demons by aid of the spirit of God (Matt. 12.28), but he seems to have been repeatedly charged with possessing the devil and with madness (cp. John 7.20, 8.48 f., 10.20).

It was as exorcisers that Christians went out into the great world, and exorcism formed one very powerful method of their mission and propaganda. It was a question not simply of exorcising and vanquishing the demons that dwelt in individuals, but also of purifying all public life from them. For the age was ruled by the black one and his hordes (Barnabas 20.1); it "lieth in the evil one," ἐν τῷ πονηρῷ κεῖται (1 John 5.19). Nor was this mere theory; it was a most vital conception of existence. The whole world and the circumambient atmosphere were filled with devils; not merely idolatry, but every phase and form of life was ruled by them. They sat on thrones, they hovered around cradles. The earth was literally a hell, though it was and continued to be a creation of God. To encounter this hell and all its devils, Christians had command of weapons that were invincible. Besides the evidence drawn from the age of their holy scriptures, [[132]] they pointed to the power of exorcism committed to them, which routed evil spirits, and even forced them to bear witness to the truth of Christianity. "We," says Tertullian towards the close of his Apology (ch. 46), "we [[[??] have stated our case fully, as well as the evidence for the correctness of our statement --  that is, the trustworthiness and antiquity of our sacred writings, and also the testimony borne by the demonic powers themselves (in our favor)." Such was the stress laid on the activity of the exorcists.\12/

\12/ In the pseudo-Clementine epistle "on Virginity" (1.10), the reading of Scripture, exorcism, and teaching are grouped as the most important functions in religion.

In Paul's epistles,\13/ in Pliny's letter, and in the Didache, they are never mentioned.\14/ But from Justin downwards, Christian literature is crowded with allusions to exorcisms, and every large church at any rate had exorcists. Originally these men were honored as persons endowed with special grace, but afterwards they constituted a class by themselves, in the lower hierarchy, like lectors and sub-deacons. By this change they lost their pristine standing.\15/ The church sharply distinguished between exorcists who employed the name of Christ, and pagan sorcerers, magicians, etc.; but she could not protect herself adequately against mercenary impostors, and several of her exorcists were just as dubious characters as her "prophets."\16/ The hotbed of religious frauds was in Egypt, as we learn from Lucian's Peregrinus Proteus, from Celsus, and from Hadrian's [[133]] letter to Servian.\17/ At a very early period pagan exorcists appropriated the names of the patriarchs (cp. Orig., c. Cels. 1.22), of Solomon, and even of Jesus Christ, in their magical formulae; even Jewish exorcists soon began to introduce the name of Jesus in their incantations.\18/ The church, on the contrary, had to warn her own exorcists not to imitate the heathen. In the pseudo-Clementine de Virginitate we read (1.12) : "For those who are brethren in Christ it is fitting and right and comely to visit people who are vexed with evil spirits, and to pray and utter exorcisms over them, in the rational language of prayer acceptable to God, not with a host of fine words neatly arranged and studied in order to win the reputation among men of being eloquent and possessed of a good memory. Such folk are just like a sounding pipe, or a tinkling cymbal, of not the least use to those over whom they pronounce their exorcisms. They simply utter terrible words and scare people with them, but never act according to a true faith such as that enjoined by the Lord when he taught that 'this kind goeth not out save by fasting and prayer offered unceasingly, and by a mind earnestly bent (on God).' Let then make holy requests and entreaties to God, cheerfully, circumspectly, and purely, without hatred or malice. For such is the manner in which we are to visit a sick (possessed) brother or a sister . . . without guile or covetousness or noise or talkativeness or pride or any behavior alien to piety, but with the meek and lowly spirit of Christ. Let them exorcise the sick with fasting and with prayer; instead of using elegant phrases, neatly arranged and ordered, let them act frankly like men who have received the gift of healing from God, to God's glory. By your fastings and prayers and constant watching, together with all the rest of your good works, mortify the [[134]] works of the flesh by the power of the Holy Spirit. He who acts thus is a temple of the Holy Spirit of God. Let him cast out demons, and God will aid him therein. . . . The Lord has given the command to 'cast out demons' and also enjoined the duty of healing in other ways, adding, 'Freely ye have received, freely give.' A great reward from God awaits those who serve their brethren with the gifts which God has bestowed upon themselves." Justin writes (Apol. 2.6): "The Son of God became man in order to destroy the demons. This you can now learn from what transpires under your own eyes. For many of our Christian people have healed a large number of demoniacs throughout the whole world, and also in your own city, exorcising them in the name of Jesus Christ, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate; yet all other exorcists, magicians, and dealers in drugs failed to heal such people. Yea, and such Christians continue still to heal them, by rendering the demons impotent and expelling them from the men whom they possessed." In his dialogue against the Jews (85), Justin also writes: "Every demon exorcised in the name of the Son of God, the First-born of all creatures, who was born of a virgin and endured human suffering, who was crucified by your nation under Pontius Pilate, who died and rose from the dead and ascended into heaven --  every demon exorcised in this name is mastered and subdued. Whereas if you exorcise in the name of any king or righteous man, or prophet, or patriarch, who has been one of yourselves, no demon will be subject to you. . . . Your exorcists, I have already said, are like the Gentiles in using special arts, employing fumigation and magic incantations." From this passage we infer that the Christian formulae of exorcism contained the leading facts of the story of Christ.\19/ And Origen says as much, quite unmistakably, in his reply to Celsus (1.6): "The power of exorcism lies in the name of Jesus, which is uttered as the stories of his life are being narrated."\20/ [[135]]

\16/ Cp. the apologists, Origen's reply to Celsus, and the injunction in the Canons of Hippolytus (Texte u. Unters. 6.4, pp. 83 f.): "Οἰωνιστής  vel magus vet astrologus, hariolus, somniorum interpres, praestigiator . . . vel qui phylacteria conficit . . . hi omnes et qui sunt similes his neque instruendi neque baptizandi sunt." [[[ET] Observe also the polemic against the magical arts of the Gnostics.

\17/ Vopiscus, Saturn. 8: "Nemo illic archisynagogus Judaeorum, nemo Samarites, nemo Christianorum presbyter, non mathematicus, non haruspex, non aliptes."

Naturally one feels very skeptical in reading how various parties in Christianity denied each other the power of exorcism, explaining cures as due either to mistakes or to deception. So Irenaeus (2.31.2): "The adherents of Simon and Carpocrates and the other so-called workers of miracles were convicted of acting as they acted, not by the power of God, nor in truth, nor for the good of men, but to destroy and deceive men by means of magical illusions and universal deceit. They do more injury than good to those who believe in them, inasmuch as they are deceivers. For neither can they give sight to the blind or hearing to the deaf, nor can they rout any demons save those sent by themselves if they can do even that."\21/ With regard to his own church, Irenaeus (cp. below, ch. 4) was convinced that the very dead were brought back to life by its members. In this, he maintains, there was neither feint, nor error, nor deception, but astounding fact, as in the case of our Lord himself. "In the name of Jesus, his true disciples, who have received grace from him, do fulfill a healing ministry in aid of other men, even as each has received the free gift of grace from him. Some surely and certainly drive out demons, so that it frequently happens that those thus purged from demons also believe and become members of the church.\22/ Others again, possess a fore-knowledge of the future, with visions and [[136]] prophetic utterances. . . . And what shall I more say? For it is impossible to enumerate the spiritual gifts and blessings which, all over the world, the church has received from God in the name of Jesus Christ, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and which she exercises day by day for the healing of the pagan world, without deceiving or taking money from any person. For as she has freely received them from God, so also does she freely give" (ἰατροὶ ἀνάργυροι).

The popular notion prevalent among the early Christians, as among the later Jews, was that, apart from the innumerable hosts of demons who disported themselves unabashed throughout history and nature, every individual had beside him a good angel who watched over him, and an evil spirit who lay in wait for him (cp., e.g., the "Shepherd" of Hermas). If he allowed himself to be controlled by the latter, he was thereby "possessed," in the strict sense of the word; i.e., sin itself was possession. This brings out admirably the slavish dependence to which any man is reduced who abandons himself to his own impulses, though the explanation is naively simple. In the belief in demons, as that belief dominated the Christian world in the second and third centuries, it is easy to detect features which stamp it as a reactionary movement hostile to contemporary culture. Yet it must not be forgotten that the heart of it enshrined a moral and consequently a spiritual advance,. viz., in a quickened sense of evil, as well as in a recognition of the power of sin and of its dominion in the world. Hence it was that a mind of such high culture as Tertullian's could abandon itself to this belief in demons. It is interesting to notice how the Greek and Roman elements are bound up with the Jewish Christian in his detailed statement of the belief (in the Apology), and I shall now quote this passage in full. It occurs in connection with the statement that while demons are ensconced behind the dead gods of wood and stone, they are forced by Christians to confess what they are, viz., not gods at all, but unclean spirits. At several points we catch even here the tone of irony and sarcasm over these "poor devils" which grew so loud in the Middle Ages, and yet never shook belief in theist. But, on the whole, the description is extremely serious. [[137]] People who fancy at this time of day that they would possess primitive Christianity if they only enforced certain primitive rules of faith, may perhaps discover from what follows the sort of coefficients with which that Christianity was burdened.\23/

"We Christians," says Tertullian (ch. 22 f.), "affirm the existence of certain spiritual beings. Nor is their name new. The philosophers recognize demons; Socrates himself waited on a demon's impulse, and no wonder -- for a demon is said to have been his companion from childhood, detaching his mind, I have no doubt, from what was good! The poets, too, recognize demons, and even the ignorant masses use them often in their oaths. In fact, they appeal in their curses to Satan, the prince of this evil gang, with a sort of instinctive knowledge of him in their very souls. Plato himself does not deny the existence of angels, and even the magicians attest both kinds of spiritual beings. But it is our sacred scriptures which record how certain angels, who fell of their own free will, produced a still more fallen race of demons, who were condemned by God together with their progenitors and with that prince to whom we have already alluded. Here we cannot do more than merely describe their doings. The ruin of man was their sole aim. From the outset man's overthrow was essayed by these spirits in their wickedness. Accordingly they proceed to inflict diseases and evil accidents of all kinds on our bodies, while by means of violent assaults they produce sudden and extraordinary excesses of the soul. Both to soul and to body they have access by their subtle and extremely fine substance. Invisible and intangible, those spirits are not visible in the act; it is in their effects that [[138]] they are frequently observed, as when, for example, some mysterious poison in the breeze blights the blossom of fruit trees and the grain, or nips theta in the bud, or destroys the ripened fruit, the poisoned atmosphere exhaling, as it were, some noxious breath. With like obscurity, the breath of demons and of angels stirs up many a corruption in the soul by furious passions, vile excesses, or cruel lusts accompanied by varied errors, the worst of which is that these deities commend themselves to the ensnared and deluded souls of men, in order to get their favorite food of flesh -- fumes and of blood offered up to the images and statues of the gods.\24/ And what more exquisite food could be theirs than to divert then from the thought of the true God by means of false illusions? How these illusions are managed, I shall now explain. Every spirit is winged; angel and demon alike. Hence in an instant they are everywhere. The whole world is just one place to them. 'Tis as easy for them to know as to announce any occurrence; and as people are ignorant of their nature, their velocity is taken for divinity. Thus they would have themselves sometimes thought to be the authors of the events which they merely report -- and authors, indeed, they are, not of good, but occasionally of evil events. The purposes of Divine providence were also caught up by them of old from the lips of the prophets, and at present from the public reading of their works. So picking up in this way a partial knowledge of the future, they set up a rival divinity for themselves by purloining prophecy. But well do your Croesuses and Pyrrhuses know the clever ambiguity with which these oracles were framed in view of the future.….As they dwell in the air, close to the stars, and in touch with the clouds, they can discern the preliminary processes in the sky, and thus are able to promise the rain whose coming they already feel. Truly they are most kind in their concern for health! First of all, they make you ill; then, to produce the impression of a miracle, they enjoin the use of remedies which are either unheard of or have quite an opposite effect; lastly, by withdrawing their injurious influence, they get the credit of [[139]] having worked a cure. Why, then, should I speak further of their other tricks or even of their powers of deception as spirits -- of the Castor apparitions, of water carried in a sieve, of a ship towed by a girdle, of a beard reddened at a touch -- things done to get men to believe in stones as gods, instead of seeking after the true God?

"Moreover, if magicians call up ghosts and even bring forward the souls of the dead, if they strangle boys in order to make the oracle speak, if they pretend to perform many a miracle by means of their quackery and juggling, if they even send dreams by aid of those angels and demons whose power they have invoked (and, thanks to them, it has become quite a common thing for the very goats and tables to divine), how much more keen will be this evil power in employing all its energies to do, of its own accord and for its own ends, what serves another's purpose? Or, if the deeds of angels and demons are exactly the same as those of your gods, where is the pre-eminence of the latter, which must surely be reckoned superior in might to all else? Is it not a more worthy conception that the former make themselves gods by exhibiting the very credentials of the gods, than that the gods are on a level with angels and demons? Locality, I suppose you will say, locality makes a difference; in a temple you consider beings to be gods whom elsewhere you would not recognize as such! . . .

"But hitherto it has been merely a question of words. Now for facts, now for a proof that `gods' and 'demons' are but different statues for one and the same substance. Place before your tribunals any one plainly possessed by a demon. Bidden speak by any Christian whatsoever, that spirit will confess he is a demon, just as frankly elsewhere he will falsely pretend to be a god.\25/ Or, if you like, bring forward any one of those who are supposed to be divinely possessed, who conceive divinity from the fumes which they inhale bending over an altar, and ("ructando curantur") are delivered of it by retching, giving vent to it in gasps. Let the heavenly virgin herself, who promises rain, let that teacher o£ healing arts, Aesculapius, ever ready to prolong [[140]] the life of those who are on the point of death, with Socordium, Tenatium (?), and Asclepiadotum -- let them then and there shed the blood of that daring Christian, if -- in terror of lying to a Christian -- they fail to admit they are demons. Could any action be more plain? Any proof more cogent? Truth in its simplicity stands here before your eyes; its own worth supports it; suspicion there can be none. Say you, it is a piece of magic or a trick of some sort? . . .What objection can be brought against something exhibited in its bare reality? If, on the one hand, they (the demons) are really gods, why do they pretend (at our challenge) to be demons? From fear of us? Then your so-called 'Godhead' is subordinated to us, and surely no divinity can be attributed to what lies under the control of men. . . . So that 'Godhead' of yours proves to be no godhead at all; for if it were, demons would not pretend to it, nor would gods deny it. . . . Acknowledge that there is but one species of such beings, namely, demons, and that the gods are nothing else. Look out, then, for gods! For now you find that those whom you formerly took for such, are demons."

In what follows, Tertullian declares that the demons, on being questioned by Christians, not only confess they are themselves demons, but also confess the Christian's God as the true God. "Fearing God in Christ, and Christ in God, they become subject to the servants of God and Christ. Thus at our touch and breath, overpowered by the consideration and contemplation of the (future) fire, they leave human bodies at our command, reluctantly and sadly, and -- in your presence -- shamefacedly. You believe their lies; they believe them when they tell the truth about themselves. When anyone lies, it is not to disgrace but to glorify himself. . . . Such testimonies from your so-called deities usually result in a making people Christians."

In ch. 27. Tertullian meets the obvious retort that if demons were actually subject to Christians, the latter could not possibly succumb helplessly to the persecutions directed against them. Tertullian contradicts this. The demons, he declares, are certainly like slaves under the control of the Christians, but like good-for-nothing slaves they sometimes blend fear and contumacy, eager to injure those of whom they stand in awe. "At [[141]] a distance they oppose us, but at close quarters they beg for mercy. Hence, like slaves that have broken loose from workhouses, or prisons, or mines, or any form of penal servitude, they break out against us, though they are in our power, well aware of their impotence, and yet rendered the more abandoned thereby. We resist this horde unwillingly, the same as if they were still unvanquished, stoutly maintaining the very position which they attack, nor is our triumph over them ever more complete than when we are condemned for our persistent faith."

In ch. 37. Tertullian once more sums up the service which Christians render to pagans by means of their exorcists. "Were it not for us, who would free you from those hidden foes that are ever making havoc of your health in soul and body -- from those raids of the demons, I mean, which we repel from you without reward or hire?" He says the same thing in his address to the magistrate Scapula (2): "We do more than repudiate the demons: we overcome them, we expose then daily to contempt, and exorcise them from their victims, as is well known to many people."\26/ This endowment of Christians must therefore have been really acknowledged far and wide, and in a number of passages Tertullian speaks as if every Christian possessed it.\27/ It would be interesting if we could only ascertain how far these cures of psychical diseases were permanent. Unfortunately, nothing is known upon the point, and yet this is a province where nothing is more common than a merely temporary success.

\27/ Cp., for example, de Corona 11. Other Christian writers also express themselves to the same effect, e.g., the speech of Peter in the pseudo-Clementine Homilies (9.19), which declares that Christians at baptism obtain a gift of healing other people by means of exorcisms: "Sometimes the demons will flee if you but look on them, for they know those who have surrendered themselves to God, and flee in terror because they honor such people" (ἐνίοτε δὲ [οἱ δαίμονες] μόνον ἐνιδόντων ὑμῶν φεύξονται· ἴσασιν γὰρ τοὺς ἀποδεδωκότας ἑαυτοὺς τῷ θεῷ, διὸ τιμῶντες αὐτοὺς πεφοβημένοι φεύγουσιν).

Like Tertullian, Minucius Felix in his "Octavius" has also treated this subject, partly in the same words as Tertullian (ch. 27).\28/ The apologist Theophilus (ad Autolyc. 2.8) writes: [[142]] "The Greek poet spoke under the inspiration, not of a pure, but of a lying spirit, as is quite obvious from the fact that even in our own day possessed people are sometimes still exorcised in the name of the true God, whereupon their lying spirits themselves confess that they are demons, the actual demons who formerly were at work in the poets." This leads us to assume that the possessed frequently cried out the name of "Apollo" or of the Muses at the moment of exorcising. As late as the middle of the third century Cyprian also speaks, like earlier authors, of demonic cures wrought by Christians (ad Demetr. 15): "O if thou wouldst but hear and see the demons when they are adjured by us, tormented by spiritual scourges, and driven from the possessed bodies by racking words; when howling and groaning with human voices (!), and feeling by the power of God the stripes and blows, they have to confess the judgment to come! Come and see that what we say is true. And forasmuch as thou sayest thou dost worship the gods, then believe even those whom thou dost worship. Thou wilt see how those whom thou implorest implore us; how those of whom thou art in awe stand in awe of us. Thou wilt see how they stand bound under our hands, trembling like prisoners -- they to whom thou dost look up with veneration as thy lords. Verily thou wilt be made ashamed in these errors of thine, when thou seest and hearest how thy gods, when cross-questioned by us, at once yield up the secret of their being, unable, even before you, to conceal those tricks and frauds of theirs."\29/ Similarly in the treatise To Donatus (ch. 5) : "In Christianity there is conferred (upon pure chastity, upon a pure mind, upon pure speech) the gift of healing the sick by rendering poisonous potions harmless, [[143]] by restoring the deranged to health, and thus purifying them from ignominious pains, by commanding peace for the hostile, rest for the violent, and gentleness for the unruly, by forcing under stress of threats and invective -- a confession from unclean and roving spirits who have come to dwell within mankind, by roughly ordering them out, and stretching them out with struggles, howls, and groans, as their sufferings on the rack increase, by lashing them with scourges, and burning them with fire. This is what goes on, though no one sees it; the punishments are hidden, but the penalty is open. Thus what we have already begun to be, that is, the Spirit we have received, comes into its kingdom." The Christian already rules with regal power over the entire host of his raging adversary.\30/

\28/ "Adjurati (daemones) per deum verum et solum inviti miseris corporibus inhorrescunt, et vel exiliunt statim vel evanescunt gradatim, prout fides patientis adiuvat aut gratia curantis adspirat. Sic Christianos de proximo fugitant, quos longe in coetibus per vos lacessebant," etc.

\29/ See also Quod Idola Dei non sint (7), and Cypr., Ep. 69.15: "Hodie etiam geritur, ut per exorcistas voce humana et potestate divina flagelletur et uratur et torqueatur diabolus, et cum exire se et homines dei dimittere saepe dicat, in eo tamen quod dixerit fallat. . . . cum tamen ad aquam salutarem adque ad baptismi sanctificationem venitur, scire debemus et fidere [which sounds rather hesitating], quia illic diabolus opprimitur" ("This goes on today as well, in the scourging and burning and torturing of the devil at the hands of exorcists, by means of the human voice and the divine power, and in his declaring that he will go out and leave the men of God alone, yet proving untrue in what he says. . . . However, when the water of salvation and the sanctification of baptism is reached, we ought to know and trust that the devil is crushed there").

\30/ Compare with this Lactantius, Divin. Instit. 2.15, 4.27, who repeats in part the description of Cyprian, but lays special emphasis on the sign of the cross as a means of salvation from demons.

Most interesting of all are the discussions between Celsus and Origen on demons and possessed persons, since the debate here is between two men who occupied the highest level of contemporary culture.\31/ Celsus declared that Christians owed the power they seemed to possess to their invocation and adjuration of certain demons.\32/ Origen retorted that the power of banishing demons was actually vested in the name of Jesus and the witness of his life, and that the name of Jesus was so powerful that it operated by itself even when uttered by immoral persons (c. Cels. 1.6). Both Origen and Celsus, then, believed in demons; and elsewhere (e.g., 1.24 f.) Origen adduces the old idea of the power exercised by the utterance of certain "names"; [[144]] in fact, he indicates a secret "science of names" which confers power on the initiated, although of course one had to be very careful to recite the names in the proper language.\33/ "When recited in the Egyptian tongue, the one class is specially efficacious in the case of certain spirits whose power does not extend beyond such things and such a sphere, whilst the other class is effective with some spirits if recited in Persian, and so forth." "The name of Jesus also comes under this science of names, as it has already expelled numerous spirits from the souls and bodies of mankind and shown its power over those who have thus been freed from possession."\34/ Origen several times cites the fact of successful exorcism (1.46.67), and the fact is not denied by Celsus, who admits even the "miracles" of Jesus. Only, his explanation was very different (68). "The magicians," he said, "undertake still greater marvels, and men trained in the schools of Egypt profess like exploits, people who for a few pence will sell their reverend arts in the open market-place, expelling demons from people, blowing diseases away with their breath, calling up the spirits of the heroes, exhibiting expensive viands, with tables, cakes, and dainties, which are really non-existent, and setting inanimate things in motion as if they really possessed life, whereas they have but the semblance of animals. If any juggler is able to perform feats of this kind, must we on that account regard him as 'God's son'? Must we not rather declare that such accomplishments are merely the contrivances of knaves possessed by evil demons?" Christians are jugglers or sorcerers or both; Christ also was a master of demonic arts -- such was the real opinion of Celsus.\35/ Origen was at great pains to controvert this very [[145]] grievous charge (see, e.g., 1.68). And he succeeded. He could appeal to the unquestionable fact that all Christ's works were wrought with the object of benefiting men.\36/ Was it so with magicians? Still, in this reproach of Celsus there lay a serious monition for the church and for the Christians, a monition which more than Celsus canvassed. As early as the middle of the second century a Christian preacher had declared, "The name of the true God is blasphemed among the heathen by reason of us Christians; for if we fulfill not the commands of God, but lead an unworthy life, they turn away and blaspheme, saying that our teaching is merely a fresh myth and error."\37/ From the middle of the second century onwards the cry was often raised against Christians, that they were jugglers and necromancers, and not a few of them were certainly to blame for such a charge.\38/ Cures of demon-possession practised by unspiritual men as a profession must have produced a repellent impression on more serious people, despite the attractive power which they did exercise (Tert., Apol. 23, "Christianos facere consuerunt"). Besides, frivolous or ignorant Christians must often have excused themselves for their sins by pleading that a demon had seduced them, or that it was not they who did the wrong but the demon.\39/ But there was hardly any chance of the matter being cleared up in the third century. Christians and pagans alike were getting more and more entangled in the belief in demons. In their dogmas and their philosophy of religion, polytheists certainly became more and more attenuated as a sublime monotheism [[146]] was evolved; but in practical life they plunged more helplessly than ever into the abysses of an imaginary world of spirits. The protests made by sensible physicians were all in vain.\40/

\31/ Origen (in Hom. 15.5, in Jesu Nave 11, pp. 141 f.) has developed a theory of his own to explain the suppression of demons by the church, especially in the light of its bearing upon the spread of Christianity. "Anyone who vanquishes a demon in himself, e.g., the demon of lewdness, puts it out of action; the demon is cast into the abyss, and cannot do any harm to anyone. Hence there are far fewer demons now than before; hence, also, a large number of demons having been overthrown, the heathen are new free to believe, as they would not be did whole legions of demons exist as formerly" ("Et inde est quod plurimo daemonum numero iam victo ad credulitatem venire gentes relaxantur, qui utique nullatenus sinerentur, si integras eorum, sicut prius fuerant, subsisterent legiones").

\32/ The ethical principles of Christianity, says Celsus (1.4 f.), are common to Christians and philosophers alike, while the apparent strength of the former lies in the names of a few demons and in incantations.

\33/ περὶ ὀνομάτων τις δύνηται τὰ ἐν ἀπορρήτοις φιλοσοφεῖν.

\35/ He gives his opinion of the Gnostic exorcisers in particular in 6.39 f.

\36/ Cp., e.g., 3.28, and 1.68.

\37/ 2 Clem. 13.3, μῦθόν τινα καὶ πλάνην.

\38/ Origen, who himself admits that Christian exorcists were usually uneducated people, asserts deliberately and repeatedly that they employed neither magic nor sorcery but prayer alone and "formulae of exorcism which are so plain that even the plainest man can make use of them" (c. Cels. 7.4: σὺν οὐδενὶ περιέργῳ καὶ μαγικῷ ἢ φαρμακευτικῷ πράγματι ἀλλὰ μόνῃ εὐχῇ καὶ ὁρκώσεσιν ἁπλουστέραις καὶ ὅσα ἂν δύναιτο προσάγειν ἁπλούστερος ἄνθρωπος. Cp. Comm. in Matth. 13.7, vol. 3, p. 224).

\39/ Cp. Origen, de Princip. 3.2.1: "Hence some of the less intelligent believers think that all human transgressions arise from their [i.e., the demons'] antagonistic powers, which constrain the mind of the sinner" ("Unde et simpliciores quique domino Christo credentium existimant, quod omnia peccata, quaecumque commiserint homines, ex istis contrariis virtutibus mentem delinquentium perurgentibus fiant").

\40/ So the famous physician Posidonius at the close of the fourth century, of whom Philostorgius (H.E. 8.10, reported by Photius) narrates: "He said, though incorrectly, that it was not by the incentive of demons that men grew frenzied, but that it was the bad juices of certain sick bodies which wrought the mischief; since the power of demons was in no whit hostile to the nature of man" (λέγειν δ’ αὐτὸν ὅμως οὐκ ὀρθῶς οὐχὶ δαιμόνων ἐπιθέσει τοὺς ἀνθρώπους ἐκβακχεύεσθαι, ὑγρῶν δέ τινων κακοχυμίαν τὸ πάθος ἐργάζεσθαι. μηδὲ γὰρ εἶναι τὸ παράπαν ἰσχὺν δαιμόνων ἀνθρώπων φύσιν ἐπηρεάζουσαν).

In its missionary activities the Christian religion presented itself as something more than the gospel of redemption and of ministering love; it was also the religion of the Spirit and of power. No doubt, it verified its character as Spirit and power by the very fact that it brought redemption and succor to mankind, freeing them from demons (see above, pp. 125 f.) and from the misery of life. But the witness of the Spirit had a wider reach than even this. “I came to you in weakness and fear and with great trembling; nor were my speech and preaching in persuasive words of wisdom but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power" (1 Cor. 2.3, 4). Though Paul in these words is certainly thinking of his conflict with demons and of their palpable defeat, he is by no means thinking of that alone, but also of all the wonderful deeds that accompanied the labors of the apostles and the founding of the church. These were not confined to his own person. From all directions they were reported, in connection with other missionaries as well. Towards the close of the first century, when people came to look back upon the age in which the church had been established, the course of events was summed up in these words (Heb. 2.3): “Salvation began by being spoken through the Lord, and was confirmed for us by those who heard it, while God accompanied [[200]] their witness by signs and wonders and manifold miracles and distributions of the holy Spirit."

(3)  Some are inspired who have power to clothe their experi­ence in words -- prophets to explain the past, to interpret and to fathom the present, and to foretell the future.\4/ Their prophecies relate to the general course of history, but also to the fortunes of individuals, to what individuals are to do or leave undone.

\4/ These prophecies do not include, however, the Christian Sibylline oracles. The Jewish oracles were accepted in good faith by Christians, and quoted by them (ever since Hermas) as prophetic; but the production of Christian Sibyllines did not begin, in all likelihood, till after the middle of the third century. These oracles are an artificial and belated outcome of the primitive Christian enthusiasm, and are simply a series of forgeries. Cp. my Chronologie 1, pp. 581 f., 2, pp. 184 f.

(5)  Others are so filled with the Spirit that they lose con­sciousness and break out in stammering speech and cries, or in unintelligible utterances -- which can be interpreted, however, by those who have the gift.