Читать книгу An Account of the Life and Writings of S. Irenæus, Bishop of Lyons and Martyr - James Beaven - Страница 8

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There are two circumstances which must prevent us from expecting that the writings of Irenæus should add largely to our stores of historical knowledge; one, that his remains are not very considerable in extent, and the other, that they are chiefly occupied in doctrinal controversy. What, however, he does tell us, is important. He asserts that the Church in his time was spread throughout the world106; and particularly specifies the Churches in Germany, Iberia, (i. e. Spain), amongst the Celts (i. e. in Gaul), in the East, in Egypt, in Lybia, and in the centre of the [pg 057] world, by which he no doubt means Palestine107. He likewise incidentally shows that the Gospel had been preached in Ethiopia108. He furnishes no evidence concerning the first missionaries, except in the case of Ethiopia, to which he informs us the eunuch baptized by Philip was sent; but he declares explicitly that all the Churches through the world, although differing in usage109, had but one faith110, which was delivered to them at baptism111.

He speaks of the Churches in general as having been settled by the Apostles112, and particularly specifies [pg 058] that the Church of Rome was founded by S. Peter and S. Paul, who appointed its first bishop Linus113; that Polycarp was made bishop of Smyrna by Apostles114, and that the succession from him had been kept up to the time of his writing115; and that S. John watched over the Church of Ephesus down to the time of Trajan116. He informs us that the successors [pg 059] of the first bishops might be reckoned up in many Churches down to his own time117, particularly specifies the Churches of Rome and Smyrna118, and gives a catalogue of the bishops of Rome as follows:—Linus, mentioned by S. Paul in his epistles to Timothy119; Anencletus120; Clement121, who had seen and conferred with the Apostles; Evarestus; Alexander; Xystus, or Sixtus; Telesphorus, who suffered martyrdom; Hyginus; Pius; Anicetus; Soter; Eleutherius122: and we have a fragment of a letter of [pg 060] his own to Victor, the successor of Eleutherius123. He has preserved an anecdote of St. John, viz. that upon one occasion entering a bath, and seeing Cerinthus there, he withdrew precipitately, saying that he was afraid lest the building should fall, because Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, was in it124. This anecdote is indeed at variance with the notion of Christian charity current at the present day, but it rests upon the testimony of Polycarp, who knew St. John well; and it is strictly in accordance with the spirit of the directions he himself gave to “the elect lady,” not to receive heretical teachers into her house, or bid them God speed125.

We are likewise indebted to Irenæus for some particulars respecting Polycarp. He states that he had been favoured with familiar intercourse with St. [pg 061] John and the rest who had seen Jesus, and had heard from them particulars respecting him and his miracles and teaching126. He mentions his having spent some time in Rome in the days of Anicetus127. He does not, indeed, state the cause of his visit; but Eusebius128 and Jerome129 distinctly say that it was on account of the Paschal controversy. This subject, amongst others, our author states to have been discussed between them, and that Polycarp rested his adherence to the Jewish practice upon his having always kept Easter in that way with St. John and the other Apostles, and consequently declined to change it; whereupon, to show that this inflexibility had produced no breach of amity, Anicetus thought proper to request Polycarp to officiate for him, and to take his place at the holy communion130. During his stay there131 he met Marcion, who inquired if he [pg 062] recognised him. His reply was, “I recognise the first-born of Satan.” This severity (or bigotry, as it would now be called) does not appear to have operated in his disfavour; for he was instrumental in recovering to the Church many who had been led away by the Gnostic delusions132. Irenæus likewise mentions Polycarp's epistle to the Philippians133, and other epistles to other Churches and individuals134.

Respecting Clement, whom Eusebius135 identifies with the companion of S. Paul136, he states that he wrote a very effectual letter to the Corinthians, to allay the dissensions which had arisen amongst them, and to restore the integrity of their faith137. This is, of course, the first epistle of S. Clement, to the genuineness [pg 063] of which his mention of it is a powerful testimony.

He speaks of the Church of Rome not only as having been founded and settled under its first bishop by St. Peter and St. Paul, but as being one of the greatest and most ancient, well known to all men138, preserving the true doctrine by the resort of persons from all quarters, and possessing from this circumstance a more powerful pre-eminence; and states that all Churches must on that account resort to it139. It is well known that this is a passage upon which Romanists very much rely, as establishing the claim of their Church to be the mistress of controversies to all Christendom; and I have chosen to give it the utmost force of which it is fairly capable, in order to avoid the charge of slurring it over, and in order to show that even thus it states nothing inconsistent with the doctrine of the Church of England respecting the present Church of Rome. I will therefore give a translation of the passage, which appears below, and make some remarks upon that translation:—“For every Church (that is, the faithful who are on all sides,) must on account of its more powerful [pg 064] pre-eminence resort to this Church, in which the apostolical tradition is preserved by those who are on all sides.”

There are several words in this passage which must influence the sense of it. The first I shall notice is the word potentiorem, the more especially as there is a various reading upon it. One MS. (the Clermont) of considerable value, reads potiorem; but Massuet, who examined it, says that it had been written pontiorem (but altered to potiorem,) which is almost certainly a contraction for the common reading. We must therefore, I conclude, sit down with the common reading; although Massuet, in the Benedictine edition, and J. J. Griesbach, in some remarks upon this passage140, prefer the other. But what Greek word potentiorem represents must be matter of conjecture; and no one who is acquainted with the manner in which the translator has rendered Greek words will be inclined to lay much stress upon it. It may have been put for ἱκανωτέραν, or κρείττονα; or, in short, the comparative of any adjective which admits of being rendered potens. We then come to the word principalitatem. This we know that the ancient translator of Irenæus uses to signify ἀρχή141. Putting these two together, Griesbach [pg 065] has rendered κρείττονα ἀρχὴν, potiorem initium, and thus got rid of the idea of authority altogether. But there is no need of this. Principalis is used by the translator as the rendering of ἡγεμονικός142; principaliter, of προηγουμένως143, and προηγητίκως144; principalitatem habeo, of πρωτεύω145. We know that all the apostolical sees had a kind of principality or pre-eminence above the surrounding Churches; a more powerful pre-eminence than other Churches equally ancient with themselves. Nay, we know that the Church of Rome had at that time, in point of fact, a more powerful pre-eminence than any other Church.

The next word to be considered is convenire, which may be rendered either resort or agree; and I confess I should have been disposed, with Massuet, to render it agree, were it not for a perfectly parallel passage in the 32d Oration of Gregory of Nazianzum, delivered at the first council of Constantinople. Speaking of Constantinople, he says, εἰς ἣν τὰ πανταχόθεν ἄκρα συντρέχει, καὶ ὅθεν ἄρχεται ὡς ἐμπορίου κοινοῦ τῆς πίστεως. Here Constantinople is spoken of then under the very same terms as Rome by Irenæus, as the common repository of the faith: other parts of the Christian world are said to [pg 066] be governed (ἄρχεται) by it; and distant Churches are said to resort from all quarters: συντρέχει πανταχόθεν. Are not these words an exact parallel to the convenire and undique of the translator of Irenæus? I therefore feel bound to give convenire the sense of resort. The next word to be noticed is undique, the application of which is disputed; some, as Barrow146 and Faber147, applying it only to the immediate neighbourhood of Rome, i. e. Italy and the adjacent parts of Gaul; others, and of course the Romanists, to the whole Christian Church. According to the former plan, the clause “hoc est ... fideles” is a limitation of the expression “omnem ecclesiam,” confining it to the Churches immediately surrounding Rome; and consequently the pre-eminence of the Church of Rome would be equally narrowed by this interpretation of undique. I am far from contending that this interpretation is not correct; and the very fact of the passage admitting it, without any force whatever, shows how little the papal cause can be made to rest upon it. But as Gregory, in the parallel [pg 067] passage I have quoted, uses the term πανταχόθεν, I am disposed to take undique as its representative; the more especially as we have seen that, whatever influence it gives to Rome, the selfsame influence had Constantinople in an after age.

There are one or two more words still to be mentioned. Necesse est is one of them. It may imply that it is the duty of every Church to resort to Rome; but its more natural and usual meaning is, that, as a matter of course, Christians from all parts, and not strictly the Churches themselves, were led to resort thither by the superior eminence of that Church.

I have hitherto taken this passage as though it must be applied definitely to the Church of Rome. But this is by no means necessary; for it may be a general observation applicable to all the most eminent Churches, as may be seen by the following translation and arrangement of it:—“For every Church, (that is, the faithful all around,) must necessarily resort to that Church in which the apostolical tradition has been preserved by those on all sides of it, on account of its more powerful pre-eminence;” that is, Christians must have recourse each to the most ancient and most eminent Church in his neighbourhood. And this agrees with a passage of [pg 068] Tertullian148, in which he refers southern Greeks to Corinth, northern to Philippi and Thessalonica, Asiatics to Ephesus, Italians and Africans to Rome. The only objection which occurs to me lies in the word hanc, which, if the passage is to be taken in this application, must be translated that; but as it was in all probability the representative of ταύτην, this word can scarcely present any difficulty.

I will close this whole discussion with two remarks; first, that unless we could recover the Greek text of this passage, it is plainly impossible to ascertain its true sense; and secondly, that the strongest sense we can attach to it, consistently with history, is, that Christians of that period from all parts of Christendom must, if they wish to ascertain traditions, have recourse to the Church of Rome, because, as the first Church in Christendom, the common traditions were preserved there by the resort of Christians from all quarters. This twofold reason for resorting thither has long ceased to exist, and consequently this passage of Irenæus can afford no support to the claims of modern Rome, until it can be proved that those portions of the Christian world which are not in communion with her are no part of the Catholic Church.

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There is another subject which has caused much discussion, which is adverted to by Irenæus, viz. the miraculous powers of the Church. He declares that in his time powers of this kind were possessed by Christians, such as raising the dead149, and casting out devils, and healing the sick; that they likewise had the gift of prophecy150, and spoke with tongues, and [pg 070] revealed secret things of men and mysteries of God151. It is well known that Gibbon and Middleton have thrown doubt upon the miraculous powers of the primitive Church; and one of their chief arguments is that the early writers, such as Irenæus, content themselves with general statements, but bring no specific instance. The subject has been very fully entered into by the present highly learned and amiable bishop of Lincoln, Dr. Kaye, in his work on Tertullian152; and in the general I am disposed to acquiesce in the theory adopted by the bishop, that those powers were conferred only by apostolical hands, and that of course they would continue till all that generation was extinct who were contemporary with St. John, the last of the Apostles. That would admit of Irenæus having known instances; and not having any idea that the power was to be extinct, he would think that it still remained, even if he had not known any recent instances. It is necessary to remark, however, that he speaks of the gifts of tongues and the revealing of secrets and mysteries, not as a thing coming under his own knowledge, but heard of from others; and it does not appear that he intends to say that they continued to his own time. And I will venture to observe that it appears rather unfair to Irenæus to set [pg 071] aside his testimony by saying that he brings no specific instance of those things which he speaks of as still done. He might feel that the thing was so notorious, that those who were not convinced by the notoriety of such occurrences would cavil at any particular case he might select; and his mentioning that some of those who had been delivered from evil spirits had become converts, that some of those who had been raised from the dead, being poor, had been assisted with money153, and that some had lived many years after154, surely indicates that he was speaking from a knowledge of individual cases. One should indeed have expected that every one who owed his deliverance from Satanic possession to the miraculous power possessed by Christians would have embraced the faith of those who exercised it; and the circumstance that Irenæus affirms this of some only gives a greater air of probability to his whole statement. Besides this, we must distinguish between the cases of persons healed by the direct agency of an individual, and those in which it pleased God to hear the joint prayers of several; for it is observable that our author attributes the raising of the dead only to [pg 072] the united prayers and fasting of a whole Church, and confines it to cases of great urgency155.

The testimony which Irenæus bears to the relation between the Church and the empire is but slight. He mentions a Christian as having been in his own youth high in the imperial court, at the same time that he was a follower or admirer of Polycarp156; he speaks of Christians in the imperial palace deriving an income from the heathen, and able to assist their poorer brethren157; and he acknowledges the general advantages which Christians derived from the supremacy of the Romans, in common with their other subjects, in the prevalence of peace and the freedom from individual outrage158. But he mentions very distinctly the persecutions at another time Christians suffered (particularly alluding to those which took place at Lyons), and notices that slaves were compelled to inform against their masters; and that in this way the calumny that Christians fed upon human flesh arose, from a misunderstanding of the nature of the holy Eucharist159; the slaves having heard their [pg 073] masters speak of feeding on the body and blood of Christ, and taking it in a literal sense.

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