[1] See the treatise on the Christian Ministry in his Philippians, p. 186.
[2] Dr. Goulburn, in his Acts of the Deacons, suggested this view of the Acts of the Apostles nearly thirty years ago.
[3] For an account of Simeon Metaphrastes the English reader should consult Dr. Schaff's valuable Encyclopædia of Historical Theology.
[4] See Professor Ramsay on "The Tale of Saint Abercius" in the Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. iii., p. 338, for a full account of this new source of early Church history which his travels and excavations have brought to our notice.
[5] Ceillier, Hist. des Auteurs Ecclésiastiques, i., 403.
[6] Mr. Harris's discovery is not the first find of this ancient apologist in modern times. The Armenian Mechitarites of Venice published what they called two sermons of Aristides in 1878; which Cardinal Pitra, the learned librarian of the Vatican, reprinted in 1883, in his Analecta Sacra, t. iv., pp. x, xi, 6-11, 282-86. One of these sermons was a fragment of the Apology of Aristides, which the Mechitarites scarcely at first recognised as such. M. Rénan, in his Origines de Christianisme, vol. vi., p. vi (Paris, 1879), scoffed at this fragment, declaring that, from the technical theological terms, such as Theotokos, therein used, it was evidently posterior to the fourth century. Doulcet, in the Revue des Questions Historiques for October 1880, pp. 601-12, made an effective reply with the materials at hand at the time; but Mr. Harris's publication of the complete work triumphantly demonstrates that M. Rénan's objections were worthless (see Harris, pp. 2, 3, 27). It is another proof that Christians have everything to hope and nothing to fear from such discoveries of early documents. Mr. Harris's preface is specially interesting, because it shows that we have had the Apology of Aristides all the time, though we knew it not, as it was worked in the quasi-oriental tale of Barlaam and Joasaph printed among the works of St. John of Damascus.
[7] The apologists of the second century will be found in a collected shape in Otto's Corpus Apologetarum, in nine vols. (Jena, 1842-72). Most of those mentioned above will be found in an English shape in Clarke's Ante-Nicene Library. See also Harnack in Texte und Untersuchungen, bd. i., hft. i. (Leipzig, 1882).
[8] St. Jerome, in Ep. 70, addressed to Magnus, a Roman rhetorician, expressly says that Justin Martyr imitated Aristides. The Cohortatio ad Græcos attributed to him is much liker the treatise of Aristides than Justin's admitted first and second apologies.
[9] Overbeck, Zeller, and Schwegler fix the composition of the Acts between 110 and 130, the very date of the Apology of Aristides. See Zeller's Acts of the Apostles, p. 71 (London: Williams & Norgate, 1875).
[10] For an account of the Jewish controversy in the second century see Gebhardt and Harnack's Texte, bd. i., hft. 3 (Leipzig, 1883), where Harnack seeks to critically restore the substance of the dialogue between Jason and Papiscus. An article on "Apologists" in the Dictionary of Christian Biography, vol. i., pp. 140-47, and another on "Theophilus" (13) in the same work, vol. iv., p. 1009, should be consulted.
[11] See a copious account of this strange second-century forgery in Dr. Gwynne's article on Thecla in the fourth volume of the Dictionary of Christian Biography. Dr. Salmon, in his Introduction to the N.T., chap. xix., gives a most interesting description of the apocrypha Acts of the Apostles, which even the unlearned can enjoy.
[12] The Irish people are very Oriental in the tenacity with which they retain ancient traditions, transmitting them intact to posterity. Abundant instances have proved this, the traditions having been perpetuated in some cases for five hundred years or more. The following case has come under the writer's notice in his own neighbourhood. There is near Dublin a village called Finglas, celebrated for its ancient Abbey. A cross stood there which had been venerated from the earliest times. When Cromwell's soldiers were advancing to attack Dublin about the year 1648, their iconoclastic fame reached the inhabitants of Finglas, who took the ancient cross and buried it in one of the glebe fields. Some one hundred and sixty years later a vicar of Finglas of antiquarian tastes heard traditions of this event. He learned from an extremely old man that his grandfather when a boy had been present at the burial of the cross, and had shown him the spot where it was concealed. The vicar made excavations, and duly found the cross, which he re-erected some time about 1810, in a spot where it is still to be seen. This instance will show how two long lives could cover the space between St. Paul's middle age and Tertullian's mature years. See Fingal and its Churches, by Rev. R. Walsh, D.D., pp. 147-49. Dublin, 1888. St. Jerome, De Vir. Illust., 53, mentions a similar case in his time. St. Jerome knew an old man who when young had himself known one of St. Cyprian's secretaries. St. Jerome wrote about A.D. 400, St. Cyprian died in 257; the difference exactly between Tertullian and St. Paul.
[13] See two articles on St. Columbanus and his library in the Expositor for June and August 1889.
[14] Dr. Salmon, in his Introd. N.T., pp. 48-54, describes the Muratorian Fragment.
[15] See Dr. Sanday's The Gospels in the Second Century, and Dr. Salmon's Introd. N.T., pp. 204-208.
[16] The latest enquiries and discoveries confirm this view, which may be deduced from a study of the apostolic Fathers, with which should be compared the new second-century documents belonging to Ephesus and Rome discussed in Texte u. Untersuch. of Gebhardt and Harnack for 1888. Their titles are the tract De Aleatoribus, by Pope Victor I., and the Martyrdoms of Carpus and Papylus, Companions of St. Polycarp. Pope Victor gives a long extract from the Shepherd of Hermas, and calls it "Divine Scripture;" which shows that the canon was not closed at Rome in the last fifteen years of the second century.
[17] An interesting account of this second-century document will be found in the Texts, edited by Gebhardt and Harnack, or in the Dict. Christ. Biog. under "Scillitan Martyrs." Every scrap of second century evidence is of the greatest importance for biblical criticism.
[18] See Butler's Analogy, Part II., chap. vi.
[19] J. Keble, "The Sixth Sunday after Epiphany."
[20] The book of Enoch was translated into English by Archbishop Laurence, and was first published about seventy years ago. There is an exhaustive article on the subject in the second volume of the Dictionary of Christian Biography, written by Professor Lipsius of Jena.
[21] The book of Jubilees has never been published in English. An interesting account of it will be found in the later editions of Kitto's Biblical Cyclopædia. The reader will find another account of the book of Jubilees in the Dict. Christ. Biog., iv., 507. The Psalms of Solomon are contained in the Cod. Pseud. Vet. Test. of J. A. Fabricius. There is a brief notice of them in the Dict. Chris. Biog., iv., 508, under the title "Pseudepigrapha."
[22] The strongest argument, from a mere literary point of view, for the existence of a supernatural element in Christianity and primitive Christian literature will be derived from a contrast between the Jewish literature of the period of the Christian era and the New Testament. Take, for instance, the book of Jubilees. It was written about the time of our Lord, and probably in Galilee. It represents the current tone of Jewish religion, and shows us, with its narrowness and absurdities, what the New Testament would have been had it been the product of unassisted human nature. The book of Jubilees or of Enoch is the strongest argument for the inspiration of the New Testament. I cannot even imagine what explanation can be offered of the difference in tone between the Christian and the Jewish writings save that of the inspiration of the Christian.
[23] The most curious instance of the essential identity of the nature deities of the West and East will be found in Mithraism. The worship of Mithras was originally the worship of the sun. It started from India, passed into Persia, thence found its way to Asia Minor, and about 70 B.C. was introduced into Rome, where it became, about A.D. 200, the great rival of Christianity, imitating the sacraments of baptism and holy communion in rites of its own. Mithraism easily combined with the worship of Apollo, or the Sun-God. Apollo, Mithras, and Baal were fundamentally one and the same. Tertullian, Justin Martyr, and Origen call Mithraism a demoniacal imitation of Christianity. See more on this point in the article on Mithras in the Dictionary of Christian Biography, vol. iii., p. 925.
[24] The miraculous gifts of the Spirit possessed by the Apostles did not guard them against mistakes as to the future, nor override the exercise of private judgment and common sense, nor enable them to work miracles or cure sicknesses for their own purposes. St. Paul, for instance, was obliged to depend upon the assistance of St. Luke when he was ill. The miraculous powers were restrained, as in our Lord's example, to cases where God's glory was specially advanced by their exercise.
[25] See my Ireland and the Celtic Church for the traditions about St. Joseph of England.
[26] The line of argument followed in this chapter was originally suggested to me by a sermon for the First Sunday in Advent, printed in a volume of Sermons at the Octagon Chapel, Bath, by the Rev. W. C. Magee, B.D., now Archbishop of York. London, Hatchards, 1858.
[27] The incarnation and the ascension are, in this respect, very much on a level in St. Paul's writings. The incarnation and birth of our Lord are referred to incidentally, but only incidentally, in Rom. i. 3; Gal. iv. 4; 1 Tim. iii. 16; yet the facts of the birth and incarnation must have occupied a great share of St. Paul's attention, if we are to judge of his teaching by the Gospel of St. Luke, his disciple and companion. The Apostle never formally states the doctrine of the incarnation as St. Luke set it forth, because it was well known by all to whom he wrote as the very foundation of his system. A bare reference was therefore enough. It was just the same with the doctrine of the ascension.
[28] See Archbishop Trench on the Draw-net in Notes on the Parables, p. 145, 10th ed.
[29] We now live so fast that it may perhaps be necessary to explain that the Unseen Universe was a book written some ten or eleven years ago by two eminent scientists, showing how that it was needful, on the principles, of modern science, to postulate the existence of an unseen universe, out of which the seen universe has been derived, and into which it is in turn passing.
[30] The line of thought here worked out was originally suggested to me by Canon Liddon's sermon on "Our Lord's Ascension the Church's Gain," in his first series of University sermons.
[31] The gladiatorial shows form an interesting standard by which we may compare the practical effects of Christian and the very highest pagan sentiment. Tertullian denounced them in the strongest language in his treatise De Spectaculis. Cicero, in the Tusculan Disputations, ii. 17, defends them warmly as the best discipline against fear of pain and death.
[32] The original authority for the story of Telemachus is Theodoret's Eccles. Hist., v. 26. It is vigorously told by Gibbon in the thirtieth chapter of his Decline and Fall.
[33] The doctrine of the sanctity of human life was unknown under paganism. Tacitus tells us, about the year A.D. 61, how that Pedianus Secundus, prefect of the city, having been murdered by one of his slaves, the whole body of his slaves, numbering more than four hundred persons, of every age and sex, were put to death (Annals, xiv., 42-45).
[34] We have no idea of the frightful character of pagan slavery. The worst form which negro slavery ever took never approached it. The following story will give our readers some idea of it. Cato, the censor, wrote a treatise, very little read or known, called De Re Rustica, treating of farming operations. In this he gives directions concerning the economical management of slaves, and among other things tells how wine for their winter consumption was to be prepared. "Put into a cask ten amphoræ of sweet wine, two amphoræ of sour vinegar, and as much wine boiled down by two-thirds. Add fifty amphoræ of pure water. Mix all together with a stick three times a day for five consecutive days. After this add sixty-four amphoræ of stale salt and water."
[35] See St. George Mivart, Genesis of Species, p. 282. The whole chapter (xii.) on Theology and Evolution is well worth careful study.
[36] See on this point Dr. John Lightfoot's Horæ Hebraicæ, Acts ii. 1; and a sermon by the learned Joseph Mede of Cambridge on Deut. xvi. 16, 17, in his Works, vol. i., p. 350 (London, 1664).
[37] See this point worked out in Dr. Salmon's article Chronica, in the first volume of the Dict. Christ. Biog., and in the opening of his article on The Chronicle of Eusebius in the second volume of the same work. A brief extract from one of the earliest and most learned apologists, who lived about the middle of the second century, will show how the Christians elaborated this argument. Tatian, in ch. xl. of his Oration to the Greeks, speaks thus: "Therefore from what has been said it is evident that Moses was older than the ancient heroes, wars, and demons. And we ought rather to believe him, who stands before them in point of age, than the Greeks, who, without being aware of it, drew his doctrines as from a fountain. For many of the sophists among them, stimulated by curiosity, endeavoured to adulterate whatever they learned from Moses, and from those who philosophised like him, first that they might be considered as having something of their own, and secondly, that covering up by a certain rhetorical artifice whatever things they did not understand, they might misrepresent the truth as if it were a fable. But what the learned among the Greeks have said concerning our polity and the history of our laws, and how many and what kind of men have written of these things, will be shown in the treatise against those who have discoursed of Divine things."
[38] Epiphanius, On Weights and Measures, ch. xiv.
[39] The traditions about the upper chamber are given at length in Fr. Quaresmius, Terræ Sanctæ Elucidatio, t. ii., p. 119 (Antwerp, 1639), with which may be compared Bingham's Antiquities, bk. viii., ch. i., sec. 13; Mede's Discourse Of Churches in his Works, vol. i., p. 408; and Bishop Milles' notes on Cyril's Catech., xvi. 2, in his edition of that writer, p. 225.
[40] See, for a fuller account, Salmon's Introduction N. T., 4th ed., pp. 384-86, and the references there given.
[41] Peter may have learned this mystical mode of interpretation from our Lord Himself in His conversations. See Luke xxiv. 44-9.
[42] The intimate connection between the Christian ministry and the miraculous facts of Christianity has been powerfully argued by Charles Leslie in his Short and Easy Method with the Deists. He contends that the existence of the Christian ministry is a standing evidence of the supernatural facts of the gospel which can alone explain that existence. If the facts never happened, how did the Christian ministry arise? Hence he concludes the perpetual character and obligation of the ministry for Christians, or, to quote his own words, "Now the Christian priesthood, as instituted by Christ Himself, and continued by succession to this day, being as impregnable and flagrant a testimony to the truth of the matter of fact of Christ as the sacraments or any other public institutions; besides that, if the priesthood were taken away, the sacraments and other public institutions which are administered by their hands, must fall with them: therefore the devil has been most busy, and bent his greatest force, in all ages, against the priesthood, knowing that if that goes down, all goes with it."—Leslie's Works, vol. i., p. 27.
[43] The literature of the apocryphal Gospels is very extensive. Those who wish to pursue this subject will find abundant materials in an article on "Gospels, Apocryphal" in the second volume of the Dictionary of Christian Biography, written by Professor Lipsius of Jena; or in Dr. Salmon's Introduction to the New Testament, Lect. XI. Origen mentioned the Gospel of Matthias, while again Eusebius (H. E., iii., 25) describes it as heretical. See Fabricius, Cod. Apoc. N. T. p. 782. The apocryphal Acts of Andrew and Matthias may be seen in Tischendorf's Acta Apoc., p. 132. Nelson's Fasts and Festivals tells, in a convenient shape, the traditions about St. Matthias and the other Apostles.
[44] The dignified self-restraint of the Acts is nowhere more manifest than in its reference to Judas Iscariot. The only notice bestowed upon him is connected with the election of Matthias. Papias was a writer of the beginning of the second century. He knew some of the Apostles and early disciples, and gathered diligently every tradition about the Church's early days. Papias made an attempt to harmonise the account of the death of Judas given by St. Peter with that told in St. Matthew, which has been preserved for us by two Greek commentators, Œcumenius, who lived in the tenth, and Theophylact, who flourished in the eleventh century. The difficulty is this. St. Matthew says that Judas hanged himself; St. Peter says that he burst asunder. Papias harmonises the two by telling that Judas first of all hanged himself on a fig-tree, but the halter broke. He was then seized with a terrible dropsy, and swelled up to an enormous size, so that when endeavouring to pass where a waggon could go he burst asunder. The narrative of Papias is given in Theophylact on Matt. xxvii., and Œcumenius on Acts i. Dr. Routh, in his Reliquiæ Sacræ, vol. i., pp. 9, 25, points out that the horrid details of the story, which cannot be here printed, are due to the Greek commentators enlarging on the simple facts stated by Papias. Origen, with characteristic daring, suggests that Judas committed suicide as soon as he saw that our Lord was condemned, in order that he might arise in the region of the dead before Him, and there seek His forgiveness. There is a curious Latin book, published in 1680, which gives all the traditions about the traitor. Its title is Kempius, On the Life and Fate of Judas Iscariot.
[45] In the last lecture I have already given the reference to Lightfoot's and Mede's works where this point is fully worked out.
[46] The same view has practically been taught by some modern sects, who have proclaimed that all of the Old Testament and the whole of our Lord's teaching till He died were intended for Jews only, and have no relation to Christians. It is hard to say how such persons regard the Old Testament and the greater part of the four Gospels, save as interesting fossils to be hung up in a museum of comparative religion.
[47] Prayer for all estates of men in the Holy Catholic Church, in Jeremy Taylor's Holy Living, chap. iv., sec. vii.
[48] In the primitive Church the gift of preaching or prophesying seems to have been widely diffused and exercised among what we should call the laity, while at the same time a fixed and appointed ministry exercised the pastoral office, including therein the celebration of the sacraments and the exercise of Church discipline. This seems the explanation of the phenomena we behold in St. Paul's Epistles, in the manual called the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, and in that curious production of the primitive Church called the Shepherd of Hermas. But though preaching and prophesying were at first very freely exercised, the disorders which arose at Corinth and other places quickly taught the necessity for fixed rules. It was just the same in the synagogue. The ritual and worship was conducted by the officials. Preaching was free and open to all, but subject to the control and direction of the ruler of the Synagogue, as the case of St. Paul at Antioch in Pisidia proves (Acts xiii. 15).
[49] Lightfoot, Horæ Hebraicæ, Acts, chap. ii., ver. 3, notes that "there is a form of prayer in the Jewish writings which was used on the solemn fast of the ninth month Ab, one clause of which illustrates the Divine symbol, 'Have mercy, O God, upon the city that mourneth, that is trodden down and desolate, because Thou didst lay it waste by fire, and by fire wilt build it up again.'"
[50] Isa. xxv. 7. See Lightfoot, Horæ Heb., on Acts ii.
[51] Meyer on Acts (ii. 4), vol. i., pp. 67, 68. Clark's translation.
[52] The speculations and discussions now rife concerning hypnotism ought to teach modesty of assertion as to what is or is not possible. On the 28th of March there appeared in an eminent medical authority, the Lancet newspaper, a review of a number of works on hypnotism, acknowledging the wonders of the subject, and containing this expression of opinion: "It is quite impossible to assign any limits to the influence of mind upon body, which is probably much more potent and far-reaching than we are usually prepared to admit." Now among the works reviewed in that article was one by Dr. Albert Moll of Berlin, published in the "Contemporary Science Series." That book makes statements about hypnotism which would quite cover Scripture miracles at which even devout people have stumbled, such as the miracles wrought by the shadow of St. Peter, or by handkerchiefs brought from the body of St. Paul (Acts v. 15, and xix. 12), which Meyer regards as mere legendary accretions to the genuine story. Moll, however, makes quite as wondrous statements about hypnotism. On page 1 he thus begins his History of Hypnotism: "In order to understand the gradual development of modern hypnotism from actual magnetism we must distinguish two points: firstly, that there are human beings who can exercise a personal influence over others, either by direct contact or even from a distance; and, secondly, the fact that particular psychical facts can be induced in human beings by certain physical processes. This second fact especially has long been known among the Oriental peoples, and was utilized by them for religious purposes. Kiesewetter attributes the early soothsaying by means of precious stones to hypnosis, which was induced by steadily gazing at the stones. This is also true of divination by looking into vessels and crystals, as the Egyptians have long been in the habit of doing, and has often been done in Europe: by Cagliostro, for example. These hypnotic phenomena are also found to have existed several thousand years ago among the Persian magi, as well as up to the present day among the Indian yogis and fakirs, who throw themselves into the hypnotic state by means of fixation of the gaze." The phenomena mentioned in the Acts, whether as to the tongues or to miracles worked through inanimate objects, may be compared with Moll's statements on pp. 5, 6, 84, and 362.
[53] The proper preface in the Book of Common Prayer is longer and more minute than the corresponding one in the Missal. The Reformers extended the ancient form, inserting a special reference to the gift of tongues.
[54] It is a completely mistaken notion, which no one would cherish who had read history with a full-orbed mental eye, realizing the past with its circumstances, that Latin and Greek superseded all other languages throughout the empire. Local dialects and languages continued to flourish all the time, save amongst the official classes. Else how did Welsh survive to this day in England? How did Celtic survive in France side by side with Latin? The two celebrated cases of Gregory of Tours and of St. Patrick show that their Latin was of a very rude and corrupt kind; their real spoken language was Celtic, the tongue of the mass of the people. In a learned work just published I note a confirmation of this view. Professor Ramsay, in his Historical Geography of Asia Minor, p. 24, avows how his mind has changed on this question in regard to Asia Minor. "Romans governed Asia Minor, because with their marvellous governing talent they knew how to adapt their administration to the people of the plateau. It is true that the great cities (of Asia Minor) put on a Western appearance, and took Latin or Greek names. Latin and Greek were the languages of government, of the educated classes, and of polite society. Only this superficial aspect is attested in literature and in ordinary history, and when I began to travel the thought had never occurred to me that there was any other. The conviction has gradually forced itself on me that the real state of the country was very different. Greek was not the popular language of the plateau, even in the third century after Christ; the mass of the people spoke Lycaonian, and Galatian, and Phrygian, although those who wrote books wrote Greek, and those who governed spoke Latin." See again pp. 98, 99 for much more on the same subject, showing the prevalence of the native languages of Asia Minor down to the year A.D. 500.
[55] Christians often give their sceptical opponents an advantage over them by allowing them to state the difficulties of Christianity and never retorting the difficulties of scepticism. There is no historical fact of the distant past that cannot be encumbered with numerous difficulties, deduced, in most cases, from our own ignorance. No difficulty on our side is so great as that which the sceptic has to meet in undertaking to explain, on purely natural grounds, the rise and success of Christianity on the very spot and at the very time its Author had been crucified. The Christian story is simple and natural; the sceptical explanation forced, unnatural, and surrounded by a thousand appalling difficulties.
[56] I read the other day the report of an eminent Unitarian divine who was lecturing upon the Gospels. He was upholding the view that it was impossible that reports of the discourses of Christ and of His Apostles could have been handed down in anything like their shape as given in the New Testament, because it was an age without shorthand. The lecturer is an eminent metaphysical and philosophical critic, but he is evidently not versed in the social life of the ancients. Had the lecturer but referred to Prof. J. E. B. Mayor's edition of Pliny's Letters, Book iii., p. 96, he would have found abundant references proving that shorthand was a usual accomplishment among educated men long prior to the Christian era.
[57] Tertullian, Against the Jews, chap. vii.
[58] Adv. Jovin., lib. ii., cap. 7, in Migne's Pat. Lat., t. xxiii., col. 296.
[59] I have worked out this point at some length in Ireland and the Celtic Church, chap. i., pp. 14-20.
[60] The history of the Jewish settlement in the south of Arabia is very little known by the average student of the Acts, and yet it is a wonderful confirmation of its accuracy both here and in the account of the Ethiopian eunuch. This colony existed in Arabia long before the Christian era. They claimed, indeed, to have been a portion of the Jews of the Captivity. They established an independent kingdom in Southern Arabia, which bitterly persecuted the Christians about the year 500. A full account of this little-known persecution, and of the Homerite martyrs who suffered in it, will be found by those curious in such matters in that great monumental work the Acta Sanctorum of the Bollandists, vols. x. and xii. for October, under the names of St. Arethas and St. Elesbaan. Large quantities of manuscripts about this Jewish colony were discovered some years ago in the mosques of Southern Arabia. A considerable number of Jews still find a place there. See, for an account of the Jewish kingdom in Arabia, an article on Elesbaan, in vol. ii. of the Dictionary of Christian Biography. Gibbon in his forty-second and fiftieth chapters has much about it.
[61] The Jewish cemeteries discovered at Rome date back to the time of our Lord, or even before it. They were the models on which the Christians made the catacombs. The symbols of Judaism appear in the Christian tombs. See Northcote's Epitaphs of the Catacombs, and Brownlow and Northcote's Roma Sotteranea.
[62] The term Ebionite is thus well explained by the Rev. J. M. Fuller in the Dict. Christ. Biog., vol. ii., p. 25: "The term Ebionism expresses conveniently the opinions and practices of the descendants of the Judaizers of the apostolic age, and is very little removed from Judaism. Judaism was for them not so much a preparation for Christianity as an institution eternally good in itself, and but slightly modified in Christianity. Whatever merit Christianity possessed, was possessed as the continuation and supplement of Judaism. The divinity of the old covenant was the only valid guarantee for the truth of the new. Hence the tendency of this class of Ebionites to exalt the old at the expense of the new, to magnify Moses and the prophets, and to allow Jesus Christ to be 'nothing more than a Solomon or a Jonas' (Tertull., De Carne Christi, c. 18); 'Legal righteousness was to them the highest type of perfection; the earthly Jerusalem, in spite of its destruction, was an object of adoration, as if it were the House of God' (Irenæus, Adv. Hær., i., 26); its restoration would take place in the millennial kingdom of Messiah, and the Jews would return there as the manifested chosen people of God."
[63] See Moll's Hypnotism, p. 216, in the "Contemporary Science Series."
[64] See the article on "Apollinaris the Younger" in the Dict. Christ. Biog., vol. i., for a concise account of the Apollinarian heresy.
[65] Horæ Hebraicæ on Acts ii. 29.
[66] See Josephus, Antiqq., XIII., viii., 4; XVI., vii., 1; Wars, I., ii., 5.
[67] This point has been admirably discussed by Dr. Salmon in his sermon on "Present Salvation" in his volume of sermons styled The Reign of Law, pp. 295-99.
[68] This controversy between the Antinomian party and the London Nonconformists of the orthodox sort is now almost unknown, and yet it created great excitement in religious circles, conformist and nonconformist, in the time of William III. Bishop Stillingfleet of Worcester, the aged Baxter, and many of the leading divines, joined in it. The echoes of it will be found resounding in the more modern controversy between John Wesley and Fletcher on the one side, and Rowland Hill and Lady Huntingdon on the other, about the year 1770. A brief account of Dr. Daniel Williams will be found in Schaft's edition of Herzog's Cyclopædia; see also Calamy's Life i., 323.
[69] As some readers may not know what the work called the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles is, let me explain its history in a few words. Early Christian writers, from the year A.D. 200, speak of a work called the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles in the highest terms. It was evidently, as known by them, a manual used in the catechetical instruction of the young. This manual was known to all the early ages, but disappeared from the view of the Western Church during the middle ages. Nearly twenty years ago it was discovered in Constantinople by the learned Greek Bishop Bryennios, and published by him about ten years ago. It is assigned by some critics to the concluding years of the first century. A convenient and cheap edition of it will be found in the second volume of the Apostolic Fathers in Griffith and Farran's "Ancient and Modern Library." It is called the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, or else the Didache, using a Greek title, which has the advantage of being shorter.
[70] The method of sprinkling is completely unknown to the Church ancient or modern, and should be absolutely rejected, as tending to a disuse of the element of water at all.
[71] The case of Perpetua and Felicitas, and the other famous martyrs of Carthage in the beginning of the third century, proves that pouring with water must have sufficed for baptism in a Church so intensely conservative as the Church of North Africa. Tertullian in his writings often reproves its members for the superstitious extremes to which they pushed their conservative feelings, imitating every ancient Christian custom, rational or irrational. Felicitas and her friends were baptized in prison, where they were thrust into a noisome dungeon. How could they have been immersed in such a place? This case is good evidence for the practice of the second century as well.
[72] See the articles on Baptism and Baptistery in Smith and Cheetham's Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, vol. i.