Having in the previous chapter described the influence which Christianity had in modifying the tenets of the Stoic school, we come now to the consideration of the influence which the latter exercised on the Christian Church. Beyond the bounds of the sect a widespread impression was made by the force of Stoic principles: and by these Christianity became affected in no small degree. There was so much about them which was real, and they appealed so strongly to the sympathies and pride of human nature, that even where their influence was unperceived and unacknowledged, it was nevertheless deep and lasting. The Stoic spirit gradually spread within the Church, and found there a new home for itself after the destruction of the school of philosophy to which it had given life. Even to the present day it has continued to exist, and still manifests undiminished energy.
The early Fathers, who came into contact with the Stoic system in its strength, saw its many excellences as well as its many defects. Being a wonderful advance on merely speculative philosophy, drawing men to the cultivation of the moral sense instead of indulging in wild dreams, there was much for the Christian to admire in its purpose. Still he would naturally be discontented with a great deal that it contained, as well as disappointed at the absence of much that it omitted. There was something to commend the system to many minds, in the fact that it taught the duty of cultivating the nobler part, of self-denial, of bringing the appetites into subjection to the will. There was a great deal of pretension also in the outward appearance of the philosophers and of their disciples, and this had an influence on many Christians, which became stronger as time wore on.
In endeavouring to decide how the Church was affected by this spirit, we perceive that there were two principal dangers to which the religion of Jesus was liable from Stoicism. These dangers were lest the purity of the Gospel should be overridden by the asceticism born of the Stoic spirit; and lest the foreknowledge and providential care of the great Father should be confounded with the fatalism which was so marked a feature of the Stoic belief. These dangers include others which will be noticed as we proceed.
There is a great proneness in many minds to look on self-imposed austerities as in themselves a mark of virtue. Hence men who have been discontented with the ordinary duties of life and attempted to find higher walks of excellence, have been looked on as superior to others. This spirit has shown itself in all countries and systems. Those who have yielded to it have generally affected a superiority over the rest of the world, and a peculiarity in their garb and manners. The Stoics were greatly influenced in this way. We read of their long robes, just as we read of the long robes of the Pharisees. Horace and Persius, in their Satires, bring before us the assumption of superiority by “the wise man.”
This spirit of asceticism found its way into the Christian Church. Perhaps jealousy lest the Stoic philosophy, or Jewish Pharisaism, should seem to have a more marked influence than Christianity, produced a desire to make a display of asceticism. Or it might be that a persuasion of the excellence of this, for its own sake, led Christian men to adhere to it. Whatever the motive, there was soon manifested, in the Church, an exaggeration of self-restraint. Men began to withdraw from the ordinary walks of Christian life. They began to despise the performance of merely common duties; and to sketch out new ways to perfection, which they thought better than those taught by the Saviour. They began to do violence to their natures. In fact they became Stoical, as if they thought the being so was an advance on being Christian.
Christianity is a religion eminently suited for the daily life of men. It teaches us to do our duty in the world. We are taught that the highest degree of piety is consistent with, and indeed implies, the performance of one’s proper part, as belonging to a great family, which has a right to the energy and service of each of its members. To do our duty amongst men, wisely and bravely, is taught us too by the example of the divine founder of our religion. A man’s interests and desires may often lie in the direction of his ordinary duties. There can be no true piety in relinquishing the post God has given him merely because his interest would induce him to retain it. On the other hand, our duties may often be difficult and distracting. In that case, we have no right to leave them. There is often greater victory in doing our work in the world than in fleeing into solitude for the exercises of devotion. He who makes his religion to consist of care for self only, who for selfish ends neglects the duties which every man owes to his fellow-men, has a very unsatisfactory sense of the doctrines of the Gospel. Yet we find early mention in the records of the Church, of men who cut themselves off from intercourse with their fellow-Christians, leaving their place in the human family vacant, their work undone. They assumed the air of peculiar sanctity, clad themselves in coarse garments, slept on the hardest of couches, often on the ground, covered only by a sheepskin, or some similar coverlet, lived on the humblest fare, and many of them thought it a peculiar virtue to forego the joys of the marriage-life. When we look at this state of things with the eye of reason, we see that it has really no claim on the veneration of mankind. If it was good for one, why not for another? If certain persons, by means of their seclusion and mortification of the flesh, as they termed it, made themselves peculiarly the loved of God, then might all men do so; for we are told, “there is no respect of persons with” Him[61]. But, if all were to adopt this system of living, what would become of human society? The earth would soon cease to be the scene of busy industry, commerce would die, and religion would be a bane instead of a blessing. If one man makes himself peculiarly the favourite of heaven by forswearing marriage, then of course all men might make themselves so by the same means. But if celibacy were universal, what would become of the human race? Yet it is the duty of every man to make himself as much like what God would approve as he can. And if celibacy is peculiarly acceptable to heaven, all should be celibates. This, however, would make it to be agreeable to the wishes of the Most High, that the race of man should come to an end. As this cannot be God’s will, so neither can celibacy be the state in which a man must be holiest and most approved by his maker. The fact is that Christianity does not teach any such an idea as this mistaken one, to which I have referred. This has its origin in the spirit to which Stoicism gave birth. The religion of Jesus is one of faith in another’s merits, as the first step of all; and then, from the loyalty to God which this produces, the believer is anxious to do the utmost he can to show his gratitude. He tries his best to please his King and Lord, by whatever means. He counts no sacrifice too great if called on to make it. But he is not to mark out a way different from the rule of the Gospel. He must be content to do God’s work in the place and by the means which His providence may point out. Since the Most High has implanted certain feelings and affections in all our natures, though it may be Stoical, it is hardly Christian to try to uproot them. The Gospel does not teach us to destroy natural affections, but to control them. It is true our appetites are not to be our masters; yet they are not evils; they are sent to be our servants, and are good gifts of heaven, if used aright. We are nowhere taught by God, that, to be His peculiar people, we must go out of the world, and live selfish and unsocial lives. The word of God lays it down as a mark of evil to be “without natural affections.” Our blessed Lord, in His prayer for His disciples and the future Church of all ages, said[62], “I pray not that Thou wouldest take them out of the world, but that Thou wouldest keep them from the evil.” The noble duty laid upon us is to show in our daily life the excellence and power of virtue.
Yet we find that very early in the history of the Church there were great numbers of persons leading lives of selfish seclusion, and claiming peculiar sanctity because of this. Their solitude, and the lonely places in which they chose to live, gave rise to the name of Monk, Hermit, and Anchorite. Very soon these men occupied the same position in the religious world that the Stoics held in the heathen. And because Christianity gave woman her proper place, as an heir of immortality, and did not neglect her as philosophy had done, the same rules of living became also common with that part of the Christian women which aimed at superiority, as prevailed with regard to the men. They separated themselves, were placed under peculiar discipline, and bound by special vows.
It is surprising to observe how soon the notion became widespread, that these men and women were worthy of more reverence than others. Religion became divorced, in thought at least, from the daily life, and began to be considered as a system apart; as if it inculcated the excellence of certain courses, which were impracticable to ordinary men. This divorce of Christianity from its duty of raising the world by permeating all classes, and imparting to all its life-giving influence, had a most disastrous result on the souls of men. They who were obliged by the necessity of things to devote themselves to the affairs of time, almost ceased to care about being religious, since they thought religion to be the peculiar possession of others, who performed certain acts and submitted to austerities, to which they could not devote their time. Those who neglected their worldly duties, at the same time that they forewent certain advantages, arrogated to themselves the name of piety, and monopolised the right to the title of religious. So, pure, vigorous Christianity decayed before a hybrid system born of superstition and asceticism. Those who devoted themselves to the monastic life became so much esteemed because of their pretensions, that they acquired more influence than the ministers of God’s holy word and sacraments. The unscriptural merit attached to celibacy caused people to reckon those who embraced it as better than those who did not. Hence the clergy, to retain their influence, gave in to the idea. As early as the Council of Nice, we find that it was the custom for those who were unmarried when they were ordained, to continue single. Not only so, but an attempt was made, at that Council, to order all married clergy to separate from their wives: and this decree would probably have been carried, but for Paphnutius, an African Bishop, who was himself, however, a celibate.
We are reminded by the hermits of the Christian Church of those Stoic anchorites from whom they differed but little. We see in the work, which M. Aurelius has left as the record of his self-communings, the following observation on the fondness for seclusion among his fellow-philosophers. “They seek places of retreat for themselves, lone dwellings in the country, and the sea-shore, and the mountains.” Then he goes on to say to himself, “And thou thyself art wont most earnestly to long for such retreats[63].” This spirit of abstraction found, in the Church of Christ, more and more adherents as time wore on, and exacted a more absolute attention. We find from the writings of SS. Chrysostom, Cyprian, Jerome, Pachomius and Basil, how fast a hold it obtained of the minds of men. Basil was a student at Athens from A.D. 351 to A.D. 355, with Gregory Nazianzene and at the same time as the Emperor Julian. Philosophy doubtless still flourished there. We find Julian renouncing Christ altogether, for its sake. Basil, probably from the education which he received at the old home of Stoicism, was peculiarly in love with asceticism. He places before us the secluded life in its best light. We see how his ideas of piety were warped, however, by this spirit of asceticism. We hear him saying to a young monk, his disciple, “Hast thou left thy cell? Thou hast left there thy virtue.” “Shun the society of those of thine own age; yea, flee from it as from a burning flame.” “It is the devil’s craft,” he says (Mon. Con. Cap. XX.), “to keep alive in the mind of the monk a recollection of his parents and natural relatives, so that under colour of rendering them some aid, he may be drawn aside from his heavenly course.” He tells us that some objected to this, because the Apostle declared, “If a man provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own kindred, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.” But he gives the Antinomian reply that a monk, being one of a peculiar class, was virtually dead to the world and to his duty in it; “As dead thou art free from all contributions for the benefit of thy natural relatives, and, as utterly a pauper, thou hast nothing which thou canst bestow.”
This same spirit has continued to animate many parts of the Christian Church to this day. It has given rise to a vast variety of bodies, bound together by various rules, all more or less austere and unnatural. Among the Roman Catholics it has developed itself in the Trappists, the Jesuits, and other societies; and even in the English Church we have seen movements which tend to show that this spirit is confined within no certain limits, but exists in all quarters.
It is not my purpose to pursue the subject further in this direction. But there is one view of it to which I shall slightly allude. I would gladly pass over this, only it serves to show the influence exerted by the ascetic spirit on certain members of the Church, and therefore seems to claim a passing notice, I allude to the practical Antinomianism of the ancient ascetics. Respecting those who have followed in their steps, in more recent ages, I will be silent. When we turn to the writings of the ancient Fathers, however, we are struck with the testimony they bear to the fact that just as among the Stoics the long robe covered very often gross licentiousness; just as the sanctimonious look and the formality and pretension were thought enough by some[64] to take away the sinfulness of sin; so it was too much the case also with the Christian anchorites. They fell into grievous sins which were a disgrace to their natures. Epiphanius informs us that when Nicolaus affected to live a celibate life, he did not, either from want of power or will, restrain his lusts, but rushed into promiscuous intercourse, urging others to follow his example. The descriptions which this writer, and Irenæus, and others have given of the failings of those who professed extraordinary sanctity among the early heretics is such as forbid their being produced for public perusal. The Christian Fathers complained of similar conduct among the professed ascetics of the orthodox Church in the first ages. St Cyprian describes the iniquity of their conduct in his reply to Pomponius: among men and women who had devoted themselves to the monastic life great disorders prevailed. There can be no mistake, as he enters into minute particulars. Allusions were made to these by writers before his time. Monks had professed virgin sisters of the Church, under vows of perpetual chastity, living with them. These were called συνεισάκτοι by the Greeks, mulieres subintroductæ by the Latins. With these the single men lived, lodging in the same cell by day, and even sleeping on the same couch by night. But they called their marriage that of the soul and not of the body. They pretended to have reached such a height of excellence and self-control, as to be able to despise temptation, and to brave moral dangers with impunity. St Chrysostom, who was a great admirer of the ascetic life, thus bewails the evil result[65]. “Alas, my soul! Well may I exclaim, and repeat the lamentable cry with the Prophet, Alas, my soul! Our virginity is fallen into contempt; the veil that parted it off from matrimony is rent by impudent hands: the holy of holies is trodden under foot, and its weighty and awful sanctities have been profaned and thrown open to all; and that which was once held in reverence, as far more excellent than matrimony, is now sunk so low, as that one should call the married blessed, rather than those who profess celibacy. Nor is it the enemy that has effected all this, but the virgins themselves.” St Basil’s works show even more plainly the evils resulting from the system. St Jerome also intimates the same facts. There is indeed nothing wonderful in all this. Men and women were fighting against human nature, common sense, yea, even against Christianity itself, possessed by an evil spirit; which was of Stoic birth, but assumed the garb of preeminent sanctity.
Other vices, besides those hinted at above, were the necessary offspring of the system. St Jerome tells us that men who wore the garb of poverty and wished to excite admiration as avowedly poor, were gathering wealth within their ragged sleeves. But I need go no further in this disagreeable direction, and shall content myself with having said what the subject seemed to demand.
Another phase of the same ascetic bias in the human mind is what we understand by Puritanism. This turn of religious sentiment led men, and leads men still, to forego pleasures and to look with suspicion on enjoyments, however innocent in themselves. It is a persuasion of the same kind as that which led the Stoic to exclaim[66], “Thou wilt despise the pleasant song, the dance, the ‘pancratium,’ if thou dividest the harmonious strain into each of its notes, and askest thyself am I overcome by that? For thou wouldst blush to confess as much. Having done the like with regard to dancing, and considered each separate motion and action, thou wouldst come to the same conclusion, with respect to it: and the same also about the ‘pancratium.’ In short, except virtue and the things relating to virtue, remember in all things to consider the parts of which they consist, one by one, that by their dissection thou mayest learn to despise them.” The closely cut hair, which Persius gives us[67] as a characteristic of the Stoic youth, has had its counterpart among those whom the Cavaliers for this cause called Roundheads. And we find that these men were animated by a zeal for what they considered the cause of God, which led them to defy danger, and apparently to court difficulties. Yet there was often an exaggeration of feeling and sentiment in many, similar to that which led to the asceticism of the first ages of the Church; and which leads men still to seek the monastic life. Among the Puritans, though distinguished from them in history, in name, and in many peculiarities, we see the Quakers standing prominently forth. In fact, they were more puritanic than the Puritans, and seem the personification of Stoicism among Christian people.
Another feature of Stoicism which has exerted great influence on the Church of Christ is its fatalism. This has been developed into a system of Christian doctrine, which we shall designate sufficiently, when we call it Calvinism; though it existed, in a considerable degree, before Calvin; and though, in the system, the necessitarian element is a variable quantity. The Supralapsarians carry their belief so far as to hold that God decreed man’s fall into sin, with all the dreadful consequences. Others, with less of this fatalism in their faith, restrict the decrees of the Almighty to the disposal of man after the fall. St Augustin was considerably influenced by doctrines bearing a resemblance to certain phases of Calvinism: but he argued stoutly for man’s freedom of will. He was essentially a Latin in his scholarship, and did not draw his information from the Hebrew and Greek. His views were tinged with the fatalism of the Stoical philosophy which had widely influenced those with whom he came in contact in early life. With these views he came to the perusal of the Epistle to the Romans, and thought he read there a confirmation of them. Respecting the 9th chapter of that Epistle, Dodwell says[68], “St Paul, being bred a Pharisee, spake there and is to be interpreted according to the doctrine of the Pharisees[69] concerning fate, which they had borrowed from the Stoics.” St Augustin and Prosper and Fulgentius understood St Paul to mean almost the same predestination that the Stoic belief would imply. Yet they did not contradict and explain away other parts of Scripture, nor utterly ignore reason and common sense. The same difficulty met them that had occurred to the Stoic Chrysippus. How was this absolute predestination to be reconciled with human freedom? Cicero tells us (De Fato, VII. 11) that Chrysippus laboured painfully to show how all things were ordered by fate, and yet that there was something in ourselves; and tried to reconcile the inconsistencies of the system by saying that while fate predisposed, the human will determined. So, naturally the reasoning would occur that, if God has predestined us to be saved, there is no need for striving; if he has not, there is no use in any effort we can make. St Augustin, however, does not seem to set before men such absolute fatalism as this; at least, he strongly impresses on us the fact, that God is willing to receive every sinner coming to Him; and gives us our choice of good and evil. The Jansenists adopted and upheld similar views to these on predestination. So did Luther and Beza. Calvin advanced more decidedly necessitarian views, and many of his followers to the present day have set out with eternal fate as the foundation of their creed, and have interpreted all other doctrines so as to harmonize with this. The essential tenet of Calvin was that God, from no other motive than His good pleasure and freewill, has predestinated from all eternity certain members of the human family to everlasting happiness, and the rest to endless misery. Calvin says[70], “Many indeed, as if they wished to avert odium from God, admit election in such a way as to deny that any one is reprobated. But this is puerile and absurd, because election itself could not exist, without being opposed to reprobation. Whom God passes by therefore he reprobates, and from no other cause than his determination to exclude them from the inheritance which he predestines for His children.” Such a doctrine as this requires that other doctrines, such as “The Lord is not willing that any should perish; but that all should come to repentance[71],” be taken in a qualified sense. Moreover, since salvation is entirely independent of the individual, there can be no danger to one predestinated, whatever he may do or neglect. He cannot fall and be lost. Again, as Christ would not die for men whom he reprobated, his death was not for the sins of the whole world, but for the elect only. The first five of “the Lambeth Articles” thus set forth that part of the Calvinistic doctrine which is necessary for our present purpose. 1. “God hath from eternity predestinated some persons to life; others he hath reprobated to death. 2. This predestination to life proceeds not from the faith, perseverance, good works, or any other quality in the predestinated, but from the sole will or pleasure of God. 3. The number predestinated is limited before, and cannot be increased, nor lessened. 4 Those not predestinated to life will of necessity be damned. 5. True faith and sanctification in the elect never fails either in part, or totally.” The ninth Article stated, “It is not in every one’s will, or power, to be saved.” The Synod of Dort, A.D. 1618, reduced the system under five heads, which it is not necessary to produce here, as they are a reiteration of what I have adduced above. The Puritans were firm adherents to the doctrines of Calvinism, and rejoiced in the belief that they were the peculiar people of God; so that in their doctrine, as well as discipline, they partook of the spirit which animated, though in a different manner, the Stoic sect. Of the Church party, at the same time, many held a mitigated form of Calvinistic doctrine, though others rejected it altogether.
From Calvinism, carried to its extreme limits, resulted violent Antinomianism. In this also Stoicism repeated itself. Just as the Stoics declared that nothing could be a crime which the wise man did; so the believers in Antinomian doctrines declare there can be no sin in those who are the elect; that Christ obeyed the law and fulfilled all righteousness in their stead, and that his righteousness being imputed to them, whatever their conduct may be, they are righteous still. Hence they call observance of the will of God, and a sense of the duty of obeying his law, “the bondage of legality.”. They cry down morality, as a worthless thing in the sight of God. The Stoics divided the world into the wise and fools. These two classes included all mankind. They called ordinary men, who did not come up to their standard, fools and mad. “The school and sect of Chrysippus,” says Horace[72], “deem every man mad, whom vicious folly, or the ignorance of any truth, drives blindly forward. This definition takes in whole nations, yea, even great kings themselves, the wise man alone being excepted.” When once a man was a “wise” man, however, they held that all things, even the most revolting crimes, were indifferent to him. So, if mankind be divided into two classes, the elect and the reprobate, not one of whom can ever change from either class to the other, “then,” some men argue, “do what I will it does not matter.” The Antinomian claims to be free from the law of God, and believes that whatever he does, he cannot bring himself under the condemnation which it denounces against the transgressor. Hence have resulted fatal mistakes. We see how evil was the result in the case of the Anabaptists in Germany. They were men who called themselves, and perhaps believed themselves, the elect of God; and, as such, despised all law, human and divine. The excesses which they committed, their crimes and subsequent misfortunes, have left a fearful record behind them of the height to which this spirit may be carried, and how it may bereave men of their reason and virtue. The sixth of the Lambeth Articles declares, that “an assurance of having justifying faith is certain of remission of sins, and of eternal salvation through Christ.” One cannot but see how possible it is that men may be deceived in such a matter as this, and how fatal such self-deception may be in its consequences. Indeed, it may lead a man on in false security and unfounded presumption till he is undone.