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XII. THE TRANSFORMATION OF CHRISTIAN UNION. 335

There was not necessarily any organization.1 The tendency to organization came partly from the tendency of the Jewish colonies in the great cities of the empire to combine, and to a far greater extent from the large tendency of the Greek and Roman world to form societies for both religious and social purposes.

But though there is no evidence that associations were in the first instance universal, there is ample evidence that, when once they began to be formed, they were formed on a basis which was less intellectual than moral and spiritual. An intellectual element existed: but it existed as an element, not by itself but as an essential ingredient in the whole spiritual life. It was not separable from the spiritual element. Of the same spiritual element, "faith" and "works" were two sides. The associations, like the primitive clusters which were not yet crystallized into associations, were held together by faith and love and hope, and fused, as it were, by a common enthusiasm. They were baptized, not only into one body, but also by one spirit, by the common belief in Jesus Christ as their Saviour, by the overpowering sense of brotherhood, by the common hope of immortality. Their individual members were the saints, that is, the holy ones. The collective unity which they formed-the Church of God-was holy. It was regarded as holy before it was regarded as catholic. The order of the attributes in the creed is historically correct-the holy Catholic Church. The pictures which remain of the earliest Christian communities show that there was a real effort to justify their name. The earliest

1 Socrates, H. E. p. 177, evwois Tоû σúpaтos, of the corporate unity of a philosophical school.

complete picture of a Christian community is that of the "Two Ways." There are fragments elsewhere. From the Acts of the Apostles and the canonical Epistles, and the extra-canonical writings of the sub-apostolic age, it is possible to put together a mosaic.

But in the "Two Ways" we have a primitive manual of Christian teaching, and the teaching is wholly moral. It professes to be a short exposition (didaxn) of the two commandments of love to God and love to one's neighbour. The exposition is partly a quotation from and partly an expansion of the Sermon on the Mount. "Bless those that curse you, and pray for your enemies." "If any one give thee a blow on the one cheek, turn to him the other also." "Give to every one that asketh thee, and ask not back." "Thou shalt not be double-minded nor double-tongued." "Thou shalt not be covetous nor grasping." "Thou shalt not be angry nor envious." "Thou shalt not be lustful nor filthy-tongued." "But thou shalt be meek and long-suffering and quiet and guileless and considerate." The ideal was not merely moral, but it was also that of an internal morality, of a new heart, of a change of character.

The book which is probably nearest in date, and which is certainly most alike in character to this simple manual, is the first book of the collection of documents known as the Apostolical Constitutions. It pictures the aim of the Christian life as being to please God by obeying His will and keeping His commandments. "Take heed, O sons of God, to do everything in obedience to God, and to become well-pleasing in all things to the Lord our God."2 1 Didaché, cc. 1--3. Apost. Const. P. 1. 15-17.

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"If thou wilt please God, abstain from all that He hates, and do none of those things that are displeasing to Him."1 Individual Christians are spoken of as servants and sons of God, as fellow-heirs and fellow-partakers with His Son, as believers, i.e., as the phrase is expanded, "those who have believed on His unerring religion."2 The rule of life is the Ten Commandments, expanded as Christ expanded them, so as to comprehend sins of thought as well as of deed. It was a fellowship of a common ideal and a common enthusiasm of goodness, of neighbourliness and of mutual service, of abstinence from all that would rouse the evil passions of human nature, of the effort to crush the lower part of us in the endeavour to reach after God.3

It is even possible that the baptismal formula may have consisted, not in an assertion of belief, but in a promise of amendment; for a conservative sect made the candidate promise-"I call these seven witnesses to witness that I will sin no more, I will commit adultery no more, I will not steal, I will not act unjustly, I will not covet, I will not hate, I will not despise, nor will I have pleasure in any evil."4

The Christian communities were based not only on the fellowship of a common ideal, but also on the fellowship of a common hope. In baptism they were born again, and born to immortality. There was the sublime con

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1 Ib. 5. 20-22.

2 Ib. 1. 6.

3 "We Christians are remarkable," says Tertullian (Ad Scap. 2), 'only for the reformation of our former vices." The plea of the Apologists was based on the fact that the Christians led blameless lives de causâ innocentiæ consistam, Tert. Apol. c. 4.

4 The Elchasaites, ap. Hipp. 9. 15.

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ception that the ideal society which they were endeavouring to realize would be actually realized on earth. The Son of Man would come again, and the regenerated would die no more. The kingdoms of this world would become the kingdom of the Messiah. The lust and hate, the strife and conflict, the iniquity and vice, which dominated in current society, would be cast out for ever; and over the new earth there would be the arching spheres of a new heaven, into which the saints, like the angels, might ascend. But as the generations passed, and all things continued as they had been, and the sign of the Son of Man sent no premonitory ray from the far-off heaven, this hope of a new earth, without changing its force, began to change its form. conceived as sudden, but as gradual. world were to be brought one by one into the vast communion. There grew up the magnificent conception of a universal assembly, a kaloλKỲ Kкλnoia.1 There would be a universal religion and a universal society, and not until then would the end come: it would be a transformed and holy world.

It was no longer

The nations of the

The first point which I will ask you to note is, that this very transformation of the idea of a particular religion into that of a universal religion-this conception of an all-embracing human society, naturally, if unconsciously, carried with it a relaxation of the bonds of discipline. The very earnestness which led men to preach the Gospel and to hasten the Kingdom, led them

1 Weingarten, Zeittafeln, p. 12. See also Lightfoot, Ignatius, vol. ii. pp. 310-312.

also to gather into the net fish of every kind. There was always a test, but the rigour of the test was softened. The old Adam asserted itself. There were social influences, and weakness of character in the officers, and a condonation by the community. It became less and less practicable to eject every offender against the Christian code. It was against this whole tendency that Montanism was a rebellion—not only against the officialism of Christianity, but also against its worldliness.1 The earlier conception of that code, in which it embraced sins of thought, came to be narrowed. The first narrowing was the limitation to open sins. The Christian societies fell under the common law which governs all human organizations, that no cognizance can be taken of the secret thoughts of the heart. The second limitation was, that even when a man had committed an open sin, and had been therefore excluded from the community, he might be re-admitted. The limitation was not accepted without a controversy which lasted over a great part of two centuries, and which at one time threatened to rend the whole Christian communities into fragments. The Church was gradually transformed from being a community of saints —of men who were bound together by the bond of a holy life, separated from the mass of society, and in antagonism to it-to a community of men whose moral ideal and moral practice differed in but few respects from those of their Gentile neighbours. The Church of Christ, which floated upon the waves of this troublesome world was a Noah's ark, in which there were unclean as well as clean.

1 Weingarten, p. 17.

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