Christ those natures can by no conjunction be made one person, so Eutychus, of sound belief as touching their true personal union, became unsound by denying the difference which still continueth between the one and the other nature." The union of the two natures in Christ supplied for many years the subject of fierce disputes between the schools of Alexandria and Antioch. Such extraneous and secondary motives for hostility concurred to prolong and exaggerate the bitterness of their disputes respecting this dogma. 22. With this dispute is connected the name of Cyril, patriarch of Alexandria (d. 444)—a man possessing dialectical powers, which would have placed him high among the schoolmen of later ages, and a writer sound and orthodox in the main, although his controversial haste led him into the fault of counteracting particular errors by expressions which would seem to fall into opposite ones. The matter was formally adjusted at the Council of Chalcedon (451). A letter, specifying the orthodox doctrine respecting the union of the two natures in Christ, by Leo the Great, Bishop of Rome, was received by that assembly as definitive and normal. Alike remarkable for his hierarchical tact and as a dogmatical writer, Leo (in whose writings the whole system of the Theology of the Western Church may be found prefigured) saw from the first the extent and importance of the controversy. A difference is throughout observable in the Theology of the Eastern and Western Churches. That of the first was essentially speculative, and occupied with discussions on the Trinity and the Person of Christ. In the West, ecclesiastical relations, and the great questions of Grace, Predestination, and Justification, were absorbing and paramount topics. So far was the East from sharing the interest felt by her sister in these questions, that the disputes of Augustine and Pelagius are hardly mentioned by her historians. 23. School of North Africa.-The peculiar character of the Theology of the Church of North Africa may be said to have commenced with Tertullian. A short sketch of his writings, and another of those of Cyprian, will be the best means of estimating the nature of the influence thus exercised. The writings of Tertullian relate to a variety of topics connected with Christianity, particularly of practice. In their classification, those containing traces of Montanism should be carefully distinguished from the rest. Enthusiastic and contemplative by turns, Tertullian embraced with much zeal his favourite objects, and rejected most unceremoniously all that was foreign or extraneous to them. His knowledge was multifarious, but ill arranged. Although a deep thinker, he was deficient in precision; and his irregular and overheated fancy hurried him into an overweening fondness for material illustrations and imagery. Still, there is much in the character of Tertullian which makes it a subject of especial interest to the Christian student. His temperament was to the last fiery, enthusiastic, teeming with the new matter which his conversion had opened to him, and which he could scarcely find means of expressing, in the rude Punic Latin of his native home. Much there is in his works dark and difficult of interpretation, but still original and attractive. It is the neglecting to observe this characteristic connexion between Tertullian and his writings which has led many to undervalue or misapprehend the real worth of this rude but spirited writer, whose great and glaring deficiencies are counterbalanced by excellencies still greater and more striking. 24. The study of Tertullian is known to have had much influence on the mind of Cyprian. Great as were the feelings of veneration with which he regarded the See of Rome, he stood forward in bold and unhesitating opposition to what he conceived the erroneous views of Stephanus, Bishop of that city, regarding the baptism of heretics. A fair and unprejudiced consideration of the character of Cyprian, will present him to us as a true disciple of Christianity, as a man animated by the most pure, unfading, and unrelaxing love to his Redeemer and his Church. No one has attempted to impeach the pastoral care with which he watched over his flock, the hearty interest he took in its welfare, or the use made by him of his episcopal authority for the preservation of order among them. Cyprian's besetting error-one into which the best and wisest, and not the least holy of men, may fall -was a tendency unduly to exalt the episcopal power. Had he, who throughout his life dreaded not to die for the name and religion of Christ, remembered that his apostolic station did not give him an immunity from the ordinary errors and frailties of mankind, he would have overthrown his adversaries, with far less risk of evil consequences to the Church. 25. This, again, is much qualified by a consideration of what was undoubtedly the leading idea of Cyprian's life. The early Christians were led to regard, by a variety of circumstances, the external unity of the Church as a matter of primary and vital importance. When they looked back upon the wretched state of unfriendly separation in which they had lived as heathens, and saw their own present unity and union of spirit-when they looked upon their own little flocks, rejected and scorned by the world, and yet valuing their own folds more dearly for that very rejection and scorn-they became less able, and less inclined, to draw any distinction between the invisible, internal Church of Christ, and its visible, external form on earth. The early Christians could trace, by historical deduction, that all the various parts of the great body of the Church rested on the foundation which the Apostles had laid, and they saw, in colours which could not be mistaken, how great detriment was inflicted on that Apostolic foundation, and on the internal unity of the Church in the Spirit, by all who severed themselves from the great whole, whether heretical sects and schools, which originated in doctrine positively false and erroneous, or schismatics, who rejected every other rule than that of their individual judgement. Thus it came to pass, that in the days of Cyprian the doctrine of the one Holy Catholic Church formed an integral part of the general Con fession of Faith used by its members. It is true, that the doctrines of Cyprian, if pushed to their extreme, would lead to formalism-to mistaking the body for the soul, or the husk for the kernel, and that, after the lapse of so many centuries, they appear rude and arbitrary. But in this, as in so many other points, the views of the early Church were just and sound. Had she expressed herself with less earnestness, or urged her demands with more of qualification, humanly speaking, she would have fallen a prey to heresy and schism, instead of emerging unscathed from her strife with heathenism or heterodoxy. 26. The early life, fortune, and mental changes of Augustine (d. 430), although extremely interesting, do not come within the plan of the present sketch. The religious system maintained by this great, original thinker, during the early portion of his life, was widely different from that of his latter years, with which his name has become identified. The enduring evils of the fall of Adam, the incapacity of unregenerate man for aught save evil, are the prominent features of the system of Augustine. The grand merit of this most influential teacher is, that he brought the notions of sin and grace forward from the secondary place which they had hitherto held, to develope them with the clearness due to their importance. Neither Augustine, however, nor his two disciples, Proster (d. 445) and Fulgentius (d. 533), the most eminent champions of Predestination and Grace, went the lengths which have been charged upon them. Their system may be stated thus:-1. God neither caused nor willed sin; neither its being, nor the forbidden act. 2. Sin was of man, Grace and Perseverance of God. 3. Election was absolute: of God's will, and not of His foreknowledge of merit. 4. God's foreknowledge of wilful sin, is the only reason of predestination to punishment-God hardening men by the withdrawal of His aid, but only in the cases of their first abandoning Him, or deserving this withdrawal by their sin. 27. The Eastern and Western Fathers may be said to have laboured on a common field, as Apologists. But the circumstances of the time contributed to give a peculiar colouring to the labours of Augustine. It is well known that the calamities and misery which the barbarian invasions had inflicted upon so wide a space of the civilised world, were interpreted as a proof of the manifestation of the wrath of God against the Christian innovators. To rebut this attack, became an object of the deepest interest to Augustine. The results of his labours are embodied in his great work, "The City of God"-a practical defence of Christianity, worthy the mind from which it emanated. Casting a comprehensive glance over the history of God's dealings with the world, he shows the insufficiency of unaided reason as a guide in even merely temporal matters; the final objects of the Heavenly Wisdom, which has been vouchsafed to man for his instruction; the unavoidable mixture of good and evil, which has always obtained in the world; and the great results arising from Christianity, which has shown that these evils are but transient, while it has mitigated their actual pressure. 28. Until the time of Calvin, there arose no writer who has equalled the testimony, at once simple and powerful, borne to the Christian faith by Augustine. The great intellects of the scholastic period, among whom an exception might most reasonably be looked for, were fettered by the ecclesiastical system under which they lived. All portions of the life and writings of Augustine are coloured by his faith his spirit and being rest on his love to the God whose presence he feels and breathes; or, in his own words, "all his light, his love, and his beauty, is God." In logical acuteness and closeness, the African Father was inferior to the more modern writer. But, although in some points the resemblance is most striking between Augustine and Calvin, there are others in which the difference is not less remarkable. They are most widely different with regard to the dogma of the Church. Those on which they approach most closely are their belief in God and his Son, and in their sentiments concerning salvation by grace, original sin, and the annihilation of spiritual pride. 29. Our limits preclude us from entering upon the discussion of Augustine's views respecting the dogma of the Church. He laboured with a twofold object-to maintain the dignity of the Christian faith, as distinct from barren and arrogant speculative views, and to establish the harmony between faith and reason, in opposition to the advocates of a blind and indiscriminating belief. Augustine held, that, to a right understanding of the deep things of God, a hearty faith and its fruits are previous requisites. But he taught, at the same time, that faith was also illustrated by the light of reason. The subject-matter of this faith, according to Augustine, was comprised in the teaching of the Church a statement pregnant with consequences to her subsequent history. The African Fathers, and the disputes with which they were connected, contributed especially to the discussion and establishment of this important dogma. 30. A formal estimate of the writings of this great and most influential Father would occupy a wide space. As a man (although a most pious and talented one), Augustine was not exempt from error. Few would have run his course with so little; yet there is an occasional ambiguity in his writings, which has perplexed the most attentive readers. But keeping in mind the distinction with which we set out, of the several speculative and practical tendencies of the Eastern and Western Fathers, we have every reason to be thankful for the views maintained respecting the Eucharist by this most influential writer. When the religious faith of ages or nations is stamped by the influence of one master-mind, its errors become doubly deplorable. Augustine's views are as clear respecting the holy rite, which forms the highest act of Church membership, as they are obscure with regard to an imaginary purgation after death. The weight which this Father's testimony carries with it, has made the champions of another Church most anxious to claim him for their own, on this mystery of Christian life but in this they have not succeeded. The canon of the Massthe centre of the theological system of the Latin Church-was definitively established by Gregory the Great (d. 604), the founder of the Romish system of Theology, and on whom the views of Augustine had very considerable influence. Gregory, like Augustine, was animated by deep, sound, and spiritual views respecting Grace and Justification. But in the latter Father these were found blended with certain tendencies to superstition: as, for instance, his allowing the sacramental elements to be buried with a corpse. From this last superstitious tendency arose the Judaising system of the Catholicism of the Middle Ages; from the better views respecting grace, the Christian excellences by which the mischief was leavened, and occasionally opposed. It is no injustice to the memory of this great Father (whose recorded sentiments have done so much for the promulgation of vital Christianity) to assert, that his authority contributed mainly to the erection of the theocratical fabric which stood during so long a period; a fabric founded, in the first instance, on the principle of the spirituality of forms, but, in a short space, maintained by its abuse. 31. We must now suspend the course of historical narrative, which we have thus far attempted to follow, and revert to the earlier days of the Alexandrian and African Churches-the days of Clement and Tertullian; for at this period may be found the germs of the ascetic institute, the parent (or, rather, the early appellation) of the monastic celibate, which has been productive of such important results in the Christian world. Our present purpose is to pass in brief review the literature of asceticism, considered as the standard and expression of the spirit by which it was animated. The writings of Clement of Alexandria and Origen reveal the principal sources of subsequent asceticism. Regarded in the most favourable light, the passages in question may be quoted as expressing very high and spiritual views concerning the fruits of faith, though soon overlaid with the perversions of human self-righteousness. Our limits preclude our entering on the fabulous and romantic legends respecting Antonius and Pachomius. The most favourable specimen of ascetic composition is to be found in the writings attributed to Macarius. The portraiture of a true Christian is sketched in these homilies according to the simplest Gospel principles. In the 17th, the ordinary error of the age respecting the sufficiency of man to fulfil the commandments of God, is controverted in the strongest manner. In the 15th, the erroneousness of extreme views regarding indefectible grace, is opposed in a similar spirit. Mark (who lived about the same period) holds up with equal zeal the futility of the hopes of those who looked upon a barren asceticism as a path to heaven, and the hopelessness of attempting to realise holiness without spiritual aid. Many passages in the writings of the Egyptian Nilus, a few years later, breathe the sentiments of a rich and sanctified experience. But, on the other side, the growth of evil was rapid, and easily explicable. In the monastic institute lay the seeds of the reli |