Imagini ale paginilor
PDF
ePub

kindly providence. On the other hand he traces the cotemporary operation of the Evil Spirit, (the "Spirit of time," as he calls it, from after the æra of the overthrow of the Pagan Empire that it had previously ruled in and animated,')—I say, he traces the Evil Spirit's operation through the same period in the beguiling sectarian spirit, and religious schisms of Christendom; including not alone the Arian schism, and the Mahomedan schism, (for he places Mahommedanism in the same category,) but also in the iconoclastic proceedings of certain of the Greek emperors,3 (proceedings which he lauds Gregory the Second for resisting,) and the consequent schism between the Eastern and Western Churches. In his sketch of the later half of the middle age, reaching from the twelfth century to the Reformation, he admits the general religious deterioration of Western Christendom; particularizing the essentially false scholastic philosophy then in vogue, and the internal feuds, and contests between Church and State:* and traces the kindly operation of the Divine Spirit, ("the Paraclete promised to the Church by its divine Founder,") whereby Christianity was preserved, in the rise and institution of the ecclesiastical mendicant orders, as men of the most perfect evangelical humility, poverty, and self-denial: at the same time reprobating the doctrines of the then popular opposers of the Church, viz. the Waldenses, Albigenses, and also Wickliffe and Huss 1 "Christianity is the emancipation of the human race from the bondage of that inimical Spirit, who denies God, and, as far as in him lies, leads all created intelligences astray. Hence the Scripture styles him the Prince of this world;' and so he was in fact, but in ancient history only; when among all the nations of the earth, in the pomp of martial glory, and splendour of Pagan life, he had established the throne of his domination. Since this divine era in the history of man, he can no longer be called the Prince of this world, but the Spirit of time, opposed to divine influence," &c. Lect. xviii. ad fin.

2 Ibid. p. 333.

3 "The rigid prohibition of the religious use of images was proper in those cases only where the use of them was not confined to a mere devotional respect, but was likely to degenerate into a real adoration and idolatry; and where a strict separation from Pagan nations and their rites was a matter of primary importance. But now that the Mahommedan proscription of all holy emblems and images of devotion arose from a decidedly antichristian spirit, this Byzantine fury against all images and symbols of piety can be regarded only as a mad contagion of the moral disease of the age." Lect. xii. p. 106.

4 Lect. xiv, xviii; pp. 173, 176, 333.

Lect. xiv. pp. 184, 186.

after them, as fraught with the germs of heresy.'-So arrived at the Reformation, he speaks of it as manifested to be a human, not divine reformation; by its claim of full freedom of faith, its rejection of the traditions of the past,3 its destruction of the dignity of the priesthood, and endangering of the very foundations of religion, through a denial of the holy sacramental mysteries,* its adoption finally of a faith of mere negation, (so he designates it,) and severing of its Protestant constituents from the sacred centre of faith and religion, i.e. from Rome.5

Such is Schlegel's philosophic view of the history of Christendom down to the Reformation: after which he notices the religious indifferentism of spirit, and false illuminism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, -ascribing them very much to the influence of the Protestant principle,6-until the tremendous political outbreak of this infidel illuminism in the French Revolution.

[blocks in formation]

3 "The total rejection of the traditions of the past, (here was the capital vice and error of this revolution) rendered this evil (the unhappy existing confusion of doctrines) incurable; and even for biblical learning, the true key of interpretation, which sacred tradition alone can furnish, was irretrievably lost." Lect. xv. p. 215.—So also at p. 228, in a passage quoted below.

"The hostility of the German Reformers to the Church was of a spiritual nature. It was the religious dignity of the priesthood which was more particularly the object of their destructive efforts. The priesthood stands or falls with faith in the sacred mysteries; and (these having been by the Protestant body generally rejected) it was not difficult to foresee that together with faith in them, respect for the clergy must sooner or later be destroyed." Moreover "that great mystery of religion on which the whole dignity of the Christian priesthood depends, forms the simple but deep internal keystone of all Christian doctrine; and thus the rejection or even infringement of this dogma shakes the foundation of religion, and leads to its total overthrow." Ibid. p. 218.

"Had it been," he says p. 228, a "divine reformation, it would at no time, and under no condition, have severed itself from the sacred centre and venerable basis of Christian tradition; in order, reckless of all legitimate decisions, preceding as well as actual, to perpetuate discord, and seek in negation itself a new and peculiar basis for the edifice of schismatic opinion."

He speaks with high approval, p. 222, of the institutions of the Jesuits; as a religious order, wholly dependent on the Church, and from their opposition to Protestantism, as the great want of the age.

6 "Those negative and destructive principles,-those maxims of liberalism and irreligion, which were almost exclusively prevalent in European literature during the eighteenth century,-in a word, Protestantism, in the comprehensive signification of that term " Lect. xviii. p. 285-So too p. 295; though he there allows that the English Protestantism of philosophy is to be distinguished from the French revolutionary Atheism; for that "though by its opposition to all spiritual ideas it is of a negative character, yet most of its partizans contrive to make some sort of capitulation with divine faith, and to preserve a kind of belief in moral feeling."

Then, after a notice of the Revolution and its twentyfive years' war" of irreligion,"-" a convulsive crisis of the world which has created a mighty chasm, and thrown up a wall of separation between the present age and the eighteenth century," he speaks of the late progressing revival of Roman Catholicism, as a revival of religion, more especially in the countries of France and Germany: and finally expresses his hope of a true and complete regeneration of the age, at no great distance of time (though not till after a temporary triumph of some antichristian. spirit of evil,1) as the fit conclusion to the philosophy of history:2-its essence to consist in a thorough Christianization alike of the state and of science ;3-its form to be somewhat like the perfecting of the noble but imperfect Christian Empire of Charlemagne ;*—its introduction to be preceded by a display of fearful divine judgments,5 and indeed attended by Christ's own coming and intervention :—and, with this divine reformation, and its accompanying complete victory of truth, " that human reformation, which till now hath existed, to sink to the ground, and disappear from the world."

How different the philosophy of the same history of

1 Lect. xv. Vol. ii. p. 199.

2 Lect. xviii. p. 323. 3 Ibid. 320, 322, 336.

4 This is spoken of at p. 320 as a magnificent ground-work for a truly Christian structure of government, which then indeed remained unfinished, but is to be the object of our hope for the future. See the next Note.

5 "This exalted religious hope,-this high historical expectation,—must be coupled with great apprehension, as to the full display of divine justice in the world. For how is such a religious regeneration possible, until every species, form, and denomination of political idolatry be entirely extirpated from the earth." p. 319.

6 "As every human soul is conducted to the realms above by the gentle hand of its divine guardian, so the Saviour himself has announced to all mankind, in many prophetic passages, that when the period of the dissolution of the world shall approach, he himself will return to the earth, will renovate the face of all things, and bring them to a close." So Lect. x. Vol. ii. p. 20. He adds that mankind had "to traverse many centuries, before the promise was to be fulfilled, the final and universal triumph of Christianity throughout the earth to be accomplished, and all mankind gathered into one fold and under one shepherd: " so showing that it is the earthly renovation of all things, and triumph of Christianity on this earthly scene, that Schlegel expected Christ's advent to introduce. To the same effect is the heading of his last Lecture (p. 300, on the " Universal Regeneration of Society.") with the accommodated text, "I come soon, and will renew all things." Schlegel was, in his way, a Premillennarian. 7 Ibid. p. 318.

Christendom, as traced out to St. John in the divinelyplanned visions of the Apocalypse:-a difference based in fact on a totally different view from Schlegel's, both as to Christ's true religion, and as to Christ's true Church! After a rapid prefiguration in its six first picturings of the chief eras and vicissitudes of the Roman Pagan persecuting empire, thenceforward successively to occur, until its total overthrow and dissolution before the power of Christianity, there was then most strikingly intimated to him, in the next or Sealing Vision, that already, at the æra so depicted, a general though covert apostacy would have begun, and be progressing, among the professing Christian body raised to power in Roman Christendom:

-an apostacy which alike the foreshadowings of the prophecy, and the parallel facts of after history, referred in chief part to that selfsame Judaic and unscriptural view of the church-sacraments and church-ministry with which Schlegel would connect the essence of religion; and the gravity of which hence appeared, from its being further depicted as the cause of a series of fearful avenging judgments, soon to follow. At the same time there was also foreshown God's gracious purpose, while allowing scope to ungrateful man's apostacy, yet to preserve to Himself in the world a faithful church and witnesses. And the formation, character, and secret history of those that would constitute this the Lord's real church, was also shown him: how they would be no visible corporate body; but strictly a Kupiakŋ ekkλŋσia, Christ's own outgathering

1 These two words have both somewhat remarkably been preserved, in the signification of church, in our modern European languages :—the one, ekkλŋσɩα, in the église, chiesa, iglesia, of the French, Italian, Spanish, &c; the other, kuplakn, in the kirche, kirk, church, of the German, Scotch, English, Dutch, Swedish, and other northern tongues.

Archbishop Whately has indeed in his late Work on the Kingdom of Christ, p. 76, suggested a very different origin to the latter appellative. "The word church, or its equivalent kirk, is probably no other than circle, i. e. an assembly, ecclesia." But what his authority for the statement I know not; and its truth seems more than problematical. In Suicer's Thesaurus it will be found that both Kuрiakη, and much more generally Kupiakov, had come in the 4th century to be words used in the sense of church in Greek Christendom. · Κυριακον usitatissimè notat templum. Sic Can. 5. Neo-Cæs. Kaтnx8μevos, eav elσePXoμevos εις το κυριακον, εν τῇ των κατηχουμένων ταξει στηκῃ Can. 27 Laod. τοις κυριακοις, η εν ταις εκκλησίαις, τας λεγομενας αγαπας ποιειν

[ocr errors]

"

Ότι ου δει εν Eusebius H. E.

[ocr errors]

and election of grace, individually chosen, enlightened, quickened, and sealed by Him with the Holy Spirit of adoption a body notable as "God's servants" for holy obedience; and though few in number, compared with the apostate professors of Christianity, yet in God's eye numerally perfect and complete.' Thenceforward these two lines and successions were traced distinctly and separately in their respective histories, through all the series of events and revolutions following, even to the consummation; and the invisible inspirers of their different polities and actions, whether the Evil Spirit, or the Good, also made manifest. On the one hand there was depicted the body of false professors, multiplied so as to form the main and dominant constituency of apostate Christendom, as developing more and more a religion not christian but antichristian, it being based on human traditions, (the same that figure so high in Schlegel's estimate,) not on God's word; and, after falling away to the worship of departed saints and martyrs as mediators, in place of Christ,3 as alike in its western and its eastern division judicially visited and desolated by the divine avenging judgments of emblematic tempests, scorpion-locusts, and horsemen from the Euphrates; in other words, of the Goths, Saracens, and Turks :then as, in its western division, rising up again from the primary desolating judgments of Gothic invasion, in the new form of an ecclesiastical empire, (the same that Schlegel eulogizes as Christ's true Church,) enthroned on the seven hills of ancient Rome: its secret contriver being the very Dragon, or Satanic Spirit, that had ruled openly before in the Pagan Empire: its ruling head proud, persecuting, blasphemous, and self-exalting

ix. 10; Και τα κυριακα όπως κατασκευάζοιεν συγχωρείται. He refers also to Can. 74 in Trullo, to Athanasius, and Zonaras. (I may add that Cyprian similarly so uses the corresponding Latin word, Dominicum.)—-From the language of Greek Christendom it was transferred, I presume, by Ulphilas, at the close of the fourth century into the Gothic language; and so into the Saxon and other cognate tongues. Thus Johnson in his Dictionary; "Church (cyrce Saxon, κυριακη Greek). Apoc. vii. Sce Vol. i. pp. 305-315.

2 Compare Apoc. xii. 17.

3 Apoc. viii. 3. 4 Apoc. viii. ix.

1

« ÎnapoiContinuă »