sively assumed, we shall find a great number of them. It is necessary to bring them together, to unite them, and to compose them into more extended masses. Thus we obtain, by the last synthesis, four periods or principal forms. The first is the primitive form, or the form of Life; the second, the form of Doctrine; the third, the form of the School; the fourth, the form of the Reformation. The Church of Christ, following a scriptural comparison, may be likened to a man. She has had

her youth; she has had her maturity; she has had her old age; and then, without dying, she has had, if we may so speak, a mighty resurrection. These are the four eras, the four ages of the Church of Jesus Christ.

We shall traverse rapidly these four forms, in appearance so diverse, I may almost say, opposed, in order to see, whether we shall not discover, under each of them, the same immutable truth. We shall listen to the voice of teachers. Doubtless the declarations of a single man cannot suffice to give us a knowledge of the faith of the Church. But, if we consult the writings of those who have lived in countries remote from each other, and find, in the midst of a great diversity of views, doctrines upon which all are agreed, may we not thence conclude, with reason, that they were the doctrines of the Church, throughout the earth? What, then, are the particular points to which we should direct our inquiry?

All Christianity, as well as all religious philosophy, relates necessarily to three principal points, viz: to God, to MAN, and to their mutual relation-the bond which God employs to unite man to himself,-REDEMPTION. Let us see, then, what the voice of the Church, in the different periods of Christianity, teaches us on these three points.

FORM OF LIFE.

We exclude from the primitive period or form, the Apostolic age, which should be considered by itself. The primitive form commenced accordingly with the successors of the Apostles, and extends to the time of Arius. The character by which it was distinguished, was Life. The truths of Christianity were not yet set forth with all that precision, and in that systematic order, which were peculiar to a later period. The christian life, which results from faith in those truths, was the essential

thing. Christians then lived for the Lord in the midst of an idolatrous world; and died for the Lord, in the arena or at the stake, without inquiring respecting his person or his work. Christianity was content to exist, to know and evince its existence, without enumerating and classifying its essential and constituent parts; just as man is, for a long time, content with possessing being and life, without investigating and explaining in order, that in which being and life consist. Certain Rationalists, (they whose superficial knowledge is not sufficient to undeceive them,) infer, strangely enough, from this peculiarity of the primitive form, that the truths of Christianity did not then exist, and that there was no doctrine, because there was no doctrinal philosophy. But to conclude from the want of precision in doctrine, that the truths of Christianity had no existence, is a mode of reasoning as strange and false as would be that of the ignorant disputer, who should affirm, that, during the period when man forms no distinct and precise notion of his being, its several parts do not exist.

It resulted from the character of the primitive form, that the controversies of that period seldom turned upon doctrines. There were different tendencies, rather than different doctrines. We meet with families which present various aspects, rather than with sects which maintain opposite opinions. Let us trace the order of those families, before pointing out the doctrines which the voice of the Church then proclaimed.

To the divine inspiration of the apostles succeeded the simple religion of the apostolic fathers. It would seem that the natural order was, for once, reversed, and that the ingenuousness and simplicity of infancy followed the vigor and maturity of manhood. The Church, under the guidance of Ignatius, Polycarp, and many other faithful disciples, lived in the presence of the great idea of the near return of Jesus Christ. Behold the summary of her faith: a new creation must be effected in humanity, before the solemn hour shall arrive."

"There are

three constitutions, or economies, of the Lord," says Barnabas, one of these fathers, who was already inclining in another direction, "the hope of life, (the Old Testament,) the commencement of life, (the New Testament,) and the consummation of life, (the kingdom of heaven.)"

But, gradually, this heaven-ward motion of the Church seems to have ceased. There appeared a generation which was not

so deeply penetrated by the spirit of Jesus Christ. They gathered curious traditions respecting his appearance while on earth. Carnal Jews, who looked for a Messiah merely human, retained their gross views under the Christian name. It would seem, that the Church, exhausted by the violence of her upward motion, fell again to the earth. Let us not be surprised at this. Great excitement is generally succeeded by a season of drow

siness.

Then appeared upon the borders of Christianity, and almost without its limits, a tendency diametrically opposite. The oriental philosophy was ambitious to join itself to the religion of Jesus of Nazareth. It destroyed the practical character of Christianity, and transformed it into systems enveloped with clouds. For wholesome doctrine Gnosticism substituted a fanciful cosmogony, which professed to explain what is inexplicable, and an extravagant theosophy, which promised to procure for man on earth, the sublime contemplations of heaven.

The West shrunk back from these bold vagaries of the East. Tertullian, in proconsular Africa, and Irenæus, in Gaul, opposed to them, a simple, plain, historical Christianity, and set forth to men that faith which is the life both of the small and the great. Regarding philosophy as the source of Gnosticism, they began to look with a jealous eye, upon the wisdom and refined learning of the Greeks.

But this exclusive simplicity had its peculiar dangers. Pagans of learning and refinement, failing to find in Christianity, as it was presented to them, any thing which answered to their intellectual necessities, continued in the worship of false deities, or plunged into the bold theories of Gnosticism. Thus, many eminent minds were lost to the Gospel. Alexandria, seated on the banks of the Nile, observed it. Alexandria, that great Emporium of learning, where, as tradition declares, the Evangelist Mark introduced the simple word of Christ, undertook to become the mediatrix between these two tendencies of man, and these two parts of the known world. Pantænus, Clemens, and Origen laid the foundation of a Christian science. In this respect they conformed to the East. But they founded it upon the Scriptures; and thus far they conformed to the West. Tvoiois άindivn―Álas! it was not altogether "a true philosophy." Although these teachers did not abandon the fundamental principles of Christianity, philosophy deposited in their systems, the

perfidious germ of the two great heresies of the subsequent age, and, indeed, of all ages. *

The Alexandrian school effected the gradual disappearance of Gnosticism, and substituted in its stead a purer philosophy. Still the weapons of the rigid and practical school of the West were aimed against it. A notable warfare between these two churches, or rather, these two schools, occurred in the third century. The two opposing tendencies served as counterpoises to each other, and thus contributed greatly to the prosperity of Christianity. Alexandria gave birth to a theological spirit in the church. She began to develop and systematize doctrines. She prevented a gross anthropomorphism from invading the heavenly religion of Jesus Christ. The West always resorted to the simple and literal sense of the written word. It remembered that Christianity must be felt,-experienced in the heart, and manifested in the life. It saved that plain and wholesome doctrine from being transformed into vain and fanciful speculations.

Such were the successive phases of the primitive form. In the midst of them all, a spirit of life animated the Church. It was the season of her youth. Christians of the primitive times, redeemed from the sins of Paganism, felt in their hearts, the transforming power of the Gospel, with an energy proportionate to the difference between their present and former condition. Their conflict with the world reminded them more constantly, of their calling as soldiers of Jesus Christ. All was life and motion in the church. She had rapturous desires for heaven; she had them for the scaffold. And, although her golden age is reserved for the new heavens and the new earth, the christian community, in those days of her youth and life, presents to our view, traits of a celestial beauty.

What now, were the truths which were professed by the teachers and the commonalty of that new people which the breath of God had created in the midst of the world? They acknowledged one living God. In Him they worshipped, not only the Father, the First Cause of all things, but also the Son, the Redeemer, and the Spirit, the Sanctifier of fallen humanity. They believed that the same God who created man in righteousness, redeems him from sin, and does not cease to sanctify him until he attains to eternal life. They knew nothing of

• Arianism and Pelagianism.

those strange errors by which some aim to deprive God of the work and glory of redemption, that they may bestow it on a

creature.

The idea of a Sacred Trinity in God discovered itself from the very commencement of the primitive period, and continued to be declared with increased distinctness. How does the voice of these first soldiers of Jesus, confound the rash pretensions of our day!

Clemens, a disciple of Paul, giving glory to Almighty God, declared in Rome," one God, one Christ, and one Spirit of grace."* Polycarp, a disciple of John, perishing in the flames, ascribed eternal glory "to the Father, with the Son, in the Holy Spirit." Justin Martyr, a converted sage, first among the christian teachers, in whom also the christian faith and Grecian philosophy were united, and who, under the Antonines, shed his blood for his master, proclaimed, in like manner, "the Unity in Trinity." Theophilus, a bishop of Antioch, professed the Sacred Trinity, about the same time, and in a manner still more explicit. Soon after him, Tertullian, an African advocate converted into a simple pastor of the flock of Jesus Christ, declared, "There is one substance in three cohering." He proclaimed "the Trinity of one Divinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit."|| And again; "Let us guard that sacrament** of our constitution which establishes the unity in Trinity, recognizing three, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; but of one substance, of one condition, of one power, because they are one God."++

With what power did the venerable bishop of a city in our own neighborhood, a city which, in his time, was shaken by the rage of the people against Jesus Christ, and, in our time, by rage of another kind, with what power did Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, who left the wonderful borders of Asia, that he might carry the light into Gaul, defend the great doctrine of God manifest in the flesh? "Christ,' said he, "united in himself God and man.

Clem. Rom. 1 Cor. † Eus. H. E. N, 15. fidei. § Theoph. Aut. Autol. II, 23.

Justin. Expositio Tertul. De pudicitiâ, II.

[** "In the writings of the ancient fathers, all articles which are peculiar to christian faith, all duties of religion containing that which sense or natural reason cannot of itself discern, are most commonly named sacraments."-- Hooker.--TR.]

Tertul. adv. Praxean, § II.