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maintained that their doctrines

over, that the heretics of the first age were of that more sacred kind which our LORD and His Apostles had divulged to certain favoured disciples. Although there was no truth in these allegations, and no proof of a divine authority for the Disciplina, yet is it not likely that the false assumption of the former, as well as the latter system, may have taken their rise in some great truth, viz. our LORD's mode of communicating knowledge to His disciples, and a certain reserve in disclosing Himself?

Add to this the extraordinary ignorance of the heathen writers respecting Christianity, and the strong indications which all must have noticed throughout St. Paul's Epistles, that he discloses and withholds Christian knowledge and mysteries, according to the meetness of those to whom he was writing to receive them.

If intimations of these things are but faint in the first age of Christianity, yet in the next they derive the most ample confirmation throughout the works of St. Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Tertullian, and most of the succeeding Fathers; their mode of speaking of religion, of interpreting Scripture, always seems to imply this principle of reserve. The Disciplina Arcani ist spoken of, not as some ecclesiastical system founded on motives of expediency, as is now often supposed, or arising from the circumstances of the times, or as merely directed towards the heathens; it is implied that this reserve is an universal principle in morals; that its assuming a strong and definite shape in the Disciplina Arcani is only an accidental development of it; that it is founded deep in our nature; that the system is to be traced throughout the heathen world in some shape or other, proving it to be either of divine origin or arising out of some common principle; that it has the authority of our LORD Himself and His disciples; that it was practised by our LORD, not from the immediate and necessary exigencies of the occasion, but as a great law and rule of religious wisdom; that an awful and reverential sense of His thus disclosing Himself only according to the state of man's heart is the only key to the knowledge of His ways, either in His moral providences or His more direct revelations.

1 See Wotton's Pref. to Clem. p. cliv.

4. Indications of the principle independent of any known definite

system.

The very silence therefore of the first ages is on this subject in our favour; and a few passages that do allude to it, are in themselves so interesting, and so much tend to confirm the view we have taken, that we cannot withhold a fuller reference to them, though they have been already alluded to. The Author of the Epistle to Diognetus, which has been ascribed to Justin Martyr, says incidentally in the passages before spoken of, "having been myself a disciple of the Apostles, I am become a teacher of the Gentiles. The things which were delivered to me, I am the means to convey to those who are worthy, who have become disciples of the truth. For who is there that has a love for the Word, who does not seek clearly to know those things which were by the Word shown openly to the disciples, to whom He declared them, being Himself manifested to them, speaking with all freedom, not understood by the unbeliever, but conversing and explaining to the disciples. And they who were by Him. esteemed faithful have become acquainted with these mysteries of the FATHER'."

This simple and undesigned but distinct allusion to the teaching of our LORD Himself is much to be observed, and seems by the mention of the disciples to carry on, and connect with the system of the Church that reserve which has been noticed in the Gospels, and serves to explain in some degree that silence, so remarkable in the New Testament, of the things concerning the Church delivered to faithful men.

The passage quoted by Mr. Keble on the subject of tradition from the bishop Hippolytus, bears an undesigned testimony to this principle also at an early period. "Take care," says that holy Father, "that these things be not delivered to unbelieving and blasphemous tongues. For the danger is not inconsiderable. But impart them to serious and faithful men, who wish to live holily and justly with fear. For it is not without a purpose that the blessed Paul in his exhortation to Timothy says.... Keep the

1 See Justin Martyr ad Diognetum, ad finem.

deposit committed to thee;' and again,' what thou hast heard from me by many exhortations, commit these to faithful men, &c.' If therefore that blessed Saint delivered these truths which were easily accessible to all, with religious caution, seeing by the Spirit that all have not faith; how much more shall we be in danger, if, at random and without distinction, we impart the oracles of God to profane and unworthy men '."

This testimony not only sanctions the evidence of the preceding extract, but inculcates the same as a moral duty incumbent on teachers of the truth. We have, again, the very high authority of St. Athanasius for knowing, that the disciples themselves did observe precisely a similar caution from the beginning to that which our LORD had observed towards them, and this testimony connects this reserve of the Ancient Church by an unbroken chain with our LORD Himself.

St. Basil bears testimony also to this having been the practice of the early disciples, and that it was founded on our LORD's example. He mentions (in the 27th c. of his work on the HOLY SPIRIT) that there were "many things which they had received, not from Scripture but from Apostolical tradition, communicated," he says, "in mystery and secrecy, and which their fathers had preserved in unobtrusive and modest silence, knowing rightly that this sacred reverence to mysteries was their best protection." He then alludes to the same having been the intention, when Moses allowed not the holy things in the temple to be seen by all, but kept the profane without, and admitted the more pure into the outer courts. After stating some circumstances of this kind in the law of Moses2, such as the Levites set apart for sacred things, and the entering into the Holy of Holies with such circumstances of solemnity and awe; "in the same manner," he says, "the Apostles and Fathers, who prescribed the first rites of the Church, preserved the dignity of their mysteries in secrecy and silence. And even that

1 See Part i. p. 26.

2 As for instance in Numbers iv. 20, "They shall not go in to see when the holy things are covered, lest they die." And Numb. xviii. 21, 22. 37. Exod. xxx. 10. Lev. xvi.

obscurity which the Scripture makes use of is," he adds, "a species of the same reserve, rendering the understanding of its doctrines difficult of apprehension, and that for the benefit of ordinary readers."

5. The Disciplina a rule of a moral nature.

The evidence of these passages has been partly historical, and suggests the probability that the early system of reserve may have had some connexion with our LORD's example and authority; and partly as adducing the testimony of the Fathers respecting the practical wisdom of the rule. To the latter we may add the authority of Tertullian, in a passage before alluded to1, and it is important as proving that, where he had occasion incidentally to allude to the Disciplina, he speaks of it as a rule of a moral nature. He strongly condemns the heretics for having no discipline whatever, or distinction observed in their assemblies and worship, even, he says, if heathen were present, they would "cast that which is holy to dogs, and pearls before swine." And this utter subversion of all discipline they called simplicity, and accused the care of the orthodox Christians as a mode of enticement." In the same passage he adds, that "discipline is an index of doctrine: they say that God ought not to be feared; therefore, every thing with them is free and open. But where is God not feared, but where He is not? and where GOD is not, truth is not; where there is no truth, of course there is no discipline. But where God is, there is the fear of GOD, which is the beginning of wisdom"."

The next person whose agreement with us we may mention is St. Chrysostom. His authority is of the more weight, as he himself was so eloquent and bold a preacher, and not a mere student; so as to prove that the practice which this reserve implies is in no way opposed to the most earnest teaching of the truth. He speaks of it frequently as a rule important to be observed in communicating religious knowledge. He mentions

1 Tract No. 80. page 56.

2 De Præscriptione Hæreticorum, p. 247.

it as his own practice (in his preface to St. Matthew). "Those that I perceive awake, and desirous to learn, I will endeavour to teach. Those that sleep and attend not, I will neither tell the difficulties nor their answers, in obedience to the Divine law: for it is written' Give not that which is holy to the dogs.' He speaks of this law in another place, as similar to that of human friendship, which imparts secrets only to the most intimate friends1. "Let them attend to this," he adds, "who make a sort of triumphal show of the secrets of the Gospel, and unto all indiscriminately display the pearls and the doctrine, and who cast the holy things unto dogs and swine by useless reasonings "." He often speaks of it as St. Paul's practice; in his Commentary on the words of not casting pearls before swine, he says, "Paul intimates the same thing in saying (1 Cor. ii. 14), the natural man receiveth not the things of the SPIRIT, for they are foolishness unto him, and in many other places he speaks of a corrupt life being the cause of their not receiving the more perfect doctrines, therefore he commands us not to open our doors to them." He has much more to the same effect on the teaching of St. Paul. And not to dwell on various passages in which St. Chrysostom incidentally alludes to the principle, one may be mentioned in which he speaks clearly of the Discipline in the very connexion we have supposed, as a mode of acting which had a reference to our LORD's own example. "We close the doors," he says, "before we perform the mysteries, and keep out the uninitiated; not from any weakness we apprehend in them, but because the generality are not yet sufficiently advanced to be rightly disposed towards them. It was upon this very account that He Himself said many things unto the Jews in parables, because seeing they did not perceive. For this reason also Paul hath commanded us to know how we ought to answer each individual."

In the Catechetical Lectures of St. Cyril of Jerusalem, we may, of course, expect to find much on this subject; all that is requisite is to show that he considered this system, not as one

1 This idea he has more than once, and He refers it to the expression in St. John xv. 15.

2 See the whole of this Homily, 1 Cor. ii. 6, 7, and 16. Hom. vii.

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