WISDOM OF SOLOMON.

351

religious and philosophical contemplation." They cultivated with diligence, and embraced with ardor, the theological system of the Athenian sage. But their national pride would have been mortified by a fair confession of their former poverty and they boldly marked, as the sacred inheritance of their ancestors, the gold and jewels which they had so lately stolen from their Egyptian masters. One hundred years before the birth of Christ, a philosophical treatise, which manifestly betrays the Before Christ. style and sentiments of the school of Plato, was produced by the Alexandrian Jews, and unanimously received as a genuine and valuable relic of the inspired wisdom of Solomon. A similar union of the Mosaic faith and the Grecian philosophy distinguishes the works of Philo,* which

16

100.

15 For the origin of the Jewish philosophy, see Eusebius, Præparat. Evangel. viii. 9, 10. According to Philo, the Theraputa studied philosophy; and Brucker has proved (Hist. Philosoph. tom. ii. p. 787) that they gave the preference to that of Plato.

16 See Calmet, Dissertations sur la Bible, tom. ii. p. 277. The book of the Wisdom of Solomon was received by many of the fathers as the work of that monarch; and although rejected by the Protestants for want of a Hebrew original, it has obtained, with the rest of the Vulgate, the sanction of the council of Trent.

*In Chap. IX. of The Diegesis, the Rev. Robt. Taylor gives a careful sketch of Philo-Judæus, and shows the remarkable resemblance between modern Christianity and the religious community of which Philo was a member. "1. Having "parishes, 2. Churches, 3. Bishops, priests, and deacons; 4. Observing the grand festivals of Christianity; 5. Pretending to have had apostolic founders; 6. Practicing the very manners that distinguished the immediate apostles of "Christ; 7. Using Scriptures which they believed to be divinely inspired, 8. And "which Eusebius himself believed to be none other than the substance of our Gospels 9. And the selfsame allegorical method of interpreting those Scriptures, which has since obtained among Christians; 10. And the selfsame manner and order of performing public worship; 11. And having missionary "stations or colonies-of their community established in Rome, Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus, Philippi, Colosse, and Thessalonica; precisely such, and in such cir cumstances, as those addressed by St. Paul, in his respective epistles to the Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Thes"salonians; and 12. Answering to every circumstance described of the state and discipline of the first community of Christians, to the very letter; 13. And "this, as nothing new in Philo's time, but of then long-established notori "venerable antiquity: yet Philo, who wrote before Josephus, and gave t "ticular description of Egyptian monkery, when Jesus Christ, if such "had ever existed, was not above ten years of age, and at least fifty year "the existence of any Christian writing whatever, has never once thrown remotest hint, that he had ever heard of the existence of Christ, of Chris "or of Christians."

66

"Here then have we, in the cities of Egypt, and in the deserts of Thoh "whole already established system of ecclesiastical polity, its hierarch "its subordinate clergy, the selfsame sacred scriptures, the self "method of interpreting those scriptures, so convenient to admi or amendment from time to time, of any defects that criticism "in them; the same doctrines, rites, ceremonies, festivals, "repeated in alternate verses by the minister and the congreg "gospels-in a word, the every-thing, and every iota of Chr "existing from time immemorial, and certainly known to hav "and as such, recorded and detailed by an historian of und "living and writing at least fifty years before the earliest "historians have assigned to any Christian document what

352

17

THE LOGOS OF ST. JOHN.

were composed, for the most part, under the reign of Augustus. The material soul of the universe" might offend the piety of the Hebrews: but they applied the character of the Logos to the Jehovah of Moses and the patriarchs: and the Son of God was introduced upon earth under a visible and even human appearance, to perform those familiar offices which seem incompatible with the nature and attributes of the universal cause.'

19

17 The Platonism of Philo, which was famous to a proverb, is proved beyond a doubt by Le Clerc (Epist. Crit. viii. pp. 211-228). Basnage (Hist. des Juifs, 1. iv. c. 5) has clearly ascertained, that the theological works of Philo were composed before the death, and most probably before the birth, of Christ. In such a time of darkness, the knowledge of Philo is more astonishing than his errors. Bull, Defens. Fid. Nicen, s. i. c. i. p. 12.*

18 Mens agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet.

Besides this material soul, Cudworth has discovered (p. 562) in Amelius, Porphyry, Plotinus, and, as he thinks, in Plato himself, a superior, spiritual, supercosmian soul of the universe. But this double soul is exploded by Brucker, Basnage, and Le Clerc, as an idle fancy of the latter Platonists.

19 Patav. Dogmata Theologica, tom. iii. I. vii. c. 2, p. 791. Bull, Defens. Fid Nicen. s. i. c. 1. pp. 8, 13. This notion, till it was abused by the Arians, was freely adopted in the Christian theology. Tertullian (ad. Praxeam, c. 16) has a remarkable and dangerous passage. After contrasting, with indiscreet wit, the nature of God, and the actions of Jehovah, he concludes: Scilicet ut hæc de filio Dei non credenda fuisse, si nonscripta essent; fortasse non credenda de Patre licet scripta.Į

*Gibbon's accuracy is here again impugned by M. Guizot, who contends that "the philosophy taught in the schools of Alexandriaf was not derived from that "of Plato alone, but from a bewildering confusion of Jewish, Greek, and Egyptian systems," and that the first of these consisted of "oriental notions acquired at Babylon." From these he maintains that Philo took his Logos, which "is con"sequently very different from that of Plato," and that his sensible and ideal "worlds are borrowed from the same source. This still evades the main question, which is, not how the opinions of a few Jews may have been tinctured by Chaldæan or Magian fancies; but how the general mind of educated Greeks was affected when the knowledge of a spiritual Deity, worshiped by the Hebrew race, mingled with and gave precisenesss and consistency to the imperfect notions of such a Being, which their philosophy had created. From this point, attention should not be withdrawn by apocryphal episodes or slight shades of difference. M. Guizot has trusted too much to Mosheim's fallacious "oriental philosophy." It was not there that Philo found his "sensible and ideal worlds," but in Aristotle's Eth woon-ù and ¿idn vonτà. (Met. Zeta. c. 7, et passim) The chief of the Peripatetics is here strangely overlooked or kept in the background.-E. C. "This PHILOSOPHY," says Rev. Robt. Taylor, "comprehended the Epicureans, "who maintained that wisely consulted pleasure, was the ultimate end of man; "the Academics, who placed the height of wisdom in doubt and skepticism; "the Stoics, who maintained a fortitude indifferent to all events; the Aristotelians. "who held the most subtle disputations concerning God, religion, and the social duties; the Platonists, from their master, Plato, who taught the immortality of "the soul, the doctrine of the trinity, of the manifestation of a divine man, who should be crucified, and the eternal rewards and punishments of a future life; and from all these resulting, the Eclectics, who, as their name signifies, elected, "and chose what they held to be wise and rational, out of the tenets of all sects, and rejected whatever was considered futile and pernicious. The Eclectics "held Plato in the highest reverence. Their college or chief establishment was at Alexandria in Egypt. The most indubitable testimonies prove, that this "Philosophy was in a flourishing state, at the period assigned to the birth of "Christ. The Eclectics are the same as the Therapeuts or Essenes of Philo, and "in every rational sense that can be attached to the word, they were the authors and real founders of Christianity.”— E.

Tertullian is here arguing against the Patripassians; those who asserted that the Father was of the Virgin, died and was buried. - MILMAN.

These things surely could not have been believed of the Son of God, had they not been written; and are perhaps not to be believed of the Father, although written. Translation by ENG. CH.

THE LOGOS OF PLATO CONFIRMED BY ST. JOHN. 353

Revealed by the Apostle St John.

A. D. 97.

The eloquence of Plato, the name of Solomon, the authority of the school of Alexandria, and the consent of the Jews and Greeks, were insufficient to establish the truth of a mysterious doctrine, which might please, but could not satisfy a rational mind. A prophet, or apostle, inspired by the Deity, can alone exercise a lawful dominion over the faith of mankind; and the theology of Plato might have been forever confounded with the philosophical visions of the Academy, the Porch, and the Lyceum, if the name and divine attributes of the Logos had not been confirmed by the celestial pen of the last and most sublime of the evangelists.20 The Christian revelation,

20 The Platonists admired the beginning of the Gospel of St. John, as containing an exact transcript of their own principles. Augustin, de Civitat. Dei, x. 29. Amelius apud Cyril advers. Julian. 1. viii. p. 283. But in the third and fourth centuries, the Platonists of Alexandria might improve their Trinity, by the secret study of the Christian theology.*

A short discussion on the sense in which St. John has used the word Logos will prove that he has not borrowed it from the philosophy of Plato. The evangelist adopts this word without previous explanation, as a term with which his contemporaries were already familiar, and which they could at once comprehend. To know the sense which he gave to it, we must inquire that which it generally bore in his time. We find two: the one attached to the word logos by the Jews of Palestine, the other by the school of Alexandria, particularly by Philo. The Jews had feared at all times to pronounce the name of Jehovah: they had formed a habit of designating God by one of his attributes; they called him sometimes Wisdom, sometimes the Word. By the word of the Lord were the heavens made. (Psalm xxxiii. 6.) Accustomed to allegories, they often addressed themselves to this attribute of the Deity as a real being. Solomon makes Wisdom say, "The "Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was." (Prov. viii. 22, 23.) Their residence in Persia only increased this inclination to sustained allegories. In the Ecclesiasticus of the son of Sirach, and the Book of Wisdom, we find allegorical descriptions of Wisdom like the following: "I came out of "the mouth of the Most High: I covered the earth as a cloud; ** I alone "compassed the circuit of heaven, and walked in the bottom of the deep*** "The Creator created me from the beginning, before the world, and I shall never "fail." (Eccles. xxiv. 35-39.) See also the Wisdom of Solomon, c. vii. v. 9. [The latter book is clearly Alexandrian. MILMAN.] We see from this that the Jews understood from the Hebrew and Chaldaic words which signify Wisdom, the Word, and which were translated into Greek by copía, 2oyos, a simple attribute of the Deity, allegorically personified, but of which they did not make a real particular being, separate from the Deity.

The school of Alexandria, on the contrary, and Philo among the rest, Greek with Jewish and Oriental notions, and abandoning himself to his i to mysticism, personified the logos and represented it (see note prec distinct being, created by God, and intermediate between God and m the second logos of Philo (2oyoç рogóрtkoç) that which acts from th of the world, alone in its kind (uovokévns), creator of the sensible wo αισθητός), formed by God according to the ideal world (κασμός και he had in himself, and which was the first logos (8 dverára), 1 (ó πрioВúтεроç vioç) of the Deity. The logos taken in this sense, created being, but anterior to the creation of the world, with his revelations to mankind.

Which of these two senses is that which St. John word logos in the first chapter of his Gospel, and f St. John was a Jew, born and educated in Palestin least very little, of the philosophy of the Greeks, and he would naturally, then, attach to the word logos th

354

THE LOGOS INCARNATE.

which was consummated under the reign of Nerva, disclosed to the world the amazing secret, that the Logos, who was with God from the beginning, and was God, who had made all things, and for whom all things had been made, was incarnate in the person of Jesus of Nazareth; who had been born of a virgin, and suffered death on the cross. Besides the general design of fixing on a perpetual basis the divine honors of Christ, the most ancient and respectable of the

Jews of Palestine. If, in fact, we compare the attributes which he assigns to the logos with those which are assigned to it in Proverbs, in the Wisdom of Solomon, in Ecclesiasticus, we shall see that they are the same. The Word was in the world, and the world was made by him; in him was life, and the life was the light of men (c. i. v. 10-14). It is impossible not to trace in this chapter the ideas which the Jews had formed of the allegorized logos. The evangelist afterwards really personifies that which his predecessors have personified only poetically; for he affirms that the Word became flesh" (v. 14). It was to prove this that he wrote. Closely examined, the ideas which he gives of the logos cannot agree with those of Philo and the school of Alexandria; they correspond, on the contrary, with those of the Jews of Palestine. Perhaps St. John, employing a well-known term to explain a doctrine which was yet unknown, has slightly altered the sense; it is the alteration which we appear to discover on comparing different passages of his writings.

It is worthy of remark, that the Jews of Palestine, who did not perceive this alteration, could find nothing extraordinary in what St. John said of the Logos: at least they comprehended it without difficulty, while the Greeks and Grecizing Jews, on their part, brought to it prejudices and preconceptions easily reconciled with those of the evangelist, who did not expressly contradict them. This circumstance must have much favored the progress of Christianity. Thus the fathers of the church in the two first centuries and later, formed almost all in the school of Alexandria, gave to the Logos of St. John a sense nearly similar to that which it received from Philo. Their doctrine approached very near to that which in the fourth century the council of Nice condemned in the person of Arius.-G. M. Guizot has forgotten the long residence of St. John at Ephesus, the centre of the mingling opinions of the East and West, which were gradually growing up into Gnosticism. (See Matter. Hist. du Gnosticisme, vol. i. p. 154.) St. John's sense of the Logos seems as far removed from the simple allegory ascribed to the Palestinian Jews as from the Oriental impersonation of the Alexandrian. The simple truth may be, that St. John took the familiar term, and, as it were, infused into it the peculiar and Christian sense in which it is used in his writings.-M. In a long note, M. Guizot has here taken great pains to make it appear that "St. John did not borrow his Logos from the philosophy of Plato." He asserts that, in the time of the evangelist, this term had only two meanings, one "adopted "by the Jews of Palestine, and the other by the school of Alexandria, especially "Philo." Of the first he finds proofs in such expressions as the "Word of the Lord," (Ps. 33, v. 6), and in the description of Wisdom (Prov. c. 8, v. 22, 23), forgetting that the two royal authors, to whom he refers, lived six hundred years before Plato; and he relies equally on similar passages in Ecclesiasticus (c. 24. v. 3, 5, 9, 20), and the Book of Wisdom (c. 7 and 9), the last of which, Dean Milman, in his comment on this note, reminds him, was not produced in Palestine, but is clearly Alexandrian." On the other hand, M. Guizot takes no account of the several Greek schools, the Old Academy, or direct followers of Plato; the New Academy, or disciples of Carneades, and the Peripatetic adherents of Aristotle, all of whom had their Logos, agreeing in some points and differing in others. These had teachers in every city, and studied not only the works of their two great masters and those of Xenophon, which we now possess, but also the sixty treatises of Xenocrates and others, which have since been lost. For some time Antioch continued to be the centre of Christian energy. After going forth from that city to preach to the Gentiles, Paul and Barnabus returning thither, reported their success to those "by whom they had been recommended to the grace of "God for the work which they fulfilled," and projected with them future missions (Acts, c. 14, v. 26, 28; c. 15, v. 36). It is evident, therefore, that Plato's Logos was well known to the educated Greeks, among whom the new faith was introduced. Of this M. Guizot affirms, that "St. John knew nothing or very little," although he had lived sixty years in the midst of it, and, as pointed out by Dean Milman,

THE EBIONITES AND DOCETES.

22

355

The Ebionites and Docetes.

ecclesiastical writers have ascribed to the evangelic theologian, a particular intention to confute two opposite heresies, which disturbed the peace of the primitive church. I. The faith of the Ebionites, perhaps of the Nazarenes,23 was gross and imperfect. They revered Jesus as the greatest of the prophets, endowed with supernatural virtue and power. They ascribed to his person and to his future reign all the predictions of the Hebrew oracles which relate to the spiritual and everlasting kingdom of the promised Messiah." Some of them might

21 See Beausobre, Hist. Critique du Manicheisme, tom i, p. 377. The Gospel according to St. John is supposed to have been published about seventy years after the death of Christ.

The sentiments of the Ebionites are fairly stated by Mosheim (p. 331) and Le Clerc (Hist. Eccles. p. 535). The Clementines, published among the apostolical fathers, are attributed by the critics to one of these sectaries.

23 Staunch polemics, like Bull (Judicium, Eccles. Cathol. c. 2), insist on the orthodoxy of the Nazarenes; which appears less pure and certain in the eyes of Mosheim (p. 330).

21 The humble condition and sufferings of Jesus have always been a stumbling block to the Jews. "Deus * * * contrariis coloribus Messiam depinxerat; "futurus, erat Rex, Judex, Pastor," &c. See Limborch et Orobio Amica Collat. pp. 8, 19, 53-76, 192-234. But this objection has obliged the believing Christians to lift up their eyes to a spiritual and everlasting kingdom.

had long resided "at Ephesus, the centre of the mingling opinions of the East " and the West." It was not till after this, and when he was ninety years old, that his gospel was written; and then, we learn from Jerome, (Prologue to his Commentary on Matthew), and Chrysostom (Introd. to his Homilies on Matthew, and again, fourth Homily on John), the importunities of the Asiatic bishops obtained, from the last surviving apostle, a confirmation of their faith. "Coactus "est," are the words of Jerome, de Divinitate Salvatoris altius scribere. There are other mistakes in M. Guizot's note, on which it is not necessary to dilate. He concludes, however, by admitting, that the philosophy of the age greatly favored the progress of Christianity, although during the two first cen"turies, the fathers of the church were led by it to a doctrine tending to that "which was afterwards held by Arius."-ENG. CH.

M. Guizot has wasted many words in explaining the difference between the Pagan and original Logos of Plato; the copied or borrowed Logos of Philo; and, (as he believes), the genuine, Christian Logos of St. John. We have thus a Trinity of these phantasms-substantially the same, yet still possessing technical shades of difference, sufficient for immediate and positive identification. It is in such hair-splitting controversies that theologians acquire fame and fortune; and the contestant who, in these sectarian tournaments, uses the greatest number of words to express the fewest possible ideas, is ultimately crowned with the laurel wreath of victory.

The Logos of Plato is undoubtedly the oldest -the original of which the others are copies, and if the originator of a system does not comprehend its meaning, to whom must we apply for a definition?

Philo, the Jew, differs from Plato, the Greek, only as one sectarian differs from another, and St. John, the Apostle, who wrote later than either, differs in the same manner from both. Still, the original idea, coined in Plato's brain centuries before the Christian era, pervades the writings of both his followers; and if there be any merit in asserting, in the language of St. John, that "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God," and that this Trinity of Words, or God, was Logos, or the Son incarnate, let us honestly award the honor to the Athenian sage, who deserves, by the right of original invention, all the fame that may accrue from his incomprehensible, metaphysical abstraction, which comprizes three gods-"the First Cause, the reason or Logos, "and the Soul or Spirit of the universe-united with each other by a mysterious and ineffable generation: "-these three persons forming one essence, or Trinity, in the Platonic philosophy, precisely as the three persons, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, form one Triune God in the Christian theology.-E.