James Vernon Bartlet

“ He is particularly careful in his speeches to show how deep is his respect for the law of Moses. In all this the letters of Paul are very different from Acts. In Galatians he claims perfect freedom in principle, for himself as for the Gentiles, from the obligatory observance of the law; and neither in it nor in Corinthians does he take any notice of a decision to which the apostles had come in their meeting at Jerusalem. The narrative of Acts, too, itself implies something other than what it sets in relief ”

“ Theologically, as a stage in the history of Christian doctrine, their value is as great negatively as positively. Impressive as is their witness to the persistence of the Apostolic teaching in its essential features, amidst all personal and local variations, perhaps the most striking thing about these writings is the degree in which they fail to appreciate certain elements of the Apostolic teaching as embodied in the New Testament, and those its higher and more distinctively Christian elements. ”

“ The Jewish Law is viewed not as a code of ethics or “works of righteousness,” as by Paul, but as a system of religious rites (vii. 11) shadowing forth the way of access to God in worship, of which the Gospel reveals the archetypal realities (ix. 1, 11, 15, 23 f., x. 1 ff., 19 ff.) . The Old and the New Covenants are related to one another as imperfect (earthly) and perfect (heavenly) forms of the same method of salvation, each with its own type of sacrifice and priesthood. ”

“ But it is doubtful whether Jesus ever used the term for the Twelve, in relation to their temporary missions, any more than for the “seventy others” whom he “sent forth” later (Luke x. 1) . Even the Fourth Gospel never so describes them. It simply has “a servant is not greater than his lord, neither an apostle (envoy) greater than he that sent him” (xiii. 16) ; and applies the idea of “mission” alike to Jesus (cf. Heb. iii. 1, “Jesus, the apostle ... of our profession”) and to his disciples, generally, as represented by the Twelve (xvii. 18, with 3, 6 ff.) ”

“ His criticism had the singular advantage of being in some sort foreign, without the disadvantage which attaches in French eyes to all criticism of things French written in a foreign language. As theologian he gave a fresh impulse to Protestant theology, especially in French-speaking lands, but also in England and elsewhere. Lord Acton classed him with Rothe. He built all on conscience, as that wherein man stands in direct personal relation with God as moral sovereign, and the seat of a moral individuality which nothing can rightly infringe. ”

“ Hermas sees that mere repentance is not enough to meet the backsliding condition in which so many Christians then were, owing to the recoil of inveterate habits of worldliness [4] entrenched in society around and within. It is, after all, too negative a thing to stand by itself or to satisfy God. “Cease, Hermas,” says the Church, “to pray all about thy sins. Ask for righteousness also” (Vis. iii. 1. 6) . The positive Christian ideal which “the saints” should attain, “the Lord enabling,” it is the business of the Shepherd to set forth. ”

“ The motives and circumstances of the emigrants determined their polity; they went out as churches and settled as church states. They were all Puritans, but not all Independents—indeed, at first only the men from Leiden were, and they were throughout more enlightened and tolerant than the men of the other settlements. Winthrop’s company were nonconformists but not separatists, esteemed it “an honour to call the Church of England, from whence we rise, our dear mother,” emigrated that they might be divided from her corruptions, not from herself. ”

“ So far we have no sure trace of our Homilies at all, apart from the Syriac version. Even four centuries later, Photius, in referring to a collection of books called both Acts of Peter and the Recognition of Clement, does not make clear whether he means Homilies or Recognitions or either. “In all the copies which we have seen (and they are not a few) after those different epistles (viz. ‘Peter to James’ and ‘Clement to James,’ prefixed, the one in some MSS. the other in others) and titles, we found without variation the same treatise, beginning, I, Clement, &c.” ”

“ Hence a new sort of legalism, known to recent writers as Moralism, underlies much of the piety of the Apostolic Fathers, though Ignatius is quite free from it, while Polycarp and “Barnabas” are less under its influence than are the Didachē, Clement, the Homilist and Hermas. It conceives salvation as a “wages” (μισθός) to be earned or forfeited; and regards certain good works, such as prayer, fasting, alms—especially the last—as efficacious to cancel sins. ”

“ These are the universality of the Gospel, the jealousy of national Judaism, and the Divine initiative manifest in the gradual stages by which men of Jewish birth were led to recognize the Divine will in the setting aside of national restrictions, alien to the universal destiny of the Church. The practical moral is the Divine character of the Christian religion, as evinced by the manner of its extension in the empire, no less than by its original embodiment in the Founder’s life and death. ”