Arthur Penrhyn Stanley

“ Let us not fear lest we should, by the surpassing interest of the story of the elder Church, be tempted to forget the end to which it leads us. The more we study the Jewish history, the more shall we feel that it is but the prelude of a vaster and loftier history, without which it would be itself unmeaning. The voice of the Old dispensation is pitched in too loud a key [1] for the ears of one small people. The place of the Jewish nation is too strait for the abode of thoughts which want a wider room in which to dwell. ”

“ Theology is not above Christianity: the Christian Church is in many respects the best practical exposition of the Christian Religion. Facts are still the most powerful, the most solid, the most stubborn guides in the mazes of speculation and casuistry; they cut through difficulties which arguments cannot overturn; they overturn theories which will surrender to nothing else. Ecclesiastical History is thus, as it were, the backbone of Theology. ”

“ Doubtless there are many points both in sacred and in common history, both in civil and ecclesiastical records, where we must be content to remain in suspense. History will have left half its work undone, if it does not teach us humility and caution. But essential truth can almost always be found—truth of all kinds can with due research be usually found: she lies, no doubt, in a well; but we may be sure that she is there, if we dig deep enough. In this labour teachers and students must all work together. What one cannot discover, many at work on the same point can often prove beyond doubt. ”

“ The further we advance, the more remarkable does the contrast become,—the mountains more bare, the river-bed more rich and green. At last its channel is contracted to the utmost limits; the cliffs on each side almost close it in; it breaks through, and over a wide extent, far as the eye can reach, it scatters a flood of vegetation and life, in the midst of which rise the towers and domes of the great city, the earliest and the latest type of human grandeur and civilization. ”

“ The Church of God is no longer confined within the limits of a single nation. The life and the truth, concentrated, up to this point, within the narrow and unbending character of the Semitic race, has been enlarged into the broad, fluctuating, boundless destinies of the sons of Japheth. The thin stream expands and loses itself more and more in the vast field of the history of the world. The Christian Church soon becomes merely another name for Christendom ”

“ In no people does the history move forward in so regular a course, through beginning, middle, and end, as in the people of Israel. In none are the beginning, middle, and end so clearly distinguished, each from each. In none has the beginning so natural and so impressive a preparation, as that formed by the age of the patriarchs. In none do the various stages of the history so visibly lead the way to the consummation, which, however truly it may be regarded as the opening of a new order, is yet no less truly the end of the old. ”

“ Study the actual statues and portraits of the men, the sculptures and pictures of the events: if they do not give us the precise image of the persons and things themselves, they give us at least the image left on those who came nearest to them. Study their monuments, their gravestones, their epitaphs, on the spots where they lie. Study, if possible, the scenes of the events, their aspect, their architecture, their geography; the tradition which has survived the history, the legend which has survived the tradition ”

“ We are told not only of his goodness, but of his sins; and we can there judge how wonderfully the history of the Church has gained by such a frank disclosure: how thin, how pale in comparison, would that biography have been, had the darker side been suppressed and the bright side only exhibited. Such a completeness of view we are almost driven to take when we explore, not one, but all the sources whence our knowledge can be drawn. We may still lament that the story of the lion is so often told only by the man ”

“ The Gallican Church, first the most brilliant in Europe, brilliant alike in its works of active mercy and in its almost Augustan age of great divines,—Vincent of Paul, Bossuet, Fenelon, Pascal,—lived to become the miserable parent, and then the victim, of the great convulsion which, whilst it shook the belief of the whole of Christendom, in France for eleven years suppressed it altogether. The French Revolution must always be considered as an epoch in the religious history of man. Not only was its hostility to the Christian faith the most direct that the world has seen since the days of Julian ”

“ Practices which we insist on retaining or repudiating, as if they involved the very essence of the Catholic faith or of the Reformation, will appear less precious or less dangerous, as the case may be, in the eyes of the respective disputants, if history shews us clearly that we thereby make ourselves, on the one hand, more papal than the Pope, more Roman than Rome,—on the other hand, more Lutheran than Luther, more Genevan than Calvin. ”

“ This marked contrast and combination of characters is exactly what is most needed in the history of the Church. Here, even more than in common history, we are apt to blend together the different persons of the story under one common class. Yet here, even more than in common history, we ought to keep each separate from each, if we would learn the lessons they have to teach to the world. Of ordinary readers, how few there are to whom the Fathers, the Schoolmen, nay, even the Reformers, although divided as classes, are not confounded as individuals! ”

“ It is always useful to see, as must be seen in any extensive survey, how large a portion of our ecclesiastical diversities is to be traced, not to religious causes, but to the more innocent, and in one sense irresistible, influences of nation, of climate, of race, of the general course of human affairs. The bitterness of English partizanship will be greatly diminished in proportion as we recognise the fact, that the divergence between the Church of England and Nonconformists springs from differences not so much of theological principle or opinion, as of social and hereditary position. ”

“ Far in the dim distance of primeval ages, is discerned the first figure in the long succession which has never since been broken,—in Ur of the Chaldees, the Patriarchal chief, followed by his train of slaves and retainers, surrounded by his herds of camels and asses, moving westward and southward he knew not whither, drawn on by a mighty destiny big with the hopes of ages,—the first Father of the universal Church,—Abraham, the Founder of the Chosen People, the Father of the faithful, whose seed was to be as the sand upon the sea-shore, as the stars for multitude. ”

“ By a violent effort, no doubt, the two spheres can be kept apart; by a compromise, tacit or understood, the student of each may avoid looking the other in the face; under special circumstances, the intimate relation between the course of Christian society and the course of human affairs may be forgotten or set aside. Josephus the priest may pass over in absolute silence the new sect which arises in Galilee to disturb the Jewish hierarchy. Tacitus the philosopher may give nothing more than a momentary glance at the miserable superstition of the fanatics who called themselves Christians. ”

“ If once we are inspired with a genuine desire of seeing the man as he really was, if he was worth being seen at all, we shall not be satisfied unless we see him altogether. Here, as in so many other respects, the sacred history of the Jewish Church is our best example. ”

“ And so, in a still higher degree, in the history of the Jewish Church we find the principles of all religious and ecclesiastical parties developed not amidst names and events, which are themselves the subjects of vehement controversy, but in a narrative of acknowledged authority, free from all the bitterness of modern watchwords, and yet with a completeness and variety such as within the same compass could be found in no modern church or nation. ”

“ But he is the truest son of all who, in the spirit of this union, feels himself free to sympathize with the several elements and principles of good which the Church of England has thus combined—who knows that the strength of a national Church, especially of the Church of a nation like ours, lies in the fact that it has never been surrendered exclusively to any one theological influence, and that the Christian faith which it has inherited from all is greater than the differences which it has inherited from each. ”

“ It is needless to repeat the arguments by which it can be shewn that, in a literal sense, this axiom is always either untrue or inapplicable. The whole Church at Ariminum was amazed to find itself Arian; Athanasius stood against the world, and the world against Athanasius. The solitary protest is always to be honoured—the lonely martyr is avenged at last. Churches and nations, and whole generations, often seem to lose their reason. ”

“ The greater divisions of Christendom can be regarded 'calmly and kindly,' in proportion as we are able to take in, as from a summit, the whole view of which they form the intersecting lines. What seemed, near at hand, to be mere deformities, from a more distant point are lost in the sense of the vast prospect to which each feature contributes its peculiar part. The most cursory view of the various sects and churches of the world will make us suspect that we are not all truth and goodness, nor they all error and vice. ”

“ It is indeed true that, in common parlance, Ecclesiastical History is often confined within limits so restricted as to render such a distinction only too easy. Of the numerous theological terms, of which the original sense has been defaced, marred, and clipped by the base currency of the world, few have suffered so much, in few has 'the gold become so dim, the most fine gold so changed,' as in the word "ecclesiastical." ”

“ As it is one of the main characteristics of Christianity itself, that alone of all religions it claims to be founded on historical fact—that its doctrines and precepts, in great measure, have been conveyed to us in the form of history, and that this form has given them a substance, a vitality, a variety, which could, humanly speaking, have been attained in no other way ”

“ There are events in the common course of history—revolutions, wars, divisions of races and nations—which in themselves can hardly be called religious, but which have at least one aspect distinctly religious. There are also institutions, customs, ceremonies, even vestures and forms of ritual, in which, though originally pagan or secular. ”

“ In the diversity of the Church will be found a more powerful argument for the divine origin of Christianity itself, than in the most perfect unity. It is not, humanly speaking, surprising that a religion should sustain itself from age to age in the same race and country. ”

“ Sometimes, as in the period of the Roman Empire, when this comparison was first made, the influence of one on the other is more by contagion, by atmosphere, even by contrast, than by direct intercourse. Sometimes the main interest of religious history hangs on an institution, like Episcopacy; on a war, like the Crusades; on a person, like Luther. In some periods, as in the middle ages, the combination of the secular and religious elements will be effected by the political or the intellectual influence of the clergy. ”

“ Whatever other charges may be brought against the history of Christendom, and however much it may have embraced within or alongside of itself sallies of wild sectarianism, yet it cannot fairly be called the history of Fanaticism, or even of Enthusiasm. Grey hairs, and high station, and long experience, whether of individuals or of communities, have their own peculiar claims to respect. The movement of the Church to perfection has in it an element of solidity, of permanence, and of prudence, as well as of fluctuation, and progress, and zeal. ”

“ The barbarous style of the sculptures, the bad spelling, the coarse engraving of the epitaphs, impresses upon us more clearly than any sermon the truth that God chose the weak, and base, and despised things of the world to bring to nought the things which are mighty. He who is thoroughly steeped in the imagery of the catacombs, will be nearer to the thoughts of the early Church than he who has learned by heart the most elaborate treatise even of Tertullian or of Origen. ”

“ Start from this view, as certain as it can be made by the facts of human nature and by the facts of history, both universal and particular. Regard confessions of faith in this, their only true, historical light, and in that light many a new glimpse will be obtained of their practical justice and moderation; many a harsh expression will be explained; many a superfluous scruple of honest minds will vanish away; many a foolish controversy will be extinguished for ever. ”