James Beaven

“ It is obvious that he means the bishops of the Churches, who were the chief preachers of those times. And it is observable that he does not think the succession a perfect guarantee of the truth being preserved, otherwise he would not have added the qualifications of sound discourse and a holy life. He does not therefore support the idea that the truth is necessarily preserved in any one Church by the succession, or that any one bishop of any particular Church (the Bishop of Rome, for instance,) is capable of deciding the sense of Scripture authoritatively. ”

“ Men were told that it was the express destiny of every one who was to be perfect, to know everything that could be known in this world; and not only that, but that if a person failed of acquiring the requisite knowledge in one lifetime, his soul must pass into another and another body, until it had arrived at the necessary degree of information. ”

“ Irenæus has expressed himself so much more fully on the subject of the holy Eucharist than any other writer near his time, that it is not wonderful that his opinions should be appealed to by those who have entered into the various discussions on the subject. And his language has just so much of ambiguity about it as to allow of hanging upon it a more exact and positive meaning than he ever thought of. Every sentence, and almost every word therefore, requires to be well weighed, that we may come at his real meaning. ”

“ But that it should have taken hold on the minds of men to such an extent and at such a time, is surely one of the most unaccountable facts in the history of the human mind. To us, even the Platonic system would appear so much more rational and intelligible, and the Christian doctrine so much more simple and natural, and, if I may so say, manly, that in their presence one wonders what there could have been to recommend Gnosticism. ”

“ Accordingly, the external facts of the life of Jesus were not disputed, but a new spirit was given to them. Jesus was a manifestation of the Supreme God, as Simon was; come upon the same errand, to destroy the Jewish law; and thence an object of hatred to the Jews, who triumphed so far as to crucify the external body in which he appeared, but had no power over him who had inhabited it. Here there was just enough of truth to impose upon a person brought up to believe the Gospel without really loving it, and falsehood enough altogether to prevent its reception. ”

“ It is remarkable how strong is the resemblance between the positions occupied by the Gnostics and Irenæus respectively, and those taken up by Romanists and the Church of England. Both that ancient father and ourselves think Scripture perfectly clear upon the fundamental points to the singleminded, go first and last to Scripture upon all doctrinal points, and make tradition only auxiliary and subordinate to it. Both the Gnostics and the Romanists complain of the insuperable difficulties of the Scripture without tradition, and thus make tradition practically set aside Scripture ”

“ When, therefore, several or many of them concur in giving one uniform meaning to particular passages of Scripture, the evidence becomes very strong that they had the right interpretation: and even where only one writer gives any assistance upon any particular text, we shall frequently see reason for accepting his acceptation of it in preference to more modern suggestions. At the same time it is necessary to bear in mind, that most of them knew nothing of the original language of the Old Testament ”

“ The only way in which he applies tradition to the interpretation of Scripture is, by laying down certain facts of our Lord's history, which were universally acknowledged or handed down by sufficient testimony, or certain doctrines of religion or general principles which were universally received as of apostolical authority, and bringing them forward in confirmation of the views which he himself deduced from a comparison and accumulation of texts. ”

“ Irenæus, then, regards Antichrist as a direct agent of Satan, in and by means of whom he will fulfil the great object of his rebellion, of procuring himself to be owned by mankind as their king, and worshipped as their God; by whom he will abolish all idols, and set himself up as the one idol, uniting in himself all the delusion of all the false gods who have ever existed. ”

“ For as the bread which comes from the earth, receiving the invocation of God, is no longer common bread, but Eucharist, consisting of two things, an earthly and a heavenly, so also our bodies, partaking of the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, having the hope of the resurrection to eternity. ”

“ It should never be forgotten that every age has its errors: and it may be, possibly, that wherein we differ from them the error is our own. No doubt each eminent writer then, as each eminent writer now, was in some respects mistaken. It is the simple condition of humanity to be liable to error. ”

“ In this way the minds of men were amused and tantalized, and prevented from a serious search after truth; whilst if one scheme was searched to the bottom, and its stock of mysteries exhausted, there was still another and another refinement to lure him away from the real truth. ”

“ It is true that this implied, in its literal meaning, the knowledge of good as well as of evil. But it requires little acquaintance with human nature to tell us in what sense it would be most commonly taken. And if any scruples still remained, they were removed by the doctrine that all actions were naturally indifferent, and that nothing but human opinion, or the arbitrary will of a tyrannical being, the Jewish God, had ever made any such thing as moral distinctions. ”

“ After the introduction of evil into creation, and the agency by which it is propagated in the world, we have next to notice the Divine plans for its counteraction and removal; and as Irenæus was opposing the Gnostic notion that the whole government of the world, prior to the Gospel, was in the hands of beings adverse to the Supreme Being, he was naturally led to show that, on the contrary, the whole history of mankind has been a series of dispensations emanating from one and the same Supreme and only God. ”

“ Simon Magus, for instance, who is generally reckoned the first Gnostic leader, was a magician, and there is great reason to suspect that his faith was more a reliance on the Apostles, on the supposition of their having some deeper art than his own, than the faith of the heart in the principles of the Gospel.
But there is another class of persons who could neither be imposed on by the pretensions to supernatural power, nor the seductions of evil appetites, [pg 323] whose cast of character is altogether intellectual, and whose temptations must therefore be intellectual. ”

“ From her or her offspring, sprang the Creator, who is sometimes represented as the chief of seven angels, sometimes as a peculiar being having the angels under him. The creation of man is represented as the work of this imperfect being, but the spark of heavenly life in him as an emanation, more or less direct, from the First Cause. In this way the scheme became more definite; but from the same cause it became a set of schemes more or less inconsistent with each other, but all aiming at having a succession of mysteries to be communicated by degrees. ”

“ We know that all the apostolical sees had a kind of principality or pre-eminence above the surrounding Churches; a more powerful pre-eminence than other Churches equally ancient with themselves. Nay, we know that the Church of Rome had at that time, in point of fact, a more powerful pre-eminence than any other Church. ”

“ Like Saturninus, however, but in other words, he asserted that the soul alone was capable of salvation, but the body necessarily perishable578.
He taught, moreover, that they who knew his whole system, and could recount the names of the angels, &c., were invisible to them all, and could pass through and see them, without being seen in return: that they ought likewise to keep themselves individually and personally unknown to common men, and even to deny that they are what they are; that they should assert themselves to be neither Jews nor Christians, and by no means reveal their mysteries579. ”

“ It is obvious, moreover, that, although no doubt God will aid and bless his ordinance of the ministry at all times to the faithful soul, yet that the aid of one's own particular pastor or bishop must be much less capable of settling the mind now that Christ's true pastors are opposed to each other, than in the time of Irenæus, when they held all together. In his time no such thing had occurred as a bishop of Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, Rome, or Constantinople, acknowledged by general consent to have fallen into great and important error. ”

“ But, as has been already stated, it is possible for an individual to be led away by controversy, or prejudice, or party bias; and therefore, when he is manifestly under any such influence, it is well to be on our guard. For that and other reasons, in any matter of serious doubt, it is impossible to rest upon the word of any single writer; but we use him as a link in the chain of evidence as to the doctrine taught from the beginning by the united universal Church.
4. We use them to aid us in interpreting the text of Scripture. ”

“ And the true answer will be found in the fact that the great body of us have abused the law of liberty, as the Israelites of old had done, and therefore, like them, have need, in the providential dealings of God, to be put back under rules and restrictions again, until we are become fitted to act as children of God: and when we are so, we have no wish to shake off such restrictions, but of our own accord go beyond them. ”

“ Persons sometimes ask, What is the advantage of studying the Fathers? why cannot we be contented with the light of Scripture? Those who study them reply, that one use at least is, that by their help the obscure parts of Scripture, where some truths are but hinted at or supposed, are brought forth into light and clear outline.
An instance of this, and a very unobjectionable one, is to be found in the doctrine of Irenæus, and not of him alone, as to the intermediate state. We know from Scripture that there is an unseen state to which Christ descended492 ”

“ All these passages reflect light upon each other, and exhibit the all-wise God as planning from eternity the last dispensation, by which He chooses, through the Divine Word, to gather out of the world men of all nations, and to restore to them the lost gift of immortality, by adopting them for his own children, and bestowing on them his Spirit, and thus uniting them in the one body of his Church; so that those who believe, and continue in obedience to Him, and hold fast his teaching, continue his children; whilst those who do not obey Him are cut off from Him, and cease to be his children. ”

“ Unlike Simon, however, or any whom I have yet mentioned, (except, perhaps, Ebion) he taught that Jesus was a mere man, the son of Joseph; that being brought up in the Jews' religion, remembering what he had been when in the same sphere with the Father, and being of an unusually firm and resolute mind, he looked down upon the Angels, and set at nought bodily suffering589. But his followers thought that there was no reason why any individual man might not surpass Jesus, and that, in point of fact, many of their sect were superior to the Apostles. ”

“ These mysteries in the nature of Christ Irenæus does not attempt to explain, fully holding the eternal and unchangeable Divinity of the Son, even when made flesh, and his strict personal union with that flesh, and at the same time asserting his subordination to the Father, even in his divine nature; feeling that when we cannot discover the reason of every thing, we should consider the immeasureable difference between us and God222; that if we cannot explain earthly things, we cannot expect to explain heavenly things, and that what we cannot explain we must leave to God223 ”

“ According to Irenæus, moreover, the different classes of sectaries would be regarded as having neither spiritual life nor the Holy Spirit, except so far as they might be supposed to be in communion with the body governed by elders or bishops descended from the Apostles. If in any way or to any degree they can be supposed to be in communion with them, to that extent they would be thought to have the Holy Ghost, and to be in the way of life, but no further. ”

“ The opposite use of the undervaluing of the flesh was the more popular and the more prevalent.
Hitherto, perhaps, there has appeared but little in common with our own times; but there were other features of Gnosticism, in which it will appear to have been the parent of Antinomianism, even that of the most recent days. If any one is at all familiar with the high Calvinism of Toplady and his school, he will have found that it strongly resembled the Gnosticism of the age of Irenæus. It is of the essence of strict Calvinism to teach that individuals are inevitably destined to salvation ”

“ Treatise leads him to adduce it formally, only on the subject of doctrine, that he found himself bound by it upon all points which appeared to be thus universally handed down in the Churches.
But then it must be confessed that Irenæus stood in a position with regard to this tradition very different from that in which we stand. It was a thing which lived about him in all the daily intercourse of life, and respecting which there was scarcely a possibility of a doubt; whereas to us it is a thing which has to be established by evidence, which does not come to our minds unsought. ”

“ And even if we do not admit that Eleutherus was the actual bishop who gave his letters of peace to the Montanists, yet it has always been acknowledged that the letters of the martyrs, thus sent by the public authority of the Gaulish Churches, were intended to caution him against entertaining them, and that either he or Victor did countenance them. And how inconsistent is such a state of things with the idea of a Church privileged to be free from error or delusion, watching [pg 017] over others, instead of being watched over by them! ”

“ But when we find him speaking of the necessity of our bodily frames being sustained by himself, arising out of the fact that we, even our bodies, are his members, we see immediately that, as we cannot be literally and corporeally his members, so the change of the bread into his body, and that of the wine into his blood, in order to nourish our bodies with himself, cannot be a literal and corporeal change. And so he does not say that Jesus effected any such change, but simply that he recognized the cup for his blood, and ordained the bread to be his body405. ”

“ Others went so far as to affirm, that the Apostles were not at all inferior to Jesus, and that if any man whatever could attain to a greater degree of contempt for the Creators than Jesus arrived at, he would become superior to him590.
They affirmed that we are to be saved by faith and love; all actions being good or bad only according to human opinion; and that Jesus taught their system as an esoteric doctrine to the Apostles, who delivered it to those who were worthy591. ”

“ But it must be some recommendation of any typical application, to say the least, to find it struck out in that early age, when those who had conversed with apostolical men were living: and where we find a number of writers agreeing to adopt any one type, (as, for instance, Clement of Rome, Justin and Irenæus, make Rahab's scarlet line typical,) it will, I suppose, appear to most minds to have a very high probability. And it is only by noticing the types in each early writer, that we can arrive at this species of authority for any one particular type. ”