A. It remains unchanged; inasmuch as God of his foreknowl edge and infinite mercy hath predestined to open for man, even after his departure from the way of happiness, a new way of hap piness, through his only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. "He hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world," are the words of the Apostle Paul, Eph. i, 4. Q. How are we to understand the predestination of God with respect to men in general, and to each man severally? A. God has predestined to give to all men, and has actually given them, preventing grace, and means sufficient for the attainment of happiness. Q. What is said of this by the word of God? A. For whom he did foreknow he also did predestinate. Rom. viii, 29. Q. How does the Orthodox Church speak on this point? A. In the Exposition of the Faith by the Eastern Patriarchs it is said: "As he foresaw that some would use well their free-will, but others ill, he accordingly predestined the former to glory, while the latter he condemned." Art. III. The very article, it will be remembered, which I have cited from the Ultimatum of the patriarchs to the English bishops. In this view foreknowledge is evidently the basis of foreordination. Without lingering to multiply illustrations from the Greek Fathers, I conclude with the words of St. John Damascene, (De Fide Orthodoxa II, c. 30): “ Χρὴ γινώσκειν, ὦ πάντα μὲν προγινώσκει ὁ θεὸς, οὐ πάντα δὲ προορίζει· γαρ τὰ ἐφ' ἡμῖν, οὐ πрoopíšeι dè avτá”-intimating here, as elsewhere, that although God foreknows, yet he does not foreordain our moral character. ART. III.-WORSHIP OF RELICS, AND THE MIRACLES OF THE ANCIENT CHURCH.* THE worship of relics legitimately followed the worship of the Virgin Mary, of martyrs and saints, and took its rise simul *For the most ample material on this whole subject, the reader is especially referred to the famous Acta Sanctorum quotquot toto orbe voluntur, thus far fifty-eight volumes fol., (1643-1864,) coming down to October 22d, and now slowly approaching completion. This rare and costly work of the Bollandists is arranged after the Roman Calendar, and is the richest source for the knowledge of religious life, the worship of martyr saints and relics in the Roman Catholic Church. A complete copy of it may be found in the Astor Library, and another in the Union Theological Seminary Library of New York. taneously in the Nicene and post-Nicene age, after the close of the heroic martyr age of Christianity, and with the influx of the entire heathen population of the Roman empire, with all its idolatrous and superstitious traditions and habits, into the Græco-Roman Catholic Church. We propose in this essay to give a condensed account of the origin and progress of this worship, with some observations on the character and credibility of the ancient Catholic miracles connected with the same. Worship, in a limited sense and subordinate to the supreme worship due to God, was accorded to the persons of departed saints in glory, and in a lower degree also to their earthly remains and relics, (reliquiæ or reliqua, Leípava.) By these we are to understand, first, their bodies, or rather parts of them -bones, blood, ashes; then all which was in any way closely connected with their persons-clothes, staff, furniture, and especially the instruments of their martyrdom. After the time of Ambrose the cross of Christ also was included, and subsequently his crown of thorns and his coat, which are preserved, the former in Paris, the latter in Treves. The cross of Christ, with the superscription and the nails, is said to have been miraculously discovered by the Empress Helena in 326. The legend of the "invention of the cross," (inventio 8. crucis,) which is celebrated in the Greek and Latin Church by a special festival, is at best faintly implied in Eusebius, in a letter of Constantine to the Bishop Macarius of Jerusalem. (Vita Const. iii, 30, though in iii, 25, where it should be expected, it is entirely unnoticed, as Gieseler correctly observes,) and does not appear till several decennia later, first in Cyril of Jerusalem, (whose Epist. ad Constantium of 351, however, is considered by Gieseler and others, on critical and theological grounds, a much later production,) then, with good agreement as to the main fact, in Ambrose, Chrysostom, Paulinus of Nola, Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoret, and other Fathers. With all these witnesses the fact is still hardly credible, and has against it particularly the following considerations: 1. The place of the crucifixion was desecrated under the Emperor Hadrian by heathen temples and statues, besides being filled up and defaced beyond recognition. 2. There is no clear testimony of a contemporary. 3. The pilgrim from Bordeaux, who visited Jerusalem in 333, and in a still extant itinerarium (Vetera Rom. itineraria, ed. P. Wesseling, p. 593) enumerates all the sacred things of the holy city, knows nothing of the holy cross, or its invention, (compare Gieseler, Church History, German ed., vol. i, 2, p. 279, note 37; Edinb. ed, vol. ii, p. 36.) This miracle contributed very much to the increase of the superstitious use of crosses and crucifixes. Cyril of Jerusalem remarks, that about 380 the splinters of the holy cross filled the whole world, and yet, according to the account of the devout but credulous Paulinus, of Nola, (Epist. 31, al. 11,) the original remained in Jerusalem undiminisheda continual miracle! Besides Gieseler, compare particularly the minute investigation of this legend by Isaac Taylor: The Invention of the Cross, and the Miracles therewith connected, in "Ancient Christianity," vol. ii, pp. 277-315.) Relics of the body of Christ cannot be thought of, since he arose without seeing corruption, ascended to heaven, where, above the reach of idolatry and superstition, he is enthroned at the right hand of the Father. His true relics are the holy supper and his living presence in the Church to the end of the world. The worship of relics, like the worship of Mary and the saints, began in a sound religious feeling of reverence, of love, and of gratitude, but has swollen to an avalanche, and rushed into all kinds of superstitious and idolatrous excess. "The most glorious thing that the mind conceives," says Goethe, "is always set upon by a throng of more and more foreign matter." As Israel could not sustain the pure elevation of its divinely revealed religion, but lusted after the flesh-pots of Egypt and coquetted with sensuous heathenism, so it fared also with the ancient Church. The worship of relics cannot be derived from Judaism; for the Levitical law strictly prohibited the contact of bodies and bones of the dead as defiling.* Yet the isolated instance of the bones of the prophet Elisha quickening by their con * Num. xix, 11 sqq.; xxxi, 19. The touching of a corpse, or a dead bone, or a grave, made one unclean seven days, and was to be expiated by washing, upon pain of death. The tent, also, in which a person had died, and all open vessels in it, were unclean. (Compare Josephus c. Apion, ii, 26; Antiq., iii, xi, 3.) The Talmudists made the laws still more stringent on this point. tact a dead man who was cast into his tomb,* was quoted in behalf of the miraculous power of relics; though it should be observed that even this miracle did not lead the Israelites to do homage to the bones of the prophet, nor abolish the law of the uncleanness of a corpse. The heathen abhorred corpses and burnt them to ashes, except in Egypt, where embalming was the custom, and was imitated by the Christians on the death of martyrs, though St. Anthony of Egypt protested against it. There are examples, however, of the preservation of the bones of distinguished heroes, like Theseus, and of the erection of temples over their graves.t The Christian relic worship was primarily a natural consequence of the worship of the saints, and was closely connected with the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the body, which was an essential article of the apostolic tradition, and is incorporated in almost all the ancient creeds. For, acccording to the Gospel, the body is not an evil substance, as the Platonists, Gnostics, and Manichæans held, but a creature of God; it is redeemed by Christ; it becomes by the regeneration an organ and temple of the Holy Ghost; and it rests as a living seed in the grave, to be raised again at the last day and changed into the likeness of the glorious body of Christ. The bodies of the righteous "grow green" in their graves, to burst forth in glorious bloom on the morning of the resurrection. The first Christians from the beginning set great store by this comforting doctrine, at which the heathen, like Celsus and Julian, scoffed. Hence they abhorred also the heathen custom of burning, and adopted the Jewish custom of burial with solemn religious ceremonies, which, however, varied in different times and countries. But in the closer definition of the dogma of the resurrection two different tendencies appeared: one spiritualistic, represented by the Alexandrians, particularly by Origen, and still later by the two Gregories; the other more realistic, advocated * Kings xiii, 21, (Sept. :) ἥψατο τῶν ὀστῶν Ελισαιέ, καὶ ἔζησε καὶ ἔστε ἐπὶ τοὺς Tódos. Compare the apochryphal book Jesus Sirach, (Ecclesiasticus) xviii. 13, 14; xlix, 12. Plutarch, in his Life of Theseus, c. xxxvi. FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XVIII.—33 by Tertullian, favored by the Apostles' Creed,* but pressed by some Church teachers, like Epiphanius and Jerome, in a grossly materialistic manner, without regard to the owμa veνpaтikóν of Paul, and the declaration that "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God."+ The latter theory was far the more consonant with the prevailing spirit of our period, entirely supplanted the other, and gave the mortal remains of the saints a higher value, and the worship of them a firmer foundation. Roman Catholic historians and apologists find a justification of the worship and the healing virtue of relics in three facts of the New Testament: the healing of the woman with the issue of blood by the touch of Jesus's garment, (Matt. ix, 20;) the healing of the sick by the shadow of Peter, (Acts v, 14, 15;) and the same by handkerchiefs from Paul, (Acts xix, 11, 12.) These examples, as well as the miracle wrought by the bones of Elisha, were cited by Origen, Cyril of Jerusalem, Ambrose, Chrysostom, and other Fathers, to vindicate similar and greater miracles in their time. They certainly mark the extreme limit of the miraculous, beyond which it passes into the magical. But in all these cases the living and present person was the vehicle of the healing power; in the second case Luke records merely the popular belief, not the actual healing; and, finally, neither Christ, nor the apostles themselves, chose that method, nor in any way sanctioned the superstitions on which it was based. At all events the New Testament and the literature of the apostolic Fathers know * In the phrase ἀνάστασις τῆς σαρκός, instead of τοῦ σώματος, resurrectio carnis, instead of corporis. The Nicene Creed uses the expression áváσracıç vekpūv, resurrectio mortuorum. In the German version of the Apostles' Creed the easily mistaken term fleisch, flesh, is retained; but the English Churches say more correctly, resurrection of the body. + Jerome, on the ground of his false translation of Job xix, 26, teaches even the restoration of all bones, voins, nerves, teeth, and hair, (because the Bible speaks of gnashing of teeth among the damned, and of the hairs of our heads being all numbered!) "Habent dentes," says he of the resurrection bodies, "ventrem, genitalia, et tamen nec cibis nec uxoribus indigent." Augustine is more cautious, and endeavors to avoid gross, carnal conceptions. (Compare the passages in Hagenbach's Dogmengeschichte, I, § 140, Engl. ed., N. Y., i, p. 370 sqq.) On the contrary, the account of the healing of sick by the handkerchiefs of Paul is immediately followed by an account of the magical abuse of the name of Jesus, as a warning. (Acts, xix, 13, etc.) |