wrote from his prison a letter full of consolation and encour agement for others.

The circumstances which contributed first to moderate, and then bring wholly to an end, this persecution, procured for Origen freedom and repose. Yet the sufferings which he had undergone served perhaps to hasten his death, which took place about the year 254, in the seventieth year of his age.

His influence on theological culture was no longer connected with his person, but continued to spread independently of the man, through his writings and his scholars, for he left behind him disciples imbued with his own spirit, who were disposed to perpetuate his teachings, and thus extend his influence.

CHAPTER IV.

Irenæus.

INSTRUCTION UNDER POLYCARP; SUCCEEDS POTHINUS AS BISHOP; IS PUT TO DEATH; CHARACTER OF WRITINGS.

T is to be wished we had a more copious account of this man. The place of his birth is quite uncertain.

His name, however, points him out to be a Grecian. His instructors in christianity were

Papias, bishop of Hierapolis, and the renowned Polycarp. The former is generally allowed to have been a man of real sanctity, but of slender capacity. He, as well as Polycarp, had been a disciple of John, and with all the imbecility of judgment which is ascribed to him, might, under God, have been of signal service to Irenæus.

But the instructions of Polycarp seem to have made the deepest impressions on his mind from his early life.

He still remembered in his old age what he had heard in his youth from his venerable teacher, concerning the life and doctrines of Christ and the apostles.

In a writing addressed to Florinus, a false teacher, with whom, in his youth, he had enjoyed the society of Polycarp, he says: "These doctrines, the elders who preceded us, who associated also with the apostles, did not teach thee; for while I was yet a boy, I saw thee in company with Polycarp, in Asia Minor; for I bear in remembrance what happened then, better than what happens now. What we have heard in childhood, grows along with the soul, and becomes one with it; so that I can describe the place in which the blessed Polycarp sat and spake; his going in and out; his manner of life, and the shape of his person; the discourses he delivered to the congregation; how he told of his intercourse with John and the rest, who had seen the Lord; how he reported their sayings, and what he had heard from them respecting the Lord, his miracles and doctrine.

"As he had received all from the eye-witnesses of his life, he narrated it in accordance with Scripture.

me,

"These things, by virtue of the grace of God imparted to

I listened to, even then, with eagerness; and wrote them down, not on paper, but in my heart; and by the grace of God, I constantly bring them up again fresh to my memory."

After the martyrdom of Pothinus, bishop of Lyons, Irenæus became his successor. Never was any pastor more severely tried by a tempestuous scene. Violent persecution without, and subtle heresies within, called for the exertion, at once, of consummate dexterity, and of magnanimous resolution.

Irenæus was favored with a large measure of both, and weathered out the storm. But heresy proved a more constant enemy than persecution. The multiplication of it in endless refinements induced him to write his book against heresies, which must have been at that time a very seasonable work. His vigor and charity also in composing the insignificant disputes about Easter are noticeable.

His labors in Gaul were doubtless of the most solid utility. Nor is it a small instance of the humility and charity of this great man, accurately versed as he was in Grecian literature, that he took pains to learn the barbarous dialect of Gaul

conformed himself to the rustic manners of an illiterate people, and renounced the politeness and elegant traits of his own country, for the love of souls. Rare fruit of chris. tian charity!

Gregory of Tours, and the ancient martyrologists, inform us, that after several torments, Irenæus was put to death, and together with him, almost all the christians of the popu lous city of Lyons, whose numbers could not be reckoned, so that the streets flowed with the blood of christians.

His book of heresies is nearly the whole of his writings. that have escaped the injuries of time. His assiduity and penetration are equally remarkable in analyzing and dissecting all the fanciful schemes with which heretics had disgraced the christian name.

It is easy to see that his views of the gospel are in the same style as those of Justin, whom he quotes, and with whose works he appears to have been acquainted.

There is not much of pathetic, practical, or experimental religion in the work. The author's plan, which led him to keep up a constant attention to speculative errors, did not admit it. Yet there is every where so serious and grave a spirit, and now and then such displays of godliness, as show him very capable of writing what might have been singularly useful to the church in all ages.

He was evidently distinguished for the sobriety of his practical, christian spirit,-possessed of a peculiarly sound and discriminating tact in determining what was of practical moment in all doctrines, profoundly penetrated with a sense of the grandeur of God's works and of the limited compass. of human understanding, perseveringly opposes the humil ity of knowledge to the arrogant pretensions of Gnostic speculation, and forms the link of connection betwixt the church of Asia Minor and that of Rome,-representing in himself what was common to both.

CHAPTER V.

Tertullian.

HIS PROFESSION; BECOMES ASSOCIATED WITH MONTANISM; HIS
WRITINGS AND CHARACTER.

ERTULLIAN was born, probably at Carthage, in the later times of the second century. His father was a centurion in the service of the proconsul at Carthage. He was, at first, an advocate,

or perhaps a rhetorician; nor did he embrace christianity until he had arrived at the age of manhood. He then obtained, if Jerome's account is correct, the office of presbyter; whether at Rome or at Carthage is, however, doubtful. The latter place is, in itself, the most probable; since in different writings, composed at different times, he discourses like one who was settled in Carthage; though the reports of Eusebius and Jerome speak for the former. The words of Eusebius do not, indeed, directly say that when a christian he took an important place in the Roman church; but according to the connection, may very well mean, that before his conversion to christianity, he stood in high repute at Rome as a juris-consul. We might then, to be sure, still infer, that, if he lived at Rome when a heathen, and enjoyed there so high a reputation, it is also probable that he was there first clothed with a spiritual office.

He became more or less identified with Montanism, a new theory of the times, a sort of one-sided super-naturalism; his conversion to which may be satisfactorily explained, from its affinity with the original bent of his mind and feelings.

The civilization of his times proceeded from the difference between the two great individualities of national characterthe Greek and the Roman. In the Greek predominated the activity of the intellect-the scientific, speculative element.

The Roman character, on the other hand, was less mobile, and as in its spirit, the practical church interest was so

absorbing as to leave no room for the scientific, the west was in want of an organ whereby the spirit which prevailed there could scientifically express itself. Such an organ was supplied by the church of North Africa in Tertullian-a man who united in himself the elements of the Roman and of the Carthaginian character. Wanting the chaste sobriety of mind for which Ireanus was distinguished, though a foe to speculation, he could not resist the impulses of a profoundly speculative intellect; and to the devout practically christian element he united a speculative one,-destitute, however, of the regular form,-which continued for a long time to operate through various intermediate agencies in the western church, until it finally impregnated the mind of that great teacher of centuries, Augustin, in whom Tertullian once more appears under a transfigured form.

A great impression was made on his peculiar temperament by the remarkable phenomenon which sprung out of the very midst of the spiritual tendency of Asia Minor, viz. :—an opposition to the speculative caprice of the times, and a faithful seeking to preserve and hold fast the peculiar, fundamental doctrines of christianity, so as to secure them against all corruptions.

As this forms an essential element in his peculiar cast of mind, so it was by him that the principles which lie at the basis of Montanism were systematically determined, and thereby made to have an influence on the history of western theology.

Among the many ideas of this sect was this one;-that there were certain seasons or epochs, of the out-pouring of the Holy Ghost, through which the progressive development of the church was to be promoted; a new momentum superadded to its ordinary, regular course of development, and designed to complete what was lacking in it. In receiving this principle, and looking round for arguments in support of it, Tertullian endeavored to show the necessity of some such progressive development of the church, by pointing to a law running through all the works of God in the kingdoms of nature and of grace.