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no more, nor lose grace, and that therefore he that falls and sins was never truly justified, . . let him be anathema."

In these positions the Council of Trent did but re-affirm that which had been catholic doctrine from the beginning. Its voice on these points is the voice of the whole orthodox Church of the Orient. And, aside from the individualistic novelties of Augustine, it is essentially the voice of the whole series of great theologians of the West. And these definitions are final and authoritative in the whole Latin Church to this day.

Thus it appears that of the 370,000,000 of Christians in the world at the present time nearly three fourths (Schaff gives 190,000,000 of Latins, 80,000,000 of Greeks, and 100,000,000 of Protestants) teach essentially the synergism which has prevailed in the Church catholic from the beginning.

When we now turn to the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century we are confronted at once by the curious fact that the three great founders of Protestantism-Luther, Zwinglius, and Calvin-were decidedly uncatholic and unorthodox on the subject of the relation of divine grace to the action of the human will. They all became entangled in a physicodynamic conception of the action of God on the souls of men. From this resulted necessarily the irresistibility of grace: grace being a dynamic, an efficient cause per se, it always produces its intended effect. This led to a partial atonement: Christ did not die for all, otherwise all would be saved; for grace can never be defeated. And this gives rise to the invention of two unscriptural decrees of election and of reprobation. But it was impossible to deny that the Bible proclaims a ready salvation for all men. How is the force of that to be evaded? By the monstrous invention of a dualistic will in Goda revealed will which offers salvation to all men, and a secret will which nullifies and defeats the revealed will!

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Such was the immense ballast of uncatholic error with which Protestantism was hampered from its very infancy. Why did not the young Church sink under the burden? Simply because these errors are of such a nature that it is impossible practically to believe them. They imply that salvation is exclusively from God, that God saves just whom, and when, and how he pleases, and that all the efforts of man are incapable either of preparing, or hastening, or in any way contributing one iota

thereto. Now, the logical tendency of such a belief would be to paralyze all human effort and concern about our ultimate salvation. But the dogma is so contradictory to our moral consciousness that it cannot be fully believed and acted upon. Its reflex, its indirect, effect is to awaken in us a very strong, trembling desire that "we individually might also be among the happy number of God's elect." Now, this desire itself is already essentially a humble petition for salvation. It is a thirsting for salvation. It is really a very strong virtualization of man's moral autonomy or ethical freedom of will. It is an actual co-operating with that grace which is the congenital heritage of every child of Adam. And this right use of present ability conditions, sooner or later, a richer presence of God in the heart-the normal result of all which is a true, orthodox, catholic, synergistic conversion, such as had been taking place in the Church from the beginning.

Thus the erroneous theories of the young Protestant Church were of such a nature as to be simply hinderances, but not entire barriers, to spiritual reformation. They only retarded, but could not defeat the efforts of good and holy men. Providence uses imperfect instruments. Essentially good movements. are often enwrapped in very erroneous speculations. But our healthy intuitional subjectivism will not heed our speculative abstractions, and often arrives at its goal in spite of them.

But that the predestinarian fatalism of the early Reformers was an immense misfortune to the new Church is clearly manifest from two considerations: 1. The cause of God does not need the assistance of theological and anthropological error. And surely the unvarying testimony of orthodox catholicity against an unconditional predestination justifies us in regarding such predestination as an error until it proves itself to be true. 2. The whole history of Protestant theological thought for now three and a half centuries has consisted partly in a vain endeavor to explain unconditional predestination into consistency with our moral intuitions, but chiefly in the work of eliminating and casting it off. Bright names in this great movement of Protestant emancipation and of return to orthodox catholicity are Melanchthon, Arminius, Wesley. The essence of this movement has consisted in simply the self-reassertion of the healthy Christian consciousness.

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The final result is, that of the 100,000,000 of Protestants now existing the very large majority have long since found their way back to the simple synergistic doctrine of œcumenical orthodoxy, while with the remnant the Augustinian errors are held more as a matter of official symbolic thralldom than from hearty youthful conviction. They lurk rather in the scholastic seminaries than in the evangelical pulpit.

We conclude, therefore, by the emphatic re-assertion of our thesis, to wit, that the synergism which was taught by Mr. Wesley is an essential of orthodox catholicity, and, by consequence, that the monergism of Augustine, Luther, and Calvin is an individualistic innovation, destined ultimately to be entirely sloughed off.

ART. II.-IGNATIUS AND HIS EPISTLES.

I. PERSONAL HISTORY.

Or the personal history of Ignatius, as of the personal history of the great majority of the Apostolical Fathers, little is known; and this little cannot be accepted with full faith in its trustworthiness. Tradition relates that he was the child whom Christ placed before his disciples as the model of humility, (Matt. xviii, 2-4; Mark ix, 36;) and as the Saviour took the child in his arms, Ignatius was consequently surnamed Theophorus, "Borne or carried by God."* The chief authority for his personal history is the Martyrium Ignatii, a brief narrative professing to be written by those who accompanied him on his voyage to Rome and witnessed his death. Though its genuineness has been questioned by Daillé (Dallæus) and others, it has been regarded by most scholars as the work of Philo, Agathopus, and perhaps Crocus, whom Ignatius mentions as his traveling companions.† Accepting the genuineness and authenticity of the narrative, we learn that Ignatius was bishop of the Church at Antioch at the close of the first and beginning of the

* In the "Martyrdom " (ii) this term is explained as meaning, "He who has Christ within his breast."

Epist. to Smyr., x; to Phila., xi; to Rom., x.

second century; * that he presented himself as a Christian before Trajan's tribunal on the occasion of that emperor's expedition against Armenia and the Parthians; † that he was condemned to suffer death at Rome; that he journeyed to that city and wrote letters to the Churches on the way; and that on his arrival he was consigned to the wild beasts in the Coliseum. These are the prominent facts in the life of Ignatius. But of his personal characteristics, accepting provisionally the genuineness of his seven epistles, a more full exhibit can be made. As from the footprints on the shore Cuvier or Agassiz determined the species and size of the animal, so from the epistles of Ignatius may be learned his character by means of the impressions which he stamped upon them.

The most prominent characteristic of the author of these letters is courage. Fear is unknown to him. He is bold to apparent rashness. He is eager for a martyr's crown. "I am,"

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he writes, "the wheat of God, and let me be ground by the teeth of the wild beasts, that I may be found the pure bread of Christ." "Entice the wild beasts," he begs his friends, "that they may become my tomb." "May I enjoy the wild beasts." "I am eager to die." Courage, bravery, fearlessness, is the conspicuous element in the character of Ignatius.

The examination of the cause of his courage reveals a second fundamental characteristic-his love of Christ. His affection for the incarnate Lord is burning and impulsive. It is as intense, to compare human things with divine, as the emotion of Abelard toward Heloise, or as self-sacrificing as the love of David for Absalom. Rejoicing in his sentence of death, he sings, "I thank thee, O Lord, that thou hast vouchsafed to honor me with a perfect love toward thee, and hast made to be bound with iron chains like thy apostle Paul." "Let," he

Traditions differ concerning the episcopal succession. He was probably either the first or second successor of Peter.

It is uncertain whether this expedition occurred in 106-107 or in 114-115. Coins and documents represent that Trajan did not come to Antioch on his Parthian expedition till 114 or 115. The text of the "Martyrium " upon this point is doubtful. It is either "ninth" or "nineteenth." The supposition of Tillemont, of two expeditions, is untenable.

The translations are taken from the "Ante-Nicene Christian Library," edited by Rev. Alexander Roberts, D.D., and James Donaldson, LL.D. Vol. i. Edinburgh : T. & T. Clark.

1867.

exclaims, in the divine aspiration of his soul, "let fire and the cross, let the crowds of wild beasts, ... let all the shatterings of the whole body, let all the torments of the devil, come upon me; only let me attain Jesus Christ." Why, he asks, does he surrender himself to death, to fire, to the sword, to wild beasts? Because he who is near to the sword is near to God, and he who is among the wild beasts is in company with God, provided only he be so in the name of Jesus Christ. Ignatius is, as Novalis says of Spinoza, "God-intoxicated;" but, unlike the great pantheist, his spirit is aflame with love for the personal, living, dying, and ever-living Christ. In the strength of the incarnate God he is strong. Of his faith in the God-man is born his Pauline courage.

Flowing from his courage and Christian faith is a third element in the author's character-enthusiasm. His beliefs, his thoughts, glow with the white heat of the intensest emotions. They are not cold intellections; they flash with the furnace-fire of the feelings. The strongest metaphors quiver with the agitation which he throws into them. "It is better for me to die in behalf of Jesus Christ than to reign over all the ends of the earth," he confesses. "Suffer me to obtain pure light," he begs. Permit me to be an imitator of the passion of my God," he commands. His enthusiasm impels to Trajan's tribunal; it hurries him across the seas to his martyrdom.

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But through the warp and woof of this courage, Godward love, and enthusiasm, runs a thread of spiritual pride. In the whirl of his emotions, in the sportings of his imagination, in the extravagance of his exclamations, is discernible a hauteur neither Christ-like nor Pauline. The excesses of his wild metaphors are very unlike the calm assurance of "I have fought a good fight. I have finished my course. I have kept the faith." Their intensity breathes not only a sublime faith in the incarnate God, but also a consciousness of nobler experiences than those to which Roman or Ephesian Christian has attained. "I have," he writes, "great knowledge in God," and lest he perish through boasting a constant restraint curbs his words. His Epistle to Polycarp is colored with emotions which hardly deserve a milder term than spiritual conceit. He addresses the disciple of St. John not as an equal, but as a pupil. He implores him to give himself to prayer without ceasing. He

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