# The Collected Works of Theodore Parker/Volume 01/Book 5/Chapter 2

CHAPTER II.
THE GRADUAL FORMATION OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.
In the earliest times of Christianity there were no regular systems of doctrine, to bind men together. The truths of natural Religion, the special forms of Judaism, and a somewhat indefinite belief in Jesus, were the cardinal points and essentials of Christianity. The public religious service seems perfectly free. Where the spirit of the Lord was, there was liberty. No one controlled another's freedom. The much vaunted “form of sound words” was notoriously different with different teachers. Paul, who came late to Christianity, boasts that he received his doctrine straightway from God, not from those “who were apostles before him,” whom he seems to hold in small esteem. The decision of the council at Jerusalem, even if it ever took place, did not bind him. The practical side of Christianity was developed more than the theoretical. The effect of the truth proclaimed with freedom, was soon manifest; for the errors and superstition still clinging to the mind of the apostles could not chain mankind. Love increased; Christianity bore fruit; the Church spread wide its arms. It emancipated men from the yokes of the ancient sacerdotal class; but there was a fierce struggle in the new congregations before the Jewish forms could be given up. The Christians were “a royal priesthood;” all were “kings and priests,” appointed to offer a “spiritual sacrifice.” The apostles who had seen Jesus, or understood his doctrine, naturally took the lead of men they sought to instruct. As the number of Christians enlarged, some organization was needed for practical purposes. The pattern was taken from the Jewish Synagogue, which claimed no divine authority; not from the Temple, whose officers made such a claim. Hence there were elders and deacons. ​One of the elders was an overseer, like the “Speaker” in a legislative assembly. But all these were chosen by the people, and as much of the people after their choice as before. There was no clergy and no laity; all were sons of God, recipients of inspiration from him. The Holy Ghost fell upon all, the same in kind, only divine in degree and mode of manifestation. The wish of Moses was complied with, and God put his spirit upon each of them; the prediction of Joel was fulfilled, and their sons and their daughters prophesied; the word of Jeremiah had come to pass, and God put his Law in their inward parts, and wrote it on their heart, and they all knew the Lord from the least to the greatest. They were “anointed of God,” and “knew all things;” they “needed not that any man should teach them.” Christ and God were in all holy hearts. The overseer, or bishop, claimed no power over the people; he was only first among his peers; the greatest only because the servant of all. Even Apollos, Cephas, Paul, who were they but servants, through whom others believed? The bishop had no authority to bind and loose in heaven or earth; no right to enforce a doctrine. He was not the standard of faith; that was “the Mind of the Lord,” which He would reveal to all who sought it. There was no monopoly of teaching on the part of the elders. A bishop, says the author of the Epistle to Timothy,“must be able to teach,” not the only teacher, not necessarily a preacher at all; but a minister of silence as well as speech. Inspiration was free to all men. “Quench not the Spirit;” “prove all things;” “hold fast what is good;” “covet earnestly the best gifts,”—these were the watchwords. Under Fetichism, all could consult their God, and be inspired; miracles took place continually. Under Polytheism, only a few could come to God at first hand; they alone were inspired, and miracles were rare. Under Christian Monotheism, God dwelt in all faithful hearts; old covenants and priesthoods were done away, and so all were inspired.
​The New Testament was not written, and the Old Testament was but the shadow of good things to come, and since they had come, the children of the free woman were not to sit in the shadow, but to stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ had made them free. Man, the heir of all things, long time kept under task-masters and governors, had now come of age and taken possession of his birthright. The decision of a majority of delegates assembled in a council, bound only themselves.
Then the body of men and women worshipping in any one place was subject neither to its own officers, nor to the Church at large; nor to the Scriptures of the Old or the New Testament. No man on earth, no organization, no book was master of the Soul. Each Church made out its canon of Scripture as well as it could. Some of our canonical writings were excluded, and apocryphal writings used in their stead. Indeed, respecting this matter of Scripture, there has never been a uniform canon among all Christians. The Bible of the Latin differs from that of the Greek Church, and contains thirteen books the more. The Catholic differs from the Protestant; the early Syrians from their contemporaries; the Abyssinians from all other churches, it seems. Ebionites would not receive the beginning of Matthew and Luke; the Marcionites had a Gospel of their own. The Socinians, and perhaps others, left off the whole of the Old Testament, or counted it unnecessary. The followers of Swedenborg do not find a spiritual sense in all the books of the canon. Critics yearly make inroads upon the canon, striking out whole books or obnoxious passages, as not genuine. In the first ages of Christianity, the Bible was a subordinate thing. In modern times it has been made a vehicle to carry any doctrine the expositor sees fit to interpret into it. The first preachers of Christianity fell back on the authority of ​Jesus; appealed to the moral sense of Mankind; applied the doctrines of Christianity to life as well as they could, and with much zeal, and some superstition and many mistakes, developed the practical side of Christianity much more than its theoretical side.
But even in the Apostles, Christianity had lost somewhat of its simplicity, much of the practical character which marks the teaching of Jesus in the Synoptics. The doctrine of Paul was far removed from the doctrine of Jesus. It was not plain Religion and Morality coming from the absolute source, and proceeding by the absolute method to the absolute end. It is taught on the “authority of Christ.” The Jews must believe he was the Messiah of the prophets. “Salvation” is connected with a belief in his person. “Neither is there salvation by any other,” says the author who takes the name of Peter; the fourth Gospel makes Jesus declare “No man cometh unto the Father but by me,” “all that ever came before me are thieves and robbers.” The Jewish doctrine of “Redemption” and reconciliation by sacrifice appears more or less in the genuine works of the Apostles, and very clearly in the Epistle to the Hebrews. We may explain some of the obnoxious passages as “figures of speech,” referring to the “Christ born in us;” but a fair interpretation leaves it pretty certain the writers added somewhat to the simpler form of Jesus, though they might not share the gross doctrines since often taught in their name. Christ is in some measure a mythological being even with Paul,—he was with the Jews in the desert, and assisted at the creation. The Jesus of history fades out and the Christ of fiction takes his place. The Pharisaic doctrine of the resurrection of the body appears undeniably; a local heaven and a day of judgment, in which Jesus is to appear in person and judge the world, are very clearly taught. The fourth Gospel speaks of Jesus as he never speaks of himself; the Platonic doctrine of the Logos appears therein. We may separate the apostolic doctrine into three classes, the Judaizing, the Alexandrine, and the Pauline, each differing more or less essentially from the simple mode of Religion of the Synoptics. Already with the ​Apostles Jesus has become in part deified, his personality confounded with the infinite God. Was it not because of the very vastness and beauty of soul that was in him? The private and peculiar doctrines of the early Christians appear in strange contrast with the gentle precepts of love to man and God, in which Jesus sums up the essentials of Religion. But, alas, what is arbitrary and peculiar in each form of worship, is of little value; the best things are the commonest, for no man can lay a new foundation, nor add to the old, more than the wood, hay, and stubble of his own folly. The great excellence of Jesus was in restoring natural Religion and Morality to their true place; an excellence which even the Apostles but poorly understood.
In their successors Christianity was a very different thing, and in the course of a few years,—alas, a very few,—it appeared in the mass of the Churches, an idle mummery; a collection of forms and superstitious rites. Heathenism and Judaism with all sorts of superstitious absurdities in their train, came into the Church. The first fifteen bishops of Jerusalem clung to the most obnoxious feature of Judaism. Christianity was the stalking-horse of ambition. A man stepped at once from the camp to the Bishop's mitre, and brought only the piety of the Roman Legion into the Church. The doctrine of many a Christian writer was less pure and beautiful than the faith of Seneca and Cicero, not to name Zoroaster, Pythagoras, and Socrates. After less than a century there was a distinction between clergy and laity. The former ere long became “Lords over God's heritage,” not “ensamples unto the flock.” They were masters of the doctrine; could bind and loose on earth and in heaven. The majority in a council bound the minority, and the voices of the clergy determined what was “the mind of the Lord.” Thus the clergy became the Church, and were set above Reason and Conscience in the individual man. They were chosen by ​themselves, and responsible to none on earth. Private inspiration was reckoned dangerous. Freedom of conscience was forbidden; he who denied the popular faith was accursed. The organization of the Church was then copied from the Jewish temple, not the synagogue. The minister was a priest, and stood between God and the people; the Bishop, an high-priest after the order of Aaron, his kingdom of this world. He was the “Successor of the Apostles;” the Vicegerent of Christ. Men came to the clerical office with no Religious qualification. Baptism atoned for all sins, and was sometimes put off till the last hour, that the Christian might give full swing to the flesh, and float into heaven at last on the lustral waters of baptism. Bits of bread from the “Lord's table” were a talisman to preserve the faithful from all dangers by sea and land. Prayers were put up for the dead; the cross was worshipped; the bones of the martyrs could work miracles, cast out devils, calm a tempest, and even raise the dead. The Eucharist was forced into the mouths of children before they could say, “my father, and my mother.” The sign of the cross and the “sacred oil” were powerful as Canidia's spell. In point of toleration the Christians went backward for a time, far behind the Athenians and men of Rome. The clergy assumed power over Conscience; power to admit to Heaven, or condemn to hell; and not only decided in matters of mummery, whereof they made “divine service” to consist, but decreed what men should believe in order to obtain eternal life; an office the sublimest of all the sons of men, modest because he was great, never took upon himself. They collected the writings of the New Testament, and decided what should be the “Standard of Faith,” and what not. But their canon was arbitrary, including some spurious books of small value, and rejecting others more edifying. However, they allowed some latitude in the interpretation of the works they had canonized. But next they went further, and developed systematically the doctrines of Scripture, on points deemed the most important, such as ​the “nature of God” and Christ. Thus the “mind of the Lord” was determined and laid down, so that he might read that ran. The mysticism of Plato, and the dialectic subtleties of the Stagirite, afforded matter for the pulpit and councils to discuss.
This method of deciding dark questions by plurality of votes has always been popular in Christendom. In some things the majority are always right; in some always wrong. The four hundred prophets of Baal have a “lying spirit” in them; Micaiah alone is in the right. The college of Padua and the Sorbonne would have voted down Galileo and Newton, a hundred to one; but what then? Majority of voices proves little in morals or mathematics. A single man in Jerusalem on a certain time had more moral and religious truth than Herod and the Sanhedrim. Synods of Dort and assemblies of Divines settle nothing but their own opinions, which will be reversed the next century, or stand, as now, a snare to the conscience of pious men.
In the early times of Christianity, the teachers in general were men of little learning, imbued with the prejudices and vain philosophies of the times; men with passions, some of them quite untamed, notwithstanding their pious zeal. In the first century no eminent man is reckoned among the Christians. But soon doctrines, that played a great part in the heathen worship, and which do not appear in the teaching of Jesus, were imposed upon men, on pain of damnation in two worlds. They are not yet extinct. Rites were adopted from the same source. The scum of idolatry covered the well of living water. The Flesh and the Devil sat down at the “Lord's Table” in the Christian Church, and with forehead unabashed, pushed away the worthy bidden guest. What passed for Christianity in many churches during the fourth and a large part of the third century was a vile superstition. The image of Christ was marred. Men paid God in Cæsar's pence. The shadows of great men, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato; yes, the shades of humbler men, of name unknown to fame, might have come up, disquieted like Samuel, from their grave, and spit upon the superstition of the Christians defiling Persia, and Athens, and Rome. It deserved ​the mockery it met. Christianity was basely corrupted long before it gained the Roman Palace. Had it not been depraved, when would it have reached king's courts; in the time of Constantine, or of Louis XIV.? The quarrels of the Bishops; the contentions of the councils; the superstition of the laymen and the despotism and ambition of the clergy in general; the ascetic doctrine taught as morality; the monastic institutions with their plan of a divine life, are striking signs of the times, and contrast wonderfully with that simple Nazarene and his lowly obedience to God and manly love of his brothers.
Yet here and there were men who fed with faith and works the flame of piety, which, rising from their lowly hearth, streamed up towards heaven, making the shadows of superstition and of sin look strange and monstrous as they fell on many a rood of space. These were the men who saved the Sodom of the Church. Did Christianity fail? The Christianity of Christ is not one thing and human nature another. It is human Virtue, human Religion, man in his highest moments; the effect no less than the cause of human development, and can never fail till man ceases to be man. Under all this load of superstition the heart of faith still beat. How could the world forget its old institutions, riot, and sin, in a moment? It is not thus the dull fact of the world's life yields to the Divine Idea of a man. The rites of the public worship; the clerical class; the stress laid on dogmas and forms; all this was a tribute to the indolence and sensuality of mankind. The asceticism, celibacy, mortification of the body, contempt of the present life; the hatred of all innocent pleasure; the scorn of literature, science, and art,—these are the natural reaction of mankind, who had been bid to fill themselves with merely sensual delight. The lives of Mark Antony, Sallust, Crassus; of Julius Cæsar, Nero, and Domitian, explain the origin of asceticism and monastic retirement better than folios will do it. The writings of Petronius Arbiter, of Appuleius and Lucian, render necessary the works of Tertullian, Cyprian, Jerome, and John of Damascus. Individuals might come swiftly out of Egyptian darkness into the light of Religion, but the world moves slow, and oscillates from one extreme to ​the opposite. For a time the leaven of Christianity seemed lost in the lump of human sin; but it was doing its great work in ways not seen by mortal eyes. The most profound of all revolutions must require centuries for its work. The good never dies. The Persecutions directed by tyrannical emperors against the new faith, only helped the work. What is written in blood is widely read and not soon forgot. Could the “holy alliance” of Ease, Hypocrisy, and Sin put down Christianity, which proclaimed the One God, the equality and brotherhood of all men? Did Force ever prevail in the long run against Reason or Religion? The ashes of a Polycarp and a Justin sow the earth for a Cadmean harvest of heroes of the soul; a man leaving wife and babes and dying a martyr's death—this is an eloquence the dullest can understand. If a fire is to spread in the forest let all the winds blow upon it. Even a bad thing is not put down by abuse. However, to see the earnest of that vast result Christianity is destined to work out for the nations, we must not look at king's courts, in Byzantium or Paris; not in the chairs of bishops, noble or selfish; not at the martyr's firmness when his flesh is torn off, for the unflinching Tuscarora surpasses “the noble army of martyrs” in fortitude; but in the common walks of life, its every-day trials; in the sweet charities of the fireside and the street; in the self-denial that shares its loaf with the distressful; the honest heart which respects others as itself. Looking deeper than the straws of the surface we see a stream of new life is in the world, and, though choked with mud, not to be dammed up.
The history of Christianity reveals the majestic preëminence of its earthly founder. In him amid all his Messianic expectations, there shines a clear religious light—Love to God, Love to Man. Come to the later times of the Apostles, the sky is overcast with dogmatic clouds, and doubtful twilight begins. Take another step, and the darkness deepens. Come down to Justin Martyr, it is deeper still; to Irenæus, Tertullian, Cyprian; to the times of the Council of Nice; read the letters of Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, the Apologies of Christianity, the fierce bickerings of strong men about matters of no mo​ment, — we should think it the midnight of the Christian Church, did we not know that after this “woe was past,” there came another woe; that there was a refuge of lies remaining where the blackness of darkness fell, and the shadow of death lingered long and would not be lifted up.
It is not necessary to go into the painful task of tracing the obvious decline of Christianity, and its absorption in the organization of the Church, which assumed the Keys of Heaven, and bound and tortured men on earth. It is beautiful to see the free piety of Paul, amid all his dogmatic subtleties,—a man to whom the world owes so much,—and the happy state of the earlier churches; when no one controlled another, except by Wisdom and Love; when each was his own priest, with no middle-man to forestall inspiration, and stand between him and God; when each could come to the Father, and get truth at first hand if he would. Jesus would break every yoke, but new yokes were soon made, and in his name. He bade men pray as he did, with no mediator, nothing between them and the Father of all; making each place a temple and each act a divine service. With the doctrines of his Religion on their tongue; the example of Jesus to stimulate and encourage them; the certain conviction that Truth and God were on their side; going into the world of men sick of their worn-out rituals, and hungering and thirsting after a religion they could confide in, live and die by; having stout hearts in their bosoms which danger could not daunt, nor gold bribe, nor contempt shame, nor death appal, nor friends seduce—no wonder the Apostles prevailed! An earnest man, though rude as Böhme, and Bunyan, and Fox, even in our times, coming in the name of Religion, speaking its word of fire, and appealing to what is deepest and divinest in our heart, never lacks auditors. How the zeal of the Mormons makes converts. No wonder the Apostles conquered the world. It were a miracle if they had not put to flight “armies of the aliens,” the makers of “silver shrines,” and “them that sold and bought in the temple.” Man moves man the world round, and Religion multiplies itself as the Banian tree. Men with all the science of the nineteenth century, but no Religion, can scarce hold a village together, while every re​ligious fanatic, from Mahomet to Mormon, finds followers plenty as flowers in summer, and true as steel. Can no man divine the cause?
Blessed was the Christian Church while all were brothers. But soon as the Trojan Horse of an organized priesthood was dragged through the ruptured wall, there came out of it, stealthily, men cunning as Ulysses, cruel as Diomed, arrogant as Samuel, exclusive and jealous, armed to the teeth in the panoply of worldliness. The little finger of the Christian priesthood was found thicker than the loins of their fathers—the flamens of Jupiter, Quirinus, the Levitical priests of Jehovah. Then Belief began to take the place of Life; the priest of the man; the Church of home; the Flesh and the Devil of the Word and the Holy Spirit. Divine service was mechanism; Religion priestcraft; Christianity a thing for kings to swear by, and to help priests to wealth and fame. But a seed remained that never bowed the knee to the idol. Righteous men, they were cursed by the Church, and blessed by the God of Truth. We are to blame no class of men, neither the learned who were hostile to Christianity, nor the priest who assumed this power for the loaves and fishes' sake; they wore men, and did as others, with their light and temptations, would have done. Looking with human eyes, it is not possible to see how the evil could have been avoided. The wickedness long intrenched in the world; that under-current of sin which runs through the nations; the low civilization of the race; the selfishness of strong men, their awful wars; the hideous sins of slavery, polygamy, the oppression of the weak; the power of lust, brutality, and every sin,—these were obstacles that even Christianity could not sweep away in a moment, though strongest of the historic daughters of God. Men could sail safely for some years in the light of Jesus, though seen more and more dimly. But as the stream of time swept them further down, and the cold shadow from mountains of hoary crime came over them anew, they felt the darkness. Let us judge these men lightly. Low as the Christian Church was in the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries, it yet represented the best interests of mankind as no other institution. Individuals but not societies rose above it, and soared away to the Heaven of Peace, amid ​its cry of excommunication. Let us give the Church its due.
Now as no institution exists and claims the unforced homage of men unless it have some real, permanent excellence, in virtue of which alone it holds its place, being hindered, not helped, by the accidental error, falsity, and sin connected therewith; and since the Christian Church has always stood, in spite of its faults, and filled such a place in human affairs as no other institution, it becomes us to look for the Idea it represents, knowing there must be a great truth to stand so long, extend so wide, and uphold so much that is false.
* ↑ On the state of the early Church, and the Bishops, Elders, and Deacons, which is still a matter of controversy, see Campbell, Lectures on Ecc. Hist., Lec. I.-XIII.; Gieseler, ubi sup. § 29; Mosheim, ubi sup. Book I. Art. II. chap. ii.; Neander, Allg. Geschichte der Christlichen Religion, Hamb. 1835, Vol. I. Part I. chap. ii.; Gibbon, Chap. XV.; Schleiermacher, Geschichte der Christlichen Kirche, Berlin, 1840, p. 86, et seq. Among the modern writers Milman takes the other side. History of Christianity, Lond. 1840, Book II. chap. ii. p. 63, et seq. See the recent works of Gfrörer, Hase, Schwegler, Baur, Schliemann, Ritschl, Staudenmaier, Rothensee, Hilgenfeld, &c.,—Stanley and Jowett and Martineau.
* ↑ See in Eusebius, H. E. III. 39. the use that Papias makes of Tradition; he stood on the debatable ground between the Bible and Tradition, and continued to mythologize. Ewald, Jahrbücher for 1854, Ch. XXXIII.
* ↑ See Faustus Socinus, ubi sup. p. 271, et al.
* ↑ See, on this point, some ingenious remarks of Hegel, Philosophie der Religion, Vol. I. p. 29, et seq.
* ↑ The Epistle to the Hebrews and the earlier Apocryphal Gospels and Epistles are valuable monuments of the opinions of the Christians at the time they were written. It is a curious fact that circumcision was rigidly enforced by the Bishops in the Church at Jerusalem for more than a century after the death of Christ; many of the laity also were circumcised. Sulpitius Severus, Lib. II.
* ↑ See Dorner and Baur; also Mass. Quarterly Review, Vol. III. Art. V., on the Christologies of N. T.
* ↑ See the impartial remarks of Schlosser, respecting the origin and subsequent fate of Christianity, in his Geschichte der alten Welt, Vol. III. Pt. i. p. 249–274, Pt. ii. p. 110–129, 381–416.
* ↑ The histories of Synesius and Ambrose afford a striking picture of the clerical class in their time.
* ↑ See the writings of Tertullian and Cyprian, passim, for proofs of what is said above.
* ↑ But see how reluctantly Synesius comes to the duties of a bishop. Ep. 105, cited in Hampden, Bampton Lectures, Lond. 1837, p. 407, et seq.
* ↑ See Parker, ubi sup., p. 165, et seq.