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| Elucidations
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Elucidations.
I.
The reader has now
had an opportunity of judging for himself whether the internal evidence
favours any other view of the authorship of The Shepherd, than that
which I have adopted. Its apparent design is to meet the rising pestilence
of Montanism, and the perils of a secondary stage of Christianity. This
it attempts to do by an imaginary voice from the first period. Avoiding
controversy, Hermas presents, in the name of his earlier synonyme, a
portraiture of the morals and practical godliness which were recognised
as “the way of holiness” in the apostolic days. In so doing,
he falls into anachronisms, of course, as poets and romancers must. These
are sufficiently numerous to reveal the nature of his production, and
to prove that the author was not the Hermas of the story.
The authorship was a puzzle and a problem during
the earlier discussions of the learned. An anonymous poem (falsely
ascribed to Tertullian, but very ancient) did, indeed, give a clue to
the solution:—
“—deinde Pius, Hermas cui germine frater,
Angelicus Pastor, quia tradita verba locutus.”
To say that there was no
evidence to sustain this, is to grant that it doubles the evidence
when sufficient support for it is discovered. This was supplied
by the fragment found in Milan, by the erudite and indefatigable
Muratori, about a hundred and fifty years ago. Its history, with very
valuable notes on the fragment itself, which is given entire, may be
found in Routh’s Reliquiæ.410
Or the English
reader may consult Westcott’s very luminous statement of
the case.411
| 411 On the Canon,
p. 235. Ed. 1855. | I am sorry that Dr. Donaldson doubts and
objects; but he would not deny that experts, at least his equals,412
| 412 Such as Lightfoot, Westcott, Canon Cook,
and others. | accept the Muratorian Canon, which carries with
it the historic testimony needed in the case of Hermas. All difficulties
disappear in the light of this evidence. Hermas was brother of Pius,
ninth Bishop of Rome (after Hyginus, circ. a.d. 157), and wrote his prose idyl under the
fiction of his Pauline predecessor’s name and age. This
accounts (1) for the existence of the work, (2) for its form of allegory
and prophesying, (3) for its anachronisms, (4) for its great currency,
and (5) for its circulation among the Easterns, which was greater than it
enjoyed in the West; and also (6) for their innocent mistake in ascribing
it to the elder Hermas.
1. The Phrygian enthusiasm, like the convulsionism
of Paris413
| 413 Candidly treated by
Guettée, L’Eglise de France, vol. xii. p. 15. See also
Parton’s Voltaire, vol. i. pp. 260–270. |
in the last century, was a phenomenon not to be trifled with; especially
when it began to threaten the West. This work was produced to meet so
great an emergency.
2. “Fire fights fire,” and prophesyings
are best met by prophesyings. These were rare among the Orthodox, but
Hermas undertook to restore those of the apostolic age; and I think
this is what is meant by the tradita verba of the old poem,
i.e., words “transmitted or bequeathed traditionally” from
the times of Clement. Irenæus, the contemporary of this Hermas,
had received the traditions of the same age from Polycarp: hence the
greater probability of my conjecture that the brother of Pius compiled
many traditional prophesyings of the first age.
3. Supposing the work to be in fact what it is
represented to be in fiction, we have seen that it abounds with
anachronisms. As now explained, we can account for them: the second
Hermas forgets himself, like other poets, and mixes up his own period
with that which he endeavours to portray.
4 and 5. Written in Greek, its circulation in the
West was necessarily limited; but, as the plague of Montanism was
raging in the East, its Greek was a godsend, and enabled the Easterns
to introduce it everywhere as a useful book. Origen values it
as such; and, taking it without thought to be the work of the Pauline
Hermas, attributes to it, as a fancy of his own,414
| 414 Comment., book x. sec. 31, as quoted in Westcott,
p. 219. | that kind of inspiration which pertained to early
“prophesyings.” This conjecture once started, “it
satisfied curiosity,” says Westcott, “and supplied the
place of more certain information; but, though it found acceptance, it
acquired no new strength.”415
| 415
I subjoin Westcott’s references: Clem. Alex., Stromata,
i. 17, sec. 85; Ibid., i. 29, sec. 29; Ibid., ii. 1,
sec. 3. Also Ibid., ii. 12, sec. 55; iv. 9. sec. 76; vi. 6,
sec. 46. Also Tertull., Pudicitia, capp. 10 and 20. These I have
verified in Ed. Oehler, pp. 468, 488. I add De Oratione,
capp. xvi. p. 311. Let me also add Athanasius, De Incarnatione,
p. 38; Contra Hæresim Arian., p. 369; Ibid., 380. To
the testimony of this great Father and defender of the faith I attach the
greatest importance; because his approval shows that there was nothing
in the book, as he had it in its pure text, to justify the attempts of
moderns to disprove its orthodoxy. Athanasius calls is “a most
useful book,” and quotes it again (“although that book is
not in the Canon”) with great respect. Ed. Paris, 1572.
Modern theories of inspiration appear to me untenable,
with reference to canonical Scripture; but they precisely illustrate the
sort of inspiration with which these prophesyings were probably
first credited. The human element is largely intermixed with divine
suggestions; or you may state the proposition conversely. |
6. Eusebius and Jerome416
| 416 Eusebius, iii. 3, and Hieronym., catal. x. See Westcott,
p. 220. | merely repeat the report as an on dit, and on
this slender authority it travelled down. The Pauline Hermas was credited
with it; and the critics, in their researches, find multiplied traces
of the one mistake, as did the traveller whose circuits became a beaten
road under the hoofs of his own horse.
If the reader will now turn back to the Introductory
Note of the Edinburgh editors, he will find that the three views of which
they take any serious notice are harmonized by that we have reached. (1)
The work is unquestionably, on its face, the work of the Pauline Hermas.
(2) But this is attributable to the fact that it is a fiction, or prose
poem. (3) And hence it must be credited to the later Hermas, whose name
and authorship are alone supported by external testimony, as well as
internal evidence.
II.
(Similitude Ninth,
cap. xi. p. 47, note 1.)
Westcott is undoubtedly
correct in connecting this strange passage with one of the least
defensible experiments of early Christian living. Gibbon finds in
this experiment nothing but an opportunity for his scurrility.417
| 417 Milman’s Gibbon,
vol. i. p. 550. The editor’s notes are not over severe, and might
be greatly strengthened as refutations. | A true philosopher
will regard it very differently; and here, once and for all, we may
speak of it somewhat at length. The young believer, a member, perhaps,
of a heathen family, daily mixed up with abominable manners, forced
to meet everywhere, by day, the lascivious hetæræ of
the Greeks or those who are painted by Martial among the Latins, had
no refuge but in flying to the desert, or practising the most heroic
self-restraint if he remained with the relations and companions of his
youth. If he went to the bath, it was to see naked women wallowing with
vile men: if he slept upon the housetop, it was to throw down his mat
or rug in a promiscuous stye of men and women.418
This
alike with rich and poor; but the latter were those among whom the Gospel
found its more numerous recruits, and it was just these who were least
able to protect themselves from pollutions. Their only resource was in
that self-mastery, out of which sprung the Encraty of Tatian and the
Montanism of Tertullian. Angelic purity was supposed to be attainable in
this life; and the experiment was doubtless attended with some success,
among the more resolute in fastings and prayer. Inevitably, however, what
was “begun in the spirit,” ended “in the flesh,”
in many instances. To live as brothers and sisters in the family of
Christ, was a daring experiment; especially in such a social atmosphere,
and amid the domestic habits of the heathen. Scandals ensued. Canonical
censures were made stringent by
the Church; and, while the vices of men
and the peril of persecution multiplied the anchorites of the desert,
this mischief was crushed out, and made impossible for Christians.
“The sun-clad power of chastity,” which Hermas means to
depict, was no doubt gloriously exemplified among holy men and women,
in those heroic ages. The power of the Holy Ghost demonstrated, in many
instances, how true it is, that, “to the pure, all things are
pure.” But the Gospel proscribes everything like presumption and
“leading into temptation.” The Church, in dealing with social
evils, often encouraged a recourse to monasticism, in its pure form;
but this also tended to corruption. To charge Christianity, however,
with rash experiments of living which it never tolerated, is neither
just nor philosophical. We have in it an example of the struggles of
individuals out of heathenism,—by no means an institution of
Christianity itself. It was a struggle, which, in its spirit, demands
sympathy and respect. The Gospel has taught us to nauseate what
even a regenerated heathen conceived to be praiseworthy, until the
Christian family had become a developed product of the Church.419
| 419 See Vision iii. cap. 8, for the
relation of encraty to faith, in the view of Hermas; also (cap.
7 and passim) note his uncompromising reproofs of lust, and his
beautiful delineations of chastity. The third canon of the Nicene Synod
proscribed the syneisactæ, and also the nineteenth of Ancyra,
adopted at Chalcedon into the Catholic discipline. |
The Gospel arms its enemies against itself, by elevating
them infinitely above what they would have been without its influences.
Refined by its social atmosphere, but refusing its sanctifying power,
they gloat over the failures and falls of those with whom their own
emancipation was begun. Let us rather admire those whom she lifted
out of an abyss of moral degradation, but whose struggles to reach the
high levels of her precepts were not always successful. Yet these very
struggles were heroic; for all their original habits, and all their
surroundings, were of the sort “which hardens all within, and
petrifies the feeling.”
The American editor has devoted more than his usual
amount of annotation to Hermas, and he affectionately asks the student
not to overlook the notes, in which he has condensed rather than amplified
exposition. It has been a labour of love to contribute something to a just
conception of The Shepherd, because the Primitive Age has often
been reproached with its good repute in the early churches. So little
does one generation comprehend another! When Christians conscientiously
rejected the books of the heathen, and had as yet none of their own,
save the Sacred Scriptures, or such scanty portions of the New Testament
as were the treasures of the churches, is it wonderful that the first
effort at Christian allegory was welcomed, especially in a time of need
and perilous temptation? E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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