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| Elucidations.
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Elucidations.
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I.
(Maintained by consent, and caressed by excuses, p.
557.)
The severer discipline of
early Christianity must not be discarded by those who claim it for the
canon of Scripture; for modes of baptism, confirmation, and other
rites; for Church polity, in short; and for the Christian year.
Let us note that the whole spirit of antiquity is opposed to
worldliness. It reflects the precept, “Be not
conformed to this world,” and in nothing more emphatically than
in hostility to theatrical amusements, which in our days are
re-asserting the deadly influence over Christians which Cyprian and
Tertullian and other Fathers so solemnly denounced. If they were
“maintained by consent, and caressed by excuses,” even in
the martyr-age, no wonder that in our Laodicean period they baffle all
exertions of faithful watchmen, who enforce the baptismal vow against
“pomps and vanities,” always understood of
theatrical shows, and hence part of that “world, the flesh, and
the devil” which Christians have renounced.
II.
(Now is the axe laid to the root, p. 586.)
Matt. iii.
10. “Securis ad
radicem arboris posita est,” says Cyprian, quoting
the Old Latin, with which the Vulgate substantially agrees.4943
| 4943 It
has arborum, however, instead of the singular. | A very
diligent biblical scholar directs attention to the vulgar abuse of this
saying,4944
| 4944
Theopneuston, by Samuel Hanson Cox, D.D., New York, 1842. | which turns
upon a confusion of the active verb to lay, with the neuter verb
to lie.4945
| 4945
Note, an extraordinary instance, Childe Harold, Canto iv.
st. 180. | It
is quoted as if it read, Lay the axe to the root, and is
“interpreted, popularly, as of felling a tree, an incumbrance or
a nuisance.…Hence it often makes radical reformers in Church and
State, and becomes the motto of many a reckless leader whose way has
been to teach, not upward by elevating the ignoble, but downward by
sinking the elevated.…There is something similar in Latin:
jacio to hurl; and jaceo, to lie, recline, or remain at
rest. Beza follows the Vulgate (posita est); but the
original is clear,—κεῖται,4946
| 4946
Lexicographers give κεῖμαι = jaceo. | is laid, or
lieth.…It means, The axe is ready; it lieth near
the root, in mercy and in menace.…The long-suffering of God
waiteth as in the days of Noah…waiteth, i.e., for good
fruit.”
Compare Luke
xiii. 9: “If it
bear fruit, well: and if not, then after that thou shalt cut it
down.” Such is the argument of Cyprian, in view of the
approaching “end of time.”
III.
(General Note.)
Let me here call attention to the mischievous use
of words common among modern Latins, even the best of them. Thus,
Pellicia4947
| 4947
Polity, etc., p. 416 (translation). This valuable work,
translated and edited by the Rev. J. C. Bellett, M.A. (London, 1883),
is useful as to mediæval usages, and as supplementing
Bingham. But the learned editor has not been sufficiently prudent
in noting his author’s perpetual misconceptions of antiquity. | mentions
Cyprian as referring his synodical judgment to “the supreme
chair of the Church of Rome.” No need to say that his
reference proves nothing of the kind. “Supremacy,”
indeed! Consult Bossuet and the Gallicans on that point, even
after Trent. The case cited is evidence of the very
reverse. Cyprian and his Carthaginian colleagues wished, also,
the conspicuous co-operation of their Italian brethren; and so he
writes to “Cornelius, our colleague,” who,
“with very many comprovincial bishops, having held a council,
concurred in the same opinion.” It is an instance of
fraternal concurrence on grounds of entire equality; and
Cyprian’s courteous invitation to his “colleague”
Cornelius and his comprovincials to co-operate, is a striking
illustration of the maxim, “Totus apellandus sit
orbis, ubi totum orbem causa spectat.” Compare
St. Basil’s letters to the Western bishops, in which he reminds
them that the Gospel came to them from the East. This is a sort
of primacy recognised by St. Paul himself,4948
as it was afterwards, when Jerusalem
was recognised as “the mother of all the churches”4949
| 4949
Theodoret, book v. cap. ix. a.d.
382. The bishops say “last year” (a.d. 381), speaking of the council in session. | by a
general council, writing to Damasus, bishop of Rome,
himself.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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