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Notes:
1. Novalis: Fragmente.
2. Herder says regarding the man of this time: "He had strength for nothing but believing. Troubled about his wretched life, trembling for the future and in dread of invisible powers, timid and powerless to investigate the course of nature, he lent his ear to stories and prophecies and let himself be inspired, initiated, flattered, betrayed" (Complete Works, Inghan's ed. xix. 290).
3. It is scarcely right for me to name special works; the literature even in as far as it is available to us laymen is extensive; the important thing is to get instruction from various sources and not to be satisfied with a knowledge of generalities. Thus the short text-books of Harnack, Muller, Holtzmann, &c., in the Grundriss dey theologischen Wissenschaften (Freiburg, Mohr) are invaluable, I have used them diligently; but the layman will get much more out of larger works, such as Nean der's Kirchengeschichte or Renan's Origines du Christianisme, &c. Still more instructive, because more vivid and clear, are the works of the specialists, as Ramsay: The Church in the Roman Empire before A.D. 170 (1895); Hatch: The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church (1897); Hergenrother's great work: Photius, sein Leben, seine Schriften und das griechische Schisma, which begins with the founding of Constantinople and thus traces in great detail the development of the Greek Church from the beginning; Hefele: Konziliengeschichte, &c. &c. We laymen can naturally acquire detailed knowledge of only a portion of this literature; but, I repeat, it is only from detailed accounts and not from summaries that we can get vivid conceptions and knowledge. (An important new work is Adolf Harnack's Mission und Ausbreiung des Christentums in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten, 1902; 2nd ed. 1906.)
4. Ambrosius admits this implicitly; see i. 24. Much is indeed an almost literal translation. How much more important, however, are his independent writings, as the speech on the death of the Emperor Theodosius with the beautiful ever-recurring refrain: "Dilexi! I loved him!"
5. Influence of Greek Ideas, pp. 139-170. In this lecture Hatch refers to Ambrosius' work and is of opinion that it is essentially Stoical not only in conception but also in detail. The Christian element is indeed there, but merely as an adjunct. Its fundamental doctrine of wisdom, virtue, justice, temperance, is pure Graeco-Roman doctrine of pre-Christian times.
6. See especially vol. i. p. 213 f. and p. 411 f.
7. As I afterwards found, Hamann has suggested this comparison: "Go into any community of Christians you like, their language in the sacred precincts, their Fatherland and their genealogy betray the fact that they are Gentile branches, artificially grafted upon a Jewish stem." (Cf. Romans xi. 24.)
8. I said five hundred years, for see Harnack on the identity of Logos and Nous: Dogmengeschichte, § 22.
9. See vol. i. pp. 411 to 440.
10. It is easy to understand how the pious Tertullian, who grew up in Heathenism, could say of the conceptions of the Hellenic poets and philosophers, that they were tam consimilia to the Christian ones! (Apol. xlvii.)
11. Christliche Symbolik (1854) i. p. viii.
12. That the Indo-Europeans also were at bottom monotheists, I have at a much earlier point emphasised, in opposition to the wide spread popular error (see vol. i. pp. 218 and 424); cf. also Jac. Grimm in the preface to his Deutsche Mythologie (pp. xliv.-xlv.) and Max Muller in his lectures on the Science of Languages (ii. 385). But this kind of monotheism must be distinguished from the Semitic.
13. Thus, for example, the so-called necessary progression of the thesis, antithesis and synthesis, or again the deity of the Absolute as father, the different existence as son, the return to itself as spirit.
14. See the whole conclusion of the first chapter.
15. The Egyptian Triads were formerly allowed to have a greater influence upon the moulding of Christian dogmas than was right. In truth the conception of the son of God in his relation to God the Father (the son "not made, nor created but begotten," literally as in the Athanasian Creed) seems specifically Egyptian: we find it in all the various Egyptian systems of gods; but the third person is the goddess (Cf. Maspero: Histoire ancienne des peuples de l'Orient classique, 1895, i. 151, and Budge: The Book of the Dead, p. xcvi.)
16. Bhagavadgita, Book IV. §§ 7 and 8.
17. See vol. i. p. 181.
18. Religion and Conscience in Ancient Egypt, ed. 1898, p. 46. Every year new proofs of the universal spread of the Isis cult in all places where the influence of the Roman chaos had penetrated are being discovered in all parts of Europe. The belief in the resurrection of the body and the communication by sacrament of the manna of eternal life were elements of these mysteries long before the birth of Christ. One finds the greatest number of evidences in the Museum of Guimet, since Gaul and Italy were the chief seats of the Isis cult. (In the meantime Flinders Petrie has made new discoveries, especially in Ehnasya, from which step by step it can be traced how the cult of Isis and of Horus were transformed into the would-be "Christian" worship of the Madonna. See the communications of this scholar before the British Association, 1904.)
19. Interesting in this connection is the demonstration by the same author that the well- known Christian monogram so frequent on old monuments and still employed to-day (supposed to be khi-rho from the Greek alphabet) is nothing more or less than the common Egyptian symbol of the God Horus!
20. See especially the famous speech of Demosthenes De Corona, and for a summary of the facts Jevons: Introduction to the History of Religion, 1896, chap. xxiii. For the tracing back of the Last Supper to Old Babylon see Otto Pfleiderer's Christusbild, p. 84, and for its relation to other old mysteries see the same author's Entstehung des Christentums, 1905, p. 154. For the fundamental facts see Albr. Dieterich's Eine Mithras-liturgie, 1903.
21. Pachomius, the founder of real monkhood, was an Egyptian like his predecessor, the hermit Antonius. He was a native of Upper Egypt, and as a "national attendant on Serapis" learned the practices which he afterwards transferred almost unchanged to Christianity. (Cf. Zockler: Askese und Monchtum, 2nd ed. p. 193 f.)
22. Cf. vol. i. p. 313. For the "adoption of heathendom," see also Muller, p. 204 f.
23. Cf. vol. i. p. 413, and also the passage on p. 337, quoted from Graetz.
24. Iliad ix. 401, and xxii. 73.
25. That in the case of Homer the word muthos corresponds to the later logos, that is, that all speech is viewed, so to speak, as poetry (which it obviously is), is one of those things in which language reveals to us the profoundest facts concerning the organisation of our mind.
26. Kluge gives in his Etymologisches Worterbuch the following as etymology and explanation of grace (Gnade). Root meaning, "to bend, bend oneself"; Gothic, "to support"; Old Saxon, "favour, help"; Old "High German, "Pity, compassion, condescension"; Middle High German, "bliss, support, favour."
27. The myth of degeneration forms, as is well known, a fundamental component of the circle of conceptions of the Greeks, who nevertheless are so persistently called "cheerful."
"Would I had sooner died, or else had been later born!
For now lives a race of iron: never by day
Are they free of misery and care, and by night
They suffer pain: and the burden of cares is the gift of the Gods!"
So speaks the "joyful" Hesiod (Works and Days, verse 175 f.). And he paints to us a past "golden age," which we have to thank for the little good that still exists among us degenerate men, for these great men of the past still move as spirits in our midst; cf. vol. i. p. 89.
28. Luther's thoughts are vaguely anticipated in the 5th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, but they are found quite fully expressed in the writings of Scotus Erigena, whom he valued so highly (see De. div. Nat., Book V. chap. 36).
29. Consult as an example Philippson's Israelitische Religionslehre, ii. 89.
30. Sin is a breach of the everlasting law by word, deed or desire.
31. Cf. especially Pfleiderer: Der Paulinismus, 2nd ed. p. 50 f. This purely scientific theological exposition is naturally different from mine, but nevertheless confirms it, especially by the proof (p. 59) that Paul assumed the presence of an impulse to sin before the Fall, which obviously could mean nothing but the removal of the myth beyond arbitrary historical boundaries; then also by the clear demonstration that Paul, in opposition to the Augustinian dogmatists, recognised in the flesh the common and unchanging source of all sinful nature.
32. Rigveda vii. 86.
33. Cankara: Die Sutra's des Vedanta i. 3. 25.
34. See the fictitious genealogies in Matthew i. and Luke ii., both of which go back to Joseph -- not to Mary.
35. See Hergenrother: Photius iii. 428.
36. See vol. i. pp. 230. 418, and 433.
37. Professor Graetz (i. 650) considers the doctrine of original sin to be a "new doctrine," invented by Paul!
38. This may have been difficult enough for Augustine himself, for earlier, in the 27th chapter of the 15th book of the De Civitate Dei, he had spoken strongly against attempting to interpret the book of Genesis as historical truth entirely free of allegory.
39. "I shall only quote one witness whose judgment is moderate and correct, Sainte-Beuve. He writes (Port Royal, Book IV. chap. 1): "Les Jesuites n'attestent pas moins par leur methode a'education qu'ils sont semi-pelagiens tendant au Pelagianisme pur, que par leur doctrine directe." [Google translate: The Jesuits do not certify their method by less they a'education are semi-Pelagian Pelagianism leading to pure, by their doctrine Direct.]
40. Cf. vol. i. pp. 193 and 437; and the paragraph on "Views of Existence'' in the ninth chapter (vol. ii.).
41. Histoire du peuple d'Israel v. 227.
42. See vol. i. pp. 238 f. and 415 f.
43. Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church, 6th ed. p. 312.
44. See vol. i. pp. 452 and 460.
45. See vol. 1. p. 235 note.
46. See the excursus on Semitic religion in the fifth chapter (vol. i.) and compare especially p. 437 with p. 453. Compare, too, the details concerning the Germanic view of the world in the particular paragraph of chap, ix. (vol. ii. p. 423).
47. This system is most perfectly developed among the old Egyptians. who believed that the heart of the dead was laid on scales and weighed against the ideal of right and uprightness; the idea of a conversion of the inner man by divine grace was quite alien to them. The Jews have never risen to the height of the Egyptian conceptions; formerly the reward for them was simply a very long life to the individual and future world-empire to the nation -- the punishment, death and misery for future generations. In later times, however, they adopted all sorts of superstitions, from which there resulted a kingdom of God which was altogether secularly conceived (see vol. i. p. 481) and as counterpart to it a perfectly secular hell. From these and other conceptions which arose from the lowest depths of human delusion and superstition the Christian hell was formed (of which Origenes knew nothing, except in the form of qualms of conscience!), while neo-platonism, Greek poetry and Egyptian conceptions of the "Fields of the Blest" (see the illustrations in Budge's The Book of the Dead) provided the Christian heaven, which, however, never attained to the clearness of hell.
48. Mostly on the strength of a misinterpretation (Isaiah lxiv. 4).
49. Concerning the relation between these two, see vol. i. pp: 46 and 86.
50. I refer especially to chap. xxix. of the work On Prayer by Origenes; in the form of a commentary to the words "Lead us not into temptation" this great man develops a purely Indian conception concerning the importance of sin as a means of salvation.
51. As a fact Origenes has expressly recognised the mythical element in Christianity. Only he thought that Christianity was "the only religion which even in mythical form is truth" (cf. Harnack: Dogmen geschichte, Abriss. 2nd ed. p. 113).
52. Take up, for example, the Handbuch fur Katholischen Religionsunterricht by the Prebendary Arthur Konig, and read the chapter on redemption. Nicodemus would not have found the slightest difficulty in understanding this doctrine.
53. See his second letter, § 6.
54. Cf. vol. i. p. 318.
55. This fancy has found its most complete expression in the novel Esther.
56. This assertion will meet with many contradictions; all I mean by it, however, is that Paul rather uses his systematic ideas as a dialectical weapon to convince his hearers than endeavours to establish a con nected, solely valid and new theological structure. Even Edouard Reuss, who, in his immortal work, Histoire de la Theologie Chretienne au siecle apostolique (3rd ed.), vindicates to the Apostle a definite, uniform system, admits at the end (ii. 580) that real theology was for Paul a subordinate clement, and on p. 73 he shows that Paul's aim was so completely directed to popular and practical work that wherever questions begin to be theoretical and theological, he leaves the metaphysical sphere for the ethical.
57. We must read the whole passage, I Cor. ix. 19 t., to see how exactly the apostle denies the later formula extra ecclesiam nulla salus. Cf., too, the Epistle to the Philippians, i. 18: "What then? notwithstanding, every way, whether in pretence or in truth, Christ is preached; and I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice."
58. See, for example, Acts of the Apostles xvi, I.
59. Cf. vol. i. p. 119 note.
60. What we know of the laws of heredity would speak very strongly for the supposition of a Jewish father and a Hellenic mother. The formerly popular saying: A man inherits the character of his father and the intellect of his mother, has indeed shown itself to be much too dogmatic; if twins that have grown together with but one pair of legs can yet be absolutely different in character (cf. Hoffding: Psychologie, 2nd ed. p. 480), we see how cautious we must be with such assertions. Yet there are so many striking cases among the most important men (I will only mention Goethe and Schopenhauer) that we are entitled in the case of Paul, where a striking incongruence stands before us as an inexplicable riddle, to put forward this hypothesis which is historically quite probable. From Harnack's Mission, &c., p. 40, I learn that even in earliest times the suggestion was made that Paul was descended from Hellenic parents.
61. Graetz asserts (Volkstumliche Geschichte der Juden i. 646): "Paul had but a scanty knowledge of Jewish writings and knew the sacred writings only from the Greek translation." On the other hand, his quotations from Epimenides, Euripides and Aratus prove his familiarity with Hellenic literature.
62. See, for example, the two episodes with John "whose surname was Mark" (Acts of the Apostles xiii. 13, and xv. 38-39).
63. Especially by the works of W. M. Ramsay: Historical Geography of Asia Minor, The Church in the Roman Empire before A.D. 170. St. Paul, the Traveller and the Roman Citizen.
64. The Church, &c., 4th ed. p. 57.
65. Kirchengeschichte (1892) i. 26.
66. See especially Galatians, ii. 15: "Although we are by nature Jews and not sinners of the Gentiles," and many other passages.
67. Let me give the reader who is not well read in Scripture some quotations. Redemption forms the subject of all the Pauline Epistles. The universality of sin is implicitly admitted by the adducing of the myth of the Fall of man and by its un-Jewish interpretation. So we find such passages as Rom. xi. 32: If God has included all men in unbelief," and the still more characteristic Ephesians ii. 3: "We all are by nature children of wrath." With regard to grace perhaps the most decisive passage is the following: "For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure" (Philippians ii. 13). With regard to the importance of faith in contrast to merit by good works we find numerous passages, for this is the main pillar of Paul's religion, here -- and here perhaps alone -- there is no shadow of a contradiction; the apostle is teaching the purely Indian doctrine. We should note especially Rom. iii. 27-28, v. I, the whole of chaps. ix. and x., likewise the whole Epistle to the Galatians, &c. &c. As examples: "Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law" (Rom. iii. 28); "We know that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ" (Gal. ii. 16). But grace and faith are only two phases, two modes -- the divine and the human -- of the same process; hence in the following passage faith is to be regarded as included in grace: "And if by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then is it no more grace: otherwise work is no more work" (see the letter to Titus iii. 5). Re-birth is mentioned as "regeneration" in a manner akin to the Indo-Platonic view.
68. Pierre Bayle: Dictionnaire. See the last note to the statement about the Jesuit Jean Adam, who in the year 1650 caused much offence by his public sermons against Augustine. One may trust this report absolutely, since Bayle was altogether sympathetic to the Jesuits and remained until his death in close personal intercourse with them. The famous Pere de la Chaise also declares that "Augustine can only be read with caution," and this refers naturally to the Pauline elements of his religion (cf. Sainte-Beuve: Port Royal, 4th ed. ii. 134. and iv. 436).
69. Pfleiderer, p. 113.
70. My space is so limited that I cannot help asking the reader to consult the authorities on such an important point. The double process of thought with its inextricable antinomy is most clearly seen when we fix our attention upon the end, the judgment, and in this we are excellently assisted by a small specialised work (in which all the literature is also given), Ernst Teichmann's Die paulinischen Vorstellungen von Auferstehung und Gericht und ihre Beziehungen zur judischen) Apokalyptik (1896). Armed with an exact knowledge of the Jewish literature of that time, Teichmann shows, sentence for sentence, how literally all the New Testament, and especially the Pauline conceptions of the last judgment, are taken from the late apocalyptic doctrines of Judaism. That these in turn are not of Hebrew origin, but borrowed from Egypt and Asia and saturated with Hellenic thoughts (see pp. 2 f., 32. &c.), only shows from what a witches' cauldron the Apostle drew his material, and it matters little, since the powerful national spirit of the Jews made everything it took hold of "Jewish." Decisive, on the other hand, is the detailed proof that Paul elsewhere (especially where his real religion is making headway) expressly does away with the idea of judgment. See especially the paragraph on Die Aufhebung der Gerichtsvorstellung, p. 100 f. Teichmann writes here: "The doctrine of justification by faith was diametrically opposed to all former views. Jews and Gentiles knew no better than that the deeds, the works of man decided his destiny after death. But here religious conduct takes the place of moral conduct." And on p. 118 the author thus sum marises his statements: "On the other hand the Apostle is quite independent when he, by the consistent development of his pneuma-doctrine, puts aside the conception of judgment. On the basis of faith, gracious reception of the [x] [which Luther translates by "Geist," spirit, but in Paul is called heavenly, reborn, divine spirit, as for example, 2 Cor. iii. 17, [x] : God the Lord is the pneuma]: by the [x] ], mystical union with Christ: in it is participation in the death of Christ and consequently in his [x] (righteousness) and his resurrection, but thereby attainment of [x] (adoption); these are the stages in the development of this idea. In the thus-formed doctrine of the [x] we have the real Christian creation of the Apostle." Teichmann seems, like most of the Christian theologists, not to know that the doctrine of [x] is as old as Indo-Aryan thought and that, as Prana, it had long before the birth of Paul passed through all possible forms from the purest spirit to the finest ether (cf. on p. 4: the different views concerning Paul's Pneuma): nor does he know that the conception of religion as faith and regeneration, in contrast to ethical materialism, is an old Indo-European legacy, an organic tendency of mind; but his evidence is all the more valuable, because it shows that the most scrupulously detailed research from the narrow standpoint of scientific Christian theology leads to exactly the same result as the most daring generalisation.
71. See especially Pfleiderer, p. iii. f.
72. Full and remarkably precise information in Reuss Book V. chap. viii.
73. I do not overlook the fact that the Arians appeal to the somewhat vague passage in the Epistle to the Philippians, the authenticity of which is very much doubted, chap. ii. 6.
74. See vol. i. p. 216.
75. In vol. i. p. 428 f. I have explained at length what a different significance dogma had for the Jew.
76. See below for the part played by bishops as judges in civil cases.
77. De moribus eccl. i. § 31.
78. In his letters Augustine addresses the Bishop of Rome simply as "brother." He certainly employs also the expression "Thy Holiness," not, however, to the Bishop of Rome alone, but to every priest, even when he is not a bishop; every Christian belonged, according to the way of speaking at that time, to the "community of the Saints."
79. Ep. 93 ad Vincent (from Neander).
80. "Turning away from books I inclined myself to my own heart; led by Thee I entered the deepest depths of my heart; Thou didst help me, that I was able to do it. I entered in. However weak my eye, I yet saw clearly -- far above this the eye of my soul, raised beyond my reason -- the unchanging light. It was not that common light with which the senses are familiar, nor was it distinguished from this merely by greater power, as though the daylight had become ever brighter and brighter, till it had filled all space. No, it was not that, but another, a quite different one. And it did not hover high above my reason, as oil floats upon water or the heaven above the earth, but it was high above me, because it had created me myself, and I was of small account as a creature. Whoever knows the truth knows that light, and whoever knows that light knows eternity. Love knows it. O eternal truth and true love and loved eternity! thou art my God! Day and night I long for thee!"
81. Particularly in the De peccato originali. Concerning grace Augustine expresses himself very clearly in his letter to Paulinus, § 6, where he is arguing against Pelagius: "Grace is not a fruit of works: if it were so, it would not be grace. Because for works there is given as much as they are worth; but grace is given without merit." In this connection he had had a good teacher in Ambrosius, for the latter had taught: "Not by works but by faith is man justified." (See the beautiful Speech on the Death of the Emperor Theodosius, § 9; Abraham is here quoted as an example.)
82. Contra epistolam Manichaei, § 6 (from Neander).
83. A doctrine to which the Church at a later time appeals (thus, for example, the Roman synod of the year 680), in order to demand from the civil power that it should make orthodoxy "supreme, and see that the weeds be torn out" (Hefele, iii. 258).
84. More details of Augustine's theory of grace will be found in Harnack's large Dogmengeschichte: the abridged edition is too short for this exceedingly complicated question. But the layman must never forget that, however confused the shades may be, the fundamental question remains always exceedingly simple. The confusion is simply a result of too subtle disputation, and its complication is caused by the possible complications of logical combinations; here we reach the sphere of intellectual mechanics. But the relation of the religion of grace to the religion of law and service is just the same as that of + to -; everybody is not able to understand the subtleties of the mathematicians and still less of the theologians, but every one should be able to distinguish between plus and minus.
85. See vol. i. p. 569. The abuse of indulgences which came into practice several centuries later could also appeal for support to Augustine in so far as from the above-mentioned relative valuation of works and especially of the death of Christ there was derived the idea of opera supererogationis (works beyond the necessary measure), from which excessive fund, through the intervention of the Church, condignities are bestowed. Our whole conception of hell and of the pains of hell is, as is now known, taken from old Egyptian religion. Dante's Inferno is exactly represented on very early Egyptian monuments. Still more interesting is the fact that the conception of opera supererogationis, the treasure of grace, by which souls are freed from purgatory (also an Egyptian idea), is likewise a legacy from ancient Egypt. Masses and prayers for the dead, which to-day play so great a part in the Roman Church, existed in exactly the same form some thousands of years before Christ. On the gravestones too might be read then as to-day: "O ye who are living upon earth, when ye pass by this grave, utter a pious prayer for the soul of the dead N. N." (Cf. Prof. Leo Reinisca: Ursprung und Entwickelung des Agyptischen Priestertums.)
86. I Tim. iv. 7. and Tit. i. 14. (Added in the 4th ed., these letters are supposed not to be by Paul.)
87. We can read in Bernouilli: Das Konzil von Nicaa, how exclusively Constantine was actuated by political and not religious motives, for though he was inclined owing to circumstances to favour Arius, he took the opposite side as soon as he noticed that this offered better sureties of more vigorous organisation, in short, more hope of political duration.
88. Karl Muller: Kirchengeschichte i. 181.
89. Cf. vol. i. p. 429 f.
90. According to Neander: Kirchengeschichte iv. 109. According to Hefele: Konziliengeschichte ii. 8, it appears also as if Gregory of Nazianz had not advised or signed along with the others the extended symbolism of Constantinople (in the year 381).
91. Hefele: Konziliengeschichte ii. II f. 372.
92. In spite of all new works I still should like to recommend to the layman chap. xlvii. of Gibbon's Roman Empire as being unsurpassed, at least as a preliminary survey of the subject.
93. See p. 28.
94. See vol. i. p. 69 f.
95. When so acute a thinker and one so strong in intuition as Schopenhauer asserts, "Christianity is an allegory, which represents one true thought," we cannot too energetically refute so manifest an error. We might throw overboard all the allegorical elements of Christianity and the Christian religion would still stand. For the life of Christ and the conversion of will which he taught are reality, not figure of speech. It is none the less real because reason cannot think out, nor contemplation interpret, what is here present. Reason and understanding will always in the last instance find themselves compelled to go allegorically to work. but religion is nothing if not a direct experience.
96. Letter to the Philadelphians, § 8. Ignatius had sat at the feet of the Apostle John, indeed, according to tradition, he had as a child seen the Saviour.
97. For more details I refer the reader to the small book of Hatch Already quoted: The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages Upon the Christian Church. This book is unique, it is absolutely scholarly, so that it is recognised by authorities and yet it is readable for every educated thinker, though he possess no theological training.
98. I have already briefly alluded to the fact, and shall discuss it later in this and the ninth chapter, that in the ninth century this theology awoke again to life in the person of the great Scotus Erigena, the real pioneer of a genuinely Christian religion.
99. Naturally the individual from the barbarian North might be an outstanding personality, and the citizen of the Empire was certainly in most cases a very rude, uncultured individual; but culture is a collective term -- we saw that especially in the case of Greece (vol. 1. p. 34) -- and so one can unquestionably assert that in Germanic countries a real culture scarcely began to show itself before the thirteenth century.
100. See vol. i. pp. pp. 325, 511 f., 554 f.
101. § 6.
102. Origines du Christianisme, 7th ed. vii. 629.
103. Cf. Origines: Against Celsus v. 64.
104. Cf. Harnack: Das apostolische Glaubensbekenninis, 27th ed. p. 9. The differences are not unimportant. The present so-called "apostolic symbolism" came into use only in the ninth century.
105. The Deformed Transformed i. a.
106. Read in Bishop Hefele's Konziliengeschichte, vol. iii. the detailed and aggressively partial account of the dispute about images; it will be seen that Leo the Isaurian and his advisers simply attempted to stop the rapid decline of religious consciousness through the introduction of superstitious un-Christian customs. It is not a dogmatic quarrel, nor is there any political interest at stake; on the contrary, by his courageous conduct the Emperor incites against himself the whole people, led by a countless army of ignorant monks, and Hefele's explanation that the Emperor lacked aesthetic feeling is too childishly simple to deserve refutation. On the other hand, it is becoming clearer and clearer that he was right in his assertion that image-worship meant a step back into heathendom. In Asia Minor at the present day the archaeologists trace from place to place the transformation of the former gods into members of the Christian Pantheon, who remained as before local Gods to whom pilgrimages were, and still are, made. Thus, for example, the giant-slaying Athene of Seleucia became a "Saint Theta of Seleucia"; the altars of the virgin Artemis were only renamed altars of the "virgin mother of God"; the God of Colossus was henceforth regarded as the Archangel Michael ... for the populations the difference was scarcely noticeable (see Ramsay: The Church in the Roman Empire, p. 466 f.). The whole worship of images was connected with these primeval popular and absolutely un-Christian and anti- Christian superstitions; the Church could introduce as many distinguos as it liked, the image remained, like the stone at Mecca, an object endowed with magic powers. In view of such facts which have kept the belief in local miracle-working divinities alive till the present day not only in Asia Minor but in all Europe (wherever we find Romish influence) (cf. Renan: Marc-Aurele, chap. xxxiv.), the "arguments" for image-worship, which Gregory II. brings forward in his letters to Leo, seem exceedingly comical. There are two especially which he expects to have decisive weight. The fact that the woman healed by Christ (Matth. ix. 20) erected on the spot where she was healed an image of Christ, and God, far from being angry, caused a healing plant hitherto unknown to grow up at the foot of the image! That is the first proof, the second is still finer. Abgar, Prince of Odessa, a contemporary of the Saviour, is said to have sent a letter to Christ, and the latter in thanking him sent him his portrait!! (Helele, pp. 383, 395.]
It is very noteworthy, and in judging the Roman standpoint very instructive, for us to know that the Pope reproaches the Emperor (see p. 400) with having robbed men of images and given them instead "foolish speeches and musical farces." That means that Leo, like Charlemagne a few years later, had reintroduced the sermon into the Church and provided music to elevate the minds. Both of these seemed to the Roman monk as superfluous as image-worship was indispensable. If we remember that Germanicia, the home of Leo, on the borders of Isauria, was one of those veteran colonies planted by the late Emperors (Mommsen: Roman History, 3rd ed. v. 310), if we remember that numerous Teutons served in the army, and that, further, Leo was a son of the people, who had so distinguished himself from the genuine sons of Asia Minor, not by his culture but by his character, as to actually hate what they loved, then we may well begin to ask whether this attack upon Roman heathen materialism, although springing up in the South, was not in reality a product of northern soil? Many a hypothesis rests on a weaker foundation.
107. It has lately been proved and should be kept in mind that the intellectual development of this remarkable man was most probably under the direct influence of the Waldensians. (Cf. Thode: Franz von Assisi, 1885, p. 31 f.)
108. For this and the former assertion compare the episcopally approved edition of the Concilii Tridentini canones et decreta by Canon Smets, with an historical introduction, 1854. p. xxiii.
109. See vol. i., p. 515.
110. Cf. vol. 1. pp. 287 and 328.
111. Quoted by Humboldt in a letter to Varnhagen von Ense on September 26, 1845.
112. Towards Peter, Christ used words such as he uttered to no other apostle: "Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me; for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men" (Matth. xvi. 23). And not only his threefold denial of Christ but also his conduct in Antioch which Paul denounced as "hypocrisy" (Gal. ii. I3) prove to us that Peter was a violent but weak character. Supposing that he did actually receive the primacy, it was not for his service or to secure the natural preponderance of his pre-eminent greatness, but in consequence of an appointment pleasing to God and ratified by history.
113. See p. 74.
114. Missive of the year 1520 to Pope Leo X.
115. Dante was born in 1265, in the century that forms the great turning-point; apart from this formal justification for naming him here, there is a further one in the fact that the eye of this great poet looked back as well as forward. Dante is at least just as much an end as a beginning. If a new age begins with him, that is not least of all explained by the fact that he has closed an old one: especially as regards his attitude on the relation between Church and State he is quite biased by the views and visions of the age of Charlemagne and of the Ottos, and really remains blind to the great political reformation of Europe which manifests itself so stormily around him.
116. Cf. p. 94 note.
117. See the documentary account in Hefele's Konziliengeschichte, iii. 472 and 708. It requires audacity to attempt to persuade us laymen that we have to do with an innocent misunderstanding; here, on the contrary, two different views of life, two different races are opposed to each other.
118. Greg. papae Epist. xi. 71 (from Renan).
119. One proof only from among the great number: in the year 1825 the Archbishop of Cologne, Graf Spiegel zum Desenberg, testifies that in his archbishopric "the real religion of Jesus has become gross image-worship" (Letters to Bunsen, 1897. p. 76). What would the right reverend gentleman say to-day?
120. A thousand years after Charlemagne the sale of the "holy oil" as a domestic charm was vigorously pursued; thus, for example, a newspaper published by Abt in Munich, Der Armen-Seelen Freund, Monatsschrift zum Troste der leidenden Seelen im Fegfeuer, in the 4th number of 1898 advertises "holy oil from the lamp of Mr. Dupont in Tours at 4d. per bottle! This oil is praised as particularly efficacious for inflammations!" (The editor of this paper is a Catholic city priest; the magazine is under episcopal censure. The high nobility are said to be Mr. Dupont's best customers.)
121. Kraus: Dante (1897), p. 736.
122. Inferno, canto xix. "What then distinguishes you from an idolator except that he worships one and you a hundred idols?"
123. Paradiso, canto xxix.: "From the gains [of the depicted misleading of the 'stupid people '] the holy Antonius feeds his swine, and many others do likewise, who are worse than swine and pay with unstamped coin [indulgences]." The Italians never seem to have had any particular admiration for their Roman priests, Boccaccio also calls them "swine which flee to where they can eat without working" (Decamerone iii. 3).
124. See vol. i. p. 538 note.
125. Dante would have shared the same fate as those "Church fathers and saints" of whom Balzac in Louis Lembert writes: "To-day the Church would brand them as heretics and atheists."
126. Inferno xix.: "O Constantine! How much evil has been caused not by your conversion but by the gift which the first rich father [= Pope] received from you."
127. De Monarchia, the whole of the second book. But see especially chap. iii. in which the "divine predestination" of the Roman people as the world-ruling power is derived not from interpretations of Old Testament prophets or from the appointment of Peter but proved from the genealogical tree of AEneas and Creusa! Race and not religion is the decisive thing for Dante!
128. Concilium Tridenlinum decretum de reformatione, chap. i.
129. Kraus, p. 703 f., seems to successfully establish his thesis, but to have no idea how little such formal orthodoxy means and how dangerous his own standpoint is for the Roman Church. Moreover I cannot help calling attention to the fact that Dante's famous confession of faith at the end of the 24th canto of the Paradiso is really grievously abstract. Kraus regards as final proof of Dante's orthodoxy a Credo, which does not mention the name of Jesus Christ! What, on the contrary, has struck me is that Dante does not go beyond general mythology. And if I review in my memory a series of other utterances, I get the impression that Dante (like many other of his contemporaries) can hardly be called a Christian at all. The great cosmic God in Heaven and the Roman Church on earth; everything intellectual and political, or moral and abstract. There is an infinite longing for religion, but religion itself, that Heaven which does not come with outward signs, had been stolen from the great and noble man in his cradle. Dante's poetical greatness lies not least of all in the fearful tragedy of the thirteenth century, the century of Innocent III. and Thomas Aquinas! His hope is content with the luce intellettual (Par. xxx.), and his true guide is not Beatrice nor the holy Bernhard, but the author of the Summa theologiae, who sought to illuminate with the pure light of reason and to idealise the almost un-Christianised Christendom and the night of that age which hated all knowledge and beauty. Thomas Aquinas signifies the nationalistic supplement of a materialistic religion; Dante threw himself into his arms. (See the interesting book -- which in truth is written in support of quite a different thesis -- of the English Catholic, E. G. Gardner, Dante's Ten Heavens, 1898.)
130. Geschichte der deutschen Sprache, 2nd ed. pp. iv. and 550.
131. Cf. vol. i. p. 481.
132. 2nd ed. i. 191. Cf. my remarks in vol. i. chap. iii. p. 239.
133. Origines du Christianisme vii. 638.
134. See vol. i. p. 431.
135. Lamprecht, p. 193. Lamprecht himself, like most of our contemporaries, has no idea of the meaning of this phenomenon (which I discuss fully in the ninth chapter). He is of opinion that "moral individualism was still slumbering."
136. It is incredible that even at the present day in scientific Roman works it is still taught (see, for example, Bruck: Lebrbuch der Kirchengeschichte, 6th ed. p. 586) that Luther preached that whoever believed could sin as he pleased. The following quotation may suffice to refute such criminal stupidity: "As now the trees must be before the fruits, and the fruits do not make the trees good or bad, but the trees make the fruits, so too the man must be good or bad in person, before he does good or bad works. And his works do not make him good or bad, but he does good or bad works. We see the same in all handiwork: a good or bad house does not make a good or bad carpenter, but a good or bad carpenter makes a good or bad house; no work makes a master according as the work is, but as the master is, so is his work" Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen).
137. Among the Israelites even in ancient times "the whole idea of right and wrong was reduced to a money standard" (Robertson Smith: Prophets of Israel, p. 105), so that Hosea had to complain, "They eat up the sin of my people, and they set their heart on their iniquity" (iv. 8). I remember once in Italy threatening a man who broke his word with the qualms of his own conscience. "Ah what! good sir," he said, "that was only a minor lie; seven years in purgatory and ten soldi is all it will cost me!" Thinking that he was making a fool of me, the next time that two Franciscan monks knocked at my door I asked the reverend gentlemen how Heaven punishes a "minor" lie, and their immediate answer was, "Seven years in purgatory! But you are a benefactor of Assisi, much will be forgiven you." It is interesting to note that the West Goths already in the sixth century fight against the "irregularity in the system of penitence, so that one sins as one likes and is always demanding reconciliation from the priest" (Hefele, iii. 51): these are again symptoms of the struggle of the Teutons against a religion spiritually alien. One finds in Gibbon's Roman Empire, chap. lviiii., details of the tariff of indulgences for money or scourgings shortly before the first Crusade.
138. Lamprecht, p. 359.
139. See vol. i. pp. 222 and 569. This timor servilis remained henceforth the foundation of all religion in Loyola's order. Very interesting in this connection is a letter of a Canadian Jesuit (published in Parkman's The Jesuits in North America, p. 148) who is ordering pictures for his congregation: one Christ, one ame bienheureuse, several holy virgins, a whole selection of condemned souls! One is here reminded of the anecdote told by Tylor (Beginnings of Culture, ii. 337). A missionary disputing with an Indian chief said to him: "My God is good, but he punishes the godless"; to which the Indian replied: "My God is also good, but he punishes no one, being content with doing good to all."
140. Volkerwanderung, 2nd ed. ii. 55.
141. I mention Theodosius because he possessed the power as well as the will; but it was his predecessor Gratian who first established the idea of "orthodoxy," and that too as a purely civil matter; anyone who was not orthodox lost his right of citizenship.
142. Tertullian: Ad Scap. 2; Clemens: Stromata, 7, 15 (both quoted from Hatch, p. 329).
143. See particularly vol. i. p. 121 f.
144. We have seen above that this Roman formula, dating from primeval heathen times was adopted by the Council of Trent for the Christian Pope.
145. These details from Mommsen: Romisches Staatsrecht, and from Esmarch: Romische Rechtsgeschichte. How great, moreover, the authority of the Pontifex maximus was in old Rome is made sufficiently clear by a passage in Cicero (De Nat. Deorum, lib. iii. chap. ii.) where he says that in all things pertaining to religion he simply referred to the Pontifex maximus and was guided by what he said.
146. That the Popes actually ascended the Roman Imperial throne and owe to it their claims to power has recently been testified by a Roman Catholic Church historian. Prof. Franz Xavier Kraus writes in the Wissenschaftliche Beilage zur Munchener Allgemeinen Zeitung of February 1, 1900, No. 26, p. 5: "Soon after the Caesars had left the palaces of the Palatine, the Popes established themselves firmly there, so as to put themselves unnoticed into the Position of Imperator in the eyes of the people."
147. See vol. i. p. 147.
148. Cf. Harnack, p. 103. Concerning the inevitably retarding effect of the Latin tongue upon all speculation and science, see Goethe's remarks in his Geschichte der Farbenlehre.
149. Cf. the beginning of the De Officiis Ministrorum.
150. This, too, was not a new Christian invention; even in antiquity there had been in Rome a jus pontificium in contrast to the jus civile: but the sound sense of the free Roman people had never permitted it to gain practical influence. (See Mommsen, p. 95.)
151. Savigny: Romischen Rechtes im Mittelalter vol. i. chap, iii.
152. This has been finally proved of at least one Pope, Honorius (see Hefele, Dollinger, &c.).
153. See Hefele: Konziliengeschichte, 2nd ed. ii. 114 f. and 120 f.
154. Bruck: Lehrbuch der Kirchengeschichte, 6th ed. p. 744 (orthodox Roman Catholic).
155. Since the assertion that "the Pope in his syllabus declared war on the whole European culture" has met with contradiction, I quote the words of § 80 of the document itself: Si quis dixit: Romanus pontifex potest ac debet cum progressu, cum liberalismo et cum recenti civililate sese reconciliare et componere; anathema sit.
156. Ideen fur Geschichte der Menschheit xix. i. I.
157. Augustine was reproached by Hieronymus for not understanding Hellenic thought. It is easy to see how true that was of the whole Roman Church if we take the trouble to read in Hefele's Konziliengeschichte, vol. ii. p. 255 f., the edict of the Emperor Justinian against Origenes and the fifteen anathemas against him of the Synods of Constantinople of the year 543. What these people did not notice gives us as good an idea of their mental qualities as what they found worthy of being anathematised. For example, the bigots did not notice that Origenes believes that the peccatum originale existed before the so-called fall, and yet that is, as I have shown above, the central point of his absolutely anti-Roman religion. On the other hand, it was revolting to them that this clear Hellenic mind considered a plurality of inhabited worlds an understood thing and that he taught the doctrine that the earth must have gradually grown by process of development. But they found it most fearful of all that he praised the destruction of the body in death as a liberation (whereas the people of the Chaos who were led by Rome could not think of immortality as anything but the eternal life of their wretched bodies), &c. &c. Many Popes, e.g., Coelestin, who crushed Nestorius, understood not a word of Greek and had in fact a very indifferent education, but this will surprise no one who has learned from Hefele's Konziliengeschichte that many of the bishops who by vote of majority founded the Christian dogma could not read, write, nor even sign their name.
158. The high-spirited African Church had given the Roman Church a good example in this as in so much else, by inserting in its confession of faith the words: "I believe in forgiveness of sins, in the resurrection of the body and in eternal life through the holy church (see Harnack: Das apostolische Glaubensbekenntnis, 27th ed. p. 9).
159. The final formal completion was reached some years later, first by the introduction of the obligatory adoration of the Host in the year 1264, secondly by the universal introduction of the festival of the holy body in the year 1311, to celebrate the wonderful transformation of the Host into the body of God.
160. See vol. i. p. 224 f.
161. See especially Rob. Smith: Religion of the Semites (1894), p. 358. For this whole question read lectures 8, 9, 10, 11.
162. See Smith, and as a supplement Cheyne: Isaiah, p. 368.
163. Rohde: Psyche, 1st ed. p. 687.
164. Der goldene Esel, Book XI.
165. Rohde, as above, and Dieterich's Eine Mithrasliturgie.
166. The use of the word totemism in this passage has led to misunderstandings and it indeed betrays an almost too daring ellipsis of thought. Totemism means "animal-worship," a custom spread over the whole world; the animal in question is sacred and inviolate (the cow in India, the ape in Southern India, the crocodile among certain African races, &c.). But if we trace the further development of this custom, we finds that the sacred Totem nevertheless was sometimes sacrificed -- thus, for example, in Mexico the youth worshipped as a God, the idea here being that by partaking of divine flesh and blood one receives a share of divinity: in view of this connection I have characterised these conceptions as totemistic.
167. See Leist: Graco-italische Rechtsgeschichte, p. 267 f.; Jhering: Vorgeschichte der Indoeuropaer, p. 313; &c.
168. Augustine in his happy hours has this view too: Nos ipsi in cordibus nostris invisibile sacrificium esse debemus" (De Civ. Dei x. 19).
169. According to the edition of the Roman Catholic Professor Narcissus Liebert.
170. Book VIII. chap. xii.
171. Hatch. p. 302. Cf., too, what has been said on p. 29.
172. According to Neander: Kirchengeschichte, 4th ed. ii. 405
173. Cf., for example, Book XXI. chap. xxv. of the De Civitate Dei.
174. De Civitate Dei, Book X. chap. xix. This doctrine was later adopted almost literally by Wyclif -- the real author of the Reformation; for he writes regarding the host: "Non est corpus dominicum, sed efficax ejus signum."
175. Gregory the Great (of about the year 600) was the first to teach that the Mass was an actual repetition of the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, and this gave the Sacrament a sacrificial (Jewish) as well as Sacramental (heathen) significance.
176. In reality there are only two. Whoever has cast the most superficial glance at the witches' cauldron of theological sophism, will be grateful to me for seeking to introduce by means of extreme simplification not only clearness but also truthfulness into this confused matter, which, partly owing to the cunning calculation of greedy priests, partly owing to the religious delusion of honest but badly balanced minds, has become the real battlefield for all subtle follies and profound impossibilities. Here in particular lies the hereditary sin of all Protestant churches; for they rebelled against the Roman doctrine of the sacrifice of the Mass and of transubstantiation but had not the courage to sweep out all the superstitions derived from the Chaos. Instead they took refuge in wretched sophistries and have ever since been flitting with characterless indecision hither and thither on dialectical pin-points, without ever putting foot on solid ground.
177. It is worth noting that in the case of the old mysteries, partaking in them removed all bonds of connection with the nation of one's birth. The initiated formed an international, extra-national family.
178. In recent times the authorship of the Pope has been doubted, but Catholics who are to be taken earnestly from a scientific point of view admit that this representation of the supposed "rights" of Rome, if not from the Pope himself, yet originated from the circle of his most intimate admirers and thus in the main gives correctly the opinions of Gregory, and this is confirmed by his actions and letters (see Hefele, 2nd ed. v. 75). Most amusing, on the other hand, is the twisting and turning of the historians who write under Jesuitical influence; they have taken much from the great Gregory but not his honesty and love of truth, and thus in their attempts at improvement they spoil the deeds and words of that very Pope under whom the Roman idea of State attained its noblest, purest and most unselfish form, and exerted its greatest moral influence. Note, for example, what trouble the Seminar-Professor Bruck (as above, § 114) takes to prove that Gregory "wished no universal monarchy," and "did not regard the Princes as his vassals," &c., but Bruck cannot at the same time refrain from mentioning that Gregory has spoken of an imperium Christi and admonished all Princes and peoples to recognize in the Church "their superior and mistress." Such dissimulation in face of the great fundamental facts of history is as unworthy as it is fruitless; the Roman hierocratic idea of a world-state is so great that one does not need to be ashamed of it.
179. In a letter to the Pope he calls them wild animals who begin to roar at the mere word "spiritual communion with Christ" (see Neander, vi. 317). At a later time Berengarius called the Papal throne sedem non apostolicam sed sedem satanae.
180. About the year 1200 there were Waldensian congregations "in France, Aragon, Catalonia, Spain, England, the Netherlands, Germany, Bohemia, Poland, Lithuania, Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Dalmatia, Italy, Sicily, &c." (See the excellent work of Ludwig Keller: Die Anfange der Reformation und die Ketzerschulen, 1897.)
181. Innocent had already in the year 1198 forbidden the reading of the Bible; the synod of Toulouse in the year 1229 and other councils were continually emphasising the prohibition. The synod of Toulouse forbade most strictly that laymen should read a fragment of the Old or the New Testament, except the Psalms (chap. xiv.). If therefore the Bible was widespread in Germany before Luther's time, it is nevertheless throwing sand in our eyes to represent this fact, as Janssen and other Catholic writers do, as a proof of the liberalism of the Roman stool. The invention of printing had had a quicker influence than the slowly moving curia could counteract, moreover the German was at all times instinctively drawn to the Gospel, and if he was earnest about anything, he did not pay overmuch heed to prohibitions. In any case the Council of Trent soon brought order into this matter, and in the year 1622 the Pope forbade all reading of the Bible unless in the Latin vulgate. It was only in the second half of the eighteenth century that episcopally approved, carefully revised translations were permitted, and that only when they were provided with notes also approved of -- a forcible measure against the spread of the Holy Script in the faithful editions of Bible societies.
he Bible studies of the Roman clergy in the thirteenth century are humorously shown up by the fact that at the synod of Nympha, in the year 1234, at which Roman and Greek Catholics met to pave the way to reunion, neither among the one party nor the other, nor in the churches and cloisters of the city and surroundings, was a copy of the Bible to be found, so that the followers of the Apostles had to proceed to the order of the day in regard to the wording of a doubtful quotation and have recourse once more, not to Holy Scripture, but to Church fathers and councils (see Hefele, v. 1048). At exactly the same time the Dominican Rainer, who had been sent to persecute the Waldensians, reports that all these heretics were very well read in the Holy Writ and he had seen uneducated peasants who could repeat the whole New Testament by heart (quoted in Neander, viii. 414).
182. First book, Von den Laien, division 5.
183. Hefele, v. 944.
184. Cf. Dollinger: Das Papsttum (1892), p. 527.
185. In the posthumous process against Boniface VIII many ecclesiastical dignitaries asserted on oath that this mightiest of all Popes laughed at the conception of Heaven and Hell and said of Jesus Christ that he had been a very clever man, nothing more. Hefele is inclined to regard these charges as not unfounded (see vi. 461 and the preceding discussion of the subject). And yet -- or rather in this way -- Boniface grasped the central idea of the Roman thought more clearly than almost any one before or after him, and in his famous bull Unam sanctam, on which present Catholicism rests as on a foundation-stone, he has given expression to it. (More details of this bull in next chapter.) In his Port Royal (Book III. chap. iii,) Sainte-Beuve proves convincingly that "one can be a very good Catholic and yet scarcely a Christian."
186. Helfferich: Christliche Mystik 1842 ii. 231.
187. To anyone who wishes to read an attempt at a systematic refutation of the opinions which I have expressed in this chapter and in other parts of the book on the essence and history of the Roman Churches I recommend Prof. Dr. Albert Ehrhard's Kritische Wurdigung of these "Foundations," originally published in the periodical Kultur and now as No. 14 of the Vortrage und Abhandlungen, published by the Leo- Gesellschaft (1901, Mayer and Co., Vienna).