Gospel was the wisdom of God, and the power of God unto salvation. We may see, in such a leaning to human systems as this, the seeds of those fatal heresies which continually distracted, and subsequently destroyed, the African church. Clement's idea, that heathen philosophy "waters and softens the earthy parts of the soil, that the spiritual seed may be the better cast in and take vital root in the minds of men," is certainly not the scriptural view of the matter.

Clement's name would have been handed down to posterity, if for nothing else, as the master of the celebrated Origen, whose character and habit of thinking he was, no doubt, greatly instrumental in forming. Unhappily for Origen's usefulness and fame, he was but too deeply imbued with the philosophic notions of his teacher.

Origen was born in the city of Alexandria, in the sixth year of the Emperor Commodus, and of the Christian era, 185. He was the eldest of seven children; and his father, Leonidas, was a Christian of eminent piety, and sedulously devoted himself to the religious education of his children. Origen was extremely studious, and of a melancholy turn of mind; so that he early turned his attention to theology, into the depths of which he penetrated with untiring industry. Leonidas rejoiced at the disposition which his son manifested; and it is related, that he frequently entered his chamber at night, and, as he lay asleep, offered up earnest prayers for the divine blessing upon him; and then uncovering his breast, kissed it with a mingled feeling of reverence and affection, as being the temple of the Holy Spirit. After having been some years a pupil of Clement, he placed himself under Ammonius Saccas, a teacher of eminence in the Platonic school, under whom he became master of the philosophy of the Platonics, Pythagoreans, and Stoics, and acquired the allegorical and mystical style of interpretation which he afterwards employed in his commentaries on the Scriptures.

The Emperor Severus commenced a deadly persecution against the Christians when Origen was seventeen years old; and the principal weight of the calamities which ensued fell upon the church of Alexandria, in which city the Emperor was then sojourning, to examine the antiquities of the place, and whither he caused to be brought from all parts of Egypt the most celebrated of the Christian Divines, that he might satiate his fiendish hatred of the holy Jesus, by feasting his eyes on the dying agonies of his most devoted saints. Vast numbers of Christians suffered martyrdom on this occasion, by every species of torment which heathen ferocity could suggest; and, among the rest, Leonidas, the father of Origen, who, however, was mercifully allowed to be beheaded.

66

The perverted zeal of young Origen now displayed itself in a manner common among Christians in those times. He panted for the honour of martyrdom, purposely exposing himself to danger, and determined to join his father in prison, that he might die with him; but his mother concealed his clothes, and thus confined him to the house. He now wrote a letter to his father, one line of which only has come down to us : Take heed, father, that your care for us do not make you change your resolution." Upon his father's death, his paternal property was all confiscated, and he reduced to the greatest distress; but God raised up a friend for him, in the person of a rich lady, who gave him an asylum in her house, where he applied himself to his studies with unwearied diligence, among which the Scriptures occupied a principal place. He was scarcely eighteen when he opened a school, to support himself and his mother; and his success was

most rapid. Still the persecution raged; and young Origen was unceasing in his attendance on the martyrs in prison, and at the place of execution : his own escape was almost miraculous; for he had become a celebrated character, multitudes crowding to hear his expositions of the divine word; and as Demetrius, the Bishop, had committed the school of Alexandria to him, he was placed in a position of dangerous pre-eminence.

With all Origen's piety and zeal, nothing could be worse than his mode of interpreting Scripture. Forsaking the plain and obvious sense, he dis-covered a mystic meaning under the most literal statement of facts, and supposed that the sacred history was only a parabolic mode of conveying to the initiated divine truths too deep for common understandings. After this manner, the whole word of God was turned into a fable, and, as a necessary consequence, rendered perfectly useless as a revelation from above ;* speaking, as it was thus made to do, a language foreign to the sense meant to be conveyed.+

* In the tenth book of the work called Stromata, he thus expresses himself: "The source of many evils lies in adhering to the carnal, or external, part of Scripture. Those who do so shall not attain to the kingdom of God. Let us, therefore, seek after the spirit and substantial fruit of the word, which are hidden and mysterious." And again: "The Scriptures are of little use to those who understand them as they are written.” No wonder that the virtual suppression of the sacred volume soon grew out of such language as this.

We are tempted to introduce here an example of this method of exegesis, which is furnished to us by Dr. Adam Clarke, in his "Succession of Sacred Literature," as it illustrates, not only Origen's teaching, but that of several others also of his day. The portion of Scripture to be interpreted is that from Exod. i. 15—22, connected with ii. 1-10. This passage contains Pharaoh's cruel order to the Hebrew midwives, and the discovery of Moses by Pharaoh's daughter. Origen thus

treats it:

"Pharaoh, King of Egypt, is the devil. The male and female children are the animal and rational faculties of the soul. Pharaoh, the devil, wishes to betray all the males; that is, the seeds of rationality and spiritual science, by which the soul may tend to, and seek, heavenly things: but he wishes to preserve the females alive; that is, all those animal propensities of man by which he becomes carnal, sensual, and devilish. Hence, when you see a man living in luxury, banqueting, pleasures, and sensual gratification, know that the King of Egypt has destroyed all the males, and preserved the females alive. The midwives are the Old and New Testaments: the one is called sephora, which signifies a 'sparrow,' and means that sort of instruction by which the soul is led to hover aloft, and investigate heavenly things; the other is called phua, which signifies 'ruddy,' or 'bashful,' and indicates the Gospel, which is ruddy with the blood of Christ, spreading the doctrine of his passion over the world. By these two, as midwives, souls are born into the church, and educated in spiritual and evangelical truths. Pharaoh, the devil, wishes to corrupt these midwives, that all the males, the spiritual and heavenly propensities, may be destroyed; and this he endeavours to do by bringing in heresies and corrupt opinions. But the midwives feared God; therefore he built them houses; that is, the two Testaments teach and inculcate the fear of God, which is the beginning of wisdom;' and thus the houses of the church are built in different parts of the world. By Pharaoh's daughter, the church is to be understood; who leaves the house of her impious and iniquitous father, according to the word of the Prophet: 'Hearken, O daughter, and consider; incline thine ear; forget also thine own people and thy father's house; so shall the King greatly desire thy beauty.' (Psalm xiv. 10, 11.) Thus she obeys the word, and comes to the waters to bathe,—that is, to the baptismal font,-that she may be washed from the stains she had contracted in her father's house. Here she finds Moses in an ark of bulrushes, among the flags, daubed over with pitch; that is, being filled, after baptism, with bowels of compassion, Pharaoh's daughter, the church, finds Moses, the law, in an ark made of reeds, daubed with pitch and bitumen, deformed and obscured by the absurd and carnal glosses of the Jews, by which all its beauty and elegance had been con

But not only did Origen thus allegorize away the simple statements of the inspired volume; he largely adulterated its doctrinal parts. with the learned nonsense of the schools; and plainly intimated, as his master, Clement, had done before him, that heathen philosophy and scriptural truth were derived from one source, and were, consequently, of equal authority. Clement used to say, that philosophy was to the Pagans what the law of Moses was to the Jews,-a communication from God through the administration of angels; and that both religions pointed out the way of salvation, the one to the Pagans, and the other to the Jews. As both, however, had been disfigured with human additions, God was pleased to impart to all mankind a more perfect wisdom through Jesus Christ, with which philosophy, stripped of its corruptions, would be found fully to correspond. Behold the teaching of the Fathers! Who that reads this will not love and value his Bible more and more? Origen's mind was a chaos of extravagant notions. His conduct was an equally outrageous comment on the loveliness, peacefulness, and sociability of the Gospel scheme. Selfinfliction of the severest kind was practised by him, as agreeable to the tenderest of Fathers; and the "fruits of the Spirit," instead of being "love, joy, peace," appeared to him to be exhibited in every endeavour to banish them from his own breast, and extirpate every tendril on which they might have grown.

Origen's greatest literary work was his Hexapla, a compilation of six versions of the holy Scriptures, in parallel columns: those of Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion, the Septuagint, and the Hebrew text, in Chaldee and Greek characters. Some years after, he added two others: one discovered by himself, at Jericho; and another by one of his disciples, at Nicopolis. This work, with the exception of a few fragments, is now lost. He also composed some Homilies and Commentaries on the Scriptures, in his own peculiar style; besides a Treatise on Principles, still extant, in which he defends the study of philosophy; and a work which he called Stromata, from which we have made a quotation.

cealed; and thus it necessarily continued till the church formed out of, and coming from among, the Gentiles, receives Moses, the law, as her own child, which being given into the care of those who are spiritual, they strip it of its carnal glosses, and give it its proper spiritual interpretation; then it acquires strength and excellence; and thus Moses grows up, and becomes, through the means of the Christian church, more respectable even in the sight of the Jews; according to the saying of Moses: 'I will move them to jealousy with those which are not a people: I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation.' (Deut. xxxii. 21.)

"When Moses was grown up, he was brought into the palace of Pharaoh's daughter; so, when we have cast aside our evil ways, and have come to the baptisinal waters, we receive Moses, the law, in its true and spiritual meaning, and see no more in it anything base or vile,-all being magnificent, elegant, and excellent; and we put it into the palace of our heart, and pray the Lord Jesus that he would reveal and show us, more and more, how great and sublime Moses is: and this he does, by his Holy Spirit, to whomsoever he will. To him, therefore, be glory and dominion, for ever and ever. Amen."

We adopt Dr. A. Clarke's reflections on this curious specimen of scriptural instruction. "Who," he says, 66 can deny this the merit both of piety and ingenuity? But who, at the same time, does not see that, on this plan of interpretation, the sacred writings may be obliged to say anything, everything, or nothing, according to the fancy, peculiar creed, or caprice of the interpreter ?" The effects of such teaching were fatal to the repose, and to the very existence, of the African church. Heresies multiplied; appeals to Scripture became every day more uncertain and unsatisfactory; and as the professedly Christian work soon ceased to be of God, it quickly came to nought.

About the year 228, Demetrius, his Bishop, sent him to Athens, to suppress some heresies. From thence he visited Palestine, and was there ordained Presbyter, in his forty-third year, by Theoctistus, Bishop of Cæsarea, and Alexander, Bishop of Jerusalem. After this he returned to Alexandria, where Demetrius assembled two Councils against him, by which he was removed from the office of teacher, and excommunicated from the church; in consequence of which he retired to Palestine, whither he was followed by many of his scholars, and where he continued his theological studies and lectures.

About the year 249 he composed his best work, "An Apology for the Christians," in answer to Celsus, a profligate Epicurean philosopher, who had written against them. This work has been greatly applauded. Shortly after this he was called upon to endure the severest sufferings in his Master's cause. He was imprisoned, and loaded with chains; he underwent the torture of being pressed in an iron chair; he had his feet distended to their utmost length for several days; and by various other species of torment were his faith and constancy tested, and proved to be genuine. He endured all with Christian fortitude; and having survived these sufferings several years, he at length died a natural death, in the seventieth year of his age; leaving the church, which he had adorned by his learning and genius, and which he sought to illuminate by his teaching, to be distracted for centuries with controversies about his writings, both in the East and West.

The severe philosophy adopted by Origen and others, which consisted practically in self-mortification, and the subjugation of every pleasurable emotion of the heart, and which was only an imitation of what had long been adopted among the Heathens as the supreme good, by men wise in their own conceits, gave birth to a species of discipline for which Egypt was particularly celebrated, the monastic life. The custom of certain individuals, and even whole communities, retiring from the busy haunts of life, to seek, in caves and deserts, the fruits of an uninterrupted devotion to the concerns of the soul, was common, even before the coming of our Lord. There were two sects of such contemplatists among the Jews,-the Essenes and the Therapeuta; of which one has been considered a branch of the other. Their ideas were, that religion consisted in meditation and silence; and that the higher degrees of virtue were only to be attained by rigorous abstinence, and the most merciless self-infliction of penances and mortifications. All human sensibilities were held as degrading to man's spiritual nature, and every indulgence of them as sinful and polluting; and, in such a case, to control, or, if possible, to eradicate, them, was the duty of every aspirant after perfection. The classical reader will here call to mind the lessons of Pythagoras and Plato, and discover that there is a common source for the wisdom that is foolishness with God: 66 They know not me, saith the Lord."

It is disputed whether Paul, the first Christian ascetic, was induced to embrace a life of solitude through dread of the persecution which raged under the Emperor Decius, and which was severely felt at Alexandria, or whether he yielded to the attractions of the prevailing philosophy, and sought to realize the exalted pleasures which it promised him, in the selfish abandonment of his suffering brethren. Probably Platonism prepared him for a step which the bloody edicts of a tyrant suggested as an immediate means of safety. At the age of fifteen he was left by his parents master of a considerable estate; and Dr. Milner describes him as

a per

son of much learning, of a mild temper, and full of the love of God." He was a married man; and it was owing to the treachery of his wife's brother, who, to obtain his property, intended to denounce him to the authorities as a Christian, that, at the age of twenty-three, he formed the resolution of retiring to the desert of Thebais, in Lower Egypt, near which he resided. "Here he led," says Mosheim, "during the space of ninety years, a life more worthy of a savage animal, than of a rational being ;" and died at the advanced age of a hundred and thirteen years.

This took place in the third century; and the example of Paul was at once imitated by many whose peculiar notions of what was pleasing to God led them to renounce the society of their fellow-men. The deserts of Egypt soon swarmed with hermits: of these, an illiterate young man named Anthony, of the same part of the country as Paul, is considered the founder and head, as he was the first who formed them into a regular body, engaged them to live in society with each other, and instituted a system of rules for the regulation of their conduct. And from this the monastic order took its rise, which has since adhered as a foul excrescence to the fair surface of Christianity, deforming its symmetry, eating as a canker into its vitals, and disgusting every enlightened mind with its odious assumption of spiritual health and soundness.

The treatment to which these wretched ascetics submitted from their spiritual superiors was sufficiently humiliating. "They performed," says Gibbon," without reluctance, the menial offices of slaves and domestics; and the several trades that were necessary to provide their habits, their utensils, and their lodging, were exercised within the precincts of the grand monasteries." "The more humble industry of the Egyptian Monks was contented with the silent, sedentary occupation of making wooden sandals, or of twisting the leaves of the palm-tree into mats and baskets. The disciples of Anthony were satisfied with their daily pittance of twelve ounces of bread, or rather biscuit, which they divided into two frugal repasts, of the afternoon and of the evening. It was esteemed a merit, and almost a duty, to abstain from the boiled vegetables which were provided for the refectory; but the extraordinary bounty of the Abbot sometimes indulged them with the luxury of cheese, fruit, sallad, and the small dried fish of the Nile."

"The actions of a Monk, his words, and even his thoughts, were determined by an inflexible rule, or a capricious Superior; the slightest offences were corrected by disgrace or confinement, extraordinary fasts or bloody flagellation; and disobedience, murmur, or delay, were ranked in the catalogue of the most heinous sins. A blind submission to the commands of the Abbot, however absurd, or even criminal, they might seem, was the first virtue, the ruling principle, of the Egyptian Monks; and their patience was frequently exercised by the most extravagant trials. They were directed to move an enormous rock; assiduously to water a barren staff, that was planted in the ground, till, at the end of three years, should vegetate and blossom like a tree; to walk into a fiery furnace; or to cast their infants into a deep pond and several saints, or madmen, have been immortalized in monastic story by their thoughtless and fearless obedience. The freedom of the mind, the source of every generous or rational sentiment, was destroyed by the habits of credulity and submission; and the Monk, contracting the views of a slave, devoutly followed the faith and practice of his ecclesiastical tyrant. The peace of the Eastern church was invaded by a swarm of fanatics, incapable of fear, or reason, or humanity;

it