of the true nature of prayer; this is sufficiently apparent in the following address to the Almighty: "I will liberate myself from lust, O Lord! that I may dwell in thee. I must be in that which is thine, O Omnipotent! and even when I am here, I am with thee; but I will be without fear that I may get near thee, and I will be content with little, imitating thy most just choice, which discerns what is really good, from that which merely resembles it."18 Not often, I hope, in the annals of human folly, has the Almighty been insulted with a more impious prayer than this! The ambitious aspirant to Gnostical perfection vaunts before his Maker, that he will accomplish in himself that, which God in his word hath declared, is the work of his Spirit only.

The error of the early fathers upon the subject of prayer, consisted in their ascription of far too much to man, and far too little to God, in its acceptable' service. This appears in a two-fold character. In the first place, they tax the innate powers of man too heavily: they call upon him to repress sin in his own heart, and then to appear before God; whereas, the Scripture every where exhorts us to ask of God to create a clean heart within us, because it is a blessing which he only can impart. But so possessed are they, with this power in man to deal independently with God in the matter of sin, that, in treating upon forgiveness, they become oblivious of the doctrine of the atonement. In the next place (with not perfect consistency) they ascribe a large measure of efficacy to the observance of a certain orthodox ritual, in the external ceremony of prayer; to this, as well as to the heart of the worshipper, they conceive the Almighty to have regard. It is almost needless to point out the tendency of one of

18 4 Strom., § 23.

these errors to aggravate the other. The religionist who is sincere and in earnest, will soon discover that the task of purifying his own heart is an utterly hopeless one: but he has been taught that the outward ceremony, in prayer, as well as the inward frame of mind, obtains acceptance with God: most naturally, therefore, he turns his attention to that which is within his reach, to the neglect of that which he has found to be unattainable: and thus, this important act of Christian duty was rapidly degraded into a superstitious and formal observance.

When the external rites of religion have acquired this degree of value, it would appear to be an inevitable consequence, that the number of them should also begin to multiply.

The following passage from Tertullian will show that that this actually took place in the instance before us: it is also important, as embodying nearly all that we know respecting the external forms of worship in use in the second century. He is speaking of certain customs, the authority for which rested not upon the written Scriptures, but upon tradition;-"to begin with baptism; when we are about to go down into the water, we sometimes are required to profess before the church, and under the hand of the bishop, that we renounce the Devil, his ceremonies, and his angels: 19 then we are thrice immersed, answering somewhat more than the Lord had appointed in the gospel. On coming from the font, we taste of a mixture of milk

19 Nos renunciare diabolo et pompis et angelis ejus;-the word pompa alludes to the subject of the tractate, which is a defence of the conduct of a Christian soldier, who suffered martyrdom rather than wearing a laurel crown in a triumphal procession. See c. 1. It is probable that the expression " pomps and vanities of this wicked world," in our baptismal service, originated in this passage.

and honey; and abstain from the daily bath for a full week afterwards. The sacrament of the Eucharist, which was instituted by our Lord during a meal, and enjoined upon all present, we also celebrate at our assemblies before day-break, and receive from no other hand than that of the President. We make oblations for the dead annually, on the day of their death. We account it wrong to fast or to kneel during prayer, on the Lord's day. We enjoy the same immunity from Easter to Whitsuntide. When we set out on any journey, every time we go out from our houses, and on our return to them, when we put on our clothes and our shoes, when we bathe, when we sit down to table, when we light the lamps, when we retire to our bed-chambers, when we recline upon couches, whatever subject engrosses our attention, at the time of commencing each of these acts, we invariably trace upon our foreheads the sign of the cross."20 He proceeds to tell us that "tradition is the author, custom the confirmer, and faith the observer of all these ceremonies." We have already discussed the question of doctrinal tradition;21 that of traditional ceremonies may conveniently be deferred, until we come to consider the ecclesiastical polity of the first and second centuries. But we may here remark upon the customs recorded in this passage generally, that though some of them may be innocent, and others even laudable, they are, nevertheless, by no means free from the taint of heathenism; and are conceived in the true spirit of those "profane and old wives' fables," which St. Paul, by the Holy Ghost, commanded Timothy to "refuse." But, the evil, after all, was not that they existed, but that they were made part and parcel of Christianity in the theology 21 Chap. III.

20 Tertull. de Corona Militis, c. 4.

22 1 Tim. iv. 7.

of the times, for they were certainly accounted as such by Tertullian.

The opinions of the early fathers, therefore, regarding the worship of God, evidently tended to confer an undue importance upon the innate powers of man, and upon the mere outward rite; errors which necessarily obscured and put aside the doctrine of divine assistance, conferring purity of motive upon the accepted worshipper, which is the leading characteristic of the Christian religion.

CHAPTER IX.

CELIBACY AND THE PERPETUAL VIRGINITY.

So far as we have hitherto pursued our investigation, it apparently leads to the conclusion, that the spirit of Christianity, in these early times, was undergoing a process of gradual assimilation to that of the false or abolished religions, in the prepossessions of which all its first converts had been educated. The two points of ecclesiastical discipline we are now about to consider, Celibacy and Fasting, will still more strikingly illustrate and confirm this view of the subject. We commence with the former.

The false doctrine which asserts the superior sanctity of religious celibates, is an error whose influence is by no means departed at the present day, though greatly diminished. The origin of the opinion is likewise perfectly apparent, in the writers whose works are before us. It is, therefore, important, that we should consider the question, even if it be only for the purpose of showing the very little practical effect, which the teachings and writings of the inspired apostles must have produced upon their immediate successors, when an error so plainly pointed out, and so unequivocally repudiated by them, receives, notwithstanding, a strong sanction from the works of the early fathers.

The only two passages which could have afforded the

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