Obrazy na stronie
PDF
ePub

PART I.

MOHAMMED AND HIS CREED.

CHAPTER I.

THE FORERUNNERS OF MOHAMMED.

"Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is Christ? He is Antichrist that denieth the Father and the Son. Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father." 1 John II. 22. 23.

1. Islam is the type of faith which of all others was most adapted to the Arabian mind. The Arabs, remained equally unimpressible to the poetry of the Greeks, the Philosophy of Plato, and the teachings of Christianity, but in perfect accordance with the national predominance of the cold intellectual faculties, they threw themselves with enthusiasm into the subtilties of Aristotle. Just so much was adopted of Judaism and Christianity as commended itself to the intellect only, without any regard to the deeper yearnings of the heart.

Hence the unconditional rejection of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, and of all the leading features of Christianity. The Arab could speak with contempt of the subtle controversies which Nestorius, Entyches and the Monophysites had fomented in the Eastern Church. Islam had no cause to dread similar troubles and comparisons; for it was a creed without miracles, and a faith without mystery.

One of the earliest doctrines of Mohammed was the Unity of Allah; and the assertion that God had no son and no partner was enough to cause the rejection of the whole basis of Christianity. Mohammed, to originate his composite system of belief, purged from the existing creeds all that seemed mysterious and supernatural.

It must not however be supposed that in thus rejecting the fundamentum fundamenti of the Christian faith, Mohammed planted an absolutely new heresy. A cursory view of the early heresies of the Church will convince us that Islam gathered the already existing elements of apostacy and reproduced them under a new type and in a new form of misbelief.

2. The mystery of the Incarnation was purposely hidden from the world for a time. If we seek for the popular opinion of our Lord's person and character during His lifetime, we find that Jesus, up to His thirtieth year, was supposed to be the son of Joseph. After his baptism Christ was spoken of by Philip "as Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph." When He commenced His public

ministry, the people ask astonished: "Is not this Joseph's son ?" At a later period they exclaim : "Is not this the carpenter's son ? Is not His mother called Mary ?" Only one year before His passion the Jews ask: "Is not this Jesus the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?” The same opinions prevailed among the unbelieving masses long after the Ascension of the Redeemer ; and even in the days of the Apostles, heresies sprang up within the Church, adopting the views then current, viz., that He was no more than "Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph."

Amongst the heretical teachers who in the apostolic age paved the way for Mohammed, Irenaeus mentions Cerinthus, a Jewish convert, who subsequently relapsed and was the first who dared to question the Divinity of Christ, asserting that his entrance into the world was according the ordinary laws of nature: Epiphanius also writes that Christ was considered an ordinary man by the Cerinthian heresy, adding that it admitted His Cross and Passion, but distinctly denied His Resurrection; and this is confirmed by St. Augustine. 3

1 "Cerinthus quidam in Asia docuit, Jesum non ex virgine natum fuisse, autem eum Joseph et Mariae filium similiter, ut reliqui omnes homines, et plus potuisse justitia et sapientia prae omnibus." Iren. lib. I. cap. 25.

2 Epiphan. lib. I. tom. II. pag. 53.

3 Vide August. tom. VI. haeres. That Cerinthus propagated his heresy in the days of the Apostles will appear from the well known incident, which Polycarp is said to have recorded viz., that St. John immediately left the bath at Ephesus on seeing that Cerinthus, "the enemy of the truth," had entered the building. Iren. lib. III. contra haeres. cap. 3.

2

6

4

Another heresy of the same age and tendency as the preceding, was that of the Ebionites, who, like the Cerinthians, adopted the popular notion concerning Christ, which was current during His lifetime. There has been much uncertainty as to the minor, and for our purpose less important items of this ancient heresy, but however indefinite and multiform their system of error may have been, one thing was clear and decided, that they denied the Godhead of Christ and lowered him to the level of mortal man. It is but due to Mohammed to add, that he abstained from going to the full length of these early heretics, when he admitted the miraculous entrance of Christ into the world, which was by them denied."

These are the two chief heresies, which gained ground in the days of the Apostles, to refute which, was one of the objects which St. John had in view in writing his Gospel and Epistles. The Evangelist indeed himself assigns a cause for writing as he does, in these words: "These are written that ye might believe, that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing, ye might have life through His name.

[ocr errors]

Irenæus writes: "John the disciple of the Lord,

4 Ebion is probably the name of the founder of this heresy; some however receive it as a cognomen, from the Hebrew Ebion, pauper.

5 "Ebionaei ex Joseph Christum generatum esse dicunt." Iren. lib. III. Cap. 24. See also: lib. I. cap. 26. and 59.

6 Epiphan. lib. I. contra haeres. tom. II. pag. 59.

This was expressly done by Ebion. Epiph. tom. II. pag. 60.

wishing by the preaching of the Gospel to refute the error, which had been spread by Cerinthus and still earlier by those who were called Nicolaitanes, commenced his Gospel with a view to confound and persuade them, that there is one God, who made all things by His Word, and to establish a rule of truth in the Church." St. Jerome says: " "Even when John was still in Asia, the seeds of the heretics, Cerinthus, Ebion and others, who deny that Christ came into the flesh, had already sprung up-whom in his Epistle he calls "Antichrists," whom Paul also frequently attacks and he was compelled by almost all the Bishops then in Asia, and by legates from Churches to write more deeply concerning the Divinity of Christ." "

many

:

9

Hence, what significance passages like these acquire "Who is a liar, but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ. He is Antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son. Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father." Again: "Beloved believe not every spirit, but try the spirits, whether they are of God, because many false prophets are gone out into the world." In the second Epistle, he complains of "many deceivers, who confess not, that Jesus came into the flesh. This is the deceiver and the Antichrist. Look to yourselves,

8 Iren. lib. III. cap. XI pag. 184.

9 Vide Hieronymus in proxim, Comment. in Matt. In his "Catalog. Script. ecclesiast.' Cap. IX. the same Father adds: that St. John wrote the last Gospel "at the request of the Bishops of Asia, against Cerinthus and other heretics, chiefly the Ebionites, who maintained that Christ did not exist prior to Mary."

« PoprzedniaDalej »