An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine

Presently Dr. Burton continues:—" Justin, as I observed, is defending the Christians from the charge of Atheism; and after saying that the gods, whom they refused to worship, were no gods, but evil demons, he points out what were the Beings who were worshipped by the Christians. He names the true God, who is the source of all virtue; the Son, who proceeded from Him; the good and ministering spirits; and the Holy Ghost. To these Beings, he says, we pay all the worship, adoration, and honour, which is due to each of them; i.e. worship where worship is due, honour where honour is due. The Christians were accused of worshipping no gods, that is, of acknowledging no superior beings at all. Justin shows that so far was this from being true, that they acknowledged more than one order of spiritual Beings; they offered divine worship to the true God, and they also believed in the existence of good spirits, which were entitled to honour and respect. If the reader will view the passage as a whole, he will perhaps see that there is nothing violent in thus restricting the words worship and adore, and honouring, to certain parts of it respectively. It may seem strange that Justin should mention the ministering spirits before the Holy Ghost: but this is a difficulty which presses upon the Roman Catholics as much as upon ourselves; and we may perhaps adopt the explanation of the Bishop of Lincoln [Note 17], who says, 'I have sometimes thought that in this passage, "and the host" is equivalent to "with the host," and that Justin had in his mind the glorified state of Christ, when He should come to judge the world, surrounded by the host of heaven.' The bishop then brings several passages from Justin, where the Son of God is spoken of as attended by a company of Angels; and if this idea was then in Justin's mind, it might account for his naming the ministering spirits immediately after the Son of God, rather than after the Holy Ghost, which would have been the natural and proper order." [Note 18]

This passage of St. Justin is the more remarkable because it cannot be denied that there was a worship of the Angels at that day, of which St. Paul speaks, which was Jewish and Gnostic, and utterly reprobated by the Church.

The special prerogatives of St. Mary, the Virgo Virginum, are intimately involved in the doctrine of the Incarnation itself, with which these remarks began, and have already been dwelt upon above. As is well known, they were not fully recognised in the Catholic ritual till a late date, but they were not a new thing in the Church, or strange to her earlier teachers. St. Justin, St. Irenæus, and others, had distinctly laid it down, that she not only had an office, but bore a part, and was a voluntary agent, in the actual process of redemption, as Eve had been instrumental and responsible in Adam's fall. They taught that, as the first woman might have foiled the Tempter and did not, so, if Mary had been disobedient or unbelieving on Gabriel's message, the Divine Economy would have been frustrated. And certainly the parallel between "the Mother of all living" and the Mother of the Redeemer may be gathered from a comparison of the first chapters of Scripture with the last. It was noticed in a former place, that the only passage where the serpent is directly identified with the evil spirit occurs in the twelfth chapter of the Revelation; now it is observable that the recognition, when made, is found in the course of a vision of a "woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet:" thus two women are brought into contrast with each other. Moreover, as it is said in the Apocalypse, "The dragon was wroth with the woman, and went about to make war with the remnant of her seed," so is it prophesied in Genesis, "I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her Seed. He shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise His heel." Also the enmity was to exist, not only between the Serpent and the Seed of the woman, but between the serpent and the woman herself; and here too there is a correspondence in the Apocalyptic vision. If then there is reason for thinking that this mystery at the close of the Scripture record answers to the mystery in the beginning of it, and that "the Woman" mentioned in both passages is one and the same, then she can be none other than St. Mary, thus introduced prophetically to our notice immediately on the transgression of Eve.

2.

Here, however, we are not so much concerned to interpret Scripture as to examine the Fathers. Thus St. Justin says, "Eve, being a virgin and incorrupt, having conceived the word from the Serpent, bore disobedience and death; but Mary the Virgin, receiving faith and joy, when Gabriel the Angel evangelized her, answered, 'Be it unto me according to thy word.'" [Note 19] And Tertullian says that, whereas Eve believed the Serpent, and Mary believed Gabriel, "the fault of Eve in believing, Mary by believing hath blotted out." [Note 20] St. Irenæus speaks more explicitly: "As Eve," he says... "becoming disobedient, became the cause of death to herself and to all mankind, so Mary too, having the predestined Man, and yet a Virgin, being obedient, became cause of salvation both to herself and to all mankind." [Note 21] This becomes the received doctrine in the Post-nicene Church.

One well-known instance occurs in the history of the third century of St. Mary's interposition, and it is remarkable from the names of the two persons, who were, one the subject, the other the historian of it. St. Gregory Nyssen, a native of Cappadocia in the fourth century, relates that his name-sake Bishop of Neo-cæsarea, surnamed Thaumaturgus, in the preceding century, shortly before he was called to the priesthood, received in a vision a Creed, which is still extant, from the Blessed Virgin at the hands of St. John. The account runs thus: He was deeply pondering theological doctrine, which the heretics of the day depraved. "In such thoughts," says his namesake of Nyssa, "he was passing the night, when one appeared, as if in human form, aged in appearance, saintly in the fashion of his garments, and very venerable both in grace of countenance and general mien... Following with his eyes his extended hand, he saw another appearance opposite to the former, in shape of a woman, but more than human... When his eyes could not bear the apparition, he heard them conversing together on the subject of his doubts; and thereby not only gained a true knowledge of the faith, but learned their names, as they addressed each other by their respective appellations. And thus he is said to have heard the person in woman's shape bid 'John the Evangelist' disclose to the young man the mystery of godliness; and he answered that he was ready to comply in this matter with the wish of 'the Mother of the Lord,' and enunciated a formulary, well-turned and complete, and so vanished." Gregory proceeds to rehearse the Creed thus given, "There is One God, Father of a Living Word," &c. [Note 22] Bull, after quoting it in his work upon the Nicene Faith, refers to this history of its origin, and adds, "No one should think it incredible that such a providence should befall a man whose whole life was conspicuous for revelations and miracles, as all ecclesiastical writers who have mentioned him (and who has not?) witness with one voice." [Note 23]

3.

It is remarkable that St. Gregory Nazianzen relates an instance, even more pointed, of St. Mary's intercession, contemporaneous with this appearance to Thaumaturgus; but it is attended with mistake in the narrative, which weakens its cogency as an evidence of the belief; not indeed of the fourth century, in which St. Gregory lived, but of the third. He speaks of a Christian woman having recourse to the protection of St. Mary, and obtaining the conversion of a heathen who had attempted to practise on her by magical arts. They were both martyred.

In both these instances the Blessed Virgin appears especially in that character of Patroness or Paraclete, which St. Irenæus and other Fathers describe, and which the Medieval Church exhibits,—a loving Mother with clients.

17. Dr. Kaye.

18. Pp. 19-21.

19. Tryph. 100.

20. Carn. Christ. 17.

21. Hær. iii. 22, § 4.

22. Nyss. Opp. t. ii. p. 977.

23. Def. F. N. ii. 12.