in the Asiatic

prising that we should find here an exception to the usual
scene of the last apostolical conflict, and that the earliest
manifestation of this wild revolutionary spirit should have
first shewed itself not in the eastern but the western focus
of lawlessness and superstition, where there was so much at
once to foster and to provoke it. And it
And it may reasonably
be asked whether the practices to which the Apostle here
alludes may not have furnished some foundation for the
tradition of the visit to Rome of that real heresiarch and
sorcerer, who had indeed before "declared himself to be
"the power of God, and had bewitched the people of
Samaria," but who here first, according to the story, set
himself in open rivalry and hostility to apostolical Chris-
tianity; whether it may not have been these very prac-
tices which gave rise to the misrepresentations of Tacitus
already referred to,-nay whether it is not probable that
they may really in their hostility to the city, as well as
the laws of Rome, have given cause for the saying of
Nero himself that the true incendiaries of Rome were to
be found amongst the ranks of the Christian community.

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But another sphere than the crowded stage of the metroChurches, polis was needed for the full exhibition of these heresies; it was reserved for another hand than that of the Apostle of the Gentiles, whose work was now drawing towards its natural close, to arrest their progress. It is in the Asiatic Churches that this false liberty, like its twin sister of false asceticism, presents itself most definitely to view. It is impossible to mistake that the party which called forth the last warnings of St. Paul at Crete and Ephesus in the Epistle to Titus, and the Second to Timothy, is in all its main features the same as that which is attacked in Asia Minor generally in the Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude, and in the seven Churches of Proconsular Asia in the Revelations. In all there is the same remarkable union of

Acts viii. 9; Iren. adv. Hær. i. 20.

principles at once anarchical and licentious; men "lovers "of their ownselves," "proud, unholy, without natural affec❝tion, truce-breakers, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers "of pleasure more than lovers of God," (2 Tim. iii. 2—4;) men "whose mind and conscience is defiled, so that with "them nothing is pure-abominable and disobedient, and "to every good work reprobate," (Tit. i. 15, 16;) who must "be put in mind to be subject to principalities and powers, "to obey magistrates, to speak evil of no man, to be no "brawlers, so that the doctrine of God their Saviour may be "adorned in all things, and that he who is of the contrary

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part may be ashamed, having no evil thing to say of them." (Tit. iii. 1; ii. 8, 10.) This general picture is evidently the same as that which calls forth the warnings of St. Peter's First Epistle, "to abstain from fleshly lusts and submit "themselves to every ordinance of men for the Lord's "sake;" to "have their conversation honest among the "Gentiles, who speak against them as evil-doers, that so "with well-doing they may put to silence the ignorance "of foolish men; as free and not using their liberty for a cloke of maliciousness, but as servants of God;" that "to endure grief is thankworthy only if when they do well they suffer for it ;" that "it is better they should suffer "for well-doing than for evil-doing;" that "no one will "harm them if they become (yévŋode) followers of that "which is good," that "they must not suffer as murderers

66

or thieves or evil-doers." (1 Pet. ii. 11—20; iii. 11—17; iv. 12-15.) And what is implied here indirectly is in the Second Epistle of St. Peter and the parallel passage in St. Jude stated directly. In both, the examples of the angels and the world before the flood and of Sodom and Gomorrah, are held out as warnings to those "who walk after the "flesh in the lust of uncleanness, and despise governments;" "murmurers, complainers, walking after their own lusts, speaking great swelling words;" who while "they pro

66

"mise their followers liberty are themselves the servants "of corruption." (2 Pet. ii. 1-19; Jude 6-16.) And lastly, all of them are identified with the corrupters of the Seven Churches by the implied union of those doctrines of gross sensuality with the profession of magic and sorcery, a union which perhaps might be startling to us did we not know from the cotemporary records of heathen authors how generally these acts were professed by all those who lent themselves by such means to be the instruments or instigators of the crimes so prevalent amongst the higher orders of the Roman Empire.

Flectere si nequeo superos Acheronta movebo,

which has always been the feeling of the dregs of a corrupt society, was never more fully exemplified than in the mingled wickedness and superstition which marked the witches, sorcerers, and astrologers of the age of Tiberius, Nero, and Domitian. Elymas at Cyprus, Simon Magus" at Rome, Apollonius of Tyara at Ephesus, are well-known instances of the influence which such arts endeavoured to gain in rivalry to that of the Christian miracles. And it is therefore exactly what we might expect, when we find that with the grosser forms of vice in the Second Epistle to Timothy are joined "seducers" or "wizards" (yóŋtes) after the manner of the old Egyptian magicians "Jannes and Jambres who withstood Moses," (2 Tim. iii. 8, 13;) and that in the Seven Churches, "the woman Jezebel who calleth herself a pro

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phetess, and the false prophet Balaam," who is also held up as the type of the heresies attacked in 2 Pet. ii. 15, and Jude 11, and whose very name when translated into the Greek form of Nicolaus seems to have been fixed on one

For the union of licentiousness and magic in the representations of Simon Magus, see Iren. adv. Hær. i. 23.

* The same union is to be observed in Gal. v. 19, 20, ἀσελγεία, εἰδωλολατρεία, φαρμακεία.

of their sects, are spoken of as the prototypes of those who now endeavoured to lead the Christians "to eat things "sacrificed to idols and to commit fornication." (Rev. ii. 6, 14, 15, 20.)

element.

It might seem at first sight, after this brief survey of these Gentile wild and licentious speculations, that now at last we must have bid farewell to Judaism, that now at length we must have reached a form of evil which is the excess not of the servile spirit of the East, but of the free spirit of the West; not a perversion of the teaching of James and Cephas, but a perversion such as we have seen in later times of the teaching of Paul. To a certain extent this is true: the heterogeneous element which from the state of the Roman empire at this time must have been mixed up with any such movement has been already noticed. The Epistles to the Corinthians furnish indications that there had been, even at that early period, a danger lest the unrestrained profligacy of the Gentile world should shelter itself under the cover of Christian liberty. The close of the Epistle to the Galatians (v. 11—vi. 6.) indicates that there was a party who, while they despised the Judaizing Christians and prided themselves on being "spiritual," were in danger of "sensuality, idolatry, and witchcraft." The answer in the Epistle to the Romans (vi. 1.) to the question "Shall "we continue in sin that grace may abound?" proves that there was a fear even then of that which is implied to have actually taken place in 2 Pet. iii. 15, 16, that there were things in the Epistles of St. Paul "hard to be understood, "which the unstable and unlearned had wrested to their 66 own destruction."

element.

But stiff and unaccommodating as was the more Phari- Jewish saical form of Judaism to foreign usages, there was yet more than one point of view in which it lent itself to the corrupt practices and excesses of heathenism. The language of the older prophecies which had spoken "of the law going

"forth from Jerusalem, and of the riches of the Gentiles

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sures.

flowing into her,—of Gentiles coming to her light and kings to the brightness of her rising,—of the dromedaries "of Midian and Ephah, the flocks of Kedar, and the rams "of Nebaioth, her gates open continually, all nations and "kingdoms fearing her;" conveyed, as is well known, to the carnal minds of the later Jews, far different notions of universality and magnificence than those with which we are familiar through the application of it by the Christian Apostles. It was to them a universality not of spiritual, but of temporal dominion; it was a felicity not of moral and religious blessings, but of outward and worldly pleaSuch was the vision which floated before the more aspiring spirits amongst the purely Jewish zealots in their last desperate endeavour to throw off the Roman yoke in the war with Titus; such, when translated into a different form, was the gross conception of the millennial reign of Christ entertained by the Judaizing Cerinthus. With such feelings as these it is easy to conceive how to the Jewish Christians the all-absorbing comprehensiveness, the all-overpowering energy of the Church might seem to furnish a mean for promoting their object, which was denied to them by the fixed rigidity of the Synagogue. Whether or not they intended ultimately to receive Jesus of Nazareth as the true Messiah, whether or not their whole nation would at once acknowledge Him when He returned, as they hoped, in earthly splendour to take His seat on the throne of David, they might still use His name as a watchword for gathering round them the allies whom in the hour of triumph they might discard or retain at their pleasure.

Such is the general form which we can imagine to have been assumed by the Jewish nucleus of these heresies. It now remains to justify it in detail through their various manifestations.