Testimonies of the Ante-Nicene Fathers to the Divinity of Christ

524 Pages·2016·38.89 MB·English

by  Burton E.

TESTIMONIES
OF THE
ANTE-NICENE FATHERS
THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST.
THE REV. EDWARD BURTON, D.D.
$t
REGIUS PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY AND CANON OF CHRIST CHURCH.
SECOND EDITION WITH CONSIDERABLE ADDITIONS.
T&ot>, r,(Auq e/c narepuv nccTepaq ha^e^Kemi ryv roiacvTrjv liavQiav
a'TK&tiKvvQptv. Athanas. deDecret. Syn. Nic,§.27.Vol.I.p.233.
OXFORD,
;
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
MDCCCXXIX.

:
INTRODUCTION.
1HE
object of the present work is to lay before
the reader a series of passages extracted from the
writings of those Fathers, who lived before the
Council of Nice, and which appear to support the
doctrine of the divinity of Jesus Christ. It might
seem hardly necessary to prove at much lengthy that
the belief of those early Christians was most likely
to be genuine and apostolical. That all corruptions
are of gradual and successive growth, may be said
to be a self-evident proposition and that any doc-
:
trine is most likely to have been pure and genuine
at a period which was not far removed from its first
promulgation, is surely as plain and undeniable, as
that we are likely to find a stream more clear and
uncorrupt, the nearer we approach its source.
Let us compare Clement and Ignatius, who were
We
contemporaries of the apostles, with ourselves.
can only learn the sentiments of the apostles from
their writings. These have come down to us with
the errors and corruptions which the lapse of eight-
een centuries must unavoidably have introduced
we read them with a previous knowledge of different
and opposite senses being deduced from the same
a 2
:
INTRODUCTION.
iv
passage and the notions in which we have been
:
brought up, if not a spirit of party and of prejudice,
are likely to warp our judgments and influence our
interpretations. But Clement and Ignatius, if they
found things hard to be understood in the writings
of the apostles, could refer for a solution of the diffi-
culty either to the writers themselves, or to other
apostles who had known them familiarly, and who
had laboured together with them. There are some
points of doctrine, of which it seems impossible to
conceive, that Clement and Ignatius could be igno-
rant. To suppose that they did not know whether
Peter or Paul or John believed Jesus Christ to be
essentially God, or a mere mortal man, seems as im-
probable, nay, I would say, as impossible, as to sup-
pose that they did not know, whether these apostles
believed Jesus Christ to have been actually nailed to
the cross. If Clement and Ignatius did know what
was the belief of the apostles concerning the divinity
or humanity of Jesus, it necessarily follows that they
held the same belief themselves; and though the
writings which they have left are extremely few, it
is highly probable that some traces of their belief
upon this subject would appear in their own works
at all events it becomes very important that their
writings should be examined, that we may see whe-
ther such traces exist or no.
If we carry the same train of reasoning into the
second century, we shall find a similar improbability,
that Justin or Ireneeus, who had seen and heard the
;
INTRODUCTION.
v
contemporaries of the apostles, should not know for
certain what was the apostolical doctrine concerning
the nature of Christ. It may be said, that the far-
ther we advance from the original source, the greater
chance there is of our meeting with accidental errors
and intentional corruptions. But this remark, though
often made, requires some restriction and qualifica-
tion. That a greater number of persons should be
followers of an error which had already existed, and
that heresies themselves should increase, was likely
to happen as theknowledge ofChristianityextended:
but the very increase of Christianity made it more
and more difficult that all Christians should unite in
corrupting their common faith. As soon as the Epi-
stles and Gospels were translated into any one lan-
guage, an obstacle was presented to any general and
uniform departure from the doctrine of the apostles
and every new nation converted to the Christian
faith would afford an additional security to the in-
tegrity and unity of that faith. If we suppose that
the great body of believers at any particular period,
at the time of the Council of Nice for instance, held
opinions concerning the divine and human natures
of Christ, which were totally different from those of
the apostles, we must suppose that the Christians of
different countries had either kept pace with each
other, and by mutual agreement made the same suc-
cessive alterations in their creeds, or that at one
particular time they all agreed by one sudden and
simultaneous act to alter the primitive belief. The
a 3
INTRODUCTION.
vi
latter supposition is manifestly absurd. All corrup-
tions, as observed above, must be gradual and pro-
gressive and if the apostles preached, and the early
:
Christians believed, as the Unitarians tell us, that
Jesus Christ was a mere man, the notion of his di-
vinity could not have been introduced and finally
established in the church without long controversy
and continued opposition. Historians would not
have been silent as to the progress of so great a
change, such a total revolution in the religious be-
lief of Christians. Volumes must have been written
in support of either doctrine the writers of one age
:
would be found to differ from those who preceded
them ; and since we have works remaining of all
the three first centuries, we should find traces of all
those successive changes which must have existed
between the creed of the apostolical times and that
of the Council of Nice.
There is indeed another hypothesis, which might
have been rejected as absurd, if advocates had not
been found who actually advanced it. It has been
said,, that the doctrine of the Council of Nice was
entirely a new doctrine, which had never been main-
tained before, but which was fabricated and pro-
mulgated by the unanimous collusion of the Fathers
assembled there. The existence of such a notion,
improbable and irrational as it may appear, makes
it desirable that an inquiry should be instituted
similar to that, which is the object of the present
work. Since we have writings of the three cen-