THE CATHOLIC CHURCH OF THE NICENE ERA.
By Elder I. E. Kimball
[This is article 9 of the series on the apostasy of the early church. Each is independent, but all are connected.] A PECULIAR interest attaches to the church of the fourth century. Some who see along the lines of Catholicity have thought they beheld at this period a preëminently holy church. No grosser conception can be imagined. There was a remarkable cluster of notable divines at this time, who compounded church principles, and formulated the discipline which should prove an earthly anchor to the church in all after time. Nicene church principles manacle the Catholic Church of to-day, and the leaders of that day have since then been regarded as sovereign interpreters of the word, so that now all interpretations of Scripture must be rendered according to the patriotic construction. Here, then, according to the Catholic notion, the eternal, life-giving Fountain flowed freely for the world; and, sorry I am to say, this delusion has been received by many Protestants. The principal lights of the Nicene era were Athanasius, Cyril, Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzen, Epiphanius, Ephraëm, Syrus, Chrysostom, Hilary, bishop of Poitiers in Gaul, Ambrose, archbishop of Milan, Jerome, the great scholar, Rufinus, Augustine, bishop of Hippo, and Cassianus. The historians were Eusebius, Theodoret, Socrates, and Sozomen. Monkery is the distinguishing feature of this time, to which we must direct attention. All the luminaries above named gave it their hearty suffrage, and spoke of it in terms of unmixed praise. No one who is acquainted with the facts will deny this. The monks became the depositaries of religion for the church, and their conception of God and righteousness has been given through the Catholic Church to the world ever since. The church of that period is bound in the sheaf with monkery. So universal was the conception that religion and righteousness were the exclusive inheritance of the monks, that, "to become converted," or "to become religious," meant merely to turn monk. They were the religiosae. The words "monk," "solitary," "hermit," "a dweller in the desert," or "anchorite," are interchangeably used to signify persons who, disengaging themselves from family relations and the world, retired to the wilderness or desert, to lone tombs and sepulchral caverns, there to sing and fast and pray. The great divines, as Augustine, Athanasius, Jerome, Chrysostom, Basil, and the Gregories, extolled monasticism as the "divine philosophy," the "angelic virtue." And Augustine said of the monks, "To those who, like the solitaries, have reached the highest possible stage of Christian perfection, and in whom faith, hope, and charity are complete, the Scriptures are not necessary, except for the purpose of instructing others."—De doctrina Christiana, lib. 1, c. 36. So here we have Augustine, the greatest divine of the age, pointing to the monk as the pattern of "Christian perfection," to whom the Scriptures were no longer necessary. We will study the portrait of divine excellence with care. Many of the most noted eremites commenced their ascetic discipline about the time of the martyrdom of Cyprian, A.D. 258. At the beginning of the fourth century it became the rage. Anthony, the Egyptian, who died about A.D. 356, is the first notable example handed down to us. He was an ascetic for nearly seventy years. Pachomius originated the system under which monasteries have since been built. Prodigious multitudes soon took the monastic vows. Thousands upon thousands found for themselves a lodgment in the wilderness. Armies were drafted from thence. Palladius speaks in several places of two, three, five, and seventeen thousand monks under the superintendence of some celebrated anchorite, or abbot. Ten thousand nuns are mentioned as belonging to one religious establishment. Its effect was to drain off from the social body almost all religious feeling. The masses who were left, although the accredited recipients of the sacrament, were wholly unrestrained by religious feeling. The religion of the Nicene era (if, indeed, we may so speak of it) was exclusively with the monks. Gallant cavaliers would feign be as prodigal as possible, lest they seem to be "religious," that is, inclined toward monkery. And, although Augustine, Ambrose, Basil, were not monks, they were third or fourth-rate Christians, according to the opinions of those times. Monks and nuns took vows of celibacy and virginity, abstinence, poverty, and obedience, withdrew from the world, and spent their time in continued fasting, from two to twenty days together, doling out prayers by the hundred, eating raw herbs, gashing themselves, and searing their bodies with hot irons, loading themselves with iron fetters, etc. But it is time for us to inquire from whence this conception of duty and righteousness arises. Did Christ enjoin this? Whence, then, can it come? Ah, to one acquainted with Gentile practices all is plain! The old Egyptian religion had its monks; so had the Greeks. The Buddhistic religion has a priesthood, consisting wholly of monks, or cenobites. We have the idea of the monk set forth in the Brahman "Laws of Manu":— In hot weather sit between four fires with sun above; in rain, uncovered; in cold weather, wet clothes. Sleep on the bare ground. Having shuffled off the body by these modes, which great sages have practiced, and, becoming void of sorrow or fear, he rises into the divine essence. The Vedanta of the Brahmans teaches that there is only one being in the universe—God—all else illusion (so think modern Christian Scientists, so thought the Nicene monks), and that the true end of life is to escape from the illusion, and be absorbed into Brahma, the created and creator. Sankhara, a Vedanta philosopher, said: "I am Brahm; I am eternal, pure, free, one consistent. Whosoever annihilates all his desires, and ceases from himself, then becomes one with the universal spirit." So the Catholic monks of the fourth century went into it with all requisite assiduity. To annihilate every desire or emotion of the flesh was their sole aim. Lecky says, "The idea of a saint was a half-starved, dirty madman, who spent his life in useless self-torture." Athanasius relates with hearty approval that St. Anthony, who ate but once in five days, and then in an impoverished way, was never guilty of washing his feet. And St. Abraham for fifty years washed neither face nor feet. They made a business of fasting the year through, eating once in two, five, or seven days, as they were able to endure. Cyprian, sometime before the year A.D. 250, had advocated celibacy and virginity as the "angel virtue." Augustine and all the doctors urged on the pestiferous delusion, until it was thought no one could be pure without taking the vows upon them. "Constantine almost adored" the company of perpetual virgins, and changed the ancient Roman law which degraded the men who after twenty-five remained unmarried. He accounted it folly for man to go about so to increase his kind, and ordained that those who lived in chastity and virginity should be privileged above the common people.—Sozomen, Hist. Eccl., lib. 1, c. 9. The early Council of Alcyra forbade deacons to marry without their bishop's consent. The Neo-Cæsarean Council absolutely prohibited the marriage of presbyters. The thirty-third canon of the Council at Elvira ordered all clergy, if already married, to abstain from their wives. The prohibition extended to monks and nuns. So the Council of Chalcedon decreed that "no monk or nun should marry," that is, forsake their profession.