CHAPTER V

THE MYSTIC LIFE IN THE EARLY CHURCH
" Agnosce, O Christiana, dignitatem tuam : et divins censors factus naturae, noli in veterem vilitatem degeneri conversatione redire. Memento cujus capitis, et cujus corporis sis membrum. Reminiscere, quia erutus de potestate tenebrarum, translatus es in Dei lumen et regnum." — (ST. LEO, De nativitate Domini?)
" Christianity for the first time reveals a complete knowledge of divine being; a deification of man." — (RUDOLPH EUCKEN.)
THE AGE OF ENTHUSIASM
THE tendency of life, to " spread sheaf-like " from each new point of vantage gained ; to fritter its first great dower of momentum amongst innumerable variations of the original type, to turn upon itself, break down and fall back from the first, spontaneous impulse to easy and quickly-crystallising habits, is nowhere better seen than in the primitive history of the Christian Church. So quick was this development that Harnack is able to enumerate eight independent factors of the primitive religion as preached in the second century, each one of which was responsible for a certain number of conversions, and was accepted by a certain group as the " essence " of Chris tianity.1 Though several of these factors — the " gospel of salvation," the idea of a New People, or " Third Race," and the cult of the Christian mysteries — have their origin in the mystical consciousness, only one, the gift of the " Spirit and Power," really represents that consciousness ; and this was already by no means the most prominent aspect of the Christian " Way."
The origin of that Way — the outbreak of life in a new direction, its saltatory ascent to freedom — was rooted in the unique personality of Jesus, the balance and wholeness of His spirit, His perfect fruition of Reality. We have seen that this exalted life was inherited to a less extent, yet still under forms of great richness and power, by Paul and John; that it was known, according to their measure, by many of the first generation of converts, who, orientat-
1 The Mission and Expansion of Christianity, Vol. I. p. 84. 261
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ing themselves anew to the Transcendent Order, " chang ing their minds," became conscious of that strange enhancement of vitality, that alteration in the rhythm and meaning of life, that inflowing power and peace which they called " the gift of the Spirit." x Soon, however, this very gift became itself amenable to the inexorable law of movement, variation, and change : for it was a living thing. Under the pressure of environment, and under the spur of altered conditions which brought fresh opportunities, limitations, and necessities in their wake, it tended to the production of new species, clothed itself in many different forms. Primitive characters became atrophied and dis appeared. New features were called into existence. The wholeness of the original type split up, and was recaptured only in isolated individuals, whose deep reality, and virile power of transcending circumstance, allowed them to repeat the curve of the life of Christ.
So far as the totality of the Christian body is concerned, the mystical impulse which was inherent in its origin appeared in the four centuries generally called primitive under four chief forms.
First, in the claim to the possession of " more abundant life," which showed itself both in prophetic and ecstatic phenomena, and in the spontaneous exhibition of power and newness : the poetic inspiration of prophets, the God-intoxicated courage of martyrs. This was a direct development and continuance of the " charismatic " or enthusiastic period.
Secondly, as that fresh period of youthfulness passed away, in the selection from the Christian body of an inner circle capable of living the "Higher" or mystical life; and in the art of contemplation, as taught by the Fathers of the third and fourth centuries and practised by these
1 The temper of Paul's later epistles and the first letter of John shows that these mystics did not feel themselves to be the solitary possessors of the secret of new life, but wrote in full confidence that some at least of those whom they addressed would be able to understand.
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spiritual Christians. This phase made of mysticism pre eminently the quest of the Vision of God : an unbalanced development of one side of the life of Jesus, its outward swing towards fruition of the Absolute.
Thirdly, in the birth of monasticism, the complementary quest of personal sanctity asserted itself : the love-impelled struggle to rebuild character in conformity with the Divine World. This, a new and genuine effort of spirit to cut a thoroughfare to its home, descends from the ethical and psychological side of the Christian gospel, with its emphasis on the need of regeneration.
Fourthly, the mystic tendency expressed itself in the drama of the Sacraments, which tended as they developed to recapitulate the interior facts of the Mystic Way, and to give the secret laws of spirit a symbolic and artistic form.
These four streams of development — the inspirational, the contemplative, the ascetic, the sacramental — though they arose in the order in which I have given them, are but the various manifestations of one tendency : the mystical tendency to transcendence inherent in humanity. They originate, one and all, in the spiritual consciousness; in Pauline language, are the " fruits " of one Spirit — the urgent, unresting Spirit of Life. Often they interpene trated each other, as happened especially with the ascetic and contemplative ideals. Often they reacted upon each other. Sometimes one seems to disappear, as happened frequently with the prophetic and inspirational type; but it always breaks out again when circumstances open a door. In the great and perfect mystic — St. Paul, St. Francis, St. Teresa, Boehme, Fox — all four strands are plaited to gether; the eager, romantic, spontaneous impulse, the dis ciplined power of attending to Reality, the passion for holiness, the sacramental vision of the world. Each con tributes its part to the "fulness of the stature of Christ."
These four strands then — these four paths cut by the new tendency of life — I propose to consider in order, as
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they appeared during the first four Christian centuries. In each of these centuries, we see that though one may be dominant, yet all are present. Prophecy, contempla tion, asceticism, sacramentalism, are permanent characters of the Christian type. First of them in time comes that great, uplifting sense of novelty which expressed itself under the forms of charismatic gifts and prophetic enthusi asm, and which inspired the idea of Christians as a " new " or " third " race.
One of the strongest marks of the primitive Church is the steady conviction, founded on experience, that some unknown powerful life transcending the known natural order energised humanity; especially that section of humanity — that " New Race," as it was not afraid to call itself — which had accepted the Christian " revelation " and set in hand the Christian process of growth. This conviction, already prominent in the writer of Acts, at last crystallised in the " belief in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life," which found a place in the Nicene Creed : but this formula is merely a memorial raised over the sepulchre of vital experiences — experiences in which that which we should now call the elan vital in its highest form of expression was felt and known, energising the " little flock," breaking out sheaf-like into the " many fruits " of the " one Spirit," and producing fresh effects within the temporal world.
This " Spirit," this new, abundant, enthusiastic life, took in experience a two-fold form. As turned towards Trans cendent Reality, in its purely religious aspect, it expressed itself in a deep, permanent, inward conviction of mystical union with God, a " sonship," which included the brotherly relation of charity with all other twice-born men. These, the "New Race," were the members of a divine family, already living Eternal Life : and their elder brother was the exalted Christ. As a secondary condition of con sciousness, possession of the " Spirit " showed itself in new strange powers, those alterations and enhancements
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of personality and often bizarre psychic phenomena which mark all great epochs of spiritual vitality. These pheno mena represent, as it were, the lowest common measure of mystical consciousness existing in the primitive com munities : the extent to which the contagious quality of that fresh life, enjoyed and freely imparted by the Chris tian leaders, was felt by the crowd, dragged up in the wake of these stronger spirits to fresh levels of experience, and made to move in " worlds not realised.''
In the fourteenth century, during the mystical revival of the Friends of God,1 in the fifteenth amongst the Anabaptists,2 and in the seventeenth, when the Quaker movement was in its first enthusiastic stage,3 such collec tive experiences of mystic phenomena, and such general, sometimes disorderly exhibitions of psychic " gifts," under the influence of leaders of great spiritual genius, were common; and help us to understand the conditions which brought about the " charismatic " period in the Early Church. A social life of close sympathy and enthusiasm then welded the small communities together; a common passion and belief, a common concentration upon spiritual interests, created an atmosphere peculiarly favourable to the development of the transcendental sense. Each little Christian church, in so far as it remained true to its mission, was a forcing-house for the latent mystic faculty in man. The principles which govern the psychology of crowds apply as well to religious as to secular assemblies : 4 but here it is the buried craving for supersensual satis faction, the instinct for Eternity, the stifled sense of a duty towards an Appellant Love, rather than the primitive and savage aspects of human personality, which emerge in response to the changed rhythm of the surrounding life and impose themselves upon the general consciousness.
1 Rufus Jones, Studies in Mystical Religion, p. 257.
2 J. O. Hannay, The Spirit and Origin of Christian Monasticism, p. 14.
3 Many examples in Fox's Journal.
* Cf. Le Bon, Psychologie des Foules.
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A corporate condition of receptivity, of eager and con vinced attentiveness to Reality, may thus be produced, which stings to a temporary alertness the spiritual " spark" that is present in every soul. Thus in the early Christian gatherings profound alterations of tension were felt, result ing in abnormal and sometimes undisciplined outbursts of psychic energy. Men were suddenly caught up to new levels of life, filled with celestial enthusiasm, and dis cerned powers in themselves which they did not know that they possessed. Thoroughfares — though seldom perfect thoroughfares — were opened for that strange inspiring power which Paul and John learned by long discipline to exhibit in orderly splendour; but which often broke out in crude psychic automatisms in those whose " conver sion " had not passed on from the enthusiastic to the pur gative and educative stage, and who remained — as Paul indeed names them — " children in mind."1 Paul's letters and the book of Acts show how violently and frequently such collective " manifestations of the Spirit " were felt in the primitive congregations of the first century : up- rushes of supernal enthusiasm, abrupt dilatations of con sciousness resulting sometimes in prophetic utterance, sometimes in ecstatic but unintelligible speech, sometimes experienced as a sudden, exultant consciousness of the Presence of God, when " the Spirit fell on them."2
That they were a " new people," a Third Race, a special variation of the human species destined to " inherit eternal life " and possessing as none others did the seed of im mortality — this notion, interwoven with crudely realistic expectations of a Second Coming, when there should be "a resurrection of the dead but not of
1 i Cor. xiv. 20.
2 I Cor. xiv. ; Acts viii. 15-20, x. 44, xi. 15, xiii. 2 and 52, xix. 6.
3 The Didache, or Teaching of the Apostles, § 16 (good translation in Lightfoot's Apostolic Fathers, pp. 216-253). The date and provenance of this treatise are still a matter of controversy ; but it undoubtedly re presents a tone of mind common in the primitive period.
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for the Christian consciousness. This sense of special life at work in them and a special destiny at hand — of a true difference in kind between the " new creature " and the normal man — shown in the steady persistence of visions, ecstacies and apocalyptic writings, also inspires the peculiar reverence felt for the prophet, the mystical teacher, the God-intoxicated man, as being of special value to the com munity. These prophets seem to have gone to and fro amongst the earlier churches like knights-errant, wrapped round with their romantic visions of a wider universe, a more exalted life. Veritable " minnesingers of the Holy Ghost," they kept alive the wild, free poetic quality of the Christian revelation; were a perpetual check on life's tendency to lag behind. They were received everywhere with respect; a respect which soon created the need of some standard whereby the false prophet might be separ ated from the true. We see the beginning of this development even in the Johannine period.1 In that enigmatic book the Teaching of the Apostles , the false prophet — the imitation mystic — has become a recognised danger; though the true prophet, who is evidently still looked upon as a permanent and not uncommon feature of Christian life, has lost none of his prestige. His acts and utterances are sacred; he is not amenable to ordinary rules. " Any prophet speaking in the Spirit ye shall not try, neither discern; for every sin shall be forgiven, but this sin shall not be forgiven." One rule only, and that the hardest, may be enforced against him : his life must tally with the vision he proclaims. " Every prophet teach ing the truth, if he doeth not what he teacheth, is a false prophet." 2
The " prophet " was the man in whom the " Spirit," the new dower of vitality, the higher consciousness, which animated in theory the whole Church, broke out with special power. But the essentially mystical hope of a new life, which
1 I John iv. I. 2 1 'be Teaching of the A-postles, § u.
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the Epistle of Barnabas calls " the beginning and end of our faith," * was the hope held out to every initiate of the primitive time. This profound conviction of novelty it is which inspires the first mission preaching. It runs like a thread of fire through the Christian Apocalypse. " Him that overcometh ... I will write upon him my new name," " they sung a new song," " I saw a new heaven and a new earth," and so to the last awful declaration, " He that sat upon the throne said, Behold! I make all things new."2 The Pauline conviction " to every one of us is given grace"3 — a dower of transcendent vitality- was the official belief, if not the universal experience. It has left its mark upon the ceremonies and sacraments of the Church; it crops up constantly in the writings of the early Apologists. It made of the real Christian some one set apart, not by his creed — one amongst the myriad beliefs of the later Empire — but by the tendency of his life, the depth, richness, and infinite possibilities of the universe in which he lived. " Christians," says Swete, " were readily distinguished by it, not only from their heathen neigh bours, but from the Jews, with whom they had been at first confused. They were seen to form a third class or type (tertium genus) living amongst Pagans and Jews, but incapable of mingling with either, or losing their iden tity."4
This strong corporate consciousness of power and new ness, the persistent exhibition of " charismatic " gifts, the exultant courage of the martyrs, the sense of separation from the world, continued to a certain extent — though with ever-decreasing radiance — through the first three centuries of the Christian era. At first these characters were so common as to be taken for granted : the normal marks of the " new " or " peculiar " people,5 the " God-loving and
1 The Epistle of Barnabas, cap. I (Migne, Pat. Grac. T. I). Translation in Lightfoot's Apostolic Fathers, pp. 239-288.
2 Rev. ifi. 12, v. 9, xxi. I and 5. 3 Eph. iv. 7.
4 The Holy Spirit in the Ancient Church, p. 401. 5 i Clement, Iviii.
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God-fearing Race." * Thus Irenaeus says, writing in the second century, " We hear many brethren in the Church who possess prophetic gifts, and through the Spirit speak all kinds of languages, and bring to light for the general benefit the hidden things of men, and declare the mysteries of God." 2 With the passing of time, however, these "gifts" died out amongst the laity; though they long survived in the professionally religious class, to which the more ardent and spiritual natures — possessed of an instinct for reality, and capable of discipline and growth — inevit ably tended to belong.
The primitive idea of Christianity as a supra-normal life, the achievement of a complete humanity " in Christ," an appropriation of the " Spirit " and of " power," the acquirement of perfect freedom, was never wholly lost. It appeared in all its old strength in sporadic outbursts of enthusiasm, such as that which is known as the " Mon- tanist " movement of the second century. This Montanist movement, which seems to have originated in the strong but undisciplined mystical power of Montanus and his prophetess daughters, and attracted many of his most spiritually minded contemporaries, was really an attempt to check the rapid toning-down and secularisation of Christianity, the rapid disappearance of mystical ideals, and give practical expression to the Johannine doctrine of the "Paraclete," the actual, divine life dwelling in and energising the Christian Church. It was founded on a clear personal recognition of an inspiring spirit — a trans cendent life-force — working like leaven in human per sonality; changing it, leading it on and up, and some times breaking through into the field of consciousness in ecstatic intuitions of spiritual things. It restored to their primitive position the old romantic fervour, the Pauline sense of being " God-possessed." For Montanus, as for the poet of the Odes of Solomon, the mind of the Christian prophet is a lyre, and the Spirit is the plectrum which plays 1 Martyrdom of Polycarp, III. 2 Contra H&r., V. 6.
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thereon.1 The aim of the Montanists was the establish ment of a " spiritual church of spiritual men " : and they did, as a fact, revive for a time in their communities the chief charismatic phenomena of the Pauline churches. Ecstatics of various grades — prophets, visionaries, and clairvoyants — were common in the Montanist church.2 Tertullian, its greatest convert, often refers to them : and composed a long treatise, now lost, upon ecstacy.
Nor did the manifestation of abnormal power, the instinct for a great spiritual destiny, die with the fall of the Montanists. It represented one of the fundamental principles of the Christian family; though as that family enlarged its boundaries and psychological conversion was more and more often replaced by mere formal belief, it tended inevitably to become an unrealised dream for the average Christian, who had changed his religion indeed but not his mind. Tormented by the vision of a " more abundant life " needed but not attained, the promise of renewal was soon identified by such Christians, not with any present possession of vitality and joy, any first-hand adjustment to a Perfection awaiting them in the Here- and-Now, but with the old eschatological hope of a coming " millenium and resurrection of the flesh " — the mystery of the Kingdom and of New Creatures reduced to crudest and most concrete terms. It was easy to find authority for such doctrines in the Synoptic gospels, which presented the apocalyptic vision of Jesus on its most definitely eschatological side, and in the swarm of Jewish and Christian prophetic writings, many of which possessed almost canonical authority. We have in the New Testa ment canon a superb example of such literature at its best : its passion, vividness, and rugged splendour, its impres sive power. So popular were these ideas, says Harnack,
1 Epiphanius, Panarion (Migne, Pat Gr&c., T. XLI).
* Cf. Swete, op. cit., pp. 77-83 ; Hannay, The Spirit and Origin of Christian Monasticism, pp. 60-70; and Rufus Jones, Studies in Mystical Religion, pp. 39-49. For another view Harnack, History of Dogma, Vol.