“P” Entries

Palestine, History of, Between the Testaments.—The history of Palestine [during the period between the Testaments] may be divided into six sections, corresponding to the different masters whose sway it owned:HBS 372.2

1. The Persians were its nominal masters to the year b. c. 333.HBS 372.3

2. Alexander the Great conquered it in that year, and was its master for ten years.HBS 373.1

3. On his death (b. c. 323) it fell, after a long contest, under the Ptolemies, or Macedonian kings of Egypt, and so remained for more than a hundred years, to b. c. 204.HBS 373.2

4. Then it came under the rule of the Macedonian kingdom of Syria, till it was set free by the Maccabees, b. c. 163.HBS 373.3

5. It was ruled by the Maccabees for another century, tillHBS 373.4

6. The Roman general Pompey conquered it (b. c. 63) and made it tributary to the great mistress of the world.—“A Manual of Bible History,” Rev. William G. Blaikie, D. D., LL. D., p. 383. London: T. Nelson & Sons, 1906.HBS 373.5

Pantheism, Not a Religion.—As a matter of historical fact, no religion has ever been a pantheism, nor has any pantheism ever constituted a religion. The Hindu philosophies, for example-and this is especially true of the Vedantâ-are just as much and just as little a religion as are the speculations of Plato and Plotinus, of Spinoza and Jacob Boehme. They are of the nature of after-thoughts, hypotheses to account for things as they are, to be studied and criticized as products of the logical intellect rather than of the spontaneous and inspired reason. Pantheism, in all its forms, is on its ideal side the deification of the actual, or the apotheosis of what is, and its ultimate truth is the right of all that is, whatever it is, to be. Hence it can be quite consistently used to vindicate the most multitudinous polytheism as well as the grossest cults; but what it cannot do is to take the place of any one of the gods or cults it vindicates, and by inviting worship become a religion. The impersonal must be personalized before thought, which is a subjective activity, can pass into worship, which is a reciprocal action, or a process of converse and intercourse between living minds.—“The Philosophy of the Christian Religion,” Andrew Martin Fairbairn, M. A., D. D., LL. D., p. 241. New York: George H. Doran Company, copyright 1902.HBS 373.6

Pantheism, Not Originating Among Semitic People.—While pantheism is native to both Hindu and Greek thought, it has never appeared as a native product among any Semitic people, the cases which do occur having been due to the action of alien thought on special persons.—Id., p. 219.HBS 373.7

Pantheism, Its View of God.—What view of God does pantheism hold? For one thing God is no more nor greater than the sum total of things. He is the ground of all things. He is just the essence of which mind and matter, with their modes, are the attributes. He did not create the world, because essentially he is the world. The world is not an effect of which God is the cause, for the same reason that we would not say a man is the cause of his own hand or other organ of his body. If we think of God as cause of the universe, it is only “as the apple is the cause of its red color, as milk is the cause of whiteness, sweetness, and liquidness, and not as the father is the cause of the child’s existence, or even as the sun is the cause of the heat.”HBS 373.8

Again: God is not a person, for personality implies limitation, according to pantheism. I know myself only in contrast with something not myself. This limitation is essential to the idea of personality, urges pantheism, and hence it cannot belong to God.HBS 373.9

This then is the mark of pantheism; it insists that there is but one real and abiding existence. In recent philosophy this attempt to resolve all diverse things into one is known as Monism. Pantheism is essentially monistic. It cannot tolerate any form of dualism save that of external appearance. Properly understood, the world is one, not two or more. All the variety we see in the world is a manifestation, in one form or another, of the one eternal substance. By an inner law peculiar to itself this substance is capable of this varied expression. According to Spinoza, thought is one attribute of substance, but personality is not. The universal substance is impersonal.—“Why Is Christianity True?” E. Y. Mullins, D. D., LL. D., pp. 25, 26. Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, copyright 1905.HBS 373.10

Pantheism, God Identified with Nature.—Deism conceived God as above and apart from the world. He had so made it that it was a system complete in itself; its perfection was seen in its ability to do its work for an indefinite period independently of him. The proper analogy of their relations was the watch and its maker. Without the maker, the watch or the world could not be; his was the idea of the whole, his the manufacture of the several parts, the calculations, the adjustments, and the first construction. Once finished, his wisdom was seen in the length of time nature could go on without repairs; and if repairs were needed, they could be done only by acts of “intervention” or “interference,” stopping the whole or some part of the machine in order to readjust the mechanism.HBS 374.1

This is very broadly but truly stated; it was the common idea of the eighteenth century, carried out by the deist to its logical conclusion-the complete separation or inter-independence of God and the world, modified with the help of a more or less infirm logic by the apologist, so as to allow Deity some part and interest in the world he had made. But each had at root the same idea: such complete transcendence, that if God acted in the world at all, his action was miraculous, and must be described or discussed in terms that implied he was outside the system, and was able to get inside it only by some process of interference or suspension of law.HBS 374.2

Pantheism, on the other hand, reversed this process: God was the causa immanens, inside nature, not separable from it, the eternal ground or substance whose infinite modes are our phenomena of space and time. Intelligence was the mode of an infinite attribute which was termed “thought,” and body the mode of an attribute termed “extension.” Deity must have an infinite multitude of attributes, but these were the only two revealed in experience, and so all we knew. But this theory as completely dissolved God in nature as the other held him apart from it. He was but the abstract of our concrete experience, the hidden energy conceived not as energy but as being, which effects or suffers the cycle of changes we call the universe. He was not the natura naturata, the begotten or produced nature, our phenomenal existence, but natura naturans, the begetting or producing nature, whose infinite modes were ever forming and ever dissolving. He alone was; everything else was but appearance, the swiftly formed and dissolved changes of an infinite kaleidoscope.—“The Place of Christ in Modern Theology,” Andrew Martin Fairbairn, M. A., D. D., pp. 414, 415. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1893.HBS 374.3

Pantheism, No Place for Morality in.—Morality is impossible in a pantheistic view of the world. If man is a part of God, and not a personal being distinct from God, his acts are God’s acts. Sin, as Spinoza held, is simply privation, partial existence, this and no more. What a man does is necessitated, not freely chosen. The universal substance does not admit of free moral choice. All happenings are simply the outbreakings of this substance on the surface of things. We think we are free, but this is illusion. Human life is like plant life, variegated, rich, wonderful, but without responsibility for good or evil. A beautiful character deserves no more credit for its moral attractiveness than a pansy for its varied hues. The history of men is like the history of plants, necessitated by an inner principle. There is no moral history, but only natural history. Practically carried out, pantheism would lead to moral chaos in human society. All restraint would be removed. Men would simply drift along the lines of least resistance, and we know whither this would lead.HBS 374.4

On the religious side also pantheism fails. Spinoza was influenced by a religious motive, but in the end he sacrificed the religious to the speculative interest. Pantheism cannot be a religion. Fellowship between persons is the core of religion. An impersonal substance cannot serve this end. Pantheism borrows from theism the moment it admits fellowship or any other of the distinctive blessings of the religious life.HBS 375.1

Now the facts of man’s moral and religious consciousness are all directly opposed to pantheism. We know we are free and responsible. Consciousness teaches this. Pantheism is shattered on the rock of consciousness. We firmly believe that we have fellowship with God. This only saves us from despair in our deepest sin and suffering.—“Why Is Christianity True?” E. Y. Mullins, D. D., LL. D., pp. 30, 31. Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, copyright 1905.HBS 375.2

Papacy, Deposing Power of.—When, in 1207, John revolted, he was excommunicated, and the whole country was placed under the ban of Rome, the throne was declared vacant, and was offered to the king of France. Such was the power of Rome in those days that John submitted abjectly.... The country was handed over to Rome in the presence of the papal legate, Randulph, and received back by John on his “promising for himself and his successors fealty and a yearly payment of 1,000 marks.”HBS 375.3

The terms of John’s oath, taken on 15th May, 1213, are as follows:HBS 375.4

“I, John, by the grace of God, King of England and Lord of Ireland, in order to expiate my sins, from my own free will and the advice of my barons, give to the Church of Rome, to Pope Innocent and his successors, the kingdom of England, and all other prerogatives of my crown. I will hereafter hold them as the Pope’s vassal. I will be faithful to God, to the Church of Rome, to the Pope my master, and to his successors legitimately elected. I promise to pay him a tribute of 1,000 marks; to wit, 700 for the kingdom of England, and 300 for the kingdom of Ireland.”HBS 375.5

The triumph of the Pope was short-lived, for two years later the king was forced by his barons, who felt greatly humiliated by the degradation of this submission, to affix his seal to the famous Magna Charta, the great charter of the liberties of England.—“The Bible and the British Museum,” Ada R. Habershon, pp. 122, 123. London: Morgan and Scott, 1909.HBS 375.6

Papacy, Historical Notes on Papal Absolutism.—The idea of papal absolutism and infallibility, like that of the sinlessness of Mary, can be traced to apocryphal origin. It is found first in the second century, in the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies, which contain a singular system of speculative Ebionism, and represent James of Jerusalem, the brother of the Lord, as the bishop of bishops, the center of Christendom, and the general vicar of Christ; he is the last arbiter, from whom there is no appeal; to him even Peter must give an account of his labors, and to him the sermons of Peter were sent for safe keeping.HBS 375.7

In the Catholic Church the same idea, but transferred to the Bishop of Rome, is first clearly expressed in the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, that huge forgery of papal letters, which appeared in the middle of the ninth century, and had for its object the completion of the independence of the episcopal hierarchy from the state, and the absolute power of the popes, as the legislators and judges of all Christendom. Here the most extravagant claims are put into the mouths of the early popes, from Clement (91) to Damasus (384), in the barbarous French Latin of the Middle Ages, and with such numerous and glaring anachronisms as to force the conviction of fraud even upon Roman Catholic scholars. One of these sayings is: “The Roman Church remains to the end free from stain of heresy.” Soon afterward arose, in the same hierarchical interest, the legend of the donation of Constantine and his baptism by Pope Silvester, interpolations of the writings of the Fathers, especially Cyprian and Augustine, and a variety of fictions embodied in the Gesta Liberii and the Liber Pontificalis, and sanctioned by Gratianus (about 1150) in his Decretum, or collection of canons, which (as the first part of the Corpus Juris Canonici) became the code of laws for the whole Western Church, and exerted an extraordinary influence. By this series of pious frauds the medieval Papacy, which was the growth of ages, was represented to the faith of the church as a primitive institution of Christ, clothed with absolute and perpetual authority.HBS 376.1

The popes since Nicholas I (858-867), who exceeded all his predecessors in the boldness of his designs, freely used what the spirit of a hierarchical, superstitious, and uncritical age furnished them. They quoted the fictitious letters of their predecessors as genuine, the Sardican canon on appeals as a canon of Nicaa, and the interpolated sixth canon of Nicaa, “the Roman Church always had the primacy,” of which there is not a syllable in the original; and nobody doubted them. Papal absolutism was in full vigor from Gregory VII to Boniface VIII. Scholastic divines, even Thomas Aquinas, deceived by these literary forgeries, began to defend papal absolutism over the whole church, and the Councils of Lyons (1274) and of Florence (1439) sanctioned it, although the Greeks soon afterward rejected the false union based upon such assumption.HBS 376.2

But absolute power, especially of a spiritual kind, is invariably intoxicating and demoralizing to any mortal man who possesses it. God Almighty alone can bear it, and even he allows freedom to his rational creatures. The reminiscence of the monstrous period when the Papacy was a football in the hands of bold and dissolute women (904-962), or when mere boys, like Benedict IX (1033), polluted the papal crown with the filth of unnatural vices, could not be quite forgotten. The scandal of the papal schism (1378-1409), when two and even three rival popes excommunicated and cursed each other, and laid all Western Christendom under the ban, excited the moral indignation of all good men in Christendom, and called forth, in the beginning of the fifteenth century, the three councils of Pisa, Constance, and Basle, which loudly demanded a reformation of the church, in the head as well as in the members, and asserted the superiority of a council over the Pope.HBS 376.3

The Council of Constance (1414-1418), the most numerous ever seen in the West, deposed two popes-John XXIII (the infamous Balthasar Cossa, who had been recognized by the majority of the church), on the charge of a series of crimes (May 29, 1415), and Benedict XIII, as a heretic who sinned against the unity of the church (July 26, 1417), and elected a new pope, Martin V (Nov. 11, 1517), who had given his adhesion to the council, though after his accession to power he found ways and means to defeat its real object, i. e., the reformation of the church.HBS 376.4

This council was a complete triumph of the Episcopal system, and the papal absolutists and infallibilists are here forced to the logical dilemma of either admitting the validity of the council, or invalidating the election of Martin V and his successors. Either course is fatal to their system. Hence there has never been an authoritative decision on the ecumenicity of this council, and the only subterfuge is to say that the whole case is an extraordinary exception; but this, after all, involves the admission that there is a higher power in the church over the Papacy.HBS 377.1

The Reformation shook the whole Papacy to its foundation, but could not overthrow it. A powerful reaction followed, headed by the Jesuits. Their general, Lainez, strongly advocated papal infallibility in the Council of Trent, and declared that the church could not err only because the Pope could not err. But the council left the question undecided, and the Roman catechism ascribes infallibility simply to “the Catholic Church,” without defining its seat. Bellarmine advocated and formularized the doctrine, stating it as an almost general opinion that the Pope could not publicly’ teach a heretical dogma, and as a probable and pious opinion that Providence will guard him even against private heresy. Yet the same Bellarmine was witness to the innumerable blunders of the edition of the Latin Vulgate prepared by Sixtus V, corrected by his own hand, and issued by him as the only true and authentic text of the Sacred Scriptures, with the stereotyped forms of anathema upon all who should venture to change a single word; and Bellarmine himself gave the advice that all copies should be called in, and a new edition printed with a lying statement in the preface making the printers the scapegoats for the errors of the Pope! This whole business of the Vulgate is sufficient to explode papal infallibility; for it touches the very source of divine revelation. Other Italian divines, like Alphonsus Liguori, and Jesuitical textbooks, unblushingly use long-exploded medieval fictions and interpolations as a groundwork of papal absolutism and infallibility.HBS 377.2

It is not necessary to follow the progress of the controversy between the Episcopal and the papal systems during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is sufficient to say that the greatest Catholic divines of France and Germany, including Bossuet and Möhler, together with many from other countries, down to the eighty-eight protesting bishops in the Vatican Council, were anti-infallibilists; and that popular catechisms of the Roman Church, extensively used till 1870, expressly denied the doctrine, which is now set up as an article of faith necessary to eternal salvation.—“Rome and the Newest Fashions in Religion,” Hon. William E. Gladstone, pp. 99-102. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1875.HBS 377.3

Papacy, Builders of, Leo I, Aspiration of.—It was the sublime effort of Leo to make the church the guardian of spiritual principles and give to it a theocratic character and aim, which links his name with the mightiest moral movements of the world; and when I speak of the church, I mean the Church of Rome, as presided over by men who claimed to be the successors of St. Peter, to whom they assert Christ had given the supreme control over all other churches as his vicars on the earth. It was the great object of Leo to substantiate this claim, and root it in the minds of the newly converted barbarians; and then institute laws and measures which should make his authority and that of his successors paramount in all spiritual matters, thus centering in his see the general oversight of the Christian church in all the countries of Europe.HBS 377.4

It was a theocratic aspiration, one of the grandest that ever entered into the mind of a man of genius, yet, as Protestants now look at it, a usurpation,-the beginning of a vast system of spiritual tyranny in order to control the minds and consciences of men. It took several centuries to develop this system, after Leo was dead. With him it was not a vulgar greed of power, but an inspiration of genius,-a grand idea to make the church which he controlled a benign and potent influence on society, and to prevent civilization from being utterly crushed out by the victorious Goths and Vandals. It is the success of this idea which stamps the church as the great leading power of Medieval Ages,-a power alike majestic and venerable, benignant yet despotic, humble yet arrogant and usurping.—“Beacon Lights of History,” John Lord, LL. D., Vol. IV, pp. 361, 362. New York: James Clarke & Co., 1886.HBS 378.1

Papacy, Builders of, Leo I.—Celestine’s second successor, Leo, who held the see from 440 to 461, is one of those popes who stand out most prominently as agents in the exaltation of the Papacy. To this cause Leo the Great (as he is called) brought the service of a lofty and commanding mind, of great political skill, and of a theological knowledge which surpassed that of any one among his predecessors. And we may not doubt that, in his exertions for the elevation of the Roman see, he believed himself to be laboring, not for its benefit only, but for the benefit of the whole church. Yet while allowing this, we must not let ourselves be blinded to the striking fault of his character-the overmastering love of domination. Barrow styles him, “this vixenly Pope,” and although the use of the epithet is rather strange, we may understand what Barrow means by it, and perhaps he did Leo no injustice. Leo, with a reckless defiance of historical fact, declared the pretensions and practices of his church to be matter of unbroken apostolical tradition, ascribing that venerable character to rules which had been introduced within the last half century by Siricius, and even by later bishops. And under such pretenses he tried to enforce the usages of Rome on the whole church.—“Plain Lectures on the Growth of the Papal Power,” James Craigie Robertson, M. A., pp. 94, 95. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.HBS 378.2

During Leo’s pontificate arose the controversy occasioned by the opinions of Eutyches. Like most other controversies of those ages, it began in the East; and in 449 a council, which was intended to be general, met at Ephesus for the decision of the questions which had been raised. [p. 100] ... It disgraced itself by the furious violence of its proceedings (among other outrages, the aged Flavian, bishop of Constantinople, was so savagely treated that he died in consequence): it decided amid tumult and uproar in favor of the heretic Eutyches. [p. 101] ...HBS 378.3

Leo, on hearing how things had gone, declared that the late assembly was not a synod, but a meeting of robbers-Latrocinium-a name by which it has continued to be known. He asked the emperor Theodosius II to summon a fresh council, to be held in Italy; and this was one of the occasions on which he cited the Sardican canon on appeals as if it had been the work of the Council of Nicaa, “decreed,” as he says, “by the priests of the whole world.” The application was in vain; but when Theodosius had been succeeded, a few months later, by his sister Pulcheria, who bestowed her hand and the Eastern empire on Marcian, a new general council was resolved on.... Marcian, as emperor of the East, was resolved that the council should be held within his own dominions; and it met in 451 at Chalcedon, on the shore of the Bosporus, opposite to Constantinople.HBS 378.4

The legates whom Leo commissioned to act for him were charged to assume the presidency of the council, and to suffer nothing to be done except in their presence; but although much was allowed them, they were not able to exercise that entire supremacy which their master intended; and there was much in the proceedings of the council which was deeply distasteful to him. [pp. 102, 103] ...HBS 379.1

That which was most offensive to Leo was a canon (the 28th) relating to the see of Constantinople. We have already seen that the second general council, in 381, assigned to the bishops of Constantinople a position next to the Bishop of Rome, and that the Roman bishops were dissatisfied with this. But differences had also arisen in the East as to the privileges of Constantinople; for, whereas the canon of 381 had bestowed on it nothing but precedence, the bishops of Constantinople, whose dignity and influence had been continually on the increase, had also set up claims to patriarchal jurisdiction over Thrace, Asia, and Pontus. The twenty-eighth canon of Chalcedon, then, was intended to settle the privileges of Constantinople; and in so doing it repeated, with far greater distinctness, that reason for the precedence of Constan tinople, which in the canon of the second general council had greatly offended the Romans. [p. 104] ...HBS 379.2

On receiving a report of the council, Leo expressed himself strongly against the twenty-eighth canon. He denied, with his usual audacity in such matters, that the precedence of sees had ever depended on the importance of the cities in which they were. He asserted that the canon of the second general council had never been acted on or notified to the Roman see; although (not to mention other instances to the contrary) his own legates at the first session of Chalcedon had admitted the canon of the second general council by joining in a complaint against the Latrocinium for having degraded Flavian of Constantinople from the second to the fifth place among the bishops. He pretended that the new canon contradicted the Nicene Council by subjecting Alexandria and Antioch to Constantinople; he declared it to be annulled by the authority of St. Peter, and loudly complained of the ambition of Anatolius in seeking the exaltation of his see. But notwithstanding all this vehemence, the canon, from the time of its enactment, was steadily enforced by the Eastern court. [p. 106] ...HBS 379.3

Before leaving Leo, however, let me mention that he introduced a novelty of considerable importance, by establishing a bishop at Constantinople as his representative, instead of the clergy of lower rank whom his predecessors had employed in that capacity. This bishop was evidently meant, not so much to watch over the interests of Rome in the East, as to overlook and coerce the Patriarch of Constantinople; and the manner in which Leo interfered even in the internal concerns of that church would probably have led to an open breach with the patriarch Anatolius, but for the death of Anatolius in 458. [p. 109]-“Plain Lectures on the Growth of the Papal Power,” James Craigie Robertson, M. A., pp. 100-109. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.HBS 379.4

There was wanted a man who could make the see of St. Peter take the place of the tottering imperial power: there was wanted a man capable above all things of disciplining and consolidating Western Christendom, so that it might present a firm front to the heretical barbarians, and remain in unshaken consistency through all that stormy period which links the ancient with the modern world. The church must be strong, while all else of that old empire was weak. The church, preserving her identity, must give the framework for the society which was to be. In order then that she might fulfil her function, large sacrifices must be made to the surpassing necessity for unity, solidity, and strength. And Leo was the man for the post: lofty and severe in life and aims; rigid and stern in insisting on the rules of ecclesiastical discipline; gifted with an indomitable energy, courage, and perseverance, and a capacity for keeping his eye on many widely distant spheres of activity at once; inspired with an unhesitating acceptance and an admirable grasp of the dogmatic faith of the church, which he was prepared to press everywhere at all costs; finally, possessed with, and unceasingly acting upon, an overmastering sense of the indefeasible authority of the Church of Rome as the divinely ordained center of all church work and life, Leo stands out as the Christian representative of the imperial dignity and severity of old Rome, and is the true founder of the medieval Papacy in all its magnificence of conception and uncompromising strength.—“A Dictionary of Christian Biography,” edited by Smith and Wace, Vol. III, art. “Leo I,” p. 654. London: John Murray, 1882.HBS 379.5

Leo was, without all doubt, a man of extraordinary parts, far superior to all who had governed that church before him, and scarce equaled by any who governed it after him. He is extolled by the ancients chiefly for his unwearied zeal in defending the Catholic faith, and unshaken steadiness in combating the opposite errors, that either sprung up or were revived in his time. And truly their encomiums on that score are not ill bestowed; though on some occasions he had better have tempered his zeal, and acted with more moderation. But then his ambition knew no bounds; and to gratify it, he stuck at nothing; made no distinction between right and wrong, between truth and falsehood; as if he had adopted the famous maxim of Julius Casar, or thought the most criminal actions ceased to be criminal, and became meritorious, when any ways subservient to the increase of his power or the exaltation of his see.... So much was he attached to that object, that after he had procured, with infinite labor and pains, the assembling of an ecumenical council, as the only means of ascertaining the Catholic faith, and saving the church, at that time in the utmost danger from the prevailing party of Eutyches and Dioscorus in the East, he was ready, notwithstanding his extraordinary zeal, to undo all he had been doing, and to render that very council ineffectual, had not his legates been allowed to preside; an undeniable proof that he had more at heart the advancement of his see, that is, of his own power and authority, than either the purity of the faith or the welfare of the church.... I shall therefore only observe here, that he has, and ever will have, the demerit of establishing an everlasting warfare between the East and the West, between Constantinople and Rome; the bishops of Constantinople, and their brethren in the East, thinking themselves bound to stand to a decree which had been so unanimously enacted by their predecessors, in an ecumenical council; and none of the later bishops of Rome, how peaceably soever inclined, daring to receive as valid a determination which one of the greatest of their predecessors had. with so much warmth, maintained to be null.HBS 380.1

Of this dispute we shall see the dreadful effects in the sequel of the present history; and they ought all to be charged to Leo’s account. For his authority drew in all the Western bishops to take the same part, and extended its influence over their successors, as well as his own. But as his ambition, in the pursuit of its own ends and designs, tended also to raise and promote the greatness of his see, that very crime became the cause of his sanctification, being more meritorious to Rome than all his virtues. Indeed, he was a principal founder of her exorbitant power. He brought with him to the pontificate, not only greater abilities, but more experience and practice in state affairs, than any of his predecessors; and used these advantages, through a long course of years, to advance the dignity and prerogatives of his see, with great skill and address, as well as intrepid assurance and courage.—“The History of the Popes,” Archibald Bower, Vol. I, pp. 247, 248: Philadelphia: Griffith and Simon, 1847.HBS 380.2

Papacy, Builders of, Gregory I.—The Papacy, when Gregory the First, a great and also a good Pope, was elected to it in 590, had risen to a position far higher than that which it occupied in the time covered by the earlier part of our inquiry. Gregory (who is styled the Great) stands in the foremost rank of popes who have contributed to the exaltation of their see. Those who may be classed with him in this respect are Leo the Great (440-461), Nicholas I (858-867), Gregory VII (1073-1085), and Innocent III (1198-1216); and to these, if his attempts had been crowned with success, you might add Boniface VIII (1294-1304), who carried the claims of the Papacy higher than any of his predecessors.HBS 381.1

But Gregory differs from all the rest of them in this respect, that he is the only one of these popes whose memory we can regard with much affection. Whatever the gifts of the others may have been, and although we may make all possible allowance for their sincerity in thinking that the exaltation of the Roman see was the necessary means toward promoting the welfare of the whole Christian church and the highest interests of mankind, there is yet about them something which, although we may admire them, makes it impossible that we should love them. However pure and unselfish their motives may have been, their conduct looks too much as if it were prompted by a politic and unscrupulous ambition.HBS 381.2

Gregory I, on the other hand, is a man with whom we feel a sympathy which in the case of the others is impossible. His letters, between 800 and 900 in number, and those passages of his sermons or other writings which bear a reference to his personal circumstances, show him to us in a very favorable light, as a man of truly human feelings, as struggling with great difficulties, as kind, generous, tolerant, while he is zealous for the propagation of the faith, and thoroughly devoted to the cause of the church.HBS 381.3

There are, indeed, two special blots on his character, and, although attempts have been made by some writers of more zeal than discretion to wash out these blots, there they remain. I mean (1) his subservient behavior to the emperor Phocas, a detestable usurper and tyrant in whom no trace of goodness can be discovered; and (2) his frequent compliments to the Frankish queen Brunichild or Brunehaut, who, unless she has been misrepresented more than probability will allow us to suppose, was a very strange object for the praises which Gregory bestows on her.HBS 381.4

These things, no doubt, are unpleasant to read of; but the right way of treating them, if we wish to deal kindly with Gregory, is not to deny clear historical facts, or to do violence to our own sense of right and wrong, but to admit that he was not without human weaknesses-that he was an impulsive man, liable to do in haste things of which he might have cause to repent at leisure; liable, in his feeling of zeal for the church, to forget the duty of looking at all sides of a question, and to welcome such things as seemed to be for the church’s immediate advantage, without taking account of all the circumstances which ought to have entered into his consideration.—“Plain Lectures on the Growth of the Papal Power,” James Craigie Robertson, M. A., pp. 115-117. London; Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.HBS 381.5

In 568, the Lombards under Alboin descended into Italy; they wrested the northern part of the peninsula from the empire; they afterward got possession of the Duchy of Beneventum, and in Gregory’s days they threatened Rome itself. In this state of things, the Pope was necessarily called to take an active part in politics. The emperor was too far off, and too much engrossed in other affairs, to give any help to his Italian subjects; the exarchs cared for nothing but how to squeeze the highest possible amount of taxes out of the distressed and miserable people; they made no effective opposition to the Lombards. [p. 118] ...HBS 382.1

In these circumstances, then, as the pressure of the Lombards made it urgently necessary that something should be done, and as no help was to be expected either from local authorities or from their distant master, the emperor, the Pope was compelled to act for himself, not only in his spiritual character, but as a great landowner. He did what he could to provide for the defense of the country, and he took it on himself to negotiate a peace with the Lombards,-a measure for which he received no better reward from the court of Constantinople than slights and ridicule, but which endeared him to the people whom he had rescued from the miseries of war. Here, then, you see the Pope, as a great landowner, drawn, through the apathy or the helplessness of the imperial authorities, to enter into political engagements; and thus Gregory will be found to have paved the way for the great political influence exercised by his successors, and for the temporal sovereignty which they acquired. [p. 120]-“Plain Lectures on the Growth of the Papal Power,” James Craigie Robertson, M. A., pp. 118-120. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.HBS 382.2

One thing more there is to be noted as to Gregory-his quarrel with John the Faster, Patriarch of Constantinople, as to the use of the term “ecumenical,” which John had assumed as part of his style. We have already seen that this title had been sometimes given by Orientals to the bishops of Rome, the first instance having been at the Council of Chalcedon, when it was used by some Alexandrians who wished to recommend themselves to Leo the Great; that it was sometimes also given to the patriarchs of Constantinople; and that, according to the Eastern usage, it had not that exclusive sense which we might naturally ascribe to it; but that the world was supposed to have room for more than one ecumenical bishop, since the emperor Justinian gave the title alike to the bishops of Rome and of Constantinople. This, however, the Latins could not or would not understand; they translated the Greek word by universalis, and supposed that ecumenical or universal bishop could not mean anything less than sole and supreme bishop of the whole church. When, therefore, John of Constantinople styled himself Ecumenical, the title was vehemently objected to, first by Pelagius II, Gregory’s predecessor, and then by Gregory himself. Gregory declares it to be a “proud and foolish word;” that the assumption of it was an imitation of the devil, who exalted himself above his fellow angels; that it was unlike the behavior of St. Peter, who, although first of the apostles, did not pretend to be more than of the same class with the rest (this, you will see, is not very consistent with the modern pretensions of the Papacy); that it was a token of Antichrist’s speedy coming.—Id., pp. 124-126.HBS 382.3

Papacy, Builders of, Nicolas I.—The second successor of Leo was Nicolas I, who held the see from 858 to 867. The impression which this Pope made on those who lived near his own time, yet far enough from it to be able to view him without exaggerating his importance, will appear from the words of Regino, abbot of Prüm, who wrote about a century later. “In the year of our Lord’s incarnation, 868,” says Regino (but it was really in May of the year before), “the most holy and blessed Pope Nicolas, after many labors for Christ, and many contests for the inviolable state of the holy church, departed to the heavenly realms, to receive from the most bountiful Lord a crown of glory that fadeth not away, for the faithful administration of the stewardship committed to him. From the time of Bishop Gregory to our own time, no bishop who has been exalted with pontifical power in the city of Rome, appears worthy to be compared to him. He gave his commands to kings and tyrants, and ruled over them with authority as if he were lord of the world; to bishops and religious priests who observed the divine commands he appeared humble, mild, piteous (pius), and gentle; to the irreligious and those who strayed from the right path he was terrible, and full of austerity; so that in him another Elias may deservedly be believed to have arisen in our time, God raising him up as another Elias, if not in body, yet in spirit and power.” [pp. 169, 170] ...HBS 382.4

Nicolas may be described as sincerely zealous for the enforcement of discipline in the church, and as filled with a conscientious sense of the greatness of his position, while he never failed in acting up to his conception of it with resolute firmness, and with great political skill. And circumstances favored his exertions by offering to him opportunities of interfering in the concerns of princes and of churches in such a manner that his actions appeared to be in the interests of justice, and so carried the opinion of mankind with him, while every step which he took was also in effect a step in advance for the Papacy. His idea of the rights of his see was such as to lead him to aim at making all secular power subject to the church, and reducing all national churches into absolute obedience to Rome; and, whether he was fully conscious of this ambitious scheme or not, he labored very powerfully toward realizing it. [pp. 171, 172]-“Plain Lectures on the Growth of the Papal Power,” James Craigie Robertson, M. A., pp. 169-172.HBS 383.1

Papacy, Builders of, Gregory VII.—Hildebrand was the chief representative, the very soul, of a party which had been lately growing up in the church. He was filled with the loftiest hierarchical ideas; he desired to make the Papacy the supreme governing power of the world, not only altogether independent of, but superior to and controlling, all secular power....HBS 383.2

For these objects Hildebrand was prepared to labor with thorough conviction, with unswerving steadiness, with a far-sighted patience, with a deep, subtle, and even unscrupulous policy. In conversations at Besançon he persuaded Bruno to forego any claim to the Papacy which was derived from the emperor’s nomination, and to look only to the clergy and people of Rome, whose exclusive privilege it was, according to the views of the hierarchical party, to elect the successors of St. Peter. Bruno laid aside the ensigns of pontifical dignity, and. taking Hildebrand as his companion, proceeded in the guise of a simple pilgrim to Rome, where he declared to the Romans assembled in St. Peter’s, that it was for them to confirm or to set aside the choice which had been made of him. He was hailed with loud acclamations as Leo IX, and from that time, under him and his four successors, from 1049 to 1073, Hildebrand was the real director of the Papacy. [pp. 196-198] ...HBS 383.3

Let us pass on to the pontificate of Hildebrand himself, who was elected in 1073, and assumed the name of Gregory VII. His election was made by the cardinals and approved by the acclamations of the people, according to the decree of Nicolas II; and, agreeably to the same decree, he sent notice to the emperor, and requested him to confirm the choice. This was the last time that the imperial confirmation was sought for an election to the Papacy; for Gregory soon carried things far beyond the point at which Nicolas had left them....HBS 383.4

Gregory’s view of the relations of church and state was, that the two powers are irreconcilably hostile to each other, and that the spiritual power is vastly above the secular. In the beginning of his pontificate, indeed, he spoke of the two powers as being like the two eyes in the human body-a comparison which would seem to imply an equality between them. But at a later time he likens them to the sun and the moon respectively-a comparison by which a great superiority is given to the priesthood. [pp. 202-204] ...HBS 384.1

The doctrines here enounced [in the Dictate of Gregory] are far in advance of what we have seen in the forged decretals, both as to the claims which are asserted for the church against the state, and as to the despotism which they would establish for the Papacy over all the rest of the church. It is laid down that the Roman Pontiff alone is universal bishop. To him alone it belongs to depose or to reconcile bishops; and he may depose them either with or without the concurrence of a synod. He alone is entitled to frame new laws for the church; he alone may use the insignia of empire; all princes are bound to kiss his feet; he has the right to depose kings or emperors, and to absolve subjects from their allegiance. His power supersedes the diocesan authority of bishops, and from his sentence there is no appeal. All appeals to him must be respected, and to him the greater causes of every church must be referred. No council may be styled general without his command. The Roman Church never has erred, and, as Scripture testifies, never will err; the Pope is above all judgment, and by St. Peter’s merits is undoubtedly rendered holy. [p. 206] ...HBS 384.2

Such, then, were some of Gregory’s principles; and, although they were not so fully realized by him as they were by Innocent III, somewhat more than a century later, it is Gregory VII-Hildebrand-that must always be regarded as the man from whom, above all others, the papal pretensions derived their greatest development. [p. 207] ...HBS 384.3

On the 25th of May, 1085, he breathed his last at Salerno. His latest words are said to have been, “I have loved righteousness and hated iniquity; therefore I die in exile.” [p. 212]-“Plain Lectures on the Growth of the Papal Power,” James Craigie Robertson, M. A., pp. 196-212. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.HBS 384.4

When Gregory VII declared that it was sin for the ecclesiastic to receive his benefice under conditions from a layman, and so condemned the whole system of feudal investitures to the clergy, he aimed a deadly blow at all secular authority. Half of the land and wealth of Germany was in the hands of bishops and abbots, who would now be freed from the monarch’s control to pass under that of the Pope. In such a state of things government itself would be impossible.—“The Holy Roman Empire,” James Bryce, D. C. L., p. 158. London: Macmillan & Co., 1892.HBS 384.5

Gregory VII did not aim at securing the papal monarchy over the church; that had been established since the days of Nicolas I. He aimed at asserting the freedom of the church from the worldly influences which benumbed it, by setting up the Papacy as a power strong enough to restrain church and state alike. In ecclesiastical matters Gregory enunciated the infallibility of the Pope, his power of deposing bishops and restoring them at his own will, the necessity of his consent to give universal validity to synodal decrees, his supreme and irresponsible jurisdiction, the precedence of his legates over all bishops. In political matters he asserted that the name of Pope was incomparable with any other, that he alone could use the insignia of empire, that he could depose emperors, that all princes ought to kiss his feet, that he could release from their allegiance the subjects of wicked rulers. Such were the magnificent claims which Gregory VII bequeathed to the medieval Papacy, and pointed out the way toward their realization.—“A History of the Papacy,” M. Creighton, D. D., Vol. I, pp. 17, 18. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899.HBS 384.6

Last Days of Gregory VII.—As death approached, no consciousness of the great woes he had occasioned, of the fierce wars he had stirred up, of the ruin he had brought upon Germany, of the desolation he had spread over Italy, of the miserable fate of Rome, seems to have disturbed his sublime serenity. At one moment he had believed himself a prophet, at another an infallible guide; he was always the vicegerent of Heaven; and just before his death he gave a general absolution to the human race, excepting only Henry and his rival pope. He died May 25, 1085, having bequeathed to his successors the principle that the Bishop of Rome was the supreme power of the earth. This was the conception which Gregory plainly represents.—“Historical Studies,” Eugene Lawrence, p. 41. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1876.HBS 385.1

Gregory VII was the creator of the political Papacy of the Middle Ages because he was the first who dared to completely enforce the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals. He found the Pope elected by the emperor, the Roman clergy, and the people; he left the election in the hands of an ecclesiastical College of Cardinals. He found the Papacy dependent upon the empire; he made it independent of the empire and above it. He declared the states of Europe to be fiefs of St. Peter, and demanded the oath of fealty from their rulers. He found the clergy, high and low, dependent allies of secular princes and kings; he emancipated them and subjected them to his own will. He reorganized the church from top to bottom by remodeling the papal Curia, by establishing the College of Cardinals, by employing papal legates, by thwarting national churches, by controlling synods and councils, and by managing all church property directly. He was the first to enforce the theory that the Pope could depose and confirm or reject kings and emperors. He attempted to reform the abuses in the church and to purify the clergy. Only partial success attended these efforts, but triumph was to come later on as a result of his labors. His endeavor to realize his theocracy was grand but impracticable, as proved by its failure. It was like forcing a dream to be true; yet Innocent III almost succeeded in Western Europe a little more than a century later. The impress of Gregory VII’s gigantic ability was left upon his own age and upon all succeeding ages.—“The Rise of the Mediaval Church,” Alexander Clarence Flick, Ph. D., Litt. D., p. 470. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1909.HBS 385.2

Papacy, Builders of, Innocent III.—In 1198 Innocent III, the most powerful of all the popes, was elected at the early age of thirty-seven. He was a man of many noble and admirable qualities, but devoted above all things to the aggrandizement of his see; and for this object he labored throughout his pontificate of eighteen years with skilful and vigorous exertion. Innocent boldly asserted, in a letter to the Patriarch of Constantinople, that to St. Peter had been committed, not only the whole church, but the whole world. By him that comparison of the spiritual and the secular powers to the sun and moon respectively, which I have mentioned in connection with Gregory VII, was elaborated and developed more strongly than before. As the moon (he says) borrows from the sun a light which is inferior both in amount and in quantity, so does the regal power borrow from the pontifical. As the light which rules over the day-i. e., over spiritual things-is the greater, and as that which rules over the night-i. e., over carnal things-is the lesser, so is the difference between pontiffs and kings like that between the sun and the moon.HBS 385.3

Innocent’s words on this subject were adopted into the decretals compiled under the authority of Gregory IX; and a commentator, who probably took his measurements from the astronomy of the time, interprets them very precisely as meaning that the Pope is one thousand seven hundred and forty-four times more exalted than emperors and all kings. This was certainly no small advance from the original form of Hildebrand’s illustration, in which the two powers were likened to the two eyes in the human head, as if they were equal and co-ordinate with each other. And in accordance with such lofty pretensions Innocent acted; he declared that the empire had been transferred from the Greeks to the Germans by the papal authority, and he claimed for the Papacy the right of “principally and finally” disposing of the imperial crown [pp. 233-235] ...HBS 386.1

Throughout all the other kingdoms of Europe, Innocent made himself felt by the vigor and the vigilance of his administration, and not only by asserting the loftiest pretensions of the Roman see, but by enforcing the obligations of Christian morality. This was indeed (as I have already said while speaking of Nicolas I) one of the means which, by enlisting popular feeling on his side, as the cause of right and justice, by teaching men to regard the Pope as the vindicator of innocence against oppression, tended most powerfully to facilitate the advance of the Roman Pontiff to that position of supreme arbiter and controller which he now attained among the kingdoms of Western Christendom.HBS 386.2

In whatever direction we may look, we see Innocent interfering with a high hand, and claiming for his office the right of giving laws to sovereigns. In France, Philip Augustus, by putting away his wife Ingeburga, a Danish princess, and entering into an irregular marriage with Agnes of Merania, gave the Pope a pretext for intervention. An interdict was pronounced on the whole kingdom; and although Philip for a time endeavored to resist the sentence and to evade his obligations, the terrors of this sentence were so severely felt that he found himself compelled to yield to the general voice of his subjects, and to submit to the Pope’s commands by doing a tardy justice to Ingeburga.HBS 386.3

Still more remarkable was Innocent’s triumph as to England, where, taking advantage of the contemptible character of the sovereign, John, he forced his nominee, Stephen Langton, into the primacy, in disregard of the rights of the national church and of the crown, and brought the king to submit to resign his crowns into the hands of a legate, and to hold the kingdoms of England and Ireland on condition of paying a heavy annual tribute to the Papacy.HBS 386.4

In the East, the pontificate of Innocent was marked by an important event. A crusading force, which had been gathered for the holy war of Palestine, allowed itself to be diverted to Constantinople, where it restored a dispossessed emperor to his throne; and afterward, when this emperor and his son had been again dethroned by a kinsman-when the younger prince had been murdered, and the father had died of grief-the crusaders put down the usurper, and established a Latin sovereignty in the capital of the Eastern Empire. The Pope had at first vehemently denounced the change of purpose from a war against the infidels to an attack on a Christian state; but the brilliant success of the expedition reconciled him to the irregularity, and he sanctioned the establishment of a Latin empire at Constantinople, with a Latin patriarch and clergy intruded to the exclusion of the hated native hierarchy of Greece.HBS 386.5

In the south of France, this pontificate was disgraced by the beginning of a war carried on with singular atrocity against the Albigensian heretics, which ended in the establishment of orthodoxy by the slaughter of multitudes, and in the desolation of the rich and flourishing country. It was in this war that the famous Spanish monk Dominic first became conspicuous, and to Innocent is to be referred the sanction of the two great mendicant orders-the Preaching Friars, founded by Dominic, and the Minorites, founded by Francis of Assisi. These orders enjoyed the especial favor of the Papacy, and from the manner in which they penetrated, as none had before done, to the humblest classes of society, in them the Papacy found its most active and most serviceable agents.HBS 387.1

On the whole, it may be said that Innocent was the greatest and the most successful of popes. In him the power of the Roman see attained its height; and his successors, by endeavoring to carry it still higher, provoked a reaction which was disastrous to it. [pp. 237-240]-“Plain Lectures on the Growth of the Papal Power,” James Craigie Robertson, M. A., pp. 233-240. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.HBS 387.2

It was reserved, however, for Innocent III to realize most fully the ideas of Hildebrand. If Hildebrand was the Julius, Innocent was the Augustus, of the papal empire. He had not the creative genius nor the fiery energy of his great forerunner; but his clear intellect never missed an opportunity, and his calculating spirit rarely erred from its mark. A man of severe and lofty character, which inspired universal respect, he possessed all the qualities of an astute political intriguer. He was lucky in his opportunities, as he had no formidable antagonist; among the rulers of Europe his was the master mind. In every land he made the papal power decisively felt. In Germany, France, and England, he dictated the conduct of the kings.—“A History of the Papacy,” M. Creighton, D. D., Vol. I, p. 21. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899.HBS 387.3

The first step in Innocent’s plan was to make himself the political head of Europe. In Italy he first made himself absolute sovereign of Rome by removing all vestiges of imperial rule. The senators and the prefect, who held their commissions from the emperor, were required to take oaths to him as their sovereign. The imperial judges were also replaced by his own appointees. By persuasion or tactful diplomacy he gained a mastery over the warring Roman nobles. From Rome he gradually extended his sway over the rest of Italy. He was made regent of Frederick II, the youthful son of Henry VI, now king of Sicily. He forced the Tuscan cities to recognize his suzerainty instead of that of the German emperor, and subdued the march of Ancona and the duchy of Spoleto. He posed as the champion of Italian independence and liberty against foreign rule. His leadership was generally recognized and he was called “The Father of His Country.” “Innocent III was the first Pope who claimed and exercised the rights of an Italian prince.” When Emperor Otto IV ceded all the lands claimed by the Papacy under grants from former rulers, an indisputable title to the Papal States was established.—“The Rise of the Mediaval Church,” Alexander C. Flick, Ph. D., Litt. D., pp. 549, 550. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1909.HBS 387.4

No other wearer of the papal tiara has left behind him so many results pregnant with good and ill for the future of the church. Under him [Innocent III] the Papacy reached the culmination of its secular power and prerogatives. The principles of sacerdotal government were fully and intelligently elaborated. The code of ecclesiastical law was completed and enforced. All the Christian princes of Europe were brought to recognize the overlordship of the successor of St. Peter. All the clergy obeyed his will as the one supreme law. Heresy was washed out in blood. The Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals and the dreams of Hildebrand had been realized. Yet in this very greatness, wealth, and strength, were the germs of weakness and disease which were eventually to overthrow the great structure reared by Innocent III and his predecessors.—“The Rise of the Mediaval Church,” Alexander Clarence Flick, Ph. D., Litt. D., pp. 566, 567. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1909.HBS 387.5

Papacy, Builders of, Boniface VIII, His Quarrel with Philip the Fair of France.—The conflict began in 1296, when the Pope issued a bull, known from its initial words as Clericis laicos, which pronounced the ban on all princes and nobles who under any pretext imposed tallages on the church and clergy. Although the bull did not mention Philip by name, it was clearly aimed at him; the Pope’s object being to induce Philip by fear of wanting supplies to refer his dispute with the English king Edward I to himself for decision. In this object he failed at the time, having entirely misjudged the character of his opponent. Philip retaliated by prohibiting the exportation of gold and silver out of France, thus depriving Boniface of an important portion of his revenues, and Boniface found it best for his own interests to repeal the bull with regard to France, and to court the favor of Philip. Friendly relations were restored, and Philip agreed to accept the arbitration of the Pope. Thus by a yielding policy Boniface succeeded in obtaining a success which he had been unable to gain by force; but while the gain was personal, a sacrifice had been made of the dignity of his office.HBS 388.1

A year or two later the quarrel broke out afresh, Philip being dissatisfied with the Pope’s award, Boniface charging Philip with oppressing the church. Saiset de Pamiers, the papal legate, threatened the king with excommunication, his whole kingdom with the interdict. To Philip Boniface wrote: “Thou art to know that in things spiritual and temporal thou art subject to us.... Those who think otherwise we hold to be heretics.” The French prelates he summoned to Rome to confer with him on the abuses in Philip’s administration; Philip himself he cited to appear before them, bidding him observe, so the letter ran, “what the Lord our God utters through us.” The celebrated bull, Unam Sanctam, was put forth, repeating in a still more advanced form the principles of Innocent III, declaring that to St. Peter, as the one head of the church, and to his successors, two swords had been committed, the one temporal, the other spiritual; that the temporal sword was to be used for the church, the spiritual by the church; and concluding by the assertion that for every human being subjection to the Pope was necessary for salvation. To crown the whole, a bull was issued on April 13, 1303, pronouncing sentence of excommunication on the king.HBS 388.2

To all these menaces Philip replied with equal boldness; Saiset, the legate, who was moreover a subject of France, he contemptuously sent out of the kingdom unanswered. To Boniface’s laconic letter he replied by one equally laconic: “Let thy most consummate folly know that in temporal things we are subject to no man.... Those who think otherwise we hold to be foolish or mad.” He forbade the prelates to leave the kingdom, and sequestrated the goods of those who disobeyed, and assembling the States General, to assure himself of the support of his subjects, he recounted the attacks which had been made on his sovereignty.HBS 388.3

The bull, Unam Sanctam, was publicly burnt, and to the bull of excommunication he replied by preferring before the States General a list of charges against the Pope, and making a solemn appeal to a general council to examine these charges. Thus for the second time in Philip’s reign an appeal was made from the Pope to a council; the sympathies of the States General were enlisted on the side of the king; and the weapon which Hildebrand had first employed against the clergy was now employed by Philip against Hildebrand’s successor.HBS 389.1

The sequel of the struggle is soon told. Boniface had gone too far to be able to withdraw, and Philip was not disposed to give way. While the Pope thought to celebrate his triumph over France, the handwriting was seen on the wall. Before Anagni, his native city, whither he had withdrawn with his cardinals from the summer heat of Rome, William de Nogaret, Philip’s keeper of the seals, appeared on Sept. 7, 1303, at the head of a troop of armed men. He entered the city at early dawn, and soon the cry resounded: “Death to Pope Boniface! Long live the King of France!” The people took part with the soldiers: the cardinals fled.HBS 389.2

Not losing his self-command, but declaring himself ready to die like Christ, if like Christ he were betrayed, Boniface put on the stole of St. Peter, and with the imperial crown on his head, the keys of St. Peter in one hand, the cross in the other, took his seat on the papal throne; and, like the Roman senators of old, awaited the approach of the Gaul. But he had not been three days in the hands of Nogaret, when the citizens of Anagni by a sudden impulse turned round; the French were driven from Rome, and Boniface was once more at liberty. To Rome he returned; no longer to exercise that sway over men’s minds which he had wielded in the days of his prosperity, but to find himself a prisoner, the Sacred College his enemies. In an access of fury, the Ghibelline historians relate, brought on by wounded pride and ambition, the fallen Pontiff sat gnawing the top of his staff, and at length beat out his brains against the wall.HBS 389.3

In the fall of Boniface was shadowed forth the fall of the papal supremacy, which for so long had held dominion over men’s minds and bodies. In the bold and unscrupulous use of ecclesiastical power no Pope had ever been the equal of Boniface; there is nothing in the life of the great Innocent III which equals Boniface’s crusade against the Colonnas, nothing in that of Gregory VII which approaches the series of bulls hurled at the head of Philip. Nevertheless, had all other signs of decline been wanting, and could the last scene of Boniface’s life be expunged from history, those two appeals to a general council, that successful enlistment of the sympathies of the States General against Boniface, showed that the papal power had begun to decline. The year of Jubilee, with its lavish grant of indulgences, provoked the reaction which prepared the way for the era of the Reformation.—“The See of Rome in the Middle Ages,” Rev. Oswald J. Reichel, B. C. L., M. A., pp. 272-278. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1870.HBS 389.4

Papyri, Discovery of Greek,—With Alexander’s conquest of Egypt (332 b. c.), and the subsequent Ptolemaic dynasty, Greeks came more than ever before into Egypt, and from Greek centers like Alexandria and Arsinoë in the Fayum the Greek language began to spread. Through the Ptolemaic (323-30 b. c.), Roman (30 b. c.—292/93 a. d.), and Byzantine periods (292/93-640 a. d.), that is, from the death of Alexander to the Arabian conquest, Greek was much used in Upper and Lower Egypt, and Greek papyri from these times are now abundant. The 300 Aphrodito Greek and Coptic papyri published by Bell and Crum (1910) date from 698-722 a. d., and show how Greek persisted in the Arabic period.HBS 389.5

The first important discovery of Greek papyri made in modern times was among the ruins of Herculaneum, near Naples, where in 1752 in the ruins of the house of a philosopher which had been destroyed and buried by volcanic ashes from Vesuvius (79 a. d.), a whole library of papyrus rolls was found, quite charred by the heat. With the utmost pains many of these have been unrolled and deciphered, and the first part of them was published in 1793. They consist almost wholly of works of Epicurean philosophy. In 1778 the first discovery of Greek papyri in Egypt was made. In that year some Arabs found forty or fifty papyrus rolls in an earthen pot, probably in the Fayum, where Philadelphus settled his Greek veterans....HBS 390.1

In 1820 another body of papyri was found by natives, buried, it was said, in an earthen pot, on the site of the Serapeum at Memphis, just above Cairo.... In 1821 an Englishman, Mr. W. J. Bankes, bought an Elephantine roll of the xxivth book of the Iliad, the first Greek literary papyrus to be derived from Egypt. The efforts of Mr. Harris and others in 1847-50 brought to England considerable parts of lost orations of Hyperides, new papyri of the xviith book of the Iliad, and parts of Iliad ii, iii, ix. In 1855 Mariette purchased a fragment of Alcman for the Louvre, and in 1856 Mr. Stobart obtained the funeral oration of Hyperides.HBS 390.2

The present period of papyrus recovery dates from 1877, when an immense mass of Greek and other papyri, for the most part documentary, not literary, was found in the Fayum, on the site of the ancient Arsinoë.... Another great find was made in 1892 in the Fayum....HBS 390.3

It will be seen that most of these discoveries were the work of natives, digging about indiscriminately in the hope of finding antiquities to sell to tourists or dealers. By this time, however, the Egypt Exploration Fund had begun its operations in Egypt, and Prof. Flinders Petrie was at work there. Digging among Ptolemaic tombs at Gurob in 1889-90, Professor Petrie found many mummies or mummy casings adorned with breast pieces and sandals made of papyri pasted together. The separation of these was naturally a tedious and delicate task, and the papyri when extricated were often badly damaged or mutilated; but the Petrie papyri, as they were called, were hailed by scholars as the most important found up to that time, for they came for the most part from the third century b. c.HBS 390.4

Startling acquisitions were made about this time by representatives of the British Museum and the Louvre. The British Museum secured papyri of the lost work of Aristotle on the “Constitution of Athens,” the lost “Mimes” of Herodas, a fragment of an oration of Hyperides, and extensive literary papyri of works already extant; while the Louvre secured the larger part of the “Oration against Athenogenes,” the masterpiece of Hyperides. In 1894 Bernard P. Grenfell, of Oxford, appeared in Egypt, working with Professor Petrie in his excavations, and securing papyri with Mr. Hogarth for England. In that year Petrie and Grenfell obtained from native dealers papyrus rolls, one more than forty feet in length, preserving revenue laws of Ptolemy Philadelphus, dated in 259-258 b. c. These were published in 1896 by Mr. Grenfell, the first of many important works in this field from his pen.HBS 390.5

With Arthur S. Hunt, of Oxford, Mr. Grenfell excavated in 1896-97, at Behnesa, the Roman Oxyrhynchus, and unearthed the greatest mass of Greek papyri of the Roman period thus far found. In nine large quarto volumes, aggregating 3,000 pages, only a beginning has been made of publishing these Oxyrhynchus texts, which number thousands, and are in many cases of great importance. The story of papyrus digging in Egypt since the great find of 1896-97 is largely the record of the work of Grenfell and Hunt. At Tebtunis, in the Fayum, in 1900, they found a great mass of Ptolemaic papyri, comparable in importance with their great discovery at Oxyrhynchus. One of the most productive sources of papyri at Tebtunis was the crocodile cemetery, in which many mummies of the sacred crocodiles were found rolled in papyrus. Important Ptolemaic texts were found in 1902 at Hibeh, and a later visit to Oxyrhynchus in 1903 produced results almost as astonishing and quite as valuable as those of the first excavations there. The work of Rubensohn at Abusir in 1908 has exceptional interest, as it developed the first considerable body of Alexandrian papyri that has been found....HBS 390.6

Of the Greek Old Testament (LXX) more than twenty papyri have been discovered.... Twenty-three papyri containing parts of the Greek New Testament have thus far been published, nearly half of them coming from Oxyrhynchus. The pieces range in date from the third to the sixth century....HBS 391.1

Among other theological papyri, the Oxyrhynchus Sayings of Jesus dating from the second and third centuries, are probably the most widely known....HBS 391.2

It is not necessary to point out the value of all this for Biblical and especially New Testament study. The papyri have already made a valuable contribution to textual materials of both Old Testament and New Testament. For other early Christian literature their testimony has been of surprising interest (the Oxyrhynchus Logia and Gospel fragments). The discovery of a series of uncial MSS. running through six centuries back of the Codex Vaticanus, bridges the gap between what were our earliest uncials and the hand of the inscriptions, and puts us in a better position than ever before to fix the dates of uncial MSS. Minuscule or cursive hands, too, so common in New Testament MSS. of the tenth and later centuries, appear in a new light when it is seen that such writing was not a late invention arising out of the uncial, but had existed side by side with it from at least the fourth century b. c., as the ordinary, as distinguished from the literary, or book, hand.HBS 391.3

The lexical contribution of these documentary papyri, too, is already considerable, and is likely to be very great. Like the New Testament writings, they reflect the common as distinguished from the literary language of the times, and words which had appeared exceptional or unknown in Greek literature are now shown to have been in common use. The problems of New Testament syntax are similarly illuminated. Specific historical notices sometimes light up dark points in the New Testament, as in a British Museum decree of Gaius Vibius Maximus, prefect of Egypt (104 a. d.), ordering all who are out of their districts to return to their own homes in view of the approaching census (cf. Luke 2:1-5).HBS 391.4

Most important of all is the contribution of the papyri to a sympathetic knowledge of ancient life. They constitute a veritable gallery of New Testament characters. A strong light is sometimes thrown upon the social evils of the time, of which Paul and Juvenal wrote so sternly. The child, the prodigal, the thief, the host with his invitations, the steward with his accounts, the thrifty householder, the soldier on service receiving his viaticum or retired as a veteran upon his farm, the Jewish money-lender, the husbandman, and the publican, besides people in every domestic relation, we meet at first hand in the papyri which they themselves in many cases have written. The worth of this for the historical interpretation of the New Testament is very great.—The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, edited by James Orr, M. A., D. D., Vol. IV, art. “Papyrus,” pp. 2239-2242.HBS 391.5

Penance, Defined.—The Latin word panitentia (from punire in an archaic form panire) means sorrow or regret, and answers to the Greek [Greek word] [metanoia], change of mind or heart. As a theological term, penance is first the name of a virtue which inclines sinners to detest their sins because they are an offense against God. Then penance came to mean the outward acts by which sorrow for sin is shown....HBS 392.1

In a more restricted sense still, penance is used for the penitential discipline of the church, or even for the third station of public penitents (so, e. g., I. Concil. Tolet., canon 2), and again for the satisfaction which the priest imposes on the penitent before absolving him from his sins. Lastly, penance is a sacrament of the new law instituted by Christ for the remission of sin committed after baptism.HBS 392.2

So understood, penance is defined as a “sacrament instituted by Christ in the form of a judgment for the remission of sin done after baptism, this remission being effected by the absolution of the priest, joined to true supernatural sorrow, true purpose of amendment, and sincere confession on the part of the sinner.” The Council of Trent (Sess. XIV) defines that priests have real power to remit and retain sins, that persons are bound by the law of God to confess before the priest each and every mortal sin committed after baptism, so far as the memory can recall it, and also such circumstances as change the nature of these sins, and that the sacrament of penance is absolutely necessary for the forgiveness of post-baptismal sin.HBS 392.3

It is true that perfect sorrow for sin which has offended so good a God at once and without the addition of any external rite blots out the stain and restores the peace and love of God in the soul. “There is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” But this perfect sorrow involves in a well-instructed Catholic the intention of fulfilling Christ’s precept and receiving the sacrament of penance when opportunity occurs.HBS 392.4

This implicit desire of confession and absolution may exist in many Protestants who reject the Catholic doctrine on this point. They desire the sacrament of penance in this sufficient sense, that they earnestly wish to fulfil Christ’s law, so far as they can learn what it is. In this sense the sacrament is necessary for the salvation of those who have fallen into mortal sin after baptism. They must receive it actually or by desire, this desire being either explicit or implicit. This point is of capital importance for the apprehension of Catholic doctrine. We in no way deny that God is ready to forgive the sins of non-Catholics who are in good faith and who turn to him with loving sorrow.—“A Catholic Dictionary,” Addis and Arnold (R. C.), art. “Penance,” p. 697. New York: Benziger Brothers, 1893.HBS 392.5

Penance, Canon on.—Canon I. If any one saith that in the Catholic Church penance is not truly and properly a sacrament, instituted by Christ our Lord for reconciling the faithful unto God, as often as they fall into sin after baptism; let him be anathema.—“Dogmatic Canons and Decrees,” p. 115. New York: The Devin-Adair Company, 1912.HBS 392.6

Pentateuch, The Basis of the Old Testament.—The Pentateuch occupies in the Old Testament a position akin to that which the four Gospels occupy in the New. The account of our Lord’s life presented in the four Gospels is the basis on which the system of faith and doctrine taught by the other writers of the New Testament is founded. Similarly the history and theology of the Pentateuch underlie the other books of the Old Testament. Even if it could be proved that the details of the Israelitish ritual set forth in the Pentateuch do not altogether harmonize with the references thereto in the other books of the Old Testament, it is indisputable that the facts of history set forth in the Pentateuch are everywhere accepted in the other books of the Jewish Scriptures, whether historical, prophetical, or poetical.—“An Introduction to the Old Testament,” Rev. Charles H. H. Wright, D. D., Ph. D., pp. 70, 71. New York: Thomas Whittaker.HBS 392.7

Pentateuch, A Complete Whole.—The division of the whole work into five parts was probably made by the Greek translators; for the titles of the several books are not of Hebrew but of Greek origin. The Hebrew names are merely taken from the first words of each book, and in the first instance only designated particular sections and not whole books. The MSS. of the Pentateuch form a single roll or volume, and are divided, not into books, but into the larger and smaller sections called Parshiyoth and Sedarim. The five books of the Pentateuch form a consecutive whole.—“A Dictionary of the Bible,” William Smith, LL. D., p. 497, Teacher’s edition. Philadelphia: Porter and Coates, copyright 1884.HBS 393.1

Pentateuch, Time of.—In regard to the remote past, certainty, in the absolute sense, cannot be attained, yet a high probability may be reached. In the present case the probability is so high that its difference from certainty may be taken as negligible, that the whole Pentateuch, not only every separate book, but all the strata into which the critical school has split it up, was in the possession of the northern tribes of Israel in the reign of Jeroboam II. These prophetic exhortations imply, as we have seen, that the acquaintance with the law was widespread in every rank of society. But this general knowledge of the law implied a very considerable space of time. The dynasty of Jehu had power for nearly a century, but, though antagonistic to Baal worship, none of its monarchs were zealous for the law. Neither Ahab nor his father Omri would be likely to spread the knowledge of a legal system which condemned alike their practices at home and their foreign alliances; still less likely to do so were the short-lived dynasties which preceded. We are thus led to the conclusion that both Ephraim and Judah had in common the whole Torah. It is admitted that the ceremonies of the dedication of the temple of Solomon agree with the enactments of the priestly code; then the further conclusion that these regulations were known possibly as far back as the days of Samuel is only to be evaded by alleging interpolation by post-exilic hands; in other words, cooking the record.HBS 393.2

It is thus clear that what the Samaritans received, and with them the Mesopotamian colonists, was the law which had been the inheritance of Israel from ancient days, but which had been lost in consequence of the Assyrian conquest and the deportation of all the more lettered people of the land. What Israel got from Assyria was what they previously had. They thus did not get the Pentateuch from Jerusalem or from Ezra.—Rev. J. E. H. Thomson, D. D., in an article, “The Samaritan Pentateuch, Its Date and Origin,” in the Biblical Review, January, 1921 (Vol. VI, No. 1), pp. 81, 82.HBS 393.3

Pentateuch, Reliability of.—All tends to show that we possess in the Pentateuch, not only the most authentic account of ancient times that has come down to us, but a history absolutely and in every respect true. All tends to assure us that in this marvelous volume we have no old wives’ tales, no “cunningly devised fables;” but a “treasure of wisdom and knowledge,” as important to the historical inquirer as to the theologian. There may be obscurities, there may be occasionally, in names and numbers, accidental corruptions of the text; there may be a few interpolations-glosses which have crept in from the margin; but upon the whole, it must be pronounced that we have in the Pentateuch a genuine and authentic work, and one which, even were it not inspired, would be, for the times and countries whereof it treats, the leading and paramount authority.—“ The Historical Evidences of the Truth of the Scripture Records,” George Rawlinson, M. A., p. 77. New York: John B. Alden, 1883.HBS 393.4

Pentateuch, Allusions to, in Subsequent Books of the Bible.—The Pentateuch is either directly alluded to or its existence implied in numerous passages in the subsequent books of the Bible. The book of Joshua, which records the history immediately succeeding the age of Moses, is full of these allusions. It opens with the children of Israel in the plains of Moab, and on the point of crossing the Jordan, just where Deuteronomy left them. The arrangements for the conquest and the subsequent division of the land are in precise accordance with the directions of Moses, and are executed in professed obedience to his orders. The relationship is so pervading and the correspondence so exact that those who dispute the genuineness and authenticity of the Pentateuch are obliged to deny that of Joshua likewise. The testimony rendered to the existence of the Pentateuch by the books of Chronicles at every period of the history which they cover, is so explicit and repeated that it can only be set aside by impugning the truth of their statements and alleging that the writer has throughout colored the facts which he reports by his own prepossessions, and has substituted his own imagination, or the mistaken belief of a later period, for the real state of the case.HBS 394.1

But the evidence furnished by the remaining historical books, though less abundant and clear, tends in the same direction. And it is the same with the books of the prophets and the Psalms. We find scattered everywhere allusions to the facts recorded in the Pentateuch, to its institutions, and sometimes to its very language, which afford cumulative proof that its existence was known and its standard authority recognized by the writers of all the books subsequent to the Mosaic age.—“The Higher Criticism of the Pentateuch,” William Henry Green, D. D., LL. D., pp. 42, 43. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1895.HBS 394.2

Pentateuch, Its One Theme.—The Pentateuch accordingly has, as appears from this brief survey, one theme from first to last, to which all that it contains relates. This is throughout treated upon one definite plan, which is steadfastly adhered to. And it contains a continuous, unbroken history from the creation to the death of Moses, without any chasms or interruptions. The only chasms which have been alleged are merely apparent, not real, and grow out of the nature of the theme and the rigor with which it is adhered to. It has been said that while the lives of the patriarchs are given in minute detail, a large portion of the four hundred and thirty years during which the children of Israel dwelt in Egypt is passed over in silence; and that of a large part of the forty years’ wandering in the wilderness nothing is recorded. But the fact is, that these offered little that fell within the plan of the writer. The long residence in Egypt contributed nothing to the establishment of the theocracy in Israel, but the development of the chosen seed from a family to a nation. This is stated in a few verses, and it is all that it was necessary to record. So with the period of judicial abandonment in the wilderness; it was not the purpose ofHBS 394.3

Pentateuch, Scheme of.—HBS 395.1

[Table from History Genesis 1 to Exodus 19 to Legislation, Israel in wilderness. Exodus 20 to Deuteronomy 34].HBS 395.2

-“The Higher Criticism of the Pentateuch,” William Henry Green, D. D., LL. D., p. 30. the writer to relate everything that happened, but only what contributed to the establishment of God’s kingdom in Israel; and the chief fact of importance was the dying out of the old generation and the growing up of a new one in their stead.HBS 395.3

The unity of theme and unity of plan now exhibited creates a presumption that these books are, as they have been traditionally believed to be, the product of a single writer; and the presumption thus afforded must stand unless satisfactory proof can be brought to the contrary.—“The Higher Criticism of the Pentateuch,” William Henry Green, D. D., LL. D., pp. 29, 30. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1895.HBS 396.1

Pentateuch, Samaritan.—About 432 b. c., as we know from Nehemiah 13:28 and Josephus (Ant., XI, vii, 2 to viii, 4), Nehemiah expelled from the Jewish colony in Jerusalem Manesseh, the polygamous grandson of Eliashib the high priest and son-in-law of Sanballat. Manasseh founded the schismatic community of the Samaritans, and instituted on Mt. Gerizim a rival temple worship to that at Jerusalem. Of the Samaritans there still survive today some 170 souls; they reside in Shechem and are known as “the smallest religious sect in the world.” It is true that Josephus, speaking of this event, confuses chronology somewhat, making Nehemiah and Alexander the Great contemporaries, whereas a century separated them; but the time element is of little moment. The bearing of the whole matter upon the history of the formation of the canon is this: the Samaritans possess the Pentateuch only; hence it is inferred that at the time of Manasseh’s expulsion the Jewish canon included the Pentateuch and the Pentateuch only.... Such a conclusion, however, is not fully warranted. It is an argument from silence. There are patent reasons on the other hand why the Samaritans should have rejected the prophets, even though they were already canonized. For the Samaritans would hardly adopt into their canon books that glorified the temple at Jerusalem. It cannot, accordingly, be inferred with certainty from the fact that the Samaritans accept the Pentateuch only, that therefore the Pentateuch at the time of Manasseh’s expulsion was alone canonical, though it may be considered a reasonable presumption.—The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, edited by James Orr, M. A., D. D., Vol. I, art. “Canon of the Old Testament, The,” p. 556.HBS 396.2

Peopling of the World, Descendants of Japheth.—The object of the author of the tenth chapter of Genesis was to give us, not a personal genealogy, but a sketch of the interconnection of races. Shem, Ham, and Japheth are no doubt persons, the actual sons of the patriarch Noah; but it may be doubted whether there is another name in the series which is other than ethnic. The document is in fact the earliest ethnographical essay that has come down to our times. It is a summary, like those which may be found in Bunsen’s “Philosophy of History” or Max Müller’s “Survey of Languages,” arranging the chief known nations of the earth into an ethnographic scheme. In examining it, we must remember that it is three thousand years old, and that it was written by a Jew and for the Jews. We must therefore only look to find in it an account of the nations with which the Jews, at the date of its composition, had some acquaintance.HBS 396.3

The genealogy opens with the statement that “the sons,” or descendants, “of Japheth were Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras” (verse 2). Can we identify the races intended under these various names, all or any of them?HBS 396.4

Gomer.-Scripture tells us nothing further of Gomer, excepting that his armed “bands” should take part in an invasion of Judea which was impending at the time when the prophet Ezekiel wrote his thirty-eighth chapter, which was probably about b. c. 600. They were to come in company with those of Magog, Meshech, Tubal, and Togarmah, “from the north quarter” (Ezekiel 38:2-6), and were to join in producing a great desolation, but were soon afterward to suffer a reverse. Gomer, therefore, should be a warlike people, not averse to taking part in the raids of other nations, dwelling somewhere in the north country, or in the regions between Syria on the one hand and the Black Sea and Caucasus on the other, and powerful in these parts toward the close of the seventh century before our era. Now these requirements are all met by a race which the Assyrians called “Gimiri,” or “Kimiri,” and the Greeks “Kimmerii,” who warred in northwest Asia from about b. c. 670 to 570, and who, according to Strabo, occasionally ravaged Asia Minor in conjunction with a Thracian people called Treres. The Kimmerii dwelt originally in the broad plains of southern Russia, the tract known as the Ukraine, but being dispossessed by the Scythians, they fled (or a portion of them fled) across the Caucasus into Armenia and Asia Minor. They there ravaged and plundered far and wide for about a century, warring with Gyges and Ardys, the Lydian kings, burning the temple of Diana at Ephesus, overrunning Phrygia, and even penetrating into the remote and mountainous Cilicia, through the passes of Taurus. They have been probably identified with the Cimbri of Roman times, a portion of the great Celtic race, some of whose tribes were found in Britain when the Romans conquered it, and came to be called by them Cambri, and their country Cambria. The descendants of these Cambri still hold a portion of our country, and know themselves by their old name of “Cymry,” utterly ignoring the name which we English give them, of “Welsh.” Others of the same stock maintained themselves for some centuries in the north, and gave to the mountainous district that harbored them the appellation, which it still retains, of Cumberland. We may say, therefore, that Gomer probably represents the Celtic race under one of their best known and most widely extended names, and that the author of Genesis meant to include among the descendants of Japheth the great and powerful nation of the Celts.HBS 396.5

Magog.-Of Magog, or Gog (for the names seem to designate the same people), nothing can be concluded from the word itself. There is no recognized ethnic appellative with any pretension to importance that bears any near resemblance to either of the two terms. It appears, however, from Ezekiel 38 and 39 that the race which these terms, as used by the Jews, designated, was one of remarkable power toward the close of the seventh century b. c.; that it led the expeditions in which Gomer participated, and pushed them as far as Palestine; that it dwelt, like Gomer, in the “north country;” that its weapon was the bow (Ezekiel 39:3); and that its warriors were all horsemen (Ezekiel 38:15). These notes of character probably identify the people intended with the European Scythians, who were the dominant race in the tract between the Caucasus and Mesopotamia for the space of nearly thirty years, from about b. c. 630 to b. c. 600; who invaded Palestine and besieged Ascalon in the reign of the Egyptian king Psammetichus, who fought almost wholly on horseback, and were famous for their skill with the bow. Probably, therefore, the author of Genesis meant to include the Scyths of Europe, the conquerors of the Kimmerians, among the races whose descent he traced to the youngest of the sons of Noah.HBS 397.1

Madai.—With respect to the third name, Madai, there is no room to doubt. Except in this, and the corresponding passages of Chronicles (1 Chronicles 1:5), the term “Madai” uniformly means—and is indeed translated uniformly, in the Authorized and all other versions—“the Medes.” The Medes called themselves—or, at any rate, the Persians, their near kindred, called them—“Madâ,” of which “Madai” is the natural Hebrew representative. There cannot be the shadow of a doubt that in placing Madai among the descendants of Japheth, the author of Genesis 10 intended to notify that from that patriarch sprang the great and powerful nation of the Medes.HBS 397.2

Javan.-Here again the word itself is a sufficient index to the writer’s meaning. Javan is the nearest possible expression in Hebrew of the Greek term which we render by “Ionians,” the original form of which in Greek was Iafon-es. Why and how is uncertain, but the fact is indisputable, that the Orientals used this term universally as the generic name for the Greek race. The Assyrians called the Greeks of Cyprus the Yavnan; the Persians called those of Asia Minor and the Agean islands, the Yuna. The terms “Greek,” “Hellene,” “Achaan,” “Dorian,” were unknown in Asia, or at any rate unused by the Asiatics generally, being superseded by the name “Ionian,” with which alone they were familiar.HBS 398.1

Tubal and Meshech, constantly coupled together in Scripture (Ezekiel 27:13; 32:26; 38:2, 3; 39:1), seem to represent the two kindred races of the Tibareni and the Moschi, who dwelt in close proximity to each other on the northen coast of Asia Minor, in the days of Herodotus and Xenophon, and who at an earlier period were among the most powerful of the races inhabiting the interior. The Assyrian monarchs were for several centuries-from about b. c. 1100 to 700-engaged in frequent wars with the Muskai and Tuplai, who then held the more eastern portion of the Taurus range, and the tract beyond it, known later as Cappadocia. Here was the great Moschian capital, which even the Romans knew as Casarea Mazaca. The author of the Noachide genealogy, in all probability, intends to state that the two powerful races of the Moschi and the Tibareni were, like the Kimmerians, the Scyths of Europe, the Medes, and the Greeks, of Japhetic origin.HBS 398.2

Tiras.-This is the most obscure of all the names in the Japhetic list, since no other passage of Scripture throws the least light upon it. Jewish tradition, however, asserts that the Thracians are the people intended. Etymologically, this is not perhaps altogether satisfactory, since the third root consonant of Thrace and Thracian is not s but k. Geographically, however, the identification is suitable enough; and it may therefore be accepted, at any rate, till some more plausible explanation is offered. Thracian tribes occupied the greater portion of northern and central Asia Minor from a remote antiquity. The Thynians and Bithynians were always admitted to be Thracians. So were the Mariandynians, according to Strabo, and, according to others, the Paphlagonians. A strong Thracian character belonged to the Phrygians and Mysians, whose very names were, moreover, mere variants of those borne by purely Thracian tribes, viz., the Bridges and Masi. Thus the more ancient Hebrews might well include under the name of Thracians the chief tribes of Asia Minor, the tribes which immediately adjoined upon the Moschi toward the west, just as Tiras immediately follows on Meshech in the genealogy. And the author of Genesis 10 may be understood to include among the descendants of Japheth the whole vast nation of the Thracians, which extended from the Halys in Asia Minor, to the Drave and Save in Europe.HBS 398.3

Such are the conclusions to which the critical student naturally comes when he examines the list of names in Genesis 10:2 in the light thrown on them by other passages of Scripture, by the context, and by a comparison of the words used with known ancient ethnic titles. In brief, the statement of the verse is, that a special connection of races united together the following peoples: the Cymry or Celts, the Scyths of Europe, the Medes or Aryans, the Greeks, the Thracians, and the comparatively insignificant tribes of the Moschi and Tibareni; that, in fact, these several races belonged to one stock, had one blood, were but the different branches of a single family.HBS 398.4

Now, here is a statement which may at any rate be compared with the results of modern ethnographical research. It is the object of ethnography, or ethnology, whichever we like to call it, to trace out, as far as the facts of history, of physiology, and of language permit, the interconnection of nations. Nations which are really one family should have a family likeness; tribes which grew up together must have once had a common language. If the Celts, the European Scyths, the Medes or Aryans, the Greeks and Romans (for these two cannot be separated), and the Thracians had a common descent, the fact should appear in a resemblance between their languages, and in a certain unity of physical type.HBS 399.1

What, then, has ethnographical science, following a strictly inductive method and wholly freed from all shackles of authority, concluded on the matter before us? A single passage from the greatest of modern ethnologists will suffice to show:HBS 399.2

“There was a time,” says Prof. Max Müller, “when the ancestors of the Celts, the Germans, the Slavs, the Greeks and Italians, the Persians and Hindus, were living together beneath the same roof, separate from the Semitic and Turanian races.” And again, “There is not an English jury nowadays, which, after examining the hoary documents of language, would reject the claim of a common descent and a legitimate relationship between Hindu, Greek, and Teuton.” Ethnological science, we see, regards it as morally certain, as proved beyond all reasonable doubt, that the chief races of modern Europe, the Celts, the Germans, the Greco-Italians, and the Slavs, had a common origin with the principal race of Western Asia, the Indo-Persian.HBS 399.3

Now, this result of advanced modern inductive science, a result which it is one of the proudest boasts of the nineteenth century to have arrived at, is almost exactly that which Moses, writing fifteen hundred years before the Christian era, laid down dogmatically as simple historical fact. For his “Gomer,” as already shown, represents certainly the race of the Celts, his “Javan” stands, beyond a doubt, for the Greco-Italians, and his “Madai” (Medes) for the Aryans or Indo-Persians, while his “Magog” may well stand for the Slavs, and his “Tiras” for the Teutons, or Germans....HBS 399.4

Whereas modern ethnological science, basing itself on the facts of language, lays it down as a grand discovery that one of the great families into which the human race is divided comprises the five divisions of (1) Indo-Persians or Aryans; (2) Celts; (3) Teutons; (4) Greco-Italians; and (5) Slavs,-Moses, anticipating this discovery by a space of above three thousand years, gives as members of one family (1) Madai, the Medes or Aryans; (2) Gomer, the Cymry or Celts; (3) Tiras, the Thracians (Teutons); (4) Javan, the Ionians (Greeks); and (5) Magog, the Scythians and Sarmatians (Slavs). The only difference between the two schemes is that Moses adds further a sixth race, Tubal, the Tibareni; and a seventh, Meshech, the Moschi,-races which rapidly declined in power between b. c. 1100 and 400, and which perished without leaving either a literature or descendants, whence modern ethnological science takes no notice of them.—“The Origin of Nations,” George Rawlinson, M. A., pp. 168-179. New York: Charles Scribners’ Sons, 1889.HBS 399.5

Peopling of the Earth.—On awaking from his drunkenness, Noah, in the spirit of prophecy, assigned to his three sons the rewards and the punishments of their respective deeds. At that time of the world’s depopulation, the few men that were in it seem to have acted more in a representative than in an individual capacity. It was, therefore, the posterity of his three sons rather than themselves that were affected by these rewards and punishments. Canaan, one of the sons of Ham, received the heaviest share of the punishment which his father had provoked. The descendants of Shem were to be blessed; God was to dwell in their tents; and the Canaanites were to become their servants. “Enlargement” was to be the portion of the descendants of Japheth, indicating that they were to spread over the widest portion of the globe.HBS 399.6

Its Fulfilment.-The event corresponded with the prophecy. In general terms it may be said that most of Africa was peopled by the descendants of Ham; most of Central Asia by those of Shem; and most of Europe by those of Japheth. According to an Armenian tradition, Ham received the region of the blacks, Shem the region of the tawny, and Japheth the region of the ruddy. For a time, some of Ham’s descendants, particularly the Egyptians and Phonicians, and the Cushite founders of Babylonia, were the foremost and most vigorous races of the world; but the period of their ascendancy passed away: a great part of the Canaanites were subdued and destroyed by the Israelites; the Cushite Chaldeans were absorbed by Semitic conquerors; and even the Phonicians, with their mighty daughter, Carthage, ultimately fell before their foes. Though the curse of Ham was formally pronounced on Canaan alone, it has been reflected more or less on the other branches of his family; the black-skinned African became a synonym for weakness and degradation. The blessing of God rested very conspicuously on Shem during the long period of Asiatic ascendancy, and especially on the Jews-that branch of the Shemites that overpowered the Canaanites, and in whose tents God had his habitation, in the “tabernacle of Mount Zion.” But the Shemites were more a stationary than a progressive race. In vigor, enterprise, and progressive power generally, the race of Japheth has excelled them all. For many an age the Japhethites were little known or heard of; they expended their energy in wild and warlike pursuits on the remote plains of Europe and Northern Asia. But for more than two thousand years they have been the dominant races of the world. Every year the race of Japheth spreads wider and wider over the globe; whole continents are peopled by him, and, either as colonist or as trader, his foot rests upon every soil.HBS 400.1

Descendants of Japheth.-Gomer, the eldest son of Japheth, is thought to have been the ancestor of many of the nations that peopled the continent and the islands of Europe, in some of whose names (for example, Germans, Cimbri, Cambri, Cumbri, Cimmerii, Crimea) the principal consonants in “Gomer,” or letters corresponding to them, are still preserved. Magog represents the Scythians; Madai, the Medes; Javan, the Greeks; Tiras, the Thracians. Ashkenaz, eldest son of Gomer, is believed to have peopled the shores of the Black Sea, which received from him its first designation, Axenus, afterward changed into Euxine. Magog, Tubal, and Meshech are noticed by Ezekiel (ch. 38:2, 14, 15) as settled in the north; and perhaps their names may be recognized in the well-known terms, Mogul, Mongolia, Tobolski, Moscow, and Muscovy. From these, or from other descendants of Japheth that peopled “the isles,” or remote coasts “of the Gentiles,” the great races of Europe, including the Greeks, the Romans, and the more modern nations, must have sprung.HBS 400.2

Descendants of Ham.-Of the sons of Ham, the first-born, Cush, appears to have peopled more districts than one. One of these was “the land of Cush” (Ethiopia) mentioned in the description of Eden (Genesis 2:13), a district somewhere near the Caspian Sea; another, and the principal, was the well-known land of Ethiopia beyond Egypt. Cush is also declared to have been the father of Nimrod, a mighty hunter and a mighty conqueror, and the founder of the first great Mesopotamian kingdom. Misr, or Mizraim, was evidently the ancestor of the Egyptians; in Hebrew, the land of Egypt is invariably called Mizraim, and one of its present designations is the land of Misr. Mauritania and other more remote parts of Africa are thought to have been peopled by Phut; while Canaan, Ham’s youngest son, was father of the Phonicians, and of the nations that were destroyed or driven out for their sins from the land of Canaan, to make way for the children of Israel. Heth, one of the sons of Canaan, is now known to have been the progenitor of a very great people; for the Hittites have been proved to have been one of the greatest nations of the East.HBS 400.3

Descendants of Shem.-The sons of Shem were Elam, Asshur, Arphaxad, Lud, and Aram. Elam seems to have settled in Eastern Persia. Asshur was represented by the Assyrians. Arphaxad, the progenitor of the Shemitic Chaldeans, dwelt in Mesopotamia, north and west of Asshur and Elam, and became, through his grandson Eber, the father of the Hebrews. Lud is thought to have been the father of the Lydians. Aram’s settlement embraced the district of Syria near Damascus, and the northern part of Mesopotamia, called Padan-aram. Uz, the eldest son of Aram, gave his name to the country where Job went through his unprecedented trials.HBS 401.1

Though there is great uncertainty as to the exact territories of many of the descendants of Noah’s sons, the general position of the settlements of the three great families is tolerably plain. They did not, however, all settle peaceably in their proper territories. Nimrod’s kingdom was founded in the very heart of the Shemite district. Another family of Ham’s, the Phonicians, were considerably Semitized, or assimilated to the Shemites, in language and otherwise, when they became prominent in history. It is impossible to draw a distinct line separating all the different families.—“A Manual of Bible History,” Rev. William G. Blaikie, D. D., LL. D., pp. 41-43. London: T. Nelson & Sons, 1906.HBS 401.2

Peopling of the Earth.—The Toldoth Beni Noah (the genealogies of the descendants of Noah) has extorted the admiration of modern ethnologists, who continually find in it anticipations of their greatest discoveries. For instance, in the very second verse the great discovery of Schlegel, which the word Indo-European embodies-the affinity of the principal nations of Europe with the Arian or Indo-Persic stock-is sufficiently indicated by the conjunction of the Madai or Medes (whose native name was Mada) with Gomer or the Cymry, and Javan or the Ionians. Again, one of the most recent and unexpected results of modern linguistic inquiry is the proof which it has furnished of an ethnic connection between the Ethiopians or Cushites, who adjoined on Egypt, and the primitive inhabitants of Babylonia,-a connection which was positively denied by an eminent ethnologist only a few years ago, but which has now been sufficiently established from the cuneiform monuments. In the tenth of Genesis we find this truth thus briefly but clearly stated, “And Cush begat Nimrod,” the “beginning of whose kingdom was Babel.” So we have had it recently made evident from the same monuments, that “out of that land went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh,” or that the Semitic Assyrians proceeded from Babylonia and founded Nineveh long after the Cushite foundation of Babylon. Again, the Hamitic descent of the early inhabitants of Canaan, which had often been called in question, has recently come to be looked upon as almost certain, apart from the evidence of Scripture; and the double mention of Sheba, both among the sons of Ham and also among those of Shem, has been illustrated by the discovery that there are two races of Arabs-one (the Joktanian) Semitic, the other (the Himyaric) Cushite or Ethiopic. On the whole, the scheme of ethnic affiliation given in the tenth chapter of Genesis is pronounced “safer” to follow than any other; and the Toldoth Beni Noah commends itself to the ethnic inquirer as “the most authentic record that we possess for the affiliation of nations,” and as a document “of the very highest antiquity.”-“The Historical Evidences of the Truth of the Scripture Records,” George Rawlinson, M. A., pp. 71, 72. New York: John B. Alden, 1883.HBS 401.3

Pharaohs of the Bible.—Pharaoh, the common title of the native kings of Egypt in the Bible, corresponding to P-ra or Ph-ra, “the sun,” of the hieroglyphics. Brugsch, Ebers, and other modern Egyptologists define it to mean “the great house,” which would correspond to our “the Sublime Porte.” As several kings are mentioned only by the title “Pharaoh” in the Bible, it is important to endeavor to discriminate them:HBS 402.1

1. The Pharaoh of Abraham. Genesis 12:15.-At the time at which the patriarch went into Egypt, it is generally held that the country, or at least Lower Egypt, was ruled by the Shepherd kings, of whom the first and most powerful line was the fifteenth dynasty, the undoubted territories of which would be first entered by one coming from the east. The date at which Abraham visited Egypt was about b. c. 2081, which would accord with the time of Salatis, the head of the fifteenth dynasty, according to our reckoning.HBS 402.2

2. The Pharaoh of Joseph. Genesis 41.-One of the Shepherd kings, perhaps Apophis, who belonged to the fifteenth dynasty. He appears to have reigned from Joseph’s appointment (or perhaps somewhat earlier) until Jacob’s death, a period of at least twenty-six years, from about b. c. 1876 to 1850, and to have been the fifth or sixth king of the fifteenth dynasty.HBS 402.3

3. The Pharaoh of the Oppression. Exodus 1:8.-The first persecutor of the Israelites may be distinguished as the Pharaoh of the oppression, from the second, the Pharaoh of the exodus, especially as he commenced and probably long carried on the persecution. The general view is that he was an Egyptian. One class of Egyptologists think that Amosis (Ahmes), the first sovereign of the eighteenth dynasty, is the Pharaoh of the oppression; but Brugsch and others identify him with Rameses II (the Sesostris of the Greeks), of the nineteenth dynasty (b. c. 1380-1340).HBS 402.4

4. The Pharaoh of the Exodus. Exodus 5:1.-Either Thothmes III, as Wilkinson, or Menephthah son of Rameses II, whom Brugsch thinks was probably the Pharaoh of the exodus, who with his army pursued the Israelites and was overwhelmed in the Red Sea.—“A Dictionary of the Bible,” William Smith, LL. D., pp. 505, 506, Teacher’s edition. Philadelphia: Porter and Coates, copyright 1884.HBS 402.5

Pharaoh-Hophra.—The Pharaoh contemporary with the later years of Zedekiah, the last king of Judah, who reigned from b. c. 595 to b. c. 586, was undoubtedly Ua-ap-ra, whom the Greeks called “Apries,” and whom Jeremiah in one place speaks of as “Pharaoh-Hophra” (ch. 44:30). Apries ascended the throne in b. c. 591, and reigned alone nineteen years (to b. c. 572), after which he was for six years more joint-king with Amasis. It would seem that very soon after his accession Zedekiah made overtures to him for an alliance (Ezekiel 17:15), transferring to him the allegiance which he owed to Babylon, and making a request for a large body of troops, horse and foot (ibid.). It is in accordance with the bold and aggressive character assigned to Apries by the Greeks to find that he at once accepted Zedekiah’s offer, and prepared to bear his part in the war. “Pharaoh’s army went forth out of Egypt” (Jeremiah 37:5) with the object of “helping” Zedekiah (id. verse 7); and the movement was so far successful that the army of the Chaldeans, which had commenced the siege of Jerusalem, “broke up from before it for fear of Pharaoh’s army” (id., verse 11). Nebuchadnezzar, who was directing the siege, marched away to encounter the Egyptians, and either terrified them into a retreat, or actually engaged and defeated them. The foundation was thus laid of that enmity between the two kings which, later in Egyptian history, is found to have had very important consequences.—“Egypt and Babylon,” George Rawlinson, M. A., p. 200. New York: John B. Alden, 1885.HBS 402.6

Pharisees.—When the New Testament records open, the Pharisees, who have supreme influence among the people, are also strong, though not predominant, in the Sanhedrin. The Herodians and Sadducees, the one by their alliance with the Roman authorities, and the other by their inherited skill in political intrigue, held the reins of government.... Outside the Sanhedrin the Pharisees are ubiquitous, in Jerusalem, in Galilee, in Peraa, and in the Decapolis, always coming in contact with Jesus. [p. 2362] ... The Pharisees were close students of the sacred text. On the turn of a sentence they suspended many decisions. So much so, that it is said of them later that they suspended mountains from hairs. [p. 2363] ...HBS 403.1

The attitude of the Pharisees to Jesus, to begin with, was, as had been their attitude to John, critical. They sent representatives to watch his doings and his sayings and report.... They were the democratic party; their whole power lay in the reputation they had with the people for piety. Our Lord denounced them as hypocrites; moreover he had secured a deeper popularity than theirs. At length when cajolery failed to win him and astute questioning failed to destroy his popularity, they combined with their opponents, the Sadducees, against him as against a common enemy.HBS 403.2

On the other hand, Jesus denounced the Pharisees more than he denounced any other class of the people. This seems strange when we remember that the main body of the religious people, those who looked for the Messiah, belonged to the Pharisees, and his teaching and theirs had a strong external resemblance. It was this external resemblance, united as it was with a profound spiritual difference, which made it incumbent on Jesus to mark himself off from them. All righteousness with them was external; it lay in meats and drinks and divers washings, in tithing of mint, anise, and cummin. He placed religion on a different footing, removed it into another region. With him it was the heart that must be right with God, not merely the external actions; not only the outside of the cup and platter was to be cleansed, but the inside first of all.—“The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia,” Vol. IV, art. “Pharisees,” pp. 2362, 2363, 2365.HBS 403.3

Pharisees, Teachings of.—The Pharisees were the most numerous and powerful sect of the Jews. The precise time when they first appeared is not known; but, as Josephus mentions the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes, as distinct sects, in the reign of Jonathan (b. c. 144-139), it is manifest that they must have been in existence for some time. [p. 362] ...HBS 403.4

Among the tenets inculcated by this sect, we may enumerate the following; viz.,HBS 404.1

They ascribed all things to fate or providence, yet not so absolutely as to take away the free will of man, though fate does not co-operate in every action. They also believed in the existence of angels and spirits, and in the resurrection of the dead....HBS 404.2

The Pharisees contended that God was in strict justice bound to bless the Jews, and make them all partakers of the terrestrial kingdom of the Messiah, to justify them, to make them eternally happy, and that he could not possibly damn any one of them! The ground of their justification they derived from the merits of Abraham, from their knowledge of God, from their practising the rite of circumcision, and from the sacrifices they offered. And as they conceived works to be meritorious, they had invented a great number of supererogatory ones, to which they attached greater merit than to the observance of the law itself. [p. 363] ...HBS 404.3

The Pharisees were the strictest of the three principal sects that divided the Jewish nation (Acts 26:5), and affected a singular probity of manners according to their system, which however was for the most part both lax and corrupt....HBS 404.4

Further, they interpreted certain of the Mosaic laws most literally, and distorted their meaning so as to favor their own philosophical system. Thus, the law of loving their neighbor, they expounded solely of the love of their friends, that is, of the whole Jewish race; all other persons being considered by them as natural enemies (Matthew 5:43 compared with Luke 10:31-33), whom they were in no respect bound to assist. [p. 364] ...HBS 404.5

But, above all their other tenets, the Pharisees were conspicuous for their reverential observance of the traditions or decrees of the elders. These traditions, they pretended, had been handed down from Moses through every generation, but were not committed to writing; and they were not merely considered as of equal authority with the divine law, but even preferable to it. “The words of the scribes,” said they, “are lovely above the words of the law; for the words of the law are weighty and light, but the words of the scribes are all weighty.” Among the traditions thus sanctimoniously observed by the Pharisees, we may briefly notice the following:HBS 404.6

1. The washing of hands up to the wrist before and after meat (Matthew 15:2; Mark 7:3), which they accounted not merely a religious duty, but considered its omission as a crime equal to fornication, and punishable by excommunication.HBS 404.7

2. The purification of the cups, vessels, and couches used at their meals by ablutions or washings (Mark 7:4); for which purpose the six large waterpots mentioned by St. John 2:6 were destined. But these ablutions are not to be confounded with those symbolical washings mentioned in Psalm 26:6 and Matthew 27:24.HBS 404.8

3. Their punctilious payment of tithes (temple offerings), even of the most trifling thing. Luke 18:12; Matthew 23:23.HBS 404.9

4. Their wearing broader phylacteries and larger fringes to their garments than the rest of the Jews. Matthew 23:5. He who wore his phylactery and his fringe of the largest size, was reputed to be the most devout.HBS 404.10

5. Their fasting twice a week with great appearance of austerity (Luke 18:12; Matthew 6:16); thus converting that exercise into religion which is only a help toward the performance of its hallowed duties. The Jewish days of fasting were the second and fifth days of the week, corresponding with our Mondays and Thursdays: on one of these days they commemorated Moses’ going up to the mount to receive the law, which, according to their traditions, was on the fifth day, or Thursday; and on the other his descent after he had received the two tables, which they supposed to have been on the second day, or Monday. [pp. 365, 366] ...HBS 404.11

With all their pretensions to piety, the Pharisees entertained the most sovereign contempt for the people, whom, being ignorant of the law, they pronounced to be accursed. John 7:49. It is unquestionable, as Mosheim has well remarked, that the religion of the Pharisees was, for the most part, founded in consummate hypocrisy; and that, in general, they were the slaves of every vicious appetite, proud, arrogant, and avaricious, consulting only the gratification of their lusts, even at the very moment when they professed themselves to be engaged in the service of their Maker. These odious features in the character of the Pharisees caused them to be reprehended by our Saviour with the utmost severity, even more than he rebuked the Sadducees, who, although they had departed widely from the genuine principles of religion, yet did not impose on mankind by pretended sanctity, or devote themselves with insatiable greediness to the acquisition of honors and riches.—“An Introduction to the Critical Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures,” Thomas Hartwell Horne, B. D., Vol. III, pp. 362-367. London: T. Cadell, 1839.HBS 405.1

Pliny, Letter of, to the Emperor Trajan (about 112 a. d.).—It is my custom, my lord, to refer to you all things concerning which I am in doubt. For who can better guide my indecision or enlighten my ignorance?HBS 405.2

I have never taken part in the trials of Christians: hence I do not know for what crime or to what extent it is customary to punish or investigate. I have been in no little doubt as to whether any discrimination is made for age, or whether the treatment of the weakest does not differ from that of the stronger; whether pardon is granted in case of repentance, or whether he who has ever been a Christian gains nothing by having ceased to be one; whether the name itself, without the proof of crimes, or the crimes, inseparably connected with the name, are punished.HBS 405.3

Meanwhile I have followed this procedure in the case of those who have been brought before me as Christians: I asked them whether they were Christians a second and a third time and with threats of punishment; I questioned those who confessed; I ordered those who were obstinate to be executed. For I did not doubt that, whatever it was that they confessed, their stubbornness and inflexible obstinacy ought certainly to be punished. There were others of similar madness, who, because they were Roman citizens, I have noted for sending to the city. Soon, the crime spreading, as is usual when attention is called to it, more cases arose. An anonymous accusation, containing many names, was presented. Those who denied that they were or had been Christians, ought, I thought, to be dismissed, since they repeated after me a prayer to the gods and made supplication with incense and wine to your image, which I had ordered to be brought for the purpose, together with the statues of the gods, and since besides they cursed Christ, not one of which things, they say, those who are really Christians can be compelled to do. Others, accused by the informer, said that they were Christians, and afterward denied it; in fact, they had been, but had ceased to be, some many years ago, some even twenty years before. All both worshiped your image and the statues of the gods, and cursed Christ. They continued to maintain that this was the amount of their fault or error that, on a fixed day, they were accustomed to come together before daylight and to sing by turns a hymn to Christ as a god, and that they bound themselves by oath, not for some crime, but that they would not commit robbery, theft, or adultery, that they would not betray a trust or deny a deposit when called upon. After this it was their custom to disperse and to come together again to partake of food, of an ordinary and harmless kind, however; even this they ceased to do after the publication of my edict in which, according to your command, I had forbidden associations.HBS 405.4

Hence I believed it the more necessary to examine two female slaves, who were called deaconesses, in order to find out what was true, and to do it by torture. I found nothing but a vicious, extravagant superstition. Consequently I postponed the examination and make haste to consult you. For it seemed to me that the subject would justify consultation, especially on account of the number of those in peril. For many of all ages, of every rank, and even of both sexes, are and will be called into danger. The infection of this superstition has not only spread to the cities, but even to the villages and country districts. It seems possible to stay it and bring about a reform. It is plain enough that the temples, which had been almost deserted, have begun to be frequented again, that the sacred rites, which had been neglected for a long time, have begun to be restored, and that fodder for victims, for which till now there was scarcely a purchaser, is sold. From which one may readily judge what a number of men can be reclaimed if repentance is permitted. (Epistles, X. 96.)-“The Library of Original Sources,” Vol. IV, pp. 7-9. Milwaukee, Wis.: University Research Extension Co., copyright 1907.HBS 406.1

Pontius Pilate.—Of the various procurators that governed Judea under the Romans, Pontius Pilate is the best known, and most frequently mentioned in the Sacred Writings. He is supposed to have been a native of Italy, and was sent to govern Judea about the year a. d. 26 or 27. Pilate is characterized by Josephus as an unjust and cruel governor, sanguinary, obstinate, and impetuous; who disturbed the tranquillity of Judea by persisting in carrying into Jerusalem the effigies of Tiberius Casar that were upon the Roman ensigns, and by other acts of oppression, which produced tumults among the Jews. Dreading the extreme jealousy and suspicion of Tiberius, he delivered up the Redeemer to be crucified, contrary to the conviction of his better judgment; and in the vain hope of conciliating the Jews whom he had oppressed. After he had held his office for ten years, having caused a number of innocent Samaritans to be put to death, that injured people sent an embassy to Vitellius, proconsul of Syria, by whom he was ordered to Rome, to give an account of his maladministration to the emperor. But Tiberius being dead before he arrived there, his successor, Caligula, banished him to Gaul, where he is said to have committed suicide about the year of Christ 41.—“An Introduction to the Critical Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures,” Thomas Hartwell Horne, B. D., Vol. III, p. 114. London: T. Cadell, 1839.HBS 406.2

Pope, Bellarmine on Fifteen Titles of.—Argumentum postremum sumitur ex nominibus Episcopi Romani, qua sunt quindecim, [1] Papa, [2] Pater Patrum, [3] Christianorum Pontifex, [4] summus sacerdos, [5] Princeps sacerdotum, [6] Vicarius Christi, [7] Caput corporis Ecclesia, [8] Fundamentum adificii Ecclesia, [9] Pastor ovilis Domini, [10] Pater et Doctor omnium fidelium, [11] Rector domus Dei, [12] Custos vinea Dei, [13] Sponsus Ecclesia, [14] Apostolica sedis Presul, [15] Episcopus universalis.—“De Romano Pontifice,” Bellarmine, lib. ii, c. 31. Colonia Agrippina: Antonius and Arnoldus Hierati Fratres, 1628.HBS 406.3

(Translation:) The last argument [of the previous chapter] is maintained from the names of the Roman bishop, which are fifteen: [1] Pope, [2] father of fathers, [3] the Pontiff of Christians, [4] high priest, [5] chief of the priests, [6] the vicar of Christ, [7] the head of the body, the church, [8] the foundation of the building, the church, [9] pastor of the Lord’s sheep, [10] the father and doctor of all the faithful, [11] the ruler of the house of God, [12] the keeper of God’s vineyard, [13] the bridegroom of the church, [14] the ruler of the apostolic see, [15] the universal bishop.—Eds.HBS 406.4

Pope, Adoration of.—After his election and proclamation, the Pope, attired in the pontifical dress, is borne on the pontifical chair to the church of St. Peter, and is placed upon the high altar, where he is saluted for the third time by the cardinals, kissing his feet, hands, and mouth. In the meantime the Te Deum is sung; and, when the adoration and the hymn is over, the dean of the Sacred College chants some versicles and a prayer, then the Pontiff descends from the altar, and is carried to the Vatican; and after some days he is crowned in the church of St. Peter by the senior cardinal deacon.—Quoted from Notitia Congregationum et Tribunalium Curia Romana (Standing Orders of the Court of Rome); cited in “Letters to M. Gondon,” Chr. Wordsworth, D. D., pp. 310, 311. London: Francis & John Rivington, 1848.HBS 407.1

St. Paul predicted the appearance of a power, which he calls “mystery,” claiming adoration in the Christian temple, taking his seat in the sanctuary of the church of God, showing himself that he is God. Let us also remember that Daniel’s word “abomination,” which describes an object of idolatrous worship, is adopted by the Apocalypse; and that, in like manner, St. Paul’s word “mystery” is adopted in the Apocalypse; and that both these words are combined in this book, in the name of the woman, whose attire is described minutely by St. John, and whose name on her forehead is “Mystery, Babylon the Great, mother of abominations of the earth.”HBS 407.2

Is this description applicable to the Church of Rome?HBS 407.3

For an answer to this question, let us refer, not to any private sources, but to the official “Book of Sacred Ceremonies” of the Church of Rome.HBS 407.4

This book, sometimes called “Ceremoniale Romanum,” is written in Latin, and was compiled three hundred and forty years ago, by Marcellus, a Roman Catholic archbishop, and is dedicated to a pope, Leo X. Let us turn to that portion of this volume which describes the first public appearance of the Pope at Rome, on his election to the pontificate.HBS 407.5

We there read the following order of proceeding: “The Pontiff elect is conducted to the sacrarium, and divested of his ordinary attire, and is clad in the papal robes.” The color of these is then minutely described. Suffice it to say, that five different articles of dress, in which he is then arrayed, are scarlet. Another vest is specified, and this is covered with pearls. His miter is then mentioned; and this is adorned with gold and precious stones.HBS 407.6

Such, then, is the attire in which the Pope is arrayed, and in which he first appears to the world as Pope. Refer now to the Apocalypse. We have seen that scarlet, pearls, gold, and precious stones are thrice specified by St. John as characterizing the mysterious power portrayed by himself.HBS 407.7

But we may not pause here. Turn again to the “Ceremoniale Romanum.” The Pontiff elect, arrayed as has been described, is conducted to the cathedral of Rome, the basilica, or church, of St. Peter. He is led to the altar; he first prostrates himself before it, and prays. Thus he declares the sanctity of the altar. He kneels at it, and prays before it, as the seat of God.HBS 407.8

What a contrast then ensues! We read thus: “The Pope rises, and, wearing his miter, is lifted up by the cardinals, and is placed by them upon the altar-to sit there. One of the bishops kneels, and begins the ‘Te Deum.’ In the meantime the cardinals kiss the feet and hands and face of the Pope.”HBS 408.1

Such is the first appearance of the Pope in the face of the church and the world.HBS 408.2

This ceremony has been observed for many centuries; and it was performed at the inauguration of the present Pontiff, Pius IX; and it is commonly called by Roman writers the “Adoration.” It is represented on a coin, struck in the papal mint with the legend, “Quem creant, adorant” (Whom they create [Pope], they adore).... What a wonderful avowal!HBS 408.3

The following language was addressed to Pope Innocent X, and may serve as a specimen of the feelings with which the Adoration is performed:HBS 408.4

“Most Holy and Blessed Father, head of the church, ruler of the world, to whom the keys of the kingdom of heaven are committed, whom the angels in heaven revere, and whom the gates of hell fear, and whom all the world adores, we specially venerate, worship, and adore thee, and commit ourselves, and all that belongs to us, to thy paternal and more than divine disposal.”HBS 408.5

What more could be said to Almighty God himself?-“Union with Rome,” Chr. Wordsworth, D. D., pp. 52-55. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1909.HBS 408.6

Pope, Deposing Power of.—I am aware of the fact that by many this power of the Roman Pontiff to depose apostate rulers is either denied, or at all events rendered doubtful; but how this can be done in good faith, we do not easily see, especially since it pertains to a most solemn matter, intimately connected with purity of the faith, concerning which unquestionable testimonies occur in history. Particularly should be noted the words which St. Gregory VII used: “Holding to the decrees of our holy predecessors, we, by our apostolic authority, absolve from their oath those who are bound by allegiance or oath to excommunicated persons, and we prohibit them from keeping faith with them in any way, until they make amends.”HBS 408.7

Moreover, it will be worth our while to quote here the very famous words with which Boniface VIII [in the bull Unam Sanctam] set forth the superiority of the ecclesiastical power over the civil:HBS 408.8

“In this church and in its power are two swords, to wit, a spiritual and a temporal, and this we are taught by the words of the gospel; for when the apostles said, ‘Behold, here are two swords’ (in the church, namely, since the apostles were speaking), the Lord did not reply that it was too many, but enough. And surely he who claims that the temporal sword is not in the power of Peter has but ill understood the word of our Lord when he said, ‘Put up again thy sword into his place.’ Both the spiritual and the material sword, therefore, are in the power of the church, the latter indeed to be used for the church, the former by the church, the one by the hand of the priest, the other by the hand of kings and soldiers, but by the will and sufferance of the priest.HBS 408.9

“It is fitting, moreover, that one sword should be under the other, and the temporal authority subject to the spiritual power. For when the apostle said, ‘There is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God,’ they would not be ordained unless one sword were under the other, and one, as inferior, was brought back by the other to the highest place.... For as the truth testifies, the spiritual power has to regulate the temporal power, and judge it if it takes a wrong course; thus with reference to the church and the ecclesiastical power, is fulfilled the prophecy of Jeremiah: ‘Behold, I have appointed thee today over nations and kingdoms.’ ... We, moreover, proclaim, declare, define, and pronounce that it is altogether necessary to salvation for every human being to be subject to the Roman Pontiff.”HBS 408.10

Neither can I refrain from quoting also the striking words, possibly not sufficiently well known, by which the angelic doctor [St. Thomas Aquinas], with his customary keenness of intellect, proves in a very clear argument the pre-eminence of the chief Pontiff over all kings, by maintaining a distinction between the new law and the old.—“De Stabilitate et Progressu Dogmatis,” Fr. Alexius M. Lepicier, O. S. M. (R. C.), pp. 211, 212. Officially printed at Rome, 1910.HBS 409.1

The common opinion teaches that the Pope has power over two swords, namely, the spiritual and temporal, which jurisdiction and power Christ himself gave to Peter and his successors (Matthew 16:19), saying, “I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven,” concerning which the doctors remark that he did not say “key” but “keys,” including both the temporal and the spiritual power.HBS 409.2

This opinion is most widely confirmed by the authority of the holy Fathers, by the teaching of the canon and civil law, and by the apostolic constitutions.—“Prompta Bibliotheca” (Ecclesiastical Dictionary), Rev. P. F. Lucius Ferraris (R. C.), art. “Papa” (the Pope).HBS 409.3

Unbelieving princes and kings by the decision of the Pope can be deprived in certain cases of the dominion which they have over the faithful,-as, if they have taken possession of the lands of Christians by force, or if they compel the faithful whom they have conquered to turn from the faith, and so on,-as is clearly shown by Cardinal Bellarmine in his “Apology Against the King of England,” chapter 4.HBS 409.4

And hence the Pope grants the provinces which formerly belonged to Christians, but which have been seized by unbelievers, to be acquired by any of the Christian princes.—Ibid.HBS 409.5

It is not to be wondered at if to the Roman Pontiff, as to the vicar of Him whose is the earth and the fulness thereof, the world and all who dwell therein, etc., there have been granted, when just cause demands, the most complete authority and power of transferring king doms, of dashing in pieces scepters, of taking away crowns, not only unsheathing the spiritual but also the material sword. Which power in its fulness, not once but frequently, the Roman pontiffs have used, as occasion required, by girding the sword upon the thigh most effectively, as is perfectly well known; and to this not only do theologians give most complete testimony, but also the professors of pontifical and imperial law, and many historians of undoubted credibility, both profane and sacred, both Greek and Latin.—Ibid.HBS 409.6

The authority of princes and the allegiance of subjects in the civil state of nature is of divine ordinance; and therefore, so long as princes and their laws are in conformity to the law of God, the church has no power or jurisdiction against them, nor over them. If princes and their laws deviate from the law of God, the church has authority from God to judge of that deviation, and to oblige to its correction.—“The Vatican Decrees,” Henry Edward (Cardinal Manning) (R. C.), p. 54. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1875.HBS 409.7

Even after the Reformation, Simancas, bishop of Badajoz, declared that the popes have power to dethrone kings who are useless to their subjects and who adopt laws adverse to the interests of religion.—“Studies in Church History,” Henry C. Lea, p. 386. Philadelphia: Henry C. Lea’s Sons & Co., 1883.HBS 409.8

Before me is an edition of the Bullarium Romanum, printed at Rome, “facultate et privilegio sanctissimi.” In it I find the bull by which Gregory VII (Hildebrand) deposed the emperor Henry the Fourth, and absolved his subjects from their allegiance. I see the same act repeated in another document in the same collection. Passing over the bulls in which Pope Gregory IX excommunicated the emperor Frederick II, and in which Pope Innocent IV deposed the same sovereign, I see there the bull in which Paul III, in 1535, excommunicated King Henry the Eighth of England, and ordered his nobles to rebel against him. I proceed further, and find another similar document in which Pius V (now canonized as a saint of the Church of Rome) pretended to depose Queen Elizabeth, and to deprive her of what he called “pratenso regni jure” [her pretended right to the kingdom], and to declare her subjects “forever absolved from any oath, and all manner of duty, allegiance, and obedience to her;” and commanded them, on pain of excommunication, “not to presume to obey her monitions, mandates, and laws.” In the year 1640 Paul V, and in 1671 Clement X, anathematized all Protestant princes and subjects as heretics.—“Letters to M. Gondon,” Chr. Wordsworth, D. D., pp. 294, 295. London: Francis & John Rivington, 1848.HBS 410.1

But let the Papacy be reminded that in former times for six centuries it used its spiritual weapons in order to deprive others of their temporalities. Pope Gregory VII used them to dethrone the emperor of Germany, Henry IV; Pope Innocent III used them to dethrone the emperor Otho and King John of England. Popes Honorius III, Gregory IX, and Innocent IV used them to deprive Frederick II of his dominions. Pope Paul III used them to dethrone our Henry VIII. Pope Pius V (canonized as a saint) and Gregory XIII used them to depose Queen Elizabeth. Pope Urban VIII used them against our King Charles I. And even at the present day, the Church of Rome eulogizes Pope Gregory VII in her Breviary, whom she has canonized as a saint, because he “deprived the emperor Henry IV of his kingdom, and released his subjects from their oaths of allegiance to him.”-“Union with Rome,” Chr. Wordsworth, D. D., p. 100. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1909.HBS 410.2

[The following extracts are taken from the bull of Pope Pius V, deposing Queen Elizabeth of England in 1570.—Editors.]HBS 410.3

“He that reigneth on high, to whom all power in heaven and earth is given, has with all fulness of power delivered the rule of the one holy catholic and apostolic church, outside of which there is no salvation, to one sole [ruler] upon earth, to wit, to Peter, the prince of the apostles, and to the Roman Pontiff, the successor of Peter. Him alone he hath set as prince over all nations and all kingdoms, to pull up, to destroy, to overthrow, and to break down, to plant, and to build, that he may keep the people faithful, bound with the bond of mutual love, and in the unity of the Spirit, and present them unhurt and safe to his Saviour.”HBS 410.4

The document then goes on to speak of “Elizabeth, the pretended queen of England, the slave of vices,” and concludes thus:HBS 410.5

“Article 4. Moreover she herself is deprived of her pretended right to the aforesaid kingdom, and also of all dominion, dignity, and privilege whatsoever.HBS 410.6

“Art. 5. And so we absolve the nobles, subjects, and peoples of the said kingdom, and all others who have taken any oath to her, from the obligation of their oath and besides from all duty of dominion, fidelity, and obedience: and we deprive the said Elizabeth of her pretended right to the kingdom and of all other things as is aforesaid: and we charge and order all and every the nobles, subjects, and peoples, and others aforesaid, not to venture to obey her monitions, commands, and laws. And we attach the like sentence of anathema to those who shall act otherwise....HBS 411.1

“Given at St. Peter’s at Rome 25th February, 1570, in the fifth year of our pontificate.”-“Our Brief Against Rome,” Rev. Charles Stuteville Isaacson, M. A., Appendix B, p. 268. London: The Religious Tract Society, 1905.HBS 411.2

Pope, Mediation of, in National Affairs.—Here is the history of the Pope’s success as arbitrator, as furnished these days by the Bollettino Salesiano:HBS 411.3

440-461-St. Leo I: With Attila, king of the Huns, in favor of Italy.HBS 411.4

590-604-St. Gregory I: With Agitulfo, king of the Lombards, in favor of the Romans.HBS 411.5

590-604-St. Gregory I: Between the emperors of the Orient and the Lombards.HBS 411.6

715-731-St. Gregory II: With Luitprandus, king of the Lombards, in favor of the Romans.HBS 411.7

741-752-St. Gregory II: With Luitprandus, king of the Lombards, in favor of the Romans.HBS 411.8

1055-1057-Victor II: Between Emperor Henry III, Baldwin of Flanders, and Geoffrey of Lorene.HBS 411.9

1094-1654-St. Leo IX: Between Emperor Henry III and King Andrew of Hungary.HBS 411.10

1198-1215-Innocent III: Between John of England and Philip Augustus of France.HBS 411.11

1216-1227-Honorius III: Between Louis VIII of France and Henry III of England.HBS 411.12

1243-1254-Innocent IV: Between the king of Portugal and his people.HBS 411.13

1277-1280-Nicholas III: Mediator several times between Emperor Rudolf of the Hapsburgs and Charles of Anjou, king of Naples.HBS 411.14

1316-1334-John XXII: Between King Edward of England and Robert of Scotland.HBS 411.15

1334-1342-Benedict XII: Between Edward Plantagenet of England and Philip of Valois, king of France.HBS 411.16

1370-1378-Gregory XI: Between the king of Portugal and the king of Castille.HBS 411.17

1447-1455-Nicholas V: Mediations in Germany, Hungary, and Italy.HBS 411.18

1484-1492-Innocent VIII: Mediations in Moscow, Austria, and Eng land.HBS 411.19

1492-1503-Alexander VI: Between Spain and Portugal.HBS 411.20

1572-1585-Gregory XIII: Between the king of Poland and the czar of Moscow.HBS 411.21

1623-1644-Urban VIII: Mediations to allay the dissensions provoked by the succession to the duchies of Mantua and Monferrato.HBS 411.22

1878-1903-Leo XIII: Between Germany and Spain.HBS 411.23

1878-1903-Leo XIII: Between the republics of Haiti and San Domingo.HBS 411.24

1915—Benedict XV: Mediations between Germany, Austria, and Russia on the one part, and England, France, Belgium, Serbia, and Montenegro on the other, for the exchange of disabled prisoners and of interned civilians.—Baltimore Catholic Review (R, C.), June 5, 1915,HBS 411.25

Postal System, Persian, in Time of Esther.—The Persian postal system was established by Cyrus the Great during a reign continuing from 559 to 529 b. c. It was greatly improved by Darius, to whom some even ascribe its origination. (Rawlinson, “Ancient Monarchies,” Vol. III, p. 426.) Herodotus (viii. 98) gives the credit to Xerxes. This latter monarch in the earlier years of his reign devoted himself to the thorough organization and the general improvement of his realm. He perceived that the peace and permanency of his rule would be greatly enhanced by quick communication between himself and all parts of his vast empire, that he might thus have prompt and frequent reports from every officer of his government, and be able speedily to transmit his own directions and decrees. Thus only he could have “well in hand” an empire of twenty satrapies and one hundred and twenty-seven districts, extending from India to Ethiopia.HBS 412.1

Accordingly, he established posthouses along the chief lines of travel at intervals of about fourteen miles, according to the average capacity of a horse to gallop at his best speed without stopping. At each of these there were maintained by state a number of couriers and several relays of horses. One of these horsemen receiving an official document rode at utmost speed to the next posthouse, whence it was taken onward by another horse, and perhaps by a new courier. Ballantine (“Midnight Marches Through Persia”) states that at the present day a good horseman of that country will often travel one hundred and twenty miles or more each day for ten or twelve days consecutively.HBS 412.2

Such was the method of transmitting messages existing in the time of Xerxes and Esther, and in our day still employed by the government of Persia, and, under substantially the same form, in thinly settled regions of Russia and other countries. This system was adopted with some improvements by the Greeks and Romans, and transmitted to the nations of Western Europe, with whom in the course of centuries it developed into the inexpressibly useful form in which it has been enjoyed by us.HBS 412.3

But in ancient times the postal system was intended only for the use of the monarch and those “whom he delighted to honor,” and not for his people, who derived no direct benefit from it. It is true that good roads, bridges, ferries, and inns were established; that by guardhouses these routes were kept free from brigands which infested the empire (Herod., v, 52); and that travelers might journey upon these highways; but it does not appear that they could obtain the use of the post horses, even when the government was in no need of them. And above all, the post itself was only for the king. It soon became a law of the system that a courier might impress man or beast into his service, and it was regarded a serious offense to resist such impressment. This privilege of couriers was subsequently, as is well known, a part of the Roman system, reference to which is found in the familiar instruction of our Saviour, “Whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.” Matthew 5:41; 27:32; Mark 15:21. The messages of the king were thus “hastened and pressed on” at any inconvenience to the people, but common men must send their letters by caravans, by special messengers, or in any way they might.—“The Book of Esther, A New Translation,” edited by Rev. John W. Haley, M. A., pp. 117-119. Andover: Warren F. Draper, 1885.HBS 412.4

Priesthood, The Roman, of Heathen Origin.—The title of the Pope, “Pontifex Maximus,” is entirely pagan. In all pagan countries, Babylon, Egypt, Rome, Peru, etc., the king or emperor was the chief priest, or Pontifex Maximus. Just also as the Pope is called “Vice-Deo” and “Vicar of Christ,” so was the pagan pontiff regarded as “the representative of the Divinity on earth,” and “a partaker of the divine nature.” This is also the case with the Grand Lama of Thibet, and the king and high priest of the Incas had similar attributes. Just also as the Pope is declared to be infallible, so was the Egyptian pontiff believed to be “incapable of error;” a characteristic which also applies to the Grand Lama. Like the Pope also, they were worshiped by the people. Just also as kings and ambassadors used to kiss the slippers of the Pope, so likewise the pontiff kings of Chaldea wore slippers for subject kings to kiss.HBS 412.5

The Roman emperors, as high pontiffs, were paid divine honors; hence the alternative offered to the early Christians, “Sacrifice to Casar, or death.” But the homage paid to the pagan pontiff in every country did not exceed that demanded and received by the popes in the plenitude of their power. Such titles as “Our Most Holy Lord,” “Our Lord God the Pope,” “His Divine Majesty, Vice-God,” and the ordinary title of “Your Holiness,” which was also the ordinary title of the pagan pontiff, as well as the claim to infallibility, gave him of necessity all the attributes, and consequent position, of God to the peoples who were professedly the Christian church, “the temple of God;” “so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.”HBS 413.1

The miter worn by the Pope, cardinals, and bishops, with a slit down the middle, is not the Jewish miter, which was a turban, but the pagan miter. It is exactly the same as that worn by the Grand Lama, and the same as that worn by the emperor of China when, as high pontiff, he blesses the people. This miter is the representation of a fish’s head, and it is the same as that worn by the Egyptian high pontiff as the representative of the pagan god, who in one of his principal aspects was Oannes, the fish god, who was called “The Teacher of Mankind,” “The Lord of Understanding,” etc. It was in short the symbol of the pontiff’s claim to be infallible or “The Lord of Understanding.”HBS 413.2

The crosier of the Pope and Roman Catholic bishops is the lituus of the pagan augurs, and was called the lituus by Roman Catholic writers previous to the Reformation.HBS 413.3

The keys carried by the Pope are a resuscitation of the keys carried by the pontiff of pagan Rome as high priest of Janus and Cybele, each of whom bore a key, and the pontiff was attired in a similar way as their representative on earth. [pp. 89, 90] ...HBS 413.4

The priesthood of Rome claim to be the successors of the apostles, but they have been the chief opposers of the truth taught by the apostles and the chief agents in resuscitating the idolatry which Christ came to destroy. On the other hand they have a true and just claim to be the successors of the pagan priesthood. For not only are the title and office of Pontifex Maximus, and the orders, offices, sacerdotal dresses, symbols, doctrines, sorceries, and idolatries of the priesthood of Rome directly derived from the priesthood of paganism, but they are the rightful and direct successors of the supreme pontiffs and priesthood of ancient Babylon and pagan Rome.—“The True Christ and the False Christ,” J. Garnier, Vol. II, pp. 89-92. London: George Allen, 1900.HBS 413.5

Note.—In an editorial in the Tablet (Roman Catholic) of June 13, 1914, Italy is mentioned as that nation “whose capital is also the center of Christendom, and against the spoliation of which as the seat of his necessary temporal dominion Christendom’s head, in the person of our High Priest [italics ours], still makes his dignified protest.” It is thus made clear that Roman Catholics regard the Pope as “our High Priest.”-Eds.HBS 413.6

Priesthood, No Sacrificing Priests in the New Testament.—1. We find that though the New Testament, from end to end, is full of accounts of Christian ministers, their lives and doings, the name of hiereus, or “priest,” is never once applied to them, or to any one of them. Surely this alone should be decisive to every plain mind. It would be an absurdity to suppose that the one name which Romanists and ritualists apply to Christian ministers, and regard as so important, should be exactly the one name which the New Testament resolutely and deliberately refuses them.HBS 413.7

2. I say resolutely and deliberately refuses them; for that it is not and cannot be the result of accident may be proved at once, to say nothing of the fact that had the New Testament been the sport and prey of such accidents, it could not possibly be our final guide; since it would then say much about less essential points in the Christian ministry, and nothing about the very point which the sacerdotalists regard as the most important of all.HBS 414.1

3. We all know that the New Testament does apply ten other names to Christian ministers of every class, and never once even strays into this name of hiereis, or sacrificing priests. It calls them apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers, ministers, overseers, presbyters, deacons, stewards. Would it not be strange indeed that it should never give them the one name which so many of them covet, if that were an admissible name? Even St. Peter, one of the greatest of the apostles, so far from coveting the name “priest,” says, “The presbyters which are among you I exhort, who am also a presbyter.” Even St. John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, chose no name for himself but “John the Presbyter.”HBS 414.2

4. And that the refusal of the name “sacrificing priests” to the Christian presbyters were deliberate is transparently obvious from the fact that this name hiereus-if the Christian minister had even in any secondary and analogical sense been meant to be a hiereus-was the very one which lay most easily, obviously, and intelligibly at hand. For the ancient world was full of sacrificing priests, and of sacrificing priests only. The only priests of the pagan world were sacrificing priests. The only priests among the Jews were sacrificing priests. Yet while Christ, and all the evangelists, and all the apostles, and all the earliest Christian writers deliberately went out of their way to shun this word, they at the same time chose such purely civil words as presbyter, overseer, and deacon. That “presbyter” was a non-priestly word, and that the word “priest” in our Prayer Book was never meant for anything but presbyter, and is derived from it, every one knows; and recent explorations in Palestine have conclusively shown that the two other names chosen to describe the Christian ministry, namely, episkopoi and diakonoi, which were deliberately selected by the apostles and early Christians, were the names of purely civil offices.HBS 414.3

5. But even that is not all. As though to prove decisively that there was deep reason for not giving the title hiereis to Christian ministers, the word is used of Christians as a whole, but not of ministers. For instance, St. Peter by analogy, in a secondary and metaphorical sense, twice calls all Christians “a sacrificial priesthood;” but to prevent any mistake in the metaphor, he expressly adds a defining clause in both verses, that the only sacrifices they can offer are “spiritual sacrifices” and “the praises of God.” And in the Apocalypse hiereis is used three times of all Christians, and not once of ministers. In the four Gospels it is not once used either of Christ or of any one of his disciples, but only of Jewish priests-who ultimately murdered Christ. The Acts of the Apostles is the first and the best of all ecclesiastical histories, and is entirely about the doings of the first Christian ministers. The word occurs in that book three times of Jewish priests, once of a heathen priest, not once of any Christian minister. There are thirteen epistles of St. Paul. The word hiereis does not once occur in any one of them. Three of these epistles are especially addressed to Christian ministers. Yet they, and those which they are to guide, are not once called by this name, though they are called by various other names. There are two epistles of the great apostle St. Peter; three of the beloved disciple, St. John; one of St. Jude; one of St. James, the Lord’s brother-not one of these, even when directly addressing ministers or speaking of them, ever calls them by this name. On the other hand, in the Acts of the Apostles, where we read how the Christian ministry was organized by the infant church, “presbyter” is applied to Christian ministers at least ten times; and in the pastoral epistles five times; and in St. Peter twice; and in St. John twice; and in the Apocalypse twelve times.—“The Bible and the Ministry,” F. W. Farrar; quoted in “The Claims of Rome,” Samuel Smith, M. P., pp. 51-53. London: Elliot Stock, 1903.HBS 414.4

Prophecy, Character of.—It is opposed to the nature of God to force men to believe. He hides himself in history, as well as in nature, that he may be found of them that seek him. And thus in the prophecies also, there was sufficient clearness for those whose hearts were prepared to be able to discover whatever was essential and important to themselves, and everything that related to the salvation of their souls; and on the other hand so much obscurity that those who did not desire the truth, might not be forcibly constrained to see it. It would be just as reasonable to demand that God should work miracles every day, for the purpose of convincing those that despise his name of the folly of their conduct, as to require that there should be greater clearness in the prophecies. That there was sufficient light to lead the elect to Christ, is evident from the living examples of Zechariah, Simeon, John the Baptist, Mary, Anna, and others.HBS 415.1

If the prophecies had possessed the clearness of history, their fulfilment would have been rendered impossible. If the life of Christ, his rejection by the Jews, and the mournful consequence, viz., the destruction of Jerusalem, had been described in the prophets as clearly, as literally, as connectedly, as circumstantially, and even for the carnally minded as intelligibly, as in the New Testament, the decree of redemption, which required the death of Christ, would never have been carried into effect. Even upon believers themselves, the obscurity which rests upon certain portions of prophecy, must have exerted a more beneficial influence than greater clearness would have done. If, for example, the Old Testament believers, who lived before the coming of Christ, had known that his appearance would be so long delayed, how greatly would this have tended to cool their love and cripple their hopes! How could the Messianic expectations, in this case, have become the center of their whole religious life? If the Christians of the first centuries had foreseen that the second coming of Christ would not take place for 1800 years, how much weaker an impression would this doctrine have made upon them than when they were expecting him every hour, and were told to watch, because he would come like a thief in the night, at an hour when they looked not for him?HBS 415.2

A considerable portion of the Messianic predictions were intended to produce an immediate effect upon the whole of the people, and to preserve at least its outward fidelity toward the Lord. But if prophecy had had all the clearness of history, this end would never have been realized. It was attained, on the other hand, by such an arrangement of the prophecies as made even a wilful misunderstanding salutary in its results. The people laid hold of the shell, and thought that they necessarily possessed the substance also. And this contributed to the maintenance of such outward conditions as were adapted to give life to the actual substance of the prophecies. If the question be asked, What end was answered by such of the prophecies as were obscure in themselves, and not merely in consequence of the carnal minds of the readers? it is a sufficient reply that the prophets did not utter the predictions for their contemporaries alone, but for posterity also, and the church of every age. Those portions which were clear, were amply sufficient for contemporaries.—“Christology of the Old Testament,” E. W. Hengstenberg, Vol. IV, pp. 442, 443, translated from the German by James Martin, B. A. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1858.HBS 415.3

Prophecy, Miraculous Character of.—Prophecy is a miracle of knowledge, a declaration, or description, or representation of something future, beyond the power of human sagacity to discern or to calculate, and it is the highest evidence that can be given of supernatural communion with the Deity, and of the truth of a revelation from God. [p. 272] ...HBS 416.1

To foresee and foretell future events is a miracle of which the testimony remains in itself. It is a miracle, because to foresee and foretell future events, to which no change of circumstances leads, no train of probabilities points, is as much beyond the ability of human agents as to cure diseases with a word, or even to raise the dead, which may properly be termed miracles of power. That actions of the latter kind were ever performed can be proved, at a distant period, only by witnesses, against whose testimony cavils may be raised, or causes for doubt advanced; but the man who reads a prophecy and perceives the corresponding event, is himself the witness of the miracle; he sees that thus it is, and that thus by human means it could not possibly have been. [p. 273]-“An Introduction to the Critical Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures,” Thomas Hartwell Horne, B. D., Vol. I, pp. 272, 273. London: T. Cadell, 1839.HBS 416.2

Prophecy, Evidence of Prescience and Omniscience.—The plan of prophecy was so wisely constituted that the passions and prejudices of the Jews, instead of frustrating, fulfilled it, and rendered the person to whom they referred, the suffering and crucified Saviour who had been promised. It is worthy of remark that most of these predictions were delivered nearly, and some of them more than, three thousand years ago. Any one of them is sufficient to indicate a prescience more than human; but the collective force of all taken together is such that nothing more can be necessary to prove the interposition of Omniscience, than the establishment of their authenticity; and this, even at so remote a period as the present, we have already seen, is placed beyond all doubt. For the books in which they are contained are known to have been written at the time to which, and by the persons to whom, they are respectively assigned, and also to have been translated into different languages, and dispersed into different parts, long before the coming of Christ. It is absurd, therefore, to suppose that any forgery with respect to them, if attempted by the first Christians, should not have been immediately detected; and still more absurd, if possible, to suppose that any passages thus forged should afterward have been admitted universally into their Scriptures by the Jews themselves; who, from the first application of these predictions to Jesus Christ, have endeavored by every method to pervert their meaning. Surely, if the prophecies in question had not been found at that time in the writings to which the first propagators of Christianity appealed, the Jews needed only to produce those writings in order to refute the imposition; and since no refutation was then attempted, it was a demonstration to the men of that age; and the same prophecies, being found there now, without the possibility of accounting for it if they were forged, convey in all reason as forcible a demonstration to ourselves at present, that they were written there from the beginning, and, consequently, by divine inspiration.—“An Introduction to the Critical Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures,” Thomas Hartwell Horne, B. D., Vol. I, pp. 291, 292. London: T. Cadell, 1839.HBS 416.3

Prophecy, Evidential Value of.—Of all the various lines of Christian evidence, none is so specially adapted to these last days as that based on fulfilled prophecy. [p. v] ...HBS 417.1

The prophecies of Daniel stand pre-eminent among all others in their evidential value. It is an astounding fact, that not only does his brief book give a foreview of twenty-five centuries of Jewish and Gentile history, including the first and the second advents of Christ, but that it also fixes the chronology of various episodes of the then unknown future, with a simple certainty which would be audacious if it were not divine. Would any mere man dare to foretell, not only a long succession of events lying far in the remote future, but in addition the periods they would occupy? This Daniel has done, and the predictions have come to pass.HBS 417.2

This great and unquestionable fact can be explained away only on one of three grounds:HBS 417.3

1. The accord must be purely accidental and fortuitous; orHBS 417.4

2. The events must have been manipulated, so as to fit the prophecy; orHBS 417.5

3. The prophecy must have been fitted to the events, and thus written after them, though claiming to have been written before.HBS 417.6

None of these three explanations can account for the agreement between Daniel’s predictions and history, as a moment’s reflection will show.HBS 417.7

1. It cannot be merely fortuitous. It is too far-reaching and detailed, too exact and varied. Chance might produce one or two coincidences of prediction and fulfilment out of a hundred, not a hundred or more without a single exception. Common sense perceives this at a glance. As far as time has elapsed every single point predicted in Daniel has come true, and there remain but a few terminal predictions to be fulfilled in the near future.HBS 417.8

2. The events were certainly not made to fit the prophecy by human arrangement. The rise and fall and succession of monarchies and of empires, and the conduct and character of nations, for over two thousand years, are matters altogether too vast to be manipulated by men. Such a notion is clearly absurd. What! did Babylonian and Persian monarchs, and Grecian and Roman conquerors, Gothic and Vandal invaders, medieval kings and popes, and modern revolutionary leaders, all intentionally conspire for long ages to accomplish obscure Jewish predictions, of which the majority of them never even heard?HBS 417.9

3. The third and last solution is consequently the only possible alternative to a frank admission of the divine inspiration of the book, and of the divine government of the world amid all its ceaseless political changes. Can the prophecy have been written to fit the events? In other words, can it be a forgery of a later date? This is the theory adopted by all the unbelieving critics, who start with the assumption that prophecy in any true sense is impossible. They attempt to assign to the book a date later than the true one, a date toward the close of the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes, who died in the second century before Christ. They then endeavor to compress all the four empires into the four centuries previous to that date, excluding entirely from the prophecy any allusion to the Roman Empire and the first advent of Christ, to say nothing of the second. Multitudinous have been the attacks made on these lines on the fortress of this book of Daniel, for skepticism has realized that while it stands impregnable, a relic of the sixth century before Christ, all rationalistic theories must fall to the ground, like Dagon before the ark. But the fortress stands firm as ever, its massive foundations revealed only the more clearly by the varied assaults it has repelled.—“Light for the Last Days,” Mr. and Mrs. H. Grattan Guinness, Preface, pp. v-vii. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1893.HBS 417.10

Prophecy, Testimony of Fulfilled.—Many of the evidences for Christianity have been counterfeited by the supporters of false religions and superstition. Thus, the miracles of Christianity have been imitated in the lying wonder of paganism and various forms of superstition. The testimony derived from the constancy and zeal of martyrs has been mimicked by the heroism of the devotees of idol worship.HBS 418.1

But the testimony of fulfilled prophecy belongs alone (so far as concerns anything worthy of the name) to the revelation contained in the Holy Scriptures. For the ambiguity and obscurity of the heathen oracles are fatal to their claim of a divine origin. They are evidently nothing more than shrewd guesses into futurity, veiled in language capable of many different senses. And if some of them might seem to show knowledge of a superhuman kind, this would not be surprising, when we recollect that many of them are probably due to satanic agency, and human intercourse with evil spirits. But there is a character of indefiniteness and imperfection stamped upon them all. The prophecies of Scripture, on the contrary, are definite and precise. They relate to events which no foresight of any created being could have anticipated. They extend into a remote future, distant many centuries from the period of their utterance.HBS 418.2

The fulfilment of such prophecies gives evidence of the strongest kind in favor of the divine origin of the religion with which they are connected. However much the proofs derived from other evidences may be weakened by supposed similar demonstrations in favor of other religious systems, the evidence of prophecy cannot be thus contested. Prescience of the future belongs to God alone. It arises out of those incommunicable attributes of the Godhead which can be shared by no created being. As the whole world of nature, so is the whole course of time, simultaneously present to his observation. He is omnipresent in all time equally as in all space. In the sublime language of the inspired prophet, he “inhabits eternity.” Isaiah 57:15. And by this attribute the Godhead stands pre-eminently distinguished from all created beings. His power may be in a measure communicated to them. His loving-kindness they may be permitted to copy. His justice they may be allowed to imitate. But his eternal omnipresence is an attribute which admits of no degrees; for a partial omnipresence is a contradiction in terms. It belongs, therefore, to him alone. And it is only where this attribute is found in all its plenitude, that the future can be equally visible with the present. He alone who possesses it can call those things which be not, as though they were.HBS 418.3

Hence, in our text, the power of originating the word of prophecy is put forth as the irrefragable proof that he who possesses it is the supreme, the only God: “I am God,” saith Jehovah by the prophet, “and there is none like me; declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done.” [pp. 4, 5] ...HBS 418.4

The great subject of the word of prophecy is the person and work of Christ. “To him give all the prophets witness.” From the earliest of the inspired records, the writings of Moses, down to the last book of the Old Testament, the chief object of the prophetic word was, to describe the advent and character of the Saviour of mankind, the nature of his work, and the ultimate triumph of his kingdom over all opposition.HBS 419.1

The prophetic intimations on these points contained in the books of Moses are, in the comparison, as might be expected, indistinct and obscure. But as time advanced, the revelations made on the subject became more and more clear and definite, until at length the announcements of Isaiah and the other prophets, though preceding our Lord’s advent by many centuries, gave a clear and even detailed account of the circumstances that were to attend and be the consequences of that event.HBS 419.2

And no further evidence is needed, that these prophecies were not written after the event, for the purpose of establishing the claims of Jesus Christ, than the fact that they have always been in the keeping of his great enemies, the Jews.HBS 419.3

Among the circumstances predicted of our blessed Lord many centuries before his advent are these: that he should be born of a virgin (Isaiah 7:14), and that he should spring from the family of David when reduced to the lowest state (Isaiah 9:6, 7, etc.); that he was to be born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2); that he was to come before the destruction of the second temple (Haggai 2:6-9; Malachi 3:1); that he was to appear at a certain particular period, precisely pointed out by Daniel (Daniel 9:24-27); that his body was not to remain in the grave after death and see corruption (Psalm 16:10); and that though he should pour out his soul unto death (Isaiah 53:12), his kingdom should be an everlasting kingdom (Isaiah 9:7, etc.); and the nations of the earth own him as their sovereign (Psalm 2:8; 72:11; Daniel 7:14); that while he should be the “Desire of all nations” (Haggai 2:7), he should yet be “despised and rejected of men, the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3); that he should bind up the broken-hearted, and proclaim liberty to the captives (Isaiah 61:1); and yet be brought as a lamb to the slaughter (Isaiah 53:7); that he should be at the same time the Child born and the Son given, and yet the mighty God and the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6); that he should be David’s Lord, and yet David’s Son (Psalm 132:11; 110:1); that his soul should be made an offering for sin, and yet his days be prolonged (Isaiah 53:10).HBS 419.4

Thus, the word of prophecy was committed to predictions of the most distinct and definite kind respecting the person, character, and work of a great future Deliverer of mankind from the effects of the curse. And if we find, on a careful consideration of these predictions, that they were all exactly fulfilled in Jesus Christ, on what other hypothesis can we account for them, but that which supposes that they emanated from one who could “declare the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things not yet done”? [pp. 6, 7]-“Fulfilled Prophecy,” Rev. W. Goode, D. D., F. S. A., pp. 4-7, 2nd edition. London: James Nisbet & Co., 1891.HBS 419.5

Prophecy, Four Classes of.—The prophecies recorded in the Scriptures respect contingencies too wonderful for the powers of man to conjecture or to effect. Many of those which are found in the Old Testament foretold unexpected changes in the distribution of earthly power; and whether they announced the fall of flourishing cities or the ruin of mighty empires, the event minutely corresponded with the prediction.HBS 419.6

This chain of predictions is so evident in the Scriptures, that we are more embarrassed with the selection and arrangement of them, than doubtful of their import and accomplishment. To a superficial observer, they may seem to be without order or connection; but to a well-informed mind they are all disposed in such a mode and succession as to form a regular system, all the parts of which harmonize in one amazing and consistent plan, which runs parallel with the history of mankind, past, present, and to come; and furnishes a perfect moral demonstration that the book which contains such predictive information is indeed divine. The prophecies contained in the Scriptures may be referred to four classes, viz., prophecies relating to the Jewish nation in particular, prophecies relating to the neighboring nations or empires, prophecies directly announcing the Messiah, and prophecies delivered by Jesus Christ and his apostles.—“An Introduction to the Critical Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures,” Thomas Hart-well Horne, B. D., Vol. I, p. 280. London: T. Cadell, 1839.HBS 420.1

Prophecy, Rationalistic Hypothesis Answered.—Prophecy formed a necessary part of the economy of the Old Testament. Its position is assigned to it by the founder himself. In Deuteronomy 18 God declares through him, that he will raise up a prophet, that he will put words into his mouth, that they shall speak all that he shall command them, that whosoever will not hearken unto their words, which they shall speak in his name, he will require it of him. And thus do all the arguments, which attest the divine origin and divine superintendence of the Old Testament, speak against this [rationalistic] hypothesis.HBS 420.2

Again, this hypothesis falls to the ground with every special prophecy, whether Messianic or not, which can be shown to have been fulfilled. For if God acknowledged the prophets to be his servants in other instances, we have no right to pronounce the Messianic idea the mere offispring of caprice. Whoever subscribes to this hypothesis must also consent to the forcible operations, by which rationalism has endeavored to conceal the remarkable agreement between prophecy and its fulfilment. One single prediction, such as those of Jeremiah, respecting the seventy years’ captivity in Babylon and the fall of Babylon (chaps. 50 and 51), or such as Zechariah 9:1-8, is amply sufficient to show the unfounded character of this view of prophecy, and therefore the unfounded character of the whole hypothesis. It is also opposed by everything which the prophets adduce in attestation of their divine mission; compare, for example, the confidence with which Isaiah promises to give to Ahaz a sign from the height above or from the depth (chap. 7), and the sign which he actually gives to Hezekiah (chap. 38).HBS 420.3

Again, the prophets themselves are most firmly convinced that they do not speak of their own caprice, but through the inward prompting of the Holy Spirit (compare, in addition to the frequently repeated expression, “Thus saith the Lord,” Amos 3:7, “the Lord doeth nothing, he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets;” also vs. 8; Jeremiah 1:9, 10; 20:7 sqq.; ... and in this conviction they cheerfully endure all the sufferings which their prophecies bring upon them. The irresistible force of this conviction may be seen in the example of Jeremiah, and also in that, of the earlier Micah (Micaiah) in 1 Kings 22.HBS 420.4

To prophesy out of one’s own heart, and on one’s own account, was regarded by the prophets as an unmistakable mark of false prophecy. Jeremiah 14:14; 23:21; 27:14, 15; 29:9. From this they knew that they were separated by a wide gap, which rationalism has attempted in vain to fill up. That the conviction of the prophets that they were the instruments of God, was a well-founded one, is attested by the imposing attitude which they assumed for centuries in connection with the history of the nation. This attitude rationalism is utterly unable to explain. [pp. 376, 377] ...HBS 420.5

Again, it is impossible to bring forward anything which leads to the conclusion that the prophets gave themselves up to sanguine hopes. On the contrary, when such hopes were indulged by every one else, and when the false prophets were sustaining them by fictitious prophecies, the prophets themselves, without heeding the danger which threatened them in consequence, fearlessly proclaimed the impending calamities (see, for example, Jeremiah 28). On the other hand, we have not the slightest indication that the false prophets, who endeavored to make themselves agreeable to the nation by setting before it the brightest prospects, ever prophesied of the Messiah. They rather confined themselves to the immediate future. Jeremiah 28; 1 Kings 22:11; Micah 3:5. The province of Messianic salvation, which was sacred from the very first, they never ventured to enter.HBS 421.1

Lastly, whenever Christ and the apostles mention the prophets, they speak of them as extraordinary messengers of God, who were moved by the Holy Ghost; and the doctrine, which is expressed with dogmatic emphasis in 2 Peter 1:21, “Prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost,” is invariably taken for granted.HBS 421.2

This hypothesis is quite as directly at variance with the express declarations of Christ and his apostles respecting the Messianic prophecies. According to the hypothesis in question, the agreement between prophecy and its fulfilment was merely accidental. But Christ frequently declared that one of the designs of the events of his life was to fulfil the prophecies, and thus to attest his own divine mission. He proclaimed himself to be the Messiah foretold by the prophets, and gave expression to the conviction that everything which happened to him had been previously foretold by them. In Luke 24:25 he reproves the disciples for their weak faith in the prophets, whereas according to the rationalistic hypothesis such faith was really a weakness. In Luke 24:44 he explains to the apostles the prophecies in the books of Moses, the prophets, and the Psalms, which refer to him. In numerous passages the apostles point out the agreement between prophecy and its fulfilment. In Acts 26:6 Paul speaks of the promise made to the fathers by God, whom the rationalists shut out altogether from the Messianic predictions. In the same manner Peter ... smites rationalism directly in the face, by tracing the Messianic announcements to revelation ([Greek word] [apekalufthe], 1 Peter 1:12), which he contrasts with their inquiring and searching diligently, and which he ascribes to the spirit of Christ working in them ([Greek words] [to en autois pneuma Christou] 1 Peter 1:11), in other words, to an infinite, supernatural source; whereas, according to the rationalistic hypothesis, the source from which they drew was their own minds. [pp. 377, 378] ...HBS 421.3

It has always been admitted by orthodox theologians, that even history possesses a prophetic importance. By the side of the prophecies, strictly so called, they have recognized acted prophecies, or types. It is undeniable that “history is also prophecy. The past enfolds the present in the germ, and in particular points, which are discernible by the eye of the mind, the greater may be seen in the less, the inward in the outward, and the present or the future in the past.” But it is perfectly obvious that verbal prophecy is the prerequisite and condition of the acted prophecy, and that the type is “a subordinate kind of divine testimony, which merely serves to complete the word of the Spirit, from which at the same time light is thrown in return.” Without the light which it receives from prophecy, the type by itself cannot possibly be understood; and hence, for the whole of the long ages preceding the fulfilment, it would be entirely useless. Its reality must therefore be questionable, if the necessary condition of its efficiency could not be proved to exist. If the evident proof is not to be found in prophecy, that there is a God who rules above the world, and moves all events toward their ultimate destiny according to a preconcerted plan; then in the place of the type or the acted prophecy, we have nothing but a vague impulse, which cannot rest till that which exists already in the design has been fully worked out in history. Hence if prophecy, in the strict sense of the word, be overthrown, the acted prophecy, which is undoubtedly worthy of its name, must fall with it, and it is nothing but an illusion to attempt to elevate types at the expense of prophecy. [pp. 388, 389]-“Christology of the Old Testament,” E. W. Hengstenberg, Vol. IV, pp. 376-378, 388, 389, translated from the German by James Martin, B. A. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1858.HBS 421.4

Prophecy, Gift of.—The gift of prophecy included that of foresight and prediction, but it included more. The prophet was inspired to reveal the will of God, to act as an organ of communication between God and man. The subject of the revelations thus conveyed was not and could not be restricted to the future. It embraced the past and present, and extended to those absolute and universal truths which have no relation to time. This is what we should naturally expect in a divine revelation, and it is what we actually find it to contain. That the prophets of the old dispensation were not mere foretellers of things future, is apparent from their history as well as from their writings. It has been well said, that Daniel proved himself a prophet by telling Nebuchadnezzar what he had dreamed, as much as by interpreting the dream itself; that it was only by prophetic inspiration that Elijah knew what Gehazi had been doing; and that the woman of Samaria very properly called Christ a prophet, because he told her all things that ever she did. In all these cases, and in multitudes of others, the essential idea is that of inspiration, its frequent reference to things still future being accidental, that is to say, not included in the uniform and necessary import of the terms.HBS 422.1

The restriction of these terms in modern parlance to the prediction of events still future has arisen from the fact that a large proportion of the revelations made in Scripture, and precisely those which are the most surprising and impressive, are of this description. The frequency of such revelations, and the prominence given to them, not in this modern usage merely, but in the word of God itself, admit of easy explanation. It is partly owing to the fact that revelations of the future would be naturally sought with more avidity, and treated with more deference, than any other by mankind in general. It is further owing to the fact that of all the kinds of revelation, this is the one which affords the most direct and convincing proof of the prophet’s inspiration. The knowledge of the present or the past or of general truths might be imparted by special inspiration, but it might also be acquired in other ways; and this possibility of course makes the evidence of inspiration thus afforded more complete and irresistible than any other. Hence the function of foretelling what was future, although but a part of the prophetic office, was peculiarly conspicuous and prominent in public view, and apt to be more intimately associated with the office itself in the memory of man. [pp. 1, 2] ...HBS 422.2

The gift of prophecy was closely connected with the general design of the old economy. The foundation of the system was the law, as recorded in the five books of Moses. In that, as an epitome, the rest of the Old Testament is contained, at least as to its seminal principles. The single book of Deuteronomy exhibits specimens of almost every style employed by the sacred writers elsewhere. Still more remarkably is this true of the whole Pentateuch, in reference not merely to its manner but its matter, as comprising virtually all that is developed and applied in the revelations of the later books. To make this development and application was the business of the prophets. The necessity for such an institution was no after-thought. The law itself provides for it. The promise of a prophet like unto Moses, in the eighteenth chapter of Deuteronomy, comprehends the promise of a constant succession of inspired men, so far as this should be required by the circumstances of the people, which succession was to terminate in Christ.HBS 423.1

This promise was abundantly fulfilled. In every emergency requiring such an interposition, we find prophets present and active, and in some important periods of the history of Israel they existed in great numbers. These, though not all inspired writers, were all inspired men, raised up and directed by a special divine influence, to signify and sometimes to execute the will of God, in the administration of the theocracy. Joshua is expressly represented as enjoying such an influence, and is reckoned in the Jewish tradition as a prophet. The judges who succeeded him were all raised up in special emergencies, and were directed and controlled by a special divine influence or inspiration. Samuel was one of the most eminent prophets. After the institution of the monarchy, we read constantly of prophets distinct from the civil rulers. After the schism between Judah and Ephraim, there continued to be prophets, even in the kingdom of the ten tribes. They were peculiarly necessary there indeed, because the people of that kingdom were cut off from the sanctuary and its services, as bonds of union with Jehovah. The prophetic ministry continued through the Babylonish exile, and ceased some years after the restoration, in the person of Malachi, whom the Jews unanimously represent as the last of their prophets. [pp. 2, 3]-“Isaiah Translated and Explained,” Joseph Addison Alexander, Vol. I, pp. 1-3. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1887.HBS 423.2

Prophecy, The Christ of.—We have treated the existing literature, and the several books of the Old Testament, as we should treat any other literary documents. We have endeavored to estimate them only as an honest examination of the features they present obliges us to estimate them. We have assumed nothing in their favor. We have conceded hypothetically almost every, if not every, position that has been debated, which might tend to modify the conclusion to be arrived at. And what is the result? It is this: that at least in the second century before Christ, and most probably in the sixth, the conception of a Messiah had attained so much consistency and solidity among the Jewish nation, that we find in writings of one period or the other, and for argument’s sake it matters not which, a usage of the word which can only be understood of an ideal and a future person. Such an application of the term is conclusive proof of the popular existence of the notion. We are not concerned now with the character of the notion, or the form it had assumed. Here it was in actual and living reality. It was a thing which had found expression in a word. It was a thought which had become crystallized and formulated in speech.HBS 423.3

What was the origin of that thought? Taking the book of Daniel hypothetically, as the latest expression of it, we find it present to the national mind at a time of great national debasement. But it is far more probable that it had already been in existence for centuries. If it was not originally derived from the literature, we have no other means of tracing its origin but from the phenomena presented by the literature; and there we can see, from time to time, germs of the same thought bursting through the soil of surrounding incident. From time to time the language used is such as to be more naturally explained with reference to this latent thought than to any other accidents of the age. The recurrence of this language is to be detected in the Psalms and prophets alone over a period of at least five hundred years. Writer after writer takes it up, and deals with it in his own characteristic manner. David, Isaiah, Micah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, not to mention others, are all distinguished by passages which appear to have a common allusion to this same idea, and which, if they have, are more intelligible than if they have not. In all these remarkable passages there are characteristic features in common. There is a perpetual falling back upon the throne of Judah and the house of David; and this even after the throne was at an end, and the family no longer reigning.HBS 423.4

No such feeling is ever associated with any dynasty of Israel. It cannot be resolved into mere patriotism, because the same onward-looking hope is to be found equally when the throne is illustrious and when it is fallen. It consistently disdains the present, and is continually projected into the distant future. No present glory is adequate; nothing less than endless duration and universal sovereignty is alike demanded and assured. No exaggeration of individual differences is capable of destroying the combined harmony. Each writer worked independently, but the combined effect of the whole is unity, or at least the natural semblance of consistent unity. Such an effect, however, was manifestly beyond the reach of any series or succession of writers, because the earliest were ignorant of, and could not control, the utterances of those who wrote subsequently. And the utmost that the latest could do was to revert to an earlier thought, to develop and expand it.HBS 424.1

No reason, however, can be assigned for the correspondences, any more than for the differences, between the 22nd Psalm and the 53rd of Isaiah. It is impossible to say that the one borrowed from the other, or that the one suggested the conception of the other. And yet, looked at together, or if you will, in a particular light, there is an incomprehensible unity. Are we to be debarred from pronouncing this unity real simply because it is incomprehensible? The mere appearance of unity that undeniably exists cannot be accounted for by any supposed similarity of condition and circumstances in the different writers, added to which no conceivable circumstances can adequately account for the language used.HBS 424.2

No adequate reason can be assigned for the correspondences, any more than for the differences, between the 21st Psalm and the 33rd of Jeremiah. It is impossible to say that the one was borrowed from or suggested the other here; and yet, after the lapse of more than four centuries, there is a certain undeniable similarity. Was this similarity, such as it is, intentional on the part of the later writer? Was he bent upon producing the kind of effect and unity, which, looked at together with other productions, or in a particular aspect, his own work has produced? Was Ezekiel, when drawing his wonderful portrait of the faithful Shepherd, in his 34th and 37th chapters, late in the times of the captivity, and when the throne of Judah was no more, reverting merely to a former thought? or was he not rather adding important elements of his own, the harmony and essential unity of which with the writings of other prophets he could not himself perceive, but which, after the lapse of many generations, it would be little less than wilful blindness to ignore? And are we in all these cases to reject that one particular aspect in which these independent and diverging rays are found to converge in a marvelous unity? Surely, rather, forasmuch as the unity was one which the writers confessedly could not have agreed together to produce, while we can see for ourselves how striking and significant it is, the most natural and the not unreasonable inference will be to confess in the language of the psalmist of old: “This is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.”-“The Religion of the Christ,” Rev. Stanley Leathes, M. A., pp. 172-176. New York: Pott, Young & Co., 1874.HBS 424.3

Prophecy, A Witness to Christianity.—There are three classes of prophecy from the fulfilment of which the truth of revealed religion in general, and of the Christian in particular, might be deduced; namely, those of the Old Testament that relate to the ancient kingdoms and nations of the earth; those, likewise of the Old Testament, referring to the person and work of Christ; and those of the New Testament that concern events that were to occur in the postapostolic period of the church. [p. 110] ...HBS 425.1

We are so accustomed from early childhood to hear and read the prophecies of the Old Testament respecting the person and work of Christ, that but few realize the true character and force of their testimony. Our very familiarity with them tends to make us overlook the distinguishing characteristics that give them their greatest weight.HBS 425.2

And I must add, that they are so generally regarded in their individual aspect, instead of being viewed as a whole, that more than half their force is lost by this dissociation of them from one another. They pervade the course of time with a full and flowing stream of testimony, taking its rise in the age of our first parents, and running onward in one continued stream for more than three thousand years. This testimony we must contemplate as a whole. One prophecy selected from that testimony is but as a small portion taken from a mighty river to show its resistless force.HBS 425.3

Many minds might hesitate to admit the force of one or another prophecy. Ingenious explanations may be resorted to by which the words of one or another prophecy may be made to appear applicable to other persons than Jesus of Nazareth, or other events than those that happened to him. But take the whole of the prophetic testimony relating to the future appearance of a mighty Deliverer and Saviour of mankind, and we see, not merely that there is no one else in whom the various prophecies find their fulfilment, but that in Jesus of Nazareth all of them, even those that seemed most discordant and contradictory, had their complete and perfect accomplishment.HBS 425.4

In illustration of the general nature and character of the prophecies relating to the Messiah, let us mark,HBS 425.5

1. Their number and variety.HBS 425.6

They commence with the promise made to our first parents that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent’s head. Genesis 3:15. The evident reference to this prophecy in some of the traditions of the heathen nations, clearly shows that it was considered from the first as foreshadowing the appearance of a great future Deliverer of mankind from the bondage of Satan.HBS 425.7

As time advanced, a far more clear and definite declaration was made to Abraham, who was set apart as the progenitor of a race separated from the rest of mankind as God’s peculiar people, from whom that mighty Deliverer was to spring in whom all the nations of the earth should be blessed. Genesis 22:18.HBS 425.8

His grandson Jacob proceeded to specify the tribe from which the promised Deliverer should come, and when a stranger in Egypt, dependent with all his family upon the precarious favor of an idolatrous monarch, calmly and without doubt spoke of Judah’s scepter, and its continuance until Shiloh came, unto whom the gathering of the people should be. Genesis 49:10.HBS 426.1

A few generations later, the great lawgiver of the Jewish people was commissioned to predict the Messiah’s advent as a prophet, raised up from among them, like himself, but with more extensive power and authority, whose hearers should incur the direct judgments of God for disobedience to his words. Deuteronomy 18:15-19. (Compare Acts 3:22 and 7:27.)HBS 426.2

Proceeding onward to the time of David, we find the character and offices of the promised Deliverer foreshadowed in the book of Psalms with a clearness which has made that book the especial study of the Christian church for its revelations respecting the Messiah. In this book we see how, in the process of time, the vague and indistinct foreshadowings of a future Deliverer had gradually ripened into those distinct delineations of the person and office of the Messiah which afforded grounds of peace and joy to the Old Testament church.HBS 426.3

His state of humiliation on earth, his sufferings and death, his being laid in the grave but without seeing corruption, his resurrection and ascension, his victories over his enemies, the establishment of his kingdom in the earth, are all foreshadowed in terms which, however mysterious to the ancient Jewish church, have all been made abundantly plain by the fulfilment of the events they predicted. (See Psalm 16; 22; 40; 89; 118, etc.)HBS 426.4

Obscure, for instance, as the prophecy might be, that the stone which the builders should refuse should become the headstone of the corner (Psalm 118:22), subsequent events proved it to be one of the most remarkable predictions of the promised Saviour, and one of the clearest proofs of the divine origin of the Old Testament prophecies.HBS 426.5

The revelations of the book of Psalms were succeeded by the testimonies of a long line of prophets following one another at certain intervals, according to the good pleasure of God, bearing witness to the time and place of the appearance of the promised Deliverer, the character of his person and mission, and the events that were to befall him, with a clearness, precision, and minuteness that, in the case of some of them, have left the unbeliever no other alternative than the conjecture that they were written after the events of which they speak.HBS 426.6

It is impossible to contemplate the large number and variety of these prophecies without being struck with the stringency of the test thus afforded by the mercy of God to their divine origin, and consequently to the divine origin of our Lord’s mission and the religion he came to establish.HBS 426.7

Let us glance at some of the more important among them.HBS 426.8

A virgin was to conceive and bear a son. Isaiah 7:14. Out of Bethlehem Ephratah was he to come forth who was to be ruler in Israel. Micah 5:2. Then the eyes of the blind were to be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped, the lame were to leap as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb to sing. Isaiah 35:5, 6. Jerusalem’s King was to come, not in external pomp and splendor, such as human imagination would have clothed him with, but “lowly, and riding upon an ass, even upon a colt the foal of an ass.” Zechariah 9:9. There was to be no beauty that men should desire him; he was to be despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; to be wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities, and cut off out of the land of the living, to have his grave with the wicked and to be with the rich in his death. Isaiah 53:2-9. Nevertheless he was to have dominion and glory and a kingdom, so that all people, nations, and languages should serve him, and his dominion was to be an everlasting dominion. Daniel 7:13, 14.HBS 426.9

On all these and various other characteristics of the person and offices of Christ, and the events that were to distinguish his mediatorial work, the testimonies of the prophets are clear and abundant.HBS 427.1

A failure, then, in any one of these prophecies would throw discredit upon the whole testimony. And all these were to be fulfilled in one person. What a test is thus afforded us of their divine origin! Is it possible to conceive any human power or agency by which such a series of predictions, so clear and definite, so particular and minute, so extensive and various, and so apparently inconsistent with each other, could be contrived? The powers of any created being may fairly be judged by the heathen oracles. And of these it may be safely said, that their brevity and ambiguity clearly showed the source from which they emanated. But the prophecies we are now considering are of a totally different character.HBS 427.2

There is also another consideration to which I would call your attention. For what purpose should all these various prophecies have been delivered by man, if they had not emanated from a divine source? How should it enter into the mind of man that such a person as the Messiah should come into the world? The predictions of the heathen oracles related to persons or states or circumstances to which the attention of mankind had already been directed. But the prediction of a great future Deliverer, such as the Messiah was to be, was one to which no earthly events or circumstances could lead the mind. The necessity for his appearance was grounded upon considerations alien from the thoughts and feelings of mankind. The work of suffering he was to accomplish was so little in accordance with human notions that even the people who had the oracles of God in their hands, distinctly foretelling the nature of that work, so little recognized it as belonging to the Saviour of mankind, that they were the unconscious instruments for fulfilling it. His mission and work, so far as they were of a spiritual nature, were altogether beyond the unassisted reason of man to imagine.HBS 427.3

Let us observe-HBS 427.4

2. The long period of time during which these prophecies were delivered.HBS 427.5

They were not confined to one generation, or even to one race. For more than three thousand years from the period of the fall were prophecies of this nature delivered at various intervals to the world.HBS 427.6

Amid all the changes and revolutions through which the earth and its inhabitants passed during that long period, including the rise and fall of various empires, one unvaried prophecy, renewed and amplified as time advanced, held out to our fallen race the hope of future blessings, in the advent of a mighty Deliverer from the curse entailed on us by the disobedience of our first parents.HBS 427.7

Had it been of man, it is impossible to conceive that it should have held its ground during so long a period of time. But not only did it hold its ground, but, as age after age rolled away without any apparent prospect of its fulfilment, it only increased in the boldness and precision and fulness of its announcements.HBS 427.8

We must notice-HBS 428.1

3. The number and diversity of those who delivered these prophecies.HBS 428.2

The earliest are those recorded by Moses as having been delivered by God himself to Adam and Abraham. The rest were delivered by the mouths of persons of various grades and positions in society,-patriarchs, prophets, priests, and kings,-between whom, for the most part, no intercommunion of any kind could have existed. We have even the testimony of Israel’s enemy, Balaam, to add to that of the Jewish prophets, as to the rise of a mighty Deliverer from the offspring of Jacob. Numbers 24:17.HBS 428.3

And these various prophets, we must observe, did not merely repeat the same prophecy, but in almost all cases there is some part of the prophecy, uttered by each, peculiar to the particular prophet by whom it was delivered. Their prophecies are not copied from one another. There is something in each to show that it came fresh from that original Source from which the first intimation arose, and from which further light was communicated at the pleasure of him from whom all emanated.HBS 428.4

But more especially should we note-HBS 428.5

4. The minuteness of detail into which many of these prophecies enter.HBS 428.6

My purpose here is merely to point out some of the chief prophecies that are marked by this characteristic. A more fitting opportunity will occur to trace the accuracy of their fulfilment.HBS 428.7

Thus the price at which the Messiah’s life should be estimated, and the very purpose to which that price should be subsequently applied, are distinctly foretold by the prophet Zechariah: “They weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver. And the Lord said unto me, Cast it unto the potter: a goodly price that I was prized at of them.” Zechariah 11:12, 13.HBS 428.8

Again, the indignities to be offered to him are thus minutely specified. The prophet Isaiah, speaking in the person of the Messiah, says, “I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair; I hid not my face from shame and spitting.” Isaiah 50:6.HBS 428.9

“They part my garments among them,” says the word of prophecy, “and cast lots upon my vesture.” Psalm 22:18.HBS 428.10

A bone of him was not to be broken (Psalm 34:20), but nevertheless he was to be pierced (Zechariah 12:10).HBS 428.11

He was to make his grave with the wicked, and yet to be with the rich in his death, because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth. Isaiah 53:9.HBS 428.12

Thus, the prophetic statements respecting the Messiah shrunk not from the minutest details as to what was to happen to him.HBS 428.13

The exactness of their fulfilment we shall hereafter point out.HBS 428.14

Lastly, we must not fail to observe-HBS 428.15

5. The seemingly contradictory character of some of these prophecies, while nevertheless they all found their fulfilment in Jesus of Nazareth.HBS 428.16

Thus, the Messiah was to be David’s son (Psalm 132:11, 17, etc.), and yet David’s Lord (Psalm 110:1), an enigma which our Lord himself in vain proposed to the Jews for their solution. Matthew 22:41-46.HBS 428.17

He was to be laid in the grave, and yet not to see corruption. Psalm 16:10.HBS 428.18

Even when his soul was to be made an offering for sin, he was at that very time to see his seed and to prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord to prosper in his hand. Isaiah 53:10.HBS 429.1

He was to be the Desire of all nations (Haggai 2:7), and yet to be despised and rejected of men (Isaiah 53:3); the messenger of the covenant whom the Jews “delighted in” (Malachi 3:1), and yet one “whom man despiseth;” “whom the nation [i. e., of the Jews] abhorreth” (Isaiah 49:7).HBS 429.2

He was to be a king, the glories of whose kingdom should exceed those of all the empires on earth, and last forever (Psalm 72; 89:27, 29, 36, etc.); and yet to be the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, wounded, bruised, and ignominiously put to death (Isaiah 53:3, 7).HBS 429.3

Well might the faith of the Old Testament church find it difficult to realize the possibility of the fulfilment of all these apparently conflicting predictions in one individual. But in him whom we worship as our Saviour, we see ... all these various prophecies exactly fulfilled. The apparent contradiction only gives weight to their evidence in the testimony it affords us of the superhuman character of their Source.HBS 429.4

True, his kingdom is not yet established in all its promised glory; but when we look around us and see what have even already been the triumphs of the cross of Christ, we cannot doubt that all that remains to be fulfilled will be accomplished in its season.HBS 429.5

We thus see, then, the general nature and character of that prophetic testimony to the Messiah, which has been so clearly and precisely fulfilled in him whom we adore as our Lord. And to that fulfilment of prophecies so many and various, so definite and precise, so circumstancial and minute, so abounding with stringent tests of its faithfulness, we point the unbeliever with confidence, as evidence of the truth of Christianity, leaving him utterly without excuse for its rejection.—“Fulfilled Prophecy,” Rev. W. Goode, D. D., F. S. A., pp. 110-118, 2nd edition. London: James Nisbet & Co., 1891.HBS 429.6

Prophecies, Design of Messianic.—The principal design of the Messianic prophecies was to prepare in such a way for the coming of Christ, that, when he should come, he might at once be recognized from a comparison of prophecy with its fulfilment. And the very fact that, notwithstanding this preparation, the greater portion of the people failed to recognize him, is in itself a proof of its necessity. As it was, the only persons who did not receive him were such as had lost their capacity for an impartial examination of prophecy and history, through their ungodliness of mind. But if there had been no signs at all, the recognition would have been rendered infinitely difficult even to the upright in heart The importance of the Messianic prophecies from this point of view is attested by New Testament authorities. When John the Baptist says, in John 1:20, “I am not the Christ,” he points to Jesus as the Christ. As Bengel says, “By thus limiting his speech ... he gives a handle to the thought which suggests itself, that the Christ is not far off.” He speaks of him with evident allusion to the prophecies of the Old Testament, as “he, who coming after him was before him” (vs. 27, 30), and with a reference to Isaiah 53 as “the Lamb of God.” Andrew, his disciple, on the strength of what he has heard from him, says to his brother Simon in verse 41, “We have found the Messiah.”HBS 429.7

It is true that Christ himself teaches that the first prerequisite to a recognition of himself is a certain state of mind, which creates a susceptibility for the outward proofs of his divine mission (John 7:17), and traces the unbelief of the Jews to the fact that this is not their state of mind (John 5:39-47). He represents himself as the promised Messiah, in John 4:25, 26; Matthew 26:63, 64, and 11:3 sqq. In Luke 24:25, 26, he reproves the apostles as being “fools and slow of heart,” because they do not discern the harmony between prophecy and its fulfilment, which is so conspicuous in his history. In Luke 24:45 he is said to “open their understanding” that they may understand “the prophecies relating to his person,” and in this way to strengthen their faith. He sets forth these prophecies in various ways, describing their great importance as the force by which history is determined, in such words as these, “Thus it is written,” and “Thus it must be.” Luke 24:26, 46; and Matthew 26:54.HBS 429.8

The importance which he attached to the agreement between prophecy and its fulfilment, as forming part of his credentials, is apparent from the fact that on the occasion of his last entry into Jerusalem, he arranged all the incidents in such a way as to insure an exact correspondence to the statements of prophecy. Matthew 21:1 and John 12:12-16. The first of the evangelists brings forward proofs at the very outset, that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah promised in the Old Testament. This was the problem that had first of all to be solved. That Jesus was the Christ was one of the leading topics in the preaching of the apostles. Acts 3:18; 10:43; 1 Corinthians 15:3, 4; 2 Corinthians 1:20. In Acts 26:22 Paul claims to obtain a hearing for his preaching of the gospel on the ground that he says nothing but what Moses and the prophets have already foretold; and in verse 27 he expressly asserts that whoever believes the prophets must of necessity believe in Christ as well.HBS 430.1

There can be no doubt, therefore, as to the great importance of the Messianic prophecies, so far as the people of the Old Testament were concerned. But the question still remains whether they are of the same importance to the the Christian church. To this question an affirmative reply has been constantly and decidedly given. [pp. 264, 265] ...HBS 430.2

The question of primary importance here is whether there are really any Messianic prophecies in the Old Testament. Schleiermacher answers this in the negative. He found nothing but indefinite presentiments, utterances of a subjective consciousness of the need of redemption, “a yearning of human nature for Christianity,” such as may be proved to have existed in heathenism as well. In making such an assertion, he placed himself in decided antagonism to the authority of Christ and his apostles. For it is evident, not only from the passages just quoted, but from many others which have been referred to in the course of this work, that they did acknowledge the existence of actual prophecies in the Scriptures. And the fallacy of the assertion is quite as apparent, if we examine the prophecies themselves. We have brought forward proofs that the Scriptures contain a long series of genuine prophecies. Compare, for example, what has already been observed with reference to Zechariah’s description of the future. Compare also Daniel 9, where the anointing of Christ with the Holy Ghost, his death, the forgiveness of sins to be secured by him, and the judgment to be executed on Jerusalem by a foreign prince, are announced. The nation from which the Redeemer is to arise, is foretold in the Old Testament, and even the tribe (Genesis 49 and other passages), the family (first of all in 2 Samuel 7), the place (Micah 5), and the time of his birth, viz., during the period of the political existence of Judah, previous to the destruction of the second temple (Haggai), in the time of the fourth monarchy (Daniel 2:7), and in the seventieth week (Daniel 9). The prophets point out clearly and distinctly the condition of both the family and nation at the time of the coming of Christ, and fully agree in predicting that before that event all the glory of Israel will pass away, the tabernacle of David fall into ruins (Amos 9:11), and the line of David sink into the obscurity of private life.HBS 430.3

The prophets foretell that with Christ’s coming a new spiritual and vital principle will begin to work in the human race (Joel 3; Jeremiah 31:31-40; Ezekiel 11:19), and history has confirmed the announcement. “All nations,” says Paschal, “were sunk in infidelity and concupiscence; but the whole earth now burned with charity, princes forsook their glory, and girls endured martyrdom. Whence came this power? The Messiah had arrived.” The prophets also place in connection with the coming of Christ a severe judgment upon Judah and its expulsion from the Lord’s own land (e. g., Zechariah 5 and 11; Malachi 3). The fulfilment is before our eyes, as well as that of the prophecies which announce the spread of the kingdom of God among the heathen in the days of the Messiah, such for example as Ezekiel 17:22-24 and Malachi 1:11, “from the rising of the sun unto the going down of the same, my name shall be great among the Gentiles.”HBS 431.1

Again, the assertion that an agreement between the prophecies and the actual result, in matters of detail, is of no importance whatever, is no more reconcilable with the authority of Christ and the apostles, than the denial of the existence of genuine prophecies. For if this be the case, why is the harmony between prophecy and fulfilment expressly pointed out in connection with the most remarkable circumstances of the life of Christ? Why did Christ explain to his apostles, after his resurrection, the passages in all the Scriptures relating to his sufferings and glory? Why did he add, after saying to his disciples, “All ye shall be offended because of me this night,” “for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad”? Matthew 26:31. Why did he say to the disciples (v. 54), “How then shall the Scriptures be fulfilled?” and to the crowd (v. 56), “All this was done that the Scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled”? He that is of the truth will listen in this matter to the voice of him who has said, “I am the truth.”HBS 431.2

In Schleiermacher’s views were correct, how could it be recorded of the people at Berea as a thing deserving praise, that they carefully compared the gospel statements with the Scriptures of the Old Testament, “searching the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so”? Philip would rather be deserving of blame for founding his address to the treasurer of Queen Candace upon Isaiah 53. If it was a matter of importance to that age that the perfect agreement between prophecy and fulfilment should be clearly demonstrated, it is of no less importance now. This is obvious from the fact that the apostles themselves do not attach importance to it, solely when they have to do with Jews, but also when writing and preaching to the Gentiles. In the present day, not merely the great mass of the Jews, but also a great portion of those who are living in outward fellowship with the Christian church, are in just the same condition as the Jews of the time of Christ. They have no true knowledge of Christ, but have yet to learn to know him. It is true that this knowledge can no more be obtained by them from the Messianic prophecies alone, than by the Jews of that day. On the contrary, external evidence of the truth of Christianity, whatever its objective validity may be, can never accomplish anything without the existence of the only state of mind that can create a susceptibility for the impression, which evidence of this description is fitted to produce. But where this state of mind does exist, a perception of the harmony between prophecy and fulfilment may produce the most beneficial results. [pp. 266-268] ...HBS 431.3

The really classical passage of the New Testament, by which this thoroughly abnormal and unchristian theory of Schleiermacher is completely refuted, is contained in 2 Peter 1:19-21, a passage the depth of which is a sufficient proof of its apostolical origin. “We have,” says the apostle, “a more sure word of prophecy, whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the daystar arise in your hearts: knowing this first, that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation, for the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” The Messianic prophecies (that the “word of prophecy” relates especially to these is evident from the connection with what precedes) are of even greater importance to Christians than to Jews. The word of prophecy is to them a surer word, since they can compare the predictions with the fulfilment. The apostle’s preaching of Christ did not rest upon arbitrary speculations, but, according to verse 16, upon the fact that the apostles were “eyewitnesses of his majesty.” From these historical facts, the word of prophecy acquired still greater firmness and importance.HBS 432.1

For this reason it is doubly advantageous to Christians to pay attention to those things from which Schleiermacher attempted with all his might to draw away the church of Christ. The apostle does not say, “Ye did well,” but “Ye do well.” It is not Jews but Christians whom he praises for giving heed to the word of prophecy, and that not merely as the foundation of faith, but also as the means of strengthening their belief. [p. 270]-“Christology of the Old Testament,” E. W. Hengstenberg, Vol. IV, pp. 264-270, translated from the German by James Martin, B. A. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1858.HBS 432.2

Prophecies, Chief Prophecies in the Minor Prophets Which Are Messianically Applied, or Otherwise Referred to in the New Testament.—“The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.” Revelation 19:10.HBS 432.3

Hosea 1:10; 2:23 all of the Gentiles Romans 9:25; Matthew 9:31 ” 3:5 Return of Israel to David their king 1 Peter 2:10 ” 10:8 Calling to the mountains and rocks Luke 23:30 ” 11:1 “Out of Egypt have I called my Son.” Matthew 2:15 ” 6:2 “On the third day” 1 Corinthians 15:4 ” 13:14 Death and Sheol 1 Corinthians 15:55 Joel 2:28, 29 The outpouring of the Spirit Acts 2:17 ” 2:32 Call of the Gentiles Romans 10:13 Amos 9:11 Restoration of Tabernacle of David Acts 15:16 Obadiah 21 Jehovah’s kingdom Luke 1:33 Jonah The signs of the prophet Matthew 16:4; Luke 11:30 “ The typical resurrection Matthew 12:40 “ The [Greek words, transliterated: kairoi ethnon] Luke 21:24 Micah 2:12, 13 Messiah’s kingdom Romans 7:26 ” 5:1, 2 Bethlehem-Ephratah Matthew 2:5, 6; John 7:42 ” 4:8 Migdal-Eder Luke 24:47

Micah 7:6 Variance in homes Matthew 20:35; Mark 13:12 Nahum 1:7 “The Lord knoweth them that are his” 2 Timothy 2:19 Habakkuk 2:3, 4 [Greek words, transliterated: o erchomenos egen] LXX Hebrews 10:37 ” 2:4 “The just shall live by faith” Hebrews 20:37 Zephaniah 3:15 The king of Israel John 1:49 Haggai 2:6-9 The shaking of the nations Hebrews 12:26 ” 2:21-23 Promise to Zerubbabel Luke 3:27 Zechariah 3:8 The Branch Luke 1:78 ” 6:13 The crowned Priest Philippians 2:5-11; Hebrews 6:20 ” 8:23 Final glory of Israel Acts 8:47, 48 ” 9:9 The lowly King Matthew 21:4, 5; John 12:14-16 ” 11:12, 13 Betrayal of the Good Shepherd Matthew 27:9 ” 12:3 The stone of stumbling Matthew 21:44 ” 12:8 Exaltation of David’s house Luke 2:4 ” 12:10 Men shall look unto Me, whom they have pierced John 19:37 ” 13:1 The cleansing fountain Revelation 1:5 ” 13:7-9 Fate of the Shepherd of the sheep Matthew 26:31; Mark 14:27 ” 14:9 Jehovah’s kingdom John 10:16; Revelation 11:15 ” 14:20 Universal holiness Revelation 21:27 Malachi 1:11 The universal offering Revelation 8:3, 4 ” 3:1 The Messenger of the covenant Mark 1:2; Luke 1:76; 7:27 ” 4:1-3 The day of the Lord Matthew 3:12; Revelation 1:7 ” 4:5 Elijah the prophet Matthew 11:14; 17:12; Mark 9:13; Luke 1:17

-“The Minor Prophets,” Rev. F. W. Farrar, D. D., F. R. S., pp. 244, 245. New York: Anson D. F. Randolph & Co.HBS 433.1

Prophet, Words for.—The commonest Hebrew word for prophet is Nab ([Hebrew word]), which occurs some three hundred times in the Old Testament, and must be regarded as the normal designation in all ages. It is true that from 1 Samuel 9:9 we might infer, at first sight, that Nabî was a later term than Roeh ([Hebrew word]), seer; but the meaning of that passage must be interpreted by the fact that Nabî is found long before Samuel’s time, whereas Roeh is not. [p. 1] ...HBS 433.2

Unfortunately, the derivation of Nabî is highly uncertain. It does not seem to have been a genuine Hebrew word at all, and was perhaps borrowed from the Canaanites. Gesenius, indeed, derives it from [Hebrew word], “to bubble up;” and he thus ingeniously connects it with Nâtaph ([Hebrew word]), which properly means “to drop,” but which is used by three prophets to symbolize the utterance of prophecy. Fleischer makes it mean “spokesman.” Ewald, too, connects it with an Arabic root meaning “to speak clear;” but perhaps the Arabic may also have borrowed the word from some Canaanite source, or may simply have formed the verb from the Hebrew Nabî.HBS 433.3

The word Roeh indicates that the prophet is one who, like Balaam, “sees in a trance, having his eyes open;” one to whom is granted “the vision and the faculty divine;” one who has been “illuminated in the eyes of his mind;” one who, amid the darkness of the present, sees with spiritual intuition the eternal hopes of the future; one whose spirit is quick-eared to hear God’s intimations, and who, being pure in heart, enjoys the beatitude of seeing God.HBS 433.4

The word Chozeh, “seer,” has a similar significance. The verb chazah, “to see,” cannot be a mere synonym of raah, “to see;” but in ordinary usage does not perceptibly differ from the latter verb in sense, though it is more poetical. Chozeh occurs twenty-two times in the Old Testament, and is applied to Gad, Heman, Iddo, Hanani, Asaph, Jeduthun, and Amos. It occurs chiefly in the books of Chronicles. Roeh, on the other hand, occurs but ten times, and in seven of these it is used as the designation of Samuel. There can be no great difference between the meaning of the two words, since Hanani, for instance, is called both a Roeh and a Chozeh. On the other hand, there must apparently have been some distinction in the popular mind, for in 1 Chronicles 29:29 we are told that the acts of David are written in the book of Samuel the Roeh, and in the book of Nathan the Nabî, and in the book of Gad the Chozeh. Both Roeh and Chozeh, however, mean one who, in the words of Gregory of Nazianzus, is “the initiated observer and interpreter of the great mysteries.”HBS 434.1

In the Greek versions the word [Greek word transliterated as follows] [prophaataas] (prophet) is used to render each of these three terms. It cannot be accepted as throwing any original light upon the conception of prophecy, for prophecy was an intermittent phenomenon, and this Greek name did not originate until long after the voice of genuine prophecy had fallen silent. It is, however, valuable as expressing the fundamental view of prophetic functions which was prevalent among the learned Jews of Alexandria three centuries before Christ.HBS 434.2

A “prophet,” in modern popular usage means predominantly one who foretells the future,-who predicts events which could be only known to him by miraculous revelation. By the “argument from prophecy” is usually meant the evidence for the divine origin of Christianity, derived from the foreknowledge exhibited by the prophets of the Old Testament. But this argument requires a careful restatement if it is to stand the light of modern criticism. The definite announcement of events yet distant is but a small, a subordinate, and an unessential part of the prophet’s mission. Elijah was a great prophet, yet he uttered no prediction which did not concern the immediate present, unless his announcements of the drouth and of the destiny of Ahab and Jezebel be reckoned as predictions; on the other hand, neither Samuel nor John the Baptist, though among the greatest of the prophets, foretold the distant future. The attempts to declare the issues of the future belonged rather to the priests with their Urim and Thummim, which would not have become obsolescent unless it had fallen into suspicion and contempt. The prophets were no mere augurs or monthly prognosticators. The work for which they were called was nobler and more divine; and when that work was sketched out to them in. the hour of their call, the power of definite prediction is not dwelt upon. They were statesmen, they were moral teachers, they were spiritual guides.HBS 434.3

The connotation which makes the word “prophecy” identical with “prediction” is partly due to a false etymology. [Greek word transliterated as follows] [prophaataas] is not derived from [Greek word transliterated as follows] [prophainoo], “I reveal,” but from [Greek word transliterated as follows] [pro] and [Greek word transliterated as follows] [phaami] and the preposition [Greek word transliterated as follows] [pro] in this compound did not originally mean “beforehand.” A prophet is not so much a “foreteller” as a “forth-teller.” The Greek word means one who interprets another, and especially one who is an interpreter of God. This is the proper and all but invariable meaning of the word in classic Greek. “Apollo,” says Aschylus, “is the prophet of Zeus”-in other words, he interprets the decrees of Zeus. Similarly, Euripides calls Orpheus the prophet of Bacchus, and Glaucus the prophet of Nereus; and the Pythian priests and priestesses were called “prophets,” because they explained the rapt utterances of the seers ([Greek word transliterated as follows] [manteis]), who spoke in ecstasy. So, too, the poets are called interpreters. “Utter thy strains, O Muse,” says Pindar, “and I will be thy prophet.”HBS 434.4

How completely this meaning, and not that of vaticination, is predominant in the Scriptures, is clear from Exodus 7:1, 2: “See, I have made thee a god to Pharaoh, and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet”-in other words, “thy interpreter;” or (as it is expressed in Exodus 4:16) “he shall be thy spokesman unto the people, and he shall be to thee a mouth.” And God says to Jeremiah (Jeremiah 15:19), “Thou shalt be as my mouth.” Nor is this point of view superseded even in the Apocrypha and the New Testament. In Genesis 20:7 Abraham is called “a prophet,” though it was not his function to predict, but he was, like Noah, “a preacher of righteousness” (2 Peter 2:5) and “a friend of God.” And though the wisdom which can see the future in the germs of the present is so naturally an endowment of the illuminated soul that definite prediction-almost always of events already upon the horizon-is not excluded from the sphere of a prophet’s work; yet it is clear, both from the Acts of the Apostles and the epistles, that the prophets of the New Testament were, in the main, and some of them exclusively, moral and spiritual teachers. [pp. 2-5] ...HBS 435.1

In general, then, it is of the deepest importance, for any genuine comprehension of the prophets in their real grandeur, to see that they were preachers of righteousness, statesmen and patriots, enlightened to teach to an ever-apostatizing nation-HBS 435.2

“What makes a nation great, and keeps it so, What ruins kingdoms, and lays cities flat.”HBS 435.3

They were “messengers of Jehovah” (Haggai 1:13), “men of God” (1 Samuel 2:27), “men of the Spirit” (Hosea 9:7). They uttered “the word of Jehovah,” “what Jehovah saith.” In all their deepest announcements they could say, with an almost oppressive consciousness of responsibility, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.” There was a sense in which “all the Lord’s people were prophets,” as Moses had desired that they should be, when Joshua, with affectionate jealousy, would fain have checked the voices of Eldad and Medad. The greatest prophets looked forward to a time when, as Joel prophesied, Jehovah would “pour out his Spirit upon all flesh;” and when, in the aspiration of Jeremiah, “they shall no more teach every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord; for all shall know me from the least to the greatest.” But until that day should come, the prophets rightly felt themselves to be the special and divinely appointed warners and teachers of their people. [pp. 8, 9] ...HBS 435.4

Three characteristics mark the efforts and position of the Hebrew prophets:HBS 435.5

1. First, we must place the heroic faith which looks beyond the little grandeurs and transitory aims of the average man. Most men shrink from braving danger, exposing falsehood, fighting against wrong. They swim with the stream. They spread their sails to the veering wind. They look on success as the end of living, and on popularity as the test of truth. Not so the prophets. Their vision pierced beyond the vain shows and passing pageantry of life. In Egypt, Syria, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Rome, they only saw in outline dim and vast-HBS 435.6

“The giant forms of empires on their way To ruin.”HBS 436.1

Kings, priests, mobs, were but weak men; that which was arrogantly paraded as the majesty of public opinion meant to them but the shout of the noisiest and the vote of the most ignorant; they believed that “one with God is always in a majority;” they “swallowed formulae;” they flung to the winds the false types of goodness, and the false types of orthodoxy which satisfied the somnolent average of religious teachers in their day; they would not deceive for reward or promotion; they would not lie for God. One form of summons might have served to describe their common call and lifelong martyrdom; “Gird thy loins and arise and speak unto them; ... be not dismayed at their faces: ... behold, I have made thee a fenced city, an iron pillar, and brazen wall against the whole land-against the kings, against the princes, against the priests, against the people.... And they shall fight against thee; but they shall not prevail against thee; for I am with thee, saith the Lord.”HBS 436.2

2. Secondly, the prophets are the most conspicuous teachers of spiritual religion. In the happy phrase of Professor Kuenen. “ethical monotheism” is the main, as it is the inestimably precious, contribution of the Hebrew prophets to the spiritual advance and eternal elevation of the race. The priests ... failed to apprehend that the one end and aim of religion is righteousness; that a religion consisting exclusively of ceremonies, a religion divorced from morality, is no religion at all. It is the protest against this idolatry of the outward function which marks the theology of the prophets. “Behold, obedience is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams,” said Samuel. “I despise your feast days, and will not smell in your solemn assemblies,” was the message of the Lord by Amos. “I desired mercy and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of the Lord more than burnt offerings,” said Hosea, in words which our Lord loved to quote. “What doth the Lord require of thee,” asks Micah, “but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” “Bring no more vain oblations,” says Isaiah, “but wash you, make you clean, put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes.” “The just,” says Habakkuk, in words which were the keynote of the theology of St. Paul, “shall live by faith.” Thus did the prophets, one after another, make light of the pompous religionism of offerings and ceremonial, and anticipate the teaching of the Son of God. “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.”HBS 436.3

3. If the prophets had delivered no other message than this,-that righteousness is the test of sincerity,-they would have done a mighty work. And in this sense Israel became a prophetic nation, for its sole significance in history is that it upheld to the ancient world the banner of righteousness. But a third and most precious characteristic of the mission of the prophets is the steady, inextinguishable spirit of hope which animated them amid the direst catastrophes of their people, and which gleams out amid their stormiest predictions of retribution and woe. Even in abasement their horizon is always luminous with the certainty of victory. As each of them could personally say,” Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labor of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no food: the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation;” so they could always point to the bow of mercy amid the wildest storm of ruin. And this hope spreads outward in ever-widening circles.HBS 436.4

Even when the prophecies of Israel’s destruction seem to be most sweeping, it is always intimated that Israel shall not utterly be destroyed. The conviction of the prophet is that evinced by Isaiah when he called one of his sons Shear-Jashub (a remnant shall be left). And the hope for all Israel becomes more and more clearly a hope for all mankind. The ultimate and most decisive declaration of Hebrew prophecy is, “The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.” God was, for them, always in the meridian; a Sun that knew no setting. Trust in him involved a universality of promise for the whole race of which he is the Father in heaven. Grander, more divine than any mere congruities of dates and details, was the faith which believed that there was all the certainty of a law in the ultimate triumph of goodness and of truth.HBS 437.1

4. And this hope, which sometimes seems to fill their pages with divine contradictions, centers more and more brightly, more and more definitely, in a divine Person, an anointed Deliverer, a coming Saviour for all mankind. And thus prophecy is the pervading and central element of the whole sacred canon. “As we watch the weaving of the web of Hebrew life, we endeavor to trace through it the more conspicuous threads. Long time the eye follows the crimson; it disappears at length; but the golden thread of sacred prophecy stretches to the end.” So true is the great saying of the apostle, that “the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.” The Messianic hope, and the trust in God by which it was inspired and continued, is the richest legacy of the prophets to all after-ages. They point us to a Priest upon his throne, to a Man as a hiding place from the wind, a covert from the tempest, the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. And in the certain advent of that divine Redeemer-beyond the sins and confusions of Israel, beyond the anarchy and moral chaos of the world-they saw, as it were, the body of heaven in its clearness, the vision of the Perfect Man, the vision of the Perfect God. [pp. 11-14]-“The Minor Prophets,” Rev. F. W. Farrar, D. D., F. R. S., pp. 1-14. New York: Anson D. F. Randolph & Co.HBS 437.2

Prophets Before Exile, Dates of.—Jonah is mentioned (2 Kings 14:25) as having foretold the deliverance of Israel and recovery of its former prosperity, which came to pass in the reign of Jeroboam the Second, b. c. 824-783.HBS 437.3

Of Joel we learn only that he was the son of Pethuel. The time of his prophesying seems to lie not very long before that of Amos, whose prophecy begins with a text of Joel. Movers (p. 119 ff.) and Ewald refer it to the reign of Joash, but on grounds which I think inconclusive.HBS 437.4

Amos prophesied in the reign of Jeroboam the Second, and in that part of it which was contemporary with the reign of Uzziah, that is, b. c. 808-783. He began to prophesy “two years before the earthquake;” this, as a remarkable event, is alluded to by Zechariah long afterward (14:5), but its time is not known. The close connection between the close of Joel and the opening of Amos seems to indicate that the two prophets were not far separated in time.HBS 437.5

Hosea began in the same reigns, but continued to prophesy into the reign of Hezekiah (1:1); i. e., from before 783 b. c. till after 726 b. c. Like Amos, he prophesied against the ten tribes; he may have lived to see the fulfilment of his predictions.HBS 437.6

Isaiah was commissioned to the prophetical office in the death-year of Uzziah (6:1).—“Chronology of the Holy Scriptures,” Henry Browne, M. A., p. 249. London: John W. Parker, 1844.HBS 437.7

Prophets, Dates of.—That the canonical order of the books of the prophets is not their chronological order is well known.HBS 438.1

But the dates usually to be found at the head or in the margin of our Bibles, as well as in many of the tables supplied in “Aids” to students, involve the subject in hopeless confusion.HBS 438.2

The four prophets commonly styled “Greater” (or Longer), viz., Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel, are all dated.HBS 438.3

Of the other twelve, called “Minor” (or Shorter), six are dated and six are undated.HBS 438.4

The dated books are Hosea, Amos, Micah, Zephaniah, Haggai, and Zechariah.HBS 438.5

The undated books are Joel, Obadiah, Jonah, Nahum, Habakkuk, and Malachi.HBS 438.6

Of the whole sixteen, therefore, we have ten dated and six undated.HBS 438.7

From the particulars given in the dated books themselves, we are enabled to lay down with precision the years and periods covered by the respective prophecies.HBS 438.8

With regard to the undated books the case is different; and we have to rely upon the guidance of their internal evidence. But this in almost every case is so clear that there is no great difficulty in assigning each of the prophetical books to its respective chronological position, Obadiah being perhaps the only exception. [p. 112] ...HBS 438.9

The sixteen prophetical books fall into four remarkable and well-defined divisions, separated by three “breaks,” or periods of years, as shown below:HBS 438.10

The first group consists of six prophets; viz., Jonah, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Micah, Nahum, covering a period of 102 years. Then follows a great “gap” or “break” of 70 years.HBS 438.11

The second group consists of seven prophets; viz., Jeremiah, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Daniel, Joel, Ezekiel, Obadiah, covering a period of 94 years, followed by a “gap” or “break” of 14 years.HBS 438.12

The third group consists of two prophets; viz., Haggai, Zechariah, covering a period of 7 years. Then follows a “gap” of 29 years, which is closed by the prophet Malachi.HBS 438.13

The whole period covered by the sixteen prophets is therefore 316 years.—“The Companion Bible,” Part IV, “Isaiah to Malachi,” Appendix, pp. 112, 114. London: Oxford University Press.HBS 438.14

Psalm 119, Ten Words of.—The number of the words which are frequently repeated in Psalm 119 has been variously given and enumerated by expositors and commentators. It will be better to give them here on the authority of the Massôrah (Ap. 30).HBS 438.15

The rubric on verse 122 is as follows: “Throughout the whole of the Great Alphabet [i. e., the Alphabetic Psalm 119] there is in every verse one of the following ten expressions: Derek (way), ‘ç ‘duth (testimony), pikkudîm (precepts), mizvâh (commandment), ‘imrâh (saying), tôrâh (law), mishpât (judgment), zedek, zedâkâh, and zaddîk (righteousness), hok and hukkâh (statutes), dâbâr (word), which correspond to the ten commandments; except one verse, in which there is none of these; viz., verse 122.” (“Massôrah,” Ginsburg’s edition, Vol. II.)HBS 438.16

The following list includes all the “ten words” given above, with every occurrence in the psalm, together with the first occurrence of each word:HBS 438.17

1. “Way” (derek) is from dârak, to tread with the feet, and denotes the act of walking. Hence it is used of a going, or way, or journeying. The first occurrence is Genesis 3:24. It occurs in this psalm thirteen times: vs. 1, 3, 5, 14, 26, 27, 29, 30, 32, 33, 37, 59, 168.HBS 438.18

2. “Testimonies” (’çduth) is from ‘ud, to turn back again, to go over again, to reiterate, hence, to testify. The first occurrence is Genesis 21:30 (çdah). It occurs in this psalm twenty-three times; nine times (’çduth), vs. 14, 31, 36, 88, 99, 111, 129, 144, 157; fourteen times (’çdâh, fem. sing.), vs. 2, 22, 24, 46, 59, 79, 95, 119, 125, 138, 146, 152, 167, 168.HBS 439.1

3. “Precepts” (pikkudîm) is from pâkad, to take oversight or charge; hence, mandates enjoined on others. It occurs only in the book of Psalms. (See 19:8; 103:18; 111:7.) In Psalm 119 twenty-one times: vs. 4, 15, 27, 40, 45, 56, 63, 69, 78, 87, 93, 94, 100, 104, 110, 128, 134, 141, 159, 168, 173.HBS 439.2

4. “Commandments” (mizvâh) is from zâvâh, to set up, constitute; hence, constitutional commands. First occurrence, Genesis 26:5. In Psalm 119 it occurs twenty-two times: vs. 6, 10, 19, 21, 32, 35, 47, 48, 60, 66, 73, 86, 96, (sing.) 98, 115, 127, 131, 143, 151, 166, 172, 176.HBS 439.3

5. “Word” (’imrâh) is from ‘âmar, to bring forth to light; hence, to say. The verb is very regularly followed by the words used; hence, ‘imrâh means an utterance and the purport of it. Not the same as dâbâr (No. 10 below), which refers to the articulate utterance of it. The first occurrence is in Genesis 4:23, and is rendered “speech.” In plural only once, Psalm 12:6 (the only place where the plural is found). In Psalm 119 it occurs nineteen times; viz., 11, 38, 41, 50, 58, 67, 76, 82, 103, 116, 123, 133, 140, 148, 154, 158, 162, 170, 172. With d âbâr the two occur forty-two times.HBS 439.4

6. “Law” (tôrâh) is from yârâh, to project, issue; hence, to point out, to show (Proverbs 6:13); then, to instruct, teach. The tôrâh contains Jehovah’s instructions to his people, pointing out to them his will. First occurrence is in Genesis 26:5 (pl.). In Psalm 119 it occurs twenty-five times, always in the singular; viz., vs. 1, 18, 29, 34, 44, 51, 53, 55, 61, 70, 72, 77, 85, 92, 97, 109, 113, 126, 136, 142, 150, 153, 163, 165, 174.HBS 439.5

7. “Judgment” (mishp ât) is from shâphat, to set upright, erect (cp. Eng. right, and German richten and recht); hence, to judge. Mishpât means judgment. Its first occurrence is in Genesis 18:19 (in Jehovah’s mouth). In Psalm 119 it occurs twenty-three times (always in plural, except four times); viz., vs. 7, 13, 20, 30, 39, 43, 52, 62, 75, 84, 91 (ordinances), 102, 106, 108, 120, 121, 132 (as thou usest to do), 137, 149, 156, 160, 164, 175.HBS 439.6

8. “Righteousness, right,” etc. (zedek, masc.), is from zâdak, to be right, upright, just, righteous. Hence the noun means rightness. By comparing the first occurrence (Leviticus 19:15) with the second (Leviticus 19:36), we get the idea that the word has special reference to equal balancing. Zedek (masc.) occurs twelve times, and is rendered “righteousness:” vs. 123, 142 (second), 144, 172; “right,” v. 75 (marg., righteousness); “righteous,” vs. 7, 62, 106, 138, 160, 164; “justice” v. 121. Zed âkâh (fem.), first occurrence, Genesis 15:6. In Psalm 119, “righteousness,” vs. 40, 142 (first). Zaddîk (adj.), spoken of a king (2 Samuel 23:3), once, in v. 137. The three words fifteen times in all.HBS 439.7

9. “Statute” (hok and hukka) is from hâkak, to hew, cut in, engrave, inscribe; hence to decree, or ordain. The noun = a decree or ordinance. First occurrence, Genesis 26:5 (hukkâh, fem.). In Psalm 119 it occurs twenty-two times; viz., vs. 5, 8, 12, 16 (hukkâh, fem.), 23, 26, 33, 48, 54, 64, 68, 71, 80, 83, 112, 117, 118, 124, 135, 145, 155, 171.HBS 439.8

10. “Word, words” (dâbâr), is from dâbar, to arrange in a row; hence, to set forth in speech. It refers to the articulate form of what is said, whether spoken or written (cp. 5 above); to the mode or manner by which the ipsissima verba [very words themselves] are imparted. The first occurrence is in Genesis 11:1 (“speech”). In Psalm 119 it occurs twenty-four times, three of them in pl.; viz., vs. 9, 16, 17, 25, 28, 42 (twice), 43, 49, 57 (pl), 65, 74, 81, 89, 101, 105, 107, 114, 130 (pl.), 139 (pl.), 147, 160, 161, 169.—“The Companion Bible,” Part III, “Psalms to Song of Solomon,” Appendix, p. 108. London: Oxford University Press.HBS 439.9

Ptolemies of Egypt.—Ptolemaus, or Ptolemy, was the common name of the Greek dynasty of Egyptian kings. Ptolemaus I, Soter, the son of Lagus, a Macedonian of low rank, distinguished himself greatly during the campaigns of Alexander, at whose death he secured for himself the government of Egypt, where he proceeded at once to lay the foundations of a kingdom, b. c. 323. He abdicated in favor of his youngest son, Ptolemy II, Philadelphus, two years before his death, which took place in b. c. 283. Ptolemy Soter is described very briefly in Daniel (Daniel 11:5), as one of those who should receive part of the empire of Alexander when it was “divided toward the four winds of heaven.”HBS 440.1

Ptolemaus II, Philadelphus, b. c. 285-247, the youngest son of Ptolemy I, was made king two years before his father’s death, to confirm the irregular succession. The conflict between Egypt and Syria was renewed during his reign, in consequence of the intrigue of his half-brother Magas. Ptolemy bestowed liberal encouragement on literature and science, founding the great library and museum at Alexandria, and gathered about him many men of learning, as the poet Theocritus, the geometer Euclid, and the astronomer Aratus. This reign was a critical epoch for the development of Judaism, as it was for the intellectual history of the ancient world. The critical faculty was called forth in place of the creative, and learning in some sense supplied the place of original speculation. It was impossible that the Jew, who was now become as true a citizen of the world as the Greek, should remain passive in the conflict of opinions. It is enough now to observe the greatness of the consequences involved in the union of Greek language with Jewish thought. From this time the Jew was familiarized with the great types of Western literature, and in some degree aimed at imitating them. A second time and in new fashion Egypt disciplined a people of God. It first impressed upon a nation the firm unity of a family, and then in due time reconnected a matured people with the world from which it had been called out.HBS 440.2

Ptolemaus III, Euergetes, b. c. 247-222, was the eldest son of Ptolemy Philadelphus and brother of Berenice the wife of Antiochus II. The repudiation and murder of his sister furnished him with an occasion for invading Syria, cir. b. c. 246. Daniel 11:7. He extended his conquests as far as Antioch, and then eastward to Babylon, but was recalled to Egypt by tidings of seditions which had broken out there. His success was brilliant and complete. He carried “captives into Egypt their gods [of the conquered nations], with their princes, and with their precious vessels of silver and of gold.” Daniel 11:8. This capture of sacred trophies earned for the king the name Euergetes (“Benefactor”). After his return to Egypt, cir. b. c. 243, he suffered a great part of the conquered provinces to fall again under the power of Seleucus.HBS 440.3

Ptolemaus IV, Philopater, b. c. 222-205. After the death of Ptolemy Euergetes the line of the Ptolemies rapidly degenerated. Ptolemy Philopator, his eldest son, who succeeded him, was to the last degree sensual, effeminate, and debased. But externally his kingdom retained its power and splendor; and when circumstances forced him to action, Ptolemy himself showed ability not unworthy of his race. The description of the campaign of Raphia (b. c. 217) in the book of Daniel gives a vivid description of his character. Daniel 11:10-12; cf. Macc. 1:1-3. After offering in the temple at Jerusalem sacrifices for the success then achieved, he attempted to enter the sanctuary. A sudden paralysis hindered his design; but when he returned to Alexandria, he determined to inflict on the Alexandrine Jews the vengeance for his disappointment. He was succeeded by his only child, Ptolemy V, Epiphanes, who was at the time only four or five years old.HBS 440.4

Ptolemaus V, Epiphanes, b. c. 205-181. The reign of Ptolemy Epiphanes was a critical epoch in the history of the Jews. The rivalry between the Syrian and Egyptian parties, which had for some time divided the people, came to an open rupture in the struggles which marked his minority. In the strong language of Daniel, “The robbers of the people exalted themselves to establish the vision.” Daniel 11:14. The accession of Ptolemy and the confusion of a disputed regency furnished a favorable opportunity for foreign invasion. “Many stood up against the king of the south” under Antiochus the Great and Philip III of Macedonia, who formed a league for the dismemberment of his kingdom. “So the king of the north (Antiochus) came, and cast up a mount, and took the most fenced city (Sidon), and the arms of the south did not withstand” (at Paneas, b. c. 198). Daniel 11:14, 15. The Romans interfered, and in order to retain the provinces of Cole-Syria, Phonicia, and Judea, Antiochus “gave him [Ptolemy] a young maiden” (his daughter Cleopatra as his betrothed wife). Daniel 11:17. But in the end his policy only partially succeeded. After the marriage of Ptolemy and Cleopatra was consummated, b. c. 193, Cleopatra did “not stand on his side,” but supported her husband in maintaining the alliance with Rome. The disputed provinces, however, remained in the possession of Antiochus; and Ptolemy was poisoned at the time when he was preparing an expedition to recover them from Seleucus, the unworthy successor of Antiochus.HBS 441.1

Ptolemaus VI, Philometor, b. c. 181-145. On the death of Ptolemy Epiphanes, his wife Cleopatra held the regency for her young son, Ptolemy Philometor, and preserved peace with Syria till she died, b. c. 173. The government then fell into unworthy hands, and an attempt was made to recover Syria. Comp. 2 Macc. 4:21. Antiochus Epiphanes seems to have made the claim a pretext for invading Egypt. The generals of Ptolemy were defeated near Pelusium, probably at the close of b. c. 171 (1 Macc. 1:16 ff.); and in the next year Antiochus, having secured the person of the young king, reduced almost the whole of Egypt. Comp. 2 Macc. 5:1. Meanwhile Ptolemy Euergetes II, the younger brother of Ptolemy Philometor, assumed the supreme power at Alexandria; and Antiochus, under the pretext of recovering the crown for Philometor, besieged Alexandria in b. c. 169. By this time, however, his selfish designs were apparent: the brothers were reconciled, and Antiochus was obliged to acquiesce for the time in the arrangement which they made. But while doing so he prepared for another invasion of Egypt, and was already approaching Alexandria when he was met by the Roman embassy led by C. Popillius Lanas, who, in the name of the Roman senate, insisted on his immediate retreat (b. c. 168), a command which the late victory at Pydna made it impossible to disobey. These campaigns, which are intimately connected with the visits of Antiochus to Jerusalem in b. c. 170, 168, are briefly described in Daniel 11:25-30. The whole of Syria was afterward subdued by Ptolemy, and he was crowned at Antioch king of Egypt and Asia. 1 Macc. 11:13. Alexander, a rival claimant, attempted to secure the crown, but was defeated and afterward put to death by Ptolemy. But the latter did not long enjoy his success. He fell from his horse in the battle, and died within a few days. 1 Macc. 11:18. Ptolemy Philometor is the last king of Egypt who is noticed in sacred history, and his reign was marked also by the erection of the temple at Leontopolis.—“A Dictionary of the Bible,” William Smith, LL. D., pp. 541-543, Teacher’s edition. Philadelphia: Porter and Coates, copyright 1884.HBS 441.2

Pul, “King of Assyria.”—One important difficulty presents itself at this point of the narrative, in an apparent contradiction between the native records of the Assyrians and the casual notices of their history contained in the Second Book of Kings. The Biblical Pul-the “king of Assyria” who came up against the land of Israel, and received from Menahem a thousand talents of silver, “that his hand might be with him to confirm the kingdom in his hand”-is unnoticed in the native inscriptions, and even seems to be excluded from the royal lists by the absence of any name at all resembling his in the proper place in the famous Canon. [p. 122]HBS 442.1

Pul appears in Scripture to be the immediate predecessor of Tiglath-Pileser.... Others would identify him with Tiglath-Pileser himself. But perhaps the most probable supposition is, that he was a pretender to the Assyrian crown, never acknowledged at Nineveh, but established in the western (and southern) provinces so firmly that he could venture to conduct an expedition into Lower Syria, and to claim there the fealty of Assyria’s vassals. Or possibly he may have been a Babylonian monarch, who in the troublous times that had now evidently come upon the northern empire, possessed himself of the Euphrates valley, and thence descended upon Syria and Palestine.—“The Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World,” George Rawlinson, M. A., Vol. II, pp. 122-124. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co.HBS 442.2

Purgatory, Doctrine of.—In connection with the doctrine of the mass and its effects, stands the Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatorial fire into which the souls of all those pious persons are removed who die without having made full satisfaction for their sins, and out of which they may be delivered by means of private masses and indulgences. The Protestants unanimously rejected this antiscriptural doctrine, and also the Greek theologians, though the latter admitted the notion of an intermediate state of the departed.—“A History of Christian Doctrines,” Dr. K. R. Hagenbach, Vol. III, p. 173. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1881.HBS 442.3

Purgatory, Origin of Doctrine, Opposition to.—From the time of Gregory the Great, the doctrine of a purifying fire, through which souls have to pass after death, came to be more and more generally adopted. The belief in it was strengthened by supposed facts furnished by legends. Missionaries carried this notion, already developed and complete, to the nations which were newly converted; and the writers of the present age, scholastics as well as poets and orators, gave the fullest description of it. Many believed in the real existence of purgatory as a material fire, which, however, in the absence of a body susceptible of physical sufferings, torments the lost souls in an ideal manner (by means of the conception of suffering). Even men who leaned to mysticism, such as Bonaventura and Gerson, maintained the reality of the fire. But that which made the doctrine practically injurious was the belief built upon it, that souls might be relieved from their pains, or even relieved from their state of suffering, sooner than would otherwise have been the case, by means of the intercessory prayers and good works of the living, and particularly by means of masses for the dead (missa pro requie defunctorum). Inasmuch as these masses and ecclesiastical indulgences were paid for, the question arose, whether the rich were not, in this respect, more privileged than the poor; to which Peter Lombard replied in the affirmative. Therefore it is not surprising that the increasing avarice and injustice of the clergy should have induced the Cathari and Waldenses, as well as Wycliffe, to combat the doctrine in question as a most dangerous one. It never met with full acceptance in the Greek Church.—“A History of Christian Doctrines,” Dr. K. R. Hagenbach, Vol. II, p. 388. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1880.HBS 442.4