Church and State as Seen in the Formation of Christendom.
by T. W. Allies.
PROLOGUE.
THE KINGDOM AS PROPHESIED AND AS FULFILLED.
This volume, though entire in itself, is also the continuation of a former work, the "Formation of Christendom," already written and published by me in three volumes. It is, in fact, the further unfolding of the subject under a particular aspect. In truth, the relation between Church and State leads perhaps more directly than any other to the heart of Christendom; for Christendom, both in word and idea, means not only one and the same Church subsisting in all civil governments, but also a community of Christian governments, having a common belief and common principles of action, grounded upon the Incarnation of the Son of G.o.d, and the Redemption wrought thereby. For this reason, the Formation of Christendom can hardly be described, unless the relation which ought by the inst.i.tution of G.o.d to subsist between the two great Powers, the Spiritual and Civil, appointed to rule human society, is first clearly established.
In this volume, therefore, I treat first of the relation of these two Powers before the coming of Christ. Secondly, of their relation as it was affected by that coming, in order to show what position the Church of Christ originally took up in regard to the Civil Power, and what the behaviour of the Civil Power towards the Church was. And, thirdly, the question of principles being thus laid down, the remainder of the volume is occupied with the historical exhibition of the subject during the first three centuries; that is, from the Day of Pentecost to the Nicene Council. The supreme importance of that period will appear to all who reflect that the Church from the beginning, and in the first centuries of her existence, must be the same in principles with the Church of the nineteenth and every succeeding century. And this volume is, in fact, a prelude to the treatment of the same subject in the last three centuries, down to the Ec.u.menical Council of the Vatican.
The subject which I am treating is, then, strictly historical, being the action of a King in the establishment of a kingdom; the action of a Lawgiver in the legislation which He gave to that kingdom; the action of a Priest in founding a hierarchy, whereby that kingdom consists; but, moreover, which is something much more-the action of One who is Priest, Lawgiver, and King at once and always, and therefore whose work is at once one and triple, and indivisible in its unity and triplicity, and issuing in the forming of a people which is simply the creation of its King.
1.-_The Kingdom as Prophesied._
As an introduction to it, let me refer to the distinct and explicit prediction of such an event at a point of time six centuries before it took effect, as well as now distant from us almost 2500 years, under circ.u.mstances upon which it is most instructive to look back. For not only did the secular and the religious histories of mankind then meet together, as they had met before, but they began to stand in a certain relation to each other, which continues from that time to this. The intersection of two societies which work themselves out in the one human history became permanent. At that moment a revelation was given, which is perhaps the most definite detailed and absolute prophecy concerning the whole compa.s.s of human society, as viewed in its relation to G.o.d, which is to be found in the Old Testament. And the occasion upon which it was given makes it even more significant, for it was like a burst of sunlight suddenly scattering the darkness of a storm and bathing the whole landscape in radiance.
That darkness indeed was terrible, for the ancient people chosen by G.o.d to support His name among apostate nations no longer lived apart from those nations in their own land which G.o.d had provided for them, with an independence based upon the law especially given to them, but lay prostrate under the feet of a heathen invader, who had placed a va.s.sal upon the diminished throne of Solomon, and the royal line of David seemed on the eve of expiring in a degenerate descendant. For the continued infidelities of four hundred years had worn out even the divine patience.
In vain had the ten tribes of schismatic Israel been carried into captivity by a.s.syria. It needed that the remaining kingdom of Judah should be broken up and its chiefs deported to Babylon, whose monarch was now the heir of a.s.sur"s great empire, the king of kings, the sceptred head of heathendom. Moreover, in a few years he was to punish the va.s.sal, rebellious to himself, but yet more faithless to the G.o.d of Israel, whom he had placed on David"s seat, and to burn that glorious Temple which the wisest of kings had erected to the majesty of the one true G.o.d. And with that fall of Zedekiah the line of David would cease for ever to sit upon a temporal throne.
A darker moment in the history of the chosen people could not be found, nor a more hopeless prospect, to all seeming, for the carrying out the promises made to Abraham and his seed. What was a divine judgment on the breakers of a special covenant with the one true G.o.d appeared to be the triumph of a heathendom which had set up many false G.o.ds. Yet it was the moment chosen to send to that very king, who was the executor of the divine chastis.e.m.e.nts upon a faithless people, a revelation which contained the future lot not only of the people which he had humbled, but of the heathendom of which he was the crown. As he lay upon his bed, Nabuchodonosor had a dream, "and his spirit was terrified, and the dream went out of his mind." He strove in vain to recover it, either by the efforts of his own memory or by the skill of the wise men and soothsayers of Babylon. But among the captives in the imperial city was a youth of David"s lineage, nourished at the king"s court, and a member of his household. And when Daniel heard the decree of the great king ordering the death of the wise men who failed to interpret a dream which the king could not disclose to them, Daniel turned himself and his three fellow-captives and companions to prayer and supplication, "to the end that they should ask mercy at the face of the G.o.d of heaven concerning this secret. Then was the mystery revealed to Daniel by a vision in the night: and Daniel blessed the G.o.d of heaven, and speaking he said: Blessed be the name of the Lord from eternity and for evermore: for wisdom and fort.i.tude are His. And He changeth times and ages: taketh away kingdoms and establisheth them, giveth wisdom to the wise, and knowledge to them that have understanding: He revealeth deep and hidden things, and knoweth what is in darkness, and light is with Him. To Thee, O G.o.d of our fathers, I give thanks, and I praise Thee; because Thou hast given me wisdom and strength: and now Thou hast shown me what we desired of Thee, for Thou hast made known to us the king"s discourse. After this Daniel went in to Arioch, to whom the king had given orders to destroy the wise men of Babylon, and he spoke thus to him: Destroy not the wise men of Babylon: bring me in before the king, and I will tell the solution to the king. Then Arioch in haste brought in Daniel to the king, and said to him: I have found a man of the children of the captivity of Judah that will resolve the question to the king. The king answered and said to Daniel, whose name was Balta.s.sar: Thinkest thou indeed that thou canst tell me the dream that I saw, and the interpretation thereof? And Daniel made answer before the king and said: The secret that the king desireth to know, none of the wise men, or the philosophers, or the diviners, or the soothsayers can declare to the king. But there is a G.o.d in heaven that revealeth mysteries, who hath shown to thee, O king Nabuchodonosor, what is to come to pa.s.s in the latter times. Thy dream, and the visions of thy head upon thy bed, are these: Thou, O king, didst begin to think in thy bed what should come to pa.s.s hereafter: and He that revealeth mysteries showed thee what shall come to pa.s.s. To me also this secret is revealed, not by any wisdom that I have more than all men alive, but that the interpretation might be made manifest to the king, and thou mightest know the thoughts of thy mind. Thou, O king, sawest, and behold there was as it were a great statue: this statue, which was great and high, tall of stature, stood before thee, and the look thereof was terrible. The head of this statue was of fine gold, but the breast and the arms of silver, and the belly and the thighs of bra.s.s: and the legs of iron, the feet part of iron and part of clay. Thus thou sawest, until a stone was cut out of a mountain without hands, and it struck the statue upon the feet thereof that were of iron and of clay, and broke them in pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the bra.s.s, the silver, and the gold broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of a summer"s threshing-floor, and they were carried away by the wind, and there was no place found for them: but the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth. This is the dream: we will also tell the interpretation thereof before thee, O king. Thou art a king of kings: and the G.o.d of heaven hath given thee a kingdom, and strength, and power, and glory: and all places wherein the children of men and the beasts of the field do dwell: he hath also given the birds of the air into thy hand, and hath put all things under thy power: thou therefore art the head of gold. And after thee shall rise up another kingdom, inferior to thee, of silver: and another third kingdom of bra.s.s, which shall rule over all the world. And the fourth kingdom shall be as iron. As iron breaketh into pieces and subdueth all things, so shall that break and destroy all these. And whereas thou sawest the feet and the toes part of potter"s clay, and part of iron: the kingdom shall be divided, but yet it shall take its origin from the iron, according as thou sawest the iron mixed with the miry clay. And as the toes of the feet were part of iron and part of clay, the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly broken. And whereas thou sawest the iron mixed with miry clay, they shall be mingled indeed together with the seed of man, but they shall not stick fast one to another, as iron cannot be mixed with clay. But in the days of those kingdoms the G.o.d of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, and His kingdom shall not be delivered up to another people, and it shall break in pieces and shall consume all these kingdoms, and itself shall stand for ever. According as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and broke in pieces the clay, and the iron, and the bra.s.s, and the silver, and the gold, the great G.o.d hath shown the king what shall come to pa.s.s hereafter, and the dream is true, and the interpretation thereof is faithful."
No one can study the vision and its interpretation without seeing that the fabric of a great temporal empire, whose ruler is called a king of kings, and whose seat is the city wherein Nimrod, "the great hunter before the Lord," set up the first kingdom, to stand for ever at the head of human history a kingdom symbolical not of justice but of force, is therein contrasted with the fabric of a kingdom which the G.o.d of heaven should set up. And it is specially noted that He should set up this kingdom in the times of the empires denoted by the statue. And of the kingdom so to be set up four things are predicated in, as it were, an ascending scale. First, there is its divine inst.i.tution: "the G.o.d of heaven shall set up a kingdom," and that in a manner wholly unexampled, which is expressed by "a stone cut out of a mountain without hands."
Secondly, "the kingdom shall never be destroyed." Thirdly, and further, "it shall not be delivered up to another people;" a process which, according to the interpretation of the vision, was to take place three times in the empires represented by the statue. Fourthly, "that it should break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, while itself should last for ever."
Moreover, as the earthly kingdom was really a kingdom, so the force of the similitude running through the whole, and heightened by the effect of contrast, declares that the heavenly should be a kingdom. As the seat of the earthly kingdom was this world, so evidently the seat of the heavenly is this same world. As the earthly kingdom should be destroyed, so the heavenly should be exempt from destruction. As the earthly kingdom was to pa.s.s from one people to another, so the heavenly kingdom should not pa.s.s from one people to another. But then comes a culmination which no one could antic.i.p.ate. For not only is there an antagonism between the earthly and the heavenly kingdom, but by force of it, and in consequence of it, the heavenly should consume and break in pieces the earthly.
Whereby the hearer is given to understand that the earthly kingdom, terrible and grand and all-powerful as it seemed to be, was created for the sake of the heavenly, which in due time should be set up in it, but not of it nor from it.
It is no less implied through the whole tenor of the vision that the authority which const.i.tutes the essence of a kingdom-that is, supreme and independent authority, which is expressed in legislation and administered in government-subsists as much in the heavenly as in the earthly kingdom, with this marked distinction, that it is transitory in the one case and permanent in the other.
And, finally, the power by which all this should be done was something beyond human power, and without parallel, very strange and astonishing, "a stone cut out of a mountain without hands," which should not only strike the statue upon its feet, but itself grow, "until it became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth."
Thus the filling of the whole earth with the stone which struck the statue and then became a great mountain terminates the vision. But it is no less its scope and object. The statue exists before that the stone may come after. The statue and the stone, as thus exhibited, indicate the respective value in the divine counsels of the powers which they represent; that is, the subordination of the human kingdom to the divine, both in the order of causality and in duration, is distinctly laid down.
And the end of both accords with this. The great statue, when struck by the stone, became like the chaff of a summer"s threshing-floor; but the stone which struck it filled the whole earth. And the vision leaves it in possession.
The vision also reaches from end to end. It begins with the first empire, which is human, and runs back by the place in which it is seated to the commencement of actual things; and it ends with the last, which is divine, and which shall consume all the other kingdoms recorded, and itself last for ever. Thus the vision grasps the whole organism of society in the human race, as it lies unrolled before the providence of G.o.d.
2.-_The Kingdom as Fulfilled._
Such was the prophecy. Now let us pa.s.s over a thousand years, and take the first fulfilment of the vision as it presented itself to an ancient saint at the beginning of the fifth century. We will only note that in the interval Nabuchodonosor and Cyrus and Alexander and Caesar had set up the four world-empires. They were four indeed, for they pa.s.sed three times from one people to another-from Chaldean to Persian, from Persian to Grecian, from Grecian to Roman, as the variety of metals in the statue was interpreted to mean. Yet were they also one-a unity which, as that of a single person, the great statue so faithfully represented. For they were one with each other in the character and unbroken tradition of the same civilisation, and in the principle of their authority, which was conquest. They were filled with the same spirit of heathen domination, which was in truth the voice and the power of a false worship, as with the spirit of one man who rose in Babylon to set in Rome.[1] Two Apostles, special friends and constant fellow-workers, had marked this ident.i.ty by giving the mystical name of Babylon to heathen Rome-St.
Peter[2] in the epistle which he dates from Babylon, St. John in his vision of the woman drunk with the blood of saints and martyrs, and seated upon the seven hills, whom he himself interprets to be "the great city which had kingdom over the kings of the earth." These empires had run their appointed course, and the last and greatest of them, which was likewise the heir and successor of the three preceding in power and thought, as well as in the body of their territories and the soul which ruled therein, was ending in disgrace and dissolution. For at length the tribes of the North had broken through the long-guarded frontiers of Roman power. Alaric with his Goths had taken Rome, and a deep cry of distress arose through all the vast provinces of her empire. Every city in that wide domain trembled with the sense of insecurity for the present and fear for the future which the fall of Rome inspired. Just at this moment the great Western Father, whose voice sounded like the voice of the Church herself, wrote thus to a heathen inquirer:-
"Faith opens the door to intelligence, while unbelief closes it. Where is the man who would not be moved to belief, simply by so vast an order of events proceeding from the beginning; by the mere connection of various ages, which accredits the present by the past, while it confirms antiquity by what is recent? Out of the Chaldean nation a single man is chosen, remarkable for a most constant piety. Divine promises are disclosed to this man, which are to find their completion after a vast series of ages in the last times, and it is predicted that all nations are to receive a benediction in his seed. This man being a worshipper of the one true G.o.d, the Creator of the universe, begets in his old age a son, of a wife whom barrenness and age had long deprived of all hope of offspring. From him is propagated a most numerous people, which multiplies in Egypt, whither a divine disposition of things, redoubling its promises and effects, had carried that family from eastern parts.
From their servitude in Egypt a strong people is led forth by terrible signs and miracles; impious nations are driven out before it; it is brought into the promised land, settled therein, and exalted into a kingdom. Then it falls more and more into sin; it perpetually offends the true G.o.d, who had conferred upon it so many favours, by violating His worship; it is scourged with various misfortunes; it is visited with consolations, and so carried on to the incarnation and manifestation of Christ. All the promises made to this nation, all its prophecies, its priesthoods, its sacrifices, its temple, in a word, all its sacred rites, had for their special object this Christ, the Word of G.o.d, the Son of G.o.d-G.o.d that was to come in the flesh, that was to die, to rise again, to ascend to heaven, that by the exceeding power of His name was to obtain in all nations a population dedicated to Himself; and in Him remission of sins and eternal salvation unto such as believed.
"Christ came. In His birth, His life, His words, His deeds, His sufferings, His death, His resurrection, His ascension,-all the predictions of the prophets are fulfilled. He sends forth the Holy Spirit; He fills the faithful who are a.s.sembled in one house, and who by their prayers and desires are expecting this very promise. They are filled with the Holy Spirit; they speak suddenly with the tongues of all nations; they confidently refute errors; they proclaim a most salutary truth; they exhort to penitence for the faults of past life; they promise pardon from the divine grace. Their proclamation of piety and true religion is followed by suitable signs and miracles. A savage unbelief is stirred up against them. They endure what had been foretold; hope in what had been promised; teach what had been commanded them. Few in number, they are scattered through the world. They convert populations with marvellous facility. In the midst of enemies they grow. They are multiplied by persecutions. In the straits of affliction they are spread abroad over vast regions. At first they are uninstructed, of very low condition, very few in number. Their ignorance pa.s.ses into the brightest intelligence; their low ranks produce the most cultivated eloquence; their fewness becomes a mult.i.tude; they subjugate to Christ minds the most acute, learned, and accomplished, and convert them into preachers of piety and salvation. In the alternating intervals of adversity and prosperity, they exercise a watchful patience and temperance. As the world verges in a perpetual decline, and by exhaustion expresses the coming of its last age, since this also is what prophecy led them to expect, they with greater confidence await the eternal happiness of the heavenly city. And amid all this the unbelief of impious nations rages against the Church of Christ, which works out victory by patience, and by preserving unshaken faith against the cruelty of opponents. When the sacrifice unveiled by the truth, which had so long been covered under mystical promises, had at length succeeded, those sacrifices which prefigured this one were removed by the destruction of the Temple itself.
This very Jewish people, rejected for its unbelief, was cast out of its own seat, and scattered everywhere throughout the world, to carry with it the sacred writings; so that the testimony of prophecy, by which Christ and the Church were foretold, may not be thought a fiction of ours for the occasion, but be produced by our very adversaries-a testimony in which it is also foretold that they should not believe. The temples and images of demons, and the sacrilegious rites of that worship, are gradually overthrown, as prophecy foretold. Heresies against the name of Christ, which yet veil themselves under that name, swarm, as was foretold, in order to call out the force of teaching in our holy religion. In all these things, as we read their prediction, so we discern their fulfilment, and from so vast a portion which is fulfilled we rest a.s.sured of what is still to come. Is there a single mind which yearns after eternity and feels the shortness of the present life, that can resist the light and the force of this divine authority?"[3]
St. Augustine wrote thus to his friend Volusian, the uncle of St.
Melania, a Roman n.o.bleman of high reputation, who was then, as he continued for many years to be, a heathen. But we must also take note that he wrote at a point of time scarcely less remarkable than that of the vision interpreted by Daniel. The old world with its sequence of world-empires was pa.s.sing away. And so soon as it pa.s.sed another travail of extraordinary severity was preparing for the Church, such a travail as even the eagle eye of the Bishop of Hippo could not discern as he stood before the beginning of its accomplishment. When he wrote there was a Catholic Church, the fulfilment of a long train of prophecies in that "connection of ages" which he has so wonderfully drawn out, but there was not yet a Christendom. Nor could he the least foresee what was to take place before that Christendom could be formed. Only, as he spoke, the iron of Roman discipline-the inflexible Romulean mind-which had held together the miry clay of so many various and divergent nationalities, European, Asiatic, African, so that "the kingdom took its origin from the iron," was losing its tenacity. That vast structure of Roman power, the breaking up of which had been feared in the wars and insurrections arising upon the death of Nero, and extinction of the family of Augustus, was in truth dissolving.[4] The western and eastern limbs of the statue were parting away from each other, and the toes were crumbling. But though Augustine heard the sound of the advancing tide, he saw not yet the full flood of the deluge from the north; and still less could he foresee the counter desolation from the south; Teuton flood and Arab desolation which in their joint effect would blast utterly the Roman Peace, and break the iron, the clay, the bra.s.s, the silver, and the gold in pieces together, until they became like the chaff of the summer"s threshing-floor.
As little could he antic.i.p.ate another sight, the further fulfilment of the vision, when the provinces, those crumbling toes of the statue, which lay before him in an impending dissolution, were to be formed into great independent kingdoms, having for the common foundation of their power "the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us." Then in that "connection of ages" which should be drawn out after the time of Augustine in even greater distinctness than before him, and with greater claim upon the believing mind, which "yearns after eternity," a grander fulfilment of the vision would be disclosed. The royalties set up by barbarian chiefs of tribes among incoherent populations of victors and vanquished were to educate mature nations with individual character in the one Christian faith, and shine as distinct stars set in the crown of the Successor to Peter"s pastorship. For as the Word made flesh created Christian monarchies and Christian nations in their several being, so the charge of the Word to a disciple by the lake of Gennesareth, "Feed My Sheep,"
created the great unity of Christendom which bound them together. In Constantine one empire had acknowledged the reign of Christ, and bent the neck of heathen domination to raise the cross upon a heathen crown. But then a group of nations should base the fabric of their laws, and the whole civilisation which redeemed them from barbarism, upon the truth that G.o.d a.s.sumed flesh for man"s sake, and should acknowledge in Peter"s Successor the Vicar of that G.o.d, who by and in that pastoral rule of Peter made them members of one Body, and in so making them "took the Gentiles for His inheritance, and the utmost parts of the earth for His possession."
This was a second and further fulfilment of the vision, which as yet Augustine saw not, nor even antic.i.p.ated; but after thus writing he set himself in the last years of his life to a great task, even that of comparing together from their origin to their end the course of the two societies, not national, but world-wide, which run out through human history, intermingled together, and claiming possession of the same man.
First, the natural society of the human race played upon by all the pa.s.sions and infirmities which are the effect of man"s original Fall; and secondly, that other society chosen by G.o.d from the beginning in view of His Son"s Incarnation, for the purpose of repairing and counterworking that Fall. It was the capture of Rome by Alaric, and the deep despondency which thence arose in the minds of many, both Christian and heathen, that moved him originally to this design, of which the first tracing is seen in the letter to Volusian just quoted. He sought to meet conclusions unfavourable to the Christian faith, which were drawn by weak, or narrow, or unbelieving minds from the fall of the imperial city. His plan accordingly led him to take a complete view of all human history; and the result has been that one of the last representatives of the old world, and certainly the greatest of all as thinker, philosopher, and theologian, the most universal genius of the patristic ages, whether among Greeks or Latins, has left us a Philosophy of History, the first in time, and as yet unequalled in ability; for it supplies a key to the acts of man and the providence of G.o.d in that masterly comparison between the City of G.o.d and the City of the devil in their origin, their course, and their end.
The leading thought of this great work gives me a final text bearing on the subject of this volume.
"Thus, then, two Cities have been created by two loves: the earthly, by that love of self which reaches even to the contempt of G.o.d; the heavenly, by the love of G.o.d which reaches even to the contempt of self.
The first has its boast in self; the second in its Lord. For the first seeks its glory from men; whereas to the second, G.o.d, the witness of conscience, is the greatest glory. The first in that glory which it has made for itself exalts its own head; the second says to its G.o.d, "Thou art my glory and the lifter up of my head." In the first the l.u.s.t of domination sways both its rulers and the nations which it subjugates. In the second a mutual service of charity is exercised by rulers who consult the good of subjects, and by subjects who practise obedience to rulers.
The first loves in its own potentates its own excellence; the second says to the G.o.d of its choice, "I will love Thee, O Lord, my strength." And thus in the first its own wise men, living after human fashion, pursue the goods of their body or their mind, or both at once, or they who might have known G.o.d, have not "glorified him as G.o.d nor given thanks, but became vain in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened; professing themselves to be wise," that is, extolling themselves in their own wisdom through the pride that mastered them, "they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible G.o.d into the likeness of the image of a corruptible man, and of birds, and of four-footed beasts, and of creeping things;" for they either led their peoples or followed them in the adoration of such-like images; and "worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever." But in the second there is no wisdom of man save piety, by which the true G.o.d is rightly worshipped, awaiting its reward in the society of saints, not men only, but angels, that G.o.d may be all in all."[5]
I put together these three facts of human history, the vision of the King of Babylon interpreted by Daniel six hundred years before Christ, the summary of its fulfilment down to his own age written by St Augustine four hundred years after the coming of Christ, and his delineation, a few years later, of the Two Cities, as set forth by him in a work on which the Christian mind has now been nurtured for fourteen hundred and fifty years. The simple juxtaposition of these shows how Babylon stretches to Rome, and Rome is heir of Babylon; and the heathen man thus formed ill.u.s.trates "the Man who is born in Sion, the city of the great King."[6]
It is true that the two great Powers of Civil and Spiritual government, the relation between which forms the subject of this volume, are not exactly represented as concerns that relation in the vision of Daniel; but only the heathen growth of the Civil Power, and the miraculous rise, permanent rule, and progressive growth of the Spiritual Power in the midst of it; yet the mighty promise is recorded that in presence of the Civil Power the Spiritual shall never pa.s.s away; rather that it shall last unchanged, while the other is shifting and transitory; and also the cognate truth, that the great and terrible Power represented by the Statue is, in the counsels of G.o.d, subordinate in its scope to the Power represented by the Stone.
It is true, again, that the vivid contrast of the Two Cities as drawn by St. Augustine does not represent the legitimate relation of the Two Powers to each other, but only the perversion of the one Power from its true end and object, and the perfect antagonism of the other to that perversion.
But the kingdom set up by the G.o.d of heaven in the vision interpreted by Daniel, and the connection of ages dwelt upon by St. Augustine, which leads up to the Person of Christ, and then starts afresh from Him, and the Divine City delineated by St. Augustine, fit exactly into each other, and so they seem to me to form together an appropriate introduction to that most remarkable period of history with which the present volume is occupied, when the Stone cut out without hands struck the Statue, and became a great mountain, in preparation for that further growth when it would fill the whole earth.
The Statue presented in vision to the heathen king has indeed been swept away, but in every country a reduced likeness of it, "the look whereof is terrible," stands over against "the Man born in Sion." And the Two Cities everywhere run on in their predestined course until the end contemplated by Augustine takes effect. But as he did not discern the second fulfilment of the divine kingdom which followed upon the wandering of the nations, so neither can we discern the third and yet grander fulfilment when the divine kingdom shall become to the whole world what once it was in the Roman Empire. For, to repeat St. Augustine"s words, "In all these things as we read their prediction, so we discern their fulfilment, and from so vast a portion which is fulfilled we rest a.s.sured of what is still to come." And "the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth."
February 12, 1882.
FOOTNOTES:
[1]
"Dentro dal monte sta dritto un gran veglio, Che tiene volte le spalle inver Damiata, E Roma guarda s, come suo speglio."
-DANTE, _Inferno_, 14, 101.
[2] 1 Pet. v. 13; Apocal. xvii. 18, xviii. 2, 20.
[3] St. Aug. Epist. 137, ad Volusianum, -- 15-16. A.D. 412. It is remarkable that Volusian, who held the highest offices in the Roman Empire, and among the rest was Prefect of the City, was not converted either by the genius or the saintliness of Augustine. But more than twenty years after this letter, about A.D. 435, he was sent on an emba.s.sy from the Emperor of the West to the Emperor of the East at Constantinople. His niece, St. Melania the younger, left the seclusion of her monastery at Jerusalem, and travelled all the intervening distance to see him. When he met in the garb of humility and poverty the niece whom he remembered at Rome in all the splendour of youth, rank, and beauty at the head of the Roman n.o.bility, he was so impressed by the force of Christian charity which had wrought such a change, that he was converted and baptized by the Patriarch Proclus, and died shortly afterwards. G.o.d did by the sight of the nun what he had not done by the learning of the theologian and the philosopher.
[4] The words which Cerialis addressed to the Gauls, as recorded by Tacitus, Hist. 4, 74, apply in all their force to the times when the trans-migration of the northern tribes took effect, four hundred years after they were written. "Octingentorum annorum fortuna disciplinaque compages haec coaluit, quae convelli sine exitio convellentium non potest."
And every city of the Roman empire could testify to the truth of what he added: "Sed vobis maximum discrimen penes quos aurum et opes, praecipuae bellorum causae."
[5] De Civ. Dei, xvi. 28.
[6] Ps. lx.x.xvi. 5.