NOTICES OF BOOKS. - Hints on the Interpretation of Prophecy. By MOSES STUART, Professor in Andover Theological Sem- inary. A Critical and Historical Interpretation of the Prophecies of Daniel. By N. S. FOLSOM.-Oration deliv- ered at the request of the City Authorities of Salem, July 4, Review of a Sermon on the "Danger of being Overwise." Preached June 7th, 1835. By W. B. Sprague, D. D. — Ob- servations on the Bible for the Use of Young Persons. 121-128 THE CHRISTIAN EXAMINER. SEPTEMBER, 1842. ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. [Delivered as an Address before the Ministerial Conference in Berry Street, Boston, May 25, 1842. By ALVAN LAMSON, D. D.] THE topic on which I am to address you, at this time, "The Value of Ecclesiastical History to the Minister,” — is not one of my own selection, nor can I hope to invest it with any attractions. Ecclesiastical History, I believe, is not a favorite study with the profession, nor is there any department of human knowledge more neglected by the public. I am not much surprised that it is so. The subject, as usually treated, is dry, dull, and repulsive in the extreme. I can conceive of nothing more so. It is a study attended with peculiar difficulty on account of the obscurity of many of its records, often clouded by passion and prejudice, darkened by inconsistency, and too frequently bearing marks of credulity, carelessness, and fraud, which justify the remark of Jortin, that " Ecclesiastical History is a sort of enchanted land, where it is hard to distinguish truth from false appearances, and a maze which requires more than Ariadne's clue." Then the topics to which it invites our attention are often of the most forbidding kind, or such as can awaken no interest in refined and cultivated intellects, — controversies about verbal distinctions and trifles, dialectic subtleties, and barren questions of scholastic theology and metaphysics. Besides, it introduces us to many disgusting views of human nature. It presents VOL. XXXIII. - 3D S. VOL. XV. NO. I. 1 this nature under some of its worst and most degrading aspects, actuated by the basest and most detestable passions, and exhibiting proofs of the melancholy perversion of all its finer sensibilities and instincts. It shows us the weakness and littleness of man under such vivid portraiture, and with such convincing evidence, as almost to make us forget, for the time, his greatness and his strength. It makes us acquainted with some of his saddest aberrations of intellect. As we turn over its pages, the eye is arrested by the superstition, which has paralyzed his faculties and narrowed and dwarfed his best virtues; by his exclusiveness, his bigotry, his persecutions; the prostration of his understanding manifested in his mistaken piety, his adoration of objects more worthless than the divinities of Egypt, his veneration for relics, and faith in lying miracles, pilgrimages, indulgences, legends of pretended saints; his suppression of freedom of thought and inquiry; his pious forgeries; with the whole catalogue of usurpations, infallibilities, inquisitions, tyrannies, follies, contradictions, and absurdities, which, in past ages, have been incorporated with the religion of the cross, and have so disfigured and obscured it, that scarcely a trace of its heavenly origin and beauty has remained visible. It is not surprising that from such a picture men should have turned away in disgust, and believing the whole subject barren alike of rational use and interest, regarding the study of it as fitted neither to gratify a liberal curiosity, to purify the feelings, or add to the stores of intellectual affluence, they should have abandoned it for fields of inquiry and thought, which have opened more pleasing views and promised a richer harvest. The nature and intrinsic difficulty of the subject has not been all. Another cause of the indifference and disgust alluded to has been the tasteless manner in which Ecclesiastical History has usually been written, and the false principles which have governed the narrative. One of these is, that whatever makes for the advantage of believers is to be told, and if with a little rhetorical exaggeration, so much the better, and whatever tells against them is to be passed over in silence; that suppression of truth in such a case, far from being a blemish in a historian, is a virtue. It is needless to say that history, written on this principle, necessarily loses the greater part of its value, by ceasing to be just. The principle came in with Eusebius, the father of Ecclesiastical History, and he has had abundance of imitators, among whom one of the most conspicuous is the old English worthy, Cave, who has been justly censured for writing panegyrics under the name of history. Another principle, nearly allied to the former, has been, that nothing is too good to say of the orthodox, and nothing too bad to say of heretics. This principle and its applications are well illustrated by Le Clerc, in a lively, but somewhat sarcastic description of the manner in which a person, if he values his reputation for orthodoxy, or looks for promotion, must proceed in writing an Ecclesiastical History. He must, says he, “adhere inviolably to this maxim, that whatever can be favorable to heretics is false, and whatever can be said against them is true; while, on the other hand, all that does honor to the orthodox is unquestionable, and everything that can do them discredit is surely a lie. He must suppress too with care, or at least extenuate as far as possible, the errors and vices of those whom the orthodox are accustomed to respect, whether they know anything about them or no, and must exaggerate, on the contrary, the mistakes and faults of the heterodox to the utmost of his power. He must remember that any orthodox man is a competent witness against a heretic, and is to be trusted implicitly on his word, while a heretic is never to be believed against the orthodox, and has honor enough done him, in allowing him to speak against his own side."* On these principles the greater part of Ecclesiastical History has been written. The old fathers so wrote perpetually, and the moderns have not been slow to profit by so worthy an example. But independently of the falsehood which has pervaded nearly all ecclesiastical writings, and to a greater extent, I believe, than any other, the needed helps have been wanting. We have no Christian histories which are good in other respects. The story of Christianity has not been written with the philosophical power, critical research, and discrimination, which mark other productions of the historic muse. Gibbon's chapters, exceptionable as they are, in addition to his usual faults of style, reflecting everywhere the hues of his own mind, and tending to mislead by the false coloring and drapery, which * Parrhasiana, T. I. p. 168, ed. 2d. I have given the version of Hallam (Hist. Lit. II. 83), with only a slight change, which fidelity to the original required. |