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Hippolytus
The Edinburgh editor supposes that the use of the plural we, in this place, is the official plural of a bishop. It has been already explained, however, that he is speaking of the provincial bishops with whom he withstood Callistus when the plebs were carried away by his hypocrisy. In England, bishops in certain cases, are a “corporation sole;” and, as such, the plural is legal phraseology. All bishops, however, use the plural in certain documents, as identifying themselves with the universal episcopate, on the Cyprianic principle—Episcopatus unus est, etc.
In Acts v. 13 is a passage which may be somewhat explained, perhaps, by this: “All consented…we did not.” The plebs joined themselves to the apostles; “but of the rest durst no man join himself to them: howbeit, the plebs magnified them, and believers were added,” etc. “The rest” (τῶν δὲ λοιπῶν) here means the priests, the Pharisees, and Sadducees, the classes who were not the plebs, as appears by what immediately follows.[1126]
Again: Hippolytus refers to the action of the suburbicarian bishops in provincial council. And here is the place to express dissatisfaction with the apologetic tone of some writers, who seem to think Hippolytus too severe, etc. As if, in dealing with such “wolves in sheep’s clothing,” this faithful leader could show himself a true shepherd without emphasis and words of abhorrence. Hippolytus has left to the Church the impress of his character[1127] as “superlatively sweet and amiable.” Such was St. John, the beloved disciple; but he was not less a “son of thunder.” Our Divine Master was “the Lamb,” and “the Lion;” the author of the Beatitudes, and the author of those terrific woes; the “meek and gentle friend of publicans and sinners,” and the “lash of small cords” upon the backs of those who made His Father’s house a “den of thieves.” Such was Chrysostom, such was Athanasius, such was St. Paul, and such have ever been the noblest of mankind; tender and considerate, gentle and full of compassion; but not less resolute, in the crises of history, in withstanding iniquity in the persons of arch-enemies of truth, and setting the brand upon their foreheads. Good men, who hate strife, and love study and quiet, and to be friendly with others; men who never permit themselves to indulge a personal enmity, or to resent a personal affront; men who forgive injuries to the last farthing when they only are concerned,—may yet crucify their natures in withstanding evil when they are protecting Christ’s flock, or fulfilling the command to “contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints.” What the Christian Church owes to the loving spirit of Hippolytus in the awful emergencies of his times, protecting the poor sheep, and grappling with wolves for their sake, the Last Day will fully declare. But let us who know nothing of such warfare concede nothing, in judging of his spirit, to the spirit of our unbelieving age, which has no censures except for the defenders of truth:—
“Eternal smiles its emptiness betray,
As shallow streams run dimpling all the way.”
Bon Dieu, bon diable, as the French say, is the creed of the times. Every one who insults the faith of Christians, who betrays truths he was sworn to defend, who washes his hands but then gives Christ over to be crucified, must be treated with especial favour. Christ is good: so is Pilate; and Judas must not be censured. My soul be with Hippolytus when the great Judge holds his assize. His eulogy is in the psalm:[1128] “Then stood up Phinehas, and executed judgment: and so the plague was stayed. And that was counted unto him for righteousness unto all generations, for evermore.”
There is an ambiguity in the facts as given in the Edinburgh edition, of which it is hard to relieve the text. The word καθίστασθαι is rendered to retain (their places) in the first instance, as if the case were all one with the second instance, where μένειν is justly rendered to continue. The second case seems, then, to cover all the ground. What need to speak of men “twice or thrice married,” if a man once married, after ordination is not to be retained? The word retained is questionable in the first instance; and I have adopted Wordsworth’s reading, to be enrolled, which is doubtless the sense.
This statement of our author lends apparent countenance to the antiquity of the “Apostolic Constitutions,” so called. Perhaps Hippolytus really supposed them to be apostolic. By Canon XVII. of that collection, a man twice married, after baptism cannot be “on the sacerdotal list at all.” By Canon XXVI., an unmarried person once admitted to the clergy cannot be permitted to marry. These are the two cases referred to by our author. In the Greek churches this rule holds to this day; and the Council of Nice refused to prohibit the married clergy to live in that holy estate, while allowing the traditional discipline which Hippolytus had in view in speaking of a violation of the twenty-sixth traditional canon as a sin. As Bingham has remarked, however, canons of discipline may be relaxed when not resting on fundamental and scriptural laws.
The Callistians, it seems, became a heretical sect, and yet presumed to call themselves a “Catholic Church.” Yet this sect, while Callistus lived, was in full communion with the Bishop of Rome. Such communion, then, was no test of Catholicity. Observe the enormous crimes of which this lawless one was guilty; he seems to antedate the age of Theodora’s popes and Marozia’s, and what Hippolytus would have said of them is not doubtful. It is remarkable that he employed St. Paul’s expression, however, ὁ ἄνομος,[1129] “that wicked” or that “lawless one,” seeing, in such a bishop, what St. Gregory did in another,—“a forerunner of the Antichrist.”
Bunsen remarks that Theodoret speaks of this sect[1130] under the head of the “Noetians.” Wordsworth quotes as follows: “Callistus took the lead in propagating this heresy after Noetus, and devised certain additions to the impiety of the doctrine.” In other words, he was not merely a heretic, but himself a heresiarch. He gives the whole passage textually,[1131] and institutes interesting parallelisms between the Philosophumena and Theodoret, who used our author, and boldly borrowed from him.
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