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the other operations of the Spirit, in which those
have no share who do not fly to the Church, but
deprive themselves of hfe by their evil opinions and
evil deeds. For where the Churcli is there is the
Spirit of God, and where the Spirit of God is there is
the Church and all grace, but the Spirit is truth.
Wherefore those who have no part in it neither receive
the Life-giving nutriment from the breasts of their
mother, nor drink of the most pure spring that flows
from the Body of Christ; but such people dig for
themselves broken cisterns out of earthly trenches,
and drink out of the filth putrid water, flying from the
faith of the Church lest they should be converted,
rejecting the Spirit that thoy may not be instructed.
Being alienated from the truth by just consequence,
they are rolled and tossed about by every error,
holding at one time one opinion, at another another in
regard to the same subject, never having any fixed and
stable judgments, caring more to cavil about words
than to be disciples of the truth. For they are not
built upon one rock, but upon the stone-strewn sand;
and hence invent many gods, and plead ever in excuse
that they are seeking, but, being blind, never succeed
in finding" (ibid., Ill, xxiv).
A modern reader of St. Irenaus's "Adversus ha>re- ses" might be inclined to object that the heretics of those days held doctrines so preposterous that his severe language about them is intelligible without our having to suppose that he would have judged with similar severity doctrines opposed to the tradition which could claim to rest upon a more rational basis. But his principle of the authority of the tradition is manifestly intended to have universal application, and may be safely taken as supplying the test by which this tjTjical Father of the second century would, were he living now, judge of the modern systems in conflict with the Chinch's tradition.
III. Divisions op Christendom and Their Causes. — A. Extinct Schisms. — The notable heresies that originated in the first four Christ ian cent uries have long since expired. Gnosticism in its various forms occasioned serious trouble to the Apologists of the second century, but scarcely survived into the third. Montanism and Novatianism are not much heard of after the third century, and Donatism, which arose in Africa in 311, perished in the general ruin of African Christianity caused by the Vandal invasion in 429. Manichieism came forward in the third century, but is not much heard of after the sixth, and Pelagianism, which arose at the very end of the fourth century, though for the time it provoked an acute crisis, received a crushing blow at the Council of Ephesus (431) and disappeared altogether after the Council of Orange in 529. Arianism arose at the beginning of the fourth centurj' and, in spite of its conclemnation at Nica'a in 32.5, was kept alive both in its pure form and in its diluted form of Semi- Arianism by the active support of two emperors. From the time of the First Council of Constantinople (3S1) it disappeared from the territories of the Empire, but received a new lease of life among the northern tribes, the Goths, Lom- bards, Burgundians, Vandals, etc. This was due to the preaching of Ulfilas, a bishop of Arian views, who was sent from Constantinople in 341 to evangelize the Visigoths. From the Visigoths it spread to the kindred tribes and became their national religion, until 586, when, with the conversion of Reccared, their king, and of the Spanish Visigoths, the last remnants of this particular heresy perished.
As these ancient heresies no longer exist, they do not concern the practical problem of reunion which is before us in the present age. But it is instructive to note that the principles they embodied are the very same which, taking other forms, have invariably motived the long series of revolts against the author- ity of the Catholic Church. Thus regarded, we may divide them into five classes. First there are certain
intellectual difticulties which have always puzzled the
human mind. The difliculty of explaining the deriva-
tion of the finite from the infinite, and the difliculty of
explaining the coexistence of evil with good in "the
physical and moral universe, motived the strange
speculations of the Gnostics and the simpler but not
less inconsistent theory of the Manicha'ans. The
difficulty of harmonizing the mystery of the Trinity
in Unity, and that of the Incarnation, with the con-
ceptions of natural reason motived the heresies of the
Patripassians, the Sabellians, the Macedonians, and
the Arians, and again the difficulty of conceiving the
supernatural or justifying the idea of inherited sin
motived the Pelagian denial of these doctrines. A
second source of heresies has been the outburst of
strong religious emotions, usually based on fancied
visions to which, as being direct communications from
on high, it was claimed that the traditional teaching
of the Church must give way. Montanism, that
earliest example of what are now glorified as "religions
of the Spirit", was the most striking example of this
class. _ Thirdly, the chafing under the rule of author-
ity, with the desire to pursue personal ambitions, is
discernible in the origins of Novatianism and Dona-
tism, whose founders, although they alleged on the
flimsiest gcrounds that the rulers they wished to dis-
place had been irregularly appointed, must be held to
have acted primarily from the desire to exalt them-
selves, even at the risk of dividing the Christian com-
munity. In the fourth place comes the principle of
nationalism, that is of nationahstic exclusivism, in
those who ally themselves with a separatist movement
not from any conviction personally formed of the
justice of the arguments on its behalf, but because ita
leaders have contri\'ed to present it to them as a
means of emphasizing t heir nat ional feeling. This has
always proved a potent instrument in the hands of
heretical leaders, and w'e have early examples of it
in the way in which Donatism presented itself as the
religion of the Africans, and Arianism as the religion
of the Goths. A last class of motives which has often
worked for separation is to be sought in the disposi-
tion of temporal rulers to intrude into the adminis-
tration of the ecclesiastical province and mould eccle-
siastical arrangements into forms that may a.ssist
their owa political schemes. We have an example
of this evil in the conduct of the Emperors Constan-
tius and Valens, who so disastrously fostered the Arian
heresy. To all these false principles the orthodox
Fathers opposed, in the first place, the authority of
the tradition that had come down from the Apostles,
though not refusing to meet the heresiarchs on their
own ground also, and refute them by argument, as
many beautiful treatises testify.
B. Neslorianism. — Besides these notable heresies of the early centuries, which fixed the type, as it were, for all future divisions, Monothelitism in the seventh century, Iconoclasni in the eighth, together with the heresies of the Waldcnsians, Albigensians, Wycliffites, and Hussites of the medieval period, introduced strife and division into Christendom for periods shorter or longer. As, however, they too are extinct, it is enough just to refer to their existence, and we may pass on to the still-enduring separatist Churches of the East of which the most ancient is the Nestorian. The distinctive doctrine of the Xestorians is that which, as held by Xestorius, was condemned in the Council of Ephesus, in 431. It is the doctrine that in Christ there are not only two natures but also two persons, the Divine person. Who is the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, and the human jierson, Who was born of the Virgin Mary; and that the union between these two persons is not physical but moral, the Divine person having chosen the human person to be in a unique manner His dwelling-place and instniment. .\s Nestorius, after his condemnation, was first imprisoned in his former monastery at Anti-
