Onesimus

Hence, among some even of the more honorable of the Jews, now to cease to be a Jew seemed all one with beginning to be a coward and a renegade; wherefore they preferred to be more Jewish than before; and, because they could not now observe the Law in such matters as appertained to the Temple, on this very account they observed all other matters of the Law more diligently than before; and, in a word, the Temple being gone, the Law became unto them both Law and Temple also. In former times the unbelieving Jews had spoken against the Church of Christ and blasphemed the brethren, but only on certain occasions; but now they began to make a rule and habit of cursing us with formal curses, so that it became a part of their worship in the synagogue. Of Nero, the deceased Emperor, they ceased now to speak reproachfully, because they esteemed him as an enemy to Vespasianus, or at least, to the saints; and Poppæa, his concubine or wife (a woman of no virtue nor purity) they praised; but the Emperors Vespasianus and Titus were in their eyes as monsters, to be smitten with the plagues of God. Such a spirit of blindness fell upon the greater part of the Jewish nation at this time; wherefore seeing they saw not, and hearing they could not understand, nor be converted to the Lord. Such of the Jews as took a middle course— who were commonly called Ebionites—neither wholly separating themselves from the Church of Christ, nor yet desiring to cast in their lot with the Gentiles, were sorely exercised at this time; and many were the defections and apostasies among them; and the Gospel with them was a Gospel of sorrow rather than of joy. Hereof some judgment may be formed, and some knowledge of the history of the Church in Syria from a certain letter written to me in the seventh year of the Emperor Vespasianus by one Menahem, a foremost teacher among the Ebionites, of which letter I will now set down some parts.

§ 3. OF MENAHEM, THE EBIONITE

After many lamentations for the evils of Israel, and especially because the Holy City had been destroyed by “Babylon” (meaning Rome) whereby the sacrifice had been made to cease, the letter turns aside to describe the manner of the worship of the Temple in times past and especially the presence and glory of the High Priest: “Alas, how was he honored in the midst of the people in his coming forth from the sanctuary! He was as the morning star before the sun hath risen, and as the moon at the full, yea as the sun shining upon the Temple of the Most High, and as the rainbow giving light in the bright clouds. When he took the portions of the priests’ hands, he himself stood by the altar compassed round with his brethren, even as a cedar of Lebanon compassed round with palm-trees. He stretched out his hand to the cup and poured out the blood of the grape, a sweet-smelling savor unto the Most High King. Then shouted the sons of Aaron, then sounded the silver trumpets, to be heard for a remembrance before the Most High. And the people besought the Most High by prayer before him that is merciful, till the solemnity of the Lord was ended. O Lord, if thou didst so much hate thy people that thou must needs cast them down, yet shouldst thou at the least destroy them with thine own hands and not give them over to Babylon. For what are they that inherit Babylon? Are their deeds more righteous than ours that they should have the dominion over Sion?”

After this Menahem reproached me in his letter that I had made myself one with “him” (meaning Paulus) “who professed to be a Jew and was no Jew;” and he affirmed that Jesus had not come to destroy the Law but to confirm it, and that we blasphemed God because we made Jesus to be even as God, whereas he was a man and of the sons of men, howbeit the deliverer and Messiah. Thence, passing again to the condition of his nation he added this hope that “the hand which now had power“—meaning the Emperor Vespasianus—should be wasted suddenly, and that “Babylon” (that is to say Rome) should be cast down, and that the spoils that she had taken from the nations should be carried back to the cities of the East in the day of vengeance of the Lord. After these things, said he, a time should come when men should hope much but obtain naught, and labor, but not prosper; for the world should be turned back again into the old silence of seven days, even as in the first beginning, so that no man should remain; and, after that, the Judgment should come, and the Lord Jesus should judge the earth and reward his brethren in Israel. But still the strain of trust died away in sorrow, and the thought of the Deliverer was lost in the thought of Israel, and the letter came to an end in these words: “Our psaltery is laid in the ground, our song is put to silence, our rejoicing is at an end; the light of our candlestick is put out, and the ark of our covenant is defiled; our priests are burned with fire, our Levites led captive, our virgins and wives defiled and ravished, our righteous men are carried away, our little ones destroyed, our young men brought into bondage, and our strong men become weak; and the seat of Sion hath now lost her honor, for she is delivered into the hands of them that hate us.”

After this manner wrote Menahem the Ebionite, a good man and devout, and one that loved the Lord Jesus and was himself of a gentle and meek disposition. Wherefore if even in so gentle a nature the thought of Jesus was swallowed up in the thought of the Holy City, much more was this likely to happen with others of his countrymen. And so indeed it was. For each year of troubles now seemed to cast a new veil of ignorance on the hearts of the Jews so that they might not understand the Scriptures, nor discern the will of God, nor be brought into the Church of Christ.

§ 4. HOW THE CHURCH WAS GUIDED AT THIS TIME BY THE SPIRIT OF GOD

Out of all these evils and troubles one good at least was gained, that there was no longer any danger lest the Church of Christ should become a mere sect of the Jews. For now to all the believers of the uncircumcision, the destruction of the City of Jerusalem seemed to be a sign sent from God that the Law was at an end, and that all things were to be made new in Christ, yea, and wholly new: and it became a common saying that the vesture of the Church was not to be made up out of the rags of the vesture of the Law, patched and botched up to serve new needs; but that it was to be a wholly new garment, woven afresh in one piece, without seam or rent. As for the Jews, they that stayed in the Church, finding themselves now constrained to choose between the old garment and the new, gave themselves with a more single mind to the Gospel; but the greater part went out from us, as I have said. They also that were called Ebionites, who had once had much power in the Church so that they had persuaded many, began now to be lightly esteemed; and whereas in former times they alone seemed to be the Church, and the rest heretics; now the contrary came to pass, and the Ebionites themselves came to be thought heretics—insomuch that the name Ebionites became a reproach among the faithful—and the doctrine of Paulus the Apostle was considered to be the doctrine of all the Churches. From this time forth therefore there was no more fear lest the Lord Jesus should be regarded as a mere prince or prophet in Israel. In old days many had said that he was but as John the Baptist and some (more especially in Ephesus) had been baptized with John’s baptism and no other; but now all men believed that John was far inferior to Jesus, and the traditions of the Church began to teach this more clearly and fully than before. Also because men now perceived that the Kingdom of the Lord Jesus was to include all nations of the earth, and indeed to consist of Gentiles rather than Jews, for this reason there were sought out such parables and discourses of the Lord as taught and explained the calling of the Gentiles into the Church. And all through the Church it was everywhere believed that Jesus was not a mere prophet, but King of kings and Lord of lords.

When great multitudes of Greeks and many other nations had now been brought into the Kingdom of Christ, they began, as was likely and reasonable, to seek out traditions concerning the nature, birth, and parentage of the King and Prophet in so great a Kingdom. The common people among the Gentile brethren believed as a thing of course, that he was divine and of divine parentage. “For if,” said they, “Trophonius and Heracles have been called gods, and if we have been wont to give the name of gods to the emperors, even such as Caius and Claudius and Nero, how shall we deny it the Lord Jesus the King of kings?” Herein the minds of the unlearned were doubtless led to a right conclusion, though a philosopher might justly find fault with the method of it, and might understand differently the “divine parentage” of which they spoke. Nevertheless, from this desire to do honor to the Lord Jesus, there crept into the Church some error. For some began to deny that he was man at all, or born as men are born, affirming it to be monstrous and incredible that a divine being should pass through a mortal womb. Others—but these were but very few in the Gentile churches—favored the old opinion of the Ebionites that Jesus was merely human, although superior to any other of the children of men.

Between these two errors, some denying that the Lord Jesus was divine, and others denying that he was human, the Church was marvellously guided by the hand of the Lord, so that the greater part of the brethren held fast the true belief, namely, that he was both human and divine. For as the most part of the Gentiles revolted against the doctrine of the Ebionites, who would have had Jesus to be a mere prince or prophet of the Jews, so did the common sense of almost all the brethren perceive, as by a heaven-sent instinct, that, howsoever he might be divine, he must also needs be human and able to suffer humanlike, or else be of no avail to bear the sins and sorrows of the children of men. Thus by the Spirit it was revealed even to the simplest and meanest of the brethren that in Christ Jesus, God and man are joined together.

About this time also began the Churches to commit to writing the traditions of the acts of the Lord; and, not long afterwards, certain of the longer discourses of the Lord, having been written down in Greek, were joined to the other tradition and came to be commonly read in the churches; but this happened for the most part toward the end of the reign of Vespasianus, or not much before. For as long as the disciples and apostles of the Lord themselves lived, it had seemed to the saints that there was no need of books, having as it were the words of the Lord Jesus among them. Moreover before the destruction of Jerusalem, the saints for the most part lived in continual expectation of the coming of the Lord, wherefore, hoping soon to have heard his voice from heaven, they were the less careful to record exactly the words he had spoken on earth. But now, during the reign of Vespasianus, when the Church had rest, and peace was everywhere, and the Lord seemed to delay his coming, and one by one the disciples of the Lord fell asleep, and the accounts and traditions of the words and deeds and especially of the birth and rising again of the Lord began to be multiplied with great diversities and not without many errors, then it was revealed to certain of the saints that the time was come when the traditions must be set forth in writing. But all this came to pass at a time when I was far away in Britain; whereof the reason will be set forth in the next chapter.

§ 5. HOW I CAME TO PHILOCHRISTUS, A DISCIPLE OF THE LORD IN BRITAIN

About the seventh year of the Emperor Vespasianus, it pleased the Lord, in a manner altogether unexpected and marvellous, to reveal to me the names of my parents. There was a certain Philochristus, a Jew by birth but not one of the Jewish faction, a man of some learning, who had studied Greek letters at Alexandria; and he had been a disciple of the Lord Jesus, having himself seen the Lord in the flesh. This man I had met many years ago at Antioch, and, being drawn to him by his love of truth and the simplicity of his nature, I had recounted to him the story of my life, telling him the place and exact time wherein I had been found as a child at Pergamus, and withal showing him (for so the Lord would have it) the very token that had been hung round the neck of my brother Chrestus, which I then wore. About this time therefore I received a letter from Philochristus (who was then in Britain or Londinium), telling me that he had found my former nurse, one Stratonice, who had come to Britain as a slave in the household of Pomponia the wife of Aulus Plautius the legate, and who now belonged to the saints that were in Londinium. This Stratonice, it seemed, had chanced to speak to Philochristus about her former mistress, how her twin sons were taken from her by the guile of some runaway slave, she being then in Asia, in the last year of the Emperor Tiberius (mentioning the exact year when my brother and I had been found); and when Philochristus further questioned her whether any sign or token had been on the children, she replied that one bore round his neck just such a token, and with the same inscription, as I had shown to Philochristus. She added that the slave, who had been persuaded thereto by one that desired to make a way to an inheritance through our death, had confessed his guilt three or four years after the deed, and that my mother (whose name was Euelpis the daughter of Nicomachus, an Athenian by birth) had, since that time, made continual search for us, at Pergamus and elsewhere, even till the day of her death, which had happened in the first year of the Emperor Vespasianus; but my father (whose name was Clinias the son of Aristodemus, also an Athenian by birth) had died many years before.

Ever since I had spoken with the priest of Asclepius at Pergamus, I had been assured in my mind that my mother had not willingly deserted us; yet even now it was joy to know for certain that foul practice, and not our mother’s fault, had cast my brother Chrestus and me upon the world; and great desire seized me to have some speech with my old nurse, Stratonice, concerning my parents before she died. So finding an occasion when I could conveniently leave Colossæ, I journeyed to Britain to Philochristus, meaning to return in a short space. But after I had satisfied my heart’s desire, learning all the story of the goodness and love and sorrow of my beloved mother from Stratonice (who lived but three months after my coming to Britain) Philochristus persuaded me to tarry with him yet longer, first for a few months, and then for a year; and, in fine, a door being opened to me of the Lord, I labored with him in the Church of Londinium for the space of seven years, in peace and great joy. For I was drawn toward the old man more than I can describe, because he wholly was given to the Lord Jesus and abhorred vain quarrels and disputations and (which was not so in all the saints) he added to his love of Christ such a love of letters and learning that (next to my beloved master Paulus) he, more than any other, seemed to join together that which is best both in the Jews and in the Greeks.

From the lips of this my beloved teacher I received the tradition of the words and deeds of the Lord pure and uncorrupted; and it was no small strength and refreshment to hear the very sayings of Christ himself from one whose love of truth appeared in this saying of his, a saying often repeated in his doctrine, that “he loved to think of the Lord Jesus as Son of man, and also as Son of God; but he loved no less to think of him as the Eternal Truth, whom no lie could serve nor please.” Moreover, because he discerned the divine nature to consist not so much in the performance of fleshly wonders as in the working of spiritual works, for this cause he never was led to magnify (as I had heard some magnify) the mighty acts of Jesus in the healing of the diseases of the body; but he spoke the more of his divine power in casting down mountains of sin, and in the uprooting of error, and in satisfying the hungry soul with bread, and in cleansing the spotted soul from all the defilements of Satan. Therefore in all his discourses, without any straining after new and convenient traditions, and without any fear and avoidance of old traditions as being not convenient, he spoke of the Lord Jesus as being verily a man in all points, sin only excepted; subject, as men are subject, to birth and pain and death; but, none the less, as being the Beginning and the Goal of human life, the Eternal Love of God, spiritually begotten of God before the foundation of the world. In this doctrine I rejoiced, and this doctrine I strove to teach; and it was a great delight that here were no Greek factions nor Jewish factions, nor disputations about traditions, or prophecies, or aught else; but all was peace and harmony, as if in some haven, shut in and sheltered by the hills, wherein the mariner, resting from long tossing on the deeps, can scarce hear the roaring of the sea without.

But after seven years had thus passed away in peace it being now the second year of the Emperor Domitianus, it came to pass that new troubles fell upon the Church; and, the Bishop of Berœa having borne witness for the Lord with his blood in a tumult in that city, I was called to the charge of the flock there; and the voice of the Lord bade me go. So bidding farewell to the beloved Elder Philochristus with much sorrow, well knowing that I should not again behold him in the flesh, I set forth with his blessing upon my journey, intending first to go to Rome and there to tarry some days, and so to Berœa.

§ 6. OF THE CHURCH IN ROME, AND OF THE NEW GOSPELS

When I came to Rome I was well received of the brethren, and I tarried there two months, observing the manner of their worship, and the teaching of the catechumens and the discourses of the elders to the faithful. But I seemed at first to be listening to a new Gospel; so great a change had fallen on the Church since I had last tarried in the great city, about fifteen years before. This appeared, not only in their worship, but also in the pictures and sculptures wherewith they had begun to adorn the tombs of those that fell asleep in the Lord; for in these I perceived that those very beliefs whereof I had written to Artemidorus as being currently reported among the faithful but not yet added to the Tradition, were now accepted by all. For example, when I entered into one of the places where the congregations commonly assemble themselves for worship—these are quarries, after the manner of galleries, hewn out of the rock under the earth beneath the city, commonly called catacombs, and used for entombments by the faithful—I perceived there the figure of a certain prophet, with a scroll in his hand, pointing to a Woman which bare a child in her arms, and above the child was a star; and I questioned my companions whether this was the Lord Jesus, the Son of the Virgin Mother, and they said “Yes,” but when I went on to speak of the Virgin as the Spiritual Sion, which is the Church of God, then they said, “Nay, but it sheweth the mother of our Lord according to the flesh, according to the saying of the prophet, ‘Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.’” Then asking concerning the star, I said that I supposed that it represented the brightness of the Messiah, even as it was written in the Scriptures that “a star should come out of Jacob.” To this they assented, “but,” added one, “it is also well-known that a star, visible to the eyes of men, did verily shine forth in the days of Herod, being seen of many nations, and especially in the East, insomuch that then was fulfilled the saying of the Psalms that the kings of Arabia and Saba should bring gifts.” “Are these things then,” said I, “contained in the Traditions of the Acts of the Lord?” Then he that had spoken replied, “No, not in the Tradition, but in a certain supplement which is now beginning everywhere to be read in all the churches, and it is said to have been put forth by the interpreters and disciples of one of the Apostles:” but another correcting him, said that one of the Apostles himself had written it, not indeed Petrus nor Jacobus who were unlearned men ignorant of letters, but in all likelihood Mattheus, as having been in earlier days a tax-gatherer and therefore ready with his pen.

Going on a little further I saw on the walls another picture of men supping at a table, and the food two fishes and some loaves. When I asked what this meant, they told me that it signified the banquet of the kingdom of God wherein all the faithful partake of the body of the Lord who, said they, is our Bread of Life, and also our true ΙΧΘΥΣ; and “of the two fishes,” said they, “the one denoteth Baptism, whereby the faithful enter into Christ, and the other the Lord’s Supper, whereby they are made partakers of the Lord’s body, so that they remain in him and he in them.” “And is this also,” I asked, “in the Tradition?” “Neither in the Tradition,” said they, “nor in the Supplement, but it is a symbol.” Then I took courage to speak concerning that other parable of a banquet, wherein I had been wont to teach how the Twelve had been bidden by the Lord Jesus to minister both of the Bread of Life and of the Fishes, asking them whether they interpreted this also spiritually and not according to the letter, even as they interpreted that other story of the ΙΧΘΥΣ. But hereat their countenances changed, and they said, “Nay, but this story is written according to the letter in the Tradition of the Gospel.” Then I told them how Philochristus the Elder had related to me that the Lord Jesus himself, in speaking of these matters, had rebuked his disciples because they understood him not, saying unto them, that when he spoke of leaven, and of bread, he spoke not of earthly bread or leaven, but of spiritual leaven and spiritual bread. But they replied that “it was not so written in the Tradition now, and that Philochristus (albeit to be reverenced as a faithful disciple of the Lord) was not to be too much trusted as a remembrancer of the Tradition, because he had lived now many years apart from the rest of the saints, not having experience of that which had been from year to year newly revealed to the Church, so that he knew naught save what he himself had heard and seen of the Lord Jesus, and this in all likelihood faintly and imperfectly remembered by him, as being well-stricken in years, not much less than fourscore and ten.” It came into my mind that to be thus all alone, remembering and teaching the words of Christ which he himself had heard (apart from controversies and colors and glosses of those who were disputing rather than remembering) was perhaps rather a help than a harm to Philochristus. However at that time I said no more.

On the morrow, coming somewhat late into the congregation in the midst of their worship, I heard them singing a psalm which, because there arose hence a question afterwards between myself and the brethren, I will here set down; and as near as I can remember, the words were these:—

1“O Pilot of our barkWhat though the night be dark?What though the tempest rave?Thou still canst hear and save.2“Tossed by the troubled sea,O Lord, we cry to thee,And through the murky night,What figure meets our sight?3“Lo, pitying our fearThe Lord himself draws near,Walking upon the waveHis helpless ones to save.4“In terror of his faceVanish the clouds apace,His footsteps on the deepLull every wave to sleep.5“The winds obey his will,The raging storm is still;Then turn we to adoreAnd lo, at hand the shore.”

Now these words or others like unto them, had been well-known to me for a long time, because some such psalm had been brought to us at Colossæ from Ephesus (from which city many psalms and hymns had come to divers churches) and it was commonly sung in the churches of Asia; and indeed, even among the ancient poems of the Jews, there is a psalm not much unlike this, wherein the mariners cry unto the Lord in their trouble and he delivereth them out of their distress, for, saith the psalm, “He maketh the storm to cease so that the waves thereof are still;” and another psalm saith, “Thy way is in the sea and thy path on the great waters.” But, often as I had sung these words, it had never so much as entered my mind to interpret them according to the letter; for even as the Greeks or Romans compare the state to a ship and the ruler to a pilot, even so had we been wont to speak, in a figure, of the Church as being a ship tossed upon the sea of troubles and persecutions, and of the Lord Jesus as her pilot in the storm; and I had also heard mention made, when I was in Britain, of some new hymn showing in a figure, how the blessed Apostle Petrus denied his Master, and describing how he adventured to walk, in his own strength, upon the troubled sea of temptation, but his faith failed him so that he began to sink, and he had been drowned in the deep waters of sin, but that the Lord stretched out his hand and saved him; but in this and other such psalms and hymns there was never a thought of any real boat nor of a real storm of wind and waves. Therefore, the worship being now ended, when a certain Philologus, one of the brethren, accosted me asking my judgment of this psalm, as if I should have censured it, I replied (not without some wonder at the strangeness of his question) that the psalm was a good one, and that none could find any fault in it. But Philologus replied, “If therefore, O Onesimus, you allow of this miracle of the Lord, why contend you against these other miracles of which the Gospel makes mention?” I said, “Nay, but of what miracle do I allow?” He said, “Even that miracle and no other, which is clearly described in the psalm, how the Lord Jesus walked upon the waters to save the holy Apostles; yea, and one of the new Gospels affirms that the blessed Apostle Petrus adventured himself to walk upon the waves; but his faith failed him so that he began to sink.”