This conclusion, however, would be the very reverse of the truth. The Christians had multiplied in a most extraordinary degree. They filled the senate-house and the army, mid they were to be found in all situations and employments. Persecution had produced upon them its usual effects,--it had not only united them more closely together, but it had inflamed their zeal and quickened their activity. Their opinions soon became general ; a very great majority of the people embraced and avow ed them, till at length, in the year S25, Constantine the Great was invested with the purple, and the religion of Jesus became the religion of the empire. From this time Christianity was not only tolerated, but protected and cherished. The number of the edifices consecrated to the worship of God was increased, and the emperor himself was not ashamed to be seen engaging in the ex ercises of religion, or in the devout observance of the ceremonies ordained by the church. It has been said, that when Constantine was about to engage in battle with his rival Maxentius, he saw in the heavens a lumi nous cross, with the following inscription, 44 by this over come ;" and that in consequence of the vision, and the success which attended his arms, he embraced Christia nity. We are aware that the story has been suspected, and perhaps not without reason; but whatever truth or falsehood there may be in it, we have no hesitation in ranking the Emperor Constantine among the sincere professors of the Christian faith.
The doctrine of the primitive church is to be learnt with the utmost certainty from the books of the New Testament. These books were received by the leading men in the Christian assemblies, and approved of by the people at large ; they were publicly read, and carefully preserved and transmitted; and having been collected into a volume, towards the end of the first century, they became, to all the followers of Jesus throughout the world, the only standard of faith, and the only rule of righteous conduct. The primitive church believed that there is one God, untreated and everlasting : that the Logos, or word of God, cc who was in the beginning with God, and was God," became cc bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh," and dwelt upon this earth : that he gave himself for us, cc an offering and a sacrifice;" and that, cc being justified by faith in him, we have peace with God." That our present state is a state of condem nation, corruption, and suffering : that, by the trans gression of our first progenitor, cc sin entered into the world, and death by sin;" and that cc death hath passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." That the soul of man shall exist in a future and unchangeable state of happiness or misc.') that, by the influence of the Holy Ghost, our understandings are enlightened in all heaven ly knowledge, and our hearts changed from all evil dis positions: that Jesus Christ, having risen from the dead, will appear in the end of all things as the judge of the whole world; and that in the great day of trial and of retribution, he will receive his followers into cc man sions" of happiness, where they shall abide for ever, beholding his glory, the glory which he had with the _Father, before the world was." Such is the sum of the doctrine maintained by the early churches ; and it is this doctrine alone which they agreed in considering as c the ,:with once delivered to the saints."
From the doctrine of the primitive church, we are naturally led to the consideration of the heresies with which it was infested. Some of these heresies appear to have arisen very soon after the first promulgation of Christianity ; nor is our religion, even at this moment, and in the countries where it is professed in its great est purity, entirely free from their influence. Most or the heresies in question derived their origin from the union of philosophical speculation, or what was called philosophical speculation, with the doctrine of the sa cred books. This was particularly the case with the heresy of the Gnostics ; a heresy which must be consi dered as the fruitful parent of many others, we had al most said of every error which has corrupted and disfi gured the simplicity ofthe primitive faith.
At the bottom of this predominating heresy, lay the eastern dogma of the two principles, the one the source of good and the other the source of evil. To the good principle, the Gnostics gave the titles of the Supreme Divinity and the Everlasting Father ; while they consi dered matter as the evil principle, and represented it as independent and active, the antagonist, and, in some in stances, the successful rival of the benignant power. To the evil principle, they attributed the creation of the earth, and the disposition or arrangement of the habitable globe. They held too, that the soul, which, according to their idea of it, was naturally ethereal and pure, was clogged and depressed by the material body; that its inherent energies were restrained, and its pro gress towards heavenly happiness obstructed. They contended, that a great Messenger and Deliverer was expected from above, who was to put an end to all such restraints and obstuuctions, to emancipate the im prisoned and shackled spirit, and to relieve the whole intellectual world from the dominion of matter. They believed in Jesus Christ as the messenger and deliverer, by whom those mighty revolutions were to be accom plished. They spoke of him as the Son of the Supreme Divinity, commissioned and dispatched from the habi tation of the Everlasting Father. They regarded him as a created existence; and maintained, that though to the eye of Man he appeared to be invested with a real body, and exposed to actual pains and privations, he was, in point of fact, destitute of all corporeal organs, and incapable of suffering. In a perfect consistency with their own opinions, they denied the resurrection of Christ, and that of the body in general. They be lieved, moreover, in a great /derma, or space above the visible heavens; and this pleroma they sometimes re presented as the immediate residence of the benevolent divinity, and at other times as filled with inferior exis tencies, called CEons. To the higher CE on s were added the genii, whose abode was chiefly upon the earth, and whose business and delight it was to thwart the pur poses, and disturb the enjoyments of the human race. And in addition to all these jarring particulars, they denied the authority of the Jewish scriptures, and, with an un accountable and repulsive absurdity, held the serpent in high estimation as the author of sin.