"The divine and the human nature, each remaining perfect, have been united in one person, to the intent that the same mediator might die, being yet immortal and impassible. . . . Neither nature is altered by the other; he who is truly God is also truly man. . The Word and the flesh preserve each its proper functions. The Holy Scripture proves equally the verity of the two natures. He is God, since it is written, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God.' He is also man, since it is written, "The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us." As man he was tempted by the Devil; as God he is ministered unto by angels.' "And so on. Observe that Leo bases his theory on quotations from the Gospel called John's, written when and by whom nobody knows-that Gospel sealed with the forgery of an Apostolic name 'to procure its readier acceptance.' "Well, the bishops unanimously-Dioscorus and his followers having seceded-approved Leo's translucent exposition of the divine fatherhood and of the two natures of the virgin-born child, and pronounced anathema against all who should deny it. Dioscorus was cited to appear before the council but came not. "Now note what followed. The petitions of the clergy and laity of Alexandria against Dioscorus were then read, in which they accused him of grievous crimes, stating that he had been guilty of homicide, had burnt and pulled down houses, had lived an infamous life, had bought up corn in order to enhance the price, and had connived at the residence of women of ill-fame in his diocese, and had even kept them in his own house.' 66 Did you ever hear anything more absurd? Why had nothing been heard before about all these appalling iniquities of the most holy bishop of Alexandria? How could these hundreds of other bishops, with the representatives of the saintly Leo among them, wrangle for days over a question whether Jesus was one in two, or two in one, or six in half a dozen, and all this time allow such a prodigy of guilt-whose alleged record reads nearly as badly as that of some of the later Popes-to stand among them, an accredited church official of the highest rank in Christendom, with no charge against him save that of heresy? Can you doubt that, had it not been for his spiritual blindness and obstinacy and his ecclesiatical treason in declaring that he owed allegiance to no man but to God alone, nothing would ever have been heard of these supposed offenses? THE FINAL WORD SPOKEN 201 Can you doubt that the indictment was mainly, if not entirely, a string of lies trumped up as a pretense of justification for cutting Dioscorus off utterly from the church and making of him a terrible example and warning to all who should think of denying or questioning the dogmas put forth by the dominant faction of bishops? 'The very fact that such an assembly of Christian. bishops, with Leo's helmsman at the wheel-an assembly fairly representing, we may suppose, the intellect, morality, piety, and authority of the Christian church at that time— that these men should, 450 years after Christ, hold themselves up in this light, is a sufficient commentary on the value of their speculations on the genesis and nature of Jesus, as well as on their claim of divine authority to say what you and I shall or shall not believe. "Dioscorus was banished and died three years later. Bishop Juvenal and the rest made open confession of the true faith' before the council and were absolved; not, however, we are told, out of charity for the misguided but repentant, but because the bishops thought the banishment of Dioscorus was sufficient and because they feared to carry their rigor against the heretical bishops too far, least a fresh schism result. The council, among other things, formulated an additional statement of faith, practically dictated by Pope Leo, interpreting the language of the Nicene creed to mean that Jesus 'is to be acknowledged one and the same Christ, the Son, the Lord, the only begotten in two natures, without mixture, change, division, or separation,' and so on, as long as you can stand it. Another important act of this council was that it confirmed the acts of a great number of previous councils, thus establishing a code of church discipline and a system of faith, many parts of it inconsistent and contradictory, but all alike authoritative and binding. "Though considerably elaborated afterwards, by the working out of the doctrines of the Atonement, Transubstantiation, and others, the Christian system of doctrine, as we have followed its growth through the four great ecumenical councils, had developed sufficiently by the middle of the fifth century to give us a fair basis for judgment upon its merits and its claims to divine and Apostolic origin. I have tried to give you the facts and the conclusions to which they seem to me to lead. "This is all I care to say on this branch of the subject," said Granger, closing his notebook, unless there is some 66 thing you want to go into more fully." "There are a few questions I should like to ask," answered Craig thoughtfully," but I think I had better leave them till to-morrow night." 66 "I wish you would tell me to-night what they are," replied Granger, so that I can think them over before I try to answer them. Otherwise I may be unable to give you any answer whatever, to say nothing about a satisfactory one.' "Well," returned Stuart, one question is this: I should like to know more fully how the list of New Testament books came to be made up as we have it. I was taught to look upon the New Testament as one perfect whole, invulnerable in all its parts, unimpeachable, inspired throughout, and I supposed all doctrines of the Protestant creeds were easily deducible from the New Testament Scriptures. You seem to show that it took centuries of time and a vast amount of speculation and discussion, not to mention persecution, to reach an agreement on these doctrines or rather to narrow the differences down to even the present wide range. But still, dropping these disputed and highly elaborated theories, we have left the New Testement as it existed before these later doctrines were developed. Now, when did the New Testament in its present form come into general or exclusive use, and its history become practically unbroken,' as I think you remarked? "The second question," continued Craig, "is this: Are not the objections you raise applicable mainly to the Catholic church, and haven't they little bearing, comparatively, on Protestantism? I have always looked upon the centuries you have been talking about as belonging to the age of Roman Catholic domination, and regarded the Protestant Reformation as carrying Christianity back to its primitive purity. I know you have answered this question to some extent, but not to my entire satisfaction. "The third question is this: Admitting the truth of your statement of the case and the conclusion to which it seems to lead, what have you left of your religion, and what belief can you retain as to God and his relations with men? "Finally, a personal question, which you may take as lightly or as seriously as you choose, though it is prompt ed by other motives than idle curiosity or banter: Don't you think you have flopped pretty suddenly and completely in the last few months from orthodox belief to orthodox unbelief? I can't quite understand it myself." Granger smiled good-naturedly. "I will try to answer all your questions to-morrow night," he said, "the personal as well as the rest. One of them, in regard to the application of what I have said to Protestantism, I intended to take up anyhow." CHAPTER 30 THE NEW TESTAMENT CANON-THE REFORMATION "I WILL answer your questions as best I can," said Granger to Craig the next evening, "in the order in which you have asked them. And first in regard to the New Testament. I did not mean to say that I knew of any particular date from which the history of the New Testament in its present form may be said to be unbroken. Let me quote Dr. Davidson again : "Before A. D. 170 no book of the New Testament was termed Scripture or believed to be divine and inspired. No canon of the New Testament, i. e., no collection of New Testament literature like the present one supposed to possess divine authority, existed before A. D. 200." "Strange, very strange, is it not, that these now holy writings did not become 'divine' or 'inspired' till a century or more after the alleged date of their composition? "The first official list of New Testament books, as far as I can learn, was that alleged to have been made by the council of Laodicea, to which I have already referred, the date of which is in dispute, being placed by different authorities as early as 314 and as late as 372-a fact in itself strongly indicating the difficulty of locating the date and authorship of early gospels and epistles, the work of individuals. The weight of authority seems to be that the council of Laodicea was held after the middle of the fourth century. It is said to have been composed of thirtytwo bishops, and to have adopted sixty canons, or rules of church government. The fifty-ninth canon forbids the faithful to sing uninspired hymns, or to read uncanonical books; and the sixtieth canon gives a list of the canonical books of Scripture, but omits the Revelation of John. "And now note the character of the men said to have promulgated this first official list of books that might be read with spiritual profit and without spiritual danger, and the frame of mind in which they went about it, as shown by other canons adopted by the council. 66 The sixth canon prohibits the admission of heretics within a church-hardly a Christlike way of treating unbelievers. "The ninth canon excommunicates all church members who visit the places of worship or burial grounds of heretics. "The tenth canon forbids the faithful to give their children in marriage to heretics, and the thirty-first canon repeats the prohibition specifically in regard to daughters. This recalls Paul's admonitions: 'Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? or what hath he that believeth with an infidel? . . touch not the unclean thing-the unclean thing' being the unbeliever, no matter how clean he may be except in this one respect of belief. "The twenty-sixth canon forbids persons who have not been authorized by a bishop to undertake to cast out evil spirits. So you see that not only was the now exploded theory of demons believed in at that time, but bishops appointed persons to practice the devices for casting the evil spirits out. However, they had precedent therefor in the alleged miracles of Jesus and the Apostles. But stranger than all that is the fact that to this day the Church of England retains a canon reading in part as follows: 666 "No minister or ministers shall, without the license and direction of the bishop of the diocese first obtained, and had under his hand and seal, . . . attempt, upon any pretence whatsoever, either of possession or obsession, by fasting and prayer, to cast out any devil or devils, under pain of the imputation of imposture or cosenage, and deposition from the ministry.' "And it is said that recourse has been had to exorcism under sanction of this canon within the last century. But to return to the council of Laodicea. The twenty-ninth canon forbids Christians to keep the Tewish Sabbath-a striking injunction, considering that |