THE TUBINGEN EASTER ROMANCE.* [Seem) NOTICE.] As everybody knows who

has the least pretensions to patristic scholarship, the apparent discrepancy between the narratives of the Synoptics and that of St. John, as to the evening on which our Lord partook of the Last Supper with His disciples, was from an early period noted and commented on. But it was reserved for these last days to make the marvellous discovery that deepest meanings lay hid beneath the varying accounts, and that in the Synoptical history, according to which Christ celebrated the normal Jewish Passover on the 14th of the month Nisan, we have the representation of "Jewish narrowness," while in the " so-called" Gospel of John, according to which Christ was crucified on the 14th, and consequently could not, on the evening of that day, keep the Passover, we have the rendering of anti-Judaic liberalism. This discovery being duly announced, it is then asserted, that in the Passover controversies of the second century, " then (p. 264) considered of such vital importance as to have occasioned the disruption of Christendom (1), the Eastern Christians appealed to the Synoptical Gospels, and to the personal authority of John, in support of their old-established custom of (p. 266) cele- brating the Passover on the 14th—postponing the commemoration of Christ's death to thd day following—while the Western Church, and a party in the Eastern, building on the notion promulgated by St. Paul, and adopted by the so-called Gospel of John, that Christ was Himself the Passover, commemorated the Crucifixion by a fast, breaking their fast for the first time on the grand festival of the Resurrection on Easter Sunday." In conclusion, it is triumphantly asked (p. 268), " How can authenticity be claimed for an alleged Gospel of John—expressly sanctioning the Western practice, and entirely subverting the order of the Eastern," supported though that order was by the example of John himself ? The prominence assigned by the Tubingen School to the Passover question, and the critical bearing of the materials of this question on the authorship of the fourth Gospel, must be our excuse for handling a somewhat abstruse ecclesias- tical subject in the columns of a popular journal.

When we turn to Eusebius we find, no doubt, that on three several occasions, the differences in the manner of celebrating the Paschal or,Easter season came, more or less conspicuously, under the notice of the Church, and it is also true that on two of these occa- sions the East and theWest were ranged on different sides. But when, in the interests of "design," Mr. Mackay asserts that " the special controversy in these instances was but part or token of a more general question, namely (p. 267), the general relation of the New to the Old Testament economy," and when he further affirms that "the Eastern Christians appealed to the Synoptical gospels in support of their practice of observing the anniversary of the Jewish Passover," he must have quite forgotten what Eusebius is singularly careful to record. For the historian writes thus:—(L. v., c. 23 21) " About this time (A. D. 198), a good deal of discussion arose respecting the observation • of the Paschal season. The churches of all Asia"—the sphere, be it remembered, of the special labours of St. Paul—" follow- ing an ancient tradition, supposed that they ought to keep the fourteenth day of the month as the Festival of the Christian Passover, on which day the Jews were commanded to slay the paschal lamb, and that it was their duty to end their fast on this day, whatever day of the week it might happen to be," that is, whether it was a Friday or not. On the other hand, " the churches throughout the rest of the world" held " that it would he improper to terminate their fast on any other

• The Tiibingen School and its Antecedents. By IL W. Mackay, M.A. Williams and Vorgate, London and Edinburgh. 1865.

day than that of the Resurrection of our Saviour." Surely, to an unbiassed reader, it would never occur that " important interests were at stake" here, and, for once, we quite agree with Mr.

Mackay when he says, "It seems strange that Victor (the Bishop of Rome) should have thought proper to excommunicate the churches of Asia Minor on grounds apparently trivial " (p. 267). It was very strange, indeed ; and so thought Irena3us, the well-known Western Bishop. Irenteus himself believed that the Western method was the preferable one ; but he did not, in consequence, look on his Eastern brethren as " bigots " and "intolerant Jews," who were false to the first principles of Christianity. On the contrary, strange as it may seem in Tubingen, he, "among others in Gaul," "remonstrated with Victor very sharply," and, adds Eusebius, "righteously dissuading him from cutting off whole churches because they were faithful to an old tradition," recommended him rather to "cultivate peace and the love of his neighbour."

There is not a syllable about " Petrine narrowness," there is no faintest hint of a "Synoptical" partizanship on the side of the Asiatics, in all that is related by Eusebius, while Irenteus, in his letter to Victor, proves to demonstration that the whole question was simply one relating to a " fast," and, instead of affording any the slightest sanction for the " disrupted Christendom" of Tubingen, he employs this remarkable expres- sion, " the very difference between us in the matter of the fast establishes the unanimity of our faith." Notwithstanding, how- ever, the explicit declarations of one who was engaged in the con- troversy, notwithstanding the fact that it is nowhere intimated that the West charged the East with upholding Jewish rites, or with erroneousness in their commemoration of the Day of the Crucifizion,it is arbitrarily maintained that the East was in error, and that the difference between East and West was that between Juda- ism (p. 272) and Christian independence." This last antithesis, as employed by Mr. Mackay, is, to use his own choice language when speaking of Ewald, "theatrical rigmarole," for, as has been already implied, the entire difference between East and West was this only :—The East not following the Synoptics, but following " an ancient tradition," and, adhering to the chronology of John Gospel, believed the 14th day of the month " Nisan " should be celebrated by a Communion Service in commemoration of the sacrifice of the true Passover Lamb on whatever day of the week the 14th might happen to fall, while the West, observing the order of the week, held that on the Sunday after the full moon the annual fast should terminate, and the Communion be ad- ministered in special commemoration of Christ's Resurrection. The Eastern festival was a fixed one like Christmas, the Western celebration left it " moveable."

But we are further informed (p. 269) that there is no distinct reference to the fourth Gospel at all throughout the controversy (p. 268), and that "since neither party appeal to such a Gospel, so opposed to everything savouring of Jewish narrowness, the probability is that, even if then existing, it was not generally acknowledged, and, perhaps, partly owed its existence to this very difference under consideration !" (209.) Not" in existence!" Why, eight and forty years before this controversy took place we read of an heretical commentary on John's Gospel ; and still earlier, as is well known, the notorious Marcion, while he objected, as later personages have done, to its teaching, nevertheless acknowledged its authenticity. Even Mr. Mackay tolls us (p. 259) that in the days of Irenteus the fourth Gospel was a subject of dispute ; that 'rename himself " unequivocally appeals to it ;" but then it " probably owed its existence " to the very " dispute " about itself while still non-existent.

It might well have happened that in this controversy no dis- tinct reference should have been made to John's Gospel. For, as far as evidence reaches, the precise element of variance was not one which that Gospel could remove. To fast or to hold festival on a given day was left wholly to the discretion of the Church,

and it was only the "bigoted" Victor who in this matter would interfere with " Christian independence." Nevertheless, it is all

but certain that the venerable Polycrates, Bishop of Ephesus, in his noble and touching letter to Victor—the letter which evoked the Victorine thunders—does allude as well to John's Gospel as to the Apostles' practice. For when the good old man speaks of St. John as having always " observed" the 14th of this month, he employs an expression which is only to be found in the fourth Gospel, " be who rested on the bosom of our Lord." Now, when, after referring to St. John in words taken from the Gospel called by his name, Polycrates further appeals to " the Gospel" as his ultimate authority for the Eastern observ- ance, when, further, he speaks of "the whole of sacred Scripture"

as corroborating the conclusion he had drawn from " the Gospel," when, finally, his contemporary Irennus time writes :—(Euseb. v., 8.) "Afterwards, John, the disciple of our Lord, the same who lay upon his bosom, also published the Gospel, whilst he was yet in Ephesus," does not the presumption amount to something liKe certainty that " the Gospel" in question must be St. John's? However, we have still stronger and more direct proof in reserve ; and must hasten to advert to the second Passover controversy. We speak of it as the second, following the order iu Eusebius, though it happened some thirty years before the other, about A. D.162.

If we were to trust to Mr. Mackay we should be ready to imagine that Polycarp of Smyrna, and Anicetus of Rome, the two controverisialists on this occasion, all but came to blows during their debate (p. 265), and that, with all the " rancour " of the St. John of Tiibingen, the Eastern Bishop had contended for the estab- lishment of a "Jewish" ceremony in the heart of the Capitol. But when we turn to the letter of Irenreus, from which, as preserved by Eusebius, we gain all the attainable information on this dis- cussion (Euseb. v., 24), we learn that it was of the most pacific character ; that the whole question between the two Bishops was the simple one of the feast, on the 14th, or the fast, on Good Friday ; that the two good men communed together, that in the Church Anicetus gave place to Polycarp in the administration of the Eucharist—a singular disruption this—andtbat they finally parted from each other with mutual respect and "in peace," all the Church being at peace too. This is all we know. Neverthe- less, we are called on to believe that Christendom was in mortal strife, and that, while the East brandished the three Gospels and St. John's example in the face of the West, the West held aloft an imaginary St. John as the banner of freedom ! How strange that fret:teens was wholly ignorant of what is so con- fidently maintained now !

Of the third controversy Mr. Mackay is thus instructed to write (p. 265), " Some time after (A. D. 168), the Asiatic Church was internally convulsed about this matter." This "internal convulsion" is a considerable advance upon the statement of Eusebius, who simply imparts the fragmentary information from the preface of a work of Melito, Bishop of Sardis, that " at the time when Sagaris suffered martyrdom, there was a good deal of

discussion Loodicea (‘ Laodicea' meaning in Tubingen the whole Asiatic Church ') concerning the Passover, which carne round in due course at that season." From Eusebius himself we hear nothing about the specialities of this controversy. He only subjoins to the preceding brief extract the intimation that Clement of Alexandria alludes to the work of Melito, and that the former wrote his own "Treatise on the Passover" in consequence of having read that of the Bishop of Sardis. We are not, how- ever, left to mere conjecture as to the subject of the " discussion in Loodicea." For, in the well-known "Paschal Chronicle" we have two fragments fro:n the " Treatise of Clement," of which we have just spoken, besides two plain-spoken extracts from Apollinaris, Bishop of Hierapolis, and two quotations from Hippolytus, from all of which it clearly appears that the East, represented by Apollinaris, the West by Hippolytus, and Alexandria by Clement, were unanimous in their opposition to certain opinions and practices relating to Easter. If we add that Eusebius speaks of Melito and Apollinaris as " flourishing " at the same time, and labouring for the same high ends, in apparent harmony, if we remember that Polycrates names Melito as one of those who upheld the Eastern mode of celebration, it becomes evident that the discussion which originated in Loodicea must have been one wholly different in character from the two other controversies. In the latter, East and West are divided ; in the former they are of one mind. Mr. Mackay, however, represents them as identical, and, with the characteristic caprice of his school, converts Apollinaris, the Eastern Bishop, into a zealous opponent of the Eastern prejudices!

In fact, the opponents of Catholic unanimity were those whom Hippolytus ranks among " Heretics," terming them " Quartodecimans," and their special heresy was twofold:— 1st. They held that Christ partook of the Passover on the 14th of the month—thus postponing the Crucifixion to the 15th, and, secondly, they adhered to the Jewish custom of celebrating the Passover by feasting on a veritable lamb ! The arguments employed against the " Quartodecimans" by the united East and West are partly dogmatical and partly histori- cal. The writers concur in proclaiming that Christ shared His last meal with His disciples on the 18th, that on the 14th, by His

*Euseb. iv., 2a

great act of self-sacrifice as the true. Lamb of God, He abolished for ever the merely ritual type, and whereas the Easterns could appeal both to St. John's example and to his written testimony, as proofs of their conformity to " the Canon of the Faith," so Clement, Apollinaris, and Hippolytus, are all harmonious in referring to the fourth Gospel as the standard of authority. Hippolytus even believes that Luke (xxii., 15) means to assure us that Christ did not share the common Passover, and Apollinaris says that to make Matthew affirm that our Lord did keep the regular annual feast would be at once to deny that He was " the true Passover," and would " set the Gospels at variance." Clement refers to John by name, quotes his very words (xviii., 28), and concludes with the statement that by adhering to John's chronology." all the Gospels become accord- ant." Nevertheless, we are gravely assured that " neither party appeals to this Gospel " (p. 269), " that it was not generally acknowledged," nay, that it " probably owed its existence to the very difference under consideration ;" just as probably, to quote the words of Latimer on another subject, " Tenterton Steeple was the cause that Sandwich Haven is decayed."

In its great zeal for Roman orthodoxy, Tubingen exceeds the Fathers themselves. For Apollinaris, instead of characterizing the " Quartodeciman" heresy as pregnant with " disruption" or " convulsion," calls it " a pardonable" error, an ignorance which only needs to be instructed, while Hippolytus himself, the great Malleus Hereticorum, expressly testifies that "in all other mattera these people agree with everything which has been handed down to us by the Apostles." Poor Hippolytus!

In conclusion, we have no alternative left us by history save that of pronouncing the Tiibingen story of the Paschal controversies to be mere romance, and we must add that, if "Jewish narrowness," " bigotry," and " intolerance" are to be found either among the early controversialists or the later critics, they are chargeable upon the despotic Victor and his modern apologists. For thus extremes meet, and Tiibingen lauds one of the earliest Roman attempts to crush the liberties of Christendom.