1847.] The seventy-third to the eighty-fourth Canons. 23 viest penalty, the fast of Lent, commencing the fortieth day (Quadragesima) before Easter, and the fasts on Wednesday and Friday, (the fourth day of the week, and the day of the Preparation). Besides, in this canon itself, the inferior clerical orders are mentioned, which not obscurely indicates the time of its origin; and the rest of its contents, indeed, confirms this indication. I am fully convinced that the ecclesiastical law, here presented, was not received earlier than in the third century. There are, however, among the learned, some who endeavor to vindicate the apostolic origin of this Fast of Lent, appealing to passages of Jerome and Augustin, who derive this custom from apostolic tradition. But with these Fathers, the expressions used in those passages are general forms of speaking, which are by no means to be perverted. It is evident, on the contrary, from the concurring statements of writers in the third century and in the fourth, that the Fast, as here regulated, was not observed till in the third century.1 Against the antiquity of canon LXXIII, learned men have mentioned well founded objections. For when, in this canon, it is forbidden that any one appropriate to his own use a vessel of silver or of gold, or a curtain, that has been consecrated, it follows that at the time when the canon was framed, the Christians had sacred edifices and precious vessels.... We therefore place this canon in the beginning of the third century, when it is most certain that spacious and costly buildings for Christian worship were erected. But we readily acknowledge the very high antiquity of the next following canons, as far as to the eighty-fourth; since, [in most points,] they do not depart from the simplicity of the apostolic age. Only this it seems proper to remark against canon LXXXII, that in the words as our Onesimus appeared, (olos 'Ovýσιμος, ὁ ἡμέτερος ἀνεφάνη,) it endeavors to impose on the reader a false author. This, although it does not pertain to the subject of which the canon treats, throws upon it an unfavorable suspicion; [which is not a little increased by the apparent assumption of unlimited power for councils of bishops in canon LXXIV, I Can. LXX. Εἴ τις ἐπίσκοπος ἢ πρεσβύτερος ἢ διάκονος ἢ ἀναγνώστης ἢ ψάλτης τὴν ἁγίαν τεσσαρακοστὴν τοῦ πάσχα ή τετράδα ἢ παρασκευὴν οὐ νηστεύοι, και θαιρείσθω, ἐκτὸς εἰ μὴ δι' ἀσθένειαν σωματικὴν ἐμποδίζοιτο· εἰ δὲ λαϊκὸς εἴη, ἀφορίζεσθε. • Can. LXXIII. Σκεῦος χρυσοῦν ἢ ἀργυροῦν ἁγιασθὲν ἡ ὀθόνην μηδεὶς ἔτι εἰς οἰκείαν χρήσιν σφετεριζέσθω· παράνομον γὰρ· εἰ δὲ τις φωραθείη, ἐπιτιμάσθω ἀφορισμῷ and by the mention of 'the sacerdotal administration' in canon LXXXIIIJ. The eighty-third canon rejects the practice of those who obtain at the same time an office in the Roman government and in the church. In this, regard is probably had to the proceeding in the council at Antioch, which deposed Paul of Samosata, because, among other offences, he was occupied as a secular magistrate. It remains that we speak concerning the last of these canons. Scarcely any one of them bears upon itself more openly than this the vestiges of a later time. It is therefore easy to fix the time of its origin. This canon presents a catalogue of the sacred books of the New Testament, enumerating all those which it deems canonical. . . . Even the two epistles of Clement, and the constitutions are set forth in our canon as being apostolical. If now we institute a comparison between this canon and the catalogue of canonical books which Eusebius, in his Ecclesiasti cal History, B. III. c. 25, has given us, we readily perceive that our canon was not made up till in the end of the fourth century, when the books just now mentioned, which it proclaims to be canonical, were brought into the canon of the sacred Scriptures. And if we inquire why this last canon was framed, the answer is easy and prompt,-that by its aid spurious books might be commended. In view of this discussion, who is there that will not maintain with us, that our canons were formed at different times in the churches denominated apostolical as having been planted by apostles, and that they were afterwards gathered into the collection which we now possess? 1 Can. LXXXIII. Ἐπίσκοπος ἢ πρεσβύτερος ἢ διάκονος στρατεία σχολάζων καὶ βουλόμενος ἀμφότερα κατέχειν, Ρωμαϊκὴν ἀρχὴν καὶ ἱερατικὴν διοίκησιν, καθαιρείσθω· τὰ γὰρ τοῦ καίσαρος καίσαρι, καὶ τὰ τοῦ θεοῦ τῷ θεῷ. 1847.] The Trinity. 25 ARTICLE II. THE TRINITY. [Translated from the Theological Lectures of Dr. A. D. C. Twesten, Professor of Theology in the University of Berlin, by Rev. H. B. Smith, West Amesbury, Mass. Concluded from No. XII. p. 774.] § 6. Character hypostaticus. (1) Notae internae. Now that we have considered the doctrine of the Trinity as a whole, and have become acquainted with the doctrinal formulas of the church upon the relation of the divine essence to the three Persons of the Godhead, it still remains for us to examine more closely the relations of the Persons to one another, and the peculiar attributes or characteristics belonging to them individually, the sum of which we call their hypostatic or personal character. These are, as we have already signified,1 of two kinds: they have reference, partly, to the internal relations of the Persons in their mode of subsistence (7оóлos vлάožεws), and, partly, to the mode in which the Father, the Son and the Spirit are revealed in the world (roóros anoxaliyeos). Accordingly, we distinguish the internal and external characteristics (notae internae et externae), or the internal and external character (character ad intra et ad extra), of the three Persons. The first of these, the internal characteristics, we will consider in this section; and the external characteristics, in the following. Under internal characteristics we comprise both the order and the manner of subsistence (ordo subsistendi, ratio subsistendi). By the former is meant that the Father is unchangeably the first, the Son the second, and the Holy Spirit the third Person in the Godhead; by the manner of subsistence, which is the necessary condition of the order, is meant that the second Person has the ground of its subsistence in the first, and the third in the first and second. This last rests upon two acts immanent in the divine essence (opera ad intra, actus personales), from which we derive, on the one hand, those three peculiar properties which constitute the notion of the three Persons (proprietates personales); and, on the other hand, some other characteristics (called notiones personales), which also serve to distinguish them. We will then proceed to consider the internal characteristics of the Persons of 1 Conf. Bibl. Sacra, Aug. 1846, p. 520. the Trinity under these four heads: personal acts, personal attributes, personal conceptions, and order of subsistence. Since our later divines are not wholly agreed in their application of this ter minology, we will hold fast to the older and stricter usage, from which it will be easier to understand the deviations, and without regard to which we shall hardly be able to appreciate the sense and purport of this whole mode of exhibiting the subject.1 1. The personal acts. Since God is pure action and life (actus purissimus), since, in virtue of his absolute self-causation and spontaneity, there is in him nothing dead, nothing independent of his action, nothing produced by an external necessity; it follows, also, that those relations, by which the divine Persons are distinguished, are to be referred to the divine efficiency. To speak more definitely, they are to be referred to the two absolutely im manent acts of generation and of procession, which are called opera ad intra, because they have nothing else than God himself for their object; and they are called personal acts, because the divine nature is conceived of as the author of them, not so far as it is common to the three Persons, but so far as it subsists in each one of them under peculiar modifications. From this it of course results, that they are not to be looked upon as actions common to all three, but as the actions of particular persons, as the Father or the Son, or both, (opera ad intra esse divisa). More important, however, than these generic statements would it be, if we were able to make clear to ourselves in what these two actions consist, and how they are connected with the nature of God. Those theologians who believed that they might, after the precedence 1 Bretschneider (Entwickelung d, dogm. Begr. § 68. S. 408; Handb. § 66. S. 461), Wegscheider (instit. § 77), and Hase (Hutterus rediv.), would have us believe that the distinction between the personal acts, properties and notions rests only upon this, that the internal relations of the persons are considered either as acts, or as attributes, or as abstract notions; if this were so, then the distinction would be really only a grammatical, hardly a logical one, and would be scarcely worth the trouble of a moment's consideration. But whoever compares the development of this doctrine among the Scholastics, (whom, and especially Aquinas, our Evangelical theologians have, for substance, followed,) will see, that it is to this very point that the scientific deduction of the whole doctrine of the Trinity is attached. * Conf. Quenstedt, P. 1. cp. X. Sect. 1. ɛo. 1-4. But it is to be considered that all opera interna are not opera ad intra, nor all opera ad intra also actus personales: e. g. the divine purpose to redeem the world by Christ is, as a purpose, an internal act, but it has the world as its object, and is so far not absolutely immanent; the omniscience and will of God are, referred to himself, opera ad intra, but they belong to the essence of God, and hence must be designated as essentialia. 1847.] Scholastic View. 27 of the Scholastics, develop the doctrine in a speculative way, 1 Other objections are not so pertinent; e. g. when it is said that on the same * E. g. Athanasius; (Orat. III. contr. Arian.) "It is not fitting to seek to |