Mead G.R.S. - The True Brotherhood of Man

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A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

The True Brotherhood of Man

George Robert Stow Mead

(English: G. R. S. Mead, F.T.S., The True Brotherhood of Man)

Publications:

• Lucifer, vol. 9, no. 51, November 1891, pp. 196-206

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Title for references: Mead G.R.S. - The True Brotherhood of Man
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George Robert Stow Mead

The True Brotherhood of Man

196

A Reply to the “True Church of Christ: Exoteric and Esoteric”.

“To form the nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood without distinction of Creed.”

I am not a Christian in the sense in which that name is generally understood, but I believe most firmly in the Universal Principle of Compassion, call it Christ or by what name you will; and I as firmly believe in a Brotherhood of perfected men of all times, races and faiths, who have become at one with that great Principle of Compassion which was and is and will be. But I do not believe that any known association of men can claim with any show of reason to be imbued with that spirit of Love, for such an association would have to be composed of Adepts, and must prove by its acts the claim it makes. An association that makes such a claim and which has notoriously throughout its history given the lie direct to the spirit of Tolerance, Justice and Compassion, which characterises the Christ-man at all times, is naught but an impudent blasphemer against the divine Principle of Love, which is the only Saviour of Humanity.

“The True Church of Christ” is without distinction of race, creed, sex, time or place. No other is a True Church; and this Church is at present esoteric and will not be exoteric until the whole of mankind is perfected.

I write what I shall have to write with deep regret. I do not wish to offend anyone, least of all my friend, J. W. Brodie Innes, but I am profoundly convinced that it is the duty of every student of Theosophy to raise his voice in protest when there is danger of our ideals being lowered and attempts made to confine us once more within the narrow limits of a man-imposed orthodoxy.

For eight months the pages of Lucifer have contained a series of papers entitled, “The True Church of Christ, Exoteric and Esoteric”, a series of special pleadings in defence of a Church which, on the writer's own showing, has been dumb and paralyzed for thirteen centuries; a body divided and sub-divided into an infinite number of parts, but which miraculously and as no other known body can do, is expected by the faithful to recover and reunite, and regain its “voice”. But if the body is disintegrating, surely the Christ is not in such a mass of corruption!

It is quite possible for other Churchmen to put forward some other theory of the Church, for there are other than High Churchmen in that body, and then my criticisms would not be entirely applicable.

A man cannot well fence with himself; he may, if it please him, fence with his own shadow in the glass, but to play at plaintiff and defendant all alone, and set up men of straw for the pleasure of knocking them over, is not to meet real steel and the earnest protests of those who refuse absolutely to have, either by analogy or otherwise, a paralyzed and disintegrating body foisted upon them as the representative of the “True Church of Christ”, even with the qualification of “exoteric”.

To take one example out of many of such arguments in the papers referred to: –

197

“If there is no higher principle there is nothing to reform, it would be as wise to try and reason with a congenital idiot. The only logical course would be to leave it, with as much kindliness as may be, to decompose when its Karma is worn out. Opposition to or criticism of the Church implies therefore (albeit often unconsciously to the critics) the recognition of a guiding spirit!”

A guiding elemental spirit perchance, but surely not the Spirit of Christ! The spirit of intolerance, bigotry, hatred and persecution, yes: the Spirit of Christ, no, emphatically no! And as to the rest, why the analogy of an idiot? Surely an idiot is not divided into so many pieces! But even so let us take the idiot; should we allow an idiot to run wild, especially when subject to sudden relapses into mania? Neither would you, I take it, allow a decomposing body to remain in the house nor expose it in the streets !

These and similar difficulties are due, I believe, simply to the fact that the analogy used in the papers under review is erroneous, and if not entirely false is vastly insufficient. I argue as follows: – The next natural unit or monad to the Individual Man is Individual Humanity, Humanity as a unit. That is to say, just as molecules make up the body of a Man, so do Men make up the body of Humanity. But the divine Individuality or Ego of Humanity is not yet incarnated in this body, for we are only in the fourth Round, and the body of Spiritual Humanity is therefore passing through its period of kâmic development, and may be compared to the bodies of the early races before the incarnation of the self-conscious Egos. The Body of Humanity is mindless. And this is proved by facts, for are not all associations of men, as associations, in the kâmic stage? Take the case of a nation. Are not its national instincts all animal, if not worse? A nation will rob and starve its own children; it will fight with them; sometimes it will destroy them, and sometimes be destroyed by them. So with all organizations they are in the kâmic stage. Witness the savage wars engaged in by the Church; the maniacal rage of an entity that can lacerate its own body, cut off its own limbs, even disembowel itself in its rage; an elemental rather than an animal instinct. In all such cases we have proofs of the elemental building up of gross organisms: but they are all part and parcel of that lower evolution which “unaided fails”. These are the elemental efforts of nature to construct a fit body for Humanity, and not until the molecules of that body are united by a common bond that all will recognize, will it be in any sense other than a failure, as a vehicle for the manifestation of the Higher Self of Humanity.

More than this, for me this ideal body of Humanity is still in the womb, and its organisms, those organizations that men are so wonderfully proud of, are the undeveloped cells of an embryonic body. There is of course in this a permanent life-centre, but the Manas or mind thereof is far, far from manifestation.

It is plainly evident, therefore, that as compared with the thought of the Christ (mark, I do not say a Christ), the “thought of the Church” or the thought of the nation, is a mere automatic action or animal instinct common to all ganglionic centres of a similar nature. But to take one part of the body of Humanity and institute a comparison between it and a man, is as absurd as taking, say, the liver out of an embryo and endeavouring to find out the correspondences between it and the perfect body of a septenary man. The liver, I am afraid, would have too many principles latent to bear the comparison, although perhaps the latency would allow wider scope for the play of the imagination.

In what I have written I claim that I have at least not degraded the Christ ideal. It may be too lofty a conception for general comprehension, 198 it is true, but so I leave it to show further that the exoteric “Church of Christ” insisted on in the last eight numbers of Lucifer is not the “True Church” of “The Christ”.

At the outset I ask, is it the act of a friend to direct you into the meanderings of a labyrinth of which the walls hide the light of heaven and finally bring you out only where you entered, even when you have the thread of Ariadne and succeed in slaying the Minotaur? The Councils of the Church are such a maze, the Minotaur is orthodoxy, and the thread of Ariadne is common sense. No doubt the Minotaur is not so dreadful as it is made out to be, but still it is sufficiently uninviting to any who have seen even the shadows of the inhabitants of the light.

To leave a simile that will appeal only to the students of the various world-religions who are at the same time students of esotericism, let us take the pith of the “orthodox” position, that is to say, orthodox according to the writer of the papers, for others who claim equal orthodoxy may take exception to such a position. Here it is: –

“The organic means of communicating the thought, teaching or decision of the whole Church is by decree of an Œcumenical Council, i.e., a general Council lawful, approved and received by the whole Church”.

The six Councils, as to which “there is no doubt”, are Nicaea a.d. 325, Constantinople (First) a.d. 381, Ephesus a.d. 431, Chalcedon a.d. 451, Constantinople (Second) a.d. 553, and Constantinople (Third) a.d. 680. These are the ultimate tribunals of orthodoxy, these are the holy assemblies which could not err, “Sancto Spiritu suggerente”.

First I shall show that no Council but that of Nicaea can in any sense be said to be truly “œcumenical”, even with the wide margin of latitude given with such open-handed generosity on every point by the writer of the papers I am criticising, and then I shall say something about that famous political cabal. To do so I shall have to quote mostly from renowned divines, not from the writings of enemies of the Church, mark well, and especially from Dean Stanley in his lectures on The History of the Eastern Church. I could also give an infinity of quotations from the Acta of the four Councils of which we have minutes, and from the canons of the first two Councils of which we have no such records, but I do not deem it necessary. Nor is it difficult to give a learned flavouring to one’s statements by such quotations, for a standard theological dictionary will give a list of authorities, and these authorities will give other lists, so that with the help of a good library quotations may be multiplied ad infinitum. But I hope that no student of Theosophy will ever be overawed with such a mayavic glamour of authority, for then indeed the Scribes and Pharisees will have been rebuked in vain.

And now to establish my first point and reduce our six Councils to one: –

“We cannot say that the importance of all the early Councils is fully recognised. Their official decrees have never gained a place and are never even mentioned in our formularies. The fifth, sixth and seventh are rarely named by Protestant theologians. The fourth (that of Chalcedon) is, as we have seen, rejected by a large part of the East. The third (of Ephesus) is repudiated by the Chaldæan Christians; and its distinguishing formula, ‘the Mother of God’, has never been frankly accepted by Protestant Churches. The Council of Constantinople was avowedly only an Eastern 199 assembly. Not a single Western bishop was present; and its œcumenical character, after having been entirely passed over by the Council of Ephesus, was only tardily acknowledged by the Council of Chalcedon.

“But with the Nicene assembly it is otherwise. Alone of all the Councils, it still retains a hold on the mass of Christendom. Its creed, as we just now saw, is the only creed accepted throughout the universal Church. The Apostles’ Creed and the Athanasian Creed have never been incorporated into the ritual of the Greek Church. But the Nicene Creed, Greek and Eastern though it be, has a place in the liturgies and confessions of all Western Churches, at least down to the end of the sixteenth century. It was regarded at the time and long afterwards, even by Councils which chafed under the acknowledgment, as a final settlement of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity; and so in a certain sense it has been regarded by many theologians of later times.”

I think that this is sufficiently conclusive and conducts us straight to the root of orthodoxy, but if any further evidence is wanted of the fact that the decrees of these Councils are not universally accepted, it will be sufficient to refer to the twenty-first “Article of Religion” of the Established Church of England.

“And when they (General Councils) be gathered together . . . they may err and sometimes have erred, even of things pertaining unto God.”

And yet we are told in Lucifer, Vol. VIII., p. 213: –

“The nature of the Councils being thus established, the strongest proof of their authority is their universal acceptance by the whole Church as the unmistakable voice and paramount authority of the Church. Ancient and modern authorities are absolutely at one upon this, the divergences of opinion being with regard to the authority of certain Councils whose claim to represent the whole Church is historically doubtful.”

But in their very nature even the six, as to which “there is no doubt”, can in nowise be said to be universal in the real meaning of the term, for: –

“There were never, indeed, any Councils held, which could strictly and properly be called universal; those, however, whose decrees and enactments were received and approved by the whole Church, or by the greatest part of it, are commonly called œcumenical”.

“The whole force and learning of early Christianity was in the East. A General Council in the West would have been almost an absurdity. . . . . The controversies on which the Councils turned all moved in the sphere of Grecian and Oriental metaphysics. They were such as no Western mind could have originated.”

Nor are Councils again assemblies that inspire us with confidence in their decrees, or impress us with an idea of that judicial calm which we expect in decisions of so grave and momentous a nature.

“A General Council is not the cause but the consequence of religious dissension. It is unnecessary, and could hardly be convoked but on extraordinary occasions to settle some questions which have already violently disorganised the peace of Christendom. It is a field of battle in which a long train of animosities and hostilities is to come to an issue. Men, therefore, meet with all the excitement, the estrangement, the jealousy, the antipathy, engendered by a fierce and obstinate controversy. They meet to triumph over their adversaries, rather than dispassionately to investigate truth. Each is committed to his opinions, each exasperated by opposition, each supported by a host of intractable followers, each probably with exaggerated notions of the importance of the question, and that importance seems to increase, since it has demanded the decision of a general assembly of Christendom.”

200

“The meeting of a General Council is . . . . in ecclesiastical history, what a pitched battle is like in military history, and similar questions naturally arise in speaking of each.”

“I never yet saw a council of bishops come to a good end.”

“I salute them afar off, since I know how troublesome they are.”

“I never more will sit in those assemblies of cranes and geese.”

Then as to brawling, uproar and acts of violence, the Nicene was bad enough, where among other things Nicholas, Bishop of Myra, enforced an argument against Arius by dealing him a blow on the jaw with all his force, not to speak of the rest, which were worse; for as Stanley says, “it would be easy to multiply instances of the crimes and follies which disfigured the Christian assemblies of later times”. For example, at the second Council of Ephesus the Bishop of Constantinople was trampled down and stamped to death by the Bishop of Alexandria. At Chalcedon there was such a riot that the Imperial Commissioners had to put a forcible stop to the tumult. Who will dare to say that this was “Sancto Spiritu suggerente” ?

Another point to be remembered is that such assemblies were convoked, ruled over and “moderated” by the secular power; they were above all things political. “General Councils may not be gathered together without the commandment and will of Princes” (Art. xxi). The very name “Œcumenical” reveals the fact.

“An ‘Œcumenical Synod’, that is, an ‘Imperial Gathering’, from the whole οἰκουμένη, or Empire (for this was the technical meaning of the word, even in the Greek of the New Testament), could be convened only by the Emperor”.

Hear the fulsome adulation and fawning flattery of the “holy Fathers” of Chalcedon in their address to Marcian and Pulcheria: –

“Long years to our sovereign lord David. . . . You are the peace of the world. . . . Thou knowest Christ. He will defend thee. Thou hast established orthodoxy. . . . . To the august Empress, many years. You are the light of orthodoxy. . . . Orthodox from her birth, God will defend her. Defender of the faith, may God defend her. Pious, orthodox enemy of heretics, God will defend her. Thou hast persecuted all the heretics. May the evil eye be averted from your empire. Worthy of the faith, worthy of Christ. . . . By thee the world is at peace; by thee the orthodox faith established; by thee the heresy ceases to be; long life to the Emperor and Empress.”

The orthodox party were no doubt exceedingly pleased with their victory, and grateful to the Emperor for casting his influence on their side; but this destruction of heretics can hardly be said to be “Sancto Spiritu suggerente”.

That the secular power was the ultimate appeal is evidenced by the sovereigns invariably threatening this appeal against the Pope. Moreover, as there is no longer an Emperor it naturally follows that no more Councils can be called.

The Councils were the spiritual ruin of Christendom, and the entrance of the clerics into the field of politics tolled the death-knell of the priesthood as the followers of the lowly teacher of Nazareth.

“The bishops . . . whose wealth and influence were not a little augmented from the time of Constantine, gradually subverted and changed the ancient principles of Church government. For they first excluded the people altogether from a voice in ecclesiastical affairs, and next gradually deprived even the presbyters of their former authority, in order that they might do everything at their own discretion, and especially either draw the ecclesiastical property to themselves or distribute it as they pleased.”

201

“The vices of the clergy, especially of those who officiated in large and opulent cities, were augmented in proportion to the increase of their wealth, honours and advantages, derived from the emperors and from numberless other sources: and that this increase was very great, after the times of Constantine, is acknowledged by all. The bishops had shameful quarrels among themselves, respecting the extent of their jurisdiction and boundaries; and while they trampled on the rights of the people and of the inferior clergy, they vied with the civil governors of provinces in luxury, arrogance and voluptuousness.”

And now to the famous Council of Nicaea, “the Great and Holy Synod” that has decided the orthodoxy of Christendom as the “irretractabilis consensus” of an infallible and God-appointed assembly. Several questions at once present themselves: – (a) Was the Council at Nicaea a representative assembly ? (b) With what motives did the bishops assemble? (c) Were they such men as to be competent to decide the spiritual belief of future generations? (d) Why was the assembly held? (e) Were Eusebius who drew up the “Symbol”, and Constantine who decided the whole affair, men of such character as to command our respect and constrain us to accept them as guardians of our conscience and intelligence ? (f) Finally, what is the Creed of Christendom as passed at Nicaea? These and many other questions at once suggest themselves and require an answer. Long persistent and systematic attempts have been made to whitewash the assembly, but with all the good will in the world the task has been found to be impossible even for the most enthusiastic apologists.

(a) The Council of Nicaea was in no sense a representative one. The records are exceedingly imperfect, and the number of bishops assembled is given variously as 218, 250, 270, or 300, 320, 318.

“All but a very few of the three hundred and twenty bishops, who formed the Council, were from Asiatic and Egyptian sees.”

“Of the three hundred and eighteen bishops whose superscriptions were affixed to its decrees, only eight at most came from the West. The language of the Creed is not only not in Latin, but almost untranslatable into Latin. Grecized forms have been adopted for some of its more subtle expressions.”

(b) The dominant motive was selfish interest.

“We are expressly told, both by Eusebius and Sozomen, that one motive which had drawn many to the Council was the hope of settling their own private concerns and promoting their own private interests.”

As soon as the Emperor set foot in Nicaea he was overwhelmed by petitions of every description, importunate demands and “begging letters” were showered upon him. To his credit he read none of them, but had them brought forth and solemnly burned before the assembly of the holy Fathers, a preparatory lesson in manners at any rate.

(c) The Fathers were mostly ignorant men of little repute.

“A large number, perhaps the majority, consisted of rough, simple, almost illiterate men.”

“The Fathers of Nice were simple and ignorant men.”

“As many of the Bishops were little skilled in human learning, and entirely unacquainted with the rules of controversy, some learned men, as well Priests as Laics, were present to render their assistance.”

In fact the prime defender of orthodoxy was Athanasius, a youth of twenty-five and a deacon, who was set forward invariably as champion.

202 Some divines, however, are less temperate in their estimate. For instance, Peter Martyr, the first Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford, describes the Nicene Fathers as a “set of demoniacs, driven by evil furies and malignant passions”.

The undignified haste of the bishops, their frantic rush to Nicaea, with all the concomitants of an excited crowd on a public holiday, is well summed up by Eusebius in the sentence, “Like racers starting from the scratch they rushed along in wild excitement”.

After all was over, Constantine invited them to a banquet, and so impressed the poor materialistic Fathers with the magnificence of the palace that they thought it a foretaste of the Kingdom of Heaven. As Fleury says: –

“Ils croyoient voir une image du règne de Jésus Christ, et plutôt un songe qu'une vérité”.

(d) The reasons for Constantine's summoning the Council were purely political. If he could get the Christians on his side it would be an enormous gain to him, and would aid in his schemes. In fact, when the Fathers became fractious, he calmly told them that if they did not sign the decrees and behave themselves, he would throw them over and favour the Pagans. The great doctrinal points at issue are known as the Arian controversy.

“It was distinguished from all modern controversies on like subjects by the extremely abstract region within which it was confined. The difficulties which gave rise to the heresy of Arius had but a slight resemblance to those which have given birth to the opinions which have borne his name in modern times. He was led to adopt his peculiar dogma from a fancied necessity, arising out of the terms ‘Father’ and ‘Son’ – ‘begotten’ and ‘unbegotten’. The controversy turned on the relation of the Divine Persons in the Trinity, not only before the Incarnation, before Creation, before Time, but before the first beginning of Time. ‘There was’ – the Arian doctrine did not venture to say ‘a time’ – but ‘there was when He was not’. It was the excess of dogmatism founded upon the most abstract region of human Thought.”

In fact, it was the last protest of philosophy against materialism in spiritual things, and Dean Stanley, in spite of his great learning, falls into the vulgar error of orthodoxy in speaking of the Divine Persons in the Trinity. As the Rev. Alfred Williams Momerie, M.A., D.Sc., LL.D., sometime Fellow of St. John’s, Cambridge, Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at King’s College, London, and Morning Preacher at the Foundling, “an expert in orthodoxy”, says: –

“The orthodox faith, when it is not immoral, is very frequently absurd. Look, for example, at another of its shibboleths – the doctrine of ‘ three persons in one God’. This is a blundering mis-translation of the original version of the Athanasian Creed. The Latin word persona meant, primarily, a mask. It is derived, as you see, from per, through, and sonare, to sound. In ancient times the actors wore masks; and these masks were called personæ, because the words sounded or were uttered through them. Then secondarily the word persona came to mean, by a natural transition of ideas, the character which anyone assumed, the part which he played either on or off the stage. The personæ of an actor are the characters in his répertoire. The personæ of Mr. Irving, e.g., are Charles I., Louis XI., Shylock, the Vicar of Wakefield, etc. And just as the same actor assumes many characters upon the scenic stage, so we all have to play many parts in real life. Every person in existence has more than one persona.

You, for instance, are a member of a family; that is one persona, it is one part which you play, one character in which you appear. You are a member of a profession; that is another persona: you are a member of a club, of a political party, of a railway company; these are other personæ. Cicero somewhere says, ‘ ego sustineo tres personas’. I am sustaining three characters, I appear before you in a threefold attitude. Here was a case – a very intelligible case – of ‘trinity in unity’. Similarly, the original 203 meaning of the Athanasian Creed was, that God had revealed Himself to us in a threefold way, viz., in stature, in human nature, especially in Christ, and in our own individual hearts. ‘The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God; and yet are they not three Gods but one God.’ In other words, it is the same kind and holy Being who appeals to us in the physical beauty of Nature, in the moral beauty of Christ, and in those yearnings after a perfect character which come to every one of us.

“But when the Latin word persona is changed into the English word person, the creed becomes a contradiction in terms. One person cannot be made up of several persons. It is the nature of a person not to include persons but to exclude them. A person as such is distinct and separate from all other persons. To talk therefore of three persons in one God, who is himself supposed to be personal – i.e., of three persons in one person – is like talking of a square circle or a circular square. It is jargon, nonsense. Yet this absurdity – the result of a gross classical blunder of which a schoolboy would be ashamed – has been stereotyped by the clergy into a dogma.”

“And the Council of King’s College, of which the Bishop of London is Chairman, will expel any Professor who publicly denies it.”

And the Latin persona is the mistranslation of the Greek highly metaphysical term hypostasis. What a materialization of divine things!

(e) And now a word on Eusebius and Constantine, whom generations of divines, hard as they have tried, can never succeed in whitewashing. The views I shall give are very, very moderate, for the characters of the pair are in reality hopelessly beyond redemption.

Eusebius was an Arian by conviction, who sold his conscience and principles to gain the imperial favour.

“He composed a creed which he endeavoured to pass off as the true sentiments of his party; and which he affirms to have been received with applause by the Council, and merely rejected because it did not employ the word consubstantial. But this falsehood is worthy of its author. For the fact is, that it was rejected with disgust, as an attempt to condemn the grosser expressions, while it maintained the doctrine of Arius.”

We have, moreover, proof of his remonstrating with Alexander, Bishop of Alexandria, a prominent figure at the Council, for deposing Arius and misrepresenting him at the Council. And Arius himself claims Eusebius as one of his partisans. “His alliance with the Arian party is indisputable”, says Lightfoot. Moreover Eusebius had great difficulty in excusing himself to his constituents, though this was an ordeal well worth going through in order to become “clerk of the imperial closet; interpreter, chaplain and confessor [!] of the Emperor”.

“He seems to have had the faults and virtues of the mere man of letters; strongly excited neither to good nor evil [?], and careless at once of the cause of truth and the prizes of secular greatness [?], in comparison of the comforts and decencies of literary ease.”

Eusebius Pamphyli of Cæsaræa stands accused on unimpeachable evidence of wholesale forgery and falsification of history and chronology.

“Eusebius is the originator of that systematic system of synchronisms which has so often subsequently mutilated history on its procrustean bed.”

“Among those who have been the most guilty of this offence, the name of Eusebius, the Bishop of Cæsaræa . . . should be designated.”

“The gravest of the ecclesiastical historians, Eusebius himself, indirectly confesses that he has related whatever might redound to the glory, and that he has suppressed all that could tend to the disgrace of religion. Such an acknowledgment will naturally excite a suspicion that a writer who has so openly violated one of the fundamental laws of history, has not paid a very strict regard to the observance of the other.”

204 And yet for the Council of Nicaea Eusebius “is a primary source of information of the highest value” (Lightfoot)! So much for this holy Father; as for Constantine he has fewer defenders. But he might have been left in peace as a creditable enough emperor in his way, in spite of the murders of his wife and son, had not Eusebius officiously lied about him so outrageously, and insisted on him as an example of Christian virtue, whereas in fact he was baptized only on his death-bed.

“It is one of the most tragical facts of all history, that Constantine, rather than Marcus Aurelius, was the first Christian Emperor. It is a bitter thought how different the Christianity of the world might have been, had it been adopted as the religion of the empire under the auspices of Marcus Aurelius, instead of those of Constantine.”

“The whole history of the fourth century should be read in the light of this sad reflection, because it serves both to hold up to us the ideal of what the Christian Church and Christian theology might have been, and to remind us of what under existing conditions it must have been and was.”

How true is this and how it is to be regretted that the last protest of Greek philosophy had none but an intriguing Eusebius and a barbaric Constantine to give ear to it. But as Niebuhr says: –

“Many judge of Constantine by too severe a standard, because they regard him as a Christian; but I cannot look upon him in that light.”

Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus Magnus Victor was great in his way in physical affairs, but “rude in intellect” . . . “he understood most indistinctly the points under debate” (Wordsworth). He was insatiable of flattery and the obliging bishops addressed him as “Your Eternity, and the word sacred was applied to his surroundings”. Above all things he was exceedingly superstitious. After his delirium of cruelty, which led to the murder of his wife and son, had passed, tormented by remorse he sought purification in every quarter, but in vain; the heathen priests refused to purify him, and so he had recourse to the bishops.

As to the merits of the dispute between the Bishops he knew nothing. After the Council,

“Constantine not only received the decrees of the bishops as a divine inspiration, but issued a decree of banishment against all who refused to subscribe to the creed, denounced Arius and his disciples as impious, and ordered that he and his books should follow the fate of the pagan Porphyry; that he and his school should be called Porphyrians and his books burned, under penalty of death to anyone who perused them.”

But this did not put an end to the matter, for religious dissension after this “irretractabilis consensus” raged fiercer than ever. Constantine, like a weathercock, veered completely round, recalled Arius, and exiled the orthodox Alexander from his see of Alexandria, received Eusebius of Nicomedia, one of the dissentients from the Nicene decrees, and the namesake of the more notorious Eusebius, into his family, and it was by the former’s hand that he was finally baptised a few days before he went to investigate the merits of the case at first hand.

(f) Let us now see what was the famous creed of Nicaea. Here is a clumsy translation, clumsy because of the insufficiency of English to translate the Greek, but still orthodox in its clumsiness.

“We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things both visible and invisible: and in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father, only begotten, that is to say, of the substance of the Father, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made, both things in heaven and things in earth – who for us 205 men and for our salvation came down and was made flesh, and was made man, suffered and rose again on the third day; went up into the heavens, and is to come again to judge the quick and dead.

“And in the Holy Ghost.

“But those who say, ‘there was when He was not’, and ‘before He was begotten He was not’, and that ‘He came into existence from what was not’, or who profess that the Son of God is of a different ‘person’, or ‘substance’ (ἑτέρας ὑποστάσεως ἢ οὐσίας), or that he is created, or changeable, or variable, are anathematized by the Catholic Church.”

Such is the creed of Christendom, proposed in draft by a Eusebius, debated upon by the turbulent and ignorant clerics at Nicaea, and decided by a Constantine. Let us strike out the damnation clauses, without which, however, no orthodox Council has come to a decision, and admit that the barbaric common sense of Constantine was superior to the turbulent fanaticism of the rest of the Council. Let those who may, believe that such an assembly was “Sancto Spiritu suggerente”; the Nicene symbol at any rate is a saner orthodoxy than any later one, for the historical side is not imposed on the faithful. Hell is absent and much else that is objectionable, but that there is any warrant in the Nicene Council for the lofty claims of the Church set forth by the writer of the papers in Lucifer, is unproved to my mind.

I had intended to take a number of points in detail from the papers before me, but this is unnecessary, for whether the conclusions drawn from the premisses be logical or illogical matters little, if the premisses themselves are not well-founded. There is, however, one point to which I should like to refer. It is that the writer is exceedingly intolerant of those who use the terms “Ecclesiasticism”, “Churchianity” and “Sacerdotalism” in their ordinarily accepted sense. He contends that if he can prove that there is a true Church or Ecclesia and a true Priesthood, then all the sting is taken out of them, and adds:

“At the very outset I wish to clear the way by some definite understanding regarding words, ‘the counters of fool, a wise man’s money’.”

Professor Momerie on the contrary says: –

“You must not allow yourselves to be misled by the glib tongues of ecclesiastics. Words, says Hobbes, are only the counters of wise men, but they are the money of fools. Fools are taken in by sound; and this is one reason why the priests have had such an easy time of it.”

The thought of the day refuses to use the terms “Churchianity”, “Ecclesiasticism” and “Sacerdotalism” in a good sense, and nothing will ever induce it to do so; it prefers the invention of new terms. As well might our brother endeavour to rehabilitate such terms as “imp”, “dunce”, “tyranny”, “Christian” and “Pagan” in their original connotations.

Let us avoid misleading others in our use of terms and follow the example of J. S. Mill, who says: –

“I take my stand upon the acknowledged principle of logic and morality, that when we mean different things we have no right to call them by the same name. Language has no meaning for a word save that in which we predicate it of our fellow-creatures; and unless that is what we intend to express by it, we have no business to employ it.”

206 We can only speak of ecclesiasticism as known to the world, we have no right to give this name to an ideal concept.

Speaking again of the awful abuses that have blackened Church history, the writer of the papers in Lucifer says: –

“These abuses are in the Church, but not of the Church”.

Whereas Professor Momerie writes: –

“As I have explained in my ‘Church and Creed’ and elsewhere, the Christianity of Christendom is fundamentally opposed to the Christianity of Christ. In attacking ecclesiasticism, therefore, I am really defending the Prophet of Nazareth. And I suppose I need hardly say I am perfectly aware that some of the best men in the world have been by profession ‘priests’ in the Church, but not of it.”

Moreover, this capable minister has pledged himself to free Christianity from the bonds of ecclesiasticism, if possible, and I for one wish him good speed in his quest.

“The doctrine of Christ has been cast into the shade by theologians. Ecclesiasticism has been substituted for Christianity.”

“The last two thousand years of ecclesiastical nightmare must be as though they had never been. The Church must be born again.”

“This lecture is only the first of a series on the mischievous effects of ecclesiasticism, which I hope to deliver and re-deliver both in England and America for some years to come.”

Yet one more quotation before I leave the subject: –

“The so-called Christian Church has spent the best of its energy in discussing subjects which are almost unintelligible and altogether unpractical. . . .

“It was literally rent asunder by what is called the filioque clause in the Nicene Creed, i.e., by the question whether the Holy Ghost proceeds – whatever that may mean – from the Father and the Son, or from the Father alone. Christ cared for none of these metaphysical logomachies. He had something else to think of, something better to do. In the last address which He delivered to His disciples, He three times summed up the whole of his teaching in the words of the golden rule. ‘A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another.’ ‘This is My commandment that ye love one another.’ ‘These things I command you, that ye love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another.’ ”

This is for me the Christianity of the Christ: these the words of a Master of Wisdom, this the only creed of Theosophists the world over; “See that ye love one another”.

“I am the Way”, says every Master to his disciples: but no Master has said the “Church is the Way”. Most seriously and earnestly I appeal to my fellow-students in the Society and out of it, not to impose a Church and a Priesthood upon any man short of the one Brotherhood of Humanity and the protection of the “Guardian Wall” of the Elder Brothers of the Race.

Let us bid a long farewell to all such dogmatic statements as: –

“I speak from experience, and all true Churchmen will endorse the statement, the promise is never broken”. And “those who are within know better; those who are without, if they are deterred from entering by such protestations, have not yet come up to the level of the first initiation”.

It is far from my intention to deny that individuals within any religious organisation can attain to lofty heights of knowledge, but it is not because of the organisation, but because of themselves. It is true, I believe, that the promise of a Master is never broken, but it must be from the Master’s own lips and not put into them by others. And those within the “True Church of the Christ” are Masters, and none less can say ‘I know”.

G. R. S. Mead, F.T.S.

Footnotes

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