the first cloister. The movement began with the original community in Jerusalem itself. The Gospel of Matthew and almost all "Acts of the Apostles" testify to rigorously ascetic sentiment.[1] The Persian and Nestorian Churches developed the monastic idea further, and finally Islam assimilated it to the full. To this day Oriental piety is dominated by the Moslem Orders and Brotherhoods. And Jewry followed the same line of evolution, from the Karæi[2] (Qaraites) of the eighth century to the Polish Hasidim of the eighteenth.[3]
Christianity, which even in the second century was hardly more than an extended Order, and whose public influence was out of all proportion to the number of its adherents, grew suddenly vast about the year 250. This is the epochal moment in which the last city-cults of the Classical effaced themselves before, not Christianity but the new-born Pagan Church. The records of the Fratres Arvales in Rome break off in 241, and the last cult-inscriptions at Olympia are of 265. At the same time, the cumulation of the most diverse priestly characters in one man became customary,[4] implying that these usages were felt no longer as specific, but as usages of one single religion. And this religion set out to convert, spreading itself far and wide over the lands of the Hellenistic-Roman stock. The Christian religion, on the other hand, was alone in spreading (c. 300) over the great Arabian field. And for that very reason it was inevitable that inner contradiction should now be set up in it. Due, not now to the spiritual dispositions of particular men, but to the spirit of the particular landscapes, these contradictions led to the break-up of Christianity into several religions — and for ever.
The controversy concerning the nature of Christ was the issue on which this conflict came up for decision. The matter in dispute was just those problems of substance which in the same form and with the same tendency fill the thoughts of all other Magian theologies. Neoplatonic Scholasticism, Porphyry, Iamblichus, and above all Proclus treated it in a Western formulation, by modes of thought closely akin to Philo's and even to Paul's. The relation between the Primary One, Nus, Logos, the Father, and the Mediator was considered with reference to the substantial. Was the process thereof one of emanation, of partition, or of pervasion? Was one contained in the other, are they identical, or mutually exclusive? Was the Triad at the same time a Monad? In the East a different constitution of the problem is evidenced already in the premisses of the John Gospel and the Bardesanian Gnosis: the relation of Ahuramazda to the Holy Spirit (Spenta Mainyu) and the nature of Vohu Mano gave plenty of
- ↑ Even to the point indicated in Matt. xix, 12, which Origen followed to the letter.
- ↑ See Ency. Brit., XI ed., article "Qaraites." The outlook of these Protestants so resembled that of the Western Protestants that their name was used as a term of contempt for the latter by the Catholics, and not greatly resented. It is significant also that this movement in Jewry almost coincided in date with the vaster Reformation of Islam. — Tr.
- ↑ The followers of Baal Shem above mentioned (p. 228) not to be confused with the Hasidim or Assideans of the second century. — Tr.
- ↑ Wissowa, Religion und Kulturs der Römer, p. 493; Geffcken pp. 4, 144.
