Back to History Reports

MOHAMMED

This period is made immortal by that stupendous mental and moral revolution which was effected by Mohammed, a native of Arabia, A.D. 569-632. But a degenerate Christianity had carefully prepared his way, so that everything was ready for the introduction and spread of his new system. It is difficult to find one body of Christians who, at this time, had not departed in a large measure from the primitive simplicity of Christianity. Metaphysical jargon had taken the place of its doctrines and almost buried its truths. Its holy spirituality had nearly expired in fierce contentions, either about matters of no vital consequence or those which never can be settled. The original beauty of its institutions had been frightfully remodeled, and an intolerable weight of ceremonies had ridiculed its pure and unpretending rites out of existence. With obscure exceptions, Christians had become a by-word and a hissing in Arabia, and in the East generally. They had given themselves up to legends, to the adoration of relics, of images, saints and angels, of Mary-worship, and other ridiculous and extravagant things. These, together with salvation by baptism, the seeking of soul-food by eating the Supper, the forcing of babes into the communion of the Church and their participancy in the Supper, purgatory, ecclesiastical pomp and corruption finished the work; so that Gregory the Great himself likened the Church to a ship, rotten and leaky, hourly looking for wreck. She had become thoroughly indolent, contentious and faithless to her trust, and was ready to be led away with any new doctrine.

Learning was nearly extinct, or was shut up in the cells of monks. Many of those bishops of whose lordliness we hear so much could neither read nor write, and their lives were given to the most odious forms of iniquity. The Church was full of spurious Gospels and other writings; and stood out before the world in bitter strifes and absurd distractions, parading an empty pride which proved to men the need of a new faith and threatened her entire overthrow east of the Bosphorus. The condition of Arabia, social, political, religions, threw powerful influences in favor of a new religion. The Arabians were pre-eminently ignorant, and no one faith prevailed strongly over another, so that no great bond held them together. They were not even united under one civil government, but under several which were at enmity with each other--a condition exactly adapted to combine them under one rapturous book and one bloody sword. Mecca, the birthplace of Mohammed, was also a singular center of religions sects, Jewish, Christian and Pagan; and he saw the weakening effect of their hostilities, especially in the divisions and hatreds of those who professed the same creeds. In the times of Roman persecution the Jews had flocked there for security, and all sorts of Christians had fled for the same protection, where they could cherish and broach their own views without fear. Of course, in this promiscuous interblending, all kinds of errors mixed themselves with truth, until there came a general decay of first principles. The epoch was specially turbulent. New kingdoms were springing up out of the vast wrecks of the Empire and in their seething jealousies Arabia, which was rising into importance, only required a leader to make her formidable. In a word, he would be a great artist, whose pen could draw a picture so black as to exaggerate the fearful state of things in this age of usurpation, fraud and error, which inflicted its due penalty in a dark and endless variety of evils.

Mohammed was highly gifted by nature. He was graceful in person and manners, rising superior to many of his countrymen in his genius, and highly enthusiastic. In very early life his powerful mind grasped the great influence of religion over mankind, an idea which drew him into deep religious contemplation, and rendered him affable to the weak and deferential to the powerful. What his original notions were in framing a new religion, whether enthusiasm or hypocrisy predominated, is a secret left with God. But for years he affected an almost total exclusion from the world, and was ready to burst upon it with his new revelations just after the Emperor Phocas had conferred upon Gregory the Great the title of Universal Pastor. Phocas had murdered his predecessor, Maurice, in order to take the crown, and he desired to prop up his throne by the support of the Church. Gregory had passed through a long, fiery contest for this supremacy in the Church, and so he sanctioned the usurper and received his reward. But dying at that juncture, Boniface took the title, A.D. 606, while the Arabian prophet really opened his public mission in 609--a remarkable coincidence. The many sects of his own home opened to him a wide field for his joint-political and religious experiment. The first idea which seized his mind was that the doctrine of the Unity of God was in danger of being lost. This one great truth was common to Jews, Christians and Arabs. But pagan polytheists amongst them contradicted this doctrine; and by gratuitous assertion lie accused the Jews of holding a plurality of gods by believing in Ezra as the son of God; and accused the Christians of the same in the doctrine of the Trinity. By this artifice he made himself the apostle of the tenet of the Divine Unity, and used it to prove his own legation from God.

In that gloomy cave at Mount Hara, near Mecca, he made this fundamental article of the Old and New Testament the cornerstone of his new system. He was shut up to the alternative of framing an entirely new religion, or of grafting new notions of his own into the credibility of those already existing. In this laboratory, therefore, he tampered with Christianity and Judaism, mixing certain elements of these weighty and ancient faiths with a curious compound of pagan superstitions. The admixture under his weird alchemy came forth an eclectic faith from genuine, spurious and apocryphal writings, the Bible, the pagan traditions and the reveries of the Talmud. What did not suit his purpose lie threw aside, and studiously accommodated his teachings to the preconceptions of all sects, yet directly imitating none. For the Jew he recognized the divine authority of Moses; for the Christian the divine mission of Jesus; and for the pagan he tolerated all his imposing ceremonies. He opened his mission with tact and sagacity, showing that he read the popular mind. He appealed directly to the prejudices and prepossessions of his countrymen; declaring himself a delegate from God to supplement what Moses and Christ had left unfinished, by improving their work, supplying their deficiencies, closing forever the book of prophecy and thus clothing the new revelation with an air of progress. His sagacious penetration employed all these in the best way to promote his ambition. His largest elements, therefore, were taken from Moses and Christ, as he depended on them for his vivifying principle to be cast into the dull and inert mass, and to give it plausibility and consistency. This was his passport both to Jewish and Christian confidence, and shows his superior skill to use the most powerful auxiliaries in his politic cause. Then he bent the sword around the motley mass to bind it together. This laid bare his design on the State, while the Koran interpreted his purpose on the Church. This singular piece of composition, the Koran, is thrown together in the most desultory manner, after the general order of Eastern writing. Yet it possesses great copiousness; it is full of natural, vivid imagery, is elegant in cadence, and wealthy in rhythm. Indeed, the Mussulman is proud of what he calls its inimitable sublimity, and avows that for this reason it cannot be translated out of the Arabic into any other tongue.

The Arabians were also proud of their descent from Ishmael, and the antiquity of their temple, which, Mohammed told them, angels had built for Abraham, after the pattern of that built for Adam in Paradise, and that Ishmael and Abraham both worshiped there. Hence, he was sent to save his countrymen from that idolatry which adored the stars which floated over its venerable walls. But he appealed only to their pride, their blind prejudices and quenchless passions. He gave them a political religion on a level with their sensual lives. There was no mystery in it for their reason to grapple with or for their faith to fathom, no discipline to keep their depraved appetites in check, no pride to be mortified and no sacrifices imposed for the blessing of others. Then he threw into it the martial element. There were new laurels to conquer, new fields of slaughter for fierceness and rapine to flood and new provinces to possess. In order to fire their zeal he declared the divine patience exhausted, and that every monument of idolatry must be destroyed by the sword. Thus all things favored his plan, and the Church was to reap the terrible harvest which she had sown. Yet there was not light enough left to penetrate the bosom of his odious system; not piety enough to exhibit a Christian superiority to the imposition. In fact, he urged it upon his countrymen as a better practical religion than any that then existed, and there was little in the spirit or conscience of the so-called Christian Church to contradict him.

THE PAULICIANS

Paulician history has come to us mainly through the persecutors of the Paulicians, and it scarcely has its parallel for calumny in the annals of the centuries. They have always been coupled with the MANICHAEANS, and nothing has been too base to say of them. Bossuet and Bowers have distinguished themselves in this calumny, but Bowers has been effectually answered by the learned Lardner. With his characteristic narrowness of all whom he dislikes, Bossuet says of them: ‘This so hidden a sect, so abominable, so full of seduction, of superstition and hypocrisy, notwithstanding imperial laws which condemned its followers to death, yet maintained and diffused itself.’ [Bossuet on Manichaeans] This is his usual style of treating the sober facts of history, hence so collected a pen as Buckle’s charges him with an ‘audacious attempt to degrade history,’ as ‘a painful exhibition of a great genius cramped,’ who could ‘willingly submit to a prostration of judgment, and could display a blind credulity, of which in our day even the feeblest minds would be ashamed.’ Fenelon was a lovely spirit and almost adored Bossuet, meeting in return little but taunt and scorn. In his noble book defending Madame Guyon, he had ventured to differ in opinion with him on a single point, whereupon Bossuet arrogantly sent a charge of heresy to Rome in 1697 against his gentle fellow-bishop. True, Louis XIV had trusted him with great responsibilities, but the good man was compelled to sign a recantation on pain of death--an act which Bishop Burnet treats with contempt. [Burnet’s Hist. of his own Time, p. 657; Schaff-Herzog, Ency. Art. Fenelon] Mosheim esteems him as lightly as Buckle as a historian, saying: ‘This writer certainly did not go to the sources, and being influenced by party zeal, he was willing to make mistakes.’ [Ecc. Hist. iii] Neither Jortin nor Fleury trust him where points of orthodoxy or Church authority are concerned. The older writers cherished a singular inveteracy against the Manichaeans as if they were fiends incarnate. Eusebius denounces Manes as a ‘barbarian,’ a ‘madman,’ ‘diabolical and furious,’ and otherwise speaks so unguardedly that the discreet Lardner says of the great historian in this case, he ‘appears out of humor and scarce master of himself.’ Without doubt, the system of Manes was abstruse, intricate and subtile, therefore it must be examined with the more care. It was a piece of mystic theology and cold-blooded reasoning which brought the theories of the Gnostic to a point of logical extravagance, and mingled the doctrines of the Magi with those of Christ. It allied with it little superstition, but aiming at the profoundest philosophy, it was as cold as ice; this alone put it beyond the grasp of a fiery spirit like Bossuet, and he confounded the Paulicians with the Manichaeans, principally because he implicitly trusted their two enemies, Photius and Siculus, the authors who have sent their names down from the ninth century on a tide of acrid invective. Arnold of Germany, Beausobre and Lardner have honored themselves and the subject with sedate investigation and judicial candor, and have set right many of the inconsistencies and contradictions of Photius and Siculus. Let us examine the competency of these two witnesses. Who were they and to what did they testify?

Photius possessed great ability, but he was an interested party in his own evidence, and we may fairly question how far he is entitled to absolute credence. As Patriarch of Constantinople, no one was more interested than he in crushing the Paulicians. He was a layman, a great diplomat, and headed one of the most scandalous dissensions of his times. In five days he hurried himself through the five necessary orders, to become Patriarch on the sixth day, thrusting himself into the place of Ignatius, son of Michael I, a man of blameless character, who was deposed because he refused the put the Empress out of the way of plotting Bardas by forcing her into a nunnery. But Pope Nicolas I, by the advice of a synod held at Rome, deposed Photius as an usurper, A.D. 862. In turn, Photius excommunicated the pope, but Gass says that another synod deposed Photius in 867 as ‘a liar, adulterer, parricide and heretic.’ He was restored to the patriarchate on the death of Ignatius, but was degraded and banished by the Emperor Leo in 886 for political intrigue and embezzlement of the public money. This is the chief witness on whose word the Paulicians are condemned. Peter Siculus is not so well-known; but he was a nobleman under Basil when that emperor drifted into a war with the Paulicians. He was sent to Fabrica, a Paulician town, to negotiate an exchange of prisoners, remaining there from seven to nine months under restraint, within an enemy’s lines by sufferance. After this, he pretends to write their history as a sect. But they were split up into several sects, and how could he learn the history of them all in that place and time? They were scattered, according to Gibbon, ‘through all the regions of Pontus and Cappadocia,’ and made up of ‘the remnant of the Gnostic sects,’ with many converted Catholics, and ‘those of the religion of Zoroaster.’ This was the training he received. for writing a history of the Paulicians, under the absurd notion that they were followers of Manes. Gass remarks that Photius wrote his book before A.D. 867, and Siculus wrote his after 868, the latter having a ‘curious resemblance’ to the former, from which Siculus ‘borrowed.’ Gibbon charges him with ‘much prejudice and passion’ in defining ‘the six capital errors of the Paulicians.’ Now, on common legal principles, what is the value of these two witnesses? Had they full knowledge of the subject to which they deposed? Were they disinterested and unbiased? And did their testimony harmonize? On the first of these questions we have scant. knowledge. As to the second, no more partial witnesses could be chosen, one being patriarch of that religion which the Paulicians opposed, the other ambassador to a prince who was seeking their lives. And as to the third, their testimony conflicts in many points, and bears the marks of ill-will. They openly take the place of accusers rather than of witnesses, and treat them as enemies whom they would destroy. Photius makes no attempt to disguise his hatred, but bluntly titles his book ‘against ‘ them. Then, Siculus is so violent in his denunciation that he spends his strength and space in scorning what they denied, rather than in slating what they held, his deepest grievance being, that they rejected so much that lie avowed. The whole animus of their design and drift is seen in their unblushing effort to stigmatize them as Manichaeans.

The Paulicians themselves certainly should have known what they were. and both these witnesses explicitly state that they repelled this charge with great spirit. But what difference did that make with these maligners? So long as they could befoul their fame by that odious brand, they pinned the charge to them as if it were true. Gibbon states that the Paulicians disclaimed ‘the theology of Manes, and the authors of the kindred heresies, and the thirty generations, or aeons, which had been created by the fruitful fancy of Valentine. The Paulicians sincerely condemned the memory and the opinions of the Manichaean sect, and complained of the injustice which impressed that invidious name on the simple votaries of St. Paul and of Christ.’ ‘All through, these witnesses judged them by a false standard of their own raising,’ while the Paulicians are allowed no counter evidence nor cross-examination, nothing but denial and protest. Photius pretended fair play when he took up his pen to write ‘Contra Manichaeos’ in one book, without telling what they did believe; and then, on a false assumption, followed that by three others to confute them as though they were disciples of Manes. Mosheim protests against such a bare-faced abuse when he says of the Paulicians: ‘They declared their abhorrence of Manes and his doctrine, and it is certain that they were not genuine Manichaeans, although they might hold some doctrines bearing a resemblance to those of that sect. [Ecc. Hist.]

THERE WERE DIFFERENT CLASSES OF MANICHAEANS AS WELL AS PAULICIANS, but Photius and Siculus lump them en masse and convict themselves again and again of misrepresentation in matters of public notoriety. They were much like Augustine, who for nine years had been a zealous Manichaean, and whose loudest complaint against them afterward was that they laughed at Catholic credulity and mocked at its authority, setting up reason against these, as well they might. Photius and Siculus weaken themselves by that silence which shows that they did not tell the whole truth, as well as renders it doubtful whether they told nothing but the truth. We find such contradictions as these in their testimony. They admit that Constantine, the leader of the Paulicians, received the New Testament as his inspired guide, and cited it to prove his tenets, and then charge him with claiming to speak by the Holy Spirit. They fail to charge him with teaching any new doctrine, but allege that he pretended to speak by the Holy Spirit, and then charge him with borrowing his doctrines from the Scythian, Pythagoras, and other pagan teachers! They contemn him for professing to be the very power of God, but fail to show that he ever attempted miracles! They ridicule the Paulicians as an aristocratic organization, then sneer at them because they gave the Scriptures to everybody, because they had no priests, and because, instead of listening to the ravings of their inspired leader, they read the Scriptures publicly! They charge them with dissolute lives, with gluttony and obscenity at their festivals; and in the same breath tell us that they studiously married, drank no wine and ate no flesh! They taught that they might eat fruit, herbs, bread, but neither eggs nor fish. In other things they discredit their whole testimony under the ordinary rules which govern evidence.

So far as we know the true history of the Paulicians is this. They first appeared about A.D. 660, and on this wise. CONSTANTINE, a young Armenian and a Manichaean, sheltered a Christian deacon who was flying from Mohammedan captivity in Syria. Grateful for his hospitality, the deacon gave him a copy of the Four Gospels and Paul’s Epistles. These the youth prized as a new treasure from God. Gibbon says:

‘These books became the measure of his studies and the rule of his faith; and the Catholics, who dispute his interpretation, acknowledge that his text was genuine and sincere. But he attached himself with peculiar devotion to the writings and character of St. Paul. The name of the Paulicians is derived by their enemies from some unknown and domestic teacher; but I am confident that they gloried in their affinity to the Apostle to the Gentiles. . . . In the Gospels and the Epistles of St. Paul, his faithful follower investigated the creed of primitive Christianity; and, whatever may be the success, a Protestant reader will applaud the spirit of the inquiry.’

He then affirms that the Paulicians respected the Old Testament, the Epistles of Peter and the teachings of Manes. It is hard to obtain their full creed. Siculus blesses ‘the divine and orthodox Emperors,’ because they committed their books to the flames, ‘and if any person be found to have secreted them, he was to be put to death, and his goods confiscated.’ Beausobre states that they agreed but little with the Manichaeans, gave the Scriptures to all, even women, and treated the worship of crosses, images, relics and Mary with contempt, like the Friends, they had no order of clergy or pastors, but held their assemblies as a universal priesthood, having no councils, synods or association; or, as Gibbon expresses it, their ‘teachers were distinguished only by their scriptural names, by the modest title of fellow-pilgrims, by the austerity of their lives, their zeal or knowledge, and the credit of some extraordinary gifts of the Holy Spirit. But they were incapable of desiring, or at least obtaining, the wealth and honors of the Catholic prelacy; such anti-Christian pride they bitterly censured, and even the rank of elder or presbyter was condemned.’ They rejected the perpetual virginity of Mary, but believed that she gave birth to the body of Jesus precisely as its form came from heaven. For these reasons they could not live in the Greek Church, nor could they be Manichaeans, believing and practicing as they did, neither were they Baptists.

In regard to Baptism and the Supper, Meander says that they rejected ‘The outward celebration of the sacraments;’ and Gibbon, that ‘In the practice, or at least in the theory of the sacraments, the Paulicians were inclined to abolish all visible objects of worship, and the words of the Gospel were, in their judgment, the baptism and communion of the faithful.’ By which is clearly meant, that they neither used the elements of water in baptism, nor of bread and wine in the Supper. They believed in a baptism known as the Consolamentum or baptism of the Spirit, which they administered by laying a copy of the Gospels on the head of the candidate, accompanied with prayer. As to the Supper, they fed on Christ only by faith in the heart, regarding this as the spirit of the institution. In a word, on the ordinances they were in substance Quakers. In this, again, they differed from the Manichaeans, who both administered water baptism and the Supper, in the use of the proper elements, as is seen in the dispute of Felix with Augustine, and the accusations against them of Leo the Great; though Beausobre surmises that they used water instead of wine at the Supper, because of their known abstinence from wine. The simple fact appears to be, that they became so thoroughly disgusted with all the ceremonies and nonsense which the Catholics threw about baptism, making it regeneration de facto, and with the ridiculous abomination of transubstantiation, that they rejected both, by swinging to the other extreme. And no wonder. Clearly enough, they were Reformed Manichaeans, who were disgusted with the rubbishly teachings of the times all around, and were groping their way back to primitive truth as best they could, with the little light that they possessed. They were terribly troubled with Gnosticism and Oriental Magism, as were most of the Christians of their day, and were filled with all sorts of speculations as to the nature of God, the origin of matter, its relations to moral and physical evil; and so were poor specimens of Christians any way, when measured after the full order of the Gospel. But the Christian world at that time afforded nothing better. Dr. Semler accords them more correct ideas of godliness, worship and Church government than the Catholics of that time, and these virtues drew upon them more persecution from the hierarchy than their doctrinal views. Besides, as we shall see hereafter, the germ of a great movement in the right direction was lodged in them, which, finally, led to the most gratifying results.