THE SACRAMENTS IN APHRAATES.
The teaching of Aphraates about the Sacraments throws most curious and instructive side-lights upon the mind of the Church in the fourth century. As in the case of his doctrine of the Trinity and the person of Christ, it is not so much the orthodoxy or heterodoxy as the utter independence of Aphraates which strikes the modern reader. The good bishop goes on in his easy simple style with a tone of assured authority and unconsciousness of serious opposition, and it is only when we pause and try to fit his utterances into the schemes of doctrine and practice with which we are familiar that we realise that we are moving in another world. The Church of Aphraates, like the Church of S. Athanasius, is the legitimate child of second-century Christianity,
