master – for the benefit of those whose leisure or acquirements did not suffice for extensive reading. He commented with a view of edification; and seeking an ethical or a spiritual lesson everywhere, he fell willingly into the pitfall of allegory.[1] His fearless pursuit however of the principles he had learned in the course of a wide, if irregular, study of the fathers, makes Claudius a signal apparition at a time when the material accessories of religion were forcing themselves more and more into the relations between man and God. The worship of images, of pictures, of the Cross itself,[2] the belief in the mediation of saints, the efficacy of pilgrimages, the authority of the holy see, seemed to him but the means of deadening the responsibility of individual men.
Claudius sought to quicken this sense. He is sure that if a man has a direct personal interest in his own welfare, if he does not rely on spiritual processes conducted by others on his behalf, nor tie his faith to material representations of the unseen, he can be the better trusted to walk aright. The freedom of the gospel he is never tired of contrasting with the bondage of the law, a bondage which he saw revived in the religious system of his day. Faith is incomplete without its corollary, action, or, as he prefers to call it, love. With the works of the sacerdotal law he will have nothing to do.[3] (Apologetic. ap. Jon. Aurel. p. 194 F. H.) Let no man trust in the intercession or merit of the saints, because except he
- ↑ Claudius's allegorising tendency has however been exaggerated. He himself lays down the limit, 'scilicet ut manente veritate historiae figuras intelligamus,' in Galat. cap. iv. p. 158 B.
- ↑ Dr. Reuter, Geschichte der religiösen Aufklärung 1. 17, is surely guilty of an anachronism in speaking of the 'crucifix,' of the existence or possibility of which neither Claudius nor any of his opponents seem aware. See for example Jonas 168 H. Pictures of the crucifixion there doubtless were, and perhaps crosses bearing a painted figure; but these are not what we call 'crucifixes.'
- ↑ De admonitione et exhortatione unde rogasti quod scriberem, ut votum quod voverunt domino reddant; ... nullam admonitionem meliorem potui invenire quam epistulae primae Pauli apostoli, quam misi, quia tota inde agitur ut merita hominum tollat, unde maxime nunc monachi gloriantur, et gratiam Dei commendat, per quam omnis qui vovit, quod vovit domino reddat: praef. in epp. Pauli, Mai, Nov. Coll. 7. 275 sq.
