The Loss of Spiritual Gifts.
Not only did the moral declensions in the Church, which started soon after the demise of the Apostles, proceed with accelerated pace after Constantine became the patron of the Church, and with such resulting evils as I have pointed out, but there was a like declension in the enjoyment of spiritual gifts in the Church. It is well known that the Apostles promised the Holy Ghost to those who received the Gospel, and the enjoyment of those supernatural gifts which go with it. Indeed Jesus Himself said in His last commission to his disciples:
Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. And these signs shall follow them that believe: In my name they shall cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.155
Paul, in speaking of the spiritual gifts promised in the Gospel, says:
Now there are diversities of gifts, by the same Spirit. And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all. But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal. For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit; to another faith by the same Spirit; to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit; to another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another discerning of spirits, to another diverse kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues: but all these worketh that one and the self-same Spirit, dividing to every man severally as He will.156
It is well known that the spiritual gifts here enumerated were enjoyed by the saints in the early Christian centuries; and especially in Apostolic times. The New Testament books are replete with reference to the enjoyment of these gifts of the Spirit among the saints. Nor is there any intimation of the discontinuance of them. On the contrary it is reasonable to conclude that so long as the saints shall continue in the enjoyment of the Holy Ghost, that long also will they enjoy the spiritual gifts which proceed from a possession of Him. Moreover, "the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts."157 Such are the effects of the operations of the Holy Ghost upon the nature of man. These fruits of the Spirit indicate the change that the Spirit of God may effect in human nature; by which that which is corrupted through sin may be conformed to that which is pure and holy, according to the working whereby the Spirit is able to subdue all things unto Himself, in them that give place for His indwelling in their souls. This effectual working of the Spirit in the souls of men, by which they were transformed from vileness to holiness, was the boast of the early saints. And, upon reflection, all will concede that the victories of the Spirit in reforming the lives of men and making them in their very nature conform to the likeness of Christ in righteousness, are more to be desired and more to be celebrated than those victories which are physical or intellectual merely in their nature. Indeed these latter fruits of the Spirit derive their chief value from the extent to which they contribute to the production of the former—that is, to the extent that they establish men in the faith, enable them to crucify the flesh with the lusts thereof, and help them to live in harmony with the sweet influence of the Spirit of God. When men live in harmony with that Spirit there will righteousness obtain; there will love abound; there will the Gospel of Christ appear triumphant. Where these fruits do not appear, there the Gospel of Christ is not; there the powers of darkness for the time being, are triumphant. Yet notwithstanding this promise concerning the enjoyment of the spiritual gifts of the Gospel, the evidence is abundant and conclusive that when all the Apostles were deceased, then there was a marked declension in the manifestation of the spiritual powers of the Gospel. "With the close of the New Testament records," says Dr. Phillip Smith, author of The Student's Ecclesiastical History, "and the death of the last surviving Apostle, the history of the Church passes from its sacred to its purely human phase. The miraculous gifts which attested the divine mission of the Apostles ceased; not indeed by any formal record of their withdrawal, but by the clear evidence that they were possessed no longer."158
Dr. Jortin bears witness to the same fact. He says:
The words Eusebius intimated that he thought those extraordinary powers to be, at least, not very common afterwards—[i. e., the beginning of the second century]. "They went about," says he, "with God's co-operative grace, for even then the divine Spirit performed many miracles by them." * * * This brings the probability of miracles down to the beginning of the second century, in the middle of which Justin Martyr says: "There are prophetic gifts among us even until now:" and amongst these gifts he reckons up miraculous powers, as healing the sick, casting out evil spirits, etc. His words imply an opinion that such gifts were not only exercised in his time, but had been continued down to his time, and he may be justly supposed to speak the sense of his contemporary Christians; and that is all that I cite him for. It seems probable that if we bad a full and authentic history of the propagation of the Gospel, from the time of the Apostles to the middle of the second century, composed by eye witnesses and by the preachers of Christianity, we should find miracles wrought for the conversion of the pagans. But from A. D. 70 to 150 is a dark interval, and we have very short accounts of the transactions of those days, unless we should accept of groundless rumors and frivolous tales.159
So, also, Dr. Mosheim, speaking of the second century, and after commenting on the extent to which the extraordinary divine gifts contributed to the extension of the limits of the Church, says: "The gift of foreign tongues appears to have gradually ceased, as soon as many nations became enlightened with the truth; * * * but the other gifts with which God favored the rising Church of Christ, were, as we learn from numerous testimonies of the ancients, still conferred upon particular persons here and there." And when writing of the fourth and succeeding centuries, he, too, bears witness of the declension, and final cessation of these spiritual powers among the Christians; and, indeed, the most of our ecclesiastical writers form the same conclusion.
Thus the Christians lost the enjoyment of the spiritual gifts of the Gospel, such as inspired dreams, prophecies, healings, speaking in new tongues, ministering of angels, and, most to be lamented of all, direct revelation from God, by which the will of God might be made known to His people and His Church preserved from error, from decadence, and from destruction: and by the absence of these spiritual gifts and powers among the Christians of the third and fourth centuries, we may know that a mere man-made religion, having indeed a form of godliness but denying the power thereof, had succeeded to the spiritually gifted religion, of Jesus Christ, wherein the power of God is ever present and outwardly as well as inwardly manifested.
Departure of "Christendom" from the