It has been too much the custom to treat Quietism as a sporadic type of religion, as a sort of capricious “sport,” to use a familiar botanical term, expressing itself in two or three famous, but solitary and isolated, mystics on the continent of Europe, and to assume that later evidences of Quietism must be traced back to the teachings of these few rare expounders of it. I am convinced, on the contrary, that these select individuals were only luminous examples of a profound religious tendency, which, in varying form of expression, swept over the entire western world in the latter part of the seventeenth and the early part of the eighteenth centuries, flooded into the consciousness of all who were intensely religious, and left an “unimaginable touch” even on the rank and file of believers. It was a deep and widespread movement, confined to no one country and it was limited to no one branch of the Christian Church. It burst forth in sundered places and spread like a new Pentecost, through kindled personalities and through quick and powerful books of genius.

Professor Adolf von Harnack in the Sitzungsberichte of the Berlin Academy for December 9, 1915 (pages 854–875) has discussed afresh in his characteristically interesting and instructive fashion the textual criticism and meaning of the angels' song in Luke 2 14. After a full exposition of the evidence and an investigation of the rare word εὐδοκία, he decides for the following text:

Δόξα ἐν ὑΨίστοις ϑεῷ καὶ ἐπὶ γῆς

Εἰρήνη ἀνϑρώποις εὐδοκίας,

which he translates:

“Glory in the highest to God and on earth

Peace to men of (His) gracious will.”

This form of the Greek text is in the second line substantially that on which the English Revised Version rests (“men in whom he is well pleased”); but Harnack, following Origen, connects εὐδοκίας not with ἀνϑρώποις but, by a somewhat harsh hyperbaton, with εἰρήνη, and interprets: “Peace is now given to men—no ordinary peace but the peace of His gracious will.”

Harnack's argument, which contains much valuable discussion on various aspects of the verse, need not be here repeated. But two of the points which he makes, and in regard to which his reasoning is convincing, deserve notice; for although at first sight they might appear to occupy but a modest place among his results, in reality they seem to offer the key to the serious textual problem of the passage, and so lead to a translation and interpretation quite different from Harnack's. They may be stated thus:

(1) With the reading εὐδοκίας, the song is a distich, of which the first line must be taken to include the words ἐπὶ γῆς and the second to begin with εἰρήνη.

(2) ἀνϑρώποις εὐδοκίας is a phrase wholly unexampled and in itself full of difficulty. For εὐδοκία means “God's gracious will.” It refers to His purpose, His choice, not to His approval or satisfaction with man's performance; and it looks to the future, to grace, to the hope of a needy world, not to the past, to man's merit, or even to the inherent worth of human nature.

Simon Zelotes or Simon the Cananæan is one of the Twelve of whom it is customary to say that we know nothing except that his name shows that he had once belonged to the Sect of the Zealots or Cananæans, the “physical-force men” of the Jews, and that he had afterwards, seeing the error of his ways, adopted the pacific teachings of Jesus.

It is therefore somewhat of a shock to discover from Josephus that, if his evidence be correct, the use of the name Zealot to describe a Jewish sect or party cannot be earlier than A.D. 66. For this reason it seems opportune to bring together the facts dealing with the Zealots and cognate contemporary movements, and in their light to ask once more what is the meaning of “Simon the Zealot.”

The church has come to have an enduring place not only in history but in thought. At least since the writing of The City of God it has decided some of the most vital questions confronting us because of a peculiar sanctity attached to it. It is not therefore out of place to demand from time to time that it show us its credentials. The present essay is an attempt to discover if there is anything peculiarly sacred about the manner of its founding that would justify us in ascribing unique spiritual authority to it.