Application of the Seven
Notes to the Existing
Developments of Christian Doctrine
Chapter 6. Application of the First Note
of a True Development—Preservation of Type
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{207} NOW let me attempt to apply the foregoing seven Notes
of fidelity in intellectual developments to the instance
of Christian Doctrine. And first as to the Note of identity
of type.
I have said above, that, whereas all great ideas are
found, as time goes on, to involve much which was not
seen at first to belong to them, and have developments,
that is enlargements, applications, uses and fortunes,
very various, one security against error and perversion
in the process is the maintenance of the original type,
which the idea presented to the world at its origin, amid
and through all its apparent changes and vicissitudes
from first to last.
How does this apply to Christianity? What is its
original type? and has that type been preserved in the
developments commonly called Catholic, which have
followed, and in the Church which embodies and teaches
them? Let us take it as the world now views it in its
age; and let us take it as the world once viewed it in
its youth; and let us see whether there be any great
difference between the early and the later description of
it. The following statement will show my meaning:— {208}
There is a religious communion claiming a divine
commission, and holding all other religious bodies around
it heretical or infidel; it is a well-organized,
well-disciplined body; it is a sort of secret society,
binding together its members by influences and by
engagements which it is difficult for strangers to
ascertain. It is spread over the known world; it may be
weak or insignificant locally, but it is strong on the
whole from its continuity; it may be smaller than all
other religious bodies together, but is larger than each
separately. It is a natural enemy to governments external
to itself; it is intolerant and engrossing, and tends to
a new modelling of society; it breaks laws, it divides
families. It is a gross superstition; it is charged with
the foulest crimes; it is despised by the intellect of
the day; it is frightful to the imagination of the many.
And there is but one communion such.
Place this description before Pliny or Julian; place
it before Frederick the Second or Guizot [Note 1].
"Apparent diræ facies." Each knows at once,
without asking a question, who is meant by it. One
object, and only one, absorbs each item of the detail of
the delineation.
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Section
1. The Church of the First Centuries
The primâ facie view of early Christianity, in
the eyes of witnesses external to it, is presented to us
in the brief but vivid descriptions given by Tacitus,
Suetonius, and Pliny, the only heathen writers who
distinctly mention it for the first hundred and fifty
years.
Tacitus is led to speak of the Religion, on occasion
of {209} the conflagration of Rome, which was popularly imputed
to Nero. "To put an end to the report," he
says, "he laid the guilt on others, and visited them
with the most exquisite punishment, those, namely, who,
held in abhorrence for their crimes (per flagitia
invisos), were popularly called Christians. The
author of that profession (nominis) was Christ,
who, in the reign of Tiberius, was capitally punished by
the Procurator, Pontius Pilate. The deadly superstition (exitiabilis
superstitio), though checked for a while, broke out
afresh; and that, not only throughout Judæa, the original
seat of the evil, but through the City also, whither all
things atrocious or shocking (atrocia aut pudenda)
flow together from every quarter and thrive. At first,
certain were seized who avowed it; then, on their report,
a vast multitude were convicted, not so much of firing
the City, as of hatred of mankind (odio humani generis)."
After describing their tortures, he continues, "In
consequence, though they were guilty, and deserved most
signal punishment, they began to be pitied, as if
destroyed not for any public object, but from the
barbarity of one man."
Suetonius relates the same transactions thus:
"Capital punishments were inflicted on the
Christians, a class of men of a new and magical
superstition (superstitionis novæ et maleficæ)."
What gives additional character to this statement is its
context; for it occurs as one out of various police or
sumptuary or domestic regulations, which Nero made; such
as "controlling private expenses, forbidding taverns
to serve meat, repressing the contests of theatrical
parties, and securing the integrity of wills."
When Pliny was Governor of Pontus, he wrote his
celebrated letter to the Emperor Trajan, to ask advice
how he was to deal with the Christians, whom he found
there in great numbers. One of his points of hesitation
was, whether the very profession of Christianity was not
by itself sufficient to justify punishment; "whether
the name {210} itself should be visited, though clear of
flagitious acts (flagitia) or only when connected
with them." He says, he had ordered for execution
such as persevered in their profession, after repeated
warnings, "as not doubting, whatever it was they
professed, that at any rate contumacy and inflexible
obstinacy ought to be punished." He required them to
invoke the gods, to sacrifice wine and frankincense to
the images of the Emperor, and to blaspheme Christ;
"to which," he adds, "it is said no real
Christian can be compelled." Renegades informed him
that "the sum total of their offence or fault was
meeting before light on an appointed day, and saying with
one another a form of words (carmen) to Christ, as
if to a god, and binding themselves by oath, (not to the
commission of any wickedness, but) against the commission
of theft, robbery, adultery, breach of trust, denial of
deposits; that, after this they were accustomed to
separate, and then to meet again for a meal, but eaten
all together and harmless; however, that they had even
left this off after his edicts enforcing the Imperial
prohibition of Hetæriæ or Associations." He
proceeded to put two women to the torture, but "discovered nothing beyond a bad and excessive
superstition" (superstitionem pravam et immodicam),
"the contagion" of which, he continues,
"had spread through villages and country, till the
temples were emptied of worshippers."
2.
In these testimonies, which will form a natural and
convenient text for what is to follow, we have various
characteristics brought before us of the religion to
which they relate. It was a superstition, as all three
writers agree; a bad and excessive superstition,
according to Pliny; a magical superstition, according to
Suetonius; a deadly superstition, according to Tacitus.
Next, it was embodied in a society, and moreover a secret
and unlawful {211} society or hetæria; and it was a
proselytizing society; and its very name was connected
with "flagitious," "atrocious," and
"shocking" acts.
3.
Now these few points, which are not all which might be
set down, contain in themselves a distinct and
significant description of Christianity; but they have
far greater meaning when illustrated by the history of
the times, the testimony of later writers, and the acts
of the Roman government towards its professors. It is
impossible to mistake the judgment passed on the religion
by these three writers, and still more clearly by other
writers and Imperial functionaries. They evidently
associated Christianity with the oriental superstitions,
whether propagated by individuals or embodied in a rite,
which were in that day traversing the Empire, and which
in the event acted so remarkable a part in breaking up
the national forms of worship, and so in preparing the
way for Christianity. This, then, is the broad view which
the educated heathen took of Christianity; and, if it had
been very unlike those rites and curious arts in external
appearance, they would not have confused it with them.
Changes in society are, by a providential appointment,
commonly preceded and facilitated by the setting in of a
certain current in men's thoughts and feelings in that
direction towards which a change is to be made. And, as
lighter substances whirl about before the tempest and
presage it, so words and deeds, ominous but not effective
of the coming revolution, are circulated beforehand
through the multitude, or pass across the field of
events. This was specially the case with Christianity, as
became its high dignity; it came heralded and attended by
a crowd of shadows, shadows of itself, impotent and
monstrous as shadows are but not at first sight
distinguishable from it {212} by common spectators. Before the
mission of the Apostles, a movement, of which there had
been earlier parallels, had begun in Egypt, Syria, and
the neighbouring countries, tending to the propagation of
new and peculiar forms of worship throughout the Empire.
Prophecies were afloat that some new order of things was
coming in from the East, which increased the existing
unsettlement of the popular mind; pretenders made
attempts to satisfy its wants, and old Traditions of the
Truth, embodied for ages in local or in national
religions, gave to these attempts a doctrinal and ritual
shape, which became an additional point of resemblance to
that Truth which was soon visibly to appear.
4.
The distinctive character of the rites in question lay
in their appealing to the gloomy rather than to the
cheerful and hopeful feelings, and in their influencing
the mind through fear. The notions of guilt and
expiation, of evil and good to come, and of dealings with
the invisible world, were in some shape or other
pre-eminent in them, and formed a striking contrast to
the classical polytheism, which was gay and graceful, as
was natural in a civilized age. The new rites, on the
other hand, were secret; their doctrine was mysterious;
their profession was a discipline, beginning in a formal
initiation, manifested in an association, and exercised
in privation and pain. They were from the nature of the
case proselytizing societies, for they were rising into
power; nor were they local, but vagrant, restless,
intrusive, and encroaching. Their pretensions to
supernatural knowledge brought them into easy connexion
with magic and astrology, which are as attractive to the
wealthy and luxurious as the more vulgar superstitions to
the populace. {213}
5.
Such were the rites of Cybele, Isis, and Mithras; such
the Chaldeans, as they were commonly called, and the
Magi; they came from one part of the world, and during
the first and second century spread with busy
perseverance to the northern and western extremities of
the empire [Note
2]. Traces of the mysteries of Cybele, a Syrian
deity, if the famous temple at Hierapolis was hers, have
been found in Spain, in Gaul, and in Britain, as high up
as the wall of Severus. The worship of Isis was the most
widely spread of all the pagan deities; it was received
in Ethiopia and in Germany, and even the name of Paris
has been fancifully traced to it. Both worships, as well
as the Science of Magic, had their colleges of priests
and devotees, which were governed by a president, and in
some places were supported by farms. Their processions
passed from town to town, begging as they went and
attracting proselytes. Apuleius describes one of them as
seizing a whip, accusing himself of some offence, and
scourging himself in public. These strollers, circulatores
or agyrtæ in classical language, told fortunes,
and distributed prophetical tickets to the ignorant
people who consulted them. Also, they were learned in the
doctrine of omens, of lucky and unlucky days, of the
rites of expiation and of sacrifices. Such an agyrtes
or itinerant was the notorious Alexander of Abonotichus,
till he managed to establish himself in Pontus, where he
carried on so successful an imposition that his fame
reached Rome, and men in office and station entrusted him
with their dearest political secrets. Such a wanderer,
with a far more religious bearing and a high reputation
for virtue, was Apollonius of Tyana, who professed the
Pythagorean {214} philosophy, claimed the gift of miracles, and
roamed about preaching, teaching, healing, and
prophesying from India and Alexandria to Athens and Rome.
Another solitary proselytizer, though of an earlier time
and of an avowed profligacy, had been the Sacrificulus,
viewed with such horror by the Roman Senate, as
introducing the infamous Bacchic rites into Rome. Such,
again, were those degenerate children of a divine
religion, who, in the words of their Creator and Judge,
"compassed sea and land to make one proselyte,"
and made him "twofold more the child of hell than
themselves."
6.
These vagrant religionists for the most part professed
a severe rule of life, and sometimes one of fanatical
mortification. In the mysteries of Mithras, the
initiation [Note 3]
was preceded by fasting and abstinence, and a variety of
painful trials; it was made by means of a baptism as a
spiritual washing; and it included an offering of bread,
and some emblem of a resurrection. In the Samothracian
rites it had been a custom to initiate children;
confession too of greater crimes seems to have been
required, and would naturally be involved in others in
the inquisition prosecuted into the past lives of the
candidates for initiation. The garments of the converts
were white; their calling was considered as a warfare (militia),
and was undertaken with a sacramentum, or military
oath. The priests shaved their heads and wore linen, and
when they were dead were buried in a sacerdotal garment.
It is scarcely necessary to refer to the mutilation
inflicted on the priests of Cybele; one instance of their
scourgings has been already mentioned; and Tertullian
speaks of their high priest cutting his arms {215} for the life
of the Emperor Marcus [Note 4]. The priests of Isis, in
lamentation for Osiris, tore their breasts with pine
cones. This lamentation was a ritual observance, founded
on some religious mystery: Isis lost Osiris, and the
initiated wept in memory of her sorrow; the Syrian
goddess had wept over dead Thammuz, and her mystics
commemorated it by a ceremonial woe; in the rites of
Bacchus, an image was laid on a bier at midnight [Note 5], which
was bewailed in metrical hymns; the god was supposed to
die, and then to revive. Nor was this the only worship
which was continued through the night; while some of the
rites were performed in caves.
7.
Only a heavenly light can give purity to nocturnal and
subterraneous worship. Caves were at that time
appropriated to the worship of the infernal gods. It was
but natural that these wild religions should be connected
with magic and its kindred arts; magic has at all times
led to cruelty, and licentiousness would be the
inevitable reaction from a temporary strictness. An
extraordinary profession, when men are in a state of mere
nature, makes hypocrites or madmen, and will in no long
time be discarded except by the few. The world of that
day associated together in one company, Isiac, Phrygian,
Mithriac, Chaldean, wizard, astrologer, fortune-teller,
itinerant, and, as was not unnatural, Jew. Magic was
professed by the profligate Alexander, and was imputed to
the grave Apollonius. The rites of Mithras came from the
Magi of Persia; and it is obviously difficult to
distinguish in principle the ceremonies of the Syrian
Taurobolium from those of the Necyomantia in the Odyssey,
or of Canidia in Horace. {216} The Theodosian Code calls magic
generally a "superstition;" and magic, orgies,
mysteries, and "sabbathizings," were referred
to the same "barbarous" origin. "Magical
superstitions," the "rites of the Magi,"
the "promises of the Chaldeans," and the
"Mathematici," are familiar to the readers of
Tacitus. The Emperor Otho, an avowed patron of oriental
fashions, took part in the rites of Isis, and consulted
the Mathematici. Vespasian, who also consulted them, is
heard of in Egypt as performing miracles at the
suggestion of Serapis. Tiberius, in an edict, classes
together "Egyptian and Jewish rites;" and
Tacitus and Suetonius, in recording it, speak of the two
religions together as "ea superstitio." [Note 6] Augustus
had already associated them together as superstitions,
and as unlawful, and that in contrast to others of a like
foreign origin. "As to foreign rites (peregrinæ ceremoniæ)," says Suetonius, "as he paid
more reverence to those which were old and enjoined, so
did he hold the rest in contempt." [Note 7] He goes
on to say that, even on the judgment-seat, he had
recognized the Eleusinian priests, into whose mysteries
he had been initiated at Athens; "whereas, when
travelling in Egypt, he had refused to see Apis, and had
approved of his grandson Caligula's passing by Judæa
without sacrificing at Jerusalem." Plutarch speaks
of magic as connected with the mournful mysteries of
Orpheus and Zoroaster, with the Egyptian and the
Phrygian; and, in his Treatise on Superstition, he puts
together in one clause, as specimens of that disease of
mind, "covering oneself with mud, wallowing in the
mire, sabbathizings, fallings on the face, unseemly
postures, foreign adorations." [Note 8] Ovid mentions in consecutive
verses the rites of "Adonis lamented by Venus,"
"The Sabbath of the Syrian Jew," and the
"Memphitic Temple of Io in her linen dress. " [Note 9] Juvenal {217} speaks of the rites, as well as the language and the
music, of the Syrian Orontes having flooded Rome; and, in
his description of the superstition of the Roman women,
he places the low Jewish fortune-teller between the pompous priests of Cybele and Isis, and the bloody
witchcraft of the Armenian haruspex and the astrology of
the Chaldeans [Note
10].
8.
The Christian, being at first accounted a kind of Jew,
was even on that score included in whatever odium, and
whatever bad associations, attended on the Jewish name.
But in a little time his independence of the rejected
people was clearly understood, as even the persecutions
show; and he stood upon his own ground. Still his
character did not change in the eyes of the world; for
favour or for reproach, he was still associated with the
votaries of secret and magical rites. The Emperor
Hadrian, noted as he is for his inquisitive temper, and a
partaker in so many mysteries [Note 11], still believed that the
Christians of Egypt allowed themselves in the worship of
Serapis. They are brought into connexion with the magic
of Egypt in the history of what is commonly called the
Thundering Legion, so far as this, that the rain which
relieved the Emperor's army in the field, and which the
Church ascribed to the prayers of the Christian soldiers,
is by Dio Cassius attributed to an Egyptian magician, who
obtained it by invoking Mercury and other spirits. This
war had been the occasion of one of the first
recognitions which the state had conceded to the Oriental
rites, though statesmen and emperors, as private men, had
long taken part in them. The Emperor Marcus had been
urged by his fears of the Marcomanni to resort to these
foreign introductions, and is said to have employed Magi
and Chaldeans in averting an unsuccessful {218} issue of the
war. It is observable that, in the growing countenance
which was extended to these rites in the third century,
Christianity came in for a share. The chapel of Alexander
Severas contained statues of Abraham, Orpheus,
Apollonius, Pythagoras, and our Lord. Here indeed, as in
the case of Zenobia's Judaism, an eclectic philosophy
aided the comprehension of religions. But, immediately
before Alexander, Heliogabalus, who was no philosopher,
while he formally seated his Syrian idol in the Palatine,
while he observed the mysteries of Cybele and Adonis, and
celebrated his magic rites with human victims, intended
also, according to Lampridius, to unite with his horrible
superstition "the Jewish and Samaritan religions and
the Christian rite, that so the priesthood of
Heliogabalus might comprise the mystery of every
worship." [Note
12] Hence, more or less, the stories which occur in
ecclesiastical history of the conversion or good-will of
the emperors to the Christian faith, of Hadrian, Mammæa,
and others, besides Heliogabalus and Alexander. Such
stories might often mean little more than that they
favoured it among other forms of Oriental superstition.
9.
What has been said is sufficient to bring before the
mind an historical fact, which indeed does not need
evidence. Upon the established religions of Europe the
East had renewed her encroachments, and was pouring forth
a family of rites which in various ways attracted the
attention of the luxurious, the political, the ignorant,
the restless, and the remorseful. Armenian, Chaldee,
Egyptian, Jew, Syrian, Phrygian, as the case might be,
was the designation of the new hierophant; and magic,
superstition, barbarism, jugglery, were the names given
to his rite by the world. In this company appeared {219} Christianity. When then three well-informed writers call
Christianity a superstition and a magical superstition,
they were not using words at random, or the language of
abuse, but they were describing it in distinct and
recognized terms as cognate to those gloomy, secret,
odious, disreputable religions which were making so much
disturbance up and down the empire.
10.
The impression made on the world by circumstances
immediately before the rise of Christianity received a
sort of confirmation upon its rise, in the appearance of
the Gnostic and kindred heresies, which issued from the
Church during the second and third centuries. Their
resemblance in ritual and constitution to the Oriental
religions, sometimes their historical relationship, is
undeniable; and certainly it is a singular coincidence,
that Christianity should be first called a magical
superstition by Suetonius, and then should be found in
the intimate company, and seemingly the parent, of a
multitude of magical superstitions, if there was nothing
in the Religion itself to give rise to such a charge.
11.
The Gnostic family [Note 13] suitably traces its origin
to a mixed race, which had commenced its national history
by associating Orientalism with Revelation. After the
captivity of the ten tribes, Samaria was colonized by
"men from Babylon and Cushan, and from Ava, and from
Hamath, and from Sepharvaim," who were instructed at
their own instance in "the manner of the God of the
land," by one of the priests of the Church of
Jeroboam. The consequence was, that "they feared the
Lord and served their own {220} gods." Of this country was
Simon, the reputed patriarch of the Gnostics; and he is
introduced in the Acts of the Apostles as professing
those magical powers which were so principal a
characteristic of the Oriental mysteries. His heresy,
though broken into a multitude of sects, was poured over
the world with a Catholicity not inferior in its day to
that of Christianity. St. Peter, who fell in with him
originally in Samaria, seems to have encountered him
again at Rome. At Rome, St. Polycarp met Marcion of
Pontus, whose followers spread through Italy, Egypt,
Syria, Arabia, and Persia; Valentinus preached his
doctrines in Alexandria, Rome, and Cyprus; and we read of
his disciples in Crete, Cæsarea, Antioch, and other
parts of the East. Bardesanes and his followers were
found in Mesopotamia. The Carpocratians are spoken of at
Alexandria, at Rome, and in Cephallenia; the Basilidians
spread through the greater part of Egypt; the Ophites
were apparently in Bithynia and Galatia; the Cainites or
Caians in Africa, and the Marcosians in Gaul. To these
must be added several sects, which, though not strictly
of the Gnostic stock, are associated with them in date,
character, and origin;—the Ebionites of Palestine,
the Cerinthians, who rose in some part of Asia Minor, the
Encratites and kindred sects, who spread from Mesopotamia
to Syria, to Cilicia and other provinces of Asia Minor,
and thence to Rome, Gaul, Aquitaine, and Spain; and the
Montanists, who, with a town in Phrygia for their
metropolis, reached at length from Constantinople to
Carthage.
"When [the reader of Christian history] comes to
the second century," says Dr. Burton, "he finds
that Gnosticism, under some form or other, was professed
in every part of the then civilized world. He finds it
divided into schools, as numerously and as zealously
attended as any which Greece or Asia could boast in their
happiest days. {221} He meets with names totally unknown to him
before, which excited as much sensation as those of
Aristotle or Plato. He hears of volumes having been
written in support of this new philosophy, not one of
which has survived to our own day." [Note 14] Many
of the founders of these sects had been Christians;
others were of Jewish parentage; others were more or less
connected in fact with the Pagan rites to which their own
bore so great a resemblance. Montanus seems even to have
been a mutilated priest of Cybele; the followers of
Prodicus professed to possess the secret books of
Zoroaster; and the doctrine of dualism, which so many of
the sects held, is to be traced to the same source.
Basilides seems to have recognized Mithras as the Supreme
Being, or the Prince of Angels, or the Sun, if Mithras is
equivalent to Abraxas, which was inscribed upon his
amulets: on the other hand, he is said to have been
taught by an immediate disciple of St. Peter, and
Valentinus by an immediate disciple of St. Paul. Marcion
was the son of a Bishop of Pontus; Tatian, a disciple of
St. Justin Martyr.
12.
Whatever might be the history of these sects, and
though it may be a question whether they can be properly
called "superstitions," and though many of them
numbered educated men among their teachers and followers,
they closely resembled, at least in ritual and
profession, the vagrant Pagan mysteries which have been
above described. Their very name of "Gnostic"
implied the possession of a secret, which was to be
communicated to their disciples. Ceremonial observances
were the preparation, and symbolical rites the
instrument, of initiation. Tatian and Montanus, the
representatives of very distinct schools, agreed in
making asceticism a rule of life. The followers {222} of each
of these sectaries abstained from wine; the Tatianites
and Marcionites, from flesh; the Montanists kept three
Lents in the year. All the Gnostic sects seem to have
condemned marriage on one or other reason [Note 15]. The
Marcionites had three baptisms or more; the Marcosians
had two rites of what they called redemption; the latter
of these was celebrated as a marriage, and the room
adorned as a marriage-chamber. A consecration to a
priesthood then followed with anointing. An extreme
unction was another of their rites, and prayers for the
dead one of their observances. Bardesanes and Harmonius
were famous for the beauty of their chants. The
prophecies of Montanus were delivered, like the oracles
of the heathen, in a state of enthusiasm or ecstasy. To
Epiphanes, the son of Carpocrates, who died at the age of
seventeen, a temple was erected in the island of
Cephallenia, his mother's birthplace, where he was
celebrated with hymns and sacrifices. A similar honour
was paid by the Carpocratians to Homer, Pythagoras,
Plato, Aristotle, as well as to the Apostles; crowns were
placed upon their images, and incense burned before them.
In one of the inscriptions found at Cyrene, about twenty
years since, Zoroaster, Pythagoras, Epicurus, and others,
are put together with our Lord, as guides of conduct.
These inscriptions also contain the Carpocratian tenet of
a community of women. I am unwilling to allude to the Agapæ and Communions of certain of these sects, which
were not surpassed in profligacy by the Pagan rites of
which they were an imitation. The very name of Gnostic
became an expression for the worst impurities, and no one
dared eat bread with them, or use their culinary
instruments or plates. {223}
13.
These profligate excesses are found in connexion with
the exercise of magic and astrology [Note 16]. The amulets of the
Basilidians are still extant in great numbers, inscribed
with symbols, some Christian, some with figures of Isis,
Serapis, and Anubis, represented according to the gross
indecencies of the Egyptian mythology [Note 17]. St. Irenæus had already
connected together the two crimes in speaking of the
Simonians: "Their mystical priests," he says, "live in lewdness, and practise magic, according to the
ability of each. They use exorcisms and incantations;
love-potions too, and seductive spells; the virtue of
spirits, and dreams, and all other curious arts, they
diligently observe." [Note 18] The Marcosians were
especially devoted to these "curious arts,"
which are also ascribed to Carpocrates and Apelles.
Marcion and others are reported to have used astrology.
Tertullian speaks generally of the sects of his day:
"Infamous are the dealings of the heretics with
sorcerers very many, with mountebanks, with astrologers,
with philosophers, to wit, such as are given to curious
questions. They everywhere remember, 'Seek, and ye shall
find.'" [Note
19]
Such were the Gnostics; and to external and prejudiced
spectators, whether philosophers, as Celsus and Porphyry,
or the multitude, they wore an appearance sufficiently
like the Church to be mistaken for her in the latter part
of the Ante-nicene period, as she was confused with the
Pagan mysteries in the earlier.
14.
Of course it may happen that the common estimate
concerning a person or a body is purely accidental and {224} unfounded; but in such cases it is not lasting. Such were
the calumnies of child-eating and impurity in the
Christian meetings, which were almost extinct by the time
of Origen, and which might arise from the world's
confusing them with the pagan and heretical rites. But
when it continues from age to age, it is certainly an
index of a fact, and corresponds to definite qualities in
the object to which it relates. In that case, even
mistakes carry information; for they are cognate to the
truth, and we can allow for them. Often what seems like a
mistake is merely the mode in which the informant conveys
his testimony, or the impression which a fact makes on
him. Censure is the natural tone of one man in a case
where praise is the natural tone of another; the very
same character or action inspires one mind with
enthusiasm, and another with contempt. What to one man is
magnanimity, to another is romance, and pride to a third,
and pretence to a fourth, while to a fifth it is simply
unintelligible; and yet there is a certain analogy in
their separate testimonies, which conveys to us what the
thing is like and what it is not like. When a man's
acknowledged note is superstition, we may be pretty sure
we shall not find him an Academic or an Epicurean; and
even words which are ambiguous, as "atheist,"
or "reformer," admit of a sure interpretation
when we are informed of the speaker. In like manner,
there is a certain general correspondence between magic
and miracle, obstinacy and faith, insubordination and
zeal for religion, sophistry and argumentative talent,
craft and meekness, as is obvious. Let us proceed then in
our contemplation of this reflection, as it may be called
of primitive Christianity in the mirror of the world.
15.
All three writers, Tacitus, Suetonius, and Pliny, call
it {225} a "superstition;" this is no accidental
imputation, but is repeated by a variety of subsequent
writers and speakers. The charge of Thyestean banquets
scarcely lasts a hundred years; but, while pagan
witnesses are to be found, the Church is accused of
superstition. The heathen disputant in Minucius calls
Christianity, "Vana et demens superstitio."
The lawyer Modestinus speaks, with an apparent allusion
to Christianity, of "weak minds being terrified superstitione
numinis." The heathen magistrate asks St.
Marcellus, whether he and others have put away "vain
superstitions," and worship the gods whom the
emperors worship. The Pagans in Arnobius speak of
Christianity as "an execrable and unlucky religion,
full of impiety and sacrilege, contaminating the rites
instituted from of old with the superstition of its
novelty." The anonymous opponent of Lactantius calls
it, "Impia et anilis superstitio."
Diocletian's inscription at Clunia was, as it declared,
on occasion of "the total extinction of the
superstition of the Christians, and the extension of the
worship of the gods." Maximin, in his Letter upon
Constantine's Edict, still calls it a superstition [Note 20].
16.
Now what is meant by the word thus attached by a consensus
of heathen authorities to Christianity? At least, it
cannot mean a religion in which a man might think what he
pleased, and was set free from all yokes, whether of
ignorance, fear, authority, or priestcraft. When heathen
writers call the Oriental rites superstitions, they
evidently use the word in its modern sense; it cannot
surely be doubted that they apply it in the same sense to
Christianity. But Plutarch explains for us the word at
length, {226} in his Treatise which bears the name: "Of
all kinds of fear," he says, "superstition is
the most fatal to action and resource. He does not fear
the sea who does not sail, nor war who does not serve,
nor robbers who keeps at home, nor the sycophant who is
poor, nor the envious if he is a private man, nor an
earthquake if he lives in Gaul, nor thunder if he lives
in Ethiopia; but he who fears the gods fears everything,
earth, seas, air, sky, darkness, light, noises, silence,
sleep. Slaves sleep and forget their masters; of the
fettered doth sleep lighten the chain; inflamed wounds,
ulcers cruel and agonizing, are not felt by the sleeping.
Superstition alone has come to no terms with sleep; but
in the very sleep of her victims, as though they were in
the realms of the impious, she raises horrible spectres,
and monstrous phantoms, and various pains, and whirls the
miserable soul about, and persecutes it. They rise, and,
instead of making light of what is unreal, they fall into
the hands of quacks and conjurers, who say, 'Call the
crone to expiate, bathe in the sea, and sit all day on
the ground.'" He goes on to speak of the
introduction of "uncouth names and barbarous
terms" into "the divine and national authority
of religion;" observes that, whereas slaves, when
they despair of freedom, may demand to be sold to another
master, superstition admits of no change of gods, since
"the god cannot be found whom he will not fear, who
fears the gods of his family and his birth, who shudders
at the Saving and the Benignant, who has a trembling and
dread at those from whom we ask riches and wealth,
concord, peace, success of all good words and
deeds." He says, moreover, that, while death is to
all men an end of life, it is not so to the
superstitious; for then 'there are deep gates of hell to
yawn, and headlong streams of at once fire and gloom are
opened, and darkness with its many phantoms encompasses,
ghosts presenting horrid visages and wretched voices, and
judges and {227} executioners, and chasms and dens full of
innumerable miseries."
Presently, he says, that in misfortune or sickness the
superstitious man refuses to see physician or
philosopher, and cries, "Suffer me, O man, to
undergo punishment, the impious, the cursed, the hated of
gods and spirits. The Atheist," with whom all along
he is contrasting the superstitious disadvantageously,
"wipes his tears, trims his hair, doffs his
mourning; but how can you address, how help the
superstitious? He sits apart in sackcloth or filthy rags;
and often he strips himself and rolls in the mud, and
tells out his sins and offences, as having eaten and
drunken something, or walked some way which the divinity
did not allow ... And in his best mood, and under the
influence of a good-humoured superstition, he sits at
home, with sacrifice and slaughter all round him, while
the old crones hang on him as on a peg, as Bion says, any
charm they fall in with." He continues, "What
men like best are festivals, banquets at the temples,
initiations, orgies, votive prayers, and adorations. But
the superstitious wishes indeed, but is unable to
rejoice. He is crowned and turns pale; he sacrifices and
is in fear; he prays with a quivering voice, and burns
incense with trembling hands, and altogether belies the
saying of Pythagoras, that we are then in best case when
we go to the gods; for superstitious men are in most
wretched and evil case, approaching the houses or shrines
of the gods as if they were the dens of bears, or the
holes of snakes, or the caves of whales."
17.
Here we have a vivid picture of Plutarch's idea of the
essence of Superstition; it was the imagination of the
existence of an unseen ever-present Master; the bondage
of a rule of life, of a continual responsibility;
obligation {228} to attend to little things, the impossibility
of escaping from duty, the inability to choose or change
one's religion, an interference with the enjoyment of
life, a melancholy view of the world, sense of sin,
horror at guilt, apprehension of punishment, dread,
self-abasement, depression, anxiety and endeavour to be
at peace with heaven, and error and absurdity in the
methods chosen for the purpose. Such too had been the
idea of the Epicurean Velleius, when he shrunk with
horror from the "sempiternus dominus"
and "curiosus Deus" of the Stoics [Note 21]. Such,
surely, was the meaning of Tacitus, Suetonius, and Pliny.
And hence of course the frequent reproach cast on
Christians as credulous, weak-minded, and poor-spirited.
The heathen objectors in Minucius and Lactantius speak of
their "old-woman's tales." [Note 22] Celsus accuses them of
"assenting at random and without reason,"
saying, "Do not inquire, but believe."
"They lay it down," he says elsewhere,
"Let no educated man approach, no man of wisdom, no
man of sense; but if a man be unlearned, weak in
intellect, an infant, let him come with confidence.
Confessing that these are worthy of their God, they
evidently desire, as they are able, to convert none but
fools, and vulgar, and stupid, and slavish, women and
boys." They "take in the simple, and lead him
where they will." They address themselves to
"youths, house-servants, and the weak in
intellect." They "hurry away from the educated,
as not fit subjects of their imposition, and inveigle the
rustic." [Note
23] "Thou," says the heathen magistrate to
the Martyr Fructuosus, "who as a teacher dost
disseminate a new {229} fable, that fickle girls may desert the
groves and abandon Jupiter, condemn, if thou art wise,
the anile creed." [Note 24]
18.
Hence the epithets of itinerant, mountebank, conjurer,
cheat, sophist, sorcerer, heaped upon the teachers of
Christianity; sometimes to account for the report or
apparent truth of their miracles, sometimes to explain
their success. Our Lord was said to have learned His
miraculous power in Egypt; "wizard, mediciner,
cheat, rogue, conjurer, were the epithets applied to Him
by the opponents of Eusebius [Note 25]; they "worship that
crucified sophist," says Lucian [Note 26]; "Paul, who surpasses
all the conjurers and impostors who ever lived," is
Julian's account of the Apostle. "You have sent
through the whole world," says St. Justin to Trypho,
"to preach that a certain atheistic and lawless sect
has sprung from one Jesus, a Galilean cheat." [Note 27]
"We know," says Lucian, speaking of Chaldeans
and Magicians, "the Syrian from Palestine, who is
the sophist in these matters, how many lunatics, with
eyes distorted and mouth in foam, he raises and sends
away restored, ridding them from the evil at a great
price." [Note
28] "If any conjurer came to them, a man of
skill and knowing how to manage matters," says the
same writer, "he made money in no time, with a broad
grin at the simple fellows." [Note 29] The officer who had custody
of St. Perpetua feared her escape from prison "by
magical incantations." [Note 30] When St. Tiburtius had
walked barefoot on hot coals, his judge cried out that
Christ had taught him magic. St. Anastasia was thrown
into prison as a mediciner; the populace called out
against St. Agnes, "Away with the witch," Tolle
magam, tolle malificam. {230} When St. Bonosus and St.
Maximilian bore the burning pitch without shrinking, Jews
and Gentiles cried out, Isti magi et malefici.
"What new delusion," says the heathen
magistrate concerning St. Romanus, "has brought in
these sophists to deny the worship of the gods? How doth
this chief sorcerer mock us, skilled by his Thessalian
charm (carmine) to laugh at punishment." [Note 31]
Hence we gather the meaning of the word "carmen"
as used by Pliny; when he speaks of the Christians
"saying with one another a carmen to Christ
as to a god," he meant pretty much what Suetonius
expresses by the "malefica superstitio."
[Note 32]
And the words of the last-mentioned writer and Tacitus
are still more exactly, and, I may say, singularly
illustrated by clauses which occur in the Theodosian
code; which seem to show that these historians were using
formal terms and phrases to express their notion of
Christianity. For instance, Tacitus says, "Quos
per flagitia invisos, vulgus Christianos appellabat;"
and the Law against the Malefici and Mathematici in the
Code speaks of those, "Quos ob facinorum
magnitudinem vulgus maleficos appellat." [Note 33]
Again, Tacitus charges Christians with the "odium
humani generis:" this is the very characteristic
of a practiser in magic; the Laws call the Malefici,
"humani generis hostes," "humani
generis inimici," "naturæ peregrini,"
"communis salutis hostes." [Note 34] {231}
19.
This also explains the phenomenon, which has created so much surprise to certain moderns;—that a grave,
well-informed historian like Tacitus should apply to
Christians what sounds like abuse. Yet what is the
difficulty, supposing that Christians were considered
mathematici and magi; and these were the secret
intriguers against established government, the allies of
desperate politicians, the enemies of the established
religion, the disseminators of lying rumours, the
perpetrators of poisonings and other crimes? "Read
this," says Paley, after quoting some of the most
beautiful and subduing passages of St. Paul, "read
this, and then think of exitiabilis superstitio;"
and he goes on to express a wish "in contending with
heathen authorities, to produce our books against
theirs," [Note
35] as if it were a matter of books. Public men care
very little for books; the finest sentiments, the most
luminous philosophy, the deepest theology, inspiration
itself, moves them but little; they look at facts, and
care only for facts. The question was, What was the
worth, what the tendency of the Christian body in the
state? what Christians said, what they thought, was
little to the purpose. They might exhort to peaceableness
and passive obedience as strongly as words could speak;
but what did they do, what was their political
position? This is what statesmen thought of then, as they
do now. What had men of the world to do with abstract
proofs or first principles? a statesman measures parties,
and sects, and writers by their bearing upon him;
and he has a practised eye in this sort of judgment, and
is not likely to be mistaken. "'What is Truth?' said
jesting Pilate." Apologies, however eloquent or
true, availed nothing with the Roman magistrate against
the sure instinct which taught him to dread {232} Christianity.
It was a dangerous enemy to any power not built upon
itself; he felt it, and the event justified his
apprehension.
20.
We must not forget the well-known character of the
Roman state in its dealings with its subjects. It had had
from the first an extreme jealousy of secret societies;
it was prepared to grant a large toleration and a broad
comprehension, but, as is the case with modern
governments, it wished to have jurisdiction and the
ultimate authority in every movement of the body politic
and social, and its civil institutions were based, or
essentially depended, on its religion. Accordingly, every
innovation upon the established paganism, except it was
allowed by the law, was rigidly repressed. Hence the
professors of low superstitions, of mysteries, of magic,
of astrology, were the outlaws of society, and were in a
condition analogous, if the comparison may be allowed, to
smugglers or poachers among ourselves, or perhaps to
burglars and highwaymen. The modern robber is sometimes
made to ask in novels or essays, why the majority of a
people should bind the minority, and why he is amenable
to laws which he does not enact; but the magistrate,
relying on the power of the sword, wishes all men to gain
a living indeed, and to prosper, but only in his own
legally sanctioned ways, and he hangs or transports
dissenters from his authority. The Romans applied this
rule to religion. Lardner protests against Pliny's
application of the words "contumacy and inflexible
obstinacy" to the Christians of Pontus.
"Indeed, these are hard words," he says,
"very improperly applied to men who were open to
conviction, and willing to satisfy others, if they might
have leave to speak." [Note 36] And he says, "It seems
to me that {233} Pliny acted very arbitrarily and
unrighteously, in his treatment of the Christians in his
province. What right had Pliny to act in this manner? by
what law or laws did he punish [them] with
death?"—but the Romans had ever burnt the
sorcerer, and banished his consulters for life [Note 37]. It
was an ancient custom. And at mysteries they looked with
especial suspicion, because, since the established
religion did not include them in its provisions, they
really did supply what may be called a demand of the age.
The Greeks of an earlier day had naturalized among
themselves the Eleusinian and other mysteries, which had
come from Egypt and Syria, and had little to fear from a
fresh invasion from the same quarter; yet even in Greece,
as Plutarch tell us, the "carmina" of
the itinerants of Cybele and Serapis threw the Pythian
verses out of fashion, and henceforth the responses from
the temple were given in prose. Soon the oracles
altogether ceased. What would cause in the Roman mind
still greater jealousy of Christianity was the general
infidelity which prevailed among all classes as regards
the mythological fables of Charon, Cerberus, and the
realms of punishment [Note 38].
21.
We know what opposition had been made in Rome even to
the philosophy of Greece; much greater would be the
aversion of constitutional statesmen and lawyers to the
ritual of barbarians. Religion was the Roman point of
honour. "Spaniards might rival them in
numbers," says Cicero, "Gauls in bodily
strength, Carthaginians in address, Greeks in the arts,
Italians and Latins in native talent, but the Romans
surpassed all nations in piety {234} and devotion." [Note 39] It
was one of their laws, "Let no one have gods by
himself, nor worship in private new gods nor
adventitious, unless added on public authority." [Note 40]
Lutatius [Note
41], at the end of the first Punic war, was
forbidden by the senate to consult the Sortes Prænestinæ as being "auspicia alienigena."
Some years afterwards the Consul took axe in hand, and
commenced the destruction of the temples of Isis and
Serapis. In the second Punic war, the senate had
commanded the surrender of the libri vaticini or precationes,
and any written art of sacrificing. When a secret
confraternity was discovered, at a later date, the Consul
spoke of the rule of their ancestors which forbade the
forum, circus, and city to Sacrificuli and prophets, and
burnt their books. In the next age banishment was
inflicted on individuals who were introducing the worship
of the Syrian Sabazius; and in the next the Iseion and
Serapeion were destroyed a second time. Mæcenas in Dio
advises Augustus to honour the gods according to the
national custom, because the contempt of the country's
deities leads to civil insubordination, reception of
foreign laws, conspiracies, and secret meetings [Note 42].
"Suffer no one," he adds, "to deny the
gods or to practise sorcery." The civilian Julius
Paulus lays it down as one of the leading principles of
Roman Law, that those who introduce new or untried
religions should be degraded, and if in the lower orders
put to death [Note
43]. In like manner, it is enacted in one of
Constantine's Laws that the Haruspices should not
exercise their art in private; and there is a law of
Valentinian's against nocturnal sacrifices or magic. It
is more immediately to our purpose that Trajan had been
so earnest in his resistance to Hetæriæ or secret
societies, that, when a fire had laid waste Nicomedia,
and Pliny {235} proposed to him to incorporate a body of a
hundred and fifty firemen in consequence [Note 44], he
was afraid of the precedent and forbade it.
22.
What has been said will suggest another point of view
in which the Oriental rites were obnoxious to the
government, viz., as being vagrant and proselytizing
religions. If it tolerated foreign superstitions, this
would be on the ground that districts or countries within
its jurisdiction held them; to proselytize to a rite
hitherto unknown, to form a new party, and to propagate
it through the Empire,—a religion not local but
Catholic,—was an offence against both order and
reason. The state desired peace everywhere, and no
change; "considering," according to Lactantius,
"that they were rightly and deservedly punished who
execrated the public religion handed down to them by
their ancestors." [Note 45]
It is impossible surely to deny that, in assembling
for religious purposes, the Christians were breaking a
solemn law, a vital principle of the Roman constitution;
and this is the light in which their conduct was regarded
by the historians and philosophers of the Empire. This
was a very strong act on the part of the disciples of the
great Apostle, who had enjoined obedience to the powers
that be. Time after time they resisted the authority of
the magistrate; and this is a phenomenon inexplicable on
the theory of Private Judgment or of the Voluntary
Principle. The justification of such disobedience lies
simply in the necessity of obeying the higher authority
of some divine law; but if Christianity were in its
essence only private and personal, as so many now think,
there was no necessity of their meeting together at all.
If, on the other hand, in assembling for worship and holy
communion, {236} they were fulfilling an indispensable
observance, Christianity has imposed a social law on the
world, and formally enters the field of politics. Gibbon
says that, in consequence of Pliny's edict, "the
prudence of the Christians suspended their Agapæ; but it
was impossible for them to omit the exercise of public
worship." [Note
46] We can draw no other conclusion.
23.
At the end of three hundred years, a more remarkable
violation of law seems to have been admitted by the
Christian body. It shall be given in the words of Dr.
Burton; he has been speaking of Maximin's edict, which
provided for the restitution of any of their lands or
buildings which had been alienated from them. "It is
plain," he says, "from the terms of this edict,
that the Christians had for some time been in possession
of property. It speaks of houses and lands which did not
belong to individuals, but to the whole body. Their
possession of such property could hardly have escaped the
notice of the government; but it seems to have been held
in direct violation of a law of Diocletian, which
prohibited corporate bodies, or associations which were
not legally recognized, from acquiring property. The
Christians were certainly not a body recognized by law at
the beginning of the reign of Diocletian, and it might
almost be thought that this enactment was specially
directed against them. But, like other laws which are
founded upon tyranny, and are at variance with the first
principles of justice, it is probable that this law about
corporate property was evaded. We must suppose that the
Christians had purchased lands and houses before the law
was passed; and their disregard {237} of the prohibition may be
taken as another proof that their religion had now taken
so firm a footing that the executors of the laws were
obliged to connive at their being broken by so numerous a
body." [Note
47]
24.
No wonder that the magistrate who presided at the
martyrdom of St. Romanus calls them in Prudentius "a
rebel people;" [Note 48] that Galerius speaks of them
as "a nefarious conspiracy;" the heathen in
Minucius, as "men of a desperate faction;" that
others make them guilty of sacrilege and treason, and
call them by those other titles which, more closely
resembling the language of Tacitus, have been noticed
above. Hence the violent accusations against them as the
destruction of the Empire, the authors of physical evils,
and the cause of the anger of the gods.
"Men cry out," says Tertullian, "that
the state is beset, that the Christians are in their
fields, in their forts, in their islands. They mourn as
for a loss that every sex, condition, and now even rank,
is going over to this sect. And yet they do not by this
very means advance their minds to the idea of some good
therein hidden; they allow not themselves to conjecture
more rightly, they choose not to examine more closely.
The generality run upon a hatred of this name, with eyes
so closed that in bearing favourable testimony to any one
they mingle with it the reproach of the name. 'A good man
Caius Seius, only he is a Christian.' So another, 'I
marvel that that wise man Lucius Titius hath suddenly
become a Christian.' No one reflecteth whether Caius be
not therefore good and Lucius wise because a Christian,
or therefore a Christian because wise and good. They
praise that {238} which they know, they revile that which they
know not. Virtue is not in such account as hatred of the
Christians. Now, then, if the hatred be of the name, what
guilt is there in names? What charge against words?
Unless it be that any word which is a name have either a
barbarous or ill-omened, or a scurrilous or an immodest
sound. If the Tiber cometh up to the walls, if the Nile
cometh not up to the fields, if the heaven hath stood
still, if the earth hath been moved, if there be any
famine, if any pestilence, 'The Christians to the lions'
is forthwith the word." [Note 49]
25.
"Men of a desperate, lawless, reckless
faction," says the heathen Cæcilius, in the passage
above referred to, "who collect together out of the
lowest rabble the thoughtless portion, and credulous
women seduced by the weakness of their sex, and form a
mob of impure conspirators, of whom nocturnal assemblies,
and solemn fastings, and unnatural food, no sacred rite
but pollution, is the bond. A tribe lurking and
light-hating, dumb for the public, talkative in corners,
they despise our temples as if graves, spit at our gods,
deride our religious forms; pitiable themselves, they
pity, forsooth, our priests; half-naked themselves, they
despise our honours and purple; monstrous folly and
incredible impudence! ... Day after day, their abandoned
morals wind their serpentine course; over the whole world
are those most hideous rites of an impious association
growing into shape: ... they recognize each other by
marks and signs, and love each other almost before they
recognize; promiscuous lust is their religion. Thus does
their vain and mad superstition glory in crimes …
The writer who tells the story of a criminal capitally
punished, and of the gibbet (ligna feralia) of the
cross being their {239} observance (ceremonias), assigns
to them thereby an altar in keeping with the abandoned
and wicked, that they may worship (colant) what
they merit ... Why their mighty effort to hide and shroud
whatever it is they worship (colunt), since things
honest ever like the open day, and crimes are secret? Why
have they no altars, no temples, no images known to us,
never speak abroad, never assemble freely, were it not
that what they worship and suppress is subject either of
punishment or of shame? ... What monstrous, what
portentous notions do they fabricate! that that God of
theirs, whom they can neither show nor see, should be
inquiring diligently into the characters, the acts, nay
the words and secret thoughts of all men; running to and
fro, forsooth, and present everywhere, troublesome,
restless, nay impudently curious they would have him;
that is, if he is close at every deed, interferes in all
places, while he can neither attend to each as being
distracted through the whole, nor suffice for the whole
as being engaged about each. Think too of their
threatening fire, meditating destruction to the whole
earth, nay the world itself with its stars! ... Nor
content with this mad opinion, they add and append their
old wives' tales about a new birth after death, ashes and
cinders, and by some strange confidence believe each
other's lies. Poor creatures! consider what hangs over
you after death, while you are still alive. Lo, the
greater part of you, the better, as you say, are in want,
cold, toil, hunger, and your God suffers it; but I omit
common trials. Lo, threats are offered to you,
punishments, torments; crosses to be undergone now, not
worshipped (adorandæ); fires too which ye predict
and fear; where is that God who can recover, but cannot
preserve your life? The answer of Socrates, when he was
asked about heavenly matters, is well known, 'What is
above us does not concern us.' My opinion also is, that
points which are doubtful, as are the {240} points in question,
must be left; nor, when so many and such great men are in
controversy on the subject, must judgment be rashly and
audaciously given on either side, lest the consequence be
either anile superstition or the overthrow of all
religion."
26.
Such was Christianity in the eyes of those who
witnessed its rise and propagation;—one of a number
of wild and barbarous rites which were pouring in upon
the Empire from the ancient realms of superstition, and
the mother of a progeny of sects which were faithful to
the original they had derived from Egypt or Syria; a
religion unworthy of an educated person, as appealing,
not to the intellect, but to the fears and weaknesses of
human nature, and consisting, not in the rational and
cheerful enjoyment, but in a morose rejection of the
gifts of Providence; a horrible religion, as inflicting
or enjoining cruel sufferings, and monstrous and
loathsome in its very indulgence of the passions; a
religion leading by reaction to infidelity; a religion of
magic, and of the vulgar arts, real and pretended, with
which magic was accompanied; a secret religion which
dared not face the day; an itinerant, busy, proselytizing
religion, forming an extended confederacy against the
state, resisting its authority and breaking its laws.
There may be some exceptions to this general impression,
such as Pliny's discovery of the innocent and virtuous
rule of life adopted by the Christians of Pontus; but
this only proves that Christianity was not in fact the
infamous religion which the heathen thought it; it did
not reverse their general belief to that effect.
27.
Now it must be granted that, in some respects, this
view of Christianity depended on the times, and would
alter with their alteration. When there was no
persecution, Martyrs {241} could not be obstinate; and when the
Church was raised aloft in high places, it was no longer
in caves. Still, I believe, it continued substantially
the same in the judgment of the world external to it,
while there was an external world to judge of it.
"They thought it enough," says Julian in the
fourth century, of our Lord and His Apostles, "to
deceive women, servants, and slaves, and by their means
wives and husbands." "A human
fabrication," says he elsewhere, "put together
by wickedness, having nothing divine in it, but making a
perverted use of the fable-loving, childish, irrational
part of the soul, and offering a set of wonders to create
belief." "Miserable men," he says
elsewhere, "you refuse to worship the ancile, yet
you worship the wood of the cross, and sign it on your
foreheads, and fix it on your doors. Shall one for this
hate the intelligent among you, or pity the less
understanding, who in following you have gone to such an
excess of perdition as to leave the everlasting gods and
go over to a dead Jew?" He speaks of their adding
other dead men to Him who died so long ago. "You
have filled all places with sepulchres and monuments,
though it is nowhere told you in your religion to haunt
the tombs and to attend upon them." Elsewhere he
speaks of their "leaving the gods for corpses and
relics." On the other hand, he attributes the growth
of Christianity to its humanity towards strangers, care
in burying the dead, and pretended religiousness of life.
In another place he speaks of their care of the poor [Note 50].
Libanius, Julian's preceptor in rhetoric, delivers the
same testimony, as far as it goes. He addressed his
Oration for the Temples to a Christian Emperor, and would
in consequence be guarded in his language; however it
runs in one direction. He speaks of "those
black-habited {242} men," meaning the monks, "who eat
more than elephants, and by the number of their potations
trouble those who send them drink in their chantings, and
conceal this by paleness artificially acquired."
They "are in good condition out of the misfortunes
of others, while they pretend to serve God by
hunger." Those whom they attack "are like bees,
they like drones." I do not quote this passage to
prove that there were monks in Libanius's days, which no
one doubts, but to show his impression of Christianity,
as far as his works betray it.
Numantian, in the same century, describes in verse his
voyage from Rome to Gaul: one book of the poem is extant;
he falls in with Christianity on two of the islands which
lie in his course. He thus describes them as found on one
of these: "The island is in a squalid state, being
full of light-haters. They call themselves monks, because
they wish to live alone without witness. They dread the
gifts, from fearing the reverses, of fortune. Thus Homer
says that melancholy was the cause of Bellerophon's
anxiety; for it is said that after the wounds of grief
mankind displeased the offended youth." He meets on
the other island a Christian, whom he had known, of good
family and fortune, and happy in his marriage, who
"impelled by the Furies had left men and gods, and,
credulous exile, was living in base concealment. Is not
this herd," he continues, "worse than Circean
poison? then bodies were changed, now minds."
28.
In the Philopatris, which is the work of an Author of
the fourth century [Note 51], Critias is introduced pale
and wild. His friend asks him if he has seen Cerberus or
Hecate; and he answers that he has heard a rigmarole from
certain "thrice-cursed sophists;" which he
thinks would {243} drive him mad, if he heard it again, and was
nearly sending him headlong over some cliff as it was. He
retires for relief with his inquirer to a pleasant place,
shadowed by planes, where swallows and nightingales are
singing, and a quiet brook is purling. Triephon, his
friend, expresses a fear lest he has heard some incantation, and is led by the course of the dialogue,
before his friend tells his tale, to give some account of
Christianity, being himself a Christian. After speaking
of the creation, as described by Moses, he falls at once
upon that doctrine of a particular providence which is so
distasteful to Plutarch, Velleius in Cicero, and Cæcilius, and generally to unbelievers. "He is in
heaven," he says, "looking at just and unjust, and
causing actions to be entered in books; and He will
recompense all on a day which He has appointed."
Critias objects that he cannot make this consistent with
the received doctrine about the Fates, "even though
he has perhaps been carried aloft with his master, and
initiated in unspeakable mysteries." He also asks if
the deeds of the Scythians are written in heaven; for if
so, there must be many scribes there. After some more
words, in course of which, as in the earlier part of the
dialogue, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is introduced,
Critias gives an account of what befell him. He says, he
fell in with a crowd in the streets; and, while asking a
friend the cause of it, others joined them (Christians or
monks), and a conversation ensues, part of it corrupt or
obscure, on the subject, as Gesner supposes, of Julian's
oppression of the Christians, especially of the clergy.
One of these interlocutors is a wretched old man, whose
"phlegm is paler than death;" another has
"a rotten cloke on, and no covering on head or
feet," who says he has been told by some ill-clad
person from the mountains, with a shorn crown, that in
the theatre was a name hieroglyphically written of one
who would {244} flood the highway with gold. On his laughing at
the story, his friend Crato, whom he had joined, bids him
be silent, using a Pythagorean word; for he has
"most excellent matters to initiate him into, and
that the prediction is no dream but true," and will
be fulfilled in August, using the Egyptian name of the
month. He attempts to leave them in disgust, but Crato
pulls him back "at the instigation of that old
demon." He is in consequence persuaded to go
"to those conjurers," who, says Crato, would
"initiate in all mysteries." He finds, in a
building which is described in the language used by Homer
of the Palace of Menelaus, "not Helen, no, but men
pale and downcast," who ask, whether there was any
bad news; "for they seemed," he says,
"wishing the worst; and rejoicing in misfortune, as
the Furies in the theatres." On their asking him how
the city and the world went on, and his answering that
things went on smoothly and seemed likely to do so still,
they frown, and say that "the city is in travail
with a bad birth." "You, who dwell aloft,"
he answers, "and see everything from on high,
doubtless have a keen perception in this matter; but tell
me, how is the sky? will the Sun be eclipsed? will Mars
be in quadrature with Jupiter? &c.;" and he goes
on to jest upon their celibacy. On their persisting in
prophesying evil to the state, he says, "This evil
will fall on your own head, since you are so hard upon
your country; for not as high-flyers have ye heard this,
nor are ye adepts in the restless astrological art, but
if divinations and conjurings have seduced you, double is
your stupidity; for they are the discoveries of old women
and things to laugh at." The interview then draws to
an end; but more than enough has been quoted already to
show the author's notion of Christianity. {245}
29.
Such was the language of paganism after Christianity
had for fifty years been exposed to the public gaze;
after it had been before the world for fifty more, St.
Augustine had still to defend it against the charge of
being the cause of the calamities of the Empire. And for
the charge of magic, when the Arian bishops were in
formal disputatious with the Catholic, before Gungebald,
Burgundian King of France, at the end of the fifth
century, we find still that they charged the Catholics
with being "præstigiatores," and
worshipping a number of gods; and when the Catholics
proposed that the king should repair to the shrine of St.
Justus, where both parties might ask him concerning their
respective faiths, the Arians cried out that "they
would not seek enchantments like Saul, for Scripture was
enough for them, which was more powerful than all
bewitchments." [Note 52] This was said, not against
strangers of whom they knew nothing, as Ethelbert might
be suspicious of St. Augustine and his brother
missionaries, but against a body of men who lived among
them.
I do not think it can be doubted then that, had
Tacitus, Suetonius, and Pliny, Celsus, Prophyry, and the
other opponents of Christianity, lived in the fourth
century, their evidence concerning Christianity would be
very much the same as it has come down to us from the
centuries before it. In either case, a man of the world
and a philosopher would have been disgusted at the gloom
and sadness of its profession, its mysteriousness, its
claim of miracles, the want of good sense imputable to
its rule of life, and the unsettlement and discord it was
introducing into the social and political world.
30.
On the whole then I conclude as follows:—if there
is a {246} form of Christianity now in the world which is
accused of gross superstition, of borrowing its rites and
customs from the heathen, and of ascribing to forms and
ceremonies an occult virtue;—a religion which is
considered to burden and enslave the mind by its
requisitions, to address itself to the weak-minded and
ignorant, to be supported by sophistry and imposture, and
to contradict reason and exalt mere irrational
faith;—a religion which impresses on the serious
mind very distressing views of the guilt and consequences
of sin, sets upon the minute acts of the day, one by one,
their definite value for praise or blame, and thus casts
a grave shadow over the future;—a religion which
holds up to admiration the surrender of wealth, and
disables serious persons from enjoying it if they
would;—a religion, the doctrines of which, be they
good or bad, are to the generality of men unknown; which
is considered to bear on its very surface signs of folly
and falsehood so distinct that a glance suffices to judge
of it, and that careful examination is preposterous;
which is felt to be so simply bad, that it may be
calumniated at hazard and at pleasure, it being nothing
but absurdity to stand upon the accurate distribution of
its guilt among its particular acts, or painfully to
determine how far this or that story concerning it is
literally true, or what has to be allowed in candour, or
what is improbable, or what cuts two ways, or what is not
proved, or what may be plausibly defended;—a
religion such, that men look at a convert to it with a
feeling which no other denomination raises except
Judaism, Socialism, or Mormonism, viz. with curiosity,
suspicion, fear, disgust, as the case may be, as if
something strange had befallen him, as if he had had an
initiation into a mystery, and had come into communion
with dreadful influences, as if he were now one of a
confederacy which claimed him, absorbed him, stripped him
of his personality, {247} reduced him to a mere organ or
instrument of a whole;—a religion which men hate as
proselytizing, anti-social, revolutionary, as dividing
families, separating chief friends, corrupting the maxims
of government, making a mock at law, dissolving the
empire, the enemy of human nature, and a
"conspirator against its rights and
privileges;" [Note 53]—a religion which they
consider the champion and instrument of darkness, and a
pollution calling down upon the land the anger of
heaven;—a religion which they associate with
intrigue and conspiracy, which they speak about in
whispers, which they detect by anticipation in whatever
goes wrong, and to which they impute whatever is
unaccountable;—a religion, the very name of which
they cast out as evil, and use simply as a bad epithet,
and which from the impulse of self-preservation they
would persecute if they could;—if there be such a
religion now in the world, it is not unlike Christianity
as that same world viewed it, when first it came forth
from its Divine Author [Note 54].
Chapter 6 - Section 2
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Notes
1. [This juxtaposition of names has been strangely
distorted by critics. In the intention of the author,
Guizot matched with Pliny, not with Frederick.]
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2. Vid. Muller de Hierarch. et
Ascetic. Warburton, Div. Leg ii. 4. Selder de Diis Syr.
Acad. des Inscript. t. 3, hist. p. 296, t. 5, mem. p. 63,
t. 10, mem. p. 267. Lucian. Pseudomant, Cod. Theod. ix.
16.
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3. Acad. t. 16, mem. p. 27.
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4. Apol. 25. Vid. also Prudent. in
hon. Romani, circ. fin. and Lucian de Deo Syr. 50.
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5. Vid, also the scene in Jul.
Firm. p. 449.
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6. Tac. Ann. ii. 85; Sueton.
Tiber. 36.
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7. August. 93.
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8. De Superst. 3.
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9. De Art. Am. i. init.
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10. Sat. iii. vi.
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11. Tertul. Ap. 5.
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12. Vit. Hel. 3.
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13. Vid. Tillemont, Mem. and
Lardner's Hist. Heretics.
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14. Bampton Lect. 2.
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15. Burton, Bampton Lect. note
61.
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16. Burton, Bampton Lect. note
44.
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17. Montfaucon, Antiq. t. ii.
part 2, p. 353.
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18. Hær. i. 20.
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19. De Præscr. 43.
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20. Vid. Kortholt, in Plin. et
Traj. Epp. p. 152. Comment. in Minuc. F. &c.
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21. "Itaque imposuistis in
cervicibus nostris sempiternum dominum, quem dies et
noctes timeremus; quis enim non timeat omnia providentem
et cogitantem et animadvertentem, et omnia ad se
pertinere putantem, curiosum, et plenum negotii
Deum?"—Cic. de Nat. Deor. i. 20.
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22. Min. c. 11. Lact. v. 1, 2,
vid. Arnob. ii. 8, &c.
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23. Origen, contr. Cels. i. 9,
iii. 44, 50, vi. 44.
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24. Prudent. in hon. Fruct, 37.
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25. Evan. Dem. iii. 3, 4.
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26. Mort. Peregr. 13.
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27. c. 108.
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28. i.e. Philop. 16.
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29. De Mort. Pereg. ibid.
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30. Ruin. Mart. pp. 100, 594,
&c.
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31. Prud. in hon. Rom. vv. 404,
868.
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32. We have specimens of carmina
ascribed to Christians in the Philopatris.
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33. Goth. in Cod. Th. t. 5, p.
120, ed. 1665. Again, "Qui malefici vulgi
consuetudine nuncupantur." Leg. 6. So Lactantius,
"Magi et ii quos verè maleficos vulgus
appellat." Inst. ii. 17. "Quos et maleficos
vulgus appellat:" August. Civ. Dei, x. 19.
"Quos vulgus mathematicos vocat." Hieron. in
Dan. c. ii. Vid. Gothof. in loc. Other laws speak of
those who were "maleficiorum labe polluti," and
of the "maleficiorum scabies."
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34. Tertuilian too mentions the
charge of "hostes principum Romanorum, populi,
generis humani, Deorum, Imperatorum, legum, morum, naturæ totius inimici." Apol. 2, 35, 38, ad. Scap.
4, ad. Nat. i. 17.
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35. Evid. part ii. ch. 4.
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36. Heathen Test. 9.
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37. Gothof. in Cod. Th. t. 5, p.
121.
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38. Cic. pro Cluent. 61. Gieseler
transl. vol. i. p. 21, note 5. Acad. Inscr. t. 34. hist.
p. 110.
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39. De Harusp. Resp. 9.
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40. De Legg. ii. 8.
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41. Acad. Inscr. ibid.
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42. Neander, Eccl. Hist. tr. vol.
i. p. 81.
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43. Muller, p. 21, 22, 30.
Tertull. Ox. tr. p. 12, note p.
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44. Gibbon. Hist. ch. 16, note
14.
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45. Epit. Instit. 55.
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46. Gibbon, ibid. Origen admits
and defends the violation of the laws: [ouk
alogon sunthekas para ta nenomismena poiein, tas huper haletheias.].
c. Cels. i. 1.
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47. Hist. p. 418.
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48. In hon. Rom. 62, In Act. S.
Cypr. 4, Tert. Apol. 10, &c.
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49. Apol. i. 3, 39, Oxf. tr.
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50. Julian ap. Cyril, pp. 39,
194, 206, 335. Epp. pp. 305, 429, 438, ed. Spanh.
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51. Niebuhr ascribes it to the
beginning of the tenth.
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52. Sirm. Opp. ii. p. 225, ed.
Ven.
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53. Proph.
Office, p. 132 [Via
Media, vol. i. p. 109].
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54. [Since the publication of
this volume in 1845, a writer in a Conservative
periodical of great name has considered that no happier
designation could be bestowed upon us than that which
heathen statesmen gave to the first Christians,
"enemies of the human race." What a remarkable
witness to our identity with the Church of St. Paul
("a pestilent fellow, and a mover of sedition
throughout the world"), of St. Ignatius, St.
Polycarp, and the other Martyrs! In this matter,
Conservative politicians join with Liberals, and with the
movement parties in Great Britain, France, Germany, and
Italy, in their view of our religion.
"The Catholics," says the Quarterly
Review for January, 1873, pp. 181-2, "wherever
they are numerous and powerful in a Protestant nation, compel
(sic) as it were by a law of their being, that nation to
treat them with stern repression and control ...
Catholicism, if it be true to itself and its mission, cannot
(sic) ... wherever and whenever the opportunity is
afforded it, abstain from claiming, working for, and
grasping that supremacy and paramount influence and
control, which it conscientiously believes to be its
inalienable and universal due ... By the force of
circumstances, by the inexorable logic of its claims, it
must be the intestine foe or the disturbing element of
every state in which it does not bear sway; and ... it
must now stand out in the estimate of all Protestants,
Patriots and Thinkers" (philosophers and historians,
as Tacitus?) "as the hostis humani generis
(sic), &c."]
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