СНАР. ХѴІ. PAGAN NOTIONS CONCERNING CHRISTIANITY. 225 accused of mistaken by and philo The surprise of the Pagans was soon succeeded by resentment, and the most pious of men were exposed to the unjust but Christianity dangerous imputation of impiety. Malice and prejudice atheism, and concurred in representing the Christians as a society of the people" atheists, who, by the most daring attack on the religious sophers. constitution of the empire, had merited the severest animadversion of the civil magistrate. They had separated themselves (they gloried in the confession) from every mode of superstition which was received in any part of the globe by the various temper of Polytheism: but it was not altogether so evident what deity, or what form of worship, they had substituted to the gods and temples of antiquity. The pure and sublime idea which they entertained of the Supreme Being escaped the gross conception of the Pagan multitude, who were at a loss to discover a spiritual and solitary God, that was neither represented under any corporeal figure or visible symbol, nor was adored with the accustomed pomp of libations and festivals, of altars and sacrifices. The sages of Greece and Rome, who had elevated their minds to the contemplation of the existence and attributes of the First Cause, were induced by reason or by vanity to reserve for themselves and their chosen disciples the privilege of this philosophical devotion. 10 They were far from admitting the prejudices of mankind as the standard of truth, but they considered them as flowing from the original disposition of human nature; and they supposed that any popular mode of faith and worship which presumed to disclaim the assistance of the senses would, in proportion as it receded from superstition, find itself incapable of restraining the wanderings of the fancy and the visions of fanaticism. The careless glance which men of wit and learning condescended to cast on the Christian revelation served only to confirm their hasty opinion, and to persuade them that the principle, which they might have revered, of the Divine Unity, was defaced by the wild enthusiasm, and annihilated by the airy speculations, of the new sectaries. The author of a celebrated dialogue, which has been attributed to Lucian, whilst he affects to treat the mysterious subject of the Trinity in a style of ridicule and contempt, betrays his own ignorance of the weakness of human reason, and of the inscrutable nature of the Divine perfections."1 ? Cur nullas aras habent? templa nulla? nulla nota simulacra?... Unde autem, vel quis ille, aut ubi, Deus unicus, solitarius, destitutus? Minucius Felix, p. 10. The Pagan interlocutor goes on to make a distinction in favour of the Jews, who had once a temple, altars, victims, &c. 10 It is difficult (says Plato) to attain, and dangerous to publish, the knowledge of the true God. See the Théologie des Philosophes, in the Abbé d'Olivet's French .ranslation of Tully de Naturâ Deorum, tom. i. p. 275. "The author of the Philopatris perpetually treats the Christians as a company of dreaming enthusiasts, δαιμόνιοι αιθέριοι, αιθεροβατοῦντες, ἀεροβατοῦντες, &c. ; and in one place manifestly alludes to the vision in which St. Paul was transported to the VOL. II. It might appear less surprising that the founder of Christianity should not only be revered by his disciples as a sage and a prophet, but that he should be adored as a God. The Polytheists were disposed to adopt every article of faith which seemed to offer any resemblance, however distant or imperfect, with the popular mythology; and the legends of Bacchus, of Hercules, and of Æsculapius, had, in some measure, prepared their imagination for the appearance of the Son of God under a human form.12 But they were astonished that the Christians should abandon the temples of those ancient heroes who, in the infancy of the world, had invented arts, instituted laws, and vanquished the tyrants or monsters who infested the earth; in order to choose for the exclusive object of their religious worship an obscure teacher, who, in a recent age, and among a barbarous people, had fallen a sacrifice either to the malice of his own countrymen, or to the jealousy of the Roman government. The Pagan multitude, reserving their gratitude for temporal benefits alone, rejected the inestimable present of life and immortality which was offered to mankind by Jesus of Nazareth. His mild constancy in the midst of cruel and voluntary sufferings, his universal benevolence, and the sublime simplicity of his actions and character, were insufficient, in the opinion of those carnal men, to compensate for the want of fame, of empire, and of success; and whilst they refused to acknowledge his stupendous triumph over the powers of darkness and of the grave, they misrepresented, or they insulted, the equivocal birth, wandering life, and ignominious death, of the divine Author of Christianity." The personal guilt which every Christian had contracted, in thus preferring his private sentiment to the national religion, blies of the was aggravated in a very high degree by the number and considered as union of the criminals. It is well known, and has been The union and assem Christians dangerous 13 nspiracy. already observed, that Roman policy viewed with the utmost jealousy and distrust any association among its subjects; and that the privileges of private corporations, though formed for the most harmless third heaven. In another place, Triephon, who personates a Christian, after deriding the gods of Paganism, proposes a mysterious oath: Ὑψιμέδοντα θεὸν, μέγαν, ἄμβροτον, οὐρανίωνα, Υἱὸν πατρὸς, πνεῦμα ἐκ πατρὸς ἐκπορευόμενον, Αριθμέειν με διδάσκεις (is the profane answer of Critias), καὶ ὅρκος ἡ ἀριθμητική· οὐκ οἶδα γάρ τι λέγεις· ἓν τρία, τρία ἵν ! 12 According to Justin Martyr (Apolog. Major, c. 70–85), the dæmon, who had gained some imperfect knowledge of the prophecies, purposely contrived this resemblance, which might deter, though by different means, both the people and the philosophers from embracing the faith of Christ. 13 In the first and second books of Origen, Celsus treats the birth and character of our Saviour with the most impious contempt. The orator Libanius praises Porphyry and Julian for confuting the folly of a sect which style a dead man of Palestine, God, and the Son of God. Socrates, Hist. Ecclesiast iii. 23 . or beneficial purposes, were bestowed with a very sparing hand.14 The religious assemblies of the Christians, who had separated themselves from the public worship, appeared of a much less innocent nature they were illegal in their principle, and in their consequences might become dangerous; nor were the emperors conscious that they violated the laws of justice, when, for the peace of society, they prohibited those secret and sometimes nocturnal meetings.15 The pious disobedience of the Christians made their conduct, or perhaps their designs, appear in a much more serious and criminal light; and the Roman princes, who might perhaps have suffered themselves to be disarmed by a ready submission, deeming their honour concerned in the execution of their commands, sometimes attempted, by rigorous punishments, to subdue this independent spirit, which boldly ackrow ledged an authority superior to that of the magistrate. The extent and duration of this spiritual conspiracy seemed to render it every day more deserving of his animadversion. We have already seen that the active and successful zeal of the Christians had insensibly diffused them through every province and almost every city of the empire. The new converts seemed to renounce their family and country, that they might connect themselves in an indissoluble band of union with a peculiar society, which everywhere assumed a different character from the rest of mankind. Their gloomy and austere aspect, their abhorrence of the common business and pleasures of life, and their frequent predictions of impending calamities, 16 inspired the Pagans with the apprehension of some danger which would arise from the new sect, the more alarming as it was the more obscure. "Whatever," says Pliny, "may be the principle of their conduct, "their inflexible obstinacy appeared deserving of punishment.": manners The precautions with which the disciples of Christ performed the offices of religion were at first dictated by fear and Their necessity; but they were continued from choice. By imi- calumniated. tating the awful secrecy which reigned in the Eleusinian mysteries, the Christians had flattered themselves that they should render their sacred institutions more respectable in the eyes of the Pagan world.1 14 The emperor Trajan refused to incorporate a company of 150 firemen for the use of the city of Nicomedia. He disliked all associations. See Plin. Epist. x. 42, 43. 15 The proconsul Pliny had published a general edict against unlawful meetings. The prudence of the Christians suspended their Agapa; but it was impossible for them to omit the exercise of public worship. 16 As the prophecies of the Antichrist, approaching conflagration, &c., provoked those Pagans whom they did not convert, they were mentioned with caution and rezerve; and the Montanists were censured for disclosing too freely the dangerous Becret. See Mosheim, p. 413. 17 Neque enim dubitabam, qualecunque esset quod faterentur (such are the words of Pliny), pervicaciam certe et inflexibilem obstinationem debere puniri. [Epist. x. 97.] See Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History, vol. i. p. 101, and Spanheim, Remarques s las Césars de Julien, p. 468, &c. But the event, as it often happens to the operations of subtile policy, deceived their wishes and their expectations. It was concluded that they only concealed what they would have blushed to disclose. Their mistaken prudence afforded an opportunity for malice to invent, and for suspicious credulity to believe, the horrid tales which described the Christians as the most wicked of human kind, who practised in their dark recesses every abomination that a depraved fancy could suggest, and who solicited the favour of their unknown God by the sacrifice of every moral virtue. There were many who pretended to confess or to relate the ceremonies of this abhorred society. It was asserted, “that a new-born infant, entirely covered over with flour, "was presented, like some mystic symbol of initiation, to the knife of "the proselyte, who unknowingly inflicted many a secret and mortal "wound on the innocent victim of his error; that as soon as the cruel "deed was perpetrated, the sectaries drank up the blood, greedily "tore asunder the quivering members, and pledged themselves to "eternal secrecy, by a mutual consciousness of guilt. It was as confidently affirmed that this inhuman sacrifice was succeeded by a suitable entertainment, in which intemperance served as a pro"vocative to brutal lust; till, at the appointed moment, the lights "were suddenly extinguished, shame was banished, nature was forgotten; and, as accident might direct, the darkness of the night was polluted by the incestuous commerce of sisters and brothers, of sons and of mothers." 19 66 66 66 66 Their imprudent defence. But the perusal of the ancient apologies was sufficient to remove even the slightest suspicion from the mind of a candid adversary. The Christians, with the intrepid security of innocence, appeal from the voice of rumour to the equity of the magistrates. They acknowledge that, if any proof can be produced of the crimes which calumny has imputed to them, they are worthy of the most severe punishment. They provoke the punishment, and they challenge the proof. At the same time they urge, with equal truth and propriety, that the charge is not less devoid of probability than it is destitute of evidence; they ask whether any one can seriously believe that the pure and holy precepts of the Gospel, which so frequently restrain the use of the most lawful enjoyments, should inculcate the practice of the most abominable crimes; that a large society should resolve to dishonour itself in the eyes of its own members; and that a great number of persons, of either sex, and every age and character, insensible to the fear of death or infamy, 19 See Justin Martyr, Apolog. i. 35 [c. 27? ed. Ben.], ii. 14 [c. 12, p. 97, ed. Ben.]. Athenagoras, in Legation. c. 27. Tertullian, Apolog. c. 7, 8, 9. Minucius Felix, p. 9, 10, 30, 31. The last of these writers relates the accusation in the most elegant and circumstantial manner. The answer of Tertullian is the boldest and most vigorous, should consent to violate those principles which nature and education had imprinted most deeply in their minds.20 Nothing, it should scem, could weaken the force or destroy the effect of so unanswerable a justification, unless it were the injudicious conduct of the apologists themselves, who betrayed the common cause of religion, to gratify their devout hatred to the domestic enemies of the church. It was sometimes faintly insinuated, and sometimes boldly asserted, that the same bloody sacrifices, and the same incestuous festivals, which were so falsely ascribed to the orthodox believers, were in reality celebrated by the Marcionites, by the Carpocratians, and by several other sects of the Gnostics, who, notwithstanding they might deviate into the paths of heresy, were still actuated by the sentiments of men, and still governed by the precepts of Christianity.21 Accusations of a similar kind were retorted upon the church by the schismatics who had departed from its communion,22 and it was confessed on all sides that the most scandalous licentiousness of manners prevailed among great numbers of those who affected the name of Christians. A Pagan magistrate, who possessed neither leisure nor abilities to discern the almost imperceptible line which divides the orthodox faith from heretical pravity, might easily have imagined that their mutual animosity had extorted the discovery of their common guilt. It was fortunate for the repose, or at least for the reputation, of the first Christians, that the magistrates sometimes proceeded with more temper and moderation than is usually consistent with religious zeal, and that they reported, as the impartial result of their judicial inquiry, that the sectaries who had deserted the established worship appeared to them sincere in their professions and blameless in their manners, however they might incur, by their absurd and excessive superstition, the censure of the laws.23 20 In the persecution of Lyons, some Gentile slaves were compelled, by the fear of tortures, to accuse their Christian master. The church of Lyons, writing to their brethren of Asia, treat the horrid charge with proper indignation and contempt. Euseb. Hist. Eccles. v. i. 21 See Justin Martyr, Apolog. i. 35 [c. 27 ? ed. Ben.]. Irenæus adv. Hæres, i. 24. Clemens Alexandrin. Stromat. 1. iii. p. 438 [c. 2, p. 514, ed. Oxon. 1715]. Euseb. iv. 8. It would be tedious and disgusting to relate all that the succeeding writers have imagined, all that Epiphanius has received, and all that Tillemont has copied. M. de Beausobre (Hist. du Manichéisme, 1. ix. c. 8, 9) has exposed, with great spirit, the disingenuous arts of Augustin and Pope Leo I. 22 When Tertullian became a Montanist, he aspersed the morals of the church which he had so resolutely defended. "Sed majoris est Agape, quia per hanc adolescentes "tui cum sororibus dormiunt. Appendices scilicet gulæ lascivia et luxuria." De Jejuniis, c. 17. The 35th canon of the council of Illiberis provides against the scandals which too often polluted the vigils of the church, and disgraced the Christian name in the eyes of unbelievers. Tertullian (Apolog. c. 2) expatiates on the fair and honourable testimony of Pliny. with much reason, and some declamation |