DESTRUCTION OF THE WORLD FORETOLD. 143 apprehensions of mankind, that it must have contributed in a very considerable degree to the progress of the Christian faith. But when the edifice of the church was almost completed, the temporary support was laid aside. The doctrine. of Christ's reign upon earth was at first treated as a profound allegory, was considered by degrees as a doubtful and useless opinion, and was at length rejected as the absurd invention of heresy and fanaticism. A mysterious prophecy which still forms a part of the sacred canon, but which was thought to favor the exploded sentiment, has very narrowly escaped the proscription of the church. 67 Conflagration of the world. Whilst the happiness and glory of a temporal reign were promised to the disciples of Christ, of Rome and the most dreadful calamities were denounced against an unbelieving world. The edification of the new Jerusalem was to advance by equal steps with the destruction of the mystic Babylon; and as long as the emperors who reigned before Constantine persisted in the profession of idolatry, the epithet of Babylon was applied to the city and to the empire of Rome. A regular series was prepared of all the moral and physical evils which can afflict a flourishing nation; intestine discord, and the invasion of the fiercest barbarians from the unknown regions of the North; pestilence and famine, comets and eclipses, earthquakes and inundations. All these were only so many 68 66 Dupin, Bibliothèque Ecclesiastique, tom. i. p. 223, tom. 1. p. 366, and Mosheim, p. 720; though the latter of these learned divines is not altogether candid on this occasion. 67 In the council of Laodicea (about the year 360), the Apocalypse was tacitly excluded from the sacred canon, by the same churches of Asia to which it is addressed; and we may learn from the complaint of Sulpicius Severus, that their sentence had been ratified by the greater number of Christians of his time. From what causes then is the Apocalypse at present so generally received by the Greek, the Roman, and the Protestant Churches? The following ones may be assigned. 1. The Greeks were subdued by the authority of an impostor, who in the sixth century, assumed the character of Dionysius the Areopagite. 2. A just appre hersion, that the grammarians might become more important than the theologians, engaged the council of Trent to fix the seal of their infallibility on all the books of Scripture contained in the Latin Vulgate, in the number of which the Apocalypse was fortunately included. (Fr. Paolo, Istoria del Concilio Tridentino, 1. ii ) 3. The advantage of turning those mysterious prophecies against the See of Rome, inspired the Protestants with uncommon veneration for so useful an ally. See the ingenious and elegant discourses of the bishop of Litchfield on that unpromising subject.* 68 Lactantius (Institut. Divin. vii. 15, &c.) relates the dismal tale of futurity with great spirit and eloquence.† *The exclusion of the Apocalypse is not improbably assigned to its obvious unfitness to be read in churches. It is to be feared that a history of the interpretation of the Apocalypse would not give a very favorable view either of the wisdom or the charity of the successive ages of Christianity Wetstein's interpretation, differently modified, is adopted by most Continental scholars.-MILMAN. Lactantius had a notion of a great Asiatic empire, which was previously to rise on the ruins of the Roman: quod Romanum nomen (horret animus dicere, sed dicam, quia futurum est) tolletur de terrà, et imperium in Asiam revertetur.-M. 144 FIRE THE CONSUMING AGENT. preparatory and alarming signs of the great catastrophe of Rome, when the country of the Scipios and Cæsars should be consumed by a flame from heaven, and the city of the seven hills, with her palaces, her temples, and her triumphal arches, should be buried in a vast lake of fire and brimstone. It might, however, afford some consolation to Roman vanity, that the period of their empire would be that of the world itself; which, as it had once perished by the element of water, was destined to experience a second and speedy destruction from the element of fire. In the opinion of a general conflagration the faith of the Christian very happily coincided with the tradition of the East, the philosophy of the Stoics, and the analogy of Nature; and even the country, which, from religious motives, had been chosen for the origin and principal scene of the conflagration, was the best adapted for that purpose by natural and physical causes; by its deep caverns, beds of sulphur, and numerous volcanoes, of which those of Ætna, of Vesuvius, and of Lipari, exhibit a very imperfect representation. The calmest and most intrepid sceptic could not refuse to acknowledge that the destruction of the present system of the world by fire was in itself extremely probable. The Christian, who founded his belief much less on the fallacious arguments of reason than on the authority of tradition and the interpretation of Scripture, expected it with terror and confidence as a certain and approaching event; and as his mind was perpetually filled with the solemn idea, he considered every disaster that happened to the empire as an infallible symptom of an expiring world.69 devoted to cternal punishment. The condemnation of the wisest and most The Pagans virtuous of the Pagans, on account of their ignorance or disbelief of the divine truth, seems to offend the reason and the humanity of the prese: t age. But the primitive church, whose faith was of à much firmer consistence, delivered over, without hesitation, 70 69 On this subject every reader of taste will be entertained with the third part of Burnet's Sacred Theory. He blends philosophy, Scripture, and tradition, into one magnificent system; in the description of which he displays a strength of fancy not inferior to that of Milton himself. 70 And yet whatever may be the language of individuals, it is still the public doctrine of all the Christian churches; nor can even our own refuse to admit the conclusions which must be drawn from the eight and the eighteenth of her Articles. The Jansenists, who have so diligently studied the works of the fathers, maintain this sentiment with distinguished zeal; and the learned M. de Tillemont never dismisses a virtuous emperor without pronouncing his damnation. Zuinglius is perhaps the only leader of a party who has ever adopted the milder sentiment, and he gave no less offence to the Lutherans than to the Catholics. See Bossuct, Histoire des Variations des Eglises Protestantes, 1. ii. c. 19-22. DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 145 to eternal torture, the far greater part of the human species.* A charitable hope might perhaps be indulged in favor of Socrates, or some other sages of antiquity, who had consulted the light of reason before that of the gospel had arisen." But it was unanimously affirmed that those who, 71 Justin and Clemens of Alexandria allow that some of the philosophers were instructed by the Logos; confounding its double signification of the human reason, and of the Divine Word. *A golden city with foundations of precious gems, for the elect, and a burning lake of fire and brimstone for the condemned, was the crude belief of the early teachers of the Christian religion; and, while many Christians have now outgrown this primitive theology, and realize that we can best serve God by being just and merciful to our fellow men that a life of virtue and happiness here does not unfit us for what may occur hereafter that the moral doctrine of Confucius and of Jesus "Do unto others as ye would that others should do unto you," is nobler than the vindictive threat of an infinite punishment for a finite offence," still this materialistic heaven and this realistic hell, form the usual stock in trade of our most successful revivalists, whose vivid pictures of the terrors of perdition, which are beneath the contempt of the wise, arouse the fears of weak-minded believers, and sometimes drive them to despair and insanity. In comparison with such childish conceptions of omnipotence and immortality, how grand seem the views of philosophers and rationalists, who contemplate with calm serenity, without alarm or apprehension, the action of those immutable laws which control the universe. Realizing that, in defiance of death's stern mandate, and notwithstanding CHANGE is written on the universal face of Nature, the benefactors of our race still survive in the influence of their works that no generous aspiration, no earnest effort, is ever lost to humanity-no noble deed is ever achieved in vain. And that we now inherit and enjoy the civilization, the wisdom and experience garnered by our predecessors in the ages that are past, and which priceless legacy will be transmitted by us to myriads yet unborn. Says George Eliot: "Oh, may I join the choir invisible "Of those immortal dead who live again "In minds made better by their presence; live "In pulses stirred to generosity, "In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn "For miserable aims that end with self, "In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars "For as soon as we have once clearly understood" says Bleek, "that individual "life and action only form a small fragment of the great eternal life of mankind, "and that it is only by partaking in the latter that the individual man really lives, "and, as we may hope, lives forever-striving for the general good no longer appears a duty hard' of fulfillment, but a necessity of our nature, which we are "the less able to resist, the more we have recognized the true essence of things. "And in truth it is the sentiment of such a relation that is the great source of all "noble and good efforts." "The great mystery of existence," says Buchner," consists in perpetual and "uninterrupted change. Every thing is immortal and indestructible, - the "smallest worm as well as the most enormous of the celestial bodies, the sandgrain or the water-drop as well as the highest being in creation: man and his Thoughts. Only the forms in which being manifests itself are changing; but Being itself remains eternally the same and imperishable. When we die we do not lose ourselves, but only our personal consciousness, or the casual form which our being, in itself eternal and imperishabie, had assumed for a short time; we "live on in Nature, in our race, in our children, in our descendants, in our deeds, in our thoughts, in short in the entire material and psychical contribution which, during our short personal existence, we have furnished to the subsistence "of mankind and of nature in general." 44 "Humanity," says Radenhausen, "persists and flows on although the indi"vidual disappears after a short course of life; but neither his life, nor that of the "water-drop is lost. For just as the latter could not complete its circulation "without dissolving or superinducing the combinations of other matters, so 146 DOCTRINE OF ETERNAL PUNISHMENT. since the birth or the death of Christ, had obstinately persisted in the worship of the dæmons, neither deserved nor could expect a pardon from the irritated justice of the Deity. These rigid sentiments, which had been unknown to the ancient world, appear to have infused a spirit of bitterness into a system of love and harmony. The ties of blood and friendship were frequently torn asunder by the difference of religious faith; and the Christians, who, in this world, found themselves oppressed by the power of the Pagans, were sometimes seduced by resentment and spiritual pride to delight in the prospect of their future triumph. "You are "fond of spectacles," exclaims the stern Tertullian ;* “expect "the greatest of all spectacles, the last and eternal judgment "of the universe. How shall I admire, how laugh, how rejoice, how exult, when I behold so many proud "monarchs, and fancied gods, groaning in the lowest abyss of darkness; so many magistrates, who persecuted the "name of the Lord, liquefying in fiercer fires than they ever "kindled against the Christians; so many sage philosophers blushing in red-hot flames with their deluded scholars; so "every man leaves the traces of his existence behind him in what he separated "or brought into new combinations, in the contribution to the culture treasures "of humanity, which is furnished by every human life, from the least to the "greatest." Says Schopenhauer: "Drum schreitet, Thoren, ferner nicht, "Ob Ihr im Geist unsterblich seid! "Denn keines Todes Macht zerbricht "In einem ew'gen Kreise fuehrt "Und, who sie zur Vernichtung strebt, "Die Flammen neuen Lebens schuert! "Unsterblich ist der kleinste Wurm, "Unsterblich auch des Menschen Geist, Den jeder neue Todessturm "In immer neue Bahnen reisst! "So lebet Ihr, gestorben auch. "In kuenftigen Geschlechtern fort, "Und dieser ewige Gebrauch "Verwechselt nichts als Zeit und Ort!" - E. Quintus Septimus Florens Tertullianus," says Rev. Robert Taylor, "the last "that can be read into the second century, and the very first of all the Latin Fathers, was, like the rest of them, originally a heathen, was afterwards a most zealous and orthodox Christian, and finally fell into heresy. He was made 'presbyter of the church of Carthage in Africa, of which he was a native, about "A. D. 193, and died, as may be conjectured, about the year 220. As he had become "tinctured with heresy, he lost the honor of his place in the noble army of "** martyrs." " In Taylor's Syntagma, p. 106, a specimen is given of Tertullian's manner of reasoning, as follows: I find no other means to prove myself to be impudent "with success, and happily a fool, than by my contempt of shame; as, for instance: I maintain that the Son of God was born: why am I not ashamed of maintaining such a thing? Why! but because it is itself a shameful thing. I maintain that "the Son of God died: well, that is wholly credible because it is monstrously "absurd. I maintain that after having been buried, he rose again :_ and that I take to be absolutely true, because it was manifestly impossible." - E. FEAR, A MOTIVE FOR CONVERSION. 147 many celebrated poets trembling before the tribunal, not " of Minos, but of Christ; so many tragedians, more tuneful "in the expression of their own sufferings; so many "dancers-." But the humanity of the reader will permit me to draw a veil over the rest of this infernal description, which the zealous African pursues in a long variety of affected and unfeeling witticisms." Were often converted by their fears. Doubtless there were many among the primitive Christians of a temper more suitable to the meekness and charity of their profession. There were many who felt a sincere compassion for the danger of their friends and countrymen, and who exerted the most benevolent zeal to save them from the impending destruction. The careless Polytheist, assailed by new and unexpected terrors, against which neither his priests nor his philosophers could afford him any certain protection, was very frequently terrified and subdued by the menance of 72 Tertullian, de Spectaculis, c. 30. In order to ascertain the degree of authority which the zealous Áfrican had acquired, it may be sufficent to allege the testimony of Cyprian, the doctor and guide of all the western churches. (See Prudent. Hym. xiii. 100.) As often as he applied himself to his daily study of the writings of Tertullian, he was accustomed to say, "Da mihi magistrum, Give me my master." (Hieronym. de Viris Illustribus, tom. i. p. 284.)† *This translation is not exact: the first sentence is imperfect. Tertullian says, Ille dies nationibus insperatus, ille derisus, cum tanta sæculi vetustas et tot ejus nativitates uno igne haurientur. The text does not authorize the exaggerated expressions, so many magistrates, so many sage philosophers, so many poets, &c. : but simply magistrates, philosophers, poets. - GUIZOT. It is not clear that Gibbon's version or paraphrase is incorrect; Tertullian writes tot tantosque reges item præsides, &c. - MILMAN. Both these fathers were prepared for the Christian faith by Platonism, and could not be so ungrateful to their eminent heathen teachers, as to exclude them from the mansions of the blest. Clemens, who was half a century later than Justin, has been censured for the use which he made of his philosophy in his religious writings, some part of which Cassiodorus suppressed in his translation on that account. R. Simon, Hist. Crit. p. 19, 20. - ENGLISH CHURCHMAN. + The object of Tertullian's vehemence in his Treatise was to keep the Christians away from the secular games celebrated by the Emperor Severus: it has not prevented him from showing himself in other places full of benevolence and charity towards unbelievers: the spirit of the gospel has sometimes prevailed over the violence of human passions: Qui ergo putaveris nihil nos de salute Cæsaris curare (he says in his Apology) inspice Dei voces, literas nostras. Scitote ex illis præceptum esse nobis ad redundationem, benignitates etiam pro inimicis Deum orare, et pro persecutoribus bona precari. Sed etiam nominatim atque manifestè ora inquit (Christus) pro regibus et pro principibus et potestatibus ut omnia si tranquilla vobis. Tert. Apol. c. 31. - Guizor. It would be wiser for Christianity, retreating upon its genuine records in the New Testament, to disclaim this fierce African, than to identify itself with his furious invectives by unsatisfactory apologies for their unchristian fanaticism. M Tertullian, in a former note, was denounced by M. Guizot as an untrue exp of early Christian sentiments. The first sentence, as given by him at full is tar more violent and revolting than it is in Gibbon's abridged vers make good his second charge of "exaggerated exclamations," he has him recourse to a most unpardonable mutilation. The "so many" which he as an amplifying interpolation, is actually in the original, and if used on: is applied to all by conjunctive particles. - ENGLISH CHURCHMAN. |