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The surprise of the Pagans was soon succeeded by resentment;
and the most pious of men were exposed to the unjust but
dangerous imputation of impiety. Malice and prejudice concurred
in representing the Christians as a society of atheists, who, by
the most daring attack on the religious 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. 9 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. 11
Footnote 9: Cur nullas aras habent? templa nulla? nulla nota
simulacra! - Unde autem, vel quis ille, aut ubi, Deus unicus,
solitarius, desti tutus? Minucius Felix, c. 10.
Footnote 10: It is difficult (says Plato) to attain, and
dangerous to publish, the knowledge of the true God. See the
Theologie des Philosophes, in the Abbe d'Olivet's French
translation of Tully de Natura Deorum, tom. i. p. 275.
Footnote 11: The author of the Philopatris perpetually treats
the Christians as a company of dreaming enthusiasts, &c.; and in
one place he manifestly alludes to the vision in which St. Paul
was transported to the third heaven. In another place, Triephon,
who personates a Christian, after deriding the gods of Paganism,
proposes a mysterious oath.
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 Aesculapius, 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. 13
Footnote 12: According to Justin Martyr, (Apolog. Major, c.
70-85,) the daemon 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.
Footnote 13: In the first and second books of Origen, Celsus
treats the birth and character of our Savior with the most
impious contempt. The orator Libanius praises Porphyry and
Julian for confuting the folly of a sect., which styles a dead
man of Palestine, God, and the Son of God. Socrates, Hist.
Ecclesiast. iii. 23.
The personal guilt which every Christian had contracted, in
thus preferring his private sentiment to the national religion,
was aggravated in a very high degree by the number and union of
the criminals. It is well known, and has been 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 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 honor concerned in the execution of
their commands, sometimes attempted, by rigorous punishments, to
subdue this independent spirit, which boldly acknowledged an
authority superior to that of the magistrate. The extent and
duration of this spiritual conspiracy seemed to render it
everyday 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 every
where 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." 17
Footnote 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.
Footnote 15: The proconsul Pliny had published a general edict
against unlawful meetings. The prudence of the Christians
suspended their Agapae; but it was impossible for them to omit
the exercise of public worship.
Footnote 16: As the prophecies of the Antichrist, approaching
conflagration, &c., provoked those Pagans whom they did not
convert, they were mentioned with caution and reserve; and the
[Montanist were censured for disclosing too freely the dangerous
secret. See Mosheim, 413.
Footnote 17: Neque enim dubitabam, quodcunque esset quod
faterentur, (such are the words of Pliny,) pervicacian certe et
inflexibilem obstinationem lebere puniri.
The precautions with which the disciples of Christ performed
the offices of religion were at first dictated by fear and
necessity; but they were continued from choice. By imitating 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. 18 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 favor 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 provocative 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
Footnote 18: See Mosheim's ecclesiastical History, vol. i. p.
101, and Spanheim, Remarques sur les Caesars de Julien, p. 468,
&c.
Footnote 19: See Justin Martyr, Apolog. i. 35, ii. 14.
Athenagoras, in Legation, c. 27. Tertullian, Apolog. c. 7, 8, 9.
Minucius Felix, c. 9, 10, 80, 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.
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 rumor 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
dishonor 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, should consent to
violate those principles which nature and education had imprinted
most deeply in their minds. 20 Nothing, it should seem, 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
Footnote 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.
Footnote 21: See Justin Martyr, Apolog. i. 35. Irenaeus adv.
Haeres. i. 24. Clemens. Alexandrin. Stromat. l. iii. p. 438.
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 Manicheisme, l. ix. c. 8, 9) has exposed, with great
spirit, the disingenuous arts of Augustin and Pope Leo I.
Footnote 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 gulae lascivia et luxuria." De
Jejuniis c. 17. The 85th 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.
Footnote 23: Tertullian (Apolog. c. 2) expatiates on the fair
and honorable testimony of Pliny, with much reason and some
declamation.
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To cite original text:
Gibbon, Edward, 1737-1794. The history of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. (NY : Knopf, 1993), v. 2, pp. 8- 14.