reflected the fierce passions and violent barbarities of the throne, would now, in turn, image back the calm and placid serenity of the imperial tribunal. Edicts are said to have been issued to some of the Grecian cities-Larissa, Thessalonica, and Athens-and to the Greeks in general, to refrain from any unprecedented severities against the Christians. Another rescript (1), addressed to the cities of Asia Minor, speaks language too distinctly Christian even for the anticipated Christianity of disposition evinced by Antoninus. It calls upon the Pagans to avert the anger of Heaven, which was displayed in earthquakes and other public calamities, by imitating the piety, rather than denouncing the atheism, of the Christians. The pleasing vision must, it is to be feared, be abandoned, which would represent the best of the Pagan Emperors bearing his public testimony in favour of the calumniated Christians; the man who, from whatever cause, deservedly bore the name of the Pious among the adherents of his own religion, the most wisely tolerant to the faith of the Gospel. CHAPTER VII. CHRISTIANITY AND MARCUS AURELIUS THE PHILOSOPHER. THE virtue of Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher, was of a more lofty and vigorous character than that of his gentle predecessor. The second Antonine might seem the last effort of Paganism, or rather of Gentile philosophy, to raise a worthy opponent to the triumphant career of Christianity. A blameless disciple in the severest school of philosophic morality, the austerity of Marcus rivalled that of the Christians in its contempt of the follies and diversions of life; yet his native kindliness of disposition was not hardened and embittered by the severity or the pride of his philosophy (2). With Aurelius, nevertheless, Christianity found not only a fair and high-minded competitor for the command of the human mind; not only a rival in the exaltation of the soul of man to higher views and more dignified motives, but a violent and intolerant persecutor. During his reign, the martyrologies become more authentic and credible; the general voice of Christian history arraigns the philosopher, not indeed as the author of a general and systematic plan for the extirpation of Christianity, but as withdrawing even (1) The rescript of Antonine, in Eusebius, to which Xiphilin alludes (Euseb. iv. 13), in favour of the Christians, is now generally given up as spurious. The older writers disputed to which of the Antonines it belonged. Lardner argues, from the Apologies of Justin Martyr, that the Christians were persecuted "even to death," during this reign. The inference is inconclusive: they were obnoxious to the law, and night endeavour to gain the law on their side, though it may not have been carried into execution. The general voice of Christian antiquity is favourable to the first Antoninus, (2) Verecundus sine ignaviâ, sîne tristitia gravis. Jul. Capit, Aug. Hist. p. 160. the ambiguous protection of the former Emperors, and giving free scope to the excited passions, the wounded pride, and the jealous interests of its enemies; neither discountenancing the stern determination of the haughty governor to break the contumacious spirit of resistance to his authority, nor the outburst of popular fury, which sought to appease the offended gods by the sacrifice of these despisers of their Deities. causes of the hosti lity of M. and his ment to Aurelius govern Christi anity. position regard to Three important causes concurred in bringing about this dan- Three gerous crisis in the destiny of Christianity at this particular period : -1. The change in the relative position of Christianity with the religion of the empire; 2. the circumstances of the times; 3. the character of the Emperor. 1. Sixty years of almost uninterrupted peace, since the beginning of the second century, had opened a wide field for the free development of Christianity. It had spread 1. Altered into every quarter of the Roman dominions. The western pro- of Christivinces, Gaul and Africa, rivalled the East in the number, if not in anity in the opulence, of their Christian congregations in almost every city Paganism. had gradually arisen a separate community, seceding from the ordinary habits and usages of life, at least from the public religious ceremonial; governed by its own laws; acting upon a common principle; and bound together in a kind of latent federal union throughout the empire. A close and intimate correspondence connected this new moral republic; an impulse, an opinion, a feeling, which originated in Egypt or Syria, was propagated with electric rapidity to the remotest frontier of the West. Irenæus, the Bishop of Lyons, in Gaul, whose purer Greek had been in danger of corruption from his intercourse with the barbarous Celtic tribes, enters into a controversy with the speculative teachers of Antioch, Edessa, or Alexandria, while Tertullian in his rude African Latin denounces or advocates opinions which sprung up in Pontus or in Phrygia. A new kind of literature had arisen, propagated with the utmost zeal of proselytism, among a numerous class of readers, who began to close their ears against the profanes fables, and unsatisfactory philosophical systems, of Paganism. While the Emperor himself condescended, in Greek of no despicable purity and elegance for the age, to explain the lofty tenets of the Porch, and to commend its noble morality to his subjects, the minds of a large portion of the world were preoccupied by writers who, in language often impregnated with foreign and Syrian barbarisms, enforced still. higher morals, resting upon religious tenets altogether new and incomprehensible, excepting to the initiate. Their sacred books were of still higher authority; commanded the homage, and required the diligent and respectful study, of all the disciples of the new faith. Nor was this empire within the empire, this universally disseminated sect,-which had its own religious rites, its own laws, to which it appealed rather than to the statutes of the empire; its Connec tion of own judges (for the Christians, wherever they were able, submitted their disputes to their bishop and his associate presbyters) its own financial regulations, whether for the maintenance of public worship, or for charitable purposes; its own religious superiors, who exercised a very different control from that of the pontiffs or sacerdotal colleges of Paganism; its own usages and conduct; in some respects its own language;-confined to one class, or to one description of Roman subjects. Christians were to be found in the court, in the camp, in the commercial market; they discharged all the duties, and did not decline any of the offices, of society. They did not altogether shun the forum, or abandon all interest in the civil administration; they had their mercantile transactions, in common with the rest of that class. One of their apologists indignantly repels the charge of their being useless to society: "We are no Indian Brahmins, or devotees, living naked in the woods, self-banished from civilised life (1)." Among their most remarkable distinctions, no doubt, was their admission of slaves to an equality in religious privileges. Yet there was no attempt to disorganise or correct the existing relations of society. Though the treatment of slaves in Christian families could not but be softened and humanised, as well by the evangelic temper, as by this acknowledged equality in the hopes of another life, yet Christianity left the emancipation of mankind from these deeply-rooted distinctions between the free and servile races, to times which might be ripe for so great and important a change. This secession of one part of society from its accustomed religious intercourse with the rest, independent of the numbers whose feelings and interests were implicated in the support of the national religion in all its pomp and authority, would necessarily produce estrangement, jealousy, animosity. As Christianity became more powerful, a vague apprehension Christi- began to spread abroad among the Roman people that the fall of anity with their old religion might, to a certain degree, involve that of their the Roman civil dominion; and this apprehension, it cannot be denied, was the fall of empire. justified, deepened, and confirmed, by the tone of some of the Christian writings, no doubt, by the language of some Christian teachers. Idolatry was not merely an individual, but a national, sin, which would be visited by temporal as well as spiritual retribution. The anxiety of one at least, and that certainly not the most discreet of the Christian apologists, to disclaim all hostility towards the temporal dignity of the empire, implies that the Christians were ob (1) Infructuosi in negotiis dicimur. Quo pacto homines vobiscum degentes, ejusdem victûs, habitûs, instinctûs, ejusdem ad vitam necessitatis? Neque enim Brachmanæ, aut Indorum gyinnosophista sumus, sylvicolæ et exules vitæ. Meminimus gratiam nos debere Deo domino creatori, nullum fructum operum ejus repudiamur, planè temperamus, ne ultra modum aut perperam uta mur. Itaque non sine foro, non sine macello, non sine balneis, tabernis, officinis, stabulis, nundinis vestris, cæterisque commerciis, cohabitamus in hoc seculo: navigamus et nos vobiscum et militamus, et rusticamur, et mercamur; proinde miscemus artes, opera nostra publicamus usui vestro. Tertull. Apologet. c. 42. Some writings apprehen noxious to this charge. The Christians are calumniated, writes Tertullian to Scapula (1), at a somewhat later period (under Severus), as guilty of treasonable disloyalty to the Emperor. As the occasion required, he exculpates them from any leaning to Niger, Albinus, or Cassius, the competitors of Severus, and then proceeds to make this solemn protestation of loyalty. "The Christian is the enemy of no man, assuredly not of the Emperor. The sovereign he knows to be ordained by God of necessity, therefore, he loves, reveres, and honours him, and prays for his safety, with that of the whole Roman empire, that it may endure-and endure it will-as long as the world itself (2)." But other Christian documents, or at least one of documents eagerly disseminated by the Christians, speak a very dif- Christian ferent language (3). By many modern interpreters, the Apocalypse wit itself is supposed to refer not to the fall of a predicted spiritual tory of this Rome, but of the dominant Pagan Rome, the visible Babylon of sion. idolatry, and pride, and cruelty. According to this view, it is a grand dramatic vaticination of the triumph of Christianity over Heathenism, in its secular as well as its spiritual power. Be this as it may, in later writings, the threatening and maledictory tone of the Apocalypse is manifestly borrowed, and directed against the total abolition of Paganism, in its civil as well as religious supremacy. Many of these forged prophetic writings belong to the reign of the Antonines, and could not emanate from any quarter but that of the more injudicious and fanatical Christians. The second (Apocryphal) book of Esdras is of this character, the work of a Judaising Christian (4); it refers distinctly to the reign of the twelve Cæsars (5), and obscurely intimates, in many parts, the approaching dissolution of the existing order of things. The doctrine of the Millennium, which was as yet far from exploded, or fallen into disregard, mingled with all these prophetic anticipations of future change in the destinies of mankind (6). The visible throne of Christ according to these writings, was to be erected on the ruins of all earthly empires the nature of his kindom would, of course, be unintelligible to the Heathen; and all that he would comprehend would be a vague notion that the empire of the world was to be transferred from Rome, and that this extinction of the majesty of the empire was, in some incomprehensible manner, connected with the triumph of the new faith. His terror, his indignation, and his contempt, (1) Sed et circa majestatem imperii infama mur, tamen nunquam Albiniani, nec Nigriani, vel Cassiani, inveniri potuerunt Christiani. Christianus nullius est hostis, nedum impera. toris; quem sciens a Deo suo constitui, necesse est ut et ipsum diligat, et revereatur, et honoret, et salvum velit, cum toto Romano imperio, quousque sæculum stabit: tamdiu enim stabit. Ad Scapulam, 1. (2) Quousque sæculum stabit. (3) I have been much indebted, in this passage, to the excellent work of Tschirner, "der Fall des Heidenthums," a work written with so much learning, candour, and Christian temper, (4) The general character of the work, the (5) C. xii. 14. Compare Basnage, Hist. des Juifs, 1. vii. c. 2. (6) There are apparent allusions to the Millennium in the Sibylline verses, particularly at the close of the eighth book. The Sibylline books. would lead to fierce and implacable animosity. Even in Tertullian's Apology, the ambiguous word "sæculum" might mean no more than a brief and limited period, which was yet to elapse before the final consummation. But the Sibylline verses, which clearly belong to this period, express, in the most remarkable manner, this spirit of exulting menace at the expected simultaneous fall of Roman idolatry and of Roman empire. The origin of the whole of the Sibylline oracles now extant is not distinctly apparent, either from the style, the manner of composition, or the subject of their predictions (1). It is manifest that they were largely interpolated by the Christians, to a late period, and some of the books can be assigned to no other time but the present (2). Much, no doubt, was of an older date. It is scarcely credible that the fathers of this time would quote cotemporary forgeries as ancient prophecies. The Jews of Alexandria, who had acquired some taste for Grecian poetry, and displayed some talent for the translation of their sacred books into the Homeric language and metre (3), had, no doubt, set the example of versifying their own prophecies, and perhaps of ascribing them to the Sibyls, whose names were universally venerated, as revealing to mankind the secrets of futurity. They may have begun with comparing their own prophets with these ancient seers, and spoken of the predictions of Isaiah or Ezekiel as their Sibylline verses, which may have been another word for prophetic or oracular. Almost every region of Heathenism boasts its Sibyl. Poetic predictions, ascribed to these inspired women, were either published or religiously preserved in the sacred archives of the cities. No where were they held in such awful reverence as in Rome. The opening of the Sibylline books was an event of rare occurrence, and only at seasons of fearful disaster or peril. Nothing would be more tempting to the sterner or more ardent Christian, than to enlist, as it were, on his side, these authorised Pagan interpreters of futurity; to extort, as it were, from their own oracles, this confession of their approaching dissolution. Nothing, on the other hand, would more strongly excite the mingled feelings of apprehension and animosity in the minds of the Pagans, than this profanation, as it would seem, whether they disbelieved or credited (1) The first book, to page 176., may be Jewish; it then becomes Christian, as well as the second. But in these books there is little prophecy; it is in general the Mosaic history, in Greek hexameters. If there are any fragments of Heathen verses, they are in the third book. (2) Ad horum imperatorum (Antonini Pii cum liberis suis M Aurelio et Lucio Vero) tempora videntur Sibyllarum vaticinia tantum extendi; id quod etiam e lib. v. videre licet. Note of the editor, Opsopæus, p. 688. (3) Compare Valckenaer's learned treatise de Aristobulo Judæo. The fragments of Ezekiel Tragædus, and many passages, which are evident versions of the Jewish scriptures, in the works of the fathers, particularly of Eusebius, may he traced to this school. It is by no means impossible that the Pollio of Virgil may owe many of its beauties to those Alexandrian versifiers of the Hebrew prophets. Virgil, who wrought up indiscriminately into his refined gold all the ruder ore which he found in the older poets, may have seen and admired some of these verses. He may have condescended, as he thought, to borrow the images of these religious books of the barbarians, as a modern might the images of the Vedas or of the Koran. |