but you quarrel with the effect, however be neficial, in consequence of your hatred of the cause from which it proceeds. Even virtue ceases in your estimation to be virtue when found in a Christian: and you are content that your wives shall be unchaste, your children disobedient, and your slaves dishonest, if they are but careful to abstain from all communication with this detested sect." Tertullian 57 alludes to an ancient law, which prohibited even the emperor from introducing the worship of any new Deity, unless it had been previously approved by the Senate. As the worship of Christ had not received this preliminary sanction, the Christians, by the profession of their religion, manifestly offended against the law; and Tertullian speaks as if this was the principal ground of the accusations against them. It was not, however, their sole offence: they were charged, not only with introducing a new deity, but with abandoning the gods of their ancestors. Tertullian replies, that the accusation came with an ill grace from men, who were themselves in the daily habit of disregarding and violating the institutions of antiquity; but he does not attempt to deny its truth. 58 On the contrary, he boldly maintains that the Christians had done right in renouncing the worship of gods, who were in reality no gods; but mortals to whom divine honours had been ascribed after death, and whose images and statues were the abode of evil spirits, lurking there in ambush to destroy the souls of men. 59 The absurdity and extravagance of the Heathen Mythology open to Tertullian a wide field for the exercise of his eloquence and wit: and while at one time he ironically apologises for the readiness with which the magistrates and people gave credit to the horrible reports circulated against the Christians, on the ground that they believed stories equally horrible respecting their own Deities; at another he warmly inveighs against the gross inconsistency of imputing to a Christian as a crime, that which was not deemed derogatory to the character of a God. 60 But the prejudice and bigotry of the enemies of the Gospel induced them, not only to believe the most atrocious calumnies against its professors, but also to entertain the most 61 erroneous and ridiculous notions respecting the objects of Christian worship. Not content with falling into the double error, first, of confounding the Christians with the Jews, and next of receiving as true the idle tales related by Tacitus respecting the origin and fortunes of the Jewish people, they persisted in accusing the Christians of worshipping the head of an ass: although, as our author justly observes, 62 the Roman historian had himself furnished the means of disproving his own statement, by relating that, when Pompey visited the temple of Jerusalem, and entered the Holy of Holies, he found there no visible representation of the Deity. Since they could give credit to so palpable a falsehood, we cannot be surprized at their believing that the Sun and the cross were objects of worship in the new religion-a belief, to which the forms of Christian devotion might appear to an adversary to lend some countenance. In replying to these calumnies, Tertullian takes the opportunity of stating in spirited and eloquent language, the Christian notions of the Deity; and of insisting upon the genuineness and antiquity of the Jewish Scriptures, by which the knowledge of the one supreme God, of the creation of the world, 63 61 Hist. L. v. c. 4. 62 Hist. L. v. c. 9. and of the origin of mankind, had been preserved and transmitted from age to age. 64 The superior antiquity of Moses and the Prophets to the poets and legislators of Greece is repeatedly urged by our author, as an irrefragable proof (weak as the argument may appear to us) of the superior claim of the Mosaic institutions to be received as a revelation from heaven. It has been remarked that the treatment of the primitive Christians formed a solitary exception to that system of universal toleration, which regulated the conduct of the Roman government towards the professors of other religions. 65 Gibbon appears to have assigned the true reason of this deviation from its usual policy, when he observes that while all other people professed a national religion, the Christians formed a sect. The Egyptian, though he deemed it his duty to worship the same birds and reptiles to which his ancestors had paid their adorations, made no attempt to induce the inhabitants of other countries to adopt his deities. In his estimation the different superstitions of the heathen world were not so much at variance that they could not exist together. He respected the faith of others, while he preferred 64 c. 47. 6க் 6 Chap. xvi. p. 523. Ed. 4to. his own. But Christianity was from its very nature a proselyting religion. The convert not only abandoned the faith of his ancestors, and thereby committed an unpardonable offence in the eyes of a Gentile, but also claimed to himself the exclusive possession of the truth, and denounced as criminal every other mode of worship. When we consider this striking distinction between the character of Christianity, and of every other form of religion then existing, we shall feel less surprise that it was regarded by the ruling powers with peculiar feelings of jealousy and dislike, or that it was excepted from the general system of toleration. 66 In vain did Tertullian insist upon the right of private judgement in matters of faith; in vain expose the strange inconsistency of tolerating the absurd superstitions of Egypt, and at the same time persecuting the professors of a religion, which inculcated the worship of one, pure, spiritual, omniscient, omnipotent God,a God in every respect worthy to receive. the adorations of intelligent beings. By thus asserting that the God of the Christians was the only true God, he unavoidably destroyed the effect of his appeal to the understanding, the justice, and the humanity of the Roman governors. |