losophers. total subjugation of Judæa, and the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem, having reduced the religious parents of the Christians to so low a state, their nation and consequently their religion, being, according to the ordinary course of events, likely to mingle up and become absorbed in the general population of the Roman empire, Christianity, it might reasonably be supposed, would scarcely survive its original stock, and might be safely left to burn out by the same gradual process of extinction. Besides this, the strong mind of Vespasian was fully occupied by the restoration of order in the capital and in the provinces, and in fixing on a firm basis the yet unsettled authority of the Flavian dynasty. A more formidable, because more immediate danger, threatened the existing order of things. The awful genius of Roman liberty had entered Stoic phi- into an alliance with the higher philosophy of the time. Republican stoicism, brooding in the noblest minds of Rome, looked back with vain though passionate regret, to the free institutions of their ancestors, and demanded the old liberty of action. It was this dangerous movement, not the new and humble religion, which calmly acquiesced in all political changes, and contented itself with liberly of thought and opinion, which put to the test the prudence and moderation of the emperor Vespasian. It was the spirit of Cato, not of Christ, which he found it necessary to control. The enemy before whom he trembled was the patriot Trasea, not the Apostle St. John, who was silently winning over Ephesus to the new faith. The edict of expulsion from Rome fell not on the worshippers of foreign religions, but on the philosophers, a comprehensive term, but which was probably limited to those whose opinions were considered dangerous to the Imperial authority (1). It was only with the new fiscal regulations of the rapacious and parsimonious Vespasian, that the Christians were accidentally implicated. The Emperor continued to levy the capitation lax, which had been willingly and proudly paid by the Jews throughout the empire for the maintenance of their own temple at Jerusalem, for the restoration of the idolatrous fane of the Capitoline Jupiter, Temple which had been destroyed in the civil contests. The Jew submitted tax. with sullen reluctance to this insulting exaction; but even the hope of escaping it would not incline him to disguise or dissemble his faith. But the Judaizing Christian, and even the Christian of Jewish descent, who had entirely thrown off his religion, yet was marked by the indelible sign of his race, was placed in a singularly perplexing position (2). The rapacious publican, who farmed the tax, was not likely to draw any true distinction among those whose features, connexions, name, and notorious descent, still designated (1) Tacit. Hist. iv. 4-9. Dion Cassius, lxvi. 13. Suetonius, Vespas. 15. Tillemont, Hist. des Empereurs. Vespasian. Art. xv. (2) Dion Cassius, edit. Reimar, with his notes, lib. lxvi. p. 1082. Suetonius in Dom. v. 12. Martial, vii. 14. Basnage, Hist, des Juifs. vol. vii. ch. xi. p. 304. : them as liable to the tax his coarser mind would consider the profession of Christianity as a subterfuge to escape a vexatious impost. But to the Jewish Christian of St. Paul's opinions, the unresisted payment of the burthen, however insignificant, and to which he was not bound, either by the letter or the spirit of the edict, was an acknowledgment of his unconverted Judaism, of his being still under the law, as well as an indirect contribution to the maintenance of heathenism. It is difficult to suppose that those who were brought before the public tribunal, as claiming an exemption from the tax, and exposed to the most indecent examination of their Jewish descent, were any other than this class of Judaizing Christians. the condition and estimation after the of the Jews war. In other respects, the connexion of the Christians with the Jews could not but affect their place in that indiscriminating public estimation, which still, in general, notwithstanding the Neronian persecution, confounded them together. The Jewish war appears to Change in have made a great alteration both in the condition of the race of Israel, and in the popular sentiment towards them. From aversion as a sullen and unsocial, they were now looked upon with hatred and contempt, as a fierce, a desperate, and an enslaved race. Some of the higher orders, Agrippa and Josephus the historian, maintained a respectable, and even an eminent rank at Rome; but the provinces were overrun by swarms of Jewish slaves, or miserable fugitives, reduced by necessity to the meanest occupations, and lowering their minds to their sordid and beggarly condition. As then to some of the Romans the Christian assertion of religious freedom would seem closely allied with the Jewish attempt to obtain civil independence, they might appear, especially to those in authority, to have inherited the intractable and insubordinate spirit of their religious forefathers; so, on the other hand, in some places, the Christian might be dragged down, in the popular apprehension, to the level of the fallen and outcast Jew. Thus, while Christianity in fact was becoming more and more alienated from Judaism, and even assuming the most hostile position, the Roman rulers would be the last to discern the widening breach, or to discriminate between that religious confederacy which was destined to absorb within it all the subjects of the Roman empire, and that race which was to remain in its social isolation, neither blended into the general mass of mankind, nor admitting any other within its insuperable pale. If the singular story related by Hegesippus (1) concerning the family The deof our Lord deserves credit, even the descendants of his house were of the bre endangered by their yet unbroken connection with the Jewish race. Domitian is said to have issued an edict for the extermination of the whole house of David, in order to annihilate for ever the hope of scendants thren of our Lord brought before the tribunal. (1) Eusebius, iii. 20. the Messiah, which still brooded with dangerous excitement in the Jewish mind. The grandsons of St. Jude, "the brother of our Lord," were denounced by certain heretics as belonging to the proscribed family, and brought before the tribunal of the Emperor, or, more probably, that of the procurator of Judæa (1). They acknowledged their descent from the royal race, and their relationship to the Messiah; but in Christian language they asserted, that the kingdom which they expected was purely spiritual and angelic, and only to commence at the end of the world, after the return to judgment. Their poverty, rather than their renunciation of all temporal views, was their security. They were peasants, whose hands were hardened with toil, and whose whole property was a farm of about twentyfour English acres, and of the value of 9000 drachmes, or about 300 pounds sterling. This they cultivated by their own labour, and regularly paid the appointed tribute. They were released as too humble and too harmless to be dangerous to the Roman authority, and Domitian, according to the singularly inconsistent account, proceeded to annual his edict of persecution against the Christians. Like all the stories which rest on the sole authority of Hegesippus, this has a very fabulous air. At no period were the hopes of the Messiah, entertained by the Jews, so little likely to awaken the jealousy of the Emperor, as in the reign of Domitian. The Jewish mind was still stunned, as it were, by the recent blow the whole land was in a state of iron subjection. Nor was it till the latter part of the reign of Trajan, and that of Hadrian, that they rallied for their last desperate and conclusive struggle for independence. Nor, however indistinct the line of demarcation between the Jews and the Christians, is it easy to trace the connection between the stern precaution for the preservation of the peace of the Eastern world and the stability of the Empire against any enthusiastic aspirant after an universal sovereignty, with what is sometimes called the second great persecution of Christianity; for the exterminating edict was aimed at a single family, and at the extinction of a purely Jewish tenet. Though it may be admitted that, even yet, the immediate return of the Messiah to reign on earth was dominant among most of the Jewish Christians of Palestine. Even if true, this edict was rather the hasty and violent expedient of an arbitrary sovereign, trembling for his personal security, and watchful to avert danger from his throne, than a profound and vigorous policy, which aimed at the suppression of a new religion, declaredly hostile, and threalening the existence of the established Polytheism. Christianity, however, appears to have forced itself upon the knowledge and the fears of Domitian in more unexpected quarter, the bosom of his own family (2). Of his two cousins german, he (1) Gibbon thus modifies the story to which appears to give some credit. (2) Suetonius, in Domit. c. 15. Dion. Cassius, lxvii. 14. Eusebius, iii. 18. Clemens. the sons of Flavius Sabinus, the one fell an early victim to his jealous apprehensions. The other, Flavius Clemens, is described by the epigrammatic biographer of the Cæsars, as a man of the most contemptible indolence of character. His peaceful kinsman, instead Flavius of exciting the fears, enjoyed, for some time, the favour, of Domitian. He received in marriage Domitilla, the niece of the Emperor, his children were adopted as heirs to the throne, Clemens himself obtained the consulship. On a sudden these harmless kinsmen became dangerous conspirators; they were arraigned on the unprecedented charge of Atheism and Jewish manners; the husband, Clemens, was put to death; the wife, Domitilla, banished to the desert island, either of Pontia, or Pandataria. The crime of Atheism was afterwards the common popular charge against the Christians; the charge to which, in all ages, those are exposed who are superior to the vulgar notion of the Deity. But it was a charge never advanced against Judaism; coupled, therefore, with that of Jewish manners, it is unintelligible, unless it refers to Christianity. Nor is it improbable that the contemptible want of energy, ascribed by Suetonius to Flavius Clemens, might be that unambitious superiority to the world which characterised the early Christian. Clemens had seen his brother cut off by the sudden and capricious fears of the tyrant; and his repugnance to enter on the same dangerous public career, in pursuit of honours which he despised, if it had assumed the lofty language of philosophy, might have commanded the admiration of his cotemporaries; but connected with a new religion, of which the sublimer notions and principles were altogether incomprehensible, only exposed him to their more contemptuous scorn. Neither in his case was it the peril apprehended from the progress of the religion, but the dangerous position of the individuals professing the religion, so near to the throne, which was fatal to Clemens and Domitilla. It was the pretext, not the cause, of their punishment; and the first act of the reign of Nerva was the reversal of these sentences by the authority of the senate the exiles were recalled, and an act, prohibiting all accusations of Jewish manners (1), seems to have been intended as a peace-offering for the execution of Clemens, and for the especial protection of the Christians. But Christian history cannot pass over another incident assigned to the reign of Domitian, since it relates to the death of St. John the Apostle. Christian gratitude and reverence soon began to be discontented with the silence of the authentic writings as to the fate different of the twelve chosen companions of Christ. It began first with some modest respect for truth, but soon with bold defiance of probability to brighten their obscure course, till each might be traced by the blaze of miracle into remote regions of the world, where it is clear, (1) Diou Cassius, lxviii. 1. Legends of the mis Sions of the Apostles into countries. that if they had penetrated, no record of their existence was likely to survive (1). These religious invaders, according to the later Christian romance, made a regular partition of the world, and assigned to each the conquest of his particular province. Thrace, Scythia, Spain, Britain, Ethiopia, the extreme parts of Africa, India, the name of which mysterious region was sometimes assigned to the southern coast of Arabia, had each their Apostle, whose spiritual triumphs and cruel martyrdom were vividly pourtrayed and gradually amplified by the fertile invention of the Greek and Syrian Death of historians of the early church. Even the history of St. John, whose St. John. later days were chiefly passed in the populous and commercial city of Ephesus, has not escaped. Yet legend has delighted in harmonising its tone with the character of the beloved disciple, drawn in the Gospel, and illustrated in his own writings. Even if purely imaginary, these stories show that another spirit was working in the mind of man. While then we would reject, as the offspring of a more angry and controversial age, the story of his flying in fear and indignation from a bath polluted by the presence of the heretic Cerinthus, we might admit the pleasing tradition that when he grew so feeble from age as to be unable to utter any long discourse, his last, if we may borrow the expression, his cycnean voice, dwelt on a brief exhortation to mutual charity (2). His whole sermon consisted in these words: "Little children, love one another;" and when his audience remonstrated at the wearisome iteration of the same words, he declared that in these words was contained the whole substance of Christianity. The deportation of the Apostle to the wild island of Patmos, where general tradition places his writing the book of Revelations, is by no means improbable, if we suppose it to have taken place under the authority of the proconsul of Asia, on account of some local disturbance in Ephesus, and, notwithstanding the authority of Tertullian, reject the trial before Domitian at Rome, and the plunging him into a cauldron of boiling oil, from which he came forth unhurt (3). Such are the few vestiges of the progress of Christianity which we dimly trace in the Constitu- obscurity of the latter part of the first century. During this period, tion of however, took place the regular formation of the young Christian churches. republics, in all the more considerable cities of the Empire. The Christian primitive constitution of these churches is a subject which it is im- (1) Euseb. Ecc. Hist. iii. 1. The tradition is here in its simpler and clearly more genuine form. postea quam in oleum igneum demersus, nihil passus est. Mosheim suspects that in this passage of Tertullian a metaphor has been converted into a fact. Mosheim, de Reb. Christ. ante (2) Euseb. Ecc. Hist, iii. 22. |