HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION STATE AND VARIOUS FORMS OF PAGAN THE reign of Augustus Cæsar is the most remark- CHAP. Era of Augustus I. CHAP. Asia, Egypt, and Greece into one political system, in which the Greek language and manners predominated. But the monarchy of Rome was founded on principles as yet unknown; the kingdoms, which were won by the most unjustifiable aggression, were, for the most part, governed with a judicious union of firmness and conciliation, in which the conscious strength of irresistible power was tempered with the wisest respect to national usages. The Romans conquered like savages, ✓ but ruled like philosophic statesmen.* Till, from the Euphrates to the Atlantic, from the shores of Britain, and the borders of the German forests, to the sands of the African Desert, the whole Western world was consolidated into one great commonwealth, united by the bonds of law and government, by facilities of communication and commerce, and by the general dissemination of the Greek and Latin languages. Roman Civilisation. For civilisation followed in the train of Roman conquest: the ferocity of her martial temperament seemed to have spent itself in the civil wars: the lava flood of her ambition had cooled; and wherever it had spread, a rich and luxuriant vegetation broke forth. At least down to the time of the Antonines, though occasionally disturbed by the contests which arose on the change of dynasties, the rapid progress of improvement was by no means retarded. Diverging * On the capture of a city, promiscuous massacre was the general order, which descended even to brute animals, until a certain signal. Polyb. x. 15. As to the latter point, I mean, of course, the general policy, not the local tyranny, which was so often exercised by the individual provincial governor. from Rome as a centre, magnificent and commodious roads connected the most remote countries; the free navigation of the Mediterranean united the most flourishing cities of the empire; the military colonies had disseminated the language and manners of the South in the most distant regions; the wealth and population of the African and Asiatic provinces had steadily increased; while, amid the forests of Gaul, the morasses of Britain, the sierras of Spain, flourishing cities arose; and the arts, the luxuries, the order, and regularity of cultivated life were introduced into regions which, a short time before, had afforded a scanty and precarious subsistence to tribes scarcely acquainted with agriculture. The frontiers of civilisation seemed gradually to advance, and to drive back the still-receding barbarism*: while within the pale, national distinctions were dying away; all tribes and races met amicably in the general relation of Roman subjects or citizens, and mankind seemed settling down into one great federal society.† ance of About this point of time Christianity appeared. AppearAs Rome had united the whole Western world into Christianone, as it might almost seem, lasting social system, ity. so Christianity was the first religion which aimed at an universal and permanent moral conquest. * Quæ sparsa congregaret imperia, ritusque molliret,et tot populorum discordes ferasque linguas sermonis commercio contraheret ad colloquia, et humanitatem homini daret. Plin. Nat. Hist. iii. 5. + « Unum esse reipublicæ corpus, atque unius animo regendum." Such was the argument of Asinius Gallus, Tac. Ann. i. 12. I. The older CHAP. The religions of the older world were content with their dominion over the particular people which were their several votaries. Family, tribal, national, Religions. deities were universally recognised; and as their gods accompanied the migrations or the conquests of different nations, their worship was extended over a wider surface, but rarely propagated among the subject races. To drag in triumph the divinities of a vanquished people was the last and most insulting mark of subjugation.* Yet, though the gods of the conquerors had thus manifested their superiority, and, in some cases, the subject nation might be inclined to desert their inefficient protectors, who had been found wanting in the hour of trial; still the godhead even of the defeated divinities was not denied: though their power could not withstand the mightier tutelar deity of the invaders; yet their right to a seat in the crowded synod of heaven, and their rank among the intermediate rulers of the world, was not called in question. The conqueror might, indeed, take delight in showing his contempt, and, as it were, trampling under foot the rebuked and impotent deities of his subject; and thus religious persecution be inflicted by the oppressor, and religious fanaticism excited among the oppressed. Yet, if * Tot de diis, quot de gentibus triumphi. Tertullian. Compare Isaiah, xlvi. 1., and Gesenius's note; Jer. xlviii. 7. xlix. 3.; Hos. x. 5,6.; Dan. xi. 8. + There is a curious passage in Lydus de Ostentis, a book which probably contains some parts of the 1 ancient ritual of Rome. A certain aspect of a comet not merely foretold victory, but the passing over of the hostile gods to the side of the Romans : καὶ αὐτὰ δὲ τὰ θεῖα κατα λείψουσι τοὺς πολεμίους, ὥστε ἐκ περισσοῦ προστεθῆναι τοῖς νικηταῖς. Lydus de Ostentis, lib. 12. I. Alexander; the temple was desecrated, the altar thrown down, CHAP. the priesthood degraded or put to the sword, this was done in the fierceness of hostility, or the insolence of pride *; or from policy, lest the religion should become the rallying point of civil independence t; rarely, if ever, for the purpose of extirpating a false, or supplanting it by a true, system of belief; perhaps in no instance with the design of promulgating the tenets of a more pure and perfect religion. A wiser policy commenced Policy of with Alexander. The deities of the conquered nations were treated with uniform reverence, the sacrilegious plunder of their temples punished with exemplary severity. + According to the Grecian system, their own gods were recognised in those of Egypt and Asia; they were called by Grecian names §, and worshipped with the accustomed offerings; and thus all religious differences between Macedonian, and Syrian, and Egyptian, and Persian, at once vanished away. * Such was the conduct of Cambyses in Egypt. Xerxes had, before his Grecian invasion, shown the proud intolerance of his disposition, in destroying the deities of the Babylonians, and slaying their priesthood (Herod. i. 183., and Arrian, vii. 19.); though, in this case, the rapacity which fatally induced him to pillage and desecrate the temples of Greece may have combined with his natural arrogance. Herod. viii. 53. + This was most likely the principle of the horrible persecution of the Jews by Antiochus Epiphanes, though a kind of heathen bigotry On the same principle, seems to have mingled with his Arrian, lib. vi. p. 431. 439. § Arrian, lib. iii. p. 158., vii. p. 464., and 486. Some Persian traditions, perhaps, represent Alexander as a religious persecutor; but these are of no authority against the direct statement of the Greek historians. The Indian religious usages, and the conduct of some of their faquirs, excited the wonder of the Greeks. |