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To
ROBERT BROWNING, esq.
AUTHOR OF "A DEATH IS THE
DESERT," AND
OF MANY OTHER POEMS OF THE DEEPEST INTEREST TO ALL
STUDENTS OF SCRIPTURE,
I DEDICATE
THESE VOLUMES
WITH SINCERE ADMIRATION AND ESTEEM.
PREFACE.
I complete in these volumes the work
which has absorbed such leisure as could be spared from many
and onerous duties during the last twelve years. My object
has been to furnish English readers with a companion, partly
historic and partly expository, to the whole of the New
Testament. By attention to the minutest details of the
original, by availing myself to the best of my power of the
results of modern criticism, by trying to concentrate upon
the writings of the Apostles and Evangelists such light as
may be derived from Jewish, Pagan, or Christian sources, I
have endeavoured to fulfil my ordination vow and to show
diligence in such studies as help to the knowledge of the
Holy Scriptures. The " Life of Christ" was intended mainly
as a commentary upon the Gospels. It was written in such a
form as should reproduce whatever I had been able to learn
from the close examination of every word which they contain,
and should at the same time set forth the living reality of
the scenes recorded. In the " Life of St. Paul" I wished to
incorporate the details of the Acts of the Apostles with
such biographical incidents as can be derived from the
Epistles of St. Paul; and to take the reader through
the Epistles themselves in a way which might enable him,
with keener interest, to judge of their separate purpose and
peculiarities, by grasping the circumstances under which
each of them was written. The present volumes are an attempt
to set forth, in their distinctive characteristics, the work
and the writings of St. Peter, St. James, St. Jude, St.
John, and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews. If my
effort has been in any degree successful, the reader should
carry away from these pages some conception of the varieties
of religious thought which prevailed in the schools of
Jerusalem and of Alexandria, and also of those phases of
theology which are represented by the writings of the two
greatest of the twelve Apostles.
In carrying out this design I have gone,
almost verse by verse, through the seven Catholic Epistles,
the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the Revelation of St.
John—explaining their special difficulties, and developing
their general characteristics. Among many Christians there
is a singular ignorance of the Books of Scripture as a
whole. With a wide knowledge of particular texts, there is a
strange lack of familiarity with the bearings of each
separate Gospel and Epistle. I have hoped that by
considering each book in connexion with all that we can
learn of its author, and of the circumstances under which it
was written, I might perhaps contribute to the intelligent
study of Holy Writ. There may be some truth in the old
motto, Bonus textuarius bonus theologus; but he whose
knowledge is confined to "texts," and who has never
studied them, first with their context, then as forming
fragments of entire books, and lastly in their relation to
the whole of Scripture, incurs the risk of turning theology
into an erroneous and artificial system. It is thus that the
Bible has been misinterpreted by substituting words for
things; by making the dead letter an instrument wherewith to
murder the living spirit; and by reading into Scripture a
multitude of meanings which it was never intended to
express. Words, like the chameleon, change their colour with
their surroundings. The very same word may in different ages
involve almost opposite connotations. The vague and
differing notions attached to the same term have been the
most fruitful sources of theological bitterness, and of the
internecine opposition of contending sects. The abuse of
sacred phrases has been the cause, in age after age, of
incredible misery and mischief. Texts have been perverted to
sharpen the sword of the tyrant and to strengthen the rod of
the oppressor—to kindle the fagot of the Inquisitor and to
rivet the fetters of the slave. The terrible wrongs which
have been inflicted upon mankind in their name have been due
exclusively to their isolation and perversion. The remedy
for these deadly evils would have been found in the due
study and comprehension of Scripture as a whole. The Bible
does not all lie at a dead level of homogeneity and
uniformity. It is a progressive revelation. Its many-coloured
wisdom was made known " fragmentarily and multifariously
"—in many parts and in many manners.
In the endeavour to give a clearer
conception of the books here considered I have followed such
different methods as each particular passage seemed to
require. I have sometimes furnished a very close and literal
translation; sometimes a free paraphrase; sometimes a rapid
abstract; sometimes a running commentary. Avoiding all
parade of learned references, I have thought that the reader
would generally prefer the brief expression of a definite
opinion to the reiteration of many bewildering theories.
Neither in these, nor in the previous volumes, have I
wilfully or consciously avoided a single difficulty. A
passing sentence often expresses a conclusion which has only
been formed after the study of long and tedious monographs.
In the footnotes especially I have compressed into the
smallest possible space what seemed to be most immediately
valuable for the illustration of particular words or
allusions. In the choice of readings I have exercised an
independent judgment. If my choice coincides in most
instances with that of the Revisers of the New Testament,
this has only arisen from the fact that I have been guided
by the same principles as they were. These volumes, like the
" Life of Christ" and the " Life of St. Paul," were written
before the readings adopted by the Revisers were known, and
without the assistance which I should otherwise have derived
from their invaluable labours. [I take this opportunity of
thanking the Rev. John de Soyres and Mr. "W. R. Brown for
the assistance which they have rendered in preparing this
book for the press.]
The purpose which I have had in view has
been, I trust, in itself a wortby one, however much I may
have failed in its execution. A living writer of
eminence has spoken of his works in terms which, in very
humble measure, I would fain apply to my own. "I have made,"
said Cardinal Newman—in a speech delivered in 1879—"many
mistakes. I have nothing of that high perfection which
belongs to the writings of the saints, namely, that error
cannot be found in them. But what, I trust, I may claim
throughout all I have written is this—an honest intention;
an absence of personal ends ; a temper of obedience; a
willingness to be corrected; a dread of error; a
desire to serve the Holy Church and " (though this is
perhaps more than I have any right to say) " through the
Divine mercy a fair measure of success."
F. W. FARRAR,
St. Margaret's
Sectary, Westminster,
June 11th, 1882.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
Volume I.
CHAPTER I.
moral condition of the world.
Degradations which
accompanied the Decadence of Paganism—The Slaves—The Rich
and Noble—The Emperor—Fatal Degeneracy—Greeklings—Literature,
Art, the Drama—The Senate — Scepticism and
Superstition—Stoic Virtue—The Holy .Toy of Christians ....
CHAPTER II.
the rise of the antichrist.
The Nemesis of
Absolutism—Reign of Nero—Christians and the Roman
Government—St. Paul and the Empire—Horrors of Cassarism—The
Palace of the Antichrist—Agrippina the Younger—Infancy of
Nero— Evil Auguries—Intrigues of Agrippina—Her Marriage with
Claudius— Her Career as Empress—Her Plots to Advance her
Son—Her Crimes— Her Peril—Murder of Claudius—Accession of
Nero . . . .17
CHAPTER III.
the features of the antichrist.
Successful Guilt—Fresh
Crimes—The "Golden Quinquennium"—Follies of Nero—Threats of
Agrippina—Jealousy of Britannicus—Murder of Britannicus—Nero
estranged from Agrippina—Influence of Poppaea— Plot to
Murder Agrippina—Burrus and Seneca—Murder of Agrippina—A
Tormented Conscience—The Depths of Satan . . . .35
CHAPTER IV.
the burning of rome, and the first
persecution.
The Era of Martyrdom—The
Fire of Rome—Was Nero Guilty ?—Devastation of the
City—Confusion and Agony—The Golden House—Nero Sanpeeted—The
Christians Accused—Strangeness of this Circumstance—
Tacitus—Popular Feeling against the Christians—Secret Jewish
Suggestions—Poppaea a Proselyte—Incendiarism attributed to
Christians— Jisthetic Cruelty—A Huge Multitude—Dreadful
Forms of Martyrdom—Martyrs on the Stage—The
Antichrist—Retribution—Awful Omens
—The Revolt of Vindex—Suicide of Nero—Expectation of his
Return....... 51
CHAPTER V.
writings of the apostles and early christians.
Annals of the Church—End
of the Acts—Obscurity of Details—Little known about the
Apostles—St. Andrew—St. Bartholomew—St. Matthew—St.
Thomas—St. James the Less—St. Simon Zelotcs—Judas— Late and
Scanty Records—Writings of the Great Apostles—Invaluable as
illustrating different Phases of Christian Thought—They
Explain the opposite Tendencies of Heretical Development—The
Revelation—The Epistle to the Hebrews—The Seven Catholic
Epistles—The Epistle of St. Jude—The Epistle of St.
James—The Epistles of St. Peter-Catholicity of St. Peter—The
Three Epistles of St. John—Genuineness of these
Writings—Contrasts between different Apostles—Difference
between St. Paul and St. John—Superiority of the New
Testament to the Writings of the Apostolic Fathers—The
Epistle of St. Clemens— Its Theological and Intellectual
Weakness—The Epistle of Barnabas— Its exaggerated Panlinism—Its
extravagant Exegesis—The Christian Church was not ideally
Pure—Yet its Chief Glory was in the Holiness of its Standard
........... 81
CHAPTER VI.
st. peter.
Outline of his early
Life—Events recorded in the Acts—Complete Tin-certainty as
to his Subsequent Career—Legends—Dom'me quo vadis?— The
Legends embellished and Doubtful—Legend about Simon Magus
—Was Peter Bishop of Rome?—Improbability of the Legend about
his Crucifixion head downwards —His Martyrdom—His Visit to
Rome....... 109
CHAPTER VII.
special features of the first epistle of st. peter.
Date of the Epistle—Its
certain Genuineness—Style of the Epistle—A Christian
Treatise—Natural Allusions to Events in the Gospels—Vivid
Expressions—Resemblance to the Speeches in the
Acts—Allusions to the Law—Resemblances to St. Paul and St.
James—Plasticity of St. Peter's Nature—Struggle after
Unity—Originality—His View of redemption —His View of
faith—His Views upon regeneration and baptism— Not
Transcendental hut Practical—Christ's Descent into
Hades—Great Importance of the Doctrine—Attempts to explain
it away—Reference to the Epistle to the Galatians—Addressed
to both Jews and Gentiles— Crisis at which it was Composed—A
Time of Persecution—Keynote of the Letter—Analysis
CHAPTER VIII.
the first epistle of st. peter.
Title which he
Adopts—Address—Provinces of Asia—Thanksgiving—Exhortation
to Hope—Special Appeals—Duty of Blameless Living—Duty of
Civil Obedience—Humble Submission—Address to Servants—To
Christian Wives—Exhortation to Love and Unity—Christ
Preaching to the Spirits in Prison—Obvious Import of the
Passage—Ruthlessness of Commentators—The approaching
End—Address to Elders—Conclusion...... 151
CHAPTER IX.
peculiarities of the second epistle.
Overpositiveness in the
Attack and Defence of its Genuineness—Its
Canonicity—Exaggeration of the Arguments urged in its Favour—Extreme
Weakness of external Evidence—Tardy Acceptance of the
Epistle— Views of St. Jerome, &c.—Cessation of Criticism—The
Unity of its Structure—Outline of the Letter—Internal
Evidence—Resemblances to First Epistle—Difference of
Style—Peculiarity of its Expressions—Difference in general
Form of Thought—Irrelevant Arguments about the Style—Marked
Variations—Dr. Abbott's Proof of the Resemblance to
Josephus—Could Josephus have Read it?—Reference to the
Second Advent—What may be urged against these
Difficulties—Priority of St. Jude—Extraordinary Relation to
St. Jude—Method of Dealing with the stranger Phenomena of
St. Jude's Epistle—Possible Counter-considerations—Allusion
to the Transfiguration—Ancientness of the
Epistle—Superiority of the Epistle to the Post-Apostolic
Writings— The Thoughts may have been Sanctioned and Adopted
by St. Peter.....
CHAPTER X.
the second epistle of st. peter.
page Reasons for offering
a Literal Translation of the Epistle—Translation and
Notes—Abrupt Conclusion—Its
Authenticity—Who was the Author?—Jude, the Brother of James—
Not an Apostle—One of the Brethren of the Lord—Wby he does
not use this Title—Wby he calls himself "Brother of
James"—Story of his Grandchildren—Circumstances which may
have called forth the Epistle—Corruption of Morals—Who were
the Offenders thus Denounced ?—Resemblances to Second
Epistle of St. Peter—Translation and Notes—Style of
Greek—Simplicity of Structure—Fondness for Apocryphal
Allusions—Methods of Dealing with these Peculiarities—
"Verbal Dictation"—Rabbinic Legends—Corrupt, Gnosticising
Sects.... 220
CHAPTER XII.
judaism, the septuagint, etc.
Unity of Christian
Faith—Diversity in Unity—Necessity and Blessing of the
Diversity—Individuality of the Sacred Writers—Phases of
Christian Truth—Alexandrian Christianity—The Jews and Greek
Philosopby—Hebraism and Hellenism—Glories of
Alexandria—Prosperity of the Jews in Alexandria—The
Diapleuston—Favour shown the Jews by the Ptolemies—The
Septuagint—Delight of the Hellenists—Anger of the
Hebraists—Effects on Judaism—Bias of the
Translators—Harmless Variations from the Hebrew—Hagadoth—Avoidance
of Anthropomorphism and Anthropopatby—Deliberate
Manipulation of the Original—Aristobulus—The Wisdom of
Solomon—Semi-Ethnic Jewish Literature—Philo not wholly
Original ..... 247
CHAPTER XIII.
philo and the doctrine of the logos.
Family of Alexander the
Alubarch—Life of Philo—Classification
of his Works—Those that bear on the Creation—On Abraham—Allegorising
Fancies—The Life of Moses—Arbitrary Exegesis—Meanings of the
word logos—Personification of the Logos—The High Priest—A
Cupbearer—Other Comparisons—Vague Outlines of the
Conception—Contrast with St. John .......... 266
CHAPTER XIV.
philonish—allegory—the catechetical school.
Influence of Philo on the
Sacred Writers—Sapiential Literature of Alexandria—Defects
of Philonism—The School of St. Mark—Motto of the Alexandrian
School—Allegory applied to the Old Testament—The Parties of
the Kabbalists—History of Allegory in the Alexandrian
School—Allegory in the Western Church . . . . . .277
CHAPTER XV.
authorship and style of the epistle to the hebrews.
Continuity of
Scripture—Manifoldness of Wisdom—Ethnic Inspiration— The
Epistle Alexandrian—External Evidence—Summary—Superficial
Custom—Misuse of Authorities—Later Doubts and
Hesitations—Indolent Custom—Phrases common to the Author
with St. Paul— Differences of Style not explicable—The
Epistle not a Translation— Fondness of the Writer for
Sonorous Amplifications .... 285
CHAPTER XVI.
theology of the epistle to the hebrews.
Difference from the
Theological Conceptions of St. Paul—Three Cardinal
Topics—"The People"—Christianity and Judaism—Alexandrianism
of the Writer—Prominence of the Jews—Method of treating
Scripture—Indebtedness to Philo—Particular Expressions—"The
Cutter-Word"—Stern Passages—Melchizedek-Priesthood of
Christ—Superiority to Philo—Fundamental Alexandrianism—Judaism
not regarded as a Law but as a System of Worship—"The
Pattern shewn thee in the Mount"—Effectiveness of the
Argument—A Prae-existent Ideal—The World of Ideas—View of
hope—faith, in this Epistle and in St.
Paul—righteousness—Christology—redemption—Prominence given
to priesthood and sacrifice—Peculiar Sentences—The Author
could not have been St. Paul .......... 301
CHAPTER XVII.
who wrote the epistle to the hebrews ?
Absence of
Greeting—Certainties about the Writer—By some known Friend
of St. Paul—Yet not by aquila—Nor by titus—Nor by silas—Nor
by st. barnabas—Nor by st. ci.emens of rome—Nor by st.
mark—Nor by st. luke—Strong Probability that the Writer was
apollos—This would not necessarily be known to the Church of
Alexandria— Suggested by Luther—Generally and increasingly
Accepted—Date of the Epistle—Allusion to Timotby—Addressed
to Jewish Christians— Not Addressed to the Church of
Jerusalem—Nor to Corinth—Nor to Alexandria—May have been
Addressed to Rome—Or to Ephesus—"They of Italy "—Apollos
......... 330
CHAPTER. XVIII.
the epistle to the hebrews.
SECTION I.
THE SUPERIORITY OF CHRIST.
Comparison between Judaism
and Christianity—Outline of the Epistle— Its Keynotes —
Striking Opening — Christ Superior to Angels— Peculiar
Method of Scriptural Argument—Use of Quotations—An Admitted
Method—Partial Change of View—The Style of Argument less
important to us . ......... 340
SECTION II.
A SOLEMN EXHORTATION.
Translation and
Notes—Christ Superior to Moses—Parallelism of Structure
—Appeal ............ 358
SECTION III.
THE HIGH PRIESTHOOD OF CHRIST.
Transitional
Exhortation—Qualifications of High Priesthood—Sketch of the
great Argument of the Epistle—Translation and
Notes—Explanation of Difficulties respecting the Nature of
Christ—Digression—Post-Baptismal Sin—Indefectibility of
Grace—Calvinistic View of the Passage—Arminian View—Neither
View Tenable—Obvious Limitations of the Meaning of the
Passage—"Near a Curse"—"For Burning"—A Better Hope .
........ 368
SECTION IV.
THE ORDER OF MELCHIZEDEK.
Translation and Notes—All
that is known of Melchizedek—Salem— El six Eliun—Allusion in
Psalm ex.—Hagadoth—Philo—Mystery attached to
Melchizedek—Fantastic Bypotheses—Who Melchizedek was—Only
Important as a Type—Semitic Phraseology and Modes of Arguing
from the Silence of Scripture—Translation and Notes—Argument
of the Passage—Superiority of the Melchizedek to the Levitic
Priesthood in Seven Particulars—Summary and Notes ...... 391
SECTION V.
THE DAY OF ATONEMENT.
Grandeur of the
Day—Translation and Notes—A New Covenant—Its Superior
Ordinances of Ministration—Translation and Notes—Symbolism
of Service—The Tabernacle, not the Temple—"Vacua omnia "—
Contents of the Ark—The Tliumiaterion—Censer (?)—Altar of
Incense—Translation and Notes—Meanings of the word Diutheke—-An
obvious Play on its Second Meaning of
"Testament"—Translation and Notes— Familiarity with the
Hagadoth and the Halacha—Grandest Phase of Levitic
Priesthood—Feelings Inspired by the Day—Careful Preparation
of the High Priest—Legendary Additions to the Ritual—Peril
of the Function—Chosen as the Highest Point of Comparison—
Superiority of Christian Privileges in every respect . . . .
409
SECTION VI.
A RECAPITULATION.
Translation and
Notes—Triumphant Close of the Argument—Summary... 440
SECTION VII.
A THIRD SOLEMN WARNING.
Exhortation—Its
Solemnity—Translation and Notes ... 446
SECTION VIII.
THE GLORIES OF FAITH.
Faith—What is Faith
?—Exhibited in its Issues—Beginning of the
Illustration—Instances from each Period of Sacred
History—Translation and Notes ........... 451
SECTION IX.
FINAL EXHORTATIONS.
Exhortation to
Endurance—God's Fatherhood—Translation and Notes— Faith and
Patience—Superior Grandeur of Christianity—Moral Appeal of
the last Chapter—Translation and Notes—Modern Controversies—
"We have, an Altar "—Explanation of the Passage—Exhortation
to Obedience—Final Clauses—Their Bearing on the Authorship
of the Epistle ........... 461
JUDAIC CHRISTIANITY.
CHAPTER XIX.
"the lord's brother."
A New Phase of
Christianity—The Name "James "—The Author was not James the
Son of Zebedee—Untenable Arguments—Nor James the Son of
Alphsous—Untenable Arguments—Alphaeus—He is James, Bishop of
Jerusalem, and the Lord's Brother—Is he Identical with the
Son of Alphseus?—"Neither did His Brethren Believe on
Him"—Paucity of Jewish Names—Helvidian Theory—The Simplest
and Fairest Explanation of the Language of the
Evangelists—The Language not Absolutely Decisive—Dogma of
the Anpartlicnia—The Evangelists give no Hint of it—What the
Gospels Say—Utter Baselessness of the Theory of St.
Jerome—Entirely Untrue that the Terms "Cousins " and
"Brothers" are Identical—The Theory an Invention due to a
priori Conceptions—Not a single Argument can be Adduced in
its favour—Tendencies which Led to the Dogma of the
Aeiparthenia— Unscriptural and Manichaean Disparagement of
the Sanctity of Marriage—The Theory arises from Apollinarian
Tendencies—Theory of Epiphanius—Derived from the Apocryphal
Gospels—Their Absurdities and Discrepancies—Conclusion
....... 483
CHAPTER XX.
life and character of st. james.
Inimitable Truthfulness of
Scripture Narrative—Childhood and Training of St. James—A
Boy's Education—"A Just Man"—Levitic Precision— The Home at
Nazareth—Familiarity with Scripture—"Wisdom"— Knowledge of
Apocryphal Books —Curious Phenomenon—A Nazaritc— Scrupulous
Holiness—A Lifelong Vow— Shadows over the Home at
Nazareth—Alienation of Christ's " Brethren "—Their
Interferences—His Calm and Gentle Rebukes—Their Last
Interference—Their Complete Conversion—Due to the
Resurrection—"He was Seen of James"—Legend in the Gospel of
the Hebrews—St. James and St. Paul—Death of the Son of
Zebedee—James, Bishop of Jerusalem— Deep Reverence for his
Character—Obliam—St. James and St. Peter— Bearing of St.
James in the Synod of Jerusalem—Wisdom which he
Showed—Importance of the Question at stake—His Decision—Its
Results—"Certain from James"—A Favourite of the Ebionites—
Judaic Type of his Character and of his Views—The Results of
his Training—"The Just"—Title which he Adopts—Unfortunate
Advice to St. Paul—Martyrdom of St. James—Josephus—Hegesippus—
Narrative of Hegesippus—Talmudic Legends of St. James—Rapid
Retribution ............ 510
VOLUME ONE
The World
Chapter I
Moral Condition of the World
“Quem vocet divum populus ruentis
Imperi rebus?
Prece qua fatigent
Virgines sanctae minus audientem
Carmina Vestam?”
Hor. Od. I, ii, 25
“Nona aetas agitur perjoraque saecula ferri
Temporibus,
quorum sceleri non invenit ipsa
Nomen, et a nullo posuit
natura metallo.”
Juv Sat. xiii, 28-30
“From Mummius to Augustus the Roman city
stands as the living mistress of a dead world, and from
Augustus to Theodusius the mistress becomes as lifeless as
her subjects.” Freeman’s Essays, ii, 330
The epoch which witnessed the early
growth of Christianity was an epoch of which the horror
and the degradation have rarely been equalled, and
perhaps never exceeded, in the annals of mankind. Were
we to form our sole estimate of it from the lurid
picture of its wickedness, which St. Paul in more than
one passage has painted with a few powerful strokes, we
might suppose that we were judging it from too lofty a
standpoint. We might he accused of throwing too dark a
shadow upon the crimes of Paganism, when we set it as a
foil to the lustre of an ideal holiness. But even if St.
Paul
2 - THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
had never paused amid his sacred
reasonings to affix his terrible brand upon the pride of
Heathenism, there would still have been abundant proofs
of the abnormal wickedness which accompanied the
decadence of ancient civilisation. They are stamped upon
its coinage, cut on its gems, painted upon its
chamber-walls, sown broadcast over the pages of its
poets, satirists, and historians. " Out of thine own
mouth will I judge thee, thou wicked servant! " Is there
any age which stands so instantly condemned by the bare
mention of its rulers as that which reealls the
successive names of Tiberius, Grains, Claudius, Nero,
Gralba, Otho, and Vitellius, and which after a brief
gleam of better examples under Vespasian and Titus, sank
at last under the hideous tyranny of a Domitian ? Is
there any age of which the evil characteristics force
themselves so instantaneously upon the mind as that of
which we mainly learn the history and moral condition
from the relics of Pompeii and Herculaneum, the satires
of Persius and Juvenal, the epigrams of Martial, and the
terrible records of Tacitus, Suetonius, and Dion Cassius
? And yet even beneath this lowest deep, there is a
lower deep; for not even on their dark pages are the
depths of Satan so shamelessly laid bare to human gaze
as they are in the sordid fictions of Petronius and of
Apuleius. But to dwell upon the crimes and the
retributive misery of that period is happily not my
duty. I need but make a passing allusion to its enormous
wealth; its unbounded self-indulgence ; its coarse and
tasteless luxury; its greedy avarice ; its sense of
insecurity and terror;1 its apatby,
1 2 Cor. vii. 10; " Interciderat
sortis hmnanae commercium vi metiis," Tac. Ann.
vi. 19; " Favor interims occnpaverat animos,"
id. iv. 76. See the very remarkable passage of
Pliny (" At Hercnle homini plurima ex homine mala
snnt," S. N. vii. 1).
3 - THE SLAVES.
debauchery, and cruelty;1 its
hopeless fatalism ;2 its unspeakable sadness and
weariness;3 its strange extravagances alike of
infidelity and of superstition.4
At the lowest extreme of the social
scale were millions of slaves, without family, without
religion, without possessions, who had no recognised
rights, and towards whom none had any recognised duties,
passing normally from a childhood of degradation to a
manhood of hardship, and an old age of unpitied
neglect.5 Only a little above the slaves stood the lower
classes, who formed the vast majority of the freeborn
inhabitants of the Roman Empire. They were, for the most
part, beggars and idlers, familiar with the grossest
indignities of an unscrupulous dependence. Despising a
life of honest industry, they
1 Mart. Ep. ii. 66; Juv. vi. 491.
2 Lucan, Phars. i. 70, 81; Suet.
Tib. 69; Tac. Agric. 42; Ann. iii.
18, iv. 26; " Sed mihi haec et talia audienti in
incerto jndicinaixest, fatone/ res mortalinm et
necessitate immntabili an forte volvantur," Ann.
vi. 22; Plin. H. N. ii. 7; Sen. De
Benef. iv. 7.
3 Tacitus, with all his
resources, finds it difficult to vary his language
in describing so many suicides.
4 See my Witness of History to
Christ, p. 101; Seekers after God, p. 38.
The " tanrobolies " and " kriobolies " (baths in the
blood of bulls and rams) mark the extreme sensuality
of superstition. See Dollinger, Gentile and Jew,
ii. 179; De Pressense, Trois Premiers Swcles,
ii. 1—60, etc.
5 Some of the lociclassici
on Roman slavery are: Cic. De Bep. xiv. 23;
Jnv. vi. 219, x. 183, xiv. 16—24; Sen. Ep. 47
; De Ira, iii. 35, 40; De Clem. 18;
Controv. v. 33; De Vit. Beat. 17; Plin.
H. N. xxxiii. 11; Plut. Cato, 21.
Vedius Pollio and the lampreys (Plin. H. N.
ix. 23). In the debate on the murder of Pedanius
Secundus (Tac. Ann. xiv. 42—45) many eminent
senators openly advocated the brutal law that when a
master was murdered, his slaves, often to the number
of hundreds, should be put to death. These facts,
and many others, will be found collected in Wallon,
De FEselavage dans I'Antiquite ; Friedlander,
Sittengesch. Horns ; Becker, Gallus,
E. T. 199—225; Dollinger, Judenth.u.Heidenth.
ix. 1, § 2. It is reckoned that in the Empire there
cannot have been fewer than 60,000,000 •slaves (Le
Maistre, Du Pape, i. 283). They were so
numerous as to be divided according to their
nationalities (Tac. Ann. iii. 53), and every
slave was regarded as a potential enemy (Sen. Ep.
xlvii.).
4 - THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
asked only for bread and the games of
the Circus, and were ready to support any Government,
even the most despotic, if it would supply these needs.
They spent their mornings in lounging about the Forum,
or in dancing attendance at the levees of patrons, for a
share in whose largesses they daily struggled.1 They
spent their afternoons and evenings in gossiping at the
Public Baths, in listlessly enjoying the polluted plays
of the theatre, or looking with fierce thrills of
delighted horror at the bloody sports of the arena. At
night, they crept up to their miserable garrets in the
sixth and seventh stories of the huge insulae—the
lodging-houses of Borne —into which, as into the low
lodging-houses of the poorer quarters of London, there
drifted all that was most wretched and most vile.2 Their
life, as it is described for us by their contemporaries,
was largely made up of squalor, misery, and vice.
Immeasurably removed from these needy
and greedy freemen, and living chiefly amid crowds of
corrupted and obsequious slaves, stood the constantly
diminishing throng of the wealtby and the noble.3 Every
age in its decline has exhibited the spectacle of
selfish luxury side by side with abject poverty; of—
" Wealth, a monster gorged Mid starving
populations :"—
but nowhere, and at no period, were
these contrasts so startling as they were in Imperial
Rome. There a whole
1 Suet. Net. 16; Mart. iv. 8, viii. 50;
jut. i. 100,128, iii. 269, etc.
2 jut. Sat. iii. 60—65;
Athen. i. 17, § 36; Tac. Ann. xt. 44, " quo
cuncta undiqne atrocia aut pudenda confluunt;"
VitniT. ii. 8; Suet. Ner. 38. There were
44,000 insulae in Rome to only 1,780 dom/us
(Becker, Gallus, E. T., p. 232).
3 Among the 1,200,000 inhabitants
of ancient Rome, eTen in Cicero's time, there were
scarcely 2,000 proprietors (Cic. De Off. ii.
21).
5 - WEALTH AND LUXURY.
population might be trembling lest
they should be starved by the delay of an Alexandrian
corn-ship, while the upper classes were squandering a
fortune at a single banquet,1 drinking out of myrrhine
and jewelled vases worth hundreds of pounds,2 and
feasting on the brains of peacocks and the tongues of
nightingales.3 As a consequence disease was rife, men
were short-lived, and even women became liable to gout.4
Over a large part of Italy, most of the freeborn
population had to content themselves, even in winter,
with a tunic, and the luxury of a toga was reserved
only, by way of honour, to the corpse.5 Yet at this very
time, the dress of Roman ladies displayed an unheard-of
splendour. The elder Pliny tells us that he himself saw
Lollia Paulina dressed for a betrothal feast in a robe
entirely covered with pearls and emeralds, which had
cost forty million sesterces,8 and which was known to be
less costly than some of her other dresses.7 Gluttony,
caprice,
1 See Tac. Ann. iii. 55.
400,000 sesterces (Juv. xi. 19). Taking the standard
of 100,000 sesterces to be in the Augustan age
£1,080 (which is a, little below the calculation of
Hultsch), this would be £4,320. 30,000,000 sesterces
(Sen. Up. xcv.; Sen. ad Helv. 9). In
the days of Tiberius three mullets had sold for
30,000 sesterces (Suet. Tib. 34). Even in the
days of Pompey Romans had adopted the disgusting
practice of preparing for a dinner by taking an
emetic. Yitellius set on the table at one banquet
2,000 fish and 7,000 birds, and in less than eight
months spent in feasts a sum that would now amount
to several millions.
2 Plin. H. N. viii. 48, xxxvii. 18.
3 "Portenta luxuriae," Sen.
Up. ex.; Plin. H. N. ix. 18, 32, x. 51,
72. Petron. 93; jut. xi. 1—55, v. 92—100; Macrob.
Sat. iii. 12,13; Sen. Up. Ixxxix. 21;
Mart. Ep. Ixx. 5; Lampridius, Elagab.20;
Suet. Vitell. 13. On the luxury of the
age in general, see Sen. De Brev. Vit. 12;
Ep. xcv.
4 Sen. Ep. xcv. 15—29. At
Herculanenm many of the rolls discovered were
cookery books.
5 Juv. i. 171; Mart. ix. 58, 8.
6 £432,000.
7 Pliny, H. JV. ix. 35, 56. He also saw
Agrippina in a robe of gold
tissue, id. xxxiii. 19.
6 - THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
extravagance, ostentation, impurity,
rioted in the heart of a society which knew of no other
means by which to break the monotony of its weariness,
or alleviate the anguish of its despair.
" On that hard Pagan world disgust
And secret loathing fell; Deep weariness and sated
lust
Made human life a hell. In his cool hall, with
haggard eyes,
The Roman noble lay ; He drove abroad in furious
guise
Along the Appian Way; He made a feast, drank fierce
and fast,
And crowned his hair with flowers— No easier nor no
quicker past
The impracticable hours."
At the summit of the whole decaying
system— necessary, yet detested—elevated indefinitely
above the very highest, yet living in dread of the very
lowest, oppressing a population which he terrified, and
terrified by the population which he oppressed1—was an
Emperor, raised to the divinest pinnacle of autocracy,
yet conscious that his life hung upon a thread;2—an
Emperor who, in the terrible phrase of Gibbon, was at
once a priest, an atheist, and a god.3
The general condition of society was
such as might have been expected from the existence of
these elements. The Romans had entered on a stage of
fatal degeneracy
1 Juv. iv. 153; Suet. Vomit. 17.
2 Tac. Ann. vi. 6; Suet. Claud. 35.
3 " Coelum decretum," Tac.
Ann. i. 73; " Dis aequa potestas Caesaris," Juv.
iv. 71; Plin. Paneg. 74-5, " Civitas nihil
felicitati suae putat adstrui, posse nisi ut Di
Caesarem imitentur." (Cf. Suet. Jul. 88;
Kb. 13, 58; Aug. 59; Calig. 33;
Vesp. 23; Vomit. 13.) Lncan, vii. 456
; Philo, Leg. ad Gaium passim; Dion Cass.
Ixiii. 5, 20; Martial, passim,; Tert. Apol.
33, 34; Boissier, La Rel. Bomaine, i.
122—208.
7 - FAMILY LIFE.
from the first day of their close
intercourse with Greece.1 Greece learnt from Rome her
cold-blooded cruelty ; Rome learnt from Greece her
voluptuous corruption. Family life among the Romans had
once been a sacred thing, and for 520 years divorce had
been unknown among them.2 Under the Empire marriage had
come to he regarded with disfavour and disdain.3 Women,
as Seneca says, married in order to be divorced, and
were divorced in order to marry; and noble Roman matrons
counted the years not by the Consuls, but by their
discarded or discarding husbands.4
To have a family was regarded as a
misfortune, because the childless were courted with
extraordinary assiduity by crowds of fortune-hunters.5
When there were children in a family, their education
was left to be begun under the tutelage of those slaves
who were otherwise the most decrepit and useless,6 and
was carried on, with results too fatally obvious, by
supple, accomplished, and abandoned Greeklings.7 But
indeed no system of education could have eradicated the
influence of the domestic circle. No care8 could have
prevented
1 The degeneracy is specially
traceable in their literature from the days of
Plautus onwards.
2 The first Roman recorded to
have divorced his wife was Sp. Oarvilins Ruga, b.c.
234 (Dionys. ii. 25; Aul. Gell. xvii. 21).
3 Hor. Od. iii. 6, 17. "
Baraqne in hoc aevo quae velit esse parens," Ov.
Nux, 15. Hence the Lex Papia Poppaea, the Jus
trium liberorum, etc. Suet. Oct. 34; Aul.
Gell. i. 6. See Ghainpagny, Les Cesars, i.
258, seq.
4 " Non consulnm numero sed
maritorum annos suos computant," Sen. De Senef.
iii. 16; " Bepudium jam votum erat, et quasi
matrimonii fructns," Tert. Apol. 6; "
Corrumpere et corrumpi saeculum vocatur," Tac.
Germ. 19. Oomp. Suet. Calig. 34.
5 Tac. Germ. 20; Ann.
xiii. 52; Plin. H. N. xiv. procem; Sen.
ad Marc. Consol. 19; Plin. Epp. iv. 16
; Juv. Sat. xii. 114,
seq.
6 Plut. De Lib. Educ.
7 Juv. vii. 187, 219.
8 Juv. Sat. xiv.
8 - THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
the sons and daughters of a wealthy
family from catching the contagion of the vices of which
they saw in their parents a constant and unblushing
example.1
Literature and art were infected with
the prevalent degradation. Poetry sank in great measure
into exaggerated satire, hollow declamation, or
frivolous epigrams. Art was partly corrupted by the
fondness for glare, expensiveness, and size,2 and partly
sank into miserable triviality, or immoral
prettinesses,3 such as those which decorated the walls
of Pompeii in the first century, and the Pare aux Cerfs
in the eighteenth. Greek statues of the days of Phidias
were ruthlessly decapitated, that their heads might be
replaced by the scowling or imbecile features of a
Grains or a Claudius. Nero, professing to be a
connoisseur, thought that he improved the Alexander of
Lysimachus by gilding it from head to foot. Eloquence,
deprived of every legitimate aim, and used almost solely
for purposes of insincere display, was tempted to supply
the lack of genuine fire by sonorous euphony and
theatrical affectation. A training in rhetoric was now
understood to be a training in the art of emphasis and
verbiage, which was rarely used for any loftier purpose
than to make sycophancy plausible, or to embellish
sophistry with speciousness.* The Drama, even in
Horace's days, had degenerated into a vehicle for
1 Juv. Sat. xiv.
passim; Tac. De Orat. 28,29; Quinct. i.
2; Sen. De Ira, ii. 22; Up. 95.
2 It was the age of Colossi (Plin.
H. N. xxxiv. 7; Mart. Up. i. 71, viii.
44; Stat. Sylv. i. 1, etc.).
3 'Panrojpcu/>(a. Cic. AM.
xv. 16; Plin. xxxv. 37. See Champagny, Les
Cesars, iv. 138, who refers to Vitruv. vii. 5 ;
Propert. ii. 5; Plin. H. N. xiv. 22, and
xxxv. 10 (the painter Arellius, etc.).
4 Tac. Dial. 36—41;
Ann. xv. 71; Sen. Up. cvi. 12; Petron.
Satyr, i. Dion Cass. lix. 20.
9 - PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS.
the exhibition of scenic splendour or
ingenious machinery. Dignity, wit, pathos, were no
longer expected on the stage, for the dramatist was
eclipsed by the swordsman or the rope-dancer.1 The
actors who absorbed the greatest part of popular favour
were pantomimists, whose insolent prosperity was
generally in direct proportion to the infamy of their
character.2 And while the shamelessness of the theatre
corrupted the purity of all classes from the earliest
age,3 the hearts of the multitude were made hard as the
nether millstone with brutal insensibility, by the fury
of the circus, the atrocities of the amphitheatre, and
the cruel orgies of the games.* Augustus, in the
document annexed to his will, mentioned that he had
exhibited 8,000 gladiators and 3,510 wild beasts. The
old warlike spirit of the Romans was dead among the
gilded youth of families in which distinction of any
kind was certain to bring down upon its most prominent
members the murderous
1 Juv. xiv. 250 ; Suet. Nero, 11; Galb.
6.
2 Mnester (Tac. Ann. xi.
4, 36); Paris (Juv. vi. 87, vii. 88); Alitnrus (Jos.
Vit. 3); Pylades (Zosim. i. 6); Batbyllus (Dion
Cass. liv. 17; Tac. Ann. i. 54).
3 Isidor. xviii. 39.
4 " Mera homicidia sunt," Sen.
Up. vii. 2; " Nihil est nobis . . . cum insania
circi, cum impudieitia theatri, cum atrocitate
arenae, cum vanitato xysti," Tert. Apol. 38.
Cicero inclined to the prohibition of games which
imperilled life (De Legg. ii. 15), and Seneca
(I. c.) expressed his compassionate
disapproval, and exposed the falsehood and sophism
of the plea that after all the sufferers were only
criminals. Yet in the days of Claudius the number of
those thus butchered was so great that the statue of
Augustus had to be moved that it might not
constantly be covered with a veil (Dion Cass. Ix.
13, who in the same chapter mentions a lion that had
been trained to devour men). In Claudius's sham
sea-fight we are told that the incredible number of
19,000 men fought each other (Tac. Ann. xii.
56). Titus, the " darling of the human race," in one
day brought into the theatre 5,000 wild beasts
(Suet. Tit. 7), and butchered thousands of
Jews in the games at Berytus. In Trajan's games (Dion
Cass. Ixviii. 15) 11,000 animals and 10,000 men had
to fight.
10 - THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
suspicion of irresponsible despots.
The spirit which had once led the Domitii and the Fabii
" to drink delight of battle with their peers " on the
plains of Gaul and in the forests of Germany, was now
satiated by gazing on criminals fighting for dear life
with bears and tigers, or upon bands of gladiators who
hacked each other to pieces on the encrimsoned sand.1
The languid enervation of the delicate and dissolute
aristocrat could only be amused by magnificence and
stimulated by grossness or by blood.2 Thus the gracious
illusions by which true Art has ever aimed at purging
the passions of terror and pity, were extinguished by
the realism of tragedies ignobly horrible, and comedies
intolerably base. Two phrases sum up the characteristics
of Roman civilisation in the days of the
Empire—heartless cruelty, and unfathomable corruption.3
If there had been a refuge anywhere
for the sentiments of outraged virtue and outraged
humanity, we might have hoped to find it in the Senate,
the members of which were heirs of so many noble and
austere traditions. But—even in the days of Tiberius—the
Senate, as Tacitus tells us, had rushed headlong into
the most servile flattery,4 and this would not have been
possible if its members had not been tainted by the
prevalent deterioration. It was
1 Suet. Claud. 14,21, 34;
Ner. 12; Calig. 35 ; Tac. Ann.
xiii. 49; Plin. Paneg. 33.
2 Tac. Ann. xv. 32.
3 Eph. iv. 19; 2 Cor. vii. 10.
Merivale, vi. 462; Champagny, Les Cesars, iv.
161, seq. Seneca, describing the age in the
tragedy of Octavia, says:—
"Saecnlo premimur gravi
Quo scelera regnant, saevit impietas furens/' etc.
-Oct. 379—437.
4 Tac. Ann. iii. 65, vi. 2, xiv. 12, 13,
etc.
11 - THE SENATE.
before the once grave and pure-minded
Senators of Rome—the greatness of whose state was
founded on the sanctity of family relationships—that the
Censor Metellus had declared in a.u.c. 602, without one
dissentient murmur, that marriage could only be regarded
as an intolerable necessity.1 Before that same Senate,
at an earlier period, a leading Consular had not
scrupled to assert that there was scarcely one among
them all who had not ordered one or more of his own
infant children to be exposed to death.2 In the hearing
of that same Senate in a.d. 59, not long before St. Paul
wrote his letter to Philemon, C. Cassius Longinus had
gravely argued that the only security for the life of
masters was to put into execution the sanguinary
Silanian Law, which enacted that, if a master was
murdered, every one of his slaves, however numerous,
however notoriously innocent, should be indiscriminately
massacred.3 It was the Senators of Rome who thronged
forth to meet with adoring congratulations the miserable
youth who came to them with his hands reeking with the
blood of matricide.4 They offered thanksgivings to the
gods for his worst cruelties,5 and obediently voted
Divine honours
1 Comp. Tac. Ann. ii. 37,
38, iii. 34, 35, xv. 19; Aul. Gell. N. A.i.S;
Liv. Epit. 59.
2 This abandonment of children
was a normal practice (Ter. Heaut. iv.
1,37; Ovid, Amor. ii. 14; Suet.Ca%.5; Oct.
65; Juv. Sat. vi. 592; Plin. Up.
iv. 15 [comp. ii. 20] ; Sen. ad Marciam, 19 ;
Controv. x. 6). Angus-tine (De Civ. Dei,
iv. 11) tells us that there was a goddess
Levana, so called " qnia levat infantes;
" if the father did not take the newborn child in
his arms, it was exposed (Tac. Hist. v. 5;
Germ. 19; Tert. Apol. 9; Ad Natt.
15; Minuc. Fel. Octav. xxx. 31; Stobaen's
Floril. Ixxv. 15; Epictet. i. 23; Paulus,
Dig. xxv. 3, etc. And see Denis, Idees
morales dans I'Antiquite, ii. 203).
3 Tac. Ann. xiv. 43,44; v. supra,
p. 3.
4 Tac. Ann. xiv. 13 : " festo cultu
Senatum."
5 "Quotiens fugas et caedes
jussit princeps, totiens grates Deis actas," Tac.
Ann. xiv. 64.
12 - THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
to the dead infant, four months old,
of the wife whom he afterwards killed with a brutal
kick.1
And what was the religion of a period
which needed the sanctions and consolations of religion
more deeply than any age since the world began? It is
certain that the old Paganism, was—except in country
places— practically dead. The very fact that it was
necessary to prop it up by the buttress of political
interference shows how hollow and ruinous the structure
of classic Polytheism had become.2 The decrees and
reforms of Claudius were not likely to reassure the
faith of an age which had witnessed in contemptuous
silence, or with frantic adulation, the assumption by
Gaius of the attributes of deity after deity, had
tolerated his insults against their sublimest objects of
worship, and encouraged his claim to a living
apotheosis.3 The upper classes were " destitute of
faith, yet terrified at scepticism." They had long
learnt to treat the current mythology as a mass of
worthless fables, scarcely amusing enough for even a
schoolboy's laughter, 4 but they were the ready dupes of
every wandering quack who chose to assume the character
of a mathemalicus or a mage? Their
official religion was a decrepit The-agony; their real
religion was a vague and credulous fatalism, which
disbelieved in the existence of the gods,
1 Tac. Ann. xvi. 6; Suet. Ner. 25;
Dion Cass. Ixii. 27.
2 Suet. Tib. 36.
3 Suet. Calig. 51. See
Mart. Ep. v. 8, where he talks of the " edict
of our Lord and God," i.e., of Domitian; and
vii. 60, where he says that he shall pray to
Domitian, and not to Jupiter.
4 "Esse aliquos manes et subterranea regna . . .
Nee pneri credunt nisi
qui nondum aere lavantnr." —Juv. Sot.
ii. 149,152,
5 Tac. H. i. 22; Ann.
vi. 20, 21, xii. 68; Juv. Sat. xiv. 248,
iii. 42, vii. 200, etc.; Suet. Aug. 94;
Tib. 14; Ner. 26; Otho, 4;
Vomit. 15, etc.
13 - DECAY OF PAGANISM.
or held with Epicurus that they were
careless of mankind.1 The mass of the populace either
accorded to the old beliefs a nominal adherence which
saved them the trouble of giving any thought to the
matter,2 and reduced their creed and their morals to a
survival of national habits; or else they plunged with
eager curiosity into the crowd of foreign cults3—among
which a distorted Judaism took its place 4—such as made
the Romans familiar with strange names like Sabazius and
Anchialus, Agdistis, Isis, and the Syrian goddess.5 All
men joined in the confession that "the oracles were
dumb." It hardly needed the wail of mingled lamentations
as of departing deities which swept over the astonished
crew of the vessel off Palodes to assure the world that
the reign of the gods of Hellas was over —that "Great
Pan was dead."
Such are the scenes which we must
witness, such are the sentiments with which we must
become familiar, the moment that we turn away our eyes
from the spectacle of the little Christian churches,
composed chiefly as yet of slaves and artisans, who had
been taught to imitate a Divine example of humility and
sincerity, of purity and love.
1 Lucr. vi. 446—465; jut. Sat.
vii. 189—202, x. 129, xiii. 86—89; Plin. H.
N. ii. 21; Quinct. Instt. v. 6, § 3; Tac.
H. I 10—18, ii 69—82; Agric. 13;
Germ. 33; Awn,, vi. 22, etc.
2 Juv. Sat. iii. 144, vi. 342, xiii.
75—83.
3 "Nee turba deonun talis ut est
hodie," Juv. Sat. xiii. 46; " Igno-bilem
Deorum turbam qiiam longo aevo longa superstitio
congessit," Sen. Ep. 110. See Boissier,
Les Religions Etrangeres (Bel. Bom. i. 374-450); Liv. xxxix. 8; Tae. Ann. ii. 85; Val. Max. I.
iii. 2.
4 Juv. Sat. xiv. 96—106; Jos. Antt.
xviii. 3 ; Pers. Sat. v. 180.
5 Cic. De Legg. ii. 8;
De Div. ii. 24; Tert. ad Natt. i. 10; Juv.
Sat. xiv. 263, xv. 1—32.
6 Plut. De Def. Orac., p.
419. Some Christian writers connect this remarkable
story with the date of the Crucifixion. See Niedner,
Lehrbucli d. Chr. K. G., p. 64.
14 - THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
There were, indeed, a few among the
Heathen who lived nobler lives and professed a purer
ideal than the Pagans around them. Here and there in the
ranks of the philosophers a Demetrius, a Musonius Rufus,
an Epictetus ; here and there among Senators an
Helvidius Priseus, a Paetus Thrasea, a Barea Soranus;
here and there among literary men a Seneca or a Persius—showed
that virtue was not yet extinct. But the Stoicism on
which they leaned for support amid the terrors and
temptations of that awful epoch utterly failed to
provide a remedy against the universal degradation. It
aimed at cherishing an insensibility which gave no real
comfort, and for which it offered no adequate motive. It
aimed at repressing the passions by a violence so
unnatural that with them it also crushed some of the
gentlest and most elevating emotions. Its
self-satisfaction and exclusiveness repelled the
gentlest and sweetest natures from its communion. It
made a vice of compassion, which Christianity inculcated
as a virtue; it cherished a haughtiness which
Christianity discouraged as a sin. It was unfit for the
task of ameliorating mankind, because it looked on human
nature in its normal aspects with contemptuous disgust.
Its marked characteristic was a despairing sadness,
which became specially prominent in its most sincere
adherents. Its favourite theme was the glorification of
suicide, which wiser moralists had severely reprobated,1
but which many Stoics belauded as the one sure refuge
against oppression and outrage.2 It was a philosophy
which was indeed able to lacerate the heart with a
righteous indignation against
1 Virg. JEn. vi. 450, seq.; Tune. Disp.
i. 74; Cic. De Senect. 73; De Hep.
vi. 15; Somn. Scip. 3; Sen. Ep. 70.
Comp. Epict. Enchir. 52.
2 Both Zeno and Cleanthes died by suicide. For
the frequency of suicide
under the Empire see Tac. Ann. vi. 10, 26, xv.
60; Hist. v. 26; Suet. K6. 49; Sen.
De Benef. ii. 27; Up. 70; Plin. Up.
i. 12, iii. 7, 16, vi. 24. For its
glorification, Lucan, Phars. iv.:—
"Mors ntinam pavidos vitae snbdncere nolles, Sed virtns te
sola daret."
Mortes repentinae, hoc est summa vitae felicitas," Plin.
H. N. vii. 53,
cf. 51. The practice of suicide became in the days of Trajan almost a " national
usage " (see Merivale, vii. 317, viii. 107). The variety of Latin phrases for
suicide shows the frequency of the crime. On the pride of Stoicism see Tac. Ann.
xiv. 57; Juv. xiii. 93.
15 - STOICISM AND CHRISTIANITY.
the crimes and follies of mankind,
but which vainly strove to resist, and which scarcely
even hoped to stem, the ever-swelling tide of vice and
misery. For wretchedness it had no pity; on vice it
looked with impotent disdain. Thrasea was regarded as an
antique hero for walking out of the Senate-house during
the discussion of some decree which involved a servility
more than usually revolting.1 He gradually drove his few
admirers to the conviction that, even for those who had
every advantage of rank and wealth, nothing was possible
but a life of crushing sorrow ended by a death of
complete despair.2 St. Paul and St. Peter, on the other
hand, were at the very same epoch teaching in the same
city, to a few Jewish hucksters and a few Gentile
slaves, a doctrine so full of hope and brightness that
letters, written in a prison with torture and death in
view, read like idylls of serene happiness and paeans of
triumphant joy. The graves of these poor sufferers, hid
from the public eye in the catacombs, were decorated
with an art, rude indeed, yet so triumphant as to make
1 On the motion against the
memory of Agrippina (Tac. Ann. xiv. 12). He
had also opposed the execution of Antistins (id.
xiv. 48). It was further remembered against him
that he had not attended the obsequies of the
deified Poppaea, or offered sacrifice for the
preservation of Nero's " divine voice."
2 Suet. Ner. 37.
16 - THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
their subterranean squalor radiant
with emblems of all that is brightest and most poetic in
the happiness of man.1 While the glimmering taper of the
Stoics was burning pale, as though amid the vapours of a
charnel-house, the torch of Life upheld by the hands of
the Tarsian tent-maker and the Galilaean fisherman had
flashed from Damascus to Antioch, from Antioch to
Athens, from Athens to Corinth, from Corinth to Ephesus,
from Ephesus to Rome.
1 "There the ever-green leaf
protests in sculptured silence that the winter of
the grave cannot touch the saintly soul; the
blossoming branch speaks of vernal suns beyond the
snows of this chill world; the good shepherd shows
from his benign looks that the mortal way so
terrible to nature had become to those Christians as
the meadow-path between the grassy slopes and beside
the still waters." (Martineau, Hours of Thought,
p. 155.)
Chapter II.
The Rise of the Antichrist
" Hie hostis Denm
Hominnmque templis expnlit superos snis, Civesque patria;
spiritom fratri abstnlit Hausit crnorem matris;—et Incem
videt!"
—SEN. Octav. 239.
"Praestare Neronem Securum valet haec
aetas." —jut.
Sat. viii. 173.
All the vice, all the splendour, all the
degradation of Pagan Home seemed to be gathered up in the
person of that Emperor who first placed himself in a
relation of direct antagonism against Christianity. Long
before death ended the astute comedy in which Augustus had
so gravely borne his part, 1 he had experienced the Nemesis
of Absolutism, and foreseen the awful possibilities which it
involved. But neither he, nor any one else, could have
divined that four such rulers as Tiberius, Gaius, Claudius,
and Nero—the first a sanguinary tyrant, the second a furious
madman, the third an uxorious imbecile, the fourth a
heartless buffoon—would in succession afflict and horrify
the world. Yet these rulers sat upon the breast of Borne
with the paralysing spell of a nightmare. The concentration
of the old prerogatives of many offices in the
1 On his death-bed he asked his
friends "whether he had fitly gone through the play of
life," and, if so, begged for their applause like an
actor on the point of leaving the stage (Suet. Octav.
99).
18 - THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
person of one who was at once Consul,
Censor, Tribune, Pontifex Maximus, and perpetual Imperator,
fortified their power with the semblance of legality, and
that power was rendered terrible by the sword of the
Praetorians, and the deadly whisper of the informers. No
wonder that Christians saw the true type of the Antichrist
in that omnipotence of evil, that apotheosis of self, that
disdain for humanity, that hatred against all mankind
besides, that gigantic aspiration after the impossible, that
frantic blasphemy and unlimited indulgence, which marked the
despotism of a Gaius or a Nero. The very fact that their
power was precarious as well as gigantic—that the lord of
the world might at any moment be cut off by the indignation
of the canaille of Rome, nay, more, by the revenge of
a single tribune, or the dagger-thrust of a single
slave1—did but make more striking the resemblance which they
displayed to the gilded monster of Nebuchadnezzar's dream.
Their autocracy, like that visionary idol, was an image of
gold on feet of clay. Of that colossus many a Christian
would doubtless be reminded when he saw the huge statue of
Nero, with the radiated head and the attributes of the
sun-god, which once towered 120 feet high on the shattered
pediment still visible beside the ruins of the Flavian
Amphitheatre.2
The sketch which I am now presenting to
the reader is the necessary introduction to the annals of
that closing epoch of the first century, which witnessed the
early struggle of Christianity with the Pagan power. In the
thirteen years of Nero's reign all the worst elements
1 Out of 43 persons in Lipsius's Stemma Caesarum,
32 died violent deaths, i.e., nearly 75 per
cent.
2 Suet. Ner. 31; Mart. Spect. Ep. 2.
19 - CHRISTIANITY AND ROME.
of life which had long mingled with the
sap of ancient civilisation seem to have rushed at once into
their scarlet flower. To the Christians of that epoch the
dominance of such an Emperor presented itself in the aspect
of wickedness raised to superhuman exaltation, and engaged
in an impious struggle against the Lord and against His
saints.
Till the days of Nero the Christians had
never been brought into collision with the Imperial
Government. We may set aside as a worthless fiction the
story that Tiberius had been so much interested in the
account of the Crucifixion forwarded to him by Pontius
Pilate, as to consult the Senate on the advisability of
admitting Jesus among the gods of the Pantheon.1 It is very
unlikely that Tiberius ever heard of the existence of the
Christians. In its early days the Faith was too humble to
excite any notice out of the limits of Palestine. Gaius,
absorbed in his mad attempt to set up in the Holy of Holies
" a desolating abomination," in the form of a huge image of
himself, entertained a savage hatred of the Jews, but had
not learned to discriminate between them and Christians.
Claudius, disturbed by tumults in the Ghetto of Jewish
freedmen across the Tiber, had been taught to look with
alarm and suspicion on the name of Christus distorted into "Chrestus;" but his decree for the expulsion of the Jews from
Rome, which had been a dead letter from the first, only
affected Christianity by causing the providential migration
of Prisca and Aquila, to become at Corinth and Ephesus
1 Ps. Clem. Horn. i. 6; Tert.
Apol. 5; Euseb. H. K ii. 2; Jer. Chron.
Pascli. i. 430. Braun (De Tiberii Christum in
Deorwm numerum referendi consilio, Bonn, 1834)
vainly tried to support this fable. Tiberius, more than
any Emperor, was "circa Deos et religiones
negligeiitior" (Suet. Tib. 69).
20 - THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
the hosts, the partners, and the
protectors of St. Paul.1 Nero was destined to enter into far
deadlier and closer relations with the nascent Faith, and to
fill so vast a space in the horrified imaginations of the
early Christians as to become by his cruelties, his
blasphemies, his enormous crimes, the nearest approach which
the world has yet seen to the "Man of Sin." He was the
ideal of depravity and wickedness, standing over against the
ideal of all that is sinless and Divine. Against the Christ
was now to be ranged the Antichrist,—the man-god of Pagan
adulation, in whom was manifested the consummated outcome of
Heathen crime and Heathen power.
Up to the tenth year of Nero's reign the
Christians had many reasons to be grateful to the power of
the Roman Empire. St. Paul, when he wrote from Corinth to
the Thessalonians, had indeed seen in the fabric of Roman
polity, and in Claudius, its reigning representative, the "check" and the "checker " which must be removed before the
coming of the Lord. 2 Yet during his stormy life the Apostle
had been shielded by the laws of Borne in more than one
provincial tumult. The Roman politarchs of Thessalonica had
treated him with humanity. He had been protected from the
infuriated Jews in Corinth by the disdainful justice of
Grallio. In Jerusalem the prompt interference of Lysias and
of Festus had sheltered him from the plots of the Sanhedrin.
At Caesarea he had appealed to Caesar as hig best security
from the persistent hatred of Ananias and the Sadducees. If
we have taken a correct view of the latter part of his
career,
1 See Tert. Apol. 3; ad Natt. i. 3; my
Life and Work of St. Paul, i. 559. I cannot
accept the |
