§ 6
It might safely have been inferred, but it is a matter of proved fact, that while the higher intellectual life was thus being paralysed, the primary intellectual virtues were attained. As formerly in Jewry, so now in Christendom, the practice of pious fraud became normal: all early Christian literature, and most of the ecclesiastical history of many succeeding centuries, is profoundly compromised by the habitual resort to fiction, forgery, and interpolation. The mystical poetry of the pagans, the Jewish history of Josephus, the gospels, the Epistles, all were interpolated in the same spirit as had inspired the production of new Gospels, new Epistles, new books of Acts, new Sibylline verses. And even where to this tendency there was opposed the growing demand of the organized Church for a faithful text, when the documents had become comparatively ancient, the disposition to invent and suppress, to reason crookedly, to delude and mislead, was normal among churchmen. This is the verdict of orthodox ecclesiastical history, a dozen times repeated.[132] It of course carries no surprise for those who have noted the religious doctrine of Plato, of Polybius, of Cicero, of Varro, of Strabo, of Dio Cassius.
While intelligence thus retrograded under the reign of faith, it is impossible to maintain, in the name of historical science, the conventional claim that the faith wrought a countervailing good. What moral betterment there was in the decaying Roman world was a matter of the transformed social conditions, and belongs at least as much to paganism as to Christianity: even the asceticism of the latter, which in reality had no reformative virtue for society at large, was a pre-Christian as well as an anti-Christian phenomenon. It is indeed probable that in the times of persecution the Christian community would be limited to the more serious and devoted types[133]—that is to say, to those who would tend to live worthily under any creed. But that the normal Christian community was superior in point of morals is a poetic hallucination, set up by the legends concerning the martyrs and by the vauntings of the Fathers, which are demonstrably untrustworthy. The assertion, still at times made by professed Positivists, that the discredit of the marriage tie in Roman life necessitated a new religion, and that the new religion was regenerative, is only a quasi-scientific variation of the legend.
The evidence as to the failure of the faith to reform its adherents is continuous from the first generation onwards. “Paul” complains bitterly of the sexual licence among his first Corinthian converts ([1 Cor. v, 1, 2]), and seeks to check it by vehement commands, some mystical (id. [v. 5]), some prescribing ostracism (vv. 9–13)—a plain confession of failure, and a complete reversal of the prescription in the gospel ([Mt. xviii, 22]). If that could be set aside, the command as to divorce could be likewise. Justin Martyr (Dial. with Trypho, ch. 141) describes the orthodox Jews of his day as of all men the most given to polygamy and arbitrary divorce. (Cp. [Deut. xxiv, 1]; Edersheim, History, p. 294.) Then the Christian assumption as to Roman degeneration and Eastern virtue cannot be sustained.
At the beginning of the third century we have the decisive evidence of Tertullian that many of the charges of immorality made by serious pagans against Christians were in large part true. First he affirms (Ad Nationes, l. i, c. 5) that the pagan charges are not true of all, “not even of the greatest part of us.” In regard to the charge of incest (c. 16), instead of denying it as the earlier apologist Minucius Felix had done in the age of persecution, he merely argues that the same offence occurs through ignorance among the pagans. The chapter concludes by virtually admitting the charge with regard to misconduct in “the mysteries.” Still later, when he has turned Montanist, Tertullian explicitly charges his former associates with sexual licence (De Jejuniis, cc. 1, 17: De Virginibus Velandis, c. 14), pointing now to the heathen as showing more regard for monogamy than do the Christians (De Exhort. Castitatis, c. 13).
From the fourth century onward the history of the Church reveals at every step a conformity on the part of its members to average pagan practice. The third canon of the Nicene Council forbids clerics of all ranks from keeping as companions or housekeepers women who are not their close blood relations. In the fifth century Salvian denounces the Christians alike of Gaul and Africa as being boundlessly licentious in comparison with the Arian barbarians (De Gubernatione Dei, lib. 5, 6, 7). They do not even, he declares, deny the charge, contenting themselves with claiming superior orthodoxy. (Cp. Bury, Hist. of the Later Roman Empire, i, 198–99, and Finlay, ii, 219, for another point of view.) On all hands heresy was reckoned the one deadly sin (Gieseler, § 74, p. 295, and refs.), and all real misdeeds came to seem venial by comparison. As to sexual vice and crime among the Christianized Germans, see Gieseler, § 125, vol. ii, 158–60.
In the East the conditions were the same. The story of the indecent performances of Theodora on the stage (Gibbon, ch. xl), probably untrue of her, implies that such practices openly occurred. Milman (Hist. of Chr. bk. iv, ch. ii. ed. cited, ii, 327) recognizes general indecency, and notes that Zosimus charged it on Christian rule. Salvian speaks of unlimited obscenity in the theatres of Christian Gaul (De Gub. Dei, l. 6). Cp. Gibbon as to the character of the devout Justinian’s minister Trebonian; who, however, was called an atheist. (Suidas, s.v.) On the collapse of the iconoclastic movement, licence became general (Finlay, Hist. of Greece, ed. Tozer, ii, 162). But even in the fourth century Chrysostom’s writings testify to the normality of all the vices, as well as the superstitions, that Christianity is supposed to have banished; the churches figuring, like the ancient temples, as places of assignation. (Cp. the extracts of Lavollée, Les Mœurs Byzantines, in Essais de littérature et d’histoire, 1891, pp. 48–62, 89; the S.P.C.K.’s St. Chrysostom’s Picture of his Age, 1875, pp. 6, 94, 96, 98, 100, 102–104, 108, 194; Chrysostom’s Homilies, Eng. tr. 1839, Hom. xii on 1st Cor. pp. 159–64; Jerome, Adv. Vigilantium, cited by Gieseler, ii, 66, note 19, and in Gilly’s Vigilantius and his Times, 1844, pp. 406–407.) The clergy were among the most licentious of all, and Chrysostom had repeatedly to preach against them (Lavollée, ch. iv; Mosheim, as last cited; Gibbon, ch. xlvii, Bohn ed. iv, 232). The position of women was practically what it had been in post-Alexandrian Greece and Asia-Minor (Lavollée, ch. v; cp. St. Chrysostom’s Picture of his Age, pp. 180–82); and the practice corresponded. In short, the supposition that the population of Constantinople as we see it under Justinian, or that of Alexandria in the same age, could have been morally austere, is fantastic.
It would indeed be unintelligible that intellectual decline without change of social system should put morals on a sound footing. The very asceticism which seeks to mortify the body is an avowal of the vice from which it recoils, and insofar as this has prevailed under Christianity it has specifically hindered general temperance,[134] inasmuch as the types capable of self-rule thus leave no offspring.
On the other hand, with the single exception of the case of the gladiatorial combats (which had been denounced in the first century by the pagan Seneca,[135] and in the fourth by the pagan Libanius, but lasted in Rome long after Christianity had become the State religion;[136] while the no less cruel combats of men with wild beasts were suppressed only when the finances of the falling Empire could no longer maintain them),[137] the vice of cruelty seems to have been in no serious degree cast out.[138] Cruelty to slaves was certainly not less than in the Rome of the Antonines; and Chrysostom[139] denounces just such atrocities by cruel mistresses as had been described by Horace and Juvenal. The story of the slaying of Hypatia, indeed, is decisive as to Christian ferocity.[140]
In fine, the entire history of Christian Egypt, Asia, and Africa, progressively decadent till their easy conquest by the Saracens, and the entire history of the Christian Byzantine empire, at best stagnant in mental and material life during the thousand years of its existence, serve conclusively to establish the principle that in the absence of freethought no civilization can progress. More completely than any of the ancient civilizations to which they succeeded, they cast out or were denuded of the spirit of free reason. The result was strictly congruous. The process, of course, was one of socio-political causation throughout; and the rule of dogma was a symptom or effect of the process, not the extraneous cause. But that is only the clinching of the sociological lesson.
Of a deep significance, in view of the total historical movement, is the philosophical teaching of the last member of the ancient Roman world who exhibited philosophical capacity—the long famous Boethius, minister of the conqueror Theodoric, who put him to death in the year 525. Ostensibly from the same hand we have the De Consolatione Philosophiae, which is substantially non-Christian, and a number of treatises expounding orthodox Christian dogma. In the former “we find him in strenuous opposition ... to the Christian theory of creation; and his Dualism is at least as apparent as Plato’s. We find him coquetting with the anti-Christian doctrine of the immortality of the world, and assuming a position with regard to sin which is ultra-Pelagian and utterly untenable by a Christian theologian. We find him, with death before his eyes, deriving consolation not from any hopes of a resurrection ... but from the present contempt of all earthly pain and ill which his divine mistress, ‘the perfect solace of wearied souls,’ has taught him.”[141] Seeing that Theodoric, though a professed admirer of the ancient life, had absolutely put down, on pain of death,[142] every remaining religious practice of paganism, it is certain that Boethius must have officially professed Christianity; but his book seems to make it certain that he was not a believer. The only theory on which the expounder of such an essentially pagan philosophy can be conceived as really the author of the Christian tractates ascribed to Boethius is that, under the stroke of undeserved ruin and unjust doom, the thinker turned away from the creed of his official life and sought healing in the wisdom of the older world.[143] Whether we accept this solution or, in despite of the specific testimony, reject the theological tractates as falsely ascribed—either by their writer or by others—to Boethius,[144] the significant fact remains that it was not the Christian tracts but the pagan Consolation that passed down to the western nations of the Middle Ages as the last great intellectual legacy from the ancient world. It had its virtue for an age of mental bondage, because it preserved some pulse of the spirit of free thought.
[1] [Mt. xxii, 39]; [Mk. xii, 31]. [↑]
[2] Talmud, tract. Sabbath, 306. [↑]
[5] See the impressive argument of Dr. Moncure Conway in his Solomon and Solomonic Literature, 1899, ch. xviii. [↑]
[6] See Dr. Nicholson’s The Gospel According to the Hebrews, 1879, p. 77. Cp. Conway, p. 222. Dr. Nicholson insists that at least the word “sacrificing” must be spurious, because “it is surely impossible that Jesus ever uttered this threat”! [↑]
[7] Cp. the author’s Christianity and Mythology, pt. iii. div. ii, § 6. [↑]
[8] The Book of the Secrets of Enoch, known as the “Slavonic Enoch,” ch. xliv, 1 (Eng. tr. 1896, pp. 60, 67). [↑]
[9] See the author’s Pagan Christs, pt. ii. [↑]
[11] [Hosea, vi, 6]; [Psalms, xl, 6, 7]; [Ecclesiastes, v, 1]. [↑]
[12] Talmud, Yoma-Derech Eretz; Midrash, Vayikra-Rabba, xxvii, 11 and 12. [↑]
[15] Cp. Conway, Solomon and Solomonic Literature, 1899, pp. 57, 201, 219. [↑]
[17] E.g., Plato, Crito, Jowett’s tr. 3rd ed. ii, 150; Seneca, De Ira, ii, 32. Valerius Maximus (iv, 2, 4) even urges the returning of benefits for injuries. [↑]
[18] It is impossible to find in the whole patristic literature a single display of the “love” in question. In all early Christian history there is nothing to represent it save the attitude of martyrs towards their executioners—an attitude seen often in pagan literature. (E.g., Ælian, Var. Hist. xii, 49.) [↑]
[20] [2 Cor. xi, 4]; [Gal. i, 6]. [↑]
[21] Cp. [Rom. ix, 14–21]. [↑]
[22] [2 Cor. x, 5]. Needless to say, such an expression savours strongly of late invention; but in any case it tells of the attitude of the Christian teachers of the second century. [↑]
[23] [1 Cor. vii, 20–24] (where the phrase translated in English “use it rather” unquestionably means “rather continue” = remain a slave. Cp. [Eph. vi, 5], and Variorum Teacher’s Bible in loc.). [↑]
[24] [Rom. xiii, 1]. Cp. [1 Peter ii, 13–14]; [Tit. iii, 1]. The anti-Roman spirit in the Apocalypse is Judaic, not Gentile-Christian; the book being of Jewish origin. [↑]
[27] The Apology of Athenagoras (2nd c.) is rather a defence of monotheism than a Christian document; hence, no doubt, its speedy neglect by the Church. [↑]
[28] Justin Martyr, 1 Apol. c. 5; Min. Felix, Octavius, c. 10. [↑]
[29] “The inhabitants of Cœlesyria, Idumea, and Judea are principally influenced by Aries and Ares, and are generally audacious, atheistical, and treacherous” (Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos, ii, 3—Paraphrase of Proclus). [↑]
[30] Cp. Tertullian, De Idolatria, passim, and Ad Scapulam, c. 5. [↑]
[31] For the refusal to worship men as Gods they had, of course, abundant pagan precedent. See above, p. 186, note. [↑]
[32] E.g., Tertullian, De Testimonio Animæ, c. 1; Arnobius, Adversus Gentes, i, 41, etc.; Lactantius, Divine Institutes, c. xv; Epit. c. vii. [↑]
[33] Cp. J. A. Farrer, Paganism and Christianity, ch. vii. [↑]
[34] Irenæus, Against Heresies, i, 26. Cp. Hagenbach, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, 3te Aufl. § 23, 4 (p. 37), as to Cerinthus. [↑]
[35] [1 Tim. vi, 20]. The word persistently translated “oppositions” is a specific term in Gnostic lore. Cp. R. W. Mackay, Rise and Progress of Christianity, 1854, p. 115, note. [↑]
[36] Cp. Harnack, Outlines of the History of Dogma, Mitchell’s trans. p. 77 (ch. vi), p. 149 (bk. ii, ch. vi); Gieseler, Comp. of Eccles. Hist. i, § 63, Eng. tr. i, 234, as to the attitude of Origen. [↑]
[37] The term “Gnostic,” often treated as if applicable only to heretical sects, was adopted by Clemens of Alexandria as an honourable title. Cp. Gieseler, p. 241, as cited. [↑]
[38] Mosheim, Eccles. Hist. 2 Cent. pt. ii, ch. i, §§ 4–12. Cp., however, Abbé Cognat, Clément d’Alexandrie, 1859, pp. 421–23, and Ueberweg, i, 239, as to the obscurity resting on the original teaching of Ammonios. [↑]
[39] Cp. Gieseler, Compendium, i, § 52 (tr. vol. i, p. 162). [↑]
[40] Id. §§ 54, 55, pp. 186–90. [↑]
[41] E. H. 3 Cent. pt. ii, ch. i, §§ 2–4. [↑]
[42] As to the earlier latitudinarianism, cp. Gieseler, as cited, p. 166. [↑]
[44] Mosheim, E. H. 3 Cent. pt. ii, ch. iii, §§ 1–7; Gieseler, as cited, § 53, pp. 162–65; Eusebius, Eccles. Hist. vi, 19; B. Saint-Hilaire, De l’école d’Alexandrie, 1845, p. 7; Baur, Ch. Hist. Eng. tr. ii, 3–8. But cp. Cognat, Clément d’Alexandrie, l. v, ch. v. [↑]
[45] Cp. Mosheim on Origen, Comm. de rebus Christ. ante Const. §§ 27, 28, summarized in Schlegel’s note to Ec. Hist. Reid’s ed. pp. 100–101; Gieseler, § 63; Renan, Marc-Aurèle, pp. 114, 140. Dr. Hatch (Influence of Greek Ideas on the Christian Church, pp. 82–83) notes that the allegorical method, which began in a tendency towards rationalism, came later to be typically orthodox. [↑]
[46] “Gnosis was an attempt to convert Christianity into philosophy; to place it in its widest relation to the universe, and to incorporate with it the ideas and feelings approved by the best intelligence of the times.” Mackay, Rise and Progress of Christianity, p. 109. But cp. the per contra on p. 110: “it was but a philosophy in fetters, an effort of the mind to form for itself a more systematic belief in its own prejudices.” Again (p. 115): “a reaction towards freethought was the essence of Gnosis.” So also Robins, A Defence of the Faith, 1862, pt. i, pp. 4–5, 153. [↑]
[47] This view could be supported by the Platonists from Plato, Laws, bk. x. Cp. Chaignet, La vie et les écrits de Platon, 1871, p. 422; and Milman, Hist. of Christianity, bk. ii, ch. v, ed. Paris, 1840, i, 288. It is explicitly set forth by Plutarch, I. and O., cc. 45–49. [↑]
[48] On the subject in general cp. Mosheim, E. H. 2 Cent. pt. ii, ch. v; also his Commentaries on the Affairs of the Christians before Constantine, Eng. tr. vol. ii; Harnack, Outlines of the Hist. of Dogma, ch. iv; King, The Gnostics and their Remains; Mackay, Rise and Progress of Christianity, pt. iii, §§ 10, 11, 12; Renan, L’Église Chrétienne, chs. ix, x; Milman, Hist. of Christianity, bk. ii, ch. v; Lardner, Hist. of Heretics, in Works, ed. 1835, vol. viii; Baur, Church History, pt. iii; Jeremie, Hist. of the Chr. Church in 2nd and 3rd Cent., ch. v (in Encyc. Metropolitana). [↑]
[49] “Mysticism itself is but an insane rationalism” (Hampden, Bampton Lect. on Scholastic Philosophy, 3rd ed. intr. p. liii). It may be described as freethought without regard to evidence—that “lawless thought” which Christian polemists are wont to ascribe to rationalists. [↑]
[50] Gieseler, §§ 61, 86 (pp. 228, 368, 370). [↑]
[51] In the fourth century and later, however, the gospel of asceticism won great orthodox vogue through the writings of the so-called Dionysius the Areopagite. Cp. Mosheim, 4 Cent. pt. ii, c. iii, § 12; Westcott, Religious Thought in the West, 1891, pp. 190–91. [↑]
[52] Compare the process by which the Talmudic system unified Judaism. Wellhausen, Israel, as cited, pp. 541–42; Milman, History of Christianity, bk. ii, ch. 4, ed. Paris, 1840, i, 276. [↑]
[53] “There is good reason to suppose that the Christian bishops multiplied sacred rites for the sake of rendering the Jews and the pagans more friendly to them” (Mosheim, E. H. 2 Cent. pt. ii, ch. iv. Cp. ch. iii, § 17; ch. iv, §§ 3–7; 4 Cent. pt. ii, ch. iii, §§ 1–3; ch. iv, §§ 1–2; 5 Cent. pt. ii, ch. iii, § 2). This generalization is borne out by nearly every other Church historian. Cp. Harnack, Outlines, pt. ii, bk. i, ch. i; Milman, bk. iv, ch. 5, pp. 367–74; Gieseler. §§ 98, 99, 101, 104; Renan, Marc-Aurèle, 3e edit. p. 630. Baur, Church History, Eng. tr. ii, 285–89. [↑]
[54] Gieseler, § 87, p. 373; Hagenbach, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, 3te Aufl. § 108. [↑]
[55] Eusebius, v, 28; Gieseler, § 60, p. 218. [↑]
[56] Cp. Gieseler, §§ 80–83, pp. 328–53; Harnack, Outlines, pt. ii, bk. i, esp. pp. 201–202. [↑]
[57] One being another Theodotos, a money-changer. [↑]
[58] Eusebius, as last cited. The sect was accused of altering the gospels to suit its purposes. The charge could probably be made with truth against every sect in turn, as against the Church in general. [↑]
[59] In the end the doctrine declared orthodox was the opposite of what had been declared orthodox in the Sabellian and other controversies (Mosheim, 4 Cent. pt. ii, ch. v, § 9); and all the while “the Arians and the orthodox embraced the same theology in substance” (Murdock, note on Mosheim, Reid’s ed. p. 161). An eminent modern Catholic, however, has described Arianism as “a deistic doctrine which had not the courage to bury itself in the fecund obscurities of dogma” (Ozanam, La Civilisation chrétienne chez les Francs, 1849, p. 35). [↑]
[60] Gieseler, § 83. p. 345. [↑]
[61] Cp. the author’s Short History of Christianity, 2nd ed. pp. 176–81. [↑]
[62] “Pelagianism is Christian rationalism” (Harnack, Outlines, pt. ii, bk. ii, ch. iv, § 3, p.364). [↑]
[63] He was first a Manichean; later an anti-Manichean, denying predestination; later, as an opponent of the Pelagians, an assertor of predestination. Cp. Mackay, Rise and Progress of Christianity, pt. v, § 15. As to his final Manicheanism, see Milman, Hist. of Latin Christianity, 3rd ed. i, 152. [↑]
[64] Cp. Harnack, Outlines, pt. ii, bk. ii, ch. v, § 1 (p. 386). [↑]
[65] Cp. Hampden, Bampton Lectures on The Scholastic Philosophy, 1848, pp. xxxv–xxxvi, and refs. [↑]
[66] Sokrates, Eccles. Hist. bk. vii, ch. 15. [↑]
[67] Epist. 93. Cp. Schlegel’s notes on Mosheim, in Reid’s ed. pp. 159, 198; Rev. W. R. Clarke, Saint Augustine, pp. 86–87 (a defence); Milman, History of Latin Christianity, bk. ii, ch. ii, 3rd. ed. i, 163; Boissier, La fin du paganisme, 2e édit. i, 69–79. Harnack’s confused and contradictory estimate of Augustine (Outlines, pt. ii, bk ii, chs. iii, iv) ignores this issue. He notes, however (pp. 362–63), some of Augustine’s countless self-contradictions. [↑]
[68] Milman, Hist. of Christianity, bk. iii, ch. viii; ed. cited, ii, 182, 188, and note. For the views of Ambrose see p. 184. In Gaul, St. Martin put down the old shrines by brute force. Id. p. 179. [↑]
[69] Cp. Beugnot, Histoire de la destruction du paganisme en Occident, 1835, i, 430. [↑]
[70] De errore profanarum religionum, end. [↑]
[71] See it translated in full by Lardner in his Testimonies of Ancient Heathens, ch. xlix. Works, ed. 1835, vol. viii. [↑]
[72] Lardner, as cited, pp. 25–27. [↑]
[73] As to the high character of Libanius, who used his influence to succour his Christian friends in the reign of Julian, see Lardner, pp. 15–17. [↑]
[74] Milman, Hist. of Christianity, bk. iii, ch. vi; vol. ii, p. 131. See the passage there cited from the Funeral Oration of Libanius On Julian, as to Christians building houses with temple stones; also the further passages, pp. 129, 161, 212, of Mr. King’s tr. of the Oration in his Julian the Emperor (Bohn Lib.). [↑]
[76] Gibbon, ch. xlvii. Bohn ed. v, 211–52, 264, 268, 272. Mosheim, passim. [↑]
[77] Milman, as cited, p. 178. [↑]
[78] De Testimonio Animæ, c. 2; De Ira Dei. [↑]
[79] Tertullian, as cited, c. 3. [↑]
[81] On the Mysteries, bk. x, ch. 2. [↑]
[82] Cp. Minucius Felix (2nd c.), Octavius, c. 5. [↑]
[83] De consensu evangelistarum, i, 10. [↑]
[84] De civ. Dei, xxi, 2, 5–7. [↑]
[87] See the citations in Abailard’s Sic et non, § 1. Quod fides humanis rationibus sit adstruenda, et contra. [↑]
[88] De Gubernatione Dei, l. 4. [↑]
[89] See Renan, L’Église Chrétienne, p. 493. As to Crescens, the enemy of Justin Martyr (2 Apol. c. 3), see id. p. 492. Cp. Arnobius, Adversus Gentes, passim, as to pagan objections. What remains of Porphyry will be found in Lardner’s Testimonies of the Heathen, ch. xxxvii. Cp. Baur, Church History, Eng. tr. ii, 179–87. [↑]
[90] The Controversy between Jason and Papiscus regarding Christ, mentioned by Origen (Ag. Celsus, bk. iv, ch. 4), seems to have been of the same nature. [↑]
[91] Origen repeatedly calls him an Epicurean; but this is obviously false. The Platonizing Christian would not admit that a Platonist was anti-Christian. [↑]
[92] Origen places him in the reign of Hadrian; but the internal evidence is all against that opinion. Kain dates the treatise 177–78. [↑]
[93] Cp. Renan, Marc-Aurèle, 3e édit. pp. 346–71. [↑]
[103] B. iv, cc. 23–30, 54–60, 74. [↑]
[104] Cp. A. Kind, Teleologie und Naturalismus in der altchristlichen Zeit, 1875; Soury, Bréviaire de l’histoire du Matérialisme, pp. 331–40. [↑]
[105] B. i, chs. 9–11; iii, 44. [↑]
[106] Cp. Renan, Marc-Aurèle, pp. 373–77. [↑]
[107] Christian excisions have been suspected in the Peregrinus, § 11 (Bernays, Lucian und die Kyniker, 1879, p. 107). But see Mr. J. M. Cotterill’s Peregrinus Proteus, Edinburgh, 1879, for a theory of the spuriousness of the treatise, which is surmised to be a fabrication of Henri Etienne. [↑]
[108] Logoi Philaletheis, known only from the reply of Eusebius, Contra Hiroclem. Hierocles made much of Apollonius of Tyana, as having greatly outdone Jesus in miracles, while ranking simply as a God-beloved man. [↑]
[109] Methodius, Eusebius, Apollinaris, and Philostorgius. [↑]
[110] Cod. Justin. De Summa Trinitate. l. I, tit. i, c. 3. [↑]
[111] Citations are given by Baur, Ch. Hist. ii, 180 sq. [↑]
[112] Cp. Mackay, Rise and Progress of Christianity, p. 160. Chrysostom (De Mundi Creatione, vi, 3) testifies that Porphyry “led many away from the faith.” He ably anticipated the “higher criticism” of the Book of Daniel. See Baur, as cited. Porphyry, like Celsus, powerfully retorted on the Old Testament the attacks made by Christians on the immorality of pagan myths, and contemned the allegorical explanations of the Christian writers as mere evasions. The pagan explanations of pagan myths, however, were of the same order. [↑]
[113] Gieseler, § 106, ii, 75. Cp. Mosheim, 4 Cent. pt. ii, ch. iii, § 22. [↑]
[114] Gieseler, § 106, vol. ii, p. 74; Mosheim, 4 Cent. pt. ii, ch. iii, § 2; and Schlegel’s note in Reid’s ed. p. 152. [↑]
[115] Milman, Hist. of Chr. bk. iii, ch. xi (ii, 268–70); Mosheim, 5 Cent. pt. ii, ch. iii, § 14; Gilly, Vigilantius and his Times, 1844, pp. 8, 389 sq., 470 sq. As to Jerome’s persecuting ferocity see also Gieseler, ii, 65 note. For a Catholic polemic on Jerome’s side see Amedée Thierry, Saint Jérome, 2e édit. pp. 141, 363–66. [↑]
[116] See a good account of the works of Macrobius in Prof. Dill’s Roman Society in the last Century of the Western Empire, bk. i, ch. iv. [↑]
[117] Philostorgius, Eccles. Hist. Epit. bk. viii, ch. x. [↑]
[118] By Justinian in 529. The banished thinkers were protected by Chosroes in Persia, who secured them permission to return (Gibbon, Bohn ed. iv. 355–56; Finlay, Hist. of Greece, ed. Tozer, i, 277, 287). Theodosius II had already forbidden all public lectures by independent teachers (id. pp. 282–83). [↑]
[119] Theodosius I, Arcadius, and Theodosius II (379–450) successively passed laws forbidding and persecuting paganism (Finlay. i, 286; Beugnot. Hist. de la destr. du paganisme en occident, i, 350 sq.). Mithraism was suppressed in the same period (Jerome, Epist. cvii, ad Laetam, Sokrates, Eccles. Hist. bk. v, ch. xvi). It is to be remembered that Constans and Constantius, the sons of Constantine, had commenced, at least on paper, to persecute paganism as soon as their father’s new creed was sufficiently established (Cod. Theod. xvi, 10, 2, 4), and this with the entire approval of the whole Church. It was not their fault that it subsisted till the time of Theodosius II (cp. Gieseler, § 75, pp. 306–308; and Beugnot, i, 138–48). On the edict of Theodosius I see Milman, bk. iii, ch. viii; ed. cited, p. 186. [↑]
[120] In S. Babylam, contra Julianum, c. ii. Cp. his Hom. iv on 1st Cor. Eng. tr. 1839, p. 42. [↑]
[121] There is also a suggestion in one passage of Chrysostom (Hom. in [1 Cor. vi, 2, 3]) that some Christians tended to doubt the actuality of apostolic miracles, seeing that no miracles took place in their own day. [↑]
[122] Præparatio Evangelica, xv, 61. [↑]
[125] Topographia, lib. v, cited by Murdock in note on Mosheim. 5 Cent. pt. ii, ch. iii, § 5, Reid’s ed. p. 192. Cp. same ed. p. 219, note; and Gibbon, Bohn ed. iv, 259; v, 319. [↑]
[126] Acta concilia Constantinop. apud Harduin, ii, 65, 71. [↑]
[127] See Schlegel’s note on Mosheim. 4 Cent. pt. ii, ch. v, § 19. [↑]
[128] The first name came from Ανόμοιος, “unlike-natured (to the Father),” that being their primary doctrinal heresy concerning Jesus. The second seems to have been a euphemism of their own making, with the sense of “holding the good law.” [↑]
[129] Jerome, Adv. Vigilantium, cc. 9, 11. [↑]
[130] Epiphanius, Adv. Hæres. lxx, § 6. [↑]
[131] Cp. Augustine, De Civ. Dei, viii, 15–19; xxi, 6; De Trinitate, iii, 12, 13 (7, 8); Epist. cxxxviii, 18–20; Sermo cc, in Epiph. Dom. ii; Jerome, Vita S. Hilarion, cc. 6, 37. [↑]
[132] Mosheim, E. H. 2 Cent. pt. ii, ch. iii, §§ 8, 15; 3 Cent. pt. i, ch. i, § 5; pt. ii, ch. iii, §§ 10, 11; 4 Cent. pt. ii, ch. iii, §§ 3, 16; Gieseler, § 63, p. 235; Waddington, Hist. of the Church, 1833, pp. 38–39; Milman, Hist. of Chr. bk. iv, ch. iii, ed. cited, ii, 337. Cp. Mackay, Rise and Progress of Christianity, pp. 11–12. [↑]
[133] Cp. the explicit admissions of Mosheim, E. H. 2 Cent. pt. ii, ch. iii, § 16; 3 Cont. pt. ii, ch. ii, §§ 4, 6; 4 Cent. pt. ii, ch. ii, § 8; ch. iii, § 17; Gieseler, § 103, vol. ii, p. 56. It is to be noted, however, that even the martyrs were at times bad characters who sought in martyrdom remission for their sins (Gieseler, § 74, p. 206; De Wette, as there cited). [↑]
[134] Cp. Gieseler, ii, 67–68. [↑]
[135] Epist. vii, 5; xcv, 33. Cp. Cicero, Tusculans, ii, 17. [↑]
[136] Cp. the Bohn ed. of Gibbon, note by clerical editor, iii, 359. [↑]
[137] The express declaration of Salvian, De Gubernatione Dei, l. 6. On the general question compare Mr. Farrer’s Paganism and Christianity, ch. x; Milman, as last cited, p. 331; and Gieseler, ii, 71, note 6. The traditional view that the games were suppressed by Honorius, though accepted by Gibbon and by Professor Dill (Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire, 2nd ed. p. 56), appears to be an error. Cp. Beugnot, Destr. du Paganisme, ii, 25; Finlay, Hist. of Greece, i, 236. [↑]
[138] As to the specially cruel use of judicial torture by the later Inquisition, see H. C. Lea, Superstition and Force, 3rd ed. p. 452. [↑]
[139] Lavollée, as cited, p. 92. Cp. St. Chrysostom’s Picture of his Age, p. 112, and the admissions of Milman, bk. iv, ch. i. [↑]
[140] As to the spirit of hatred roused by controversy among believers, see Gieseler, § 104, vol. ii, pp. 64–67; and Ullmann’s Gregory of Nazianzum, Eng. tr. 1851, pp. 177–80. [↑]
[141] H. Fraser Stewart, Boethius: An Essay, 1891, pp. 100–101. [↑]
[142] Cp. Beugnot, Destruction du Paganisme, ii, 282–83. [↑]
[143] Id. p. 159. Mr. Stewart in another passage (p. 106) argues that “The Consolation is intensely artificial”—this by way of explaining that it was a deliberate exercise, not representing the real or normal state of its author’s mind. Yet he has finally to avow (p. 107) that “it remains a very noble book”—a character surely incompatible with intense artificiality. [↑]
[144] This is the view of Maurice (Medieval Philosophy, 2nd ed. 1859, pp. 14–16), who decides that Boethius was neither a Christian nor a “pagan”—i.e., a believer in the pagan Gods. This is simply to say that he was a rationalist—a “pagan philosopher,” like Aristotle. But, as is noted by Prof. Bury (ed. of Gibbon, iv. 199), Boethius’s authorship of a book, De sancta trinitate, et capita quædam dogmatica, et librum contra Nestorium, is positively asserted in the Anecdoton Holderi (ed. by Usener, Leipzig, 1877, p. 4), a fragment found in a 10th century MS. [↑]