"The sad truth is that as soon as Christianity was generally diffused, it began to absorb corruptions from all the lands in which it was planted, and to reflect the complexion of all their systems of religion and philosophy."[A]
[Footnote A: Eccles. Hist., vol. i, p. 49.]
Dean Milman, in his preface to his annotated edition of Edward Gibbon's great work, "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," and commenting upon that great author's attitude respecting the Christian religion, says:
"If, after all, the view of the early progress of Christianity be melancholy and humiliating, we must beware lest we charge the whole of this on the infidelity of the historian. It is idle, it is disingenuous, to deny or dissemble the early depravations of Christianity, its gradual but rapid departure from its primitive simplicity and purity, still more from its spirit of universal love. It may be no unsalutary lesson to the Christian world, that this silent, this unavoidable perhaps, yet fatal change, shall have been drawn by an impartial, or even an hostile hand."[A]
[Footnote A: Gibbon's Roman Empire, Preface by Dean Milman, p. 15.]
Dr. Mosheim, in his "Institutes," deals at length with the abuses which arose in the Church in the second and third centuries, which I abridge to the following, and first as to the second century: Many rites were added without necessity to both public and private religious worship, to the great offense of good men; and principally because of the perversity of mankind, who are more delighted with the pomp and splendor of external forms and pageantry than with the true devotion of the heart. There is good reason to believe that the Christian bishops purposely multiplied sacred rites for the sake of rendering the Jews and pagans more friendly to them. For both these classes had always been accustomed to numerous and splendid ceremonies, and believed them an essential part of religion. In pursuance of this policy, and to silence the calumnies of the pagans and the Jews against them—to the effect that the Christians were pronounced atheists, because destitute of temples, altars, victims, priests, and all that pomp in which the vulgar suppose the essence of religion to consist—the Christian leaders introduced many rites, that they might be able to maintain that they really had those things which the pagans had, only they subsisted under different forms. Some of these rites—justified, as was supposed, by a comparison of the Christian oblations with Jewish victims and sacrifices—in time corrupted essentially the doctrine of the Lord's supper, and converted it into a sacrifice. To add further to the dignity of the Christian religion, the churches of the east feigned mysteries similar to those of the pagan religions; and, as with the pagans, the holy rites of the mysteries were concealed from the vulgar:—"And they not only applied the terms used in the pagan mysteries to the Christian institutions, particularly baptism and the Lord's Supper, but they gradually introduced also the rites which were designed by those terms." This practice originated in the eastern provinces of the empire, and thence, after the times of Adrian (who first introduced the Grecian mysteries among the Latins), it spread among the Christians of the west. "A large part therefore, of Christian observances and institutions, even in this century, had the aspect of the pagan mysteries." In like manner many ceremonies and customs of the Egyptians were adopted.[A]
[Footnote A: Institutes, vol. i, cent, ii, part ii, ch. iv.]
Speaking of the third century, the Doctor says that all the monuments of this century show that there was a great increase of ceremonies in the Church, owing to the prevailing passion for the Platonic philosophy. Hence arose the public exorcisms, the multiplication of fasts, the aversion to matrimony, and the painful austerities and penances which were enjoined upon offenders.[A]
[Footnote A: Ibid. cen. iii, part ii, ch. iv.]