[289] Serapis was a synthesis of Osiris and Apis.
[290] See Legge, Forerunners and Rivals of Christianity, chap. xii. See also Cumont’s Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism for a very clear account of the gradual development of Roman Paganism into a religion very similar to Christianity pari passu with the development of Christianity.
[291] Cp. Father Hugh Benson’s account of the procession of the Host in his book Lourdes.
[292] In any prayer book of the Episcopalian Church. The Athanasian Creed embodies the view of Athanasius, but probably was not composed by him.
[293] Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chap. xvi.
[294] Here, from another point of view, are some remarks upon the acceptance of Christianity by the empire. Let us remember that the Church, an object so familiar to us, was to the decent Roman a very strange thing. It was a vast society for mutual help, quite outside the state and the recognized corporations; it was secret (hence the frequent inquisitions and the praise given by Church historians to those who “confessed Christ”); it drew its main strength from a class “not well thought of by the police, the proletariat of the big manufacturing towns of Syria and the Levant, like Antioch.” Alternately proscribed and connived at, much subjected to pogroms, it gradually increased in strength. Diocletian summoned his two associated Cæsars to a conference on the subject, and they decided to crush the society by a drastic persecution. They persecuted and failed, and Diocletian resigned. Constantine the Great, the next claimant to the empire, made terms with the society and succeeded. He established it as official, and overcame its hatred of Rome by showering wealth and power on it. Eventually, when in fear of death, he got baptized. All modern analogies are fallacious, but if you imagine a blend of pacifist international socialists with some mystical Indian sect, drawing its supporters mainly from an oppressed and ill-liked foreign proletariat, such as the “hunkey” population of some big American towns, full of the noblest moral professions but at the same time alien, or even hostile, to the whole established order of society, I think you will get the sort of impression that the Christian society made on a Roman. The conception of the blameless and saintly Early Christian is, I think, hugely romance. Of course, like most religious reformers, they were in the main seekers after righteousness and above the average of their contemporaries. Also the Christian writers are apt to have more life and vision than their conventional or reactionary Pagan contemporaries. But consider the appalling accusations made by all the Christian sects against each other, and the furious denunciation of the turbulent Christian monastics by Augustine. Also consider what a spirit lies behind the Book of Revelation! Read especially Chapters 17-19, a series of elaborate and horrific curses upon Rome (including repeated threats of its destruction by fire, which the Christians were believed to have attempted), or the end of Chapter 14 where the ministers of the Son of Man tread the winepress of the world till the blood comes “even to the bridles of the horses.” If we found such a book now circulating in India, with England taking the place of Rome, I fear there would be some shooting and hanging. The fact that the Christians actually prayed for the destruction of the whole world by fire seemed to the average non-Christian evidence of almost maniacal wickedness.
I do not of course write to blame the Revelationist; such visions of hatred are the natural outcome of persecution and great suffering. I am merely trying to make intelligible the dislike and even dread of the Christians which seems to have been commonly felt. (See also Seek, Untergang der Antiken Welt, vol. 3, esp. the notes.)—G.M.
[295] q.v., The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chap. xiv.
[296] On the rise of dogma or tradition in the Church, especially at Rome, see Davis, Mediæval Europe (Home University Library).—E. B.
[297] Encyclopædia Britannica, art. “Church History,” p. 336.