But if this gentleman had been the author of the early cross, is it likely that God would have embraced it as the signal of His protection when dealing destruction to the objects of His divine vengeance?
“And the Lord said unto him, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and put a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof:
“And to the others he said in my hearing, Go ye after him through the city, and smite: let not your eye spare, neither have ye pity.
“Slay utterly old and young, both maids and little children, and women; but come not near any man upon whom is the mark; and begin at My sanctuary.”[366]
Now this “mark,” in the ancient Hebrew original, was the cross X. St. Jerome, the most learned by far of those “fathers,” has admitted the circumstance. And if this had been the device of the enemy of man, would the Author of all goodness so sanction his imposture, as to adopt it as the index of His saving love?
“Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things?”[367]
But this was not the only invention which they attributed to the devil. Tertullian gravely assures us that he was the author of buskins also! And why, good reader, would you suppose?—in sooth, for no other reason than because that our Saviour said, in His sermon upon the mountain, “Which of you, by taking thought, can add one cubit unto his stature?”[368]
In him, also, did they find an adequate excuse for those apertures, which I shall by and by notice, as excavated in rocks and mounds of clay, calling them, with some compliment it must be admitted to his gallantry, by the monopolising appellation of the Devil’s Yonies.[369]
But of all the puerilities which sully their zeal, there is no one half so calculated to injure vital religion, as the low quibbles and dishonest quotations which Justin Martyr had recourse to, as apologies for the cross!
Why, Sir, the greatest persecutor with which the Christians had ever been cursed, namely, the Emperor Decius, had imprinted the cross upon some of his coins!