The Antonines invariably made kind and humane princes, lovers of justice, sparing of the lives of their subjects. Marcus Aurelius, in particular, went too far in his complaisance and goodness of heart. The principle of the stoical philosophy he had embraced, and which he was proud to follow, taught the inviolability of liberty in private life, and far from advising the persecution of opinions, it must rather have taught respect for them.
On the other hand, in spite of a visible tendency on the part of the authorities at this time to restore or to strengthen the old Roman discipline, in spite of the alliance entered upon between philosophy and the popular religion, multifarious worships flourished freely throughout the empire. The emperors, whose official devoutness has nothing exclusive, are admitted, like Hadrian, into the alien churches; or, like Marcus Aurelius, do not fear to make an appeal in urgent cases to all known religions. Amongst the philosophers, some, regarding such matters with contempt, state that the diversity matters but little provided that the heavenly sentiment is in the soul; others, incredulous and sceptical like Lucian, scoff with impunity at all the gods and religious symbols, sparing none. There is nothing in the empire resembling a state religion; it would even be difficult to say precisely which is the religion of the majority of the citizens.
Polytheism means diversity and confusion. There is no common formulary, or catechism, nothing resembling the doctrinal teaching of a fixed and definite theology. All the gods are accounted good, and the newest seem to possess extraordinary virtues. Whence comes it that Christianity alone is excluded from universal toleration and is legally without the rights of the law? Whilst striving to answer this question, there is the risk of defining and exaggerating ideas which hovered vaguely in the minds of the princes and statesmen of that time, and of reducing dim notions to too fixed formulas. The Christians in the second century are usually taxed with atheism and impiety. It is certain that the apologists have fair play in replying to this imputation, and answer it triumphantly. The fact however remains that Christianity was the absolute negation of all the symbols of pagan naturalism, that it condemned and repudiated without exception all the gods and all worships, and aspired to destroy and replace them. Lucian, it is true, was not more respectful to the various prevailing superstitions, but Lucian’s invectives were an individual piece of wit. He did not attempt to raise altar against altar, he did not do the work of destruction in view of propaganda. He did not work against the institutions in the name of a new community. He remained faithful to the old philosophical tradition. His burst of laughter was as the last hostile note uttered by philosophy, before disarming and offering a hand to the popular religion.
The Christian objectors, also bitter, were far more in earnest and more formidable. Their attacks amounted to a general assault, and cloaked a manifestly subversive design. They did not scoff for the mere sake of scoffing, but to overthrow and to make a distinct place for their own community, establishing it on new foundations. Authority respects the individual conscience, and grants it the greatest license, but the general conscience is what is called conspiracy.
There is here no room for doubt. Impiety and atheism are in fact not purely religious names, in the modern sense, but political imputations. Religions in the empire are matters of state, or rather religion and the state form only one commonwealth, of which the emperor is the head. Lucian was free to be impious or atheistical. No inference is to be drawn from this, however, though he may here and there have either imitators or disciples.
But the Christian is not an individual unit, his name is legion; he is a member of an association, a party which cannot be confounded with a philosophical school. He belongs to an organised body which has its members everywhere; which possesses a distinctive language, rallying signs, a hierarchy, and a common purse maintained by voluntary contributions; which holds clandestine meetings, celebrates nocturnal rites of which popular imagination is afraid, and possesses certain means of operation at a distance by means of delegates or circulars. And what an organisation it is! Its members in Gaul have communication with Rome, and with the cities of Asia and Phrygia. It covers the entire empire with an invisible network. Philosophy, the daughter of curiosity and the work of the brain, divides; Christian belief unites.
Do not these associates, these collegiati of a new species, whose secret designs and whose nearest hopes are unknown, but are in any case manifestly in accordance with hatred of the morals, the customs, and the institutions of the empire, form the beginning of a state within a state? Are they not a menace to the public class, that which at all times is reported inseparable from the preservation of existing institutions? These are enemies; the more so that community of faith, hatred of the state, and the bond of a common fear in the presence of danger and of proscription holds them together.
Pertinax, on attaining to the imperial dignity, gave this for the first watchword: “Let us fight”—a virile watchword, and one suited also to the reign of Marcus Aurelius. In fact, on the frontiers the barbarians are hastening to arm. Of the thirty legions of which he has the disposal, the emperor is forced to muster twenty with numerous auxiliaries to drive them beyond the Danube, and hold them in awe. During this time, other peaceful barbarians, as they are called, profess contempt for their country, enervate their minds by an unnerving mysticism, detaching themselves from masculine duties and the rough obligations of civil and military life, and by their attacks and their counsels noiselessly lay the mine which will engulf the fortunes of Rome.
They respect, they say, the established powers, and offer up prayers to their gods on behalf of the emperor; but they are heard to say that marriage is a corruption, and a Christian slave dares to reply to the judge that Christ has freed him, and amongst the foundations on which the state and society, decency, family ties, and religion rest, there is not one institution which finds favour in their sight.
The state has need of the devotion of all. It is a critical moment. A war, which all good citizens must consider as a holy war, is added to the scourge which devastates the empire. The stake is, perhaps, civilisation itself. The Christians are reluctant to serve the country at home or abroad. They wish to be neither soldiers nor magistrates. They glory in being citizens of heaven. They wrap themselves up in meditation, controversy, and the exercises of their piety. The community is threatened. In every town they have made for themselves a city of their own choosing, a society separate and apart, of which, they say, God himself is the founder, which they call their church, and to which they dedicate all their attention and their zeal. The service of their church is the sole thing which moves them. The duties it imposes are, in their eyes, the only essential and necessary duties.