Zeus, universal providence attributed by the Greeks to, i. 161
Footnotes
[1.] There is a remarkable passage of Celsus, on the impossibility of restoring a nature once thoroughly depraved, quoted by Origen in his answer to him. [2.] This is well shown by Pressensé in his Hist. des Trois premiers Siècles. [3.] See a great deal of information on this subject in Bingham's Antiquities of the Christian Church (Oxford, 1853), vol. v. pp. 370-378. It is curious that those very noisy contemporary divines who profess to resuscitate the manners of the primitive Church, and who lay so much stress on the minutest ceremonial observances, have left unpractised what was undoubtedly one of the most universal, and was believed to be one of the most important, of the institutions of early Christianity. Bingham shows that the administration of the Eucharist to infants continued in France till the twelfth century. [4.] See Cave's Primitive Christianity, part i. ch. xi. At first the Sacrament was usually received every day; but this custom soon declined in the Eastern Church, and at last passed away in the West. [5.] Plin. Ep. x. 97. [6.] The whole subject of the penitential discipline is treated minutely in Marshall's Penitential Discipline of the Primitive Church (first published in 1714, and reprinted in the library of Anglo-Catholic Theology), and also in Bingham, vol. vii. Tertullian gives a graphic description of the public penances, De Pudicit. v. 13. [7.] Eusebius, H. E. viii, 7. [8.] St. Chrysostom tells this of St. Babylas. See Tillemont, Mém. pour servir à l'Hist. eccl. tome iii. p. 403. [9.] In the preface to a very ancient Milanese missal it is said of St. Agatha that as she lay in the prison cell, torn by the instruments of torture, St. Peter came to her in the form of a Christian physician, and offered to dress her wounds; but she refused, saying that she wished for no physician but Christ. St. Peter, in the name of that Celestial Physician, commanded her wounds to close, and her body became whole as before. (Tillemont, tome iii. p. 412.) [10.] See her acts in Ruinart. [11.] St. Jerome, Ep. xxxix. [12.] “Definitio brevis et vera virtutis: ordo est amoris.”—De Civ. Dei, xv. 22. [13.] Besides the obvious points of resemblance in the common, though not universal, belief that Christians should abstain from all weapons and from all oaths, the whole teaching of the early Christians about the duty of simplicity, and the wickedness of ornaments in dress (see especially the writings of Tertullian, Clemens Alexandrinus, and Chrysostom, on this subject), is exceedingly like that of the Quakers. The scruple of Tertullian (De Coronâ) about Christians wearing laurel wreaths in the festivals, because laurel was called after Daphne, the lover of Apollo, was much of the same kind as that which led the Quakers to refuse to speak of Tuesday or Wednesday, lest they should recognise the gods Tuesco or Woden. On the other hand, the ecclesiastical aspects and the sacramental doctrines of the Church were the extreme opposites of Quakerism. [14.] See the masterly description of the relations of the English to the Irish in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, in Froude's History of England, ch. xxiv.; and also Lord Macaulay's description of the feelings of the Master of Stair towards the Highlanders. (History of England, ch. xviii.) [15.] See on the views of Aristotle, Labourt, Recherches historiques sur les Enfanstrouvés (Paris, 1848), p. 9. [16.] See Gravina, De Ortu et Progressu Juris Civilis, lib. i. 44. [17.]
“Nunc uterum vitiat quæ vult formosa videci,
Raraque in hoc ævo est, quæ velit esse parens.”
Ovid, De Nuce, 22-23.
The same writer has devoted one of his elegies (ii. 14) to reproaching his mistress Corinna with having been guilty of this act. It was not without danger, and Ovid says,
“Sæpe suos utero quæ necit ipsa perit.”
A niece of Domitian is said to have died in consequence of having, at the command of the emperor, practised it (Sueton. Domit. xxii.). Plutarch notices the custom (De Sanitate tuenda), and Seneca eulogises Helvia (Ad Helv. xvi.) for being exempt from vanity and having never destroyed her unborn offspring. Favorinus, in a remarkable passage (Aulus Gellius, Noct. Att. xii. 1), speaks of the act as “publica detestatione communique odio dignum,” and proceeds to argue that it is only a degree less criminal for mothers to put out their children to nurse. Juvenal has some well-known and emphatic lines on the subject:—