The Secret Vault presents: The Christian and Pagan Creeds Collated. Rev. Robert Taylor, A. B. & M. R. C. S.
By the Rev. Robert Taylor, A. B. & M. R. C. S.
From the self-evident absurdity of all arguments drawn from miracles, which could be of avail only to those who witnessed them, and even to them of no further avail than to make them stare and wonder, but to leave them in as great ignorance as ever as to the what then, or what inference, from an unaccountable fact to the truth or falsehood of an unaccountable doctrine, divines have been driven upon the dernier resort of a desperate attempt to connect Christianity with a species of historical evidence arising from the argument of martyrdom.
Accordingly, in the latest or at least most popular treatise on the Evidences of Christianity which is now read in our universities, and generally appealed to as exhibiting the whole stress of the cause set in the best light, and shown to the utmost advantage, the whole burthen is laid on these two propositions: -
First, "That there is satisfactory evidence that many professing to be original witnesses of the Christian miracles, passed their lives in labours, dangers, and sufferings, voluntarily undergone in attestation of the accounts which they delivered, and solely in consequence of their belief of those accounts; and that they also submitted, from the same motives, to new rules of conduct."
Second Proposition. "That there is not satisfactory evidence that persons pretending to be original witnesses of any other similar miracles, have acted in the same manner in attestation of the accounts which they delivered, and solely in consequence of their belief of the truth of those accounts." [Paley's Evidences of Christianity.] [LN., Paley, William 1743 to 1805, Christian Apologist, philosopher and Utilitarian. Best known for his work 'Natural Theology or evidences of the existence and attributes of the Deity.']
Such are the specific propositions on which the whole fabric of the evidences of Christianity is raised, by that great master "of thoughts that are just, and words that are beautiful," [Words of Sir James Scarlett, sold to the prosecution of the Author in the Court of King's Bench, October 24, 1827.] whose name and authority were urged to justify the cutting off from society of one whose only offence was, that he availed himself of thoughts quite as just, in words as beautiful, leading only to diametrically opposite conclusions.
Not to quarrel with the logic of these propositions, nor waste a moment's indignation on the apparent insult offered to the acutest sensibilities of our nature, in thus couching conditions involving the eternal happiness or misery of man, in terms whose laxity of purport and indefiniteness of sense could intend no other drift than to evade conclusion, to disappoint solicitude, and to defeat examination;
We apply at once to this whole argument of martyrdom, these two grand conflicting propositions: -
First, that sufferings undergone by the first preachers of Christianity is not the kind of evidence which we have a right to expect that the good and gracious Father of mankind should have given to a revelation which he was pleased to make;
Second, that it is absolutely not true, that the first preachers of Christianity did undergo any sufferings whatever in attestation of the accounts which they delivered. In still briefer proposition, the argument of martyrdom is not true; and it would be good for nothing, if it were true.
1. That Martyrdom is not the kind of evidence which we have right to expect.
Against this first and primordial consideration of the business, a most preposterous and absurd war of nonsense and insolence is generally raised, to shelter and protect the desolation of the Christian argument. "Nay, but O man, who art thou, that replies against God? What right have we, to demand that God should give to his revelation just such evidence as we please to think necessary?"
To all which sort of language, though disgracing the style of authors who have acquired the fame of critics, scholars, and rational men, on all other subjects, we have only to bid observance be awake to the 'petitio principii,' or entire begging of the question, which it involves. For they who write or preach on the evidences of the Christian religion, must at least be supposed to hold out that they have some reasons or arguments to offer, which shall induce men who before did not believe, to become believers; or those who before did in some degree believe, to believe with a stronger degree of conviction than they otherwise would: (which is a branch of the same general purpose): and to acquit themselves in the discharge of that duty which the apostolic injunction has bound upon them - i.e. to be ready always to give an answer to every man that asks them a reason of the hope that is in them, with meekness and fear. [1 Pet. 3-15.] But such an answer is a veto upon all reason, and a complete admission of entire inability to give one; and, instead of indicating any disposition of meekness, is little short of an assumption to themselves of the most unqualified infallibility; and brings their logic into a circle, which all rational men know at once to be downright idiocy. For not only must they maintain that the evidence was therefore proper, because it is such as God has been pleased to give, but that God has been pleased to give it, because it was proper: thus, assuming to themselves that very right which they impugn, and exercising that prerogative which they hold to be the highest pitch of impiety when claimed by other persons, or exercised to other ends than, theirs.
And this, their 'argumentum in circulo,' is spun upon the pivot of another sophism in logic, the 'assumptio ex post facto.' The propriety and sufficiency of their evidence would never have been dreamed of, if it had not been that such, and none other, was the best evidence they had to pretend; and any other evidence whatever that they had chosen to pretend, they could just as well have pretended to be the proper and sufficient evidence as this.
The impropriety of the argument as it respects the character of God.
A moment's conscientious reflection must surely lead any rational mind to a conviction how essentially immoral and unfit, and how egregiously irrelevant and inconclusive any such sort of evidence to a divine revelation must be, and make the very most of it, and concede the very utmost in its favour. Is it in the compass of invention to conceive anything more unworthy of God? more disparaging and subversive of all respectful and honourable apprehensions, which, whosoever believeth that there is a God at all, ought to entertain and cultivate in his mind?
Or was there ever in the world a conceivable worse example of injustice and cruelty, than that involved in the supposition of the Almighty Governor of the universe choosing out his best and most accepted servants to send them on a message, the faithful delivery of which should bring on them the most horrible sufferings, and most cruel deaths? What else is a Moloch? or Belial? What other notion can we have of a demon? What dye of grimmer blackness can be added to that monster of your conceit, whom you have described as dealing thus with those who love and serve him best: whom you portray as a tyrant, whose commissions are fatal to those who hold them, who pays his best servants with bloody wages, whose embassies of peace are borne on vulture's wings, whose charities are administered in works of destruction, whose tender mercies are cruel? [LN., Moloch, Molech, seems to have been a sky god associated with the bull of the heavens, it seems very much associated the practice of child sacrifice by fire, performed either in times of danger, or drought, when they sacrificed children, to bring rain. Belial is a term that occurs in the Hebrew Bible and general associated with the Devil, but in reality, he was a storm god, of the Canaanites and associated with Ba'al Hadad.]
And what relevancy, pray, after all, between the sufferings which any set of persons may voluntarily undergo, and the truth or falsehood of any doctrines they may have maintained? What consequence or connection between the endurance of punishment, and the utterance of truth, unless we have some means of being assured that it was impossible that anybody should have been punished for uttering falsehood, and so outrage all notions of a moral government of the universe?
Do we, then, hold a revelation from God to be, in the nature of things, absolutely impossible? - We answer, no! Then, by what other possible means than those of miracles, and the sufferings of those who were the immediate channels of the divine communication, can we suppose the revelation to be conveyed? "They shall no more teach everyman his neighbour, saying, Know the Lord! for they shall all know him, from the least to the greatest; for the whole earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea." - Isaiah.
A person who had sincerely persuaded himself of the divine authority of whatever purports to have been positively commanded or forbidden by Christ, would never be seen to darken the doors of either church or chapel. -
"Thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: But thou, when thou pray, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy father which is in secret." What is the act, then, of attending public worship, but an act of public hypocrisy? And whose authority is it, that they respect, who fly in the teeth of so positive an inhibition?
But this would spoil religion as a trade; and therefore, like Christ's professed indifference to the observation of the Sabbath, [Matt. 12-8.] and his most solemn forbiddance of oathtaking! [Matt, 5-34] it becomes a dead letter, which everybody reads, but nobody respects.
The impropriety of the argument as it respects the character of Man. With respect to the character of man, knowing and feeling as we do, in every sentiment of our minds, in every impression on our senses, our liability both to false impressions and erroneous ideas, and that these are competent to urge men to act and suffer to the same extent as the most accurate impressions, and the most mathematical conclusions; that is, that men are, and have been in all ages, as ready to become martyrs for falsehood as for truth: We ask,
How could sufferings, either voluntarily or involuntarily incurred, supply any sort of attestation to a doctrine?
If such sufferings be voluntarily incurred, when they might as well have been avoided, what is to excuse such wanton and useless suicide?
Surely the act of suicide is precisely the same, if a man rushes on a drawn sword, which he sees held in another man's hand, as if he held the sword himself. -And,
What right can any man have to expect that other men should believe him affirming to a fact upon the testimony of his senses, when they see him setting the testimony of his senses at defiance, and not himself subscribing to the argument of pain and smarting?
If such sufferings were involuntary, where could be the merit, or what proof of the sincerity of the sufferers could they involve?
If such sufferings, in the natural course of things, were inevitable upon the conduct which the first preachers of the Gospel adopted, and God be believed to be the author and director of the natural course of things, what stronger proof could God himself be conceived to give us that that conduct was wrong, and that that religion, which could only be propagated by such conduct, was false?
Nor should we overlook the palpable injustice of the argument built upon the long ago, and probably greatly exaggerated sufferings, of the martyrs of Christianity, but which takes no account of the sincerity and self-denial of its conscientious victims; that sympathizes, like Nero, in dramatic griefs, but forgets its own Oakham; weeps for the scratched finger of any of its own faction but is at ease in an Aceldama of persecuted infidels.
Extraordinary fortitude, exhibited under great and cruel sufferings, could only be considered as involving an argument for the truth of the Christian religion, on the supposition that such fortitude was properly and strictly miraculous; a supposition directly outraging all notions of either goodness or justice in the Deity who should choose to work a sanguinary and horrible miracle, when he might at once have better accomplished the same effect by better means. - And,
Lastly, in the case of Judas Iscariot, as given in the Acts of the Apostles, we have the judgment of the whole apostolic college on the side of our proposition; [Of course, making the assumption, that there were such persons, and that such were their acts and counsels, 'argumenti gratia.'] the horrible and cruel death of the traitor being there specifically adduced as an argument of the divine displeasure against him; thereby demonstrating that, in the judgment of the apostles themselves, the coming to a bad end should be read to the diametrically opposite inference of that of martyrdom; that we should rather conclude, that "so bad a death argues a monstrous life;" and that the good and gracious Father of mankind would never have suffered those who had sought to please him, or preached a doctrine that was agreeable to him, to have had any occasion to suffer for it.
2. That the argument of martyrdom is absolutely not true
Is demonstrable, distinctively, on these four grounds:
1st, That it is contrary to nature;
2nd, That it is contrary to the general tenor of the New Testament itself;
3rd, That it is contrary to the evidence of history;
4th, That it is positively denied by the very authorities on whose testimony alone it could be pretended.
1st. It is contrary to nature. - Credulity and easiness of belief are the essential characteristics of man, and especially of ignorant man.
There was nothing and could have been nothing in the lives and conduct of such men as we must suppose the first preachers of Christianity to have been but must have been calculated to win all men's hearts, and have made them the great objects of favour, admiration, love, and confidence. It is as impossible but that they must have found friends, as it is impossible that Christianity could have been propagated, if they had not done so. We might as well believe in St. Augustin's men and women without heads, as imagine that there were ever men, or whole races of men, without the natural affections and rational faculties that constitute men; or that, being such, they should be insensible of the virtue, goodness, wisdom, and miraculous gifts of the first preachers of the purest and best doctrine that ever was in the world, or have suffered such men to undergo any sort of wrong or oppression whatever. It outrages probability; it is unnatural; it is impossible; it is inconceivable; it is the sheer end of all discourse of reason.
2nd. It is contrary to the general tenor of the New Testament itself; in that the Gospel of St. Luke is addressed to the most excellent Theophilus, a person of rank and distinction sufficient to prove that the Gospel, at the time of writing it, enjoyed the patronage of the great: in that Christ, by express precept, instructs his disciples, that if they should be persecuted in one city they should fly to another, (Matt. 10-23); a precept implying, not only that persecution would never be general; but authorizing and commanding them not to suffer themselves to be persecuted, but to get out of the way of it, even by having recourse to a lie or a shirk, when occasion should call for it: which is necessarily included in every act of absconding or flight.
Jesus Christ, by palpable example, shows that he would rather have seen the whole world perish than he would have been crucified, if he could by any means, fair or foul, have made his escape; and submitted at last to drink the cup only because it was impossible that it should pass from him.
The Apostle Peter asks of the Christians to whom his epistles are addressed, "Who is he that will harm you, if ye be followers of that which is good?" [1 Peter 3-13. t Romans 13-3.] a sort of challenge which could not have been given if the Christians ever had been called to suffer on account of their religion merely or were in any state of liability to suffer on that account.
The Apostle Paul, in the last authentic account of him, is described as existing in a state of perfect security and independence in Rome, under the government of Nero himself, and is so far from charging even that worst of all the Roman emperors with the spirit of religious intolerance, that he speaks of him as the minister of God, not a terror to good works, but to the evil; [Romans 13-3.] a sort of language and doctrine that leaves us no alternative, but that either the whole of ecclesiastical history is a tissue of falsehood, or the New Testament is no better.
3d. It is contrary to the evidence of history. - Such abandoned and unprincipled wretches as the state justly punished for their crimes, would gladly be thought martyrs rather than felons; they would accuse their judges - as what felons would not - of partiality, and of condemning them for being Christians, especially as there were never wanting a number of persons sufficiently stupid and wicked to think that Christianity itself gave them a right and privilege to commit crimes with impunity (a notion that wants not countenance in the New Testament itself [a]); and these persons, when suffering the due rewards of their deeds, would not fail to claim and receive the credit of being martyrs. The offensive conduct of such persons could not have failed to have occasioned innumerable mistakes, in which the innocent may have suffered with the guilty, and the Pagans may, upon the stimulus of intense provocation, have taken sometimes severe and excessive revenge on the insults put on their religion. A Jeffries, a Bonnor, or a city of London Recorder [b] might occasionally have sat on a Pagan bench, but it does not appear that the Roman senate or magistracy, generally, ever lent countenance to any public measures of religious persecution. The code of Roman laws contains not a vestige of any statute that was ever enacted against Christians. Nerva, Trajan, Adrian, the Antonines, and Julian, were, men of the nicest sense of honour, and of so strict and passionate an attachment to the principle of justice, that it is rather conceivable that they would have suffered martyrdom themselves than have put it into the power of their worst enemy to attain the purity of their administration. "If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would without hesitation name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus." [c]
That period embraces eighty-four years, from the 96th of the Christian era to the 180th, during which reigned Nerva, Trajan, Adrian, Antoninus Pius, and Antoninus the Philosopher. Nor can any age or any country in the world boast of a succession of reigning princes of equal virtue, wisdom, and humanity. The best of our most religious and gracious kings that ever swayed the sceptre over a Christian people, was never worthy to be compared with any one of these successively excellent sovereigns. "The edicts of Adrian and Antoninus Pius expressly declared, that the voice of the multitude should never be admitted as legal evidence to convict or to punish the unfortunate persona who had embraced the enthusiasm of the Christians." [Gibbon, vol. 2, p. 422.]
1. [notes. [a] "The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from all sin." (1 John 1-7.) - "If our unrighteousness commends the righteousness of God." (Rom. 3-5.)
2. [b] The little barbarian, in calling for judgment on the author, pleaded for the expediency of violent and corporeal punishment, on Feb. 7, 1828.
3. [c] Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 1, p. 126.]
What extraordinary motive, what new and never before heard of spring of human action can have been brought into play, to set men all at once persecuting the very best of religions, who had never persecuted any other that ever was in the world; and to induce those unquestionably wise and good men, whose justice and generosity had never been impeached till then, just then to lay aside their justice and generosity, to be wise and good men no longer, but to be converted into persecutors, and to become enemies to the death of the meek and innocent followers of an offence-less faith? Surely here is problem without solution, effect without cause, and improbability without evidence. To believe that the first preachers of Christianity, or their immediate successors, were the victims of persecution, we must shut out the evidence of all other histories but such as they themselves put into our hands, and determine to believe not only without evidence, but in direct contradiction to it. Nor even will such a degree of obstinacy make sure work for our persuasion that the Christians generally testified their sincerity by martyrdom, since,
4th. It is positively denied by the very authorities on whose testimony alone it could be pretended. - "In the time of Tertullian and Clemens of Alexandria, the glory of martyrdom, with the universal consent of the Christian community, was confined to the singularly distinguished personages St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. James." [Ibid, vol. 2, p. 427] St. James is said to have been murdered by St. Paul, and therefore his death ought not to be laid to the charge of Pagan persecution.
The martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul is contrary to the indications of the New Testament itself, and rests on no better credit than that of the Apostolic history of Abdias, which the church has rejected as apocryphal.
"Dionysius, the friend of Origen, reckons in the immense city of Alexandria, and under the rigorous persecution of Decius, only ten men, and seven women, who suffered for the profession of the Christian name:" and Origen himself declares, in the most express terms, that the number of martyrs was very inconsiderable.
Specimens of Martyrology.
The Roman legends tell of ten thousand Christian soldiers who were crucified in one day by order of the Emperor Trajan, or Adrian, on Mount Ararat; on the strength of no better authority than which, our church of England daily repeats the palpable and egregious falsehood, "The noble army of martyrs praise thee." The fact itself is of such a nature, even in the judgment of sincere Christians, as to be pronounced not only not true, but utterly, physically and morally, impossible to be true.
And of this character, and no better, are all the stories of martyrdom endured by Polycarp, Ignatius, and others, under the humane and just Trajan, and the martyrdoms of Sanctus, Maturus, Pothinus, Ponticus, Attains, Blandina, and all the martyrs of Vienna and Lyons, who, if we will believe Eusebius, Addison, and, I blush to say, Lardner, suffered under the administration of Antoninus Verus, were fried to death in red hot iron chairs, and suffered such torments, as to be sure it was physically impossible that they should have suffered.
"The holy martyrs," says the veracious historian, "underwent such torments as are above all description." However, he makes an attempt to describe them, and tells us, that "the tormenters who were employed to torment (the young lady) Blandina, tortured her all manner of ways from morning till evening, relieving each other by turns, till they themselves became feeble and faint with exertion, and acknowledged themselves. overcome, there being nothing more that, they could do to her; and they wondered that she had any breath left, her whole body having been tortured and mangled; and they declared, that any one torture used by them was sufficient to deprive her of life, much more so many and so great. But that blessed woman renewed her strength, and it was a refreshment and ease to her; and though her whole body was torn to pieces, yet by pronouncing the words, 'I am a Christian, neither have we committed any evil,' she was immediately recreated and refreshed and felt no pain. So, after the executioners had given up the business of attempting to kill her, which they were by no means able to accomplish, she was hung up in chains, dangling within the reach of wild beasts. And this, no doubt, was so done by the ordinance of God, that she, hanging in the form of a cross, might, by her incessant prayers, procure cheerfulness of mind to the suffering saints. After she had hung thus a long while, and the wild beasts had not ventured to touch her, she was taken down and cast into prison, to be reserved for further torments; where she still continued preaching and encouraging her fellow Christians, rejoicing and triumphing in all that she -had gone through, as if she had only been invited to a wedding dinner: whereupon they broiled her whole body in a frying-pan; which she not at all regarding, they took her out and wrapped her in a net, and cast her into a mad bull, who foamed and tossed her upon his horns to and thro, yet had she no feeling of pain in all these things, her mind being wholly engaged in conference with Christ. So that at length, when no more could be done unto her, she was beheaded, the Pagans themselves confessing, that never any woman was heard of among them to have suffered so many and so great torments. [a]
As for Sanctus, deacon of Vienna, when there was nothing more that, they could do to him, "they clapped red hot plates of brass upon the most tender parts of his body, which fried, seared, and scorched him all over, yet remained he immoveable and undaunted, being cooled, refreshed, and strengthened with heavenly dews of the water of life gushing from the womb of Christ; [b] his body being all over wound and scar, contracted and drawn together, having lost the external shape of a man. In whom Christ suffering, performed great wonders: for when those wicked men began again to torture him, supposing that if they should make use of the same tortures, while his body was swollen, and his wounds inflamed, they should master him, or that he would die, not only no such thing happened, but, beyond all men's expectation, by those latter torments his body got relief from all the disease it had contracted by what he had before suffered; he recovered the use of his limbs which he had lost ; he got rid of his pains; so that, through the grace of Christ, the second torture that they put him to, proved to be a remedy and a cure to him, instead of a punishment. [c] Such is a fair specimen of ecclesiastical history, and such the trash which must be held to be credible, if the argument of martyrdom be so.
1. [notes. [a] Quoted from Eusebius by Lardner, vol. 4, p. 83, and. revised from the original by the author. Notwithstanding the gravity of Lardner and Addison on this subject, I mightily suspect that this Lady Blandina was nothing else than a Shrove-Tuesday pancake; - a sort of Sir John Barleycorn. She would not be the first divine sufferer who had been made of a bit of dough. - Compare with pp. 58, and 238, of this Diegesis.
2. [b] The womb of Christ: so, Dr Hanmer renders it. It-is not the only passage which serves to render the sex of Christ equivocal.
3. [c] Lardner's translation, as far as it is followed, vol. 4, p. 87; the rest original, from Eusebius. Eccl. Hist. lib. 5, c. 1.]
Against such evidence, which may well be considered as setting comment at defiance, we every now and then stumble on admissions of the Christian Fathers themselves that entirely exonerate the Pagan magistracy, not only from such charges as might be inferred from any suppose-able ground or outline of original truth in such narrations as these, but which clear them from all suspicion of ever having countenanced persecution on the score of religion, in any case whatever. Tertullian challenges the Roman Senate to name him one of their emperors, on whose reign they themselves had not set a stigma, who had ever persecuted the Christians; and the modest and rational Melito, bishop of Sardis, in applying for redress (which was instantly granted) to Marcus Antoninus from some grievances which religious people at that time had cause to complain of, expressly states, that a similar cause of complaint had never before existed.
Even if the evidence of the reality of martyrdoms incurred for the conscientious maintenance of the Christian faith in former times, were a thousand-fold more than it is (which it could easily be), or more than is pretended (which it could not easily be) it surely could not avail against the evidence of our own absolute experience, that the merit of this argument in our times, stands altogether and exclusively on the side of infidelity. None are the persecutors but Christians themselves. None are the victims of persecution, or liable to be so, but the conscientious and honourable opponents of Christianity. It is the deniers and impugners of revelation, who alone give evidence of sincere conviction, in the voluntary abdication of station and affluence, and in the endurance of the most-cruel and trying sufferings. It is our own times that have witnessed the virtue that has preferred the cell of solitary confinement, and the fate of felons and culprits with an approving conscience, to the professorial chair, the rector's mansion, or the prebendal stall, that might have been held as the wages of iniquity.
They are Christians, and of Christians the loudest and most ostentatious professors of Christianity, who alone discover the dispositions and tempers of persecutors, and are, of all persecutors, the most implacable, most cruel, most inexorable. - While those who are most conspicuous in their professions of deprecating persecution, and who "lament that ever the arm of the law should be called in to vindicate their cause," deprecate and lament it avowedly on no other ground than that of their fear that it should render its victims objects of a pity and sympathy of which themselves are incapable. - In their own right charitable phrase, they fear lest persecution should "go near to place the martyr's crown on the loathsome hydra of infidelity;" that is, they are not sorry for the sufferer, but they are sorry that anybody else should be sorry for him. They would not spare the poor victim a single pang, nor take a knot out of the lash that is laid on him, nor whisper a comfortable syllable in his ear, nor reach a cup of water to his lip, nor wipe away a tear from his cheek, nor soothe his fainting spirit with a sigh; - but they are sorry for the disturbance of the welkin (the heavens) - they begrudge him the pity and compassion due to his sorrows. If some way could be invented to do the business without a noise, it seems, for all their charity, it might be very well done.
One might fill libraries with works of Christian divines in protest against the principle of persecution - one act of any Christian divine whatever, in accordance with the sincerity of such a protest, would be one more than the world has ever heard of. Never did the sun see a Christian hand drawn out of the bosom to prevent persecution, to resist its violence, to say to it what does thou? or to redress the wrong that it had done. - Of what, then are such protests evidence - but of the foulest, the grossest hypocrisy; - hypocrisy than, which imagination can conceive no greater. - James, 2. 15, 16.
The demonstrations of Euclid, therefore, are not more mathematically complete than the ratiocinate certainty that the whole argument of martyrdom, upon which the most popular treatises on the evidences of the Christian religion are founded, is as false as God is true.
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next Chapter 40. The Apostolic Fathers.