The Secret Vault presents: The Christian and Pagan Creeds Collated. Rev. Robert Taylor, A. B. & M. R. C. S.
Papias, 116AD. Bishop of Hierapolis.
By the Rev. Robert Taylor, A. B. & M. R. C. S.
The first of all the Fathers of the second century, and next immediately following on those of the first to whom exclusively is applied the distinction apostolical, is Papias, placed by Cave at the year 110; according to others, he flourished about the year 115 or 116. He is said by some to have been a martyr. Irenseus speaks of him as a hearer of St. John, and a companion of Polycarp. [Author's note. I claim to be excused from giving the Greek text in all cases in which the translation is not my own. This is Dr Lardner's.] Papias however, in his preface to his five books, entitled An Explication of the Oracles of the Lord, does not himself assert that he heard or saw any of the holy apostles, but only that he had received the things concerning the faith from those who were well acquainted with them. "Now we are to observe," says Eusebius, "how Papias, who lived at the same time, mentions a wonderful relation he had received from Philip's daughters. For he relates, that in his time a dead man was raised to life. He also relates another miracle of Justus, surnamed Barsabas, that he drank deadly poison, and, by the grace of the Lord, suffered no harm." This deadly poison was certainly not arsenic.
Dr Lardner concludes his very brief account of this Father, with a remark which, from any pen but his, would bear the character of drollery. Immediately after telling us that "Papias was a man of small capacity," he adds, "But I esteem the testimony he has given to the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark, and to the first epistle of St. Peter and St. John, very valuable; but if Papias had been a wiser man, he had left us a confirmation of many more books of the New Testament." [Lardner, under the head Papias.] [LN., Lardner, Nathaniel, 1684 to 1768, an English theologian.]
It was convenient, however, for Dr Lardner, and indeed essential to the policy of his whole work, entirely to suppress the important evidence by which his readers might be furnished with the means of estimating the value of this testimony for themselves. It is perhaps a very different impression of the character of this primitive bishop, and of the value of his testimony, which the reader would be led to form, upon consideration of the evidence arising from his writings themselves as preserved to us on the authority of his admirer and disciple Ireneeus, in which he gravely assures us, that he had immediately learned from the evangelist St. John himself, that "the Lord taught and said, that the days shall come in which vines shall spring up, each having ten thousand branches, and in each branch shall be ten thousand arms, and on each arm of a branch ten thousand tendrils, and on each tendril ten thousand bunches, and on each bunch ten thousand grapes, and each grape, on being pressed, shall yield five and twenty gallons of wine; and when any one of the saints shall take hold of one of these bunches, another shall cry out, 'I am a better bunch, take me, and bless the Lord by me.' [a] The same infinitely silly metaphors of multiplication by ten thousand, are continued with respect to grains of wheat, apples, fruits, flowers, and animals beyond all endurance, precisely after the fashion of that famous sorites of the nursery upon the House that Jack built, the malt, the rat, the cat, the dog, the cow, &c.: all which Jesus concluded by saying, "And these things are believable by all believers; but Judas the traitor not believing, asked him, But how shall things that shall propagate thus be brought to an end by the Lord? And the Lord answered him and said, those who shall live in those times shall see." [b] But even this Christian conceit wants the merit of originality. It is a poor plagiarism from the form of adulation in which the sovereigns of India were wont to be addressed, which was as follows:
"May the king live for a thousand years, and the queen for a thousand years lie in his bed; and may each of those years consist of a thousand months, and each of those months of a thousand days, and each of those days of a thousand hours, and each of those hours be a thousand years." [c]
Papias, however, notwithstanding his intimacy with the Evangelist St. John, and the value of his testimony to the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, fell into the slight error of believing that no such an event as the crucifixion ever happened, but that Jesus Christ lived to be a very old man, and died in peace in the bosom of his own family. Papias, with all his absurdities, had some respect for poetical justice, would have wound us up the scene decently, and give us gospel quite as true, though not so bloody.
1. [note. [a] Docebat Dominus et dicebat venient dies in quibus nascentur vineae, singulae dena millia palmitum habentes, et in uno palmite denia millia brachiorura, et in uno brachio palmitis dena millia flagellorum, et in uno quoque flagello, dena millia botruum, et in unoquoque botro, dena millia acinorum, et unumquodque acinum cxpressum dab it viginti quinque metretas vini. Et cum eorum apprehenderit aliquis sanctorum botrum, alius clamabit. Botrus ego melior sum, me sume, per me Dominum benedic. - Haec Irenaei textus translatio Alberti Fabricii est.
2. [b] Et adjecit (scil. Jesus) dicens, Haec autem credibilia sunt credentibus. Et Juda, inquit proditore, non credente, et interrogante: Quomodo ergo tales genitura a Domino perficientur? Dixisse Dominum: Videbunt qui venient in ilia.
3. [c] Vir. clar. Thomas Hyde de Schachiludio et Nerdiludio. - Citante Fabrieio ad locum]
Quadratus 119AD. Bishop of Athens.
The testimony on which the advocates of Christianity lay the greatest stress, is that of Quadratus. For easiness of time and apparent distinctiveness of attestation, they have no other, equal, or second to it.
He is the only writer, up to the period of the time of his existence, who has spoken of the miracles of our Saviour, in a sort of language which might make it seem that he believed them himself and took them to be historical events. He was endued, says the Chronograph [a] with the gift of prophecy, and wrote an Apology to the emperor Adrian. He is not, however, placed by Lardner in his proper place as an Apostolic Father, or as next to an Apostolic Father, for reasons, which it is impossible for the earnest inquirer after truth not to suspect. He is of the same age with Ignatius, and has left us, says Paley, the following noble testimony. [b]
1. [a] Which I have frequently quoted. It is that by Melmoth Hanmer, to his edition of Eusebius, Evagrius, and Socrates, A. r. 1649. [LN., Evagruis, Scholasticus, 6th century AD, he was a Syrian scholar and intellectual, his only surviving work, 'Ecclesiastical History, comprising six volumes.]
2. [b] Paley's Evidences of Christianity, vol. 1. p. 122. [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.']
The testimony of Quadratus.
"The works of our Saviour were always conspicuous, for they were real; both those that were healed, and those who were raised from the dead, who were seen, not only when they were healed or raised, but for a long time afterwards; not only whilst he dwelled upon this earth, but also after his departure; and for a good while after it, insomuch that some of them have reached our times."
Paley adds not another word on this important testimony. It is only by referring to the authority which he affects to quote (which is evidently so much more pains than he ever took himself) that we learn that this famous Quadratus was, even to Eusebius himself, a mere hearsay evidence, - "Among those who were then famous," he tells us, "was Quadratus, whom they say, together with the daughters of Philip, was endued with the gift of prophesying; and many others also at the same time flourished, who obtaining the first step of apostolical succession, and preaching and sowing the celestial seed of the kingdom of heaven throughout the world, filled the barns of God with increase." - "His book," says Eusebius, "is as yet extant among the Christian brethren, and a copy thereof remains with us, wherein appear perspicuous notes of the understanding and true apostolic doctrine of this man. That he was one of the ancients, may be gathered from his own words." Then follows the famous passage which we have given.
Quadratus, according to such an account of the matter as we may gather from the Ecclesiastical History (or rather ecclesiastical romance, for such it is) of Eusebius, was fourth bishop of Athens, reckoning St. Paul the first, Dionysius the Areopagite the second, and Publius, his immediate predecessor, who as well as himself is said to have suffered martyrdom, the third.
From a letter of Dionysius bishop of Corinth to the Athenians, it is indicated that the Athenians had not only embraced the faith previous to the martyrdom of the predecessor of Quadratus, but that "they were now in a manner fallen from it and were by the zealous labours of Quadratus reclaimed." [Eusebius. Eccl. Hist. lib. iv. c. 22.]
But what if it should turn out that this Quadratus was no Christian at all? That he was a Pagan priest, who officiated in the temple of God the Saviour Aesculapius, then established at Athens, and that this pretended testimony to the Jew- Jesus, is nothing more than a broken paragraph out of some account that a heathen bishop had given of the miracles that were wrought by the son of Coronis. Let the reader return to our article Aesculapius, and propose to his own conviction, and solve as he may the important queries thence emergent: [LN., see SV, book on Aesculapius.]
1st. If such an apology, as this purports to be, had been written to the emperor Adrian, and Eusebius had possessed or seen a copy of it, why he should not have given us the whole of it, or at least enough to have given it distinctiveness of application and sense, so as to put beyond all doubt those three grand primaries of every written document - who it was that wrote - to whom it was that it was written, - and what was the subject of the writing?
Of these inquiries, the broken sentence which Eusebius has given us, affords no solution. It might have been written by anybody else as well as Quadratus - to anybody else as well as to Adrian; and of and concerning Aesculapius, as well, yea better and more probably, than concerning any other figment whatever.
No mind that has the faculty of critical comparison, can shut from their influence on its conclusion these eighteen predications of the case:
1. That Eusebius was a Christian-evidence manufacturer, and was labouring and digging in any way, or on any ground, to find or to make a testimony to primitive Christianity.
2. That he lived and wrote in the age of pious frauds, when it was considered as the most meritorious exploit to turn the arms and defences of Paganism against itself, to pervert documents from their known sense, and to support the cause of Christianity, not only by forging writings, but by supposing persons who never existed.
3. That Eusebius himself indirectly confesses that he has acted on this principle, "that he has related whatever might redound to the glory, and that he has suppressed all that could tend to the disgrace of religion." [A] And that "if we subtract falsifications, interpolations and evident improbabilities, his account of the Christians during the first century, amounts to little more than we read in that undatable compilation, the New Testament." [B]
4. That we have no indication whatever, either in the New Testament, or in any credible history, that Christianity had been so successfully preached at Athens, as to gain an establishment; or that that city had become the see of a Christian bishop, at any time within the three first centuries.
5. That where Paul himself, with all his gift of tongues and power of working miracles, was only regarded as a babbler, and derided as a poor insane vagabond, it outrages the faculty of conceit itself, to conceive, that he could have appointed and left the regular succession of an ecclesiastical hierarchy.
6. That we have the most unquestionable and unquestioned evidence, that Aesculapius was worshipped all along in Athens, under the express title and designation of Our Saviour.
7. That the miracles subsequently ascribed to Jesus Christ, had been previously ascribed to, and believed to have been wrought by Aesculapius.
8. That these miracles, as ascribed to Aesculapius, answer in every particular to those referred to in this passage of Quadratus.
9. That, as ascribed to Aesculapius, these miracles of healing, and raising men from the dead (I pray observe, not raising the dead, but raising them from sicknesses of which they otherwise would have died, and so preventing their being numbered with the dead) were characteristic of this deity and come within measure of probability - not of their having happened, - but of their, having been believed to have happened.
10. That that character of openness, publicity and notoriety, which Quadratus here challenges as peculiarly characteristic pf the works of Our Saviour Aesculapius, was as peculiarly wanting and deficient, nay, and even renounced and given up, as the very reverse of the character of the miracles ascribed to Our Saviour Jesus Christ.
11. That tablets were hung up in the temple of Aesculapius, and all its walls and pillars covered over and emblazoned with trophies of his victories over disease and death.
12. That persons who had been healed and raised from the dead (that is, recovered from diseases of which they had like to have died,) were every day in attendance in his temple, certifying the reality of the miracles which they sincerely believed had been wrought upon them, and pouring forth in fervours of ecstatic devotion their grateful acknowledgments to the god who had heard their prayers, and magnified his power in their miraculous recoveries: - but
13. That the works of Jesus Christ, were expressly said to have been done in secret, and concealed as much as possible from human observance. His own resurrection is admitted by writers on the Christian evidence, to have been only a private miracle. [c] A character of legerdemain and collusion attaches to his most wonderful performances, even on the showing of the New Testament itself. When he was transfigured [d] he takes with him only his three favourites. - When he turns water into wine, he chooses the time when the witnesses were so drunk as not to know the difference. - When he raises Jairus's daughter, he puts away all her friends from witnessing the reanimating process. - When he cures the blind man, he takes him aside from public observance. - When he cleanses the leper, he "straitly charged him, see thou say nothing to any man, but show thyself to the priest;" [e] and expressly avows his aim and intention to have been to bilk and deceive the people. [f]
14. These were the works, and the characteristics of the works of the Christian Saviour, in diametrical opposition to which, the bishop of Aesculapius would with singular propriety, say, "But the works of our Saviour were always conspicuous, for they were real," &c. as it follows: and as it might have followed, or gone before - The works of their Saviour were secret and clandestine, because they were not real, nor have Christians so much as one public trophy to show, or one individual in the whole world whom they can bring forward to attest any sort of benefit or advantage received from their Saviour to the mind, body or estate of any man, except in the way of supplying a new pretext for levying contributions on the folly, weakness, and ignorance of mankind. And
1. [notes. [A] Gibbon's Decline and Fall, vol. 2. Ch. 16, p. 490. See, also, Gibbon's Vindication of the 15th and 16th chapters, p. 127, et seq., where he quotes the two very remarkable passages, wherein this extraordinary admission is made. Hear, also, St. Chrysostom: "Great is the force of deceit! provided it be not excited by a treacherous intention." - Com. on 1 Corinth, 9-19.
2. [B] My learned friend's unpublished Ed. of Plutarch, in Appendice Primo, 11.
3. [c] See Ignatius's Testimony - Belsham's Evidences.
4. [d] Metamorphosed is the real original word.
5. [e] Mark, 1-44.
6. [f] Mark, 4-12.]
15. That whereas not more than a twentieth part of the Roman empire had embraced the Christian religion, previous to the conversion of that (as Eusebius calls him) most holy emperor Constantine: the worship of the god Aesculapius continued in the heart of the empire under an unbroken succession of Pagan bishops, with scarcely diminished splendour for several hundred years after the pretended diffusion of the New Light.
16. That notwithstanding Constantine's destruction of the Phoenician temples, that at Athens still remained.
17. We have better evidence than any that hath yet been pretended for Christianity, of the belief of a miraculous cure wrought by this deity, as late as the year AD.485, which is thirty-five years on this side the middle of the fifth century.
18. Nor, whatever Protestants may choose to think and say of the palpable Paganism of Popery, ought they to be suffered to blink the historical fact that the religion of Constantine was of the very grossest type and form of all that was ever popish. [a] So that they who choose to deny that Christianity and Popery are one and the same religion, must make their best bargain of the consequence that follows on their denial - even that Christianity kept floundering about, and found no settlement in the world for whose benefit it was intended, till it was taken up and established by our English Constantine, Henry the VIII.
[a] See his desire to have Mass and prayers for his soul after death, cap. 71. And "how he commanded that his picture should not be set in idolatrous temples," that honour being reserved for Christian churches - 16. "How he commanded that the heathenish military legions should pray on the Lord's day." - 19. And his piety and faith in the Sign of the Cross - 2. And how the Scythians were subjected and overcome by the Sign of the Cross. - Ch. 5. B. 4.]
The Christian Apologists, or those who are said to have addressed apologies to the Roman Emperors, or Senate, in vindication of Christianity and of Christians, were in order of time -
1. Quadratus, Bishop of Athens AD. 119
2. Aristides, an Athenian Philosopher AD. 121
3. Justin Martyr AD. 140
4. Melito AD. 141
5. Athenagoras AD. 178
6. Tertullian AD. 200
7. Minucius Felix, AD. 210
8. Arnobias AD. 306
The difference of time between these Christian advocates, precludes us from taking any view of their writings distinctively from their occurrence in the regular succession of Christian Fathers. Of the two first no remains are extant.
Aristides, 121AD
An Athenian Philosopher and Christian Apologist, of whom Eusebius informs us, that u he was a faithful man, zealous for our religion, and like Quadratus, wrote an Apology for it to Adrian, which, he adds, "is still preserved among many." [a] We have, however, not a word of this; nor should we, perhaps, have found such a name as that of Aristides among the faithful, if the heathens had not had their Aristides the Just, whose name was wanted for the martyrology. [a] Eccl. Hist. lib. 4. c. 3. vol. 4.]
Hegesippus, 130AD
Is placed by Dr Lardner forty-three years later, lived under Adrian, and wrote on the siege of Jerusalem, comprising the ecclesiastical history from the Apostles down to his own time. Though Eusebius represents him as having lived in the time of the Apostles themselves, or as immediately succeeding them, and having written five books of Memoirs of the Apostles, from the fifth of which he gives us a long extract concerning the martyrdom of the apostle James, the immediate brother of Christ, whom Hegesippus thus describes! - "This man was holy from his mother's womb; he drank neither wine nor strong drink; neither ate any creature wherein there was life. He was neither shaven nor anointed, nor ever used a bath. To him alone was it lawful to enter into the holy places. He used no woollen garments, but wore only fine linen, and he went alone into the temple. He was found on his knees, supplicating for the remission of the sins of the people; so that his knees were overgrown with a callosity like those of a camel; from his continual kneeling in prayer to God, and supplication for the people; and from the excess of his righteousness he was surnamed The Just, and Oblias, which signifies in Greek the bulwark of the people, and righteousness."
I held this passage worthy of preservation, as furnishing an additional proof that the first of that order of eccentric and fanatical creatures whose successors afterwards came to be called Christians, were really Egyptian monks, as Eusebius has in positive terms acknowledged them to be, the regular descendants and disciples of the philosophy of Pythagoras.
None of the genuine works of this Hegesippus are extant; his name, however, and the number and the subjects of the volumes ascribed to him being given, there were data enough for Christian piety to fall to work upon:
"There is a counterfeit volume of five books under his name, the translator whereof they say St. Ambrose was; nay, it is likelier that St. Ambrose himself was the author."
So, says the Ecclesiastical Chronography, affixed to the oldest editions of Eusebius. With Dr Lardner, however, St. Ambrose is an honourable man: - "so are they all - all honourable men?"
I can neither embrace nor entirely reject the inference that presents itself, from the fact of the title of Hegesippus's five books - the Memoirs of the Apostles - being precisely the same as that under which Justin Martyr seems to quote the contents of our New Testament.
Justin Martyr, 140AD
Is so called from his being believed to have suffered martyrdom, - a distinction which entirely harmonizes with the admissions of Dionysius, Origen, Tertullian, and Melito, that the numbers of martyrs were really very few, and that consequently martyrdom was no common occurrence to the professors of Christianity. He was born at Flavia Neapolis, anciently called Sichem, a city of Samaria in Palestine; a circumstance which fully accounts for the Jewish turn and character which any system of philosophy that had percolated his brain, would necessarily imbibe. Dr Lardner describes him as being early a lover of truth and informs us that he studied philosophy under several masters, first under a Stoic, next under a Peripatetic, then under a Pythagorean, and lastly, under a Platonic philosopher, whose principles and sentiments he preferred above all others, until he became acquainted with the Christian Religion, which he then embraced as the only safe and profitable philosophy. [note [GK.] I found this alone the safe and profitable philosophy, are his words. Surely, that word philosophy is an infinitely suspicious term for Christianity?]
Fabricius supposes that he was born AD. 89. and suffered martyrdom in the 74th year of his age, which would be 163AD. [LN., Fabricius, John Albert. 1668 to 1736 a German classical scholar and bibliographer.]
The testimony of Justin Martyr to the contents of the New Testament, for the sake of which he is adduced by Lardner, is rendered nugatory by the facts: 1st, of the existence of apocryphal gospels, which contained very much of the same contents, and in the same language, as those that have been since received into the canon of the New Testament: 2. That Matthew's and Luke's Gospels were mere compilations from previously existing documents, from which Justin might have made his extracts as well, or rather than from the compilations of our Evangelists: 3. That he has never mentioned the names of our Evangelists, but speaks of his authorities generally as Commentaries, or Memoirs of the Apostles: 4. And that he has also quoted passages from those Gospels which the Church has rejected, with indications of his entertaining as high respect for them as for those it has received.
The principal works of Justin Martyr are his two Apologies, and his Dialogue with Trypho, the Jew, in two parts; the latter of which is generally quoted by such writers as Porteus, Doddridge, and Addison, in those contemptible and truly wicked treatises on the Evidences of the Christian Religion, which are written for the purpose of being; imposed on workhouse children, parish apprentices, and candidates for confirmation, to make them believe in the miraculous propagation of the Gospel.
This is the popmar quotation from it: - "There exists not a people, whether Greeks or barbarians, or any other race of men, by whatever appellation or manners they may be distinguished, however ignorant of arts or agriculture, - whether they dwell under tents, or wander about in covered waggons, - among whom prayers are not offered up, in the name of a crucified Jesus, to the Father and Creator of all things." One's wonder that so early a Christian should have committed himself in so monstrous an absurdity, utterly destructive as it is of all the stories of martyrdom which give such pathetic effect to the tale of Christian Evidences, is only subdued by the truly paralyzing impudence of those who would, in our own day, still attempt to impose it on Christian congregations.
The character and genius of Justin's Apologies for Christianity will be best appreciated from so much of the text itself as I subjoin.
Justin Martyr's Apology, addressed in the Year 141.
A Specimen.
"Unto the Autocrat Titus Aelius Adrianus; unto Antoninus Pius, most noble Caesar and true Philosopher; unto Lucius, son of the philosopher Caesar, and adopted of Pius, favourers of learning: and unto the sacred Senate, with all the people of Rome; on the behalf of those persons who, among all sorts of men, are unjustly hated and reproached: I, Justin, the son of Priscus Bacchius of Flavia Neapolis, of Palestine in Syria, as one of their number, do, suppliant with earnest prayers, present this my petition" - (omissis omittendis.) - "You hold not the scales of Justice even; for, instigated by headstrong passions, and driven on also by the invisible whips of evil demons, you take great care that we shall suffer though you care not for what. [note. Is this language that could have been addressed to those models of justice and just government, Adrian and Antoninus? Would the like of it have been endured by any Christian Sovereign? Has it so much as an appearance of plausibility?]
"For verily I must tell you that heretofore those impure spirits under various apparitions went into the daughters of men, and denied boys, and dressed up such scenes of horror, that such as entered not into the reason of things, but judged by appearance only, stood aghast at the spectres; and being shrunk up with fear and amazement, and never imagining them to be devils, called them gods, and invoked them by such titles as each devil was pleased to nickname himself by. [Reeves's Apologies, p, 10.]
"If then we hold some opinions near of kin to the poets and philosophers in greatest repute among you, why are we thus unjustly hated? For, in saying that all things were made in this beautiful order by God, what do we seem to say more than Plato? When we teach a general conflagration, what do we teach more than the Stoics? By opposing the worship of the works of men's hands, we concur with Menander the comedian; and by declaring the Logos the first-begotten of God, our Master Jesus Christ, to be born of a Virgin without any human mixture, and to be crucified and dead, and to have risen again, and ascended into heaven, we say no more in this, than what you say of those whom you style the Sons of Jove.
"For you need not be told what a parcel of sons the writers most in vogue among you assign to Jove. There's Mercury, Jove's interpreter, in imitation of the Logos, [note. This Mercury had, however, held his title of the Logos many ages before it was challenged for the Christian Mercury. - See chapter 26.] in worship among you. There's Aesculapius, the physician, smitten by a bolt of thunder, and after that ascending into heaven. There's Bacchus torn to pieces, and Hercules burnt to get rid of his pains. There's Pollux and Castor, the sons of Jove by Leda, and Perseus by Danae. Not to mention others, I would fain know why you always deify the departed Emperors and have a fellow at hand to make affidavit that he saw Caesar mount to heaven from the funeral pile. [a] As to the son of God, called Jesus, should we allow him to be nothing more than man, yet the title of the Son of God is very justifiable upon the account of his wisdom, considering you have your Mercury in worship, under the title of the Word and Messenger of God.
[note. [a] In the case of Romulus, one Julius Proculus, a man ef exemplary virtues, took a solemn oath that Romulus, himself appeared to him, and ordered him to inform the Senate of his being called up to the assembly of the gods, under the name of Quirinus. - Plutarch, and Dionysius Halicar. lib. 2, p. 124.]
"As to the objection of our Jesus's being crucified, I say, that suffering was common to all the aforementioned sons of Jove, but only they suffered another kind of death. As to his being born of a virgin, you have your Perseus to balance that. As to his curing the lame, and the paralytic, and such as were cripples from their birth, this is little more than what you say of your Aesculapius. [note. See Aesculapius and Jesus Christ compared, chap. 20.]
"But if the Christian profession must still meet with such bitter treatment, remember what I told you before, that the farthest you can go is to take away our lives, [note. A reluctant admission that no lives had been taken away.] but the loss of this life will certainly be no ill bargain to us; but you indeed, and all such wicked enemies without repentance, shall one day dearly pay for this persecution in fire everlasting. And as far as these things shall appear agreeable to truth, so far we would desire you to respect them accordingly: but if they seem trifling, despise them as trifles: however, don't proceed against the professors of them, who are people of the most Inoffensive lives, as severely as against your professed enemies. For tell you I must, that if you persist in this course of iniquity, you shall not escape the vengeance of God in the other world."
The reader has here a fair specimen of the whole composition, and a complete view of the state and character of the most primitive Christianity.
It will be seen from the fickleness of Justin' character, and the infinitely suspicious style of his Apology (which it is impossible to believe was ever presented at all,) that it is in the highest degree doubtful whether he was really a Christian, or anything more than an Ammonian philosopher; that is, one of the sect of Ammonius Saccas, who in the second century maintained, that all religions were equally founded in the delirium of crazy brains, and in the craft of shrewd ones; and that there was no such difference between Paganism and Christianity, but that they might very well be incorporated and considered as one and the same, equally proper to be solemnly taught, and had in respect by the common people, and laughed at in secret by the wise. [note. The celebrated Origen had, in his early days, been a disciple of the all-accommodating Ammonius. - Lardner, vol. 1. p. 520.]
The story of his martyrdom has no other plausibility of history than a brief notice of a lewd quarrel with a cynical philosopher, Crescens, who was provoked to knock him on the head for bringing a charge which we have had Christian bishops who would have felt more disposed to forgive than to resent.
The attempt to represent Justin as a martyr, strongly illustrates the general character of Christian martyrdom. Those who suffered by the most just and impartial administration of the laws, as robbers or murderers, or who brought on themselves the consequences of the provocations they had given, so they made a profession of Christianity, never failed to acquire the posthumous renown of martyrdom. All Christian thieves were sure to pass for saints; and even our Henry VIII. and Queen Mary have been represented as the victims of persecution, suffering under the obstinacy of their heretical subjects.
Melito, AD. 141. Bishop of Sardis.
Melito, supposed by some of the moderns to be the same as the Angel of the Church of Sardis, whom Christ is represented in the Revelation of St. John, as ordering that Apostle to address in the Epistle there dictated, was Bishop of Sardis in Lydia. In the very ancient Chronography affixed to the oldest English editions of Eusebius, and which, upon the whole I find easiest to be conciliated to some sort of consistency with circumstances, he is called Meliton, and placed next to Justin, at 141AD, which is sixty-four years earlier than his place in Lardner. He dedicated an Apology to Marcus Antoninus in behalf of the Christian community, then under suffering, which Eusebius, in his Chronicle, places at the year 170. As Marcus Antoninus began his reign March 7, 161AD, this Apology at least cannot be dated earlier than that time; and taking it, upon the most laborious investigation, to be one of the most genuine and authentic documents, of so high antiquity, that antiquity could ever supply: it may be well esteemed to be matter of real and substantial evidence. Making the due allowance for the barbarity of the times, and hoping, as we may, that it was the cruelty of others, and not his own fanaticism, that made him a eunuch, one cannot enough admire the elegant simplicity and plain and rational statement of the probable, and therefore convincing, facts that rest on the authority of his most unexceptionable statement. Eusebius has preserved a large fragment of this important document, from which Dr Lardner liberally renders for us lie annexed paragraph, which he says is remarkable for politeness, as well as upon other accounts:
"Pious men," says he, "are now persecuted and harassed throughout all Asia by new decrees, which was never done before; and impudent sycophants, and such as covet the possessions of ethers, tasking occasion from the edicts, rob without fear or shame, and cease not to plunder those who have offended in nothing-. If these things are done by your order, let them be thought to be well done - for it is not reasonable to believe that a just emperor should ever decree what is unjust - and we shall cheerfully bear the reward of such a death. But if this resolution and new edict, which is not fit to be enacted against barbarians and enemies, proceeds not from you, much more would we entreat you not to neglect and give us up to this public rapine."
But perhaps it was not, in Dr Lardner's view, conducive to the interests of piety and religion, to have continued his quotation into the very next paragraph of this document. For the importance of the truth with which it seems, this single passage outweighs the value of a thousand volumes of factitious evidences. Other testimonies only serve to thicken the darkness, and to remove the truth we seek still further and further from the reach of our research; this leads us directly to it, and with so much the happier effect, as it appears to have been no part of our guide's design to have done so. The sincerity and devotion of this Father's mind to the Christian cause, renders a testimony like his such as Christians themselves must respect. The adverse bearing of the testimony of a friendly party, like the favourable bearing of the admissions of an enemy, is universally considered to constitute the most satisfactory sort of historical certainty. I hold the preservation of this important passage, and bringing it forth into the prominence it challenges, worth a place in my text itself, and the more so, as I feel assured that there is no writer on the Christian evidences whatever who has hitherto quoted the passage, or who, if he had possessed diligence of research enough to have found it, would not have taken pains to bury it again. This it is:
[a paragraph in Greek appears here- translated below]
"For the philosophy which we profess, truly nourished afore-time among the barbarous nations; but having blossomed again (or been transplanted) in the great reign of thy ancestor Augustus, it proved to be above all things ominous of good fortune to thy kingdom."
The passage continues: "For from thenceforth the Roman empire increased in glory, whose inheritor now you are, greatly beloved indeed by all your subjects: both you and your son will be continually prayed for. Retain, therefore, this religion, which grew as your empire grew; which began with Augustus, which was reverenced by your ancestors before all other religions. Only Nero and Domitian, through the persuasion of certain envious and malicious persons, were disposed to bring our doctrine into hatred. But your godly ancestors corrected their blind ignorance and rebuked oftentimes by their epistles the rash enterprises of those who were ill affected towards us. And your own father wrote unto the municipal authorities in our behalf, that they should make no innovations, nor practice anything prejudicial to the Christians. And of yourself, we are fully persuaded that we shall obtain the object of our humble petition, in that your opinion and sentence is correspondent unto that of your predecessors, yea, and even more gracious, and far more religious."
This document - and it is wholly indisputable - is absolutely fatal to all the pretended historical evidences of Christianity, inasmuch as it demonstrates the facts -
1st. That it is not true that Christians, as such, had ever at any time been the objects of any extensive or notorious political persecution.
2nd. That it is not true that Christianity had any such origin as has been generally imagined for it.
3rd. That it is not true that it made its first appearance at the time generally assigned; for, [GK] it had flourished before that time.
4th. That it is not true that it originated in Judea, which was a province of the Roman empire; for it was an importation from some foreign countries which lay beyond the boundaries of that empire.
It is enough to arrange in their places the minor name of Apollinaris, Dionysius of Corinth, Athenagoras, Theophilus of Antioch, Miltiades, Serapion, and whoever else there may have been in the space of time from Melito, whose testimony is so essential, till we come to these distinguished luminaries of the church, and pillars of the faith, with whom it is absolutely necessary to be acquainted. The rest are but as sparks on tinder.
St. Irenaeus, 192AD. Bishop of Lyons.
Learned men are not agreed, about the time of Irenaeus, or of his principal work against heresies. He was bishop of Lyons in Gaul. One cannot reasonably fix him at so early a date as is sometimes claimed for him (as having been the disciple of Polycarp, who was the disciple of St. John), on account of the later date of the heresies and corruptions of Christianity, against which he has written, and which must of course have had time to have spread, and to have become very serious evils, before they could have called for the composition of so learned and laborious a work intended to expose and refute them. It would be incompatible with that argumentative generosity which I have proposed to myself as the principle of this Diegesis, to take up as a proposition the earliest date that the learned would grant me for this Father, for the sake of pouncing on the fatal corollary that must follow; i.e. if so early wrote Irenseus, so much earlier still must those heretical forms of Christianity have obtained in the world, which Irenseus wrote to refute; they, then, were not derived from Christianity, but Christianity was derived from them; they are not corruptions and depravations from an original stock of primitive orthodoxy, but they are themselves the primitive type, and orthodoxy is either a corruption or an improvement upon them. Like all the rest of the noble army, Irenseus contrived to carry off the crown of martyrdom; but as, at any rate, the blood-thirsty Pagans suffered him to enjoy his bishopric in peace till he was ninety-three years old, he had not much to complain of, in their expediting so slow a progress to glory.
He is honoured by Dr Lardner with the epithet, "this excellent person;" and is called by Photius the divine Irenseus. The best account of him which the English reader can expect to find, is in Middleton's Free Inquiry into the Miraculous Powers, &c. in which he is neither spared nor flattered. The best apology for him is one of the oldest in being, and which we have continual occasion to remember in reading the works of Christian divines, "Remember, that the Holy Ghost saith, Omnis homo mendax." We must not wonder, then, that Irenseus should have been in the habit of asserting as true, not only what he himself knew to be false, but, in the plenitude of that security of not being contradicted, and of being able to cloak himself up in the sanctity of affected contempt for all who were more honest and better informed (on which all other churchmen as well as he place their ultimate reliance), that he should put forth as truth what he knew was impossible to be so, and what every sensible man in the world must have known so too; that he should audaciously misread inscriptions on public monuments, and pretend authorities for the proof of the Christian religion, even in the teeth of thousands who both knew and saw that there was nothing of the sort in existence.
Thus, he pretended that there was a monument or image between two bridges on the river Tiber at Rome, bearing an inscription to Simon the holy God [Eusebius. lib. 2, c. 34.] which the Devil had caused to be erected there to the honour of Simon Magus, whom they were to be persuaded by that sort of proof that their ancestors had worshipped; thence to infer a coincidence with the apostolic history.
Amid innumerable ridiculous stories, he tells us that John, [Ibid lib. 3, c. 28.] who leaned on the breast of our Saviour, was a priest, a martyr, and a doctor of divinity, and wore a petalon (some part of the Popish trumpery), which, on such authority as this, was to claim the sanction of apostolic institution. The distinctness and solemnity of his assurance that miracles were still in full vogue in the church in his days; that u they still possessed the power of raising the dead, as the Lord and his apostles did, through prayer; and that oftentimes the whole church of some certain place, by reason of some urgent cause, with fasting and chaste prayer hath brought to pass that the departed spirit of the dead hath returned to the corpse, and the man was, by the earnest prayers of the saints, restored to life again. Such a man never expected that rational beings would believe him: no good cause would thank him for his advocacy.
However early Irenaeus be placed in the order of Christian Fathers (Dodwell supposed that he was born as early as the year 97, and Dr Lardner places him at 178AD, and distinguishes him as a saint), so early prevailed many of the grossest absurdities and superstitions which Protestants are wont to consider as peculiarly characteristic of the church of Rome.
Pantaenus, AD. 193.
Pantaenus has claim on our acquaintance as master of Clemens Alexandrinus and Origen, and head of the university or school of Alexandria, in Egypt; though, on the best calculations, it would seem that he was living even in the third century. His high authority is indicated in the circumstance of Origen's pleading his example in justification of his study of heathen learning. Photius speaks of him as a hearer of some who had seen the apostles, and even of some of the apostles themselves.
Eusebius bears this important testimony to his character and place in history: "At that time (scil. about the period of the accession of Commodus) there presided in the school of the faithful at that place (scil. Alexandria) a man highly celebrated on account of his learning, by name Pantaenus. For there had been from ancient time erected among them a school of sacred learning, which remains to this day; and we have understood that it has been wont to be furnished with men eminent for their eloquence and the study of divine things; and it is said that this person excelled others of that time, having been brought up in the Stoic philosophy; that he was nominated or sent forth as a missionary to preach the gospel of Christ to the nations of the East, and to have travelled into India. For there were yet at that time many evangelists of the word, animated with a divine zeal of imitating the apostles, by contributing to the enlargement of the gospel, and building up the church: of whom this Pantaenus was one; who is said to have gone to the Indians, where it is commonly said he found the gospel of Matthew, written in the Hebrew tongue, which before his arrival had been delivered to some in that country who had the knowledge of Christ, to whom Bartholomew, one of the apostles, is said to have preached, and to have left with them that writing of Matthew, and that it was preserved among them to that time. This Pantaenus, therefore, for his many excellent performances, was at last made president of the school of Alexandria, where he set forth the treasures of the divine principles both by word of mouth and by his writings." [Eccles. Hist. lib. 5, c. 9.]
What St. Jerom says of this ancient Christian, is to this purpose: "Pantaenus, a philosopher of the Stoic sect, according to an ancient custom of the city of Alexandria, was, at the request of ambassadors from India, sent into that country by Demetrius, bishop of Alexandria, where he found that Bartholomew, one of the twelve apostles, had preached the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to the gospel of Matthew, which he brought back with him to Alexandria, written in Hebrew letters." [St. Jerome quoted by Lardner, vol. 1, p. 391.]
Here have we another clue to the real history of Christianity, winding up to the same core of the labyrinth, and bringing us through a varied tract to the result which we have already ascertained, under the guidance of Melito, Eusebius, and Philo. Pantaenus, a missionary from Therapeutan college of Alexandria, seems to have brought from India the idolatrous legends of the Hindu god Chrishna, whom he imported into the Roman dominions, like a good Eclectic as he was, uniting the characters of the Grecian, or Phoenician Yesus, and the Indian Chrishna, "in one Lord Jesus Christ," whose history, at first contained in the Diegesis, or general narrative, was re-edited by three Egyptian secretaries, afterwards yclept? the evangelists, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and subsequently enlarged by an appendix of Egyptian rhapsodies, under the denomination of the Gospel according to St John. The discovery of the unknown term in a quadratic equation, never more entirely responded to all the requisites of the problem, than these facts do to every rational query that can arise out of the phenomena of the gospel legend.
Clemens Alexandrinus, 194AD
Or, as he is entitled by Dr Lardner, St. Clement of Alexandria, was, as Eusebius intimates, originally a heathen, though he succeeded Pantaenus as president of the monkish university of Alexandria, which mankind have to thank for the concoction or getting up the whole gospel scheme, as originally imported from India, and modified to the taste of the nations which acknowledged the supremacy of Rome. Mr. Dodwell was of opinion that all the works of Clement which are remaining were written between the years 193 and the end of 195. His works are very extensive, his authority very high in the church, and his name and place in history chiefly to be remembered on account of the frequent quotation of his Stromata, or fragments, and other pieces. In point of evidence he affords nothing, except that from the circumstance of the four gospels having received the more particular countenance of the Alexandrine college, over which he presided, he and all other aspirants to university honours, and the ecclesiastical emoluments that would follow them, must be expected to pay all due deference to the books his university had chosen to patronize. [LN., Clemens Alexandrinus or Alexandria, called Titus Flavius Clemens, theologian, and writer.]
Tertullian, 200AD
Quintus Septimus Florens Tertullianus, the last that can be read into the second century, and the very first of all the Latin Fathers, was, like the rest of them, originally a heathen, was afterwards a most zealous and orthodox Christian, and finally fell into heresy. He was made presbyter of the church of Carthage in Africa, of which he was a native, about 193, and died, as may be conjectured, about the year 220. As he had become tinctured with heresy, he lost the honour of his place in "the noble army of martyrs."
The character of his style, as given by Lactantius, may be allowed by all. - "It is ragged, unpolished, and very obscure;" and yet, as Cave observes, it is lofty and masculine, and carries a kind of majestic eloquence with it, that gives a pleasant relish to the judicious and inquisitive reader. "There appears," says Lardner, in his writings frequent tokens of true unaffected humility and modesty -virtues in which the primitive Christians were generally so very eminent."
Of this assertion of Dr Lardner, and, consequently, of the character of assertions likely to be made by the Doctor generally, where the honour of Christianity and of Christians was to be maintained, I leave the reader to judge from the annexed
Specimen of St. Tertullian's true unaffected humility and modesty, in his discourse against the sin of going to Theatre. "You are fond of spectacles: expect the greatest of all spectacles - the last and eternal judgment of the universe! How shall I admire, how laugh, how rejoice, how exult, when I behold so many proud monarchs and fancied gods groaning in the lowest abyss of darkness; so many magistrates, who persecuted the name of the Lord, liquefying in fiercer fires than they ever kindled against the Christians, so many sage philosophers blushing in red-hot flames, with their deluded scholars; so many celebrated poets trembling before the tribunal, not of Minos, but of Christ; so many tragedians, more tuneful in the expression of their own sufferings; so many dancers," [a] &c. - I hope the reader may think here is humility and modesty enough!
Specimen of Tertullian's manner of reasoning on the evidences of Christianity. [De Spectaculis, c. 30.]
"I find no other means to prove myself to be impudent with success, and happily a fool than by my contempt of shame; as, for instance, - I maintain that the Son of God was born: why am I not ashamed of maintaining such a thing? Why! but because it is itself a shameful thing. - I maintain that the Son of God died: well, that is wholly credible because it is monstrously absurd. - I maintain that after having been buried, he rose again: and that I take to be absolutely true, because it was manifestly impossible." [b]
This language, not being protected by privilege of inspiration, is allowed to convey its full drift of absurdity to our awakened intelligence. It is safest to go to sleep and give God the glory, over the perfectly parallel rhapsodies of the inspired chief of sinners.
Where Tertullian is intelligible, his testimony to the status rerum of Christianity up to his time, is highly important. And it is from his Apology addressed to the Emperor and the Roman Senate in the year 198, which Dr Lardner justly calls his master-piece, that we collect a testimony corroborative of that of Melito, of Origen himself, and of the highest degree of conjectural probability, in demonstration of the utter falsehood and romance of the whole proposition on which Paley rests the stress of his Evidences of Christianity. So far is it from truth, that Christians were ever the victims of intolerance and persecution on the score of their profession of a pure and holy doctrine, that in addition to the testimony of the general sense and fairest scope of the greatest number of texts of Scripture itself, [c] the truly respectable suffrage of Melito bishop of Sardis, the express declaration of Origen, [Quoted in Gibbon, chap. 15.] that up to his time the number of martyrs was very inconsiderable, and above all, to the irresistible conviction of all the rational probabilities of the case, we may now add [the testimony of Tertullian]
[note, [a] Supersunt alia spectacula, ille ultimus et perpetuus judicii dies, ille nationibus insperatus ille derisus, cum tanta seculi vetustas et tot ejus nativitates uno igne haurientur. Quae tunc spectaculi latitudo? quid admirer! quid rideam! ubigaudeam, ubi exultem, spectans tot et tantos reges, qui in coulum recepti nunciabantur, in imis tenebris congemiscentes? item presides persecutores Dominici nominis, saevioribus quam ipsi flammis saevierunt liquescentes? Quos sapientes philosophos coram discipulis suis una conflagrantibus erubescentes, etiam Poetas, non Rhadamanti nec ad Minois sed ad inopinati Christi tribunal palpitanies, &c. - Ita citat locum Paganus Oblrectator, p. 150. Sufficiat lecteri -justo pro auctoritate. - R. T.
[b] So rendered and authenticated by the original text, quoted in my "Syntagma," p. 106, my first publication from this prison; a work which those whose scandalous impostures and audacious slanders provoked, find it wisest to treat with contempt. The Christian war is always Parthian. Its tact is to throw out its calumnies, but never to allow the accused his privilege of defence. To read the vituperations that Christians heap on infidels, is an exercise of godly piety: to venture but to look on an infidel's vindication, is playing with edged tools. - None rail so loud, as they who rail in safety!
[c] 1 Timothy, 4-8. Godliness is profitable, &c. -1 Peter, 3-13. And who is he that will harm you, if ye be followers of that which is good? - 5-16, That they may be ashamed that falsely accuse your good conversation. - Matthew, 5. That they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven.]
The Testimony of Tertullian
[Reeves' Apologies of, &c.]
"That the wisest of the Roman Emperors have been protectors of the Christians."
"The Christian persecutors have been always men divested of justice, piety, and common shame, upon whose government you yourselves have put a brand, and rescinded their acts by restoring those whom they condemned. But of all the Emperors down to this present reign, who understood anything of religion or humanity, name me one who ever persecuted the Christians. On the contrary, we show you the excellent M. Aurelius for our protector and patron, who though he could not publicly set aside the penal laws, yet he did as well, he publicly rendered them ineffectual in another way, by discouraging our accusers with the last punishments, viz. burning alive.
"Does not the prison sweat with your heathen criminals continually? - Do not the mines continually groan with the load of heathens? - Are not your wild beasts fattened with heathens? - Now, among all these malefactors, there's not a Christian to be found for any crime but that of his name only, or if there be, we disown him for a Christian." [note. This is an early specimen of primitive Quakerism, the policy of a sect of the most arrogant, most ignorant, fraudulent, intolerant, and inexorable men that ever adorned the gospel and disgraced humanity. In everything the diametrical reverse of their professions. It may seem hard to say that there never was an honest man among them; but there never was a hard saying so like a true one.]
Such language as we have seen Tertullian use, and such a spirit of annoyance and actual assault upon the rights and liberties of their Pagan fellow citizens, must occasionally have provoked the passions of any men who had no supernatural graces to subdue and coerce the sentiments of nature. The spitting in a magistrate's face - the interruption of Pagan worship, the total expulsion of their own children and brethren from all membership, relation, or succession of inheritance, in the families of which they were a part, upon their not conforming to the faith: [Quaeque Ipse misserima, vidi et quorum! Quis talia fando!] and all such sort of conduct as persons who desired martyrdom, and delighted in being ill-used, would be likely to adopt, might be followed frequently by just, and sometimes by excessive retribution; but - "it is certain that we may appeal to the grateful confessions of the first Christians, that the greatest part of those magistrates who exercised in the provinces the authority of the Emperor or of the Senate, and to whose hands alone the jurisdiction of life and death was intrusted, behaved like men of polished manners and liberal education, who respected the rules of justice, and who were conversant with the precepts of philosophy. [Gibbon's Decline and Fall, chap. 15.] In one word, the Pagan magistrates neither were, nor pretended to be, under the influence of supernatural motives, and there are no natural motives to incline any men to be cruel and inexorable.
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next Chapter 42. The Fathers of the Third Century.