Volume I Part 28 (2/2)

Quae Paganorum exacerbata perfidia nescit naturae libramenta servare.

Unde enim ver solitam gratiam abjuravit? unde aestas, messe jejuna, laboriosum agricolam in spe dest.i.tuit aristarum? unde hyemis intemperata ferocitas uberitatem terrarum penetrabili frigore sterilitatis laesione d.a.m.navit? nisi quod ad impietatis vindictam transit lege sua naturae decretum.”-Novell. lii. Theodos. _De Judaeis, Samaritanis, et Haereticis_.

786 Milman's _Latin Christianity_ vol. ii. p. 354.

_ 787 Demonomanie des Sorciers_, p. 152.

788 See a curious instance in Bayle's _Dictionary_, art. ”Vergerius.”

789 Pliny, Ep. x. 43. Trajan noticed that Nicomedia was peculiarly turbulent. On the edict against the hetaeriae, or a.s.sociations, see _Ep._ x. 97.

790 All the apologists are full of these charges. The chief pa.s.sages have been collected in that very useful and learned work, Kortholt, _De Calumniis contra Christianos_. (Cologne, 1683.)

791 Justin Martyr tells us it was the brave deaths of the Christians that converted him. (_Apol._ ii. 12.)

792 Peregrinus.

_ 793 Ep._ x. 97.

_ 794 Ep._ ii.

795 Juvenal describes the popular estimate of the Jews:-

”Tradidit arcano quodcunque volumine Moses; Non monstrare vias, eadem nisi sacra colenti, Quaesitum ad fontem solos deducere verpos.”

_Sat._ xix. 102-105.

It is not true that the Mosaic law contains these precepts.

796 See Merivale's _Hist. of Rome_, vol. viii. p. 176.

797 See Justin Martyr, _Trypho_, xvii.

798 Justin Martyr, _Apol._ i. 26.

799 Eusebius expressly notices that the licentiousness of the sect of Carpocrates occasioned calumnies against the whole of the Christian body. (iv. 7.) A number of pa.s.sages from the Fathers describing the immorality of these heretics are referred to by Cave, _Primitive Christianity_, part ii. ch. v.

800 Epiphanius, _Adv. Haer._ lib. i. Haer. 26. The charge of murdering children, and especially infants, occupies a very prominent place among the recriminations of religionists. The Pagans, as we have seen, brought it against the Christians, and the orthodox against some of the early heretics. The Christians accused Julian of murdering infants for magical purposes, and the bed of the Orontes was said to have been choked with their bodies. The accusation was then commonly directed against the Jews, against the witches, and against the mid-wives, who were supposed to be in confederation with the witches.

801 See an example in Eusebius, iii. 32. After the triumph of Christianity the Arian heretics appear to have been accustomed to bring accusations of immorality against the Catholics. They procured the deposition of St. Eustathius, Bishop of Antioch, by suborning a prost.i.tute to accuse him of being the father of her child. The woman afterwards, on her death-bed, confessed the imposture. (Theodor.

_Hist._ i. 21-22.) They also accused St. Athanasius of murder and unchast.i.ty, both of which charges he most triumphantly repelled.

(Ibid. i. 30.)

802 The great exertions and success of the Christians in making female converts is indignantly noticed by Celsus (_Origen_) and by the Pagan interlocutor in Minucius Felix (_Octavius_), and a more minute examination of ecclesiastical history amply confirms their statements. I shall have in a future chapter to revert to this matter. Tertullian graphically describes the anger of a man he knew, at the conversion of his wife, and declares he would rather have had her ”a prost.i.tute than a Christian.” (_Ad Nationes_, i. 4.) He also mentions a governor of Cappadocia, named Herminia.n.u.s, whose motive for persecuting the Christians was his anger at the conversion of his wife, and who, in consequence of his having persecuted, was devoured by worms. (_Ad Scapul._ 3.)

803 ”Matronarum Auriscalpius.” The t.i.tle was given to Pope St. Damasus.

See Jortin's _Remarks on Ecclesiastical History_, vol. ii. p. 27.

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