Part 10 (2/2)
Otherwise such an account would have produced on a man imbued with Roman prejudices no other impression but that of aversion and disgust. The idea and proposal itself of regarding an extraordinary man endowed with wonderful and divine power, at G.o.d and as worthy of divine honours, has nothing at all improbable in itself, or at all inconsistent with Roman rites and usages, of with Roman opinions respecting G.o.ds and deified men. The only thing really improbable in the whole affair, is that the Senate of that time should have dared to oppose and contradict Tiberius in this matter. However, if the Senate, as we may easily imagine, were hostile to the proposal of Tiberius, it was easy for them to adopt some evasive form, and indirectly to impede and set aside this matter, which as it regarded old national rites, fell entirely within their jurisdiction. But this circ.u.mstance, as we said before, is the only thing which appears at all exaggerated in this account. It is easy to understand from this how the proposition of Tiberius, which was never carried into execution should have fallen into complete oblivion, and should never have come to the knowledge of Tacitus; as we may conclude, from his account of the Christians, that he would not otherwise have suffered this circ.u.mstance to pa.s.s unnoticed. Singular and remarkable as this fact may be, it is of no importance in itself; it forms only a single incident in the strange and contradictory impressions which the new religion produced on the minds of the Romans. A pa.s.sage of Suetonius, in his history of Claudius, would show that the Christians were confounded with the Jews, for, speaking of that Emperor, he says, ”he expelled the Jews from the Capital, for, at the instigation of _Chrestus_, they were ever exciting troubles in the state.” _Chrestus_ in the Greek p.r.o.nunciation, has the same sound with Christus; and we may easily conceive that what the Christians said of their invisible Lord and Master, that he interdicted them such and such Pagan rites, may in a matter so totally strange and unintelligible to the Romans, have been easily misunderstood, as applying to a chief and party-leader actually in existence. In the same way, by the troubles spoken of in the pa.s.sage above cited, may be understood the accustomed and just refusal of the Christians to comply with the illicit demands of the Pagans.
A fuller light is thrown on this subject by the narrative of Tacitus in his history of Nero; and, however much the Christian religion may be misrepresented by the Roman historian, his account has still a character thoroughly historical, and amidst its very misrepresentations, is perfectly intelligible, if we take care to distinguish the chief historical traits. When Nero, at the height of his crimes and presumption had set Rome on fire, in order to have a lively and dramatic spectacle of the burning of Troy, he afterwards strove to screen himself from the odium of this misdeed, and to throw the blame entirely upon the Christians, who must have been then tolerably numerous in Rome. Tacitus thinks they were not the authors of the conflagration laid to their charge; and his feelings revolt at the inhuman cruelties which Nero inflicted upon them; but, he adds, many horrible things were said of them, and that it was known in particular they were animated by sentiments of hatred towards the whole human race. That we are to understand by this hatred towards the human race nothing more than that rigid rejection by the Christians of all the idolatrous rites, maxims and doctrines of the Heathen world, is perfectly evident of itself.
Among the horrible things, of which the Christians were accused, we are in all probability to understand _the repasts of Thyestes_, for their enemies make use of that very term in their accusations;--accusations which were received with eager credulity by a populace that held them in abhorrence. Although this charge was no doubt afterwards the effect of malicious calumny, and deliberate falsehood, yet it is very possible that a gross misconception may originally have given rise to it, and that this accusation, egregiously false as it was, proceeded from an obscure and confused knowledge of the mystery of the holy sacrifice, and of the reception of the Sacrament in that divine feast of love solemnized in the Christian a.s.semblies.
Even in the official report, which the better and well-meaning younger Pliny transmitted to Trajan in the year 120, while he was governor of Pontus and Bithynia, we can clearly discern the embarra.s.sment of the generous Roman, who was at a loss how to consider the new religion, so perfectly mysterious and totally inexplicable did it appear to him; and who in consequence was quite undetermined what he was to do, and how he was to treat the matter. He writes that, according to the confessions wrung from the Christians by torture, after the Roman custom, they were found to entertain an excessive, strange, heterogeneous, an very perverse, faith of superst.i.tion; but that in other respects they were people of irreproachable morals, and who on a certain day of the week, Sunday, a.s.sembled in the morning to sing the praises of their G.o.d Christ, and to engage themselves to the fulfilment of the most important precepts of virtue, and that they met again in the evening to enjoy a simple and blameless repast. He adds that their numbers had already increased to such an extent that the altars of Paganism were nearly abandoned; and that a great number of women, boys and children belonged to their sect. He is at a loss to know, with respect to the latter, whether he should make any difference in the degree of punishment which, it appears, they have inevitably incurred under the old Roman laws against all societies and fraternities not sanctioned by the state; and on this subject he demands further instructions from the emperor, in this memorable official letter, which is still extant, and contains the most ancient portrait of the Christians drawn by a Roman hand.
Thus then, in this period of the world, in this decisive crisis between ancient and modern times, in this great central point of history, stood two powers opposed to each other:--on one hand, we behold Tiberius, Caligula and Nero, the earthly G.o.ds, and absolute masters of the world, in all the pomp and splendor of ancient paganism--standing, as it were, on the very summit and verge of the old world, now tottering to its ruin:--and, on the other hand, we trace the obscure rise of an almost imperceptible point of Light, from which the whole modern world was to spring, and whose further progress and full development, through all succeeding ages, const.i.tutes the true purport of _modern history_.
END OF VOL. I.
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