Part 113 (2/2)
”Heathen rites were adopted, a pompous and splendid ritual, gorgeous robes, mitres, tiaras, wax-tapers, processional services, l.u.s.trations, gold and silver vases, were introduced.
”The festival of the Purification of the Virgin was invented to remove the uneasiness of heathen converts on account of the loss of their Lupercalia, or feasts of Pan.
”The apotheosis of the old Roman times was replaced by canonization; tutelary _saints_ succeeded to local mythological divinities. Then came the mystery of _transubstantiation_, or the conversion of bread and wine by the priest into the flesh and blood of Christ. As centuries pa.s.sed, the _paganization_ became more and more complete.”[408:1]
The early Christian saints, bishops, and fathers, _confessedly_ adopted the liturgies, rites, ceremonies, and terms of heathenism; making it their boast, that the pagan religion, properly explained, really was nothing else than Christianity; that the best and wisest of its professors, in all ages, had been Christians all along; that Christianity was but a name more recently acquired to a religion which had previously existed, and had been known to the Greek philosophers, to Plato, Socrates, and Herac.l.i.tus; and that ”if the writings of Cicero had been read as they ought to have been, there would have been no occasion for the Christian Scriptures.”
And our Protestant, and most orthodox Christian divines, the best learned on ecclesiastical antiquity, and most entirely persuaded of the truth of the Christian religion, unable to resist or to conflict with the constraining demonstration of the data that prove the absolute sameness and ident.i.ty of Paganism and Christianity, and unable to point out so much as one single idea or notion, of which they could show that it was peculiar to Christianity, or that Christianity had it, and Paganism had it not, have invented the apology of an hypothesis, that the Pagan religion was _typical_, and that Crishna, Buddha, Bacchus, Hercules, Adonis, Osiris, Horus, &c., were all of them _types_ and forerunners of the _true_ and _real_ Saviour, Christ Jesus. Those who are satisfied with this kind of reasoning are certainly welcome to it.
That Christianity is nothing more than Paganism under a new name, has, as we said above, been admitted over and over again by the Fathers of the Church, and others. Aringhus (in his account of subterraneous Rome) acknowledges the conformity between the Pagan and Christian form of wors.h.i.+p, and defends the admission of the ceremonies of heathenism into the service of the Church, by the authority of the wisest prelates and governors, whom, he says, found it necessary, in the conversion of the Gentiles, to dissemble, and wink at many things, and yield to the times; and not to use force against customs which the people were so obstinately fond of.[409:1]
Melito (a Christian bishop of Sardis), in an _apology_ delivered to the Emperor Marcus Antoninus, in the year 170, claims the patronage of the emperor, for the _now_ called Christian religion, which he calls ”_our philosophy_,” ”on account of its _high antiquity_, as having been _imported_ from countries lying beyond the limits of the Roman empire, in the region of his ancestor Augustus, who found its _importation_ ominous of good fortune to his government.”[409:2] This is an absolute demonstration that Christianity did _not_ originate in Judea, which was a Roman province, but really was an exotic oriental fable, _imported_ from India, and that Paul was doing as he claimed, viz.: preaching a G.o.d manifest in the flesh who had been ”believed on in the world” centuries before his time, and a doctrine which had already been preached ”unto every creature under heaven.”
Baronius (an eminent Catholic ecclesiastical historian) says:
”It is permitted to the Church to use, _for the purpose of piety_, the ceremonies which the pagans used _for the purpose of impiety_ in a superst.i.tious religion, after having first expiated them by consecration--to the end, that the devil might receive a greater affront from employing, in honor of Jesus Christ, that which his enemy had destined for his own service.”[409:3]
Clarke, in his ”Evidences of Revealed Religion,” says:
”Some of the ancient writers of the church have not scrupled expressly to call the Athenian _Socrates_, and some others of the best of the _heathen moralists_, by the name of _Christians_, and to affirm, as the law was as it were a schoolmaster, to bring the Jews unto Christ, so true moral philosophy was to the Gentiles a preparative to receive the gospel.”[409:4]
Clemens Alexandrinus says:
”Those who lived according to the _Logos_ were really _Christians_, though they have been thought to be atheists; as Socrates and Herac.l.i.tus were among the Greeks, and such as resembled them.”[409:5]
And St. Augustine says:
”_That_, in our times, is the _Christian religion_, which to know and follow is the most sure and certain health, called according to that name, but not according to the thing itself, of which it is the name; for the thing itself which is now called the _Christian religion_, really was known to the ancients, nor was wanting at any time from the beginning of the human race, until the time when Christ came in the flesh, from whence the true religion, _which had previously existed_, began to be called _Christian_; and this in our days is the Christian religion, not as having been wanting in former times, but as having in later times received this name.”[410:1]
Eusebius, the great champion of Christianity, admits that that which is called the Christian religion, is neither new nor strange, but--if it be lawful to testify the truth--was known to the _ancients_.[410:2]
How the common people were Christianized, we gather from a remarkable pa.s.sage which Mosheim, the ecclesiastical historian, has preserved for us, in the life of Gregory, surnamed ”_Thaumaturgus_,” that is, ”the wonder worker.” The pa.s.sage is as follows:
”When Gregory perceived that the simple and unskilled mult.i.tude persisted in their wors.h.i.+p of images, on account of the pleasures and sensual gratifications which they enjoyed at the Pagan festivals, _he granted them a permission to indulge themselves in the like pleasures_, in celebrating the memory of the holy martyrs, hoping that in process of time, they would return of their own accord, to a more virtuous and regular course of life.”[410:3]
The historian remarks that there is no sort of doubt, that by this permission, Gregory allowed the Christians to dance, sport, and feast at the tombs of the martyrs, upon their respective festivals, and to do everything which the Pagans were accustomed to do in their temples, during the feasts celebrated in honor of their G.o.ds.
The learned Christian advocate, M. Turretin, in describing the state of Christianity in the fourth century, has a well-turned rhetoricism, the point of which is, that ”it was not so much the empire that was brought over to the faith, as the faith that was brought over to the empire; not the Pagans who were converted to Christianity, but Christianity that was converted to Paganism.”[410:4]
Edward Gibbon says:
”It must be confessed that the ministers of the Catholic church imitated the profane model which they were impatient to destroy. The most respectable bishops had persuaded themselves, that the ignorant rusties would more cheerfully renounce the superst.i.tions of Paganism, if they found some resemblance, some compensation, in the bosom of Christianity.
The religion of Constantine achieved, in less than a century, the final conquest of the Roman empire: _but the victors themselves were insensibly subdued by the arts of their vanquished rivals_.”[411:1]
Faustus, writing to St. Augustine, says:
”You have subst.i.tuted your agapae for the sacrifices of the Pagans; for their idols your martyrs, whom you serve with the very same honors. You appease the shades of the dead with wine and feasts; you celebrate the solemn festivities of the _Gentiles_, their calends, and their solstices; and, as to their manners, those you have retained without any alteration.
_Nothing distinguishes you from the Pagans, except that you hold your a.s.semblies apart from them._”[411:2]
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