^R^ OF PRlNcS^ BR 165 .C38 1840 Cave, William, 1637-1713 Primitive Christianity *^ I ^u^. ; O'^ PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY: (lU, THE RELIGION OF THE ANCIENT CHRISTIANS IN THE FIRST AGES OF THE GOSPEL. TO WHICH IS ADnF.n A DISSERTATION ( ONC'ERNING THE GOVERNMENT OF THE ANCIENT CHURCH BISHOPS, METROPOLITANS, AND PATRIARCHS. Vt WILL I AM 'C AVE, D.D A NEW EDITION, CAREFULLY REVISED, BY HENRY GARY, M.A. WOKCESTER roI.I.KOE, AND PERPETfAI, fCRATE OF ST. PATl/S, OXFORn. OXFORD, PRINTED BY J. VINCENT, FOR THOMAS TEOO, 73, C H E A P S I D E, LONDON. 1840. r ^SXr ^^Oj,': ' f^^. ^■^w ^ T.^ PREFACE. I KNOW nol whether it may be any satisfaction to the curiosity of the reader, to understand the birth and original of these papers ; if it be, let him take this account. No sooner did I arrive at j^ears of capable discerning-, but I began to inquire into the grounds of that religion into which I had been baptized ; which I soon found to be so noble and excellent, in all its laws so just aiul rational, in all its designs so divine and heavenly, so perfective of the principles, so conducive to the happiness of human nature ; a religion so worthy of God, so advantageous to man, built upon such firm and uncontrollable evidence, backed with such proper and powerful arguments, that I was presently convinced of the divinity that resided in it, and concluded with m^^self, (and I thought I had reason so to do,) that surely the disciples of this religion must needs be the most excellent per- sons in the world. But, alas ! a few years experience of the world let me see, that this was the conclusion of one that had conversed only with books, and the reasonings of his own mind. I had not been long an observer of the manners of men, but I found them generally so debauched and vicious, so corrupt and contrary to the rules of this holy religion, that if a modest and honest heathen was to estimate Christianity by the lives of its professors, he would certainly proscribe it as the vilest religion ill the ^vorld. Iking offended hereat, I resolved "to stand in the Avays and see, and inquire for the good old way, the paths wherein the ancient Christians walked." For T could not think that this had always been the unhappy fate and portion of Christianity; and that if the footsteps of true Christian piety and simplicity were any where to be found, it must be in those iv PRE FA (J K. times "when (as St. Jerome uutes') the hluod of Christ was j^et warm in the breasts of Cliristians. and the faitli and spirit of rei'igion more brisk and vigorons.'"' In pnrsnance of this design, I set myseh' to a more ch)se and diligent reading of the first fathers and ancient monnments of the church than ever I had done before, especially for the three or four first centuries, for much lower I did not intend to go, because the life and spirit of Christianity did then visibly decline apace ; nothing, as I went along, whatever contributed to my satisfaction in this affair. Had I consulted my own ease and quiet, I might have gone a nearer way to work, and have taken up with what I could have picked up of this nature in Baronius, the Centuries, &c. But I could not satisfy myself (and I pre- sume it would as little have satisfied the reader) with shreds, with things taken upon trust, and borrowed at the second hand. For the same reason I made little use of the Lives of the Saints, (especially in such instances whereof there was the least cause to doubt,) and the spurious and supposititious writings of the fathers, seldom making use of any but such as are of unquestion- able credit and authority. And because the testimony of an enemy is ever accounted of great moment and regard, I have been careful to add the testimonies that have been given to Christians and to their religion by the ^nown and professed adversaries of the Christian faith, such as Plin}^ Lucian, Porphyry, Julian, &c. ; more whereof we might have been fur- nished with, had those writings of theirs against the Christian religion been extant, which the zeal of the first Christian princes industriously banished out of the world. What other authors of later date I have borrowed {>ny light from in this dis- course, I have faithfully produced in the margin. Two books, indeed, I met with, which at first sight I well hoped would have wholly saved me the labour of this search ; the one written by » "Qiiando Domini nostri adliuccalebat cruor, ct servebat recens in credontibus fines." Ilier. ad Dpmot. PREFACE. V a person of our own nation,'' the other by a Florentine of great name and note,'' biit my hopes were very much frustrated in both. For the first, I no sooner looked into it, but found myself wretchedly imposed upon by the title ; his elder times and Chris- tians (not to say any thing- of his intermixtures of things nothing to his purpose) seldom reaching any higher than the middle ages of the church, little or nothing being remarked of the first ages of Christianity, the only thing I aimed at. For the other, (which I met not with till I had almost finished this search,) I found it miserably thin and empty, containing little else but short glosses upon some few passages out of Tertullian, from whence I did not enrich myself with any one observation which I had not made before. There is, indeed, an epistle of Fronto's,'* the learned chancellor of the university of Paris, concerning this affair ; but it contains only some general intimations, and seems to have been designed by him (as appears from that and some other of his epistles) as the ground-work of a larger and more particular discourse : but his death happening some few years after the date of that epistle, cut off all hopes of prosecuting so excellent a design. These are all that I know of, who have at- tempted any thing in this subject ; none whereof coming up to the curiosity of my design, I was forced to resume the task I had undertaken, and to go on with it through those ancient writers of the church ; the result of which search is laid together in this book. Whether I have discharged myself herein to the satisfaction of the reader, I know not; sure I am, I have endeavoured what I propounded to myself, viz. a specimen of primitive Christianit}", in some of the most considerable branches and instances of re- ligion. Hero he will find a piety active and zealous, shining •• A modest Discourse of the Piety, Charity, and Policy of older Times and Chris- tians, &c. by Edward Waterhouse. London, 16.55. •^ Paganin. Gaudentius de vita Christianorum ante tempora Constantini. Florent. Ifi39. "^ De vita et moribus Christianorum, etc. Par. IGSO. vi PREFACE. through the blackest clouds of malice and cruelty ; afflicted in- nocence triumphant, notwithstanding all the powerful or politic attempts of men or devils ; a patience unconquerable under the biggest persecutions ; a charity trul}^ catholic and unlimited ; a simplicity and upright carriage in all transactions ; a sobriety and temperance remarkable to the admiration of their enemies ; and, in short, he will here see the divine and holy precepts of the Christian religion drawn down into action, and the most ex- cellent genius and spirit of the gospel breathing in the hearts and lives of these good old Christians. Here he will find a real and evident confutation of that senseless and absurd calumny that was fastened upon Christianity, as if it required no more than an easy and credulous temper of mind ; as if, under a pre- tence of kindness and mdulgence to sinners, it ministered to all vice and wickedness. Celsus confidently begins the charge : " There be some amongst the Christians (says he^) that will neither give nor receive a reason of their faith, who are wont to cry out. Do not examine, but believe ; and. Thy faith will save thee ; The wisdom of this world is evil, but foolishness good and useful.'" Julian carries on the charge somewhat higher, as if the Christian religion were not only content with a naked and an empty faith, but gave encouragement to sin, by assuring its most desperate proselytes of an easy pardon. In the conclusion of his Ciesars, after he had assigned the Roman emperors their particular tutelar deities, he delivers over Constantine the Great, the first Chris- tian emperor, to the goddess of Pleasure, who having effeminately tricked and dressed him up, brought him to the goddess Asotia, or intemperance, where he finds rov vibv, "his son," Constantius, probably, (for the passage is a little disturbed and obscure, for which reason, probably, the translator passed it by, and took no notice of it,) making this universal proclamation : ' " Whoever is an adulterer, or a murderer, whoever is an impure profligate Avretch, let him come boldh^ ; for I declare that, being washed in " Orig. iiilv. Ccls. 1. i. s. 9. Vid. 1. vi. s. 1 1. ' .Inlian. Caesarcs, p. 53. PREFACP:. vii this water, [baptism,] he shall immediately be cleansed ; nay, although he again commit those sins, let him but knock his breast and beat his head, and I will make him clean." Much to the same purpose Zosimus (as good a friend to Christianity as either of the former) spitefully charges it upon Oonstantine the Great, that being haunted with the conscience of his prodigious villanies, and liaA^ng no hopes given him by the Gentile priests of the expiation of his crimes, embraced Christianity ; being told, that in the Christian religion " there was a promise of cleans- ing from all sin, and that as soon as ever any closed with it, 2)ardon Avould be granted to the most profligate oftenders :"" = as if Christianity had been nothing else but a receptacle and sanc- tuary for rogues and villains, where the worst of men might be wicked under hopes of pardon. But how false and groundless (especially as urged and intended by them) this impious charge was, appears from the whole design and tenor of the gospel, and that more than ordinary vein of piety and strictness that was conspicuous in the lives of its first professors, whereof we have in this treatise given abundant evidence. To this representation of their lives and manners, I have added some account concerning the ancient rites and usages of the church ; wherein if any one shall meet with something that does not jump with his own humour, he will, I doubt not, have more discretion than to quarrel with me for setting down thino-s as I found them : but in this part I have said the less, partly because this was not the thing I primarily designed, partly be- cause it has been done by others in just discourses. In some few instances 1 have remarked the corruption and degeneracy of the church of Rome from the purity and simplicity of the ancient church ; and more I could easily have added, but that I studiously avoided controversies : it being no part of my design to inquire what ^\as the judgment of the fathers in disputable cases, especially the more abstruse and intricate speculations of K Zosim. Fli^t. 1. ii. c. 29. viii PREFACE. theology, but what was their practice, and by what rules and measures they did govern and conduct their lives: the truth is, their creed in the first ages was short and simple, their faith lying then (as Erasmus observes**) not so much in nice and numerous articles, as in a good and an holy life. At the end of the book I have added a chronological index of the authors,' according to the times wherein they are supposed to have lived, with an account of the editions of their works made use of in this treatise : which I did, not that I had a mind to tell the world, either what, or how many books I had, a piece of vanity of which, had I been guilt}', it had been no hard matter to have furnished out a much larger catalogue : but I did it partly to gratify the request of the bookseller, partly because I conceived it might not be altogether unuseful to the reader; the index to give some light to the quotations, by knowing when the author lived, especially when he speaks of things done in or near his own time, and which must otherwise have been done at every turn in the body of the book. And, because there are some writings frequently made use of in this book, the authors whereof in this index could be reduced to no certain date, especially those that are called the Apostolical Canons and Constitutions, it may not be amiss here briefly to take notice of them. And first for the Canons : as I am far from their opinion who ascribe them to the apostles, so I think their great antagonist, Mr. Daille, bends the stick as much too far the other way, not allowing them a being in the world till the year 500, or a little before. The truth doubtless lies between these two : it is evident, both from the histories of the church, and many passages in Tertullian, Cyprian, and others, that there were, in the most eai'ly ages of Christianity, frequent S3niods and councils for settling the doc- ^ Prfefat. in Hilar, opcr. ' Instead of tlie Index Ihtc mentioned, an iVlphabetical Table of the principal authors referred to by Cave has been prclixed to the new edition of his Lives of tlic Fathers and of the Apostles. PREFACE. ix triiie and discipline of the church, though the determinations under that notion be not extant at this day. Part of these synodical decrees, so many of them as concerned the rites and disciphne of the church, we may conceive some person of learning and judgment gathered together, probably about the beginning of the third centui-y, and put them, (especially the first fifty, for I look not upon the whole eighty-five as of equal value and au- thority,) if not into the same, into some such sort or method wherein we now have them ; styling them Ecclesiactical or Apo- stolical Canons; not as if they had been composed by the apostles, but either because containing things consonant to the doctrines and rules delivered by the apostles, or because made up of usages and traditions supposed to be derived from them, or, lastly, because made by ancient and apostolic men. That many, if not all of these canons, were some considerable time extant before the first Nicene council, we have great reason to believe, from two or three passages amongst many others. St. Basil,-* giving rules about discipline, appoints a deacon guilty of fornication to be deposed and thrust down into the rank of laics, and that in that capacity he might receive the communion, "there being, (says he,) dp'^aio<; kuvmv, ' an ancient canon,"' that they that are deposed should only fall under this kind of punishment ; the ancients (as I suppose) following herein that command, thou shalt not punish twice for the same fault." This Balsamon joins with the twenty-fifth canon of the apostles, which treats of the very samfe affair; and indeed it cannot, in probability, be meant of any other, partly because there was no ancient canon (that we know of) in St. BasiPs time about this business, but that partly because the same sentence is applied as the reason both in the apostolical and St. Basil's canon, "thou shalt not punish twice for the same fault ;" which clearly shews whence Basil had it, and what he understands by his ancient canon. Theodoret'' records a letter of Alexander, bishop of Alexandria. ■' Ep. Canon, ad Aniphil. Can. ;i. ^ Hist. Keel. 1. i. c. l. X, , PREFACE. to another of the same name bishop of Constantinople, (this letter was written a little before the council of Nice,) where speaking of some bishops who had received the Arians, whom he had excommunicated, into communion, he tells him, " that herein they had done what the Apostolical Canons did not allow ;" evidently referring to the twelfth and thirteenth canons of the apostles, which state the case about one bishop's receiving those into communion who had been excommunicated by another. To this let me add, that Constantine, in a letter to Eusebius,' commends him for refusing to leave his own bishopric to go over to that of Antioch, to which he was chosen ; especially " be- cause herein he had exactly observed the rule of ecclesiastical discipline, and had kept the commands of God, and the apostolical and ecclesiastic canon ;" meaning, doubtless, the fourteenth apo- stolic canon, which treats about such removes. Nay, learned men, both formerly and of late, have observed divers passages in the Nicene canons themselves, which plainly respect these canons, as might be made appear, (notwithstanding what Daille has excepted against it,) were this a proper place to discourse of it. This for the Canons. For the Constitutions, they are said to have been composed by St. Clemens, at the instance and by the direction of the apostles. And this wild and extravagant opinion has not wanted its patrons and defenders, Turrianus, Bovius, &c., but herein de- serted by the more modest and moderate of their own party ; besides that their apostolicalness (in this sense) is, by the learned Daille,'" everlastingly shattered and broken. But then he sets them at too wide a distance, assigning them to the latter end of the fifth century, when it is as clear as the sun that they were extant and in credit with many before the times of Epiphanius, (though somewhat altered now from what they were in his time,) compiled probably out of many lesser Aiha')(a\ and Ai,a- Td^ei<;, books containing the doctrines and rites that had been ' Euseb. de vit. Const. 1. iii, c. (il. '" I>p I'seiid. opier. Apol. ii. i-. 17. PREFACE. xi delivered and practised by ancient and apostolical persons, or, at least, vented under their names ; Lut whether, as some con- jecture, composed by Clemens Alexandrinus, (and thence, by an easy mistake, ascribed to Clemens Romanus,) I am not at leisure to consider. In this class of writers I may reckon Dionyslus the Areopaglte, absurdly enough asserted by many to be genuine, by Dallle thrust down to the beginning of the sixth century : but most probably thought to have been written about the middle of the fourth age, as a person amongst us, deservedly of great name and note, has shewn In his late vindication of Igna- tlus's epistles. These are the principles of those authors, who could not be fixed upon any certain year : the rest have In the index their particular and respective times. To which I have added the account of the editions, for the more ready finding (if occasion be) of any passage quoted out of them. One thing, Indeed, there Is which I cannot but take notice of, it looks so like a piece of vanity and ostentation that the margin is charged with so many quotations ; but whoever considers the nature of my design, will quickly see that It was absolutely ne- cessary, and that it concerned me not to deliver any thing with- out good authorlt}' ; the reason why I have, where I could, brought them In speaking their own words : though to avoid as much of the charge as was possible, I omitted the citing authors In their own languages, and only set them down In English, faithfully representing the author's sense, though not always tying myself to a strict and precise translation. How pertinent my quotations are, the reader must judge : I hope lie will find them exact, being immediately fetched from the fountain head ; here being very few (if any) that have not been examined more than once. For the method into which the book is cast, I chose that which to me seemed most apt and proper, following St. Paul's distribution of religion, into piety towards God, sobriety towards ourselves, and righteousness towards others; and accordingly divided the discourse into three parts, xii PREFACE. respecting those three great branches of religion ; though the first is much larger than either of the other, hy reason of some preliminary chapters, containing a vindication of the Christians from those crimes that were charged upon tliem ; that so, the rubbish being cleared and thrown out of the way, we might have a fairer prospect of their religion afterwards. The book, I confess, is swelled into a greater bulk than I either thoiight of or desired; but by reason of somewhat a confused copy, never designed for the press, no certain measures could be taken of it. And now if after all this it shall be inquired, why these papers are made public, as I can give no very good reason, so I will not trouble myself to invent a bad one. It may suffice to intimate, that this discourse (long since drawn up at leisure hours) lay then by me, when a tedious and uncomfortable distemper (whereb}'^ I have been taken off from all public service and the prosecution of severer studies) gave me too much opportunity to look over my papers, and this especially, which, perad venture, otherwise had never seen the light. Indeed, I must confess, I was some- what the easilier prevailed with to let this discourse pass abroad, that it might appear, that when I could not do what I ought, I was, at least, willing to do what I could. If he that reads it shall reap any delight or satisfaction by it, or be in any measure induced to imitate these primitive virtues, I shall think my pains well bestowed : if not, I am not the first, and probably shall not be the last, that has written a book to no purpose. CONTENTS "fROPERTT hZC. :t Joi» 1883 TO PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. PART I. PACK Chapter I. — Things charged upon the Primitive Christians respecting their Religion 1 Chapter II. — Of tlie Novelty that was charged upon Christianity - - . 8 Chapter III. — Things charged upon the Christians respecting their outward Con- dition - - - - - - - - - - - - -1.5 Chapter IV. — The Charges brought against them respecting their Life and Manners 37 Chapter V. — Of the positive parts of their Religion : and first of their Piety towards God ----- 46 Chapter VI. — Of Churches and Places of public Worship in the Primitive Times .59 Chapter VII. — Of the Lord's Day, and the Fasts and Festivals of the Ancient Church - - - - - - - - - - - - -76 Chapter VIII. — Of the Persons constituting the Body of the Church, both People and Slinisters 100 Chapter IX. — Of their usual Worship, both private and public - ... 126 Chapter X. — Of Baptism, and the Administration of it in the Primitive Church - 143 Chapter XI. — Of the Lord's Supper, and the Administration of it in the Ancient Church ------------- 161 PART II. THE RELIGION OF THE PRIMITn'E CHRISTIANS AS TO THOSE VIRTUES THAT RESPECT THEJISEL\-ES. Chapter I-r-Of their Humility - - - - - - - - -173 Chapter II. — Of their Heavenly-mindedness, and Contempt of the World - - 18'3 Chapter III. — Of their Sobriety in respect of their Garb and Apparel - - 191 Chapter IV. — Of their great Temperance and Abstinence 204 Chapter V. — Of their singular Continence and Chastity - - - . - - 211 Chapter VI. — Of their Readiness and Constancy in professing their Religion - 232 Chapter VII. ^Of their exemplary Patience under Suft'pvings - - - . 242 CONTENTS. PAUT III. OF THEIR REMCilON, AS RESPECTINO OTHER .MEN. I'A(iK Chapter I. — Of their Justice and Honesty - - 269 Chapter II. — Of their admirable Love and Charity - - - - - - 283 Chapter III. — Of their Unity and Peaceableness - 312 Chapter IV. — Of their Obedience and Subjection to Civil Government - - 322 Chapter V. — Of their Penance, and the Discipline of the Ancient Churcli - - 337 CHURCH-GOVERNMENT. Chapter I. — The State of the Church-government, and Power of the Roman Bishops till the Council of Nice --------- 3G3 Chapter II. — The Government of the Church, and Power of the Bishops of Rome, as it is represented in the Canons of the Nicene Council 377 Chapter III. — The extent of the bishop of Rome's .Jurisdiction, considered as a Metropolitan -..---.----- 393 Chapter IV. — An Inquiry into the Rise and Original of Patriarchs in the Chris- tian Church ------------ 405 Chapter V. — The Bounds of the Roman Patriarchate 423 Chapter VI. — The Encroachments of the Sec of Rome upon other Sees, especially the See of Constantinople ---------- 444 PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY: OR, THE RELIGION OF THE ANCIENT CHRISTIANS IN THE FIRST AGES OF THE GOSPEL. PRIMITIVE CHRISTI OR THE RELIGION OF THE ANCIENT CHRISTIAN^ IN THE FIRST AGES OF THE GOSPEL. PART L CHAPTER I. THINGS CHAKGED UPON THE PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANS RESPECTING THEIR RELIGION. Christian religion likely to meet with opposition at its first setting out. Chiefly under- mined by calumnies and reproaches. Three things by the heathens charged upon the Christians — some things respecting their religion ; some thdr outward condition ; others their moral carriage, and the matters of their worship. Their religion charged witli two things — impiety and noveltj'. The charge of atheism considered, and answered out of the fathers. The heathens excepted against, as incompetent judges of the atfairs of Christianit}'. In what sense Christians confessed themselves atheists. The wretched and absurd deities that were amongst the heathens, and the impure manner of their worship. Atheism, properly such, diso-\vned and denied by Christians. The account they gave of their religion, and the God whom thej' worshipped. No sooner did the, Son of God appear in tlie world, to establisli the most excellent religion that ever was comnmnicated to mankind, but he met with the most fierce and vigorous opposi- tion : persecuted and devoted to death as soon as he was born, followed all his life with fresh assaults of malice and cruelty, his credit traduced and slandered, his doctrine despised and slighted, and himself at last put to death with the most exquisite arts of torture and disgrace. And "" if they thus served the master of the house, how much more them of the household • the disciple not being above his master, nor tin* servant above his lord."" 2 PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. Therefore, when he gave commission to his apostles, to pubhsh this religion to the workl, he tokl them beforehand what hard and unkind reception they must look to meet with : " that he sent them forth as sheep in the midst of wolves ; that they should be delivered up to the councils, and scourged in the synagogues, and be brought before kings and governors, and be hated of all men for his name^s sake." Nay, so high should the quarrel arise upon the account of religion, that men should violate some of the nearest laws of nature, " betray their friends and kinsfolk ; the brother delivering up the brother to death, and the father the child ; the children rising up against their parents, and causing them to be put to death." This he well foresaw (and the event truly answered it) would be the fate of its first appearing in the world : and, indeed, considering the present state and cir- cumstances of the w^orld at that time, it could not reasonably be expected that the Christian religion should meet with a better entertainment ; for the genius and nature of its doctrine was such, as was almost impossible to escape the frowns and displeasure of men : a doctrine it was that called men off from lusts and pleasures, and offered violence to their native inclina- tions ; that required the greatest strictness and severity of life; obliged men " to deny themselves, to take up their cross," and to follow the steps of a poor crucified Saviour, and that upon little other encouragement at present, than the invisible rewards of another world. It introduced new rites and ceremonies, un- known to those of former ages, and such as did undermine the received and established principles of that religion that for so many generations had governed the world : it revealed and brought to light such truths as were not only contrary to the principles of men''s education, but many of them above the reach of natural comprehension, too deep for the line of human reason to fathom or find out. Upon these, and such like accounts, Christianity was snre to encounter with mighty prejudices and potent opposition ; and so it did : for no sooner did it peep abroad in the world, but it was " every where spoken against ;" princes and potentates, and the greatest powers and policies of the world, did for some ages confederate and combine together, to extirpate and banish it out of the world : and certainly, if arms and armies, if strength aiul subtlety, if malice and cruelty could have stifled it, it had been PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. 3 smothered in its infancy and first delivery into the world. Bnt notwithstanding- all these oppositions, it still lifted np its head in trinmph, and outbraved the fiercest storms of persecution ; and, as TertuHian told their enemies,"* " by every exquisite act of cruelty, they did but tempt others to come over to the party; the oftener they were mowed down, the faster they sprung up again, the blood of Christians making the church's soil more fat and fertile." Hereupon the great enemy of mankind betook him- self to other counsels, and sought to undermine what he saw he could not carry by open assault and battery : he studied to leaven the minds of men with false and unjust prejudices against Christianity, and to burden it with whole loads of reproaches and defamations ; knowing no speedier way to hinder its recep- tion, than to blast its reputation. For this purpose all the arts of spite and malice were mustered up, and Christians confidently chai-ged with all those crimes that could render them and their religion vile and infamous. Now the things that were charged upon the Christians were either such as respected their religion, or such as concerned their outward state and condition, or such as related to their moral carriage and behaviour, Avith some things relating to the matter or manner of their worship. We shall consider them in order, and how the Christians of those times vindicated themselves from these imputations. The Christian religion, at its first coming abroad into the world, was mainly charged Avith these two things, impiety and novelty. For the first, it was commonly cried out against as a grand piece of atheism and impiety, as an aifront to their religion, and an undermining the very being and existence of their gods. This is the sum of the charge, as we find it in the ancient apologists ; ^ more particularly Csecilius the heathen, in Minutius Felix, accuses the Christians for a desperate, undone, and un- lawful faction, who by way of contempt did snufF and spit at the mention of their gods, deride their worship, scoft' at their priests, and despise their temples, as no better than charnel- houses, and heaps of bones and ashes of the dead ; for these, and such like reasons, the Christians were every where accounted a pack of atheists, and their religion " the atheism ;'' and seldom it is that Julian the emperor calls Christianity by any other * Apol. c. ult. '' .Tust. Mart. Apol. ii. s. 3. Athenag. Ijpgat. s. 4. Arnob. 1. i. p. 7. Min. Fel. Octav. c. 8. b2 4 PEIMITIYE CHRISTIANITY. name. Thus Lucian,*" bringing in Alexander, the impostor, setting np for an oracle-monger, ranks the Christians with Atheists and Epicureans, as those that were especially to be banished from his mysterious rites. In answer to this charge, the Christians pleaded especially these three things. First ; that the Gentiles were, for the most part, incompetent judges of such cases as these, as being almost wholly ignorant of the true state of the Christian doctrine, and therefore unfit to pronounce sentence against it. Thus when Crescens the philo- sopher had traduced the Christians as atheistical and irreligious, Justin Martyr answers,*^ that he talked about things which he did not understand, feigning things of his own head, only to comply with the humour of his seduced disciples and followers ; that in reproaching the doctrine of Christ, when he did not un- derstand it, he discovered a most wicked and malignant temper, and shewed himself far worse than the most simple and un- learned, who are not wont rashly to bear Avitness and determine in things not sufficiently known to them : or if he did under- stand its greatness and excellency, then he shewed himself much more base and disingenuous, in charging upon it wliat he knew to be false, and concealing his inward sentiments and convictions, for fear lest he should be suspected to be a Christian. But Justin well knew that he was miserably unskilful in matters of Christianity, having formerly had conferences and disputations with him about these things; and therefore offered the senate of Rome, (to whom he then presented his Apology,) if they had not heard the sum of it, to hold another conference with him, even before the senate itself; which he thought would be a work worthy of so wise and grave a council : or if they had heard it, then he did not doubt but they clearly apprehended how little he imderstood these things ; or, that if he did under- stand them, he knowingly dissembled it to his auditors, not daring to own the truth, as Socrates did in the face of danger : an evident argument, that he was ov ' Prepar. Evaii^'. 1. i. c. 2. ^ Ep. li. opcr. .Till. par. ii. ]). '2W]. * De nioi't. Pcipgi'ln. vol. ii. p. 7'?-. 10 PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. that was crucified in Palestine, who introduced that new reli- gion into the world. So Symmachus,'' some years after Julian, (a man no less eminent for his parts and eloquence than for his power and authority, being chief priest and prefect of Rome,) confidently owns to the emperors themselves, (though they were Christians,) that he did endeavour to defend the institutions of their ancestors, the settled rights and laws of the country, (he means them of religion.) that he designed to settle that state of religion, which for so many ages had been profitable to the commonwealth ; and therefore begs of them, that what they had received when they were children, now they were old they might leave to their posterity ; that they were to be true to the trust that had from so many ages been devolved upon them, and were to follow their parents, as they had happily done their ancestors that had gone before them. So he, pleading the cause of paganism from its antiquity and prescription, obliquely reflecting upon the novelism of Christianity ; for more he durst not speak, the emperors (to whom he made his address) being themselves Christians. This, indeed, must needs be a mighty prejudice against the Christian religion at its first coming into the world ; for all men, as they have a natural reverence for re- ligion, so they have a great veneration for antiquity, the customs and traditions of their fathers, which they entertain as a most inestimable depositum, and for which they look upon themselves as obliged to contend, as for that which is most solemn and sacred. " What more excellent and venerable, (says the heathen in Minutius Felix,'') than to entertain the discii^line of our fore- fathers ; to solemnize that religion that has been delivered to us ; to worship those gods, the knowledge of whom has been infused into us by our parents, not boldly to determine concerning the deities, but to believe those who have been before us." To the same purpose Lactantius,*^ speaking of the heathens : they go on (says he) most pertinaciously to maintain and defend the reli- gion derived down to them from their ancestors ; not so much considering what they are, as concluding them to be right and good, because the ancients conveyed them to them ; nay, so great the power and authority of antiquity, that it is accounted a kind of impiety to question it, or inquire into it. Upon these *• Symmach. Epist. 1. x. ep. 54. ad Valent. Theod. et Arcad. •^ Min. Fel. Octav, c. 5. ^ Lactant. 1. ii. c. 6. PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. 1] accounts the Gentiles bore so hard upon Christianity, beholding it as a mushroom sect, sprung up of a sudden, and as an en- croaching inmate, undermining the established religions of the world. Now we find two pleas especially which the Christians made to this indictment. First, that the charge was not wholly and universally true: for besides that many principles of Christianity Avere the same with those of the law of nature, the Christian religion was for substance the same with that of the ancient Jews, whose reli- gion claimed the precedency of all others in the world. That the religion was in substance and effect the same, is expressly asserted and proved by Eusebius.'^ The ancient patriarchs were the Christians of the old world, who had the same faith, religion, and worship common with us ; nay, the same name too, as he endeavours to prove from that, " touch not mine anointed," Tcov Xpiarcov fj,ov, " my Christs,7 or Christians. And how far superior in age they were to any thing that is recorded of the most ancient Gentiles, to their oldest writers, Orpheus, Homer, Hesiod, nay, to their very gods themselves, is sufficiently made good by many of the ancient fathers ; ' there being, at the easiest computation, between Moses and Homer, above six hundred years : nay, Cadmus (the first inventor of letters among the Grecians) was some ages junior unto Moses. Therefore Origen tells Celsus,^ that Moses and the prophets were not only more ancient than Plato, but than Homer himself, yea, than the very invention of letters amongst the Grecians, who yet were as proud of their antiquity as any other nation in the world. Nay, whatever useful and excellent notions the great masters of reli- gion amongst the heathens had amongst them, it is plain they borrowed, or, more truly, stole them, from the writings of the ancient Jews, as is abundantly demonstrated by Eusebius at large ; '' as before him it had been done by Clemens of Alex- andria,' and by Tertullian ^ before them both ; who shews, that all their poets and philosophers had drunk deep of the fountain of the prophets, and had forced their best doctrines and opinions *•■ Demonstr. Evang. 1. i. c. 5. f Vid. Atlienag. leg. pro Christ, s. ] 7. Clem. Alex. Strom. 1. i. c. 20. s Adv. Cels. 1. vi. s. 7. '' Praepar. Evang. 1. x. ' Clem. Alex. Strom. 1. i. c. 20. '' Tertull. Apol. c. 47. Vid. Theod. do curand. Grace, affect. Serm ii. de princip. 12 PRIMITIVE ClilUSTIANITY. from tlience, thoiigli subtilely altering and disguising tliera, to make them look more like their own. So that upon this con- sideration the accusation was unjust and false, and Christianity appears the oldest religion in the world. Secondly; admit the Christian religion, in a more limited and restrained sense, to be of a far later standing than the religion of the Gentiles, yet they pleaded that it was infinitely reasonable that they should change for the better, whenever it offered itself to them ; that novel truth was better than ancient error ; and that they ought not to be eternally bound up in old and in- veterate customs and principles, when those which were abun- dantly more reasonable and satisfactory were presented to them. " You tell us, (says Clemens Alexandrinus,') that you may not subvert the customs received from your ancestors. But if so, why then are Me not content without any other food than our mother's milk, to Avhich we were accustomed when we first came into the world ? Why do we increase or impair our estates, and not rather keep them at the same pitch, just as we received them from our fathers 'i Why have we left off those toys and sports to which we were wonted while infants and children, but only because years and discretion (although we had no other tutor) would make us quit those childish and trifling vanities f That old age (says St. Ambrose'") has true cause to blush, that is ashamed to reform. It is not multitude of years, but the good- ness of manners, that make gray hairs worthy of praise and honour: no age is too late to learn, nor is it shame to grow better. What wilt thou do, (says Lactantius to the heathen,") wilt thou follow reason, or thy ancestors i If reason, then thou must needs relinquish the authority and institutions of thy fore- fathers, because that way only can be right that is warranted and prescribed by reason ; but if piety towards thine ancestors sway with thee to follow them, thou must confess, both that they were fools in devoting themselves to a religion contrary to reason, and that thou thyself art unwise and simple in worshipping what thou art convinced to be false. Besides, that they had little reason to boast of those goodly ancestors to whom they adhered so close, and upon whose authority they did so mu(-h depend ; as he goes on to demonstrate in the remaining ])art of that chapter. That ' Exhort, ad gent. c. 10. '" Ambr. ep. ii.tontr. Syniiiuith. inter cp. .^ymniiicli. p. ;)"_''l. " Lact;int. 1. ii. c. (i. PEIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. 13 you object to us the novelty of ouv religiou, (so Arnobius,") may we not charge some such fault upon the first and most ancient ages of the world, who at first lived in a very poor and mean state, but by little and little changed it into a more liberal and splendid course of life ? Was it any crime that they changed their beasts' skins into more comely and convenient garments, or that they were no longer fond of their thatched cottages, or chose to dwell like wild beasts in rocks and caverns, when they had learnt to build better habitations I It is natural to all mankind to prefer better before what is worse, profitable before Avhat is useless, and to seek after what we are assured is more grateful and excellent. Therefore, when you charge us with apostacy from the religion of the ancients, you should rather consider the cause than the action ; and not so much upbraid us with what we have left, as examine what it is we have entertained. For if merely to change our opinion, and to pass from ancient institu- tions to what is more late and new, be a fault and crime, then none so guilty of the charge as yourselves, who have so oft changed your manners and course of life, and by embracing new rites and customs have condemned those that went before : which he there makes good by particular instances. And the same answer St. Ambrose gives to Symmachus : if nothing but ancient rites will please you, how comes it to pass that there has been a succession of new and foreign rites, even in Rome itself? of which he gives him many particular examples. In short, Ambrose wittily argues thus : ^ " Our way of religion (you say) is new, and yours ancient ; and what does this either hurt our cause, or help yours ! If ours be new, it will in time become old. Is yours old? there was a time when it was new. The goodness and authority of religion is not to be valued by length of time, but by the excellency of its worship ; nor does it become us to consider so much when it begun, as what it is we worship." It may not be impertinent in this place to take notice of what the heathens objected as a branch of this charge ;i that if God's sending Christ into the world was so great a blessing, why did this Saviour of mankind come no sooner to reveal this religion, to lead men into the truth, to tell the world who this true God was, and to reduce us to the adoration of him ? If so, why did " Adv. gent. 1. ii. p. 40, 41. P Ubi supra. 1 Arnob. adv. gent. 1. ii. p. 43. Vid. Greg. Xyss. Orat. Catechet. c. 29, vol. ii. p. 521, 14 PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. God suiFer him to stay so long, and to be born (as it were) but a few hours before, in comparison of the preceding- ages of the world ? To this Arnobius answers, with a great deal of modesty and reason, that he could not tell ; that it were easy to retort the same captious question upon them, if it were so much to the benefit of the world that Hercules, Esculapius, Mercury, &c. should be gods, why were they born and deified no sooner, that not only posterity but antiquity might have reaped advantage by them 1 If there was reason in one case, then there was also in the other : but to assign proper and particular reasons was not possible ; it not being within the power of such a short-sighted creature as man is, to fathom the depth of the Divine counsels, or to discover by what ways or methods he disposes his affairs ; these things being known only to him who is the grand Parent, the sovereign Lord and Governor of all things : that although we are not able to assign the cause why a thing comes to pass in this or that particular manner, yet this concludes never a whit the more that the thing is not so, or that it is less credible, when it has otherwise the most clear and unquestionable evidence and demonstration. More particularly he answers, that our Saviour cannot be said to have been lately sent in respect of God, because in respect of eternity there is nothing late ; where there is neither beginning nor end, there can be nothing too soon, nothing too late. Time, indeed, is transacted by parts and terms, but these have no place in a perpetual and uninterrupted series of eternal ages. What if that state of things, to which he came to bring relief, required that season of time to come in ? What if the condition of ancient and modern times were in this case not alike, or called for somewhat different methods of cure ? It may be, the great God then chose to send Christ, when the state of mankind was more broken and shattered, and human nature become more weak and unable to help itself. This we are sure- of, that if what so lately came to pass had been neces- sary to have been done some thousands of years ago, the Su- preme Creator would have done it ; or had it been necessary to have been done thousands of years hence, nothing could have forced God to have anticipated the settled periods of time one moment : for all his actions are managed by fixed and eternal reasons ; and what he has once determined, cannot be frustrated by any change or alteration. And thus we see how easily, and PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. 15 yet how satisfactorily, the primitive Christians wiped oft' that double imputation of impiety and novelty which the Gentiles had so undeservedly cast upon their religion. CHAPTER in. THINGS CHARGED UPON THE CHRISTIANS RESPECTCNG THEIR OUTWARD CONDITION. The Christians looked upon, and despised by the Heathens, as a company of rude and illiterate persons, mechanics, silly women, and children. This charge considered and largeh' answered by Origen. Christianity provides for the truest and best knowledge : it excludes none, learned or unlearned. Christians not shy of communicating the know- ledge of their mysteries to men sober and inquisitive. The efficacy of Christianity in prevailing upon men of the acutest parts and greatest learning. The Christians ac- cused for being poor and mean. This charge (universally) false. Christianity enter- tained by persons of all sorts, of the highest as well as the lowest rank. Several in- stances of such : Fl. Clemens and Fl. Domitilla, (Domitian's near kindred,) Christians ; another Domitilla, Domitian's niece, Acil. Glabrio the consul, Apollonius the senator, and others. Philip the emperor proved to be no Christian : the rise of the story, whence. Though Christianity had had no such persons under its profession, this had been no just reasonable prejudice. External pomp and grandeur not necessary to re- ligion. The advantages Christians reaped from their meanness and contempt of the world. Of their being charged as a people useless and unserviceable to the public. This disowned. The opinion that it was not lawful for Christians to bear arms or offices, particular only to some persons and in some cases, and why. How much the world was beholden to Christians for reclaiming men from vice and wickedness. The gospel greatly instrmiicntal that way ; its general influence upon those whom it did not convert : the writings of philosophers generally better after Christianity appeared, and why. The excellent prayer of Simplicius. Christians very useful by frequent working- beneficial miracles, curing diseases, raising the dead, dispossessing devils, &c. This miraculous power continued for several ages in the church. Christians further tra- duced as pernicious to the world, as the cause of all public evils and calamities. This objected at every turn. The occasion of St. Augustine's and Orosius's writing a vin- dication of it. This charge justly retorted upon the heathens, and they sent to seek the cause of public calamities nearer home. Some few hinted by Tertulliaii. Chris- tians unjustly charged with it, because the world was pestered with such evils before . Christianity appeared in it. The public state better and more prosperous since Chris- tianity than before. Hs prosperity ebbed or increased according to the entertainment Christianity found in the world. The second sort of arts which the enemies of Christianity made use of, to render Christians vile and despicable, related to the circumstances of their external state and condition in the world, where two things were laid to their charge ; that they gene- IG PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. rally were a very mean and inconsiderable sort of men, and that they were an useless and unserviceable people, nay, per- nicious and mischievous to the world. They were looked upon as the lowest and meanest rank of men ; persons neither con- siderable for their parts and learning, nor for their estates and quality. Inconsiderable they were accounted in respect of parts and learning : " you scorn and spit us out as rude and simple, and think that the treasury of all divine and excellent know- ledge is open only to yourselves," as Arnobius tells them.*" Thus Celsus objected,* that amongst the Christians no wise and learned men were admitted ta the mysteries of their religion. Let no man come that is learned, Avise, and prudent, for these things (says he) they account evil and unlawful ; but if any be un- learned, an infant or an ideot, let him come and welcome ; openly declaring, that none but fools, and such as are devoid of sense and reason, slaves, silly women, and little children, are fit disciples for the God they worship. We may observe (says he ') these trifling and mountebank impostors, bragging great things to the vulgar, not in the presence and company of wise men, (for that they dare not,) but wherever they espy a flock of boys, slaves, and weak simple people, there they presently crowd in and boast themselves. You shall see (as he goes on in this charge") weavers, tailors, fullers, and the most rustic and illiterate fellows, at home when before their elders and betters as mute as fishes ; but when they can get a few children and silly women by themselves, then who so wise and learned, who so full of talk, and so able to teach and instruct as they? Much to the same purpose Cecilius discourses in Minutius Felix," that the Christians were men of a desperate and unlawful faction, who gathering a company out of the very dregs and refuse of the people, of silly, easy, credulous women, who by reason of the weakness of their sex are easily imposed and wrought upon, combine them into a wicked confederation : a people mute in public, but in corners talkative and full of prattle. Now to this part of the accusation Origen answers,^ that it is for the main false, and proceeds from the spirit of malice and reproach. The sum of his answer, as he delivers it to the several parts of the charge, take thus : that the Christian doctrine invites and calls ■■ Adv. gent. 1. iii. p. 49. » Orig. Contr. Cels. 1. iii. s. 44. ' Ibid. s. 50. " Ibid. s. .55. " Min. Fcl. Octav. c. B. v Adv. Cols. 1. iii. s. 44, ct seq. PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. 17 men to wisdom, as appears both from the writings of the Jews of old and the scriptures of the New Testament, wherein we find many singularly eminent for wisdom and learning, Moses, Solomon, Daniel, and such like of old ; and the blessed Jesus made choice of such disciples, as whom he judged fittest to com- municate the secrets of his religion to, and privately opened and explained to them, what he only delivered in parables and similitudes unto others ; that he promised to send forth pro- phets,^ wise men, and scribes, for the divulging and propagating of his doctrine ; that St. Paul reckons wisdom and knowledge in the first rank of the gifts of God,* and that if he any where seem to reflect severely upon wisdom or human learning, (which probably may be the first rise of this charge,) he only censures the abuse, never intending to blame the thing itself; that when he prescribes the properties of a true bishop, or governor of the church, he requires this as one necessary qualification, "that he be apt to teach, and able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince the gain say ers." ^ That we are so far from pro- hibiting any, that come who will, wise, learned, and prudent, provided the rude, simple, and unlearned be not excluded ; for to them also the gospel does promise and provide a remedy, making them meet for God. That no man but must confess that it is an excellent thing to study the best arts and discipline ; and that learning, the study of arts, and prudence, are so far from being an hinderance to the knowledge of God, that they mightily help it and advance it. That it is a great calumny to compare us to wandering impostors, who, by our reading and ex- pounding the divine oracles, do only exhort the people to piety toward the great God, and to the rest of those virtues which are its individual companions ; endeavouring to rescue men from ii contempt of the Deity, and all brutish and irregular passions ; a thing which the very best philosophers of them all could wish for. That Christians are so far from admitting any hand over -head, that they first pre-examine the minds of those that desire to become their auditors; and having privately had trial of them before they receive them into the congregation, when they perceive them fully resolved to lead a pious and religious life, then they admit them in their distinct orders ; some that are newly admitted, but not yet baptized ; others that have given ^ Matt, xxiii. 34. " 1 Cor. xii. «. '' Tit. i. 9. 18 PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. some evidence and demonstration of their purpose to live as be- comes Christians ; amongst whom there are governors appointed to inspect and inquire into the Hfe and manners of those who have been admitted, that they may expel and turn off those candidates of religion who answer not their profession, and heartily entertain those that do, and by daily converses build them up and make them better. That it is false to say that we apply ourselves only to women and children, and that in corners ; when Ave endeavour what we can, by all means, to fill our societies with wise and prudent persons, and to such we open the more sublime and recondite principles of religion ; otherwise accom- modating our discourses to the capacities of meaner persons, who stand more in need of milk than strong meat : that we desire that all men may be trained up in the word of God, and that servants and children may have such instructions given them as are suitable and convenient to them ; the ministers of our re- ligion professing themselves to be debtors both to the Greeks and Barbarians, both to the wise and to the unwise, that as much as may be they may outgrow their ignorance, and attain to the best kind of wisdom. And whereas we are accused to seduce and circumvent silly women and little children, and to draw them away from more weighty and serious counsels ; let him produce any such, and inquire of them whether ever they heard better masters than ours ? or if they did, why they would leave so grave a discipline, and suffer themselves to be seduced into a worse ? But he will find no such thing to fasten upon us ; but that, on the contrary, we reclaim women from immodesty, from falling out with their husbands and parting from them, from the wild extravagancies of the sports and theatres, and from all superstition whatsoever. The youth who are prone to vice and luxury, we restrain, by telling them, not only how base and de- generous a thing it is 'to indulge their lust, but into how much danger they precipitate their souls, and what punishments the divine vengeance lays up for such profligate offenders. We openly (not in corners) promise eternal happiness to those who live ac- cording to the rules of the divine law, who set God always be- fore their eyes, and whatever they do, endeavour to approve themselves to him : and is this the discipline, these the doc- trines of weavers, tailors, fullers, and the most rustic and illiterate persons? Surely, no. If at any time we refuse to produce our PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. 19 instructions and counsels before masters of families or the doctors of philosophy, know, that if they be studious of virtue, enemies to vice, and such as breathe after the best things, before such we are most willing and ready to instruct our youth, being well assured we shall find them favourable judges. But if they be enemies to goodness and virtue, and opposers of sound wholesome doctrine, then if we hold our peace, no fault can justly be laid upon us ; for in such circumstances the philosophers themselves would not discover the dictates and mysteries of their philosophy. This is the substance of the several answers which Origen pursues more at large through several pages : which, though very rational and satisfactory, yet we find something pleaded more direct and positive to the charge ; viz. that although amongst the Christians (as it is in any society of men) the vulgar and more common sort might not be men of the sharpest understanding, or versed in the more polite arts of learning, yet wanted they not (and those no small number) great scholars, men of acute parts and raised abilities, such as had run through the whole circle of the sciences, who daily came over to them. So Arnobius,*' urging the triumphant power and efficacy which the Christian faith had over the minds of men. Who (says he) would not believe it, when he sees in how short a time it has conquered so great a part of the world ; when men of so great wit and parts, orators, grammarians, rhetoricians, lawyers, physicians, and philosophers, have thrown up those former sentiments, of which but a little before they were so tenacious, and have embraced the doctrines of the gospel I So fast did the Christian church fill with the most eminent pro- fessors of all parts of learning that were then known to the world. Nor were the Christians of those times more despised upon the account of their weakness and ignorance, than they were for their meanness and poverty. They were looked upon as de ultima fcece, as the scum and refuse of the people, scarce a con- siderable man to be found amongst them. " See (says the Heathen in Minutius Felix ^) the most and best of all your party are a poor, beggarly, hunger-starved generation, that have neither riches nor reputation to bear them out." This charge (however impertinent, seeing the goodness of any religion depends not upon the greatness of its professors) was yet as untrue as it was « Adv. gent. 1. ii. p. 21. d Octav. c. 12. c2 20 PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. unreasonable ; the Christians having amongst them persons of tlie choicest place and quality, and after some years, the princes and potentates of the world, and even the emperors themselves struck sail to the sceptre of Christ. When Scapula, the president of Carthage, threatened the Christians with severe and cruel usage, Tertullian bids him bethink himself:" "What wilt thou do (says he) with so many thousands of men and women of every sex, age, and dignity, as will freely offer themselves? What fires, what swords, wilt thou stand in need of? What is Carthage itself like to suffer if decimated by thee ; when every one shall find there his near kindred and neighbours, and shall see there matrons, and men perhajis of thy own rank and order, and the most principal persons, and either the kindred or friends of those Avho are thy own nearest friends? Spare them, therefore, for your own sake, if not for ours." And if there were persons of such quality in Africa, (so remote, and in a manner so barbarous a province,) what may we suppose there were in Rome itself, and other parts of the Roman empire ? And in his Apology,* speaking of the vast spreading of the party, "Though (says he) we be men of quite another way, yet have we filled all places among you, your cities, islands, castles, corporations, councils, nay, your armies themselves, your tribes, companies, yea, the palace, the senate, and the courts of justice ; only your temples we have left you free."'"' Sure I am, Pliny,^ in his letter to the emperor, tells him, that Christianity had not only overrun city and country, but that it had infected many of every sex, age, and order of men. And indeed it were no hard matter, out of the ancient histories and martyrologies of the church, nay, from the heathen writers themselves, to prove that persons of the highest rank and qua- lity (even in those times) embraced Christianity, and sealed it with their blood. Of which it may suffice to give an account only of some few. Not to insist upon the saints which St. Paul tells us were in Nero's palace, we find many considerable persons, and some of them near akin to the emperor, under the reign of Domitian, (that cruel prince, and persecutor of Christians,) en- tertaining the profession of the gospel. And first, let us hear the account which Dion Cassius,'' the famous historian, gives us. >■■ Ad Scap. c. 4. f Cap. 37. K Lib. x. ep. 97. ^ Lib. Ixvii. in Domit. p. 776. ed. 160G. PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. 21 He tells us, that, about the latter end of Doniitian''s reign, he condemned many, (some whereof were slain, others stri])ped of their estates,) and amongst the rest. Flavins Clemens the consul, liis own cousin-german, and his wife Flavia Domitilla, near akin also to the emperor, upon pretence of atheism, (€7r7]vexOv ^7" Kkiifxa aOeoTTfTOf,) and for that they had embraced the rites and religion of the Jews. His nephew Clemens he put to death, his wife Domitilla he banished into the island Pandateria. Upon the same account also he put to death Acilius Glabrio, who, together with Trajan, had been consul the 3'ear before. That the persons here described were Christians, is j)lain, ])artly from the charge of atheism here fastened upon them, (the common and familiar accusation, and the title given to Chris- tianit}^ by the heathens, as we observed before,) and partly because they are said to have passed over to the rites and customs of the Jcavs, nothing being more ordinary in the histo- rians of those times, than to mistake Christians for Jews, and to call them so, because both proceeding out of the same country, Christ himself and his apostles being Jews born, and his religion first published and planted there. And that which may give some more countenance to this is, that Suetonius,' speaking of Domitian's condemning this Fl. Clemens, represents him as a man conteinpfisswica inerfico, as a most contemptibly dull and sluggish person ; which we know was generally charged upon the Christians, that they were an useless and unactive people, as we shall have occasion by-and-by more particularly to remark. Besides this Fl. Domitilla, the Avife of Clemens, there was another of the same name, his niece by the sister's side, (unless Dion Cassius mistook, and put down wife for niece, which there is no reason to suppose, seeing both may very well consist to- gether,) who (as Eusebius informs us*") was with many more banished by Domitian in the fifteenth year of his reign, into the island Pontia, and there put to death for the profession of • Christianity ; whose persecutions and martyrdoms (says he) are recorded by heathen writers themselves ; amongst whom, (I suppose,) he principally intends Brettius, or Brutius, the histo- rian, whom he cites elsewhere,' and out of whom he there quotes this very passage : " that under Domitian many of the Christians ' In Domitian. c. 15. i> Hist. Eccl. 1. iii. c. 13. ' Can. Chron. ad Ann. C'hr. ;)7. p. 208. ct Cliroii. p. SO. edit. Graec. 22 PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. suffered martyrdom, amongst whom was Fl. Domitilla, niece by the sister's side to Fl. Clemens the consul, who, for being a Christian, was banished, into the island Pontia." She is said, after a great deal of hard and tedious usage, to have been burnt, together with the house Avherein she was ; her memory is cele- brated in the Roman Calendar upon the seventh of May.™ Besides these, we find that, Christianity getting ground under the quiet reign of the emperor Commodus, many of the greatest birth and fortunes in Rome, together with their whole families, flocked over to the Christian faith." Amongst whom was Apollonius, a man famous for philosophy and all polite human literature, who so gallantly pleaded his cause before the senate, and was himself a senator, as St. Jerome informs us.° I shall but mention one instance more, and that is of Philip the em- peror, whom Eusebius expressly affirms to have been a Chris- tian,'' and the first of the emperors that was so, followed herein by a whole troop, both of ancient and modern writers. Nay, we are told by some a formal story, that this Philip and his son were converted by the preaching of Pontius the martyr,'' and baptized by Fabian bishop of Rome. But notwithstanding the smoothness of the story, and the number of authorities, 1 must confess it seems to me scarcely probable, that a person of so bad a life, guilty of such enormous villanies, as that em- peror was, should either be, or be thought a Christian ; or if he was, that the whole world should not presently ring of it. Certain I am, that all historians of that time are wholly silent in the case, nor is there the least intimation of any such thing in any writer, either Heathen or Christian, before Eusebius. Nay, Origen, who wrote his book in defence of Christianity under the reign of this very emperor, and about this very time, (nay, and two epistles, one to Philip, the other to his wife Severa, if we may believe Eusebius,) yet not only makes no mention of it, when it would have made greatly for his purpose, but tacitly implies there was no such thing. For Celsus reproving the boldness and petulancy of the Christians, as if they should give out, that if they could but bring over the present emperors to their religion, all other men would quickly be brought over ; «" Martyr. Rom. ad 7 Mali. " Eiiseb. Hist. Eccl. 1. v. c. 21. « De Script. Eccl. in Apoll. p Hist. Eccl. 1. vi. c. 34. 1 Act. Pont, apud Sur. ad 14 Maii. PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. 23 Origen pointblaiik denies the charge, and tells him there is no need of any answer,' for that none of the Christians ever said so : an answer which surely he would not have given, had the em- peror at that time been a Christian : not to insist upon many other intimations which might be produced out of that book against it. Besides, Eutropius reports,^ that Philip and his son being slain by the soldiers, were yet inter divos relati, deified, or advanced into, the number of their gods : an honour which it is certain the senate would not have done them, had they either been, or but suspected to have been Christians. To all which I may add, that Eusebius * himself (in whom the first footsteps of this story appear) builds it upon no better a foundation than a Karey^ei \6yo<;, " a bare tradition and report." That which seems to have given both birth and colour to the story, is this : one Philippus," an illustrious person under the emperor Severus, was a long time governor of Egypt ; he, by the means of his daughter Eugenia, was converted to Christianity, under whose shelter the Christians there enjoyed great peace and favour; (nay, the story adds, though certainly without any ground, that he was created bishop of Alexandria;) till the emperor, being acquainted with his being a Christian, presently removed him, and, by the help of his successor Terentius, caused him to be secretly murdered and made away. This (if any thing) was the rise of the story ; and that which makes it more probable is, the honour and excellency of that employment, the greatest of all the offices in the Roman empire, the command and state little less than regal ; and therefore the emperors, in their letter to this Philip, (wherein they reproach him for ingratitude and apostacy,) tell him that in a manner he was made a king, when he was chosen president of Egypt. Accordingly, the title of the governor of Egypt (as appears from the historians, but especially the Notitia Imperii) was ]pr(Bfectus Augustalis ; and how easy was it to mistake Philippus Augustus for Philippus Augustalis? JBut enough of this, as also the falseness of that charge that the Christians were such a sorry inconsiderable people. But, however, let us suppose them to have been as mean and poor as the malice and cruelty of their adversaries did endeavour to make them, yet this was no real prejudice to then- cause, nor ^ Adv. Cels. 1. viii. s. 71. • Hist. Rom. 1. ix. iion longe ab init. ' Hist. Eccl. 1. vi. c. 34. » Martyr. Eugen. apud Sur. ad 25 Decemb. 24 PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. any great hurt to them. " That the most part of us are accused to be poor, (says Octavius, in answer to Csecihus's charge,) it is not our dislionour, hut our glory ; the mind, as it is dissolved by plenty and luxury, so it is strengthened and girt close by indi- gence and frugality ; and yet how can that man be poor, who wants not, who is not greedy of what is another man's, who is rich in and towards God ? That man is rather poor, who, when he has a g-reat deal, desires more. The truth is, no man can be so poor as he was ^A'hen he was born : the birds live witliout any patrimony entailed upon them, and the beasts find pastures every day ; and j^et these are born for our use, all which we fully enjoy when we do not covet them : much lighter and hapjiier does he go to heaven who is not burdened by the way with an unnecessary load of riches. And yet did we think estates so useful to us, we could beg them of God, who, being Lord of all, might well afford a little to us ; but we had rather despise them than enjoy them, and rather choose innocency and patience, de- siring more to be good, than to be great and prodigal. If we endure outward sufferings and tortures, it is not so much pain as it is a warfare ; our courage is increased by infirmities, and calamity is very oft the discipline of virtue ; the nerves, both of body and mind, without exercise would grow loose and faint : and therefore God is neither unable to help us, nor yet negligent of us, as being the Governor of the world and the Father of his children ; but tries and examines every one's temper in an adverse state, as ' gold is tried in the fire.' Besides, it must needs be a sight very pleasing to God, to behold a Christian conflicting with grief and misery, preparing himself to encounter threatenings and torments, pressing in upon the very noise of death and the liorror of the executioner, maintaining his liberty against kings and princes, and only yielding to God, whose he wholly is, coming off from all the attempts of adversity with victory and triumph." So argues that excellent person, (and whoever reads him in his native language must confess it,) with equal strength of eloquence and reason ; where he also briefly touches that ob- jection so common amongst the heathens, that if Christians were so dear to God, why then did he suffer them to be oppressed with 60 many miseries and troubles, and not come in to vindicate and relieve them : an argument fully cleared by Arnobius, Lactan- tius, and other ancient apologists for the Christian faith. PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. 25 But this was not all ; they were charged as a very useless and unserviceable people, that contributed nothing to the happiness of the commonwealth ;" nay, as destructive and pernicious to human society, and as the procuring cause of all those mischiefs and calamities that befel the world. In answer to the first, their being useless as to the common good, hear what Tertullian says in the case. " How can this be, (says he,^) when we live amongst you, have the same diet, habit, manner, and Avay of life I We are no Brachmans or Indian Gymnosophists, who live in woods, and banish themselves from all civil life : we are not unmindful of what we owe to our great Creator, and therefore despise none of his creatures, though careful to use them with temperance and sobriety ; wherefore we live not in the Avorld without the use of your markets, shambles, baths, taverns, shops, stables, your marts, and other ways of human commerce ; we go to sea with you, bear arms, till and improve the ground, use merchandise ; we undergo trades amongst you, and expose our works to your use ; and how then can we seem unserviceable to your affairs, with which and by which we live, I see not." " Certainly, (says he,'') if any have cause truly to complain of our being unprofit- able, they are bawds, panders, pimps, hectors and ruffians, sellers of poison, magicians, soothsayers, wizards, and astrologers: and to be unserviceable to these, is the greatest serviceableness." But besides this, they pleaded for themselves, that their religion was highly beneficial to the world, and in its own nature con- tributed to the peace and happiness of mankind. It cannot be denied, but that some of the primitive Christians were shy of engaging in wars, and not very forward to undergo ]niblic places of authority and power ; but (besides that this was only the opinion of some private persons, and not the common and current practice or determination of the church) it arose partly from some mistaken passages in the gospel, turning evangelical counsels into positive precepts; but principally because such offices and em- ■ plojments were usually clogged with such circumstances and con- ditions, as obliged them to some things repugnant to the Christian law ; otherwise, where they could do it, without oftering violence to their religion and their conscience, they shunned it not, but frequently bore arms, and discharged such public oflfices as were ^ Arnob. adv. gent. 1. ii. prop. fin. Lactant. dc jub.tit. 1. v. c. '22. y Apol. c. 4-2. ' Ibid, c 43. 26 PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. committed to them, as cannot be unknown to any that are never so little versed in the history of the first ages of the church ; never were there better, more resolute and faithful soldiers, more obedient to the orders of their commanders, more ready to attempt the most hazardous enterprizes, never boggling at any thing which they could do without sin ; of which, amongst many others, I shall instance only in that of the Thebaean legion,^ who being commanded upon a bloody and unlawful butchery, to de- stroy and cut off the Christians, their brethren, meekly returned this answer to the heathen emperor Maximianus, under whom they served : " We offer our hands against any enemy, but count it unlawful to imbrue them in the blood of the innocent ; our swords know how to strike a rebel or an enemy, but not to wound those who are citizens and guiltless : we remember that we took up arms for, not against friends and fellow-citizens : we have always fought for justice and piety, and the safety of the innocent ; these have been hitherto the price of those dangers that we have run upon : we have fought for fidelity, which how shall we be able to keep to you, if we do not first keep it to our God V So far were the Christians of those times from refusing to engage in the service of their prince. Nay, those of them who were so bound up by their private sentiments as not to think it lawful, yet reckoned they otherways made equivalent compensation. Thus when Celsus pressed the Christians to undergo public offices, and to help the emperors in their wars, Origen answers,^ that they did so, though by a divine, not human help, by praying for their persons and their prosperity and success; "above all men (says he) we fight for the emperor, while we train ourselves in exercises of piety, and contend by prayers for him." But besides these, there were several other instances which the Christians pleaded to vindicate themselves from being unserviceable to the good of mankind, amongst which I shall at present take notice only of these two. First, that they really sought to reclaim men from vice and sin, to a good and a virtuous life ; by which means (besides that they provided for men's highest and nearest interest, the interest of their souls, and their eternal happiness in another life) they greatly consulted the peace and welfare of the places where they lived ; for vicious and wicked men are the pests and plagues of » Martyrol. Adonis ad 10 Kalend. Octob, *> Adv. Cels. 1. viii. s. 73. PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. 27 human society, that taint and infect others by their bad ex- amples or persuasions, and entail vengeance upon the places of their residence ; whilst good men engage the favour and blessing of heaven, and both by their counsels and examples bring over others to sobriety and virtue, whereby they establish and strengthen the foundations of government, and the happiness of civil life. And none so eminent for this as the Christians of old : this is the great triumphant argument wherew^ith Origen at every turn exalts the honour of Christianity ; " this (says he) we find in the multitudes of those that believe, who are de- livered from that sink of vices wherein they were wont to wallow : inquire into the lives of some of us,*^ compare our former and our present course, and you will find in what nlthiness and impieties they tumbled before they entertained the Christian doctrine ; but since the time that they entered into it,* how gentle and moderate, how grave and constant are they become, and some so inflamed with the love of purity, that they forbear even what lawfully they might enjoy ; how largely are the churches of God, founded by Christ, spread over all nations, consisting of such as are converted from innumerable evil ways to a better mind. And elsewhere,^ vindicating the doctrine of Christ from the mischievous cavils of his adversary, he tells us how it was impossible that could be pestilent and hurtful, which had con- verted so many from their vices and debaucheries to a course most agreeable to nature and reason, and to a life of temperance and all other virtues : and the same he urges frequently in other places ; and what greater kindness and benefit could be done to men ? Does Celsus call upon us (says he^) to bear offices for the good of our country ? let him know, that the country is much more beholden to Christians than to the rest of men, while they teach men piety towards God, the tutelar guardian of the country, and shew them the way to that heavenly city that is above ; which they that live well may attain to, though here • they dwell in the smallest city in the world. Nor do the Chris- tians thus employ themselves because they shun the public offices of the civil life ; '' but only reserve themselves for the more divine and necessary services of the church, in order to the good and happiness of men ; for this they think very just and reasonable, <= Adv. Cels. 1. i. s. 9. «> Ibid. s. 26. " Ibid. s. 67. f Lib. ii. s. 29. s Lib. viii. s. 74. *> Ibid. s. 75. 28 PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. that tliey sliould take care of all men : of tliem of their own part}^ that they may every day make them better ; of others, that they may draw them to the belief and practice of piety and religion ; that so worshipping God in truth, and doing what they can to instruct others, they may be united to the great God and to liis blessed Son, who is the wisdom, truth, and righteousness, and by whom it is that every one is converted to a pious and a religious life. Theodoret,' discoursing against the Gentiles, of the excellency of the laws of Christ above any that were given by the best jihi- losophers or wisest men amongst the heathens, gives them in- stances of whole nations whom Christianity had brought off from the most brutish and savage manners : he tells them of the Persians, who, by the laws given them b}^ Zarada, lived in in- cestuous mixtures with their own mothers, sisters, and daughters, looking upon it as a lawful and warrantable practice ; till en- tertaining Christianity, they threw off those abominable laws, and submitted to that temperance and chastity which the gospel requires of us. And whereas before they Avere wont to cast out the bodies of their dead to be devoured by beasts and birds of prey, since they embraced the Christian religion they abstained from that piece of inhumanit}^, and decently committed them to the earth ; from which they could not be restrained, either by the laws of their country, or the bitterness of those torments which they miderwent. The Massagetes, who thought it the most miserable thing in the world to die any other than a violent death, and therefore made a law, that all persons arrived to old age should be offered in sacrifice and eaten, no sooner sub- mitted to Christianity, but abhorred those barbarous and abo- minable customs. The Tibarens, who used to throw aged persons down the steepest rocks, left it off upon their embracing of the gospel. Upon the same account the Hyrcani and the Caspians reformed their manners, who were formerly wont to keep dogs on purpose to devour the bodies of the dead. Nor did the Scythians any longer, together with their dead, bury those alive who had been their nearest friends and kindred. " So great a change (says my author) did the laws of Christ make in the manners of men, and so easily were the most barbarous nations persuaded to entertain them; a thing which l^hito, though ' Dc curaiul. Griuc. ;itVcct. Surm. ix. de Ley. )). 1"28. PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. 29 the best of all pliilosopliers, could never effect amongst the Athenians, his own fellow-citizens, who could never induce them to govern the commonwealth according to those laws and in- stitutions which he had prescribed them." Nay, where the gospel did not produce this eftect, to reclaim men from their vices and vanities, and to bring them over to the religion of the crucified Saviour, yet had it this excellent in- fluence upon the world, that it generally taught them better lessons, refined their understandings, and filled their minds with more useful and practical notions about religion than they had before. To which purpose it is mainly observable, that those philosophers who lived in the time of Christianity, after the gospel publicly appeared in the world, wrote in a much more divine strain, entertained more honourable and worthy sentiments about God and religion, and the duties of men in their several capacities, than those of their sect that went before them : of which I conceive no account can be given so satisfactory as this, that the genius and spirit of the gospel began then to fly abroad, and to breathe in a freer air, and so could not but leave some tincture and savour upon the spirits of men, though its most in- veterate enemies.'^ Besides that many of them did more nearly converse with the writings of Christianity, which they read either out of curiosity, or with a design to confute and answer them. This doubtless sharpened the edge of their understandings, and furnished them with better notions, more useful precepts and rules of life, than are to be met with in any of the old phi- losophers : witness those excellent and uncommon strains of piety that run through the writings of Seneca, Epictetus, An- toninus, Arrian, Plutarch, Hierocles, Plotinus, and the rest that lived in those first ages of the gospel ; of which I could give con- siderable instances, were it necessary to my purpose. I shall, only as a specimen, set down that prayer wherewith Simplicius (enemy enough to Christianity) concludes his comment upon Epictetus : and thus he makes his address to God. 'lK€Tevo} ere, AecnroTa, 6 "I beseech thee, Lord, thou irar-iip Koi riye/Mcbv rod iv that art the Father and Guide of rj/ji,iv Xoyov, vTro/jLvrja-drjvai our rational powers, grant that we yu-ev r]fjbd<; Trjs eavrwv evrye- may be mindful of those noble and i/eia Ibid. c. 4, P Apol, c. 37, 32 PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. should agree to retire out of the Roman empire, he asks them what protection they would thou have left against the secret and invisible attempts of devils, who made such havoc both of their souls and bodies, whom the Christians so freely expelled and drove out ; that it would be a sufficient piece of revenge, that hereby they should leave them open to the uncontrolled possession of those evil spirits. It were endless to produce all the testimonies of this nature, that might be fetched from Origen, Minutius Felix, Cyprian, Arnobius, Lactantius, Euse- bius, and all the old apologists for the Christian religion, (some whereof I have briefly noted in the margin,'') who constantly pleaded this as a mighty and uncontrollable argument of the truth and divinity of their religion, and of their great usefulness to mankind ; nay, this miraculous power continued in the church some considerable time after Constantino and the world was become Christian, as appears from St. Basil, Nazianzen, and others :"" and though I do not give heed to all the miracles which are reported by St. Jerome in the lives of Hilarion, Paulus, and some others, or by Palladius in his Historia Lausiaca, yet doubtless many of them were very true and real ; God with- drawing this extraordinary power as Christianity gained faster footing in the world, and leaving the church to those standing methods by which it was to be managed and governed to the end of the world. And yet notwithstanding the ease was thus plain and evident, how much the world was beholden to Christians, yet were they looked upon as the pests of human society, counted and called the "common enemies of mankind," as Tertullian^ complains; that they were the causes of all public calamities, and that for their sakes it was that vengeance did so often remarkably haunt the Roman empire. This was the common outcry : if the city be besieged, (says Tertullian,*) if any thing happen ill in the fields, in the garrisons, in the islands, presently they cry out, "It is because of the Christians."" They conspire the ruin of 'I Orig. contr. Ccls. 1. i. s. 1. (j. 67 ; 1. iii. s. 24 ; 1. vii. s. 4. 67. Cypr. ad Donat. p. 5. :l(] Demctrian. p. 188. 192. Min. Fel. Octav. c. 27. Arnob. adv. gent. 1. i. p. 13. Lact. do orig. error. 1. ii. e, 15. Euseb. demonstr. Evang. 1. iii. p. 132. ■■ Naz. Orat, i. Apol. p. 35. August, do Civ. Dei. 1. xxii. c 8. Greg. Nyss. Orat. in suam ordinat. vol. i. p. 876. Athanas. do incarn. Verb. s. 48. ' Apol. c. 37. ' Ibid. c. 1. " Ibid. c. 40. PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. S3 good men, and thirst after the blood of the innocent, patronizing their hatred with this vain pretence, that the Christians are the cause of all public misfortunes and calamities. If Tiber overflow the walls, if the Nile do not (as it is wont) overflow the fields, if the heaven do not keep its accustomed course, if an earthquake happen, if a famine, or a plague, presently the cry is, " Away with the Christians to the lions." Thus Demetrian, the pro- consul of Africa, objected to St. Cyprian," that they might thank the Christians that wars did oftener arise, that plagues and famines did rage so much, and that immoderate and excessive rains hindered the kindly seasons of the year. The same Ar- nobius tells us,^ the heathens were wont to object at every turn, and to conclude it as sure as if it had been dictated by an oracle, that since the Christians appeared in the world, the world had been well-nigh undone, mankind has been overrun with infinite kinds of evils, and the very gods themselves had withdrawn that solemn care and providence wherewith they were wont to superintend human affairs. Nay, so hot and common was this charge amongst the Pagans, that when the Goths and Vandals broke in upon the Roman empire, St. Augustine^ was forced to write those excellent books, De Civitate Dei, purposely to stop the mouth of this objection ; as upon the same account and at his request, Orosius** wrote his seven books of History against the Pagans. Omitting some of the answers given by the fathers, (as being probably less solid, and not so proper in this case ; such as, that it was no wonder if miseries happened, and things grew worse in this old age of time, the world daily growing more feeble and decrepid ; and that these things had been foretold by God, and therefore must necessarily come to pass ; two ar- guments largely and strongly pleaded by St. Cyprian,'' that those evils were properly resolvable into natural causes ; and that every thing is not presently evil, because it crosses our ease and interest, as Arnobius answers.*^ Passing by these), I shall take notice only of two things which the Christians pleaded in this case. First, that the Gentiles should do very well to seek the true causes of these things nearer home, and to inquire whether it " Cj'pr. ad Demetr. p. 187. y Arnob. adv. gent. 1. i. p. 1. ^ Aid. Retractat. 1. ii. c. 43, « P. Oros. Praf. ad lib. Hist, ad D. Aug. ^ Ad Demet. 188, ^ Arnob. adv. gent. 1. i. p. 4, D 34 PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. was not for their own sakes that the Divine Providence was thus offended with them ; there being very just reasons to think so. Tertullian'^ points them to such causes as these : first, their horrible affronting- their natural notions of God, that " when they knew God they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful ; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened, and they changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made hke to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things;"^ as St. Paul had told them lono- before: and that therefore it was reasonable to suppose,*^ that God was more angry with them, who, instead of him, worshipped pieces of wood and statues, or at best genii and devils, than with those who sincerely paid their adorations to him alone. Secondly, passing by God, the great Master of all goodness and innocence, and the severe revenger of all impiety, they tumbled themselves in all manner of vice and wickedness ; and what wonder if the divine justice followed close at their heels? "You are angry (says Cyprian*^) that God is angry, as if in living ill you deserved well, and as if all that has happened to you were not less and lighter than your sins. And thou, De- metrian, who art a judge of others, be in this a judge of thyself; inspect the retirements of thy conscience, and behold thyself now, Avho shalt one day be seen naked by all, and thou wilt find thyself enslaved and led captive by some sins or other ; and why then shouldst thou wonder that the flames of the divine anger should rise higher, when the sins of men do daily administer more fuel to it?" An answer whicli he there prosecutes to very excellent purpose. Thirdly, their prodigious imthankfulness to God for all the former blessings they had received from him. So far as they were ungrateful, they were highly guilty, and God could not but punish them. Had they sought him, whom in part they could not but know, and been observant of him, they would in this case have found him a much more propitious than an angry Deity, as Tertullian tells them. Uj^on these and such like accounts they might well conclude it was, that the vengeance of God did press so hard upon them, and that therefore they had no true reason to lay the fault at any other door but their own. <* Apol. c. 40. <= Rom. i. 21—23. ' Apol. c. 41. Vid. Arnob. 1. i. p. G, 7. s Ad Dcmetr. 189, 190. PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. 35 Secondly, as to the thing itself, as it was charged upon them, they pointblank denied it to be true, and that for two reasons especially. First, because the world had been sadly and frequently pes- tered with such evils and miseries long before the Christian re- ligion appeared in it. " I pray, (says Tertullian,*') what miseries did overwhelm all the woi'Id, and even Rome itself, before the times of Tiberius, i. e. before the coming of Christ ? Have we not read of Hierapolis, and the islands of Delos, and Rhodes, and Cos, destroyed, with many thousands of men ? Does not Plato speak of the greatest part of Asia and Africa SAvallowed up by the Atlantic sea ? An earthquake drank up the Corinthian sea, and the force of the ocean rent olf Sicilia from Italy. Not to ask, where were the Christians, the great contemners of your gods, but where were your gods themselves, when the flood overran the world l Palestine had not yet re- ceived the Jewish nation out of Egypt, much less had the Chris- tians sat down there when Sodom and Gomorrah, and the ad- jacent parts, were burnt up by a shower of fire and brimstone, of which the country smells to this day. Nor could Tuscia and Campania complain of the Christians, when a fire from heaven destroyed the Vulsinii and the Pompeii. None, as yet, wor- shipped the true God at Rome, when Hannibal at Canna made such a slaughter of the Romans, that the very rings that he took (which were the honourable badges of none but Roman knights) were measured by the bushel. They were all your gods that then had the general worship, when the Gauls took the capitol itself." So smartly does that grave man retort their own arguments upon themselves. Arnobius fully and elegantly pursues this ;' that, in this respect, the former times were no better than these, which they so much complained of, and bids them run over the annals and records that were written in all languages, and they would find that all nations had frequently had their common miseries and devastations. The clearing of which was likewise the great design Orosius proposed to himself,*" in drawing down the history of the world through all the ages and generations of it. Secondly, because since the coming of Christianity, the world had been in a better and more prosperous state than it was '' Apol. c. 40. • Lib. i. p. 2, .3. ^ Praefat. ad lib. Hist, ad August. d2 3(> PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. before, especially -whenever the Christian rehgioit met with any favour and encouragement. The reason of it Tertullian gives :' " although M-e should compare present with former miseries, yet they are much lighter now, since God sent Christians into the world ; for since then, innocency has balanced the iniquities of the age, and there have been many who have interceded with heaven." The author of the Questions and Answers in Justin Martyr,"' (for that it was not Justin himself, I think no man can doubt that reads him, the man betraying himself openly enough to have lived in the times of prevailing Christianity,) putting this question. Whether Paganism was not the better religion, for- asmuch as under it there was great prosperity and abundance ? whereas it was quite otherwise since Christianity came in fashion : he answers, among other things, that (besides that plenty was no argument of the goodness of any religion. Christians being to be judged of rather by the holiness than the prosperity of their reli- gion) that there was so much the more abundance in these times of Christianity, by how much there were fewer wars than there were while Paganism governed the world. Never were wars more successfully managed, never was prosperity more triumphant, than when Christians met with kind entertainment. Melito, bishop of Sardis, in an oration which he presented to the emperor M. Antoninus in behalf of the Christians, (part whereof is yet extant in Eusebius,") tells him, that Christianity commencing under the reign of Augustus was a good omen of the prosperity of the empire, and that ever since the majesty of the Roman empire had increased : of whom he being the heir and successor, he could not better assure it to himself and his son, than by pro- tecting that religion that had been born and bred up together with the empire, and for which, his ancestors, amongst other religions, had had an esteem and honour ; that there could be no better argument that this religion contributed to the happiness of the empire, (with which it began and had grown up,) than that since the reign of Augustus no misfortune, but, on the con- trary, (according to all men's wishes,) every thing had happened to be magnificent and prosperous. Hence Eusebius notes," once and again, that the affairs of the empire commonly flourished while Christianity was protected ; but when that was persecuted, ' Apol. c. 40, "' Qurest. 126. " Hist. Eccl. 1. iv. c. 2. 6. o Vid. ibid. 1. vii. c. 1; 1. viii. c. 13. De Martyr. Palest, c. 3. PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. S7 things began to go to rack, and their ancient peace and prosperity- could not be retrieved till peace and tranquillity was restored to the Christians, Therefore Cyprian tells the pi'oconsul,P that their cruelty to the Christians was one of those crying sins that had provoked God to inflict so many heavy miseries upon them ; not only refusing to worship God themselves, but unjustly perse- cuting those innocent persons that did, with all the methods of rage and fierceness. So little hand had the Christians in entail- ing vengeance upon the world, that their enemies rather wilfully pulled it down upon their own heads. CHAPTER IV. THE CHARGES BROUGHT AGAINST THEM RESPECTING THEIR LIFE AND MANNERS. The primitive Christians accused of the grossest sins, sacrilege, sedition, treason, incest, murder, &<;. The particular consideration of these referred to their proper places. What they offered in the general for their vindication considered. They openly asserted their innocency, and appealed to the known piety of their lives. None accounted Christians, however eminent in profession, unless their lives answerable. Their abstaining from appearance of evil, or doing any thing that symbolized with the idolatrous rites of the heathens. Their being willing to be brought to the strictest trial, and to be severely punished, if found guilty of those crimes. Their complaints of being (generally) condemned merely for bearing the name of Christians. They greatly gloried in that title. This name prohibited by Julian, and Christians com- manded in scorn to be called Galileans. The Christians appealed for their vindication to the consciences of their impartial enemies, and by them acquitted. The testimonies of Pliny, Ser. Granianus, Antoninus Pius, AI. Antoninus, Trypho the Jew, and Apollo's oracle to this purpose. The excellency of Christians, if compared with tlie best of heathens. All such disowned for Christians as did not exactly conform to the rule and discipline of Christianity. All the attempts that had been hitherto made against the honour and reputation of Christians, seemed but like the first ■skirmishings of an army, in respect of the main battalia that was yet behind, the charge that was made against their moral carriage and behaviour : and here they were accused at every turn of no less than sacrilege, sedition, and high treason; of incest and |)roiniscuous mixtures ; of murder, and eating the flesh of infants at their sacramental feasts. These were s;id and P .\d Demct. p. lOO. 38 PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. horrid crimes, and (had they been true) would justly have made Christianity stink in the nostrils of all sober and considering men : but they were as false as they were black and hellish. The particular answers to these charges (together with some things relating to matters of worship) shall be considered here- after, accoi'ding as they fall in their more proper places : I shall only at present take notice of the general vindication which the Christians made of themselves, from these indictments that were brought in against them ; and the sum of what they pleaded lies especially in these three things. First, they did openly assert and maintain their innocency, and shew by their lives, as well as their Apologies, that they were men of quite another make and temper than their enemies did generally represent them. Their religion and way of life was admired by all. " Who (says St. Clement to the Co- rinthians 1) did ever dvvell amongst you, that did not approve of your excellent and unshaken faith ? that did not wonder at your sober and moderate piety in Christ ? You were forward to every good work, adorned with a most virtuous and venerable conversation, doing all things in the fear of God, and having his laws and commands written upon the tables of your hearts." They placed religion then not in talking finely, but in living- well. " Amongst us, (says Athenagoras,0 the meanest and most mechanic persons, and old women, although not able to discourse and dispute for the usefulness of their profession, do yet demonstrate it in their lives and actions: they do not indeed critically weigh their words, and recite elegant orations, but they manifest honest and virtuous actions : while being" bufiotted they strike not again, nor sue them at law that spoil and plunder them ; liberally give to them that ask, and love their neighbours as themselves. And this we do, because we are assured that there is a God that superintends human affairs, who made both us and the whole world ; and because we must give to him an account of all the transactions of our lives, there- fore we choose the most moderate, humane, and benign, and (to many) the most contemptible course of life ; for we reckon that no evil in this life can be so great, though Ave should be called to lay down our lives, Avhich ought to be esteemed little and of no value in comparison of that happiness which we hereafter 1 Clem. cp. ad Corinth, s. 1. '■ Leg. pro Christ, s. II. PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. 39 look for from the great Judge of the world, promised to those who are of an humble, benign, and moderate conversation." Clemens of Alexandria ^ gives us this short account of them : " As the fairest possession we give up ourselves to God, entirely loving him, and reckoning this the great business of our lives. No man is with us a Christian, or accounted truly rich, tem- perate, and generous, but he that is pious and religious ; nor does any further bear the image of God, than he speaks and be- lieves what is just and holy. So that this, in short, is the state of us who follow God : such as are our desires, such are our dis- courses ; such as are our discourses, such are our actions ; such as are our actions, such is our life : so universally good is the whole life of Christians.'' Certainly none were ever greater enemies to a naked profession, and the covering a bad life under the title of Christianity. Do any live otherwise than Christ hath com- manded, it is a most certain argument they are no Christians, though with their tongues they never so smoothly profess the Christian doctrine ; for it is not mere professors, but those who live according to their profession, that shall be saved, as Justin Martyr declares before the emperors : ' " Let no man (says Basil ") impose upon himself with inconsiderate words, saying, ' Though I be a sinner, yet I am a Christian, and I hope that title will be my shelter.' But hearken, sinner, all wicked men shall be bundled up together, and in the great day of the divine vengeance shall be indifferently thrown into those merciless and devouring flames." Nay, so careful were they to avoid all sin, that they stood at a wide distance from any thing that (though lawful in itself, 3'et) seemed to carry an ill colour with it. This, Origen " tells Celsus, was the reason why they refused to do any honour to an image, lest thereby they should give occasion to others to think that they ascribed divinity to them. For this reason they shunned all community with the rites and customs of the heathens, abstaining from things strangled, or that had been offered to idols, from frequenting the public baths, or going to the sights and shows, because they seemed to owe their original to idolatry, and were the occasion of many gross enormities. They refused to wear crowns of laurel, lest they should seem to « Cohort, ad gent. c. 12. i Apo]. i. s. 16". " Comment, in c. i. Kssjii. s. 64. * Lib. vii. s. (>. 40 PPvIMlTIVE CHRISTIANITY. piitioiiise the custom of the Gentiles, who were wont to do so in their sacred and solemn rites; as appeared eminently in the solemnities of the emperors Severus and Caracalla, when the tribune delivered the donative to the soldiers, and all came to receive it with crowns upon their heads, one of them brought his in his hand, and being demanded the reason, answered that he was a Christian and could not do it : which was the occa- sion of Tertullian's book De Corona Militis, wherein he sets himself to defend it. Secondly, they were willing to put themselves upon the strictest trial, and to undergo the severest penalties, if found guilty of those crimes that were charged upon them. So their apologist bespeaks the emperor : ^ " We beseech you (says he) that those things that are charged upon the Christians may be inquired into, and if they ])e found to be so, let them have their deserved punishment, nay, let them be more severely punished than other men ; but if not guilty, then it is not reasonable that innocent persons should suffer merely upon report and clamour." And speaking of those that only took sanctuary at the name of Christians, he adds, that those who lived not ac- cording to the laws of Christ, and were only called by his name, they begged of them that such might be punished. To the same purpose, Athenagoras,^ in his embassy, taking notice how their enemies laid wait for their lives and fortunes, loaded them with heaps of reproaches, charging them with things that never so much as entered into their minds, and of which their accusers themselves were most guilt}^ he makes this offer : " Let but any of us be convict of any crime, either small or great, and wc refuse not to be punished, nay, are ready to undergo the most cruel and heavy penalty ; but if we be only accused for our name, (and to this day all our accusations are but the figments of obscure and uncertain fame, no Christian having ever been convict of any fault,) then we hope it will become such wise, gracious, and mighty princes as you are, to make such laws as may secure us from those wrongs and injuries." But, alas ! so clear was their innocency, that their bitterest adversaries durst not suffer them to come to a fair open trial. " If you be so certain that we are guilty, (says TertuUian to the heathens,") why then are we not treated in the same nature with all male- y Just. Mait. Apol. i. s. 3. ' Leg. pro Christ, s. 2. " Apol. c. 2. PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. 41 factors, who have leave both by themselves and their advocates to defend their innocency, to answer and put in pleas, it being- unlawful to condemn any before they be heard, and have liberty to defend themselves ? Whereas Christians only are not per- mitted to speak any thing that might clear their cause, maintain the truth, and make the judge able to pronounce righteous sentence. It is enough to justify the public odium, if we do but confess ourselves Christians, without ever examining of the crime ; contrary to the manner of procedure against all other delinquents, whom it is not enough barely to charge to be murderers, sacrilegious, or incestuous, or enemies to the public, (the titles you are pleased to bestow upon us,) unless they also take the quality of the fact, the place, manner, time, partners, and accessories under examination. But no such favour is shewn to us, but we are condemned without any inquisition passed upon us." And good reason there was that they should take this course, seeing they could really find nothing to con- demn them for, but for being Christians, This one would think strange, especially amongst a people so renowned for justice and equity as the Romans were, and yet in these times nothing more ordinary. Therefore when Urbicius, the prefect of Rome, had condemned Ptolomasus merely upon his confessing himself a Christian,'' one Lucius, that stood by, cried out, " What strange course is this, what infamous misdemeanor is this man guilty of, that when he is no adulterer, fornicator, no murderer, no thief nor robber, thou shouldst punish him only because he calls ^liimself a Christian? Certainly, Urbicius, such justice as this does not become the piety of the emperor, or the philosophy of Cfesar his son, or the sacred and venerable senate." And Ter- tuUian tells us, *" it was the common accusation they had in their mouths, " such or such a one is a good man, only he is a Chris- tian ;" or, " I wonder at such a one, a wise man biit lately turned Christian," So Cyprian,*^ I remember, reduces his adversary to this unavoidable dilemma : " choose one of these two things ; to be a Christian, either is a fault, or it is not : if it be a fault, why dost thou not kill every one that confesses it 1 if it be not, why dost thou persecute them that are innocent?" Hence we find nothing more common in the old apologists, than complaints concerning the unreasonableness of being accused, condemned, ^ Just. Mart. Apol. ii. s. 2. <= Apol. c. 3. "^ Ad Demet. p. 190. 42 PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. and punished, merely for their name, this heing the first and great cause of all that hatred and cruelty that was exercised towards them : ^ it was the innocent name that was hated in them ; all the quarrel was about this title ; and when a Chris- tian was guilty of nothing else, it was this made him guilty, as Tertullian complains at every turn. The truth is, they mightily gloried in this title, and were ambitious to own it in the face of the Greatest danger : therefore when Attalus,nhe famous French martyr, was led about the amphitheatre, that he might be ex- posed to the hatred and derision of the people, he triumphed in this, that a tablet was carried before him with this inscription : THIS IS ATTALus THE CHRISTIAN.^ And SaDctus (another of them) being oft asked by the president what his name was, what his city and country, and whether he was a freeman or a servant ? answered nothing more to any of them than that he was a Christian, professing this name to be country, kindred, and all things to him. Nay, so great was the honour and value which they had for this name, that Julian the emperor, (whom we commonly call the Apostate,) endeavoured by all ways to sup- press it, that Avhen he could not drive the thing, he might at least banish the name out of the world ; and therefore did not only himself constantly call Christians Galileans,'' but made a law that they should be called only b}^ that name. But to return : the sum is this, the Christians were so buoyed up with the conscience of their innocency, that they cared not who saw them, Avere willing and desirous to be scanned and searched to the bottom, and to lie open to the view of all ; and therefore desired no other favour than that that Apology which Justin Martyr presented to them,' might be set out with the decree of the senate, that so people might come to the true knowledge of their case, and they be delivered from false suspicions, and those accusations, for which they had been undeservedly exposed to so many punishments. Thirdly, they appealed for their vindication to the judgment and consciences of their more sober and impartial enemies, and were accordingly acquitted by them, as guiltless of any heinous « Vid. Tertull. Apol. c. 1 — 3. Just. Mart. Apol. i. s. 4, '24. Athenag. leg. pro Christ, s. 2. f Euseb. Hist. Eccl. 1. v. c. 1. s Id. ibid. '' Greg. Naz. Invect. in Julian, i. p. 8). ' Apol. ii. s. 14. PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. 43 crimes. Pliny the Younger,'' being commanded by Uie emperor Trajan to give him an account of the Christians, tells him, " that after the best estimate that he could take, and the strictest inquisition that he could make by tortures, he found no worse of them than this : that they were wont to meet early for the performance of their solemn devotions, and to bind themselves under the most sacred obligations to commit no vice or wicked- ness ; and that their religion was nothing else but an untoward and immoderate superstition.'''' This is the testimony which that great man (who, being proconsul of Bithynia, was capable to satisfy himself, and who was no less diligent to search into the matter) gives concerning them. Next after him, Serenus Granianus,' (the proconsul of Asia,) writes to the emperor Adrian, Trajan"'s successor, to represent to him how unjust it Avas to put Christians to death, when no crime was duly laid to their charge, merely to gratify the tumultuous clamours of the people : to whom the emperor answers, that they should not be unjustly troubled ; that if any thing was truly proved against them, he should punish them according to the nature of the fault ; but if done out of malice or spite, he should then accordingly punish the accuser as a calumniator. Next to Adrian, Antoninus Pius,™ (if he be not mistaken for his successor Maidens,) in his epistle to the commons of Asia, tells them, that they had traduced the Christians, and had objected those crimes to them which they could not prove ; that they were more firm and undaunted in their profession than themselves, and had a greater freedom with and confidence towards God ; and that therefore he resolved to ratify and follow the determination of his father. After him comes M. Antoninus, who, having obtained that famous and signal victory against the Quades in Germany, confesses in his letter to the senate," (which letter, though I know it is ques- tioned by some learned men, as now extant, whether true and genuine, yet that there was such a letter is evident enough from Tertullian," who himself lived within a few years of that time, and appeals to it,) that it was clearly gotten by the prayers of the Christian legion which he had in his army, and therefore commands that none be molested for being Christians ; and that if any accuse a Christian for being such, Avithout a sufficient ^ Epist. 1. X. ep. 97. ' Euseb. Hist. Eccl. 1. iv. c. 8, .9. "' Just. Mart. Apol. i. s. 70. " Ibid. s. 7J. " Apol. c. 5. ct ad Scap. c. 4. 44 PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. crime proved against him, he shall be burnt alive for his accusa- tion : that a Christian, confessing himself to be one, shall be safe and secure, and that the governor of the province shall not drive him to renounce his profession ; and this he commands to be confirmed by the decree of the senate. So clear did the Chris- tians appear to their greatest enemies, especially in their more calm and sober intervals. Nay, Trypho the Jew (and that very notion speaks him enemy enough, yet) confesses them clear of those foul aspersions ; for when the Martyr had asked him,'' whether he disliked the Christians' manners and way of life, and whether he really believed that they eat men"'s flesh, and putting out the candles ran together in promiscuous mixtures? the Jew answered, that those things, whereof they were accused by many, Avere unworthy of belief, as being so extremely ab- horrent to human nature ; and that the precepts which are commanded in their gospel (which his curiosity had prompted him to read) were so great and admirable, that he supposed no man could be able to keep and obey them. And, to instance in no more, the heathen oracle itself pronounced in favour of the Christians ; *> for Apollo giving forth his oracles, not, as he was wont, by human voice, but out of a dark and dismal cavern, confessed it was because of just men that lived upon the earth ; and when Dioclesian inquired who those just men were, one of the heathen priests, that stood by, answered, that they were the Christians. This Constantine the Great tells us he himself heard, being then a young man, and in company at that time with the emperor Dioclesian, and he there solemnly calls God to witness for the truth of the story. From all which it appears how innocent the Christians were of those things which the Gentiles charged upon them, how infinitely strict and unblamable in their lives, and therefore triumphed over the heathens in the purity and innocency of their conversations. Origen tells Celsus,"" that the churches of God which had taken upon them the discipline of Christ, if compared to the common societies of men, were amongst them like lights in the world. " For who (says he) is there, but he must needs confess that the worser part of our church is much better than the popular assemblies I as for instance ; the church P Just. Mart. dial, cum Tryph. s. 10. T Euscb. de vit. Const. 1. ii. c. 50, 51. " Lib. iii. s. 29. PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. 45 of Gocl at Athens is meek and quiet, as endeavouring- to approve itself to the great God ; whereas now the popular assembly of Athens is seditious and tumultuous, and no ways to be compared with the church of God in that city. And the same may be said of the churches of God, and the vulgar assemblies which are at Corinth or Alexandria." So Minutius Felix:* "Should we Christians be compared with you, although our discipline may seem somewhat inferior, yet we should be found infinitely to transcend you. You forbid adultery, and then practise it ; we keep entirely to our own wives. You punish wickedness when committed ; with us, even a wicked thought is sin : you stand in awe of those who are conscious of your crimes ; we of nothing but our consciences, without which we cannot be. And last of all, it is with your party that the prison is filled and crowded : no Christian is there, unless such a one as is either a shame to his religion, or an apostate from it." And a little after he tells his adversary,' how much they exceeded the best philosophers, who were filthy and tyrannical, and only eloquent to declaim against those vices of which themselves were most guilty : that we Christians do not measure wisdom by men's habits, but by their minds and tempers, and do not speak great things, but live them ; having this to boast of, that we really attain to those things which they earnestly sought, but could not find. Thus Lactantius," having excellently discoursed of the prodigious debaucheries and wickednesses of the heathens : "But which of these things (says he) can be objected to our people, whose whole religion is to live 'without spot or blemish T from whence they might easily gather, had they any under- standing, that piety is on our side, and that they themselves are vile and impious." And Eusebius tells us," that in his time the Christian faith had, by gravity, sincerity, modesty, and holiness of life, so conquered all opposition, that none durst bespatter it, or charge it with any of those calumnies which the ancient enemies of our religion used to fasten upon it. What religion (says Arnobius^) can be truer, more useful, powerful, just, than this I which (as he elsewhere notes) renders men meek, speakers of truth, modest, chaste, charitable, kind, and helpful to all, as • Octav. c. 35. ' Ibid. c. 38, " De justit. 1. v. c. 9. * Hist. Eccl. 1. iv. c. 7. Vid. Constant. Orat. ad coetum. S. S, c. 23. y Adv. gent. 1. iv. p. 67. 46 PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. if most nearly related to us. And indeed this is the genuine and natural tendency of the Christian doctrine, and which it cannot but effect wherever it is kindly embraced and enter- tained. So true is that which Athenagoras ^ told the emperors, that no Christian could be a bad man, unless he were an hypocrite. And Tertullian" openly declares, that when men depart from the discipline of the gospel, they so far cease amongst us to be ac- counted Christians. And, therefore, when the heathens objected,'' that some that went under that name were guilty of great enor- mities, and inquired how comes such a one to be a cheat, if the Christians be so righteous ; how so cruel, if they be merciful ? he answers, that by this very thing they bore witness, that they who were real Christians Avere not such ; that there is a vast difference between the crime and the name, the opinion and the truth ; that they are not presently Christians that are called so, but cheat others by the pretence of a name ; that they shunned the company of such, and did not meet or partake with them in the offices of religion ; that they did not admit those whom mere force and cruelty had driven to deny Christianity, much less such as voluntarily transgressed the Christian disci- pline : and that, therefore, the heathens did very ill to call them Christians, whom the Christians themselves did disown, who yet were not wont to deny their own party. CHAPTER V. OF THE POSITIVE PARTS OF THEIR RELIGION : AND FIRST OF THEIR PIETY TOWARDS GOD. The religion of the ancient Christians considered, with respect to God, themselves, and other men. Their piety seen in two things — theii- detestation of idolatry, and great care about the matters of divine worship. What notion they had of idolatry ; their abhorrency of it. Their refusing to give divine honour to angels and created spirits: this condemned by the Laodicean council Their denying any thing of divine honour to martyrs and departed saints. The famous instance of the church of Smyrna, con- cerning St. Polycarp. St. Augustine''s testimonies to this purpose. Their mighty abhorrence of the heathen idolatry. The very making an idol accounted unlawful. Hatred of idolatry one of the first principles instilled into new converts. Their af- fectionate bewailing any that lapsed into this sin. Several severe penalties imposed * Leg. pro Christ, s. 2. =» Apol. c. 46. i" Ad Nation. 1. i. c. 5. PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. 47 by the ancient council of Illiberis upon persons guilty of idolatry. They were willing to hazard any thing rather than sacrifice to the gods. Constantius's plot to try the integrity of his courtiers. A double instance of the Christian soldiers in Julian's army : their active zeal in breaking the images of the heathen gods, and assaulting persons while doing sacrifice to them ; this whether justifiable. Notwithstanding all this, the Christians accused by the heathens of idolatry ; of worshipping the sun : whence that charge arose. Of adoring a cross. Of worshipping an ass's head. Christians called Asinarii. The absurd and monstrous picture of Christ mentioned by Tertullian. The occasion of this ridiculous fiction, whence. Having thus seen with how much clearness the ancient Chris- tians vindicated themselves from those unjust aspersions, which their spiteful and malicious adversaries had cast upon them ; we come now to take a more direct and positive view of their reli- gion, which, according to St. PauFs division,'^ we shall consider as to their piety towards God ; those virtues which more imme- diately concerned themselves ; and those which respected their behaviour and carriage towards others. Their piety towards God appeared in those two main instances of it, a serious and hearty detestation of idolatry, and a religious care about the concerns of divine worship. Idolatry in those times was the prevailing sin of the world, " the principal crime of mankind, the great guilt of the age, and the almost sole cause of men''s being brought into judgment ;" as what in a manner contains all sins under it, as Tertullian begins his book upon that subject ;'* a crime of the first rank, and one of the highest sorts of wickedness, as it is called by the most ancient council in Spain."^ They looked upon it as a sin that undermined the very being of the Deity, and ravished the honour of his crown. Before we proceed any further, we shall first inquire, what was the notion they generally had of idolatry ; and they then accounted that a man was guilty of idolatry, when he gave divine adoration to any thing that was not God ; not only when he worshipped a material idol, but when he vested any creature with that religious respect and veneration that was only due to God. " Idolatry (says Tertullian*^) robs God, denying him those honours that are due to him, and conferring them upon others ; so that at the same time it does both defraud him and reproach him :" and a little after he express!}* affirms,^' that what- ever is exalted above the standard of civil Avorship, in imitation <= Tit. ii. 12. "i De Idololut. c. 1. « Cone. Illibcrit. Can. 1. ' De Idololat. c. 11. e Ibid. c. 15. 48 PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. of the divine excellency, is directly made an idol : thus St. Greg-ory, for his solid and excellent learning called "the Divine,"'' (a title never given to any besides him, but to St. John the Apostle,) designs idolatry (which, says he, is the greatest evil in the world) to be " the translation of that worship that is due to the Creator upon the creature." Accordingly, we find them infinitely zealous to assert divine adoration as the proper and incommunicable prerogative of God alone, and absolutely re- fusing to impart religious worship to any, though the best of creatures ; surely, if any one would think, angels, the first rank of created beings, creatures of such sublime excellencies and perfections, might have challenged it at their hands ; but hear what Origen says to this: "we adore (says he') our Lord God, and serve him alone ; following the example of Christ, who, when tempted by the devil to fall down and worship him, answered, ' Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve ;' which is the reason why we refuse to give honours to those spirits that preside over human affairs, because we cannot serve two masters, to wit, God and mammon. As for these demons, we know that they have no administration of the con- veniences of man's life : yea, though we know that they are not demons, but angels, that have the government of fruits and seasons, and the productions of animals committed to them ; we indeed speak well of them, and think them happy that they are intrusted by God to manage the conveniencies of man"'s life ; but yet do not give them that honour that is only due to God ; for this neither does God allow of, neither do they desire it ; but equally love and regard us when we do not, as if Ave did sacrifice to them." And when Celsus a little before had smartly pressed him to do honour to demons, he rejects the motion with great contempt : " away (says he'') with this counsel of Celsus, who in this is not in the least to be hearkened to ; for the great God only is to be adored, and prayers to be delivered up to none but his only begotten Son, ' the first-born of every creature,"* that as our High-priest he may carry them to 'his Father and to our Father, to his God and to our God.'" It is true that the worship of angels did (and that very early, as appears from the apostle's caveat against it in his epistle to the Colossians) creep into some ^ Greg. Naz. Orat. Paneg, in Nativ. Clirist. Orat. xxxviii. p. 620. ' Contr, Gels. 1. viii. s. 56. k Ibid. b. 26. PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. 49 parts of the Christian church, but was always disowned and cried out against, and at last publicly and solemnly condemned by the Avhole Laodicean council : " It is not lawful (says the thirty-fifth canon of that council) for Christians to leave the church of God, and to go and invocate angels, and to make prohibited assemblies : if, therefore, any one shall be found de- voting himself to this private idolatry, let him be accursed ; forasmuch as he has forsaken the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and has delivered up himself to idolatry." From which nothing can be more clear, than that it was the sense of these fathers, that the worshipping of angels was not only downright idolatry, but a plain apostacy from the Christian faith. Nor were they more peremptory in denying divine honour to angels, than they were to martyrs and departed saints : for though they had a mighty honour and respect for martyrs, (as we shall take notice afterwards,) as those that had maintained the truth of their religion and sealed it with their blood, and therefore did what they could to do praise and honour to their memories, yet were they far from placing any thing of religion or divine adoration in it ; whereof it will be enough to quote one famous instance. The church of Smyrna,' writing to the churches of Pontus, to give them an account of the martyrdom of Polycarp their bishop, tells them, that after he was dead, many of the Christians were desirous to have gotten the remains of his body, to have given them decent and honourable burial, but were prevented in it by some Jews, who importuned the proconsul to the contrary, suggesting that the Christians, leaving their crucified Master, might henceforth worship Polycarp ; whereu])on they add, that this suggestion must needs proceed from ignorance of the true state of Christians : " this they did, (say they,) not considering how impossible it is that ever we should either forsake Christ, who died for the salvation of man- kind, or that we should worship any other. We adore him as the Son of God ; but the martyrs, as the disciples and followers of our Lord, we deservedly love for their eminent kindness to their own Prince and Master ; whose companions and fellow- disciples we also by all means desire to be." This instance is so much the more valuable in this case, not only because so plain and pertinent, but because so ancient, and from persons of so ' Euseb. Hist. Eccl. ). iv. c. 15. r>{) PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. great authority in the church : for this is not the testimony of any one private person, but of the whole church of Smyrna, according as it had been trained up under the doctrine and discipline of Polycarp, the immediate disciple of St. John. This was the doctrine and practice of Christians then, and it held so for some ages after, even down to the times of St. Augustine, when yet in many other things the simplicity of the Christian religion began to decline apace : " we set apart (says he"') no temples, nor priests, nor divine services nor sacrifices to martyrs, because they are not God ; but the same who is theirs, is our God : indeed we honour their memories, as of holy men who have stood for the truth even unto death, that so the true re- ligion might appear, and those which are false be convinced to be so. But who ever heard a priest standing at the altar, built for the honour and worship of God, over the body of the holy martyr, to say in his prayers, ' I oifer sacrifice to thee, Peter, or Paul, or Cyprian V for in such commemorations we offer to that God, who made them both men and martyrs, and has made them i)artners with holy angels in the heavenly glory ; and by these solemnities we both give thanks to the true God for the victories which they have gained, and also stir up ourselves, by begging his assistance, to contend for such crowns and rewards as they are possessed of; so that whatever offices religious men perform in the places of the martyrs, they are only ornaments to their memories, not sacrifices or divine services done to the departed, as if they were deities." More to the same purpose we may find in that place, as also in infinite other places of his works, where (were it worth the while) I could easily shew that he does no less frequently than expressly assert, that though the honour of love, respect, and imitation, yet no religious adoration is due either to angels, martyrs, or departed saints. But the great instance wherein the primitive Christians mani- fested their detestation of idolatry was, in resi)cct of the idolatrous worship of the heathen world, the denying and abhorring any thing of divine honour that Avas done to their gods. They looked upon the very making of idols (though with no intention to worship them) as an unlawful trade, and inconsistent with Christianity : " How have we renounced the devil and all his angels, (says TertuUian," meaning their solemn renunciation in "' Auffust. ck> Civ. Uei. 1. viii. c. 27. Vid, 1. xxii. c. 10.. " De Idololat. c. G. PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. 51 baptism,) if we make idols i nor is it enough to say, though I make them, I do not worship them ; there being the same cause not to make them that there is not to worship them, viz. the offence that in both is done to God; yet thou dost so far worship them, as thou makest them that others niay worship them :" and therefore he roundly pronounces," that no art, no profes- sion, no service whatsoever that is employed either in making or ministering to idols, can come short of idolatry. They startled at any thing that had but the least shadow of sym- bolizing with them in their idolatry : therefore the Ancyran councilP condemned them to a two years' suspension from the sacrament who sat down with their heathen friends upon their solemn festivals in their idol-temples, although they brought their own provisions along with them, and touched not one bit of what had been oftered to the idol. Their first care in instructing new converts, was to leaven them with the hatred of idolatry : " Those that are to be initiated into our religion, (says Origen,'') we do, before all things, instil into them a great dislike and con- tempt of all idols and images, and lift up their minds from wor- shipping creatures instead of God, to him who is the great Creator of the world." If any, through weakness, chanced at any time to lapse into this sin, how pathetically did they bewail it ! So Celerinus, in his epistle to Lucian,"" giving him an account of a woman, that to avoid persecution had done sacrifice, and thereby fallen from Christ, he bewails her as dead, tells him that it stuck so close to him, that though in the time of Easter, a time of festivity and rejoicing, yet he wept night and day, and kept company with sackcloth and ashes, and resolved to do so, till by the help of Christ and the prayers of good men she should, by repentance, be raised up again. The better to prevent this sin, (wherein weaker Christians were sometimes ensnared in those times of cruelty and persecution,) the discipline of the ancient church was very severe against it ; of which we can have no better evidence than to take a little view of the determinations relating to this case of that ancient council of Illiberis,* held some years before the time of Constantine ; there we find, that if any Christian after baptism took upon him the flamenship, or Dc Idololat. c. 11. Vid. c. f), 10. P Can. 7. 1 Adv. Cels. 1. iii. s. 15. •■ Inter Epist. Cypr. ep. xxi. p. 44, 45. ' Concil. lUiber, Can, 2. vid. not. Albaspin. p. 5. et de rit. Eccles. Obs. 22. e2 52 PRIMITIVE OHllISTIANITY. priesthood of the Gentiles, (an office ordinarily devolved upon the better sort, and which Christians sometimes either made suit for, to gain more favour Avith the people, or had it forced upon them by the laws of the country, so that they must either undergo it, or fly, and forfeit their estates,) such a one, no not at the hour of death, was to be received into the communion of the church. The reason of which severity was, because whoever underwent that office must do sacrifice to the gods, and entertain the people with several kind of sights, plays, and sports, which could not be managed without murders, and the exercise of all lust and filthiness, whereby they did double and treble their sin, as that council speaks.* If a Christian in that office did but allow the charges to maintain those sports and sights, (although he did not actually sacrifice, which he might avoid, by substituting a Gentile priest in his room,) he was indeed to be taken into com- munion at last, but was to undergo a very severe penance for it all his life. Nay, although he did neither of the former, yet if he did but wear a crown," (a thing usually done by the heathen priests,) he was to be excluded from communion for two years together. If a Christian went up to the capitol," (probably out of curiosity,) only to see the sacrifices of the Gentiles, and did not see them, yet he should be as guilty as if he had seen them, his intention and will being the same, as the learned Albaspine (and I think truly) understands the canon -J and in such a case, if the person was one of the faithful, he was not to be received till after ten years' repentance. Every master of a family was com- manded to suffer no little idols or images to be kept in his house, to be worshipped by his children or servants ; but if this could not be done without danger of being betrayed and accused by his servants, (a thing not unusual in those times,) that then, at least, he himself should abstain from them ; otherwise to be tlnown out of the church. JJeing imbued with such principles, and trained up under such a discipline as this, it is no wonder if they would do or suffer any thing rather than comply with the least symptom of idolatry. They willingly underwent banish- ment and confiscation ; amongst several of which sort, Caldonius tells Cyprian of one Bona,"' who, being violently drawn by her husband to sacrifice, they b}' force guided her hand to doit, cried < Vid. Can. 3. " Can. f);'). >^ Can. 59. y Can. 41. ^ Inter. Epist. Cypr. c. xxiv. p. 49. PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. 53 out and protested against it, that it was not she but they that did it, and was thereupon sent into banishment. They freely hiid down their greatest honours and dignities, rather than by au}^ idohTtrous act to offer violence to their consciences ; whereof Oonstantius, the father of Constantine, made this wise experi- ment :" he gave out that all the officers and great men of tlie court should either do sacrifice to the gods, or immediately quit his service, and the offices and preferments which they held under him ; whereupon many turned about, while others re- mained firm and unshaken : upon this, the prudent and excel- lent prince discovered his plot, embraced, commended, and ad- vanced to greater honours those who were faithful to their re- ligion and their conscience ; reproaching and turning off those Avho were so ready to acquit and forfeit them. Thus Jovianus,'' a man of considerable note and quality, and an officer of great place in Julian's army, when the emperor sent out his edict that all the soldiers should either sacrifice or lay down their arms, presently threw away his belt, rather than he Avould obey that impious command ; though the emperor, at that time, for reasons of state, would not suffer him to depart. And after the death of Jidian, when by the unanimous vote of the whole army he was chosen emperor, he utterly refused it, till the army had renounced their pagan idolatry and superstition. And though, it is true, that life is dearest to men of all things in this world, yet how cheerfully did they choose rather to shed their blood than to de- file their consciences with idolatry ; of which Eusebius gives us many instances ; and, indeed, this was the common test in those times, either sacrifice or die. Phileas, bishop of Thmuis,'' in a letter to his people, giving them an account of the martyrdoms that happened at Alexandria, tells them, that many, after having endured strange and unheard-of torments, were put to their choice, whether they would sacrifice, and be set at liberty, or re- fuse, and lose their heads ; whereupon all of them, without any ■ hesitation, readily went to embrace death ; knowing well how the scripture is, " that whoever sacrifices unto strange gods shall be cut off;"' and again, " thou shalt have no other gods but me." And in the next chapter, Eusebius tells us of a whole city of Christians in Plirygia, which, together with all the men, women, « Euseb. do vit. Const. 1. i. c. 19. *> Socrat. Hist. Eccl. 1. iii. c. 22. ■■ Euseb. Hist. Eccl. 1. viii. c. 10. 54 PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. and cbildion, was burnt to ashes, for no other reason, but because they universally confessed themselves to be Christians, and re- fused to obey those that commanded them to worship idols : in- stances of which kind there are enough to be met with in the histories of the church. And so fixed and unmoveable were they in this, that no pro- mises or hopes of reward, no fear or threatening, could either tempt or startle them ; a memorable passage or two that we meet withal to this purpose : it was a custom amongst the Romans to shew some respect and honour not only to the em- perors themselves, but even to their statues and images, by bowing the body, or some other act of external veneration. Now Julian the emperor'^ (whose great design was to reduce all men, but especially his army, back to paganism and idolatry) made use of this crafty project ; he placed the pictures of Jupiter, and other heathen gods, so close to his own statues, that they could not bow to the one but they must also to the other ; po- litically reducing them to this strait, that either they must refuse to pay civil honour to their prince, (which had been a sufficient crime against them,) or seem at least to do honour unto the gods ; with this device the less wary and cautelous were en- trapped ; ^ but others, that were more pious and prudent, chose rather to deny the prince that civil homage, and fall into the hands of martyrdom, than, by such an ambiguous adoration, seem to patronise idolatry. At another time he fell upon this stratagem : upon a solemn day, when the em- perors were wont to bestow largesses upon the soldiers, he caused the army to be called before him, setting then in great pomp and splendour, and a large donative of gold to be laid on the one side, and an heap of frankincense, with fire by it, on the other; proclamation being made, that they that would sao'ifico the one, should have the other. By this means many of the Christian soldiers were ensnared, performed the sacrifice, received the donative, and went home jolly and secure. But being at dinner with their companions, and drinking to each other, (as the custom was,) with their eyes lift up, and calling upon Clirist, and making the " sign of the cross," as oft as they took the cup into their hands, one at the table told them, be ''. fiivg. Naz. Ural, iiivcct. i. in Julian. Oiat. xiii. p. fMI. Vid. Sozoni. Hist. Eccl. 1. v. t. 17. *= (jreg. Naz. ibid. p. 84. PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. 55 wondered how tliey could call upou Christ, whom they had so lately abjured. Amazed at this, and asking how they had ab- jured him, they were told, that they had sacrificed, which was all one as to deny Christ. Whereupon starting up from the table, they ran up and down the market-place in a furious and frantic manner, crying out, " We are Christians, we are Chris- tians in heart and truth ; and let all the world take notice that there is hut one God, to whom we live, and for whom we will die. We have not broken the faith which we swore to thee, blessed Saviour, nor renounced our profession. If our hands be guilty, our hearts are innocent. It is not the gold that has corrupted us, but the emperor^s craftiness hath deceived us." And with that running to the emperor, they threw down their gold before him, with this address : " We have not, sir, received a donative, but are condemned to die. Instead of being honoured, we are vilified and disgraced : take this largess, and give it to your soldiers ; as for us, kill us, and sacrifice us to Christ, whom alone we own as our highest Prince. Return us fire for fire, and for the ashes of the sacrifice reduce us to ashes. Cut off those hands, which we so wickedly stretched out ; those feet that carried us to so great a mischief. Give others the gold, who may have no cause to repent of it ; for our part, Christ is enough for us, Avhom we value instead of all things." With this noble and generous resolution, though the emperor was highly enraged, yet because he envied them the honour of martyrdom, he would not put them to death, but banished them, and inflicted other penalties which might sufficiently evidence his rage against them. Nay, with so warm a zeal were they acted against idolatry, that many of them could not contain themselves from falling- foul upon it, wherever they met it, though with the immediate hazard of their lives. So Romanus,^ (deacon and exorcist of the church of CiBsarea,) seeing great multitudes of people at Antioch ■flocking to the temples, and doing sacrifice to the gods, came to them, and began very severely to reprove and reproach them ; for which being apprehended, after many strange and cruel usages he was put to death with all imaginable pain and torture. Thus Apphianus, (a young man,) when the criers by proclama- tion summoned all the inhabitants of Cffisarea to sacrifice to the f Euseb. de mart. Palest, c, 2. 56' PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. gods, the tribunes particularly reciting every man's name out of a book, to the great terror of all that were Christians, privately and unknown to us, (says Eusebius,'^ who lived at that time in the same house with him,) stole out, and getting near Urbanus the president, (who was then compassed about with a guard of soldiers,) just as he was about to ofter sacrifice, caught hold of his right hand, which he grasped so fast, that he forced him to let fall the sacrifice, gravely admonishing him to desist from such errors and vanities : " clearly shewing, (says the historian,) that true Christians are so far fi-om being drawn from the worship of the true God, that by threatenings and torments they are rather heightened into a greater and more ingenuous freedom and bold- ness in the profession of the truth." For this fact, the 3^oung man Avas almost torn in pieces by the soldiers, whose rage and fierceness could scarce suffer him to be reprieved for acuter tortures, which were exercised towards him with all possible cruelty ; and \vlien all could do no good upon him, he Avas thrown half dead into the sea. The like we read of three fa- mous Christians at Merum, a city in Phrygia,'' where, when the governor of the province, under Julian the Apostate, had com- manded the heathen temple to be opened, they got by night into the temple, and broke to pieces all the statues and images of the gods. Whereupon, when a general persecution was like to arise against all the Christians of the city, that the ignorant and innocent might not suffer, the authors of the fact came of their own accord to the judge, and confessed it ; who offered them pardon if they would sacrifice, which they rejected with disdain, and told him, they were much readier to endure any torments, and death itself, than to be defiled with sacrificing. And accordingly were first treated with all sorts of torments, and then burnt upon an iron grate, retaining their courage to the last, and took their leave of the governor with this sar- casm : " If thou hast a mind, Amachius, to eat roast meat, turn us on the other side, lest we be but half roasted, and so prove ungrateful to thy taste." So mightily did a restless passion for the divine honour possess the minds of those primitive Christians. And though it is true, such transports of zeal are not ordinarily warrantable, (for which reason the council of Illiberis ' justly prohibited those who were killed in the defacing and demolishing y Eiiseb. de mart. Palest, c. 4. ^ Socrat. Hist. Eccl. 1. iii. c. 15. ' Ciin. 60. PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. 57 idols, to be reckoned in the number of martyrs,) yet do they sufficient!}^ shew what a spirit of eagerness and activity ruled in those times against the false religions of the world. By all this we may see how unjustly the Christians were tra- duced and accused for idolaters. Three things were commonly charged upon them : that they worshipped the sun, the cross, and an ass"'s head. For the first, their worshipping the sun, Tertullian answers,'' that the mistake arose from a double cause, partly that the Christians of those times did generally pray to- ward the east and the sun rising, which the heathens themselves also did, though upon different grounds ; and partly because they performed the solemnities of their religion upon the day that was dedicated to the sun, which made the Gentiles suspect that they worshipped the sun itself. They were next charged with wor- shipping crosses ; a charge directly false. As for crosses, (says Octavius,') we neither desire nor Avorship them ; it is you who consecrate Avooden gods, that perhaps adore wooden crosses as jiarts of them : for what else are your ensigns, banners, and colours, with which you go out to war, but golden and painted crosses ? The very trophies of your victory do not only resemble the fashion of a simple cross, but of a man that is fastened to it. The very same answer which Tertullian "^ also returns to this charge. The occasion of it, no doubt, was the Christians' talking of and magnifying so much their crucified Master, and their almost constant use of the sign of the cross, which (as we shall see afterwards) they made use of even in the most common actions of their lives : but for paying any adoration to a ma- terial cross, was a thing to which those times were the greatest strangers. Othervi^isei understanding the cross for him that hung upon it, they were not ashamed (with the great apostle) " to glory in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ," and to count it the matter of their highest joy and triumph; but the absurdest part of the charge Avas, that they Avorshipped the head of an ass. I hear, (says the heathen in Minutius Felix,") that being .se- duced by I knoAv not Avhat fond persuasion, they Avorship the consecrated head of an ass, one of the filthiest creatures : a religion fitly calculated for pei'sons of such a dull and stupid disposition. Hence Tertullian tells us,° that Christians were ^ Apol. c. 16. ' Mill. Fel. Octav. c. 29. "' Apol. c. 16. " Octav. c. 9. " Apol. c. 16. Vid. ad Nation. 1. i, c. 14. 58 PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. called asinarii, " ass-worshippers ;" and that Christ was painted, and pubhcly exposed, by the bold Avicked hand of an apostate Jew, with asses' ears, one of his feet hoofed, holding a book in his hand, and having a gown over him, with this inscription : deus CHRisTiANORUM oNONYCHiTEs,^ " The ass-lioofed God of the Chris- tians." A most ridiculous representation, and the issue of the most foolish spite and malice. " When I saw it, (says he,) I laughed both at the title and the fashion.'" This, Octavius tells his adversary,'' was the result and spawn of lying fame, begot and nourished by the father of lies : for who (says he) can be so silly as to worship this i or who can be so much more silly as to believe it should be worshipped ? unless it be that you yourselves do consecrate whole asses in the stable with your goddess Epona, and religiously adorn them in the solemnities of Isis, and both sacrifice and adore the heads of rams and oxen. You make gods of a mixture of a goat and a man, and dedicate them with tlie faces of dogs and lions. More he has there to the same purpose, as Tertullian also had answered the same thing before him. The true ground of this ridiculous charge (as Tertullian observes"^) was a fabulous report that had been a long time common amongst the heathens, that the Jews, when wandering in the wilderness, and almost ready to die of thirst, were con- ducted by wild asses to a fountain of water ; for which great kindness, they formed the shape of an ass, and ever after wor- shipped it with divine honours. This is confidently reported, both by Tacitus^ and Plutarch,' as it had been many years be- fore by Appio the Alexandrian, in his books against the Jews; and by this means the heathens, Avho did frequently confound the Jews and Christians, came to form and fasten this charge upon them, when it was equally false in respect of both. For, as Tertullian observes," the same Tacitus, who reports this, tells us in another place, that when Pompey, at the taking of Je- rusalem, presumptuously broke into the holy of holies, whither none but the high-priest might enter, out of a curiosity to pry into the most hidden secrets and arcana of their religion, he found no image at all there ; whereas, (says Tertullian,) had they worshipped any such thing, there had been no likelier place 1' Dc variis luijus vocis Icctioiiibus. Vid. Rigiilt. in loc. et Voss. dc Idol. 1. iii. c. 75. 1 Octiiv. c. 28. ' Vid. ctiam ad Nation. 1. i. c. 11. ■' Tacit. Hist. 1. v. c. 4. ' Plut. sympos. 1, iv. qua;st. 5, p. G70. " Apol. c. IG. PEIMITIYE CHRISTIANITY. 59 to have met with it, and therefore brands him with the charge of the most l3''ing historian in the world. And thns we see how the ancient Christians manifested and maintained their love and piety towards God, by a most vigorous and hearty opposition of that idolatry, that reigned so uncontrollably in the heathen world. CHAPTER VI. OF CHUIICIIES AND I'LACES OF PUI5LIC WORSHIP IN THE I'lUMlTIVE TIMES. Place, a circumstance necessary to every action. The piety of Christians in founding places for the solemnities of religion. They had distinct and separate places for their public assemblies, even in the apostles' times. This proved out of the Ncv/ Testa- ment, as also in the succeeding ages, from the testimonies of the fathers and heathen writers. The common objection of the Gentiles, that Christians had no temples, con- sidered and answered. Churches increased as Christianity met with favourable en- tertainment : restored and repaired by Dioclcsian, Maximinus, Constantine. The fashion of their churches, oblong : built towards the east. The form of their churches described. The vcstihulum, or porch. The nartkea', and what in it. The nave, or body of the church. The umbo, or reading pew, the station of the faithful. The UpaTi7ov, or chancel. The altarium, or Lord's table. The bishop's throne, and seats of the presbyters. The diaconicon, what. The protJiesis. Christians then beautified their churches. Whether they had altars in them. Decent tables for the celebra- tion of the divine offices. Those frequently by the fathers styled altars, and in what sense. They had no such gaudy altars as the heathens had in their temples, and the papists now in the churches. Altars, when begun to be fixed and made of stone. Made asylums and places of refuge, and invested with many privileges by Chi'istian emperors. No images in their churches for above four hiuidred years, proved out of the fathers. Pictures in churches condemned by the council of Illiberis. An account of Epiphanius's tearing the picture of Christ in the church of Anablatha ; and the great force of the argument thence against image worship. Christian churches, when first fonnally consecrated. The encccnia of the ancient church. Our wakes or feasts in memory of the dedication of particular churches. What incomes or revenues they had in the first ages. Particular churches had some standing revenues even under the . heathen emperors. These much increased by the piety of Constantine and the first Christian princes ; their laws noted to that purpose. Their reverence shewed at their going into churches, and during their stay there, oven by the emperors themselves. The primitive Christians were not more heartily zealous against the idolatrous worship of the heathen gods, than they were religiously observant of whatever concerned the honour and M'orship of the true, as to all the material parts and circum- GO PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. stances of it ; as will easily appear, if we consider what care tliey had about tlie place, time, persons, and both the matter and the manner of that worship that they performed to God. Under each of which we shall take notice of what is most con- siderable, and does most properly relate to it, so far as the records of those times give us an account of it. Place is an inseparable circumstance of religious worship ; for every body, by the natural necessity of its being, requires some determinate place either for rest or motion. Now the worship of Clod being in a great part an external action, especially when performed by the joint concurrence of several persons, does not only necessarily require a place, but a place conveniently ca- pacious of all that join together in the same public actions of re- ligion : this reason put all nations, even by the light of nature, upon erecting public places for the honour of their gods, and for their own conveniency in meeting together to pay their religious services and devotions. But my present inquiry reaches no further than the primitive Christians ; not whether the}^ met to- gether for the discharge of their common duties, (which I sup- pose none can doubt of,) but whether they had churches, fixed and appropriate places, for the joint performance of their public offices: and that they had, even in those early times, will, I think, be beyond all dispute, if we take but a short survey of those first ages of Christianity. In the sacred story, we find some more than probable footsteps of some determinate places for their solemn conventions, and peculiar only to that use. Of this nature was that virepMov, or "upper room,''''''' into which the apostles and disciples (after the return from the ascension of our Saviour) went up, as into a place commonly known and separate to that use, there by fasting and prayer to make choice of a new apostle ; and this supposed by a very ancient tradition to have been the same room wherein our Saviour, the night before his death, celebrated the passover with his disciples, and instituted the Lord"'s supper. Such a one, if not (which I rather think) the same, was that one place,'' wherein they were all assembled with one accord upon the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Ghost visibly came down upon them : and this the rather, be- cause the multitude (and they too strangers of every nation under heaven) came so readily to the place upon the first rumour " Actsi. 13. >= Acts ii. 1. PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. Gl of so strange an accident, which could hardly have been, had it not been commonly known to be the place where the Christians used to meet together. And this very learned men take to be the meaning of that. Acts ii. 46 : " they continued daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread, Kar oIkov, (not as we render it, from house to house, but) at home,'' as it is in the margin ; or, " in the house they eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart :" i. e. when they had performed their daily devotions at the temple, at the accustomed hours of prayer they used to return home to this upper room, there to celebrate the holy eucharist, and then go to their ordinary meals. This seems to be a clear and unforced interpretation, and to me the more probable, because it immediately follows upon their as- sembling together in that one place at the day of Pentecost ; which room is also called by the same name of " house," at the second verse of that chapter. And it is no ways unlikely, (as Mr. Mede conjectures,) but that when the first believers " sold their houses and lands, and laid the money at the apostles' feet," to supply the necessities of the church, some of them might give their houses (at least some eminent room in them) for the church to meet and perform their sacred duties : which also may be the reason why the apostle, writing to the particular Chris- tians, speaks so often of " the church that was in their house :" which seems clearly to intimate, not so much the particular persons of any private family, living together under the same band of Christian discipline, as that in such or such a house, (and more especially in this or that room of it,) there was the constant and solemn convention of the Christians of that place, for their joint celebration of divine worship. And this will be further cleared by that famous passage of St. Paul, where taxing the Corinthians for their irreverence and abuse of the Lord's supper, one greedily eating before another, and some of them to great excess ; " What, (says he,^) have ye not houses to eat and to drink in I or despise ye the church of God f Where that by church is not meant the assembly meeting, but the place in which they used to assemble, is evident, partly from what went before; for "their coming together in the church," verse 18, is expounded by " their coming together into one place," verse 20 : plainly arguing that the apostle meant not the persons but the y 1 Cor. xi. 22. G2 PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. place ; partly from tbc opposition which he makes between the church and their own private houses. If they must liave such irregular banquets, they had houses of their own, where it was much fitter to do it, and to have their ordinary repast, than in that place which was set apart for the common exercises of re- ligion, and therefore ought not to be dishonoured by such ex- travagant and intemperate feastings ; for which cause he enjoins them, in the close of that chapter, " that if any man hunger, he should eat at home.*''' And that this place was always thus un- derstood by the fathers of old, were no hard matter to make out ; as also by most learned men of later times, of which it shall suffice to intimate two of our own, men of great name and learning, who have done it to great satisfaction.^ Thus stood the case during the apostles' times : for the ages after them we find that the Christians had their fixed and definite places of worship, especially in the second century : as, had we no other evidence, might be made good from the testimony of the author of that dialogue in Lucian,"* (if not Lucian himself, of which I see no great cause to doubt,) who lived under the reign of Trajan, and who expressly mentions that house or room wherein the Christians were wont to assemble together. And Clemens'' (in his famous epistle to the Corinthians) assures us, that Christ did not only appoint the times when, the persons by whom, but the places where he would be solemnly served and worshipped. And Justin Martyr expressly affirms,*^ that upon Sunday, all Christians (whether in town or country) used to assemble together in one place ; which could hardly be done, ^ had not that place been fixed and settled. The same we find afterwards in several places of Tertullian,'' who speaks of their coming into the church and the house of God, which he elsewhere calls the " house of our dove ;" i. e. our innocent and dove-like re- ligion ; and there describes the very form and fashion of it. And in another place, speaking of their going into the water to be baptized, he tells us,*" they were wont first to go into the church to make their solemn renunciation before the bishop. About this time, in the reign of Alexander Severus the emperor, (who began his reign about the year 222,) the heathen historian tells '• Nic. Full. Misc. Sacr. 1. ii. c. I). Medc, p. 105. " Philopatr. vol. ii. p. 1007. *> Sect. 40. '• Apol. i. s. 67. J De Idolol. c. 7. p. 88. Adv. Valentin, c. 3. " De Corona Mil. c. .3. PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. 63 us,* that when there was a contest between the Christians and the vintners abont a certain pubhc pkice, which the Christians had seized and challenged for theirs, the emperor gave the cause for the Christians against the vintners ; saying, " it was much better that God should be worshipped there any ways, than that tlie vintners should possess it." If it shall be said, that the heathens of those times generally accused the Christians for having no temples, and charged it upon them as a piece of. atheism and impiety ; and that the Christian apologists did not deny it, as will appear to any that will take the pains to examine the places alleged in the margin.^ To this the answer, in short, depends upon the notion which they had of a temple, by which the Gentiles understood the places devoted to their gods, and wherein their "deities were inclosed and shut up ; places adorned with statues and images, with fine altars and ornaments. And for such temples as these, they freely confessed they had none, no, nor ought to have ; for that the true God did not (as the heathens supposed theirs) " dwell in temples made with hands," nor either needed nor could possibly be honoured by them : and therefore they purposely abstained from the word " temple," and I do not remember that it is used by any Christian writer for the place of the Christian assemblies, for the best part of the first three hundred years. And yet those very writers who deny Christians to have had any temples, do at the same time ac- knowledge that they had their meeting places for divine worship, their conveiiticula, as Arnobius calls them,'' and complains they were furiously demolished by their enemies. If any desire to know more concerning this, as also that Christians had ap- propriate places of worship for the greatest part of the three first centuries, let him read a discourse purposely written upon this subject by a most learned man of our own nation:" nor in- deed should I have said so much as I have about it, but that I had noted most of these things before I read his discourse upon that subject. Afterwards their churches began to rise apace, according as they met with more quiet and favourable times ; especially ' Lamprid. in vit. Alex. Sever, c. 49. e Min. Fel. Octav. c. 8. et S2. Arnob. adv. gent. 1. vi. p. ii?>. Lact. de Orig. error. 1. ii. e. 2. '' Lib. iv. p. 07. ' Jos. Mode's Discourse concerning Churches, oper. par. i. 1. ii. ^4- PRIMITIVE OHIUSTIANITY. Tinder Valerian, Gallienus, Claudius, Aurelian, and some other emperors : of M'hicli times Eusebius tells us,"" that the bishops met with the highest respect and kindness, both from people and governors ; and adds, " but who shall be able to reckon up the innumerable multitudes that daily flocked to the faith of Christ, the number of congregations in every city, those famous meetings of theirs in their oratories, or sacred places, so great, that not being content with those old buildings which they had before, they erected from the very foundations more fair and spacious churches in every cityr"* This was several years before the times of Constantine, and yet even they had their churches of ancient date. This indeed was a very serene and sunshiny season ; but, alas, it begun to darken again, and the clouds re- turned after rain ; for in the very next chapter he tells us, that in the reign of Dioclesian there came out imperial edicts, com- manding all Christians to be persecuted, the bishops to be im- prisoned, the holy Bible to be burnt, and their churches to be demolished and laid level with the ground ; which how many they were may be guessed at by this, that (as Optatus tells i;s,' there were about this time above forty hasllicce or churches in Rome only. Upon Constantine's coming into a partnership of the empire, the clouds began to disperse and scatter; and Maximinus,'" (who then governed the eastern parts of the empire,) a bitter enemy to Christians, was yet forced by a public edict to give Christians the free liberty of their religion, and leave to repair and rebuild, ra KvpiaKa ra oiKela, their churches ; " which shortly after, they every where set upon, raising their churches from the ground to a vast height, and to a far greater splendour and glory than those which they had before, the em- perors giving all possible encouragement to it by frequent laws and constitutions ; the Christians also themselves contributing towards it with the greatest cheerfulness and liberality, even to a magnificence comparable to that of the Jewish princes towards the building of Solomon's temple, as Eusebius tells them,'' in liis oration at the dedication of the famous church at Tyre. And no sooner was the whole empire devolved upon Constantine,^ but he published two laws, one to prohibit pagan worship, the other commanding churches to be built of a nobler size and ^ Hist. Keel. 1. viii. c. 1. ^ Dc schism. Doiiat. 1. ii. p. 40. '" Euseb. 1. ix. c. 10. " Id. 1. X. c. 2. o Ibid. c. 4. p Euscb. dc vit. Const. 1. ii. c. 45, 46. PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. Gf) capacity than before ; to which purpose he directed his letters to Eusehius and the rest of the bishops, to see it done within, their several jurisdictions, charging also the governors of the provinces to be assisting to them, and to furnish them with whatever was necessary and convenient.'' Insomuch, that in a short time the world was beautified with churches and sacred oratories, both in cities and villages, and in the most barbarous and desert places, called KvpiaKu, says the historian, (from > whence our kirk and church,) the Lord"'s houses, because erected not to men, but to the honour of our Lord and Saviour. It were needless to insist any longer upon the piety of Christians in building churches in and after the time of Constantine, the instances being so vastly numerous ; only I cannot omit wliat Nazianzen '' reports of his own father, who (though bishop of a very small and inconsiderable diocese, yet) built a famous church almost wholly at his own charge. Thus we have seen that, from the very infancy of the gospel, ^ the Christians always had their settled and determinate place of divine worship ; for the form and fashion of their churches, it was for the most part oblong, to keep (say some'^) the better correspondence with the fashion of a ship, the common notion ,- and metaphor by which the church was wont to be represented, and to put us in mind that we are tossed up and down in the world, as upon a stormy and tempestuous sea, and that out of the church there is no safe passage to heaven, the country we all hope to arrive at. They were generally built towards the east, (towards which also they performed the more solemn parts of their worship, the reasons whereof we shall see afterwards in its due place,) following herein the custom of the Gentiles, though upon far other grounds than they did ; and this seems to have obtained from the first ages of Christianity ; sure I am, it was so in Tertullian''s time, who, opposing the plain and simple way of the orthodox assemblies to the skulking and clancular con- venticles of the heretics, who, serpent-like, crept about in holes and corners, says, ' " the house of our dove-like religion is simple, built on high and in open view, and respects the light as the figure of the Holy Spirit, and the east as the representation of Christ." It cannot be thought that in the first ages, Avhile 1 Oral, de laud. Const, c. 7. ■• Ornt. funolir. in laud. Patr. Oral. xfv. p. 31.3. ' Constit, Apost. 1. ii. c, 57. ' Adv. Valentin, c. 3. 66 PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. the flames of perseeutiou raged about their ears, the Christian clinrehes should be very stately and magnificent, but such as the condition of those times would bear, their splendour in- creasing according to the entertainment that Christianity met withal in the world, till the empire becoming Christian, their temples rose up into grandeur and gallantry, as amongst others may appear by the particular description which Ensebius makes of the church of Tyre," mentioned before, and that which Con- stantine built at Constantinople in honour of the apostles, both which were incomparably sumptuous and magnificent. 1 shall not undertake to describe at large the exact form, and the several parts and dimensions of their churches, (which varied somewhat according to different times and ages,) but briefly reflect upon such as were most common and remark- able. At the entrance of their churches (especially after they "^ began to arrive at more perfection) was the vestihulum, (called also atrium and Trpovdov,) the " porch," in greater churches of somewhat larger capacity, adorned many times with goodly cloisters, marble columns, fountains and cisterns of water, and covered over, for the conveniency of those that stood or walked there. Here stood the lowest order of penitents, begging the prayers of the faithful as they went in. For the church itself, it usuall)'- consisted of three parts : the first was the narthex, (which we have no proper word to render by,) it was that part of the church that lay next to the great door by which they entered in : in the first part of it stood the catechumens, or first learners of Christianity ; in the middle the energumeni, or those who were possessed by Satan ; and in this part also, stood the font, or place of baptismal initiation ; and towards the upper end was the place of the hearers, who were one of the ranks of penitents. The second part contained the middle or main body of the church, (called by the Greeks v«o9, by the Latins navls, from whence our term the " nave"" of the church comes,) where the faithful assembled for the celebration of divine service,'' where the men and the women had their distinct apartments, lest at such times unchaste and irregular appetites should be kindled by a promiscuous interfering with one another ; of which pious and excellent contrivance mention is made in an ancient funeral inscription found in the Vatican cemetery at Rome ; such a " De vit. Const. 1. iv. c. 58, 59. " Const. Apost. 1. ii. c. 57. PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. 67 one Luried sinistra parte virorum.,''' on that side of tlu> cluirch whove tlie men sat. In this part of tlie chnrch, next to the entering into it, stood the class of the penitents who were called viro- TTLTTTovTe'i, bccause at their going out they fell down upon their knees before the bishop, who laid his hands upon them : next to them was the ambo, the " pulpit," or rather " reading desk," whence the scriptures were read and preached to the people: above that were the faithful, the highest rank and order of the peoj)le, and who alone communicated at the Lord's table. The third part was the ^rjixa, or leparelov, separate from the rest of the church by neat rails, called cancelU, whence our English word " chancel," to denote that part of the church to this day; into this part none might come but such as were in holy orders, unless it were the Greek emperors at Constantinople, who were allov.ed to come up to the table to make their offerings, and so back again ; within this division, the most considerable thing was the Ovaiaa-TTjpiov, the " altar," (as they metaphorically called it, be- cause there they offered the commemorative sacrifice of Chrisfs body and blood,) or the " communion table," (?; dyla rpaTre^a, as it is frequently styled by the Greek fathers,) behind which, at the very upper end of the chancel, was the chair or throne of the bishop, (for so was it almost constantly called,) on both sides whereof were the auvdpovot, the "seats of the presbyters," (for the deacons might not here sit down,) the bishop's throne was raised up somewhat higher from the ground, and from hence, I suppose, it was that he usually delivered his sermons to the people. Therefore Socrates^ seems to note it as a new thing in Chrysostom, that when he preached he went to sit eVl rov dfj.^wvo'i, " upon the pulpit," (he means that in the body of the church, for so Sozomen** tells us that he sat in the reading desk in the middle of the church,) that, by reason of his low voice, he niight be better heard of the people. Adjoining to the chancel, on the north side probably, was the diaconicon, mentioned both in the Laodicean council,'' (though I know both Zonaras and Balsamon, and after them the learned Leo Allatius,'' will have another thing to be meant in that place,) as also in a law of Arcadius and Honorius against heretics,'' and probably so called, either because )■ Roma subterran. 1. ii. c. 10. n. "23. ' Hist. Eccl. 1. vi. c. 5. * Lib. viii. c. 5. ^ Can. '21. *^ De Toiiipl. Gra>c. n. 14. *• Cod. Theodos. lib. x\-i. tit. v. 1. "29. ubi vid. Jac. Oothofr. Com. C8 PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. peculiarly committed to the deacon of the place, or (as the great commentator upon that law will have it) because set apart, tj} leprj BiaKovia, to some sacred services. It was in the nature of our modern vestries, the sacristy, wherein the plate, vessels, and vestments, belonging to the church, and other things dedicated to holy uses, were laid up, and where (in after-times) relics and such-like fopperies were treasured up with great care and dili- gence. On the other side of the chancel was the prothesiuus, or place where things were prepared in order to the sacrament, where the offerings Avere laid, and what remained of the sacra- mental elements, till they were decently disposed of. And this may serve for a short view of the churches of those first times, after they began to grow up into some beauty and perfection. But though the Christians of those times spared no convenient \! cost in founding and adorning public places for the worship of / God, yet were they careful to keep a decent mean between a sor- did slovenliness, and a too curious and over-nice superstition. In the more early times, even while the fury and fierceness of their enemies kept them low and mean, yet they beautified their ora- tories and places of worship ; especially if we may believe the author of the dialogue in Lucian, (whom we mentioned before, and who lived within the first age,) who, bringing in one Critias, that was persuaded by the Christians to go to the place of their assembly, (which, by his description, seems to have been an vTrepoiov, or " upper room,"") tells us, that after they had gone up several stairs, they came at last into " an house or room that was overlaid with gold," where he beheld nothing but a company of persons with their bodies bowed down and pale faces. I know the design of that dialogue in part is to abuse and deride the Christians, but there is no reason to suppose he feigned those circumstances which made nothing to his purpose. As the times grew better, they added more and greater ornaments to them ; concerning two whereof there has been some contest in the Christian world — altars and images. As for altars, the first X Christians had no other in their churches than decent tables of wood, upon which they celebrated the holy eucharist ; these, it is true, in allusion to those in the Jewish temples, the fathers ge- nerally called altars ; and truly enough might do so, by reason of those sacrifices they offered upon them, viz. in commemoration of Christ's sacrifice in the blessed sacrament, the sacrifice of prayer PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. 69 and thanksgiving-, and the oblation of ahiis and charity for the poor, (usually laid upon those tables,) which the apostle expressly styles " a sacrifice." These Avere the only sacrifices (for no other had the Christian world for many hundreds of years) which they then offered upon their altars, which were much of the same kind with our communion tables at this day. For that they had not any such fixed and gaudy altars (as the heathens then had in their temples, and papists still have in their churches) is most evident, because the heathens at every turn did charge and re- proach them for having none, and the fathers, in their answers, did freely and openly acknowledge and avow it;^ asserting and pleading, that the only true sacred altar was a pure and a holy mind, and that the best and most acceptable sacrifice to God was a pious heart and an innocent and religious life. Hwc nostra sacri/icia, hwc Dei sacra sunt : " these (say they) are our oblations, these the sacrifices we owe to God." This Avas the state of altars in the Christian churches for near upon the first three hundred years, till Constantine coming in, and with him peace and plenty, the churches began to excel in costliness and K bravery every day, and then the wooden and moveable altars began to be turned into fixed altars of stone or marble, though used to no other purpose than before, and yet this too did not so universally obtain, (though severely urged by Sylvester, bishop of Rome,) but that in very many places, tables, or moveable altars of wood, continued in use a long time after, as might easily be made appear from several passages in Athanasius^ and others, yea, even to Augustine's time, and probably much later, were it proper to my business to search after it. No sooner were altars made fixed and immoveable, but they were com- passed in with rails to fence off rudeness and irreverence, and -^ persons began to regard them with mighty observance and re- spect ; which soon grew so high, that they became asylums and refuges to protect innocent persons and unwitting offenders from immediate violence and oppression : an instance whereof Nazi- anzen ^ gives us in a Christian widow, a woman of great place * Vid. Clem. Alex. Stromal. 1. vii. c. 4. Orig. adv. Cels. 1. viii. s. 17. Min. Fel. Octav. c. 8. et 3'2. Amob. adv. gent. 1. vi. p. 83. Lact. 1. ii. c. 2. f Athan. Eucyd. ad episc. epist. c. 3. et Ep. ad moimchos. Aug. quajst. E. et. N. T. qiuest. 101. ct alibi saepe. s Orat. XX. in Inud. Babil. p. 353. 70 PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. and quality, who flying from the importunities of the president, who would have forced her to marr}^ him, had no other way but to take sanctuary at the holy table in St. Basil's church at Ca3sarea. She was demanded with many fierce and terrible threatenings, but the holy man stoutly refused, although the president was his mortal enemy, and sought only a pretence to ruin him. Many such cases are to be met with in the history of the church. Nor was this a privilege merely founded upon cus- tom, but settled and ratified by the laws of Christian emperors; concerning the particular cases whereof, together with the extent and limitation of these immunities, there are no less than six several laws of the emperors Theodosius, Arcadius, and Theodo- sius junior, yet extant in the Theodosian code.*^ But how far those asylas and sanctuaries were good and useful, and to what evil and pernicious purposes they were improved in after-times, is without the limits of my present task to inquire. But if in those times there was so little ground for altars, (as ■)^ used in the present sense of the church of Rome,) there was yet far less for images ; and certainly, might things be carried by a fair and impartial trial of antiquity, the dispute would soon be at an end ; there not being any one just and good authority to prove, that images were either worshipped, or used in churches, for near upon four hundred years after Christ ; and 1 doubt not but it might be carried much further, but that my business lies mainly Avithin those first ages of Christianity. Nothing can be more clear, than that the Christians v/ere frequently challenged X by the heathens, as for having no altars and temples, so that they had no image or statues in them, and that the Christian apologists never denied it, but industriously defended themselves against the charge, and rejected the very thoughts of any such thing with contempt and scorn ; as might be abundantly made good from Tertullian, Clemens Alexandrinus, Orlgen, Minutius Felix, Arnobius, and Lactantius, many of whose testimonies have been formerly pointed to. Amongst other things, Origen plainly tells his adversary,' (who had objected this to the Chris- tians,) that the images that were to be dedicated to God were not to be carved by the hand of artists, but to be formed and fashioned in us by the word of God, viz. the virtues of justice and temperance, of wisdom and piety, &c., that conform us to the '' Lib. ix. tit. xlv. dc his qui ad Ecclesias confugiuiit. • Contr. Ccls. 1. viii. s. 17. PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. 71 image of his only Son. " These (says he) are the only statues formed in our minds, and by which alone we are persuaded it is fit to do honour to him who is the image of the invisible God, the prototype and architypal pattern of all such images," Had Christians then given adoration to them, or but set them up in their places of worship, with what face can we suppose they should have told the world, that they so much slighted and ab- horred them ; and, indeed, what a hearty detestation they uni- versally shewed to any thing that had but the least shadow of idolatry, has been before proved at large. The council of Illiberis ^ that was held in Spain sometime before Constantine expressly provided against it, decreeing that " no pictures ought to be in the church, nor that any thing that is worshipped and adored should be painted upon the walls:" words so clear and positive, as not to be evaded by all the little shifts and glosses which the expositors of that canon would put upon it. The first use of statues and pictures in public churches was merely historical, or to add some beauty and ornament to the place, which after-ages improved into superstition and idolatry. The first that we meet with, upon good authority, (for all the in- stances brought for the first ages are either false and spurious, or impertinent and to no purpose,) is no elder than the times of Epiphanius, and then too met with no very welcome entertain- ment, as may appear from Epiphanius's own epistle, translated by St. Jerome ; ' where the story, in short, is this : " coming (sa3's he) to Anablatha, a village in Palestine, and going into a church to pray, I espied a curtain hanging over the door, whereon was painted the image of Christ, or of some saint ; which when I looked upon, and saw the image of a man hanging up in the church, contrary to the authority of the holy scriptures, I presently rent it, and advised the guardians of the church rather to make use of it as a winding-sheet for some poor man's burying. Whereat when they were a little troubled, and said, 'it was but just, that since I had rent that curtain I should change it, and give them another ; ' I promised them I would, and have now sent the best I could get, and pray entreat them to accept it, and give command that for the time to come no such curtains, being contrary to our religion, may be hung up in the church of Christ ; it more becoming your j)lace '' Can. 36. ' Inter opora Hicron. vol. ii. p. 161. 72 PRIMITIVE CIIIUSTIANITY. fsolicitously to remove whatever is offensive to, and iinvvortli}' of, the church of Christ, and the people committed to your charge.^' This was written to John, bishop of Jerusalem, in whose diocese the thing had been done : and the case is so much the more pressing and weighty, by how much the greater esteem and value Epiphanius, (then bishop of Salamis in Cyprus,) for his great age and excellent learning, had in the church of God. This instance is so home and pregnant, that the patrons of image worship are at a mighty loss what to say to it ; and, after all, are forced to cry oiit against it as supposititious. Bel- larmlne,'" brings no less than nine arguments (if such they may be called) to make it seem probable : but had he been ingenuous, he might have given one reason more true and satisfactory than all the rest, why that part of the epistle should be thought forged and spurious, viz. because it makes so much against them. More might be produced to this purpose ; but by this I hope it is clear enough, that the honest Christians of those times, as they thought it sufficient to pray to God without making their )(. addresses to saints and angels, so they accounted their churches fine enough without pictures and Images to adorn them. Their churches being built and beautified, (so far as consisted with the ability and simplicity of those days,) they sought to derive a greater value and esteem upon them by some peculiar consecration ; for the wisdom and piety of those times thought it not enough barely to devote them to the public services of religion, unless they also set them apart with solemn rites of a formal dedication. This had been an ancient custom both amongst Jews and Gentiles, as old as Solomon's temple, nay, as Moses and the tabernacle. When it was first taken up by Christians, Is not easy to determine ; only I do not remember to have met with the footsteps of any such thing in any approved writer, (for the decretal epistles, every one knows what their faith is,) till the reign of Constantine. In his time, Christianity being become more prosperous and successful, churches were every where erected and repaired ; and no sooner were so, but (as Eusebius tells us °) they were solemnly consecrated, and the dedications celebrated with great festivity and rejoicing : an instance whereof he then gives of the famous church of Tyre, at the dedication whereof he himself made that excellent oration "> De Eccles, Triumph. 1. ii. v. 9. '• Hist. Eccl. I. x. c. 3. PniMITlVE CHRISTIANITY. 73 inserted into the body of his history. About the thirtieth year of his reign, ho bnilt a stately church at Jerusalem," over the sepul- chre of our Saviour, which was dedicated with singular magni- ficence and veneration ; and for the greater honour, by his impe- rial letters, he summoned the bishops, who from all parts of the East were then met in council at Tyre, to be present and assisting at the solemnity. The rites and ceremonies used at these dedica- tions, (as we find in Eusebius,) were a great confluence of bishops and strangers from all parts, the performance of divine offices, singing of hymns and psalms, reading and expounding of the st'riptures, sermons and orations, receiving the holy sacrament, prayers and thanksgivings, liberal alms bestowed on the poor, and great gifts given to the church, and, in short, mighty ex- pressions of mutual love and kindness, and universal rejoicing with one another. What other particular ceremonies were in- troduced afterwards concerns not me to inquire; only let me note, that under some of the Christian emperors, when paganism lay gasping for life, and their temples were purged and con- verted into Christian churches, tliey were usually consecrated only by placing a cross in them, as tlie venerable ensign of the Christian religion, as appears by the law of Theodosius the Younger to that purpose. p The memory of the dedication of that chui-ch at Jerusalem was constantly continued and kept alive in that church; " and once a year, to wit, on the 14th of September, on which day it had been dedicated, was solemnized with great pomp and much confluence of people from all parts, the solemnity usually lasting eight days together : which doubt- less gave birth to that custom of keeping anniversary days of commemoration of the dedication of churches, which from this time forwards we frequently meet with in the histories of the church, and much prevailed in after-ages, some shadow whereof still remains amongst us at this day, in the wakes observed in several counties ; which, in correspondence with the encoenia of the ancient church, are annual festivals kept in country villages in memory of the dedication of their particular churches. And because it was a custom in some ages of the church, that no church should be consecrated till it was endowed, it may « De vit. Const. I. ii. c. 4-2, 43. -'* Cod. Thcodos. lib. xvi. tit. x. dc P;ig. Sacrific. et Toinplis 1. "2.5. ubi vid. Com. Oothofr. T Niceph. Cal. Hist. Ectl. 1. viii. c. 50. 74 PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. give us occasion to inquire what revenues churches had in those first ages of Christianity. It is more than prohable, that, for a great while, they had no other puhlic incomes, than either what arose out of those common contrihutions which they made at their usual assemblies, every one giving or offering according to his ability or devotion, which was put into a common stock or treasury, or what proceeded from the offerings which they made out of the Improvement of their lands, the apostolic canons'" pro- viding that their first-fruits should be partly offered at the church, partly sent home to the bishops and presbyters. The care of all which was committed to the president, or bishop of the church ; (for who, says the author of the forecited canons,* is fitter to be trusted with the riches and revenues of the church, than he who is entrusted with the precious souls of men ;) and by him disposed of for the maintenance of the clergy, the relief of the poor, or whatever necessities of the church. As Chris- tianity increased, and times grew better, they obtained more proper and fixed revenues, houses and lands being settled upon them ; for such it is certain they had even during the times of persecution : for so we find in a law of Constantine and Licinius,' where, giving liberty of religion to Christians, and restoring them freely to the churches which had been taken from them, and disposed of by former emperors, they further add, " and because (say they) the same Christians had not only places wherein they were wont to assemble, but are also known to have had other possessions, which were not the propriety of any single person, but belonged to the whole body and community. All these, by this law, we command to be immediately restored to these Christians, to every society and community of them what be- longed to them.*" And in a rescript to Anullnus the proconsul," about the same matter, they particularly specify whether they be gardens or houses, or whatever else belonged to the right and [)ropriety of those churches, that with all speed they be univer- sally restored to them ; '^ the same which Maximinus also (though no good friend to Christians, yet either out of fear of Constantine, or from the conviction of his conscience, awakened by a terrible sickness) had ordained for his parts of the empire. Afterwards, Constantine set himself by all ways to advance the honour and '■ CiUi, 3, 4. ' Can. 41. ' Kuseb. Hist. Ectl. 1. xx. c. 5. " Id. ibid. " Lib. ix. c. ult. PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. 75 interests of the clmrcli.^ Out of the tributes of every city, which were yearly paid into his exchequer, he assigned a portion to the church and clergy of that place ; and settled it by a law, which (excepting the short reign of Julian, who revoked it ^) was, as the historian assures us,** in force in his time. Where any of the martyrs or confessors had died without kindred, or been banished their native country, and left no heirs behind them, he ordained that their estates and inheritance should be given to the church of that place ; and that whoever had seized upon them, or had bought them of the exchequer, should restore tliem, and refer themselves to him for what recompense should be made them. He took away the restraint which former em- perors had laid upon the bounty of pious and charitable men, and gave every man hberty to leave what he would to the church.'' He gave salaries out of the public corn, which (though taken away by Julian) was restored by his successor Jovianus," and ratified as a perpetual donation by the law of Valentinian and JNIarcianus. After his time the revenues of churches in- creased every day, pious and devout persons thinking they could never enough testify their piety to God, by expressing their bounty and liberality to the church. I shall conclude this discourse by observing what respect and reverence they were wont in those days to shew in the church, as the solemn place of worship, and where God did more pecu- liarly manifest his presence. And this certainly was very great. They came into the church, as into the palace of the great king, (as Chrysostom calls it,'') with fear and trembling, upon which account he there presses the highest modesty and gravity ujjon them. Before their going into the church they used to wash, at least, their hands, as Tertulliau probably intimates,^ and Chrysostom expressly tells us,*^ carrying themselves while there with the most profound silence and devotion. Nay, so great was the reverence which they bore to the church, that the em- perors themselves, who otherwise never went without their guard about them, yet, when they came to go into the church, y Sozoni. Hist. Eccl. 1. i. c. 8. ^ Id. ]. v. c. 5. « Euscb. de vit. Const. 1. ii. c. 36. et seq. '' Cod. Theodos. lib. i. tit. ii. de SS. Eccl. 1. 1. c Ibid. 1. 12. ■^ Ep. ad Heb. in c. 9. Horn. xv. s. 4. vol. xii. p. 156. <■ De Oral. c. 11. f Chrysost. Horn. Ii. (al. Hi.) in Matt. s. 4. vol. vii. p. .j-_'6. Horn, in Joan. Ixxiii. (al. Ixxii.) s. 3. vol. viii. p. 433. 76 PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. used to lay down their arms, to leave their guard behind them, and to put off their crowns, reckoning that the less ostentation they made of power and greatness there, the more firmly the imperial majesty would be entailed upon them; as we find it in the law of Theodosius and Valontinian, inserted at large into the last edition of the Theodosian Code/ But of this we may probably speak more when we come to treat of the manner of their public adoration. CHAPTER VII. OF THE L0Uu''s DAY, AND THE FASTS AND FESTIVALS OF THE ANCIENT CHURCH. Time as necessarj' to religious actions as place. Fixed times of public worship observed by all nations. The Lord's day chiefly observed by Christians. Styled Sunday, and why. Peculiarly consecrated to the memory of Christ's resurrection. All kneeling at praj'er on this day forbidden, and why. Their public assemblies constantly held upon this day. Forced to assemble before day in times of persecution ; thence jeered by the heathens as latehrosa et lucifmjaa' 7iafio. The Lord's daj' ever kept as a day of rejoicing ; all fasting upon it forbidden. The great care of Constantino, and the first Christian emperors, for the honour and observance of this day. Their laws to that purpose. Their constant and conscientious attendance upon public worship on the Lord's day. Canons of ancient councils about absenting from public worship. SuIj- batum, or Saturday, kept in the East as a religious day, with all the public solemnities of divine worship. How it came to be so. Otherwise in the Western churches ; observed by them as a fast, and why. This not universal. St. Ambrose's practice at Milan, and counsel to St. Augustine in the case. Their solemn fasts, either weekly or annual ; weekly on Wednesdays and Fridaj-s, held till three in the afternoon. Annual fasts, that of Lent, how ancient. Upon what account called Quadragesima. Observed with great strictness. The Ilcldomada ]\Ia' Cod. Thcodos. lib. ii. tit. viii. de feriis, 1. 1. lib. i. tit. viii. 1. 3. ' Ibid. lib. XV. tit. v. de Spectac. 1. 2. " Ibid. 1. v. Dominico. G 82 PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. the honour of God before the concerns of his own majesty and greatness, he commanded, that if it should so happen, that then the imperial solemnity should be put off, and deferred till another day. I shall take notice but of one instance more of their great ob- servance of this day, and that was their constant attendance upon the solemnities of public worship. They did not think it enough to read, and pray, and praise God at home, but made conscience of appearing in the public assemblies, from which no- thing but sickness and absolute necessity did detain them : and if sick, or in prison, or under banishment, nothing troubled them more, than that they could not come to church, and join their devotions to the common services. If persecution at any time forced them to keep a little close, yet no sooner was there the least mitigation, but they presently returned to their open duty, and publicly met all together. No trivial pretences, no light excuses were then admitted for any one's absence from the con- gregation ; but, according to the merit of the cause, severe censures were passed upon them. The synod of Illiberis provided, *" that if any man dwelling in a city (where usually churches were nearest at hand) should for three Lord's days absent himself from the church, he should for some time be suspended the com- munion, that he might appear to be corrected for his fault. They allowed no separate assemblies, no congregations but what met in the public church. If any man took upon him to make a breach, and to draw people into corners, he was presently con- demned, and a suitable penalty put upon him. When Eustathius, bishop of Sebastia, (a man pretending to great strictness and austerity of life,) began to cast off the discipline of the church, and to introduce many odd observations of his own ; amongst others, to contemn priests that were married, to fast on the Lord's day, and to keep meetings in private houses ; drawing away many, but especially women, (as the historian observes,*^) who, leaving their husbands, were led away Avith error, and from that into great filthiness and impurity. No sooner did the bishops of those parts discover it, but meeting in council at Gangra, the metropolis of Paphlagonia, about the year 840, they condemned and cast them out of the church, passing these two canons amongst the rest :'' " If any one shall teach that the '' Can. 21. '^ Sozom. 1. iii. c. 14. ^ Cone. Gangr. Can. 4, 5. PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. 83 house of God is to be despised, and the assemblies that are held in it, let him be accursed. If any shall take upon him out of the church privately to preach at home, and making liglit of the church, shall do those things that belong only to the churcli, without the presence of the priest, and the leave and allowance of the bishop, let him be accursed." Correspondent to wliich, the canons called apostolical,* and the council of Antioch ordain, that if any presbyter, setting light by his own bishop, shall with- draw and set up separate meetings, and erect another altar, (i. 6. says Zonaras, keep unlawful conventicles, preach privately, and administer the sacrament,) that in such a case he shall be deposed as ambitious and tyrannical, and the people communi- cating with him be excommunicate as being factious and schis- matical : only this not to be done till after the third admonition. After all that has been said, I might further shew what esteem and value the first Christians had of the Lord's day, by those great and honourable things they have spoken concerning it, of which I will produce but two passages : the one is, that in the epistle ad Magnesias^ which, if not Ignatius's, must yet be ac- knowledged an ancient author. " Let every one (says he ') that loves Christ keep the Lord's day festival, the resurrection day, the queen and empress of all days, in which our life was raised again, and death conquered by our Lord and Saviour." The other, that of Theophilus, bishop of Alexandria, ^ who speaks thus : " that both custom and reason challenge from us that we should honour the Lord's day, and keep it festival ; seeing on that daj- it was that our Lord Jesus Christ completed his resur- rection from the dead." Next to the Lord's day, the Sabbath or Saturday (for so the word sahhatum is constantly used in the writings of the fathers, when speaking of it as it relates to Christians) was held by them in great veneration, and especially in the Eastern parts honoured with all the public solemnities of religion. For which we are to know, that the gospel in those parts mainly prevailing amongst the Jews, they being generally the first converts to the Christian faith, they still retained a mighty reverence for the Mosaic in- stitutions, and especially for the sabbath, as that which had been appointed by God himself, (as the memorial of his rest from « Can. 31. Cone. Antioch. Can. .5. f Sect. 9. s Edict. Theoph. apud Balsam, in Synod, vol. ii. par. i. p. 170. g2 84 PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. the work of creation,) settled by their great master Moses, and celebrated by their ancestors for so many ages, as the solemn day of their public worship, and were therefore very loth that it should be wholly antiquated and laid aside. For this reason it seemed good to the prudence of those times, (as in others of the Jewish rites, so in this,) to indulge the humour of that people, and to keep the sabbath as a day for religious offices. Hence they usually had most parts of divine service performed upon that day ; they met together for public prayers, for reading the scriptures, celebration of the sacraments, and such like duties. This is plain, not only from some passages in Ignatius and Olemens's Constitutions, but from writers of more unquestionable credit and authority. Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, tells us,*" that they assembled on Saturdays, not that they were in- fected with Judaism, but only to worship Jesus Christ, the Lord of the sabbath ; and Socrates,' speaking of the usual times of their public meeting, calls the sabbath and the Lord's day, the weekly festivals, on which the congregation was w^ont to meet in the church for the performance of divine services. Therefore the council of Laodicea amongst other things decreed, "^ that upon Saturdays the gospels and other scriptures should be read, that in Lent the eucharist should not be celebrated but upon Saturday and the Lord's day, and upon those days only in the time of Lent it should be lawful to commemorate and re- hearse the names of martj'rs. Upon this day also, as Avell as upon Sunday, all fasts were severely prohibited, (an infallible argument they counted it a festival day,) one Saturday in the year only excepted, viz. that before Easter-day, Avhich was al- ways observed as a solemn fast : things so commonly known as to need no proof. But though the church thought fit thus far to correspond with the Jewish converts, as solemnly to observe the sabbath ; yet to take away all offence, and to vindicate themselves from compliance with Judaism, they openly declared, that they did it only in a Christian way, and kept it not as a Jewish sabbath, as is expressly affirmed by Athanasius,' Nazi- anzen, and others ; and the forementioned Laodicean synod has a canon to this purpose;'" "that Christians should not Judaize, and rest from all labour on the sabbath, but follow their ordinary •» Homil. de Sement. in init. ' Hist. Eccl. 1. vi. c. 8. '' Can. IC. ' Athiin. Iloniil. de Sement. s. 1. " Can. 29. PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. 85 works, (i. e. so far as consisted with their attendance upon the puhHc assemblies,) and shoukl not entertain such thoughts of it, but that still they should prefer the Lord's day before it; and on that day rest as Christians : but if any were found to Judaize, they should be accursed." Thus stood the case in the Eastern church ; in those in the West we find it somewhat different. Amongst them, it was not observed as a religious festival, but kept as a constant fast. The reason whereof (as it is given by pope Innocent, in an epistle to the bishop of Eugubium, where he treats of this very case) seems most probable; "if (says he") we commemorate Christ's resur- rection not only at Easter, but every Lord's day, and fast upon Friday, because it Avas the day of his passion, we ought not to pass by Saturday, which is the middle-time between the days of grief and joy ; the apostles themselves spending those two days (viz. Friday and the sabbath) in great sorrow and heaviness :" and he thinks no doubt ought to be made, but that the apostles fasted upon those two days ; whence the church had a tradition, that the sacraments were not to be administered on those days, and therefore concludes that every Saturday, or sabbath, ought to be kept a fast. To the same purpose the council of Illiberis ordained," that a Saturday festival was an error that ought to be reformed, and that men ought to fast upon every sabbath. But though this seems to have been the general practice, yet it did not obtain in all places of the West alike. In Italy itself, it was otherwise at Milan, where Saturday was a festival ; and it is said in the Life of St. Ambrose,'' who was bishop of that see, that he constantly dined as well upon Saturday as the Lord's day, (it being his custom to dine upon no other days but those, and the memorials of the martyrs,) and used also upon that day to preach to the people ; though so great was the prudence and moderation of that good man, that he bound not up himself in these indifferent things, but when he was at Milan he dined 'upon Saturdays, and when he was at Rome he fasted as they did upon those days : this St. Augustine "^ assures us he had fi-om his own mouth ; for when his mother Monica came after him to Milan, (where he then resided,) she was greatly troubled to find the Saturday fast not kept there as she had found it in other places ; for her satisfaction he immediately went to consult " Innocent. Ep. ad Decium Eugubin. c. 4. " Can. ii6. P Pauliii. i» vit. Ambr. opp. Ambros. prsefix. 'i Ad Janimr. Epibt, 118. 86 PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. St. Ambrose, then bishop of that place, who told him he could give him no better advice in the cause, than to do as he did : " When I come to Rome, (said he) I fast on the Saturday as they do at Rome ; Avhen I am here, I do not fast. So likewise you, to whatsoever church you come, observe the custom of that place, if you mean not either to give or take offence."" With this answer he satisfied his mother ; and ever after, when he thought of it, looked upon it as an oracle sent from heaven. So that even in Italy the Saturday fast was not universally ob- served. Nay, a very learned man,*^ (and a bishop of the Roman church,) thinks it highly probable, that for the first ages espe- cially, Saturday was no more kept as a fast at Rome than in the churches of the East : though the great argument whereby he would establish it, viz. because some Latin churches, who must needs follow the pattern of the church of Rome, did not keep it so, is very infirm and weak ; and needs no more than that very instance of the church of Milan to refute it, which, though under the pope''s nose, did not yet keep that day as a fast, although this was many years after it had been so esta- blished and observed at Rome. And now that I am got into this business, I shall once for all despatch the matter about their fasts, before I proceed to their other festivals. It is certain, the ancient Christians had two sorts of solemn fasts, weekly and annual. Their weekly fasts (called jejunia quartce et sextw ferice) were kept upon Wednesdays and Fridays, appointed so, as we are told, for this reason, because on Wednesday our Lord was betrayed by Judas, on Friday he was crucified by the Jews.'' This custom Epiphanius* (how truly I know not) refers to the apostles ; and elsewhere tells us, that those days were observed as fasts through the whole world. These fasts they called their stations, (not because they stood all the while, but by an allusion to the military stations, and keeping their guards, as Tertullian observes," they kept close at it,) and they usually lasted, ew? &pa• Euseb. Hist. Eccl. 1. vii. c. 11 ; 1. ix. c. 2. . ' Adv. Vigilant, vol. ii. p. 123. ^ De cur. Grsec. affect. Serm. viii. de martyr, p. 122K- * Vid. Constit. Apost. 1. viii. c. 45. ^ Vid. Epipli. Expos, fid. cathol. c. 22. PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. 99 praises, and alms at those times, it is that tlie t'atliers speak so often of oblations and sacrifices at the martyrs'' festivals. Ter- tullian, often:" "upon an anniversary day (says he) we make oblations for them that are departed, in memory of the natalitia, or birthdays;" and to the same purpose elsewhere. " As oft (says Cyprian *") as by an anniversary commemoration we celebrate the passion days of the martyrs, we always offer sacrifices for them ;" and the same phrases oft occur in many others of the fathers : by which it is evident, they meant no more than their public prayers, and offering up praises to God for the piety and constancy, and the excellent examples of their martyrs ; their celebratmg- the eucharist at these times, as the commemoration of Christ's sacrifice ; their oblation of alms and charity for the poor; every one of which truly may, and often is styled a sacrifice or oblation, and are so understood by some of the more moderate, even of the Romish church ; ' and with good reason, for that they did not make any real and formal sacrifices and oblations to martyrs, but only honour them as holy men, and friends to God, who, for his and our Saviour's honour and the truth of religion, chose to lay do^vn their lives, I find expressly affirmed by Theodoret.'' These festivals, being times of mirth and gladness, were cele- brated with great expressions of love and charity to the poor, and mutual rejoicings with one another. Here they had their