rather long, I shall transcribe the substance of it in this place.

"The pagan world having early imbibed this inveterate prejudice concerning intercommunity of worship, men were but too much accustomed to new revelations, when the Jewish appeared, not to acknowledge its superior pretensions. Accordingly we find, by the history of this people, that it was esteemed by its neighbours a true one; and therefore they proceeded to join it occasionally with their own; as those did whom the king of Assyria sent into the cities of Israel in place of the ten tribes. Whereby it happened, so great was the influence of this principle, that, in the same time and country, the Jews of Jerusalem added the pagan idolatries to their religion, while the pagans of Samaria added the Jewish religion to their idolatries.

"But when these people of God, in consequence of having their dogmatic theology more carefully inculcated to them, after their return from the captivity, became rigid, in pretending not only that their religion was true, but the only true one; then it was that they began to be treated by their neighbours, and afterwards by the Greeks and Romans with the utmost hatred and contempt, for this their inhumanity and unsociable temper. To this cause alone we are to ascribe all that spleen and rancour which appears in the histories of these later nations concerning them. CELSUS fairly reveals what lay at bottom, and speaks out for them all. "If the Jews, on these accounts," says he, " adhere to their own law, it is not for that they are to blame; I rather blame those who forsake their own country religion to embrace the Jewish. But if these people give themselves airs of sublimer wisdom than the rest of the world, and on that score refuse all communion with it, as not equally pure-I must tell them, that it is not to be believed that they are more dear or

SECT. I.]

The sentiments of Dr. Warburton.

147

agreeable to God than other nations."-Hence among the pagans, the Jews came to be distinguished from all other people, by the name of a race of men odious to the gods, and with good reason. This was the reception the Jews met with in the world.

"When Christianity arose, though on the foundation of Judaism, it was at first received with great complacency by the pagan world. The gospel was favourably heard, and the superior evidence with which it was enforced, inclined men, long habituated to pretended revelations, to receive it into the number of the established. Accordingly we find one Roman emperor introducing it among his closet religions; and another proposing to the senate to give it a more public entertainment. But when it was found to carry its pretensions higher, and, like the Jewish, to claim the title of the only true one, then it was that it began to incur the same hatred and contempt with the Jewish. But when it went still further, and urged the necessity of all men forsaking their own national religions, and embracing the gospel, this so shocked the pagans, that it soon brought upon itself the bloody storm which followed. Thus you have the true origin of persecution for religion; a persecution not committed, but undergone by the Christian church.

"Hence we see how it happened, that such good emperors as Trajan and Mark Antonine came to be found in the first rank of persecutors; a difficulty that hath very much embarrassed the inquirers into ecclesiastical antiquity, and given a handle to the Deists, who impoison every thing, of pretending to suspect, that there must be something very much amiss in primitive Christianity, while such wise magistrates could become its persecutors. But the reason is now manifest. The Christian preten sions overthrew a fundamental principle of paganism, which they thought founded in nature, namely, the friend

ly intercommunity of worship. And thus the famous passage of Pliny the younger becomes intelligible. "For I did not in the least hesitate, but that whatever should appear on confession to be their faith, yet that their frowardness and inflexible obstinancy would certainly deserve punishment." What was the "inflexible obstinacy?" It could not be in professing a new religion; that was a thing common enough. It was the refusing all communion with paganism,-refusing to throw a grain of incense on their altars. For we must not think, as is commonly imagined, that this was at first enforced by the magistrate to make them renounce their religion; but only to give a test of its hospitality and sociableness of temper. It was indeed, and rightly too, understood by the Christians to be a renouncing of their religion, and so accordingly abstained from. The misfortune was, that the pagans did not consider the inflexibility as a mere error, but immorality likewise. The unsociable, uncommunicable temper, in matters of religious worship, was esteemed by the best of them as a hatred and aversion to mankind. Thus Tacitus, speaking of the burning of Rome, calls the Christians "persons convicted of hatred to all mankind." But how? The confession of the pagans themselves, concerning the purity of the Christian morals, shews this could be no other than a being "convicted" of rejecting all intercommunity of worship; which, so great was their prejudice, they thought could proceed from nothing but hatred towards mankind. Universal prejudice had made men regard a refusal of this intercommunity as the most brutal of all dissociability. And the emperor JULIAN, who understood this matter the best of any, fairly owns, that the Jews and Christians brought the execration of the world upon them, by their aversion to the gods of paganism, and their refusal of all communication with them."*. But to proceed.

• Divine Legation of Moses, vol. ii. b. ii. § 6, &c,

SECT. I.]

Gibbon's account of this matter.

149

From what took place in the province of Bithynia, under the government of the mild and amiable Pliny, a tolerably correct judgment may be formed of the state of Christianity during the reign of Trajan, in every other part of the empire.

While Pliny was thus conducting matters in Bithynia, the province of Syria was under the government of Tiberianus. There is still extant a letter which he addressed to Trajan, in which he says, "I am quite wearied with punishing and destroying the Galilæans, or those of the sect called Christians, according to your orders. Yet they never cease to profess voluntarily, what they are, and to offer themselves to death. Wherefore I have laboured by exhortations and threats, to discourage them from daring to confess to me, that they are of that sect. Yet, in spite of all persecution, they continue still to do it. Be pleased therefore to inform me, what your highness thinks proper to be done with them."*

The stated returns of the public games and festivals were generally attended by calamitous events to the Christians." On those occasions, the inhabitants of the great cities of the empire were collected in the great circus of the theatre, where every circumstance of the place, as well as of the ceremony, contributed to kindle their devotion and to extinguish their humanity. Whilst the numerous spectators, crowned with garlands, perfumed with incense, purified with the blood of victims, and surrounded with the altars and statues of their tutelar deities, resigned themselves to the enjoyment of pleasures, which they considered as an essential part of their religious worship; they recollected, that the Christians alone abhorred the gods of mankind, and by their absence and melancholy on those solemn festivals, seemed to insult or to lament the public felicity. If the empire had been

* Quoted in Dr. Middleton's Free Inquiry, p. 201. sto eď,

afflicted by any recent calamity, by a plague, a famine, or an unsuccessful war; if the Tyber had, or if the Nile had not, risen beyond its banks; if the earth had shaken, or if the temperate order of the seasons had been interrupted, the superstitious pagans were convinced that the crimes and the impiety of the Christians, who were spared by the excessive lenity of the government, had at length provoked the divine justice.* It was not among a licentious and exasperated populace, that the forms of legal proceedings could be observed; it was not in an amphitheatre, stained with the blood of wild beasts and gladia tors, that the voice of compassion could be heard. The impatient clamours of the multitude denounced the Christians as the enemies of gods and men, doomed them to the severest tortures, and venturing to accuse by name, some of the most distinguished of the new sectaries, quired, with irresistible vehemence, that they should be instantly apprehended and cast to the lions."+

re

About the time that Pliny wrote his celebrated letter, Trajan, who was then entering upon the Parthian war, arrived at Antioch in Syria. Ignatius was at that time one of the pastors of the church there; a man of exemplary piety, and " in all things like to the apostles." Dur

Inveterate as were the prejudices of this classical historian against the Christians, it seems he could condescend occasionally to borrow a striking thought or a brilliant sentence from their writings. The reader may compare the above quotation with the following extract from Tertullian's Apology.

"If the city be besieged, if any thing happen ill in the fields, in the gar. risons, in the lauds, immediately they (the Pagans) cry out, "Tis because of the Christians." Our enemies thirst after the blood of the innocent, cloaking their hatred with this silly pretence, "That the Christians are the cause of all public calamities." If the Tyber flows up to the walls-if the river Nile do not overflow the fields-if the heavens alter their course-if there be an earthquake, a famine, a plague, immediately the cry is "Away with the Christians to the lions." APOL. cap. 1. Operum, p. 17.

+ Gibbon's Decline, vol, 2. ch. 16.