PART I

brace the gospel. Such malignant and superficial CENT. reasoners do not consider, that those who em- I. braced this divine religion exposed their lives to the most imminent danger; nor have they attention enough to recollect, that neither lazy nor vicious members were suffered to remain in the society of Christians. Equally vain is the invention of those, who imagine, that the profligate lives of the Heathen priests was an occasion of the conversion of many to Christianity. For, though this might indeed give them a disgust at the religion of these unworthy ministers, yet it could not, alone, attach them to that of Jesus, which offered them from the world no other prospects than those of poverty, infamy, and death. The person who could embrace the gospel, solely from the motive now mentioned, must have reasoned in this senseless and extravagant manner: "The ministers of that religion which I have "professed from my infancy, lead profligate "lives: therefore, I will become a Christian, "join myself to that body of men who are con"demned by the laws of the state, and thus expose my life and fortune to the most imminent danger.

CHAP. V.

Concerning the calamitous events that happened to the church.

I.TH

persecute

Palestine.

HE innocence and virtue that distinguish- The Jews ed so eminently the lives of Christ's ser- the Chrisvants, and the apostles' purity of the doctrine they tians in taught, were not sufficient to defend them against the virulence and malignity of the Jews. The priests and rulers of that abandoned people, not only loaded with injuries and reproach the apostles of

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Jesus,

I.

CENT. Jesus and their disciples, but condemned as many of them as they could, to death, and exePART Icuted in the most irregular and barbarous manner their sanguinary decrees. The murder of Stephen, of James the son of Zebedee, and of James, surnamed the Just, bishop of Jerusalem, furnish dreadful examples of the truth of what we here advance [e]. This odious malignity of the Jewish doctors, against the heralds of the gospel, was undoubtedly owing to a secret apprehension that the progress of Christianity would destroy the credit of Judaism, and bring on the ruin of their pompous ceremonies.

reign coun

And also by II. The Jews who lived out of Palestine, in the those in fo- Roman provinces, did not yield to those of Jeru tries. salem in point of cruelty to the innocent disciples of Christ. We learn from the history of the Acts of the Apostles, and other records of unquestionable authority, that they spared no labour, but zealously seized every occasion of animating the magistrates against the Christians, and setting on the multitude to demand their destruction. The high priest of the nation, and the Jews who dwelt in Palestine, were instrumental in exciting the rage of these foreign Jews against the infant church, by sending messengers to exhort them, not only to avoid all intercourse with the Christians, but also to persecute them in the most vehement manner [f]. For this inhuman order, they endeavoured to find out the most plausible pretexts; and, therefore, they gave out, that the Christians were enemies to the Roman emperor,

since

[e] The martyrdom of Stephen is recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, vii. 55; and that of James the son of Zebedee, Acts xii. 1, 2; that of James the Just, bishop of Jerusalem, is mentioned by Josephus in his Jewish Antiquities, book xx. chap. viii. and by Eusebius, in his Eccles. History, book ii, chap. xxiii.

[f] See the Dialogue of Justin Martyr, with Trypho the Jew, p. 51, 52, 53, 109, 138, 318.

I. PART I.

since they acknowledged the authority of a cer- CENT. tain person whose name was Jesus, whom Pilate had punished capitally as a malefactor by a most righteous sentence, and on whom, nevertheless, they conferred the royal dignity. These perfidious insinuations had the intended effect, and the rage of the Jews against the Christians was conveyed from father to son, from age to age; so that the church of Christ had, in no period of time, more bitter and desperate enemies than that very people, to whom the immortal Saviour was more especially sent.

treatment

III. The Supreme Judge of the world did The Jews not let the barbarous conduct of this perfidious na- severely tion go unpunished. The most signal marks of for their divine justice pursued them, and the cruelties they of Christ, had exercised upon Christ and his disciples, were and his disdreadfully avenged. The God, who had for so ciples. many ages protected the Jews with an outstretched arm, withdrew his aid. He permitted Jerusalem, with its famous temple, to be destroyed by Vespasian and his son Titus, an innumerable multitude of this devoted people to perish by the sword, and the greatest part of those that remained to groan under the yoke of a severe bondage. Nothing can be more affecting than the account of this terrible event, and the circumstantial description of the tremendous calamities which attended it, as they are given by Josephus, himself a Jew, and also a spectator of this horrid scene. From this period the Jews experienced, in every place, the hatred and contempt of the Gentile nations, still more than they had formerly done. And in these their calamities, the predictions of Christ were amply fulfilled, and his divine mission further illustrated.

Gentile

IV. However virulent the Jews were against The ten the Christians, yet, upon many occasions, they persec wanted power to execute their cruel purposes, tio

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This

CENT. people to be drawn away from their attachment I. to it. These, however, were the two things

PART I.

which the Christians were charged with, and that justly, though to their honour. They dared to ridicule the absurdities of the Pagan superstition, and they were ardent and assiduous in gaining proselytes to the truth. Nor did they only attack the religion of Rome, but also all the different shapes and forms under which superstition appeared in the various countries where they exercised their ministry. From hence the Romans concluded, that the Christian sect was not only unsupportably daring and arrogant, but, moreover, ́an enemy to the public tranquillity, and every way proper to excite civil wars and commotions in the empire. It is, probably, on this account, that Tacitus reproaches them with the odious character of haters of mankind [1], and styles the religion of Jesus a destructive superstition; and that Suetonius speaks of the Christians, and their doctrine, in terms of the same kind [m]. Other cau- VII. Another circumstance that irritated the ses of these Romans against the Christians, was the simplicity

persecu

tions.

of their worship, which resembled in nothing the sacred rights of any other people. The Christians had neither sacrifices, nor temples, nor images, nor oracles, nor sacerdotal orders; and this was sufficient to bring upon them the reproaches of an ignorant multitude, who imagined that there could

[1] Annal. lib. xv. cap. xliv.

[m] In Nerone, cap. xvi. These odious epithets, which Tacitus gives to the Christians and their religion, as likewise the language of Suetonius, who calls Christianity a poisonous, or malignant superstition (maleficia superstitio), are founded upon the same reasons. A sect, which not only could not endure, but even laboured to abolish, the religious systems of the Romans, and also those of all the other nations of the universe, appeared to the short-sighted and superficial observers of religious matters, as enemies of mankind, and persons possessed with a mortal hatred of all the human race,

I.

PART I

could be no religion without these. Thus they CENT. were looked upon as a sort of Atheists; and, by the Roman laws those who were chargeable with Atheism were declared the pests of human society. But this was not all: the sordid interests of a multitude of lazy and selfish priests were immediately connected with the ruin and oppression of the Christian cause. The public worship of such an immense number of deities, was a source of subsistence, and even of riches, to the whole rabble of priests and augurs, and also to a multitude of merchants and artists. And as the progress of the gospel threatened the ruin of this religious traffic, and the profits it produced, this raised up new enemies to the Christians, and armed the rage of mercenary superstition against their lives and their cause [n].

odious ca

against the

VIII. To accomplish more speedily the ruin of The most the Christians, those whose interests were incom- lumnies patible with the progress of the gospel, loaded spread them with the most opprobrious calumnies, which were too easily received as truth, by the credu- Christians. lous and unthinking multitude, among whom they were dispersed with the utmost industry. We find a large account of these perfidious and illgrounded reproaches in the writings of the first defenders of the Christian cause [o]. And these,

66

indeed

[n] This observation is verified by the story of Demetrius the silver-smith, Acts xix. 25. and by the following passage in the 97th letter of the xth book of Pliny's epistles; "The temples, which were almost deserted, begin to be frequented again: and the sacred rites, which have been long neglect"ed, are again performed.-The victims, which have had hi"therto few purchasers, begin to come again to the mar"ket," &c.

"

[o] See the laborious work of Christ. Kortholt, entitled, Paganus obtrectator, seu de calumniis Gentilium in Christianos; to which may be added, Jo. Jac. Huldricus, De calumniis Gentilium in Christianos, published at Zurich, in 8vo, in year 1-44.

the