"

pire. Men had forgotten the creation, and God hath renewed it, by producing out of that nothing, his church, which he hath rendered all-powerful against error. He hath confounded with idols all the human greatness that interposed in their defence; and he hath performed this great work, as he made the universe, by the sole power of his word.

XII. Different Forms of Idolatry, the Senses, Interest, Ignorance, a false Veneration for Antiquity, Policy, Philosophy, and Heresies, come to its Aid: the Church triumphs over all.

IDOLATRY appears to us to be weakness itself, and we can hardly conceive why so much power should have been requisite to destroy it. But, on the contrary, its extravagance shews the difficulty there was to conquer it, and so great a subversion of right reason sufficiently demonstrates how much its principles were tainted. The world was grown old in idolatry; and infatuated by its idols, was become deaf to the voice of nature, which cried out against them. What power then was necessary to recal to the mind of man the true God, so entirely forgotten, and to recover mankind from so prodigious a state of stupidity?

All the senses, all the passions, all interests, fought for idolatry. It was made for pleasure: in it, diversions, shews, and even lewdness itself, made a part of divine wor

ship. The festivals were nothing but farces; and there was no engagement of a man's life, from which modesty was more carefully banished, than from the mysteries of religion. How shall you accustom minds so corrupted to the regularity of true religion, which is chaste, severe, an enemy to the senses, and solely attached to invisible blessings? When St. Paul spoke to Felix, the governor of Judea, of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, he trembled, and answered, Go thy way for this tinte; when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee*. This was a discourse to be long deferred by a man, who was resolved to enjoy, without scruple and at any rate, the good things of the earth.

Would you see the exertions of interest, that powerful spring, which gives motion to human affairs? In that great crying down of idolatry, which St. Paul's preaching began to cause in all Asia, the craftsmen who got their living by making little silver shrines, or temples, of Diana of Ephesus, assembled themselves together, and the leading man among them represented to them, that their gain was like to cease: And not only, says he, this our craft is in danger to be set at nought; but also the temple of the great goddess Diana shall be despised, and her magnificence shall be destroyed, whom all Asia and the world wor skippeth t.

How powerful is interest, and how bold,

"Acts xxiv, 25.

+Acts xix. 27.

when it can cloak itself under the pretext of religion! Nothing more was wanted to stir up the workmen. They came forth all together, crying out like so many madmen, Great is Diana of the Ephesians, and dragging St. Paul's companions to the theatre, where the whole city was assembled. Then the cries were redoubled, and for the space of two hours the public place rang with these words, Great is Diana of the Ephesians. St. Paul and his companions were with difficulty rescued out of the hands of the people by the magistrates, who feared lest greater disorders should happen in the uproar. If to the interest of private persons we join the interest of the priests, who were about to fall with their gods; and to all this add the interest of the cities, which false religion rendered considerable, as the city of Ephesus, which owed to its temple its privileges, and the resort of strangers, by which it was enriched: what a storm must arise against the infant church? And need we be surprised to see the apostles so frequently beaten, stoned, and left for dead in the midst of the populace? But a greater interest is about to move a greater machine; the interest of the state is about to put the senate, the Roman people and emperors, all in action.

The decrees of the senate had long prohibited strange religions *. The emperors. had entered into the same policy; and in

* Liv. lib. xxxix. &c. Orat. Mæcen. ap. Dion. lii. Tertul. Apolog. 5. Eus. Hist. Eccl. it. 2.

that great consultation about reforming abuses of the government, one of the chief regulations that Mecenas proposed to Augustus, was to prevent innovations in religion, which had never failed to occasion dangerous commotions in states. The maxim was just: for what is there that more violently agitates men's minds, and carries them to stranger excesses? But God was resolved to shew that the establishment of the true religion excited no such troubles; and this is one of the wonders, which demonstrate his being engaged in the work. For who would not be amazed to see, that during three hundred entire years, that the church had to suffer all the cruelties that the rage of persecutors could invent, amidst so many seditions and civil wars, amidst so many conspiracies against the persons of emperors, there should never be found one single Christian, good or bad*? The Christians defy their greatest enemies to name one; there never was one: so much veneration for public authority did the Christian doctrine inspire; and so deep was the impression made on all their minds by these words of the Son of God: Render unto Cesar the things which are Cesar's, and unto God the things that are God'st.

That beautiful distinction conveyed so clear a light into their minds, that never did the Christians cease to reverence the image of God in princes, even when they were persecutors of the truth. This prin

* Tertul. Apolog. 35, 36, &c. + Mat. xxii. 21.

ciple of submission shinès so bright in all their apologies, that they inspire, even at this day, those that read them, with the love of public order, and shew that they expected from none but God the establishment of Christianity. Men so determined against death*, who filled the whole empire, and all the armies, were yet never once guilty of any disturbance during so many ages of suffering; they forbad themselves not only seditious actions, but even murmurs. The finger of God was in the work, and no other hand but his could have restrained spirits provoked to the utmost by so many injuries.

Indeed it was hard for them to be treated as public enemies, and enemies of the emperors, who breathed nothing but obedience, and whose most ardent wishes were for the safety of the princes, and the happiness of the state. But the Roman policy thought itself attacked in its foundations, when its gods were despised. Rome boasted of being a holy city from her foundation, consecrated at her original by divine auspices, and dedicated by her founder to the god of war. She almost believed Jupiter to be more present in the capitol, than in heaven. She thought she owed her victories to her religion. It was by it she had overcome both the nations and their gods; such at least was the reasoning at that time: so that the Roman gods must have been masters of other gods, as the Romans

* Tertul. Apolog. 37.