were masters of other men*. Rome, by subduing Judea, had reckoned the God of the Jews among the gods she had vanquished: to pretend to establish his reign, was to overthrow the foundations of the empire; it was to hate the victories and power of the Roman people. Thus the Christians, enemies of the gods, were looked upon at the same time as enemies of the republic. The emperors took more pains to exterminate them, than to exterminate the Parthians, Marcomans, or Dacians. CHRISTIANITY OVERTHROWN, appeared in their inscriptions with as much pomp as THE SARMATIANS DEFEATED. But they unjustly boasted of having destroyed a religion, which was still growing under fire and sword. In vain were calumnies joined to cruelty. Men who practised virtues above man, were accused of vices, which are shocking to human nature. Those were accused of incest, whose chastity was their delight. Those were accused of eating their own children, who did all the good in their power to their persecutors. But in spite of the public hatred, the force of truth drew favourable reports from the mouths of their enemies. Every body knows what the younger Pliny wrote to Trajan concerning the good behaviour of the Christians †. They were justifiéd, but not exempted from the severest punishment; for this last stroke

*Cic. Orat. pro Flacc. Orat. Symm. ad Imper, Valer. Theod. & Arc. ap. Amb. tom. v, lib. v. Ep. 30. Zosim. Hist. lib. ii. iv. &c.

Plin. lib. x. Eph. 97.

was requisite, in order to complete in them the image of JESUS CHRIST crucified, and they were, like him, to go to the cross with a public declaration of their innocence.'

But idolatry did not lay its whole stress upon violence. Although its basis was a brutal ignorance, and a total depravation of common sense, it was willing to colour itself over with some shew of argument. How many times did it endeavour to disguise itself, and how many various forms did it assume, in order to cover its shame! It sometimes affected a reverence for the Deity, saying, Whatever is divine is unknown: the Deity alone can know himself; it is not for us to discourse on such high matters; therefore we are to believe our forefathers, and every one ought to follow the religion which he finds established in his country. By these maxims, errors equally gross and impious, which filled the whole earth, were without remedy; and the voice of nature, which proclaimed the true God, was stifled.

There was ground to think that the weakness of our erring reason stood in need of some authority to bring it back to its first principle, and that it is from antiquity, we must learn the true religion. And you have seen the uninterrupted progression of it from the beginning of the world. But of what antiquity could Paganism boast, which could not read its own histories, without finding in them the origin not only of its religion, but even of its gods. Varro and Cicero, not to mention other authors, have

1

sufficiently shewn this*. Or should we have recourse to those numberless thousands of years, which the Egyptians filled with confused and impertinent fables, in order to establish the antiquity of which they boasted? Yet there too were to be seen the birth and death of the divinities of Egypt, and that people could not make themselves ancient, without pointing out the beginning of their gods.

But there was another form of idolatry, which would have made men adore every thing that passed for divine. The Roman policy, which so strictly prohibited strange religions, allowed the worship of the gods of the Barbarians, provided it had adopted them. Thus did it affect to appear equitable towards all gods, as well as towards all men. It sometimes offered incense to the God of the Jews, with the rest. We find a letter of Julian the apostate, in which he promises the Jews to rebuild the holy city, and with them to sacrifice to God, the creator of the universet. This was a common error. We have seen, that the heathens were very willing to worship the true God, but not the true God alone; and it was not the fault of the emperors, that JESUS CHRIST himself, whose disciples they were persecuting, had not altars among the Romans.

But could the Romans ever think of honouring as a God, him whom their magi

* De Nat. Deor. lib. i. & iii.
† Jul. Ep. ad comin. Judæor.

strates had condemned to the most infamous punishment, and whom several of their authors had loaded with reproaches? The thing is incontestable, nor need we be astonished at it.

Let us first of all distinguish what blind hatred in general dictates, from positive facts established by proof. Certain it is that the Romans, though they condemned JESUS CHRIST, had never reproached him with any one particular crime. Pilate even condemned him with reluctance, overcomeTM by the clamours and threats of the Jews. But what is much more wonderful, the Jews themselves, at whose instance he was crucified, have not preserved in their ancient books the memory of any one action, that might cast the least blemish upon his life, so far were they from remarking any that should have made him deserve the most ignominious punishment: by which is manifestly confirmed what we read in the Gospel, that our Lord's whole crime was his having called himself the Christ the Son of God.

Indeed Tacitus gives us an account of JESUS CHRIST's suffering under Pontius Pilate*, and during the empire of Tiberius; but he mentions no one crime that made him worthy of death, save that of being the author of a sect convicted of hating mankind, or of being hateful to it. Such was the crime of JESUS CHRIST and the Christians; and their greatest enemies

* Tac. An. xv. 44.
CC

could never accuse them but in vague terms, without ever producing one positive fact that could be laid to their charge.

It is true, that in the last persecution, and three hundred years after JESUS CHRIST, the heathens, being quite at a loss how to brand either him or his disciples, published forged acts of Pilate, in which they pretended the crimes were to be seen, for which he had been crucified. But as we hear nothing of those acts in all the preceding ages, and as neither under Nero, nor Domitian, who reigned during the origin of Christianity, how great enemies soever they were to it, can we find one word about them, it evidently appears, that they were forged for the purpose; and there were among the Romans so few certain proofs against JESUS CHRIST, that his enemies were obliged to have recourse to fiction.

Here, then, is one clear point, the irreproachable innocence of JESUS CHRIST. Let us add another, the acknowledged holiness of his life and doctrine. One of the greatest Roman emperors, namely, Alexander Severus, admired our Lord*, and caused some sentences of his Gospel to be inscribed on the public works, as well as in his own palace. The same emperor commended, and proposed as a pattern, the holy precautions with which the Christians ordained ministers of sacred things. But this is not all: there was in his palace a sort of chapel, where he sacrificed every morn

* Lamprid. in Alex. Sev. c. 45, 51.