UNIVERSAL HISTORY.

BOOK THE FIFTH.

CHAPTER IV.

Establishment of Christianity in the Empire.

A TEOROUGH acquaintance with the history of the world and the state of mankind at the time of our Savior's birth has led the wisest and most enlightened inquirers to conclude, that the Alnighty having designed to illuminate the world by a revelation, there was no period at which it was more certainly required than that in which it was actually sent; nor could any concurrence of circumstances have been more favorable for its extensive dissemination, than that which took place at the time of our Savior's mission. A great part of the known world was at this time under the dominion of the Romans, and subject to all those grievances which are the inevitable result of a system of arbitrary power. Yet this circumstance of the union of so many nations into one great Empire was of considerable advantage for the propagation and advancement of Christianity: for that spirit of civilization which nations, hitherto sunk in barbarism, derived from an intercourse with a refined and liberal people, was favorable to the diffusion of a religion which was founded in an extension of the social feelings; that is to say, in universal charity and benevolence. These nations were, previous to this, sunk in the grossest superstition. The pagan religion had no influence towards refining or improving the morals of mankind. The only attributes which distinguished the heathen gods from the race of ordinary men were their power and their immortality. They were endowed with the same passions as human creatures, and those distinguishing attributes of power and immortality served, in general, only to extend the measure and the enormity of their vices. The example of their gods was, therefore, an incentive to vice instead of virtue; and

those rites with which many of them were worshipped, and which were conceived to be peculiarly acceptable to them, were often the grossest violations not only of decency but of humanity.

The philosophy too of the pagan world was but ill calculated to supply the place of religion in the refinement of morals. The doctrines of Epicurus, which were highly prevalent at the time of the birth of Christ, by representing pleasure as the chief good, by imposing no restraint on the indulgence of the passions, and limiting all happiness to the enjoyments of the present life, tended to corrupt and degrade human nature to a rank little superior to that of the brutes. Next to the Epicurean system, the doctrines most prevalent at that time were those of the new Academy, very different from those of the old Academy, founded by Plato. The new Academics asserted the impossibility of arriving at truth, and held it entirely a matter of doubt whether vice or virtue were preferable. These opinions evidently struck at the foundation not only of religion, but of morality and as to the other sects, although the Platonists, the Stoics, and the disciples of Aristotle, made the belief of a God a part of their philosophy, and some of them-as, for example, the Stoics-entertained sublime ideas with regard to the nature of virtue and the dignity of man, yet the austerity of their doctrines, and indeed the incomprehensibility of many of their tenets, gave them but few followers in comparison with the popular sects of the Epicureans and new Academics.*

At no period, therefore, of the history of the world, did mankind stand more in need of a superior light to dispel the mists of error, and to point out the path of true religion and of virtue, than at that great era when the Messiah appeared upon earth. The propagation of a new religion, which thus strongly opposed itself, not only to the prevailing passions and habits of mankind, but to established and revered systems of philosophy, could not fail to encounter a violent and obstinate opposition. Let us take a short progressive view of the state of the church in the four first centuries from its institution.

The severe persecutions which the first Christians underwent from the Romans, who had then acquired the sovereignty of the greatest part of the known world, have been reckoned a singular exception to that spirit of toleration which this enlightened people showed for the various systems of idolatrous worship, different

*Not only was this the situation of the pagan world, but even the Jews themselves at this period were a most corrupted and degenerate people. That law which they had received from God they had vitiated by the intermixture of heathen doctrines, and ceremonies borrowed from the pagans; while their doctors dissented from the opinions of each other in the most essential articles, such as the literal or figurative interpretation of the Scripture, the temporal or the spiritual authority of the promised Messiah, the materiality or spirituality of the soul; in short, Judaism itself was so much corrupted or disguised, that it had become a source of national discord and division among its own votaries, as well as the object of abhorrence and contempt to the pagan world.

from their own, which they found prevailing in the countries which they conquered; but this may be very easily accounted for: the Romans showed a spirit of toleration to the religious opinions of other nations, because they found nothing in these which aimed at the subversion of their own religion, nor any thing of that zeal of making converts which so remarkably distinguished the votaries of Christianity. The religion of the Romans was inseparably interwoven with their system of government. The Christians, by exposing the absurdities of their system of worship, in effect undermined the fabric of their political constitution; and hence they were not without reason considered by the Romans as a dangerous body of men, whom it became the interest of the empire to suppress and exterminate. Hence those opprobrious epithets with which they have been stigmatized by the Roman writers, and hence those cruel persecutions which they underwent from the emperors and their deputies in the provinces.

In the first century after the death of Christ, the emperors Nero and Domitian exercised against the Christians all that sanguinary cruelty which preeminently distinguished their characters; and the number of martyrs whose names are recorded to have suffered in those persecutions, though suspected to be exaggerated much beyond the truth, was yet extremely great. These were, no doubt, chiefly men of some eminence, whose consideration and authority with the lower ranks of people made them to be regarded as peculiarly dangerous, or whose wealth offered a tempting object to the avarice of the Roman governors.

But, under all these discouragements, Christianity made a most rapid and wonderful progress, through the power and efficacy of its first teachers, those holy men to whom the Messiah himself had given in charge the enunciation of his religion to mankind..

There is no subject which has afforded greater controversy than the ascertainment of that external form which our Savior is supposed to have given to the primitive church, or that method which was instituted for its government. While the supporters of the Roman Catholic Faith maintain, that is was our Savior's intention that the whole Christian church should form one body, which was to be governed by St. Peter and his successors-the doctors of the church of England deny the evidence of any divine institution of a supreme perpetual head; but refer to the Apostles the nomination of Bishops, or Ministers, presiding over a certain district, whom the civil authority, and regulations of good policy, afterwards subjected to a Metropolitan, a Patriarch, or an Archbishop. The Presbyterians again affirm, that it was the intention of the Great Author of Christianity that all ministers and teachers of the Gospel should be upon a level of perfect equality. To these three opinions a fourth may be added, which, perhaps, comes nearer the truth than any of them, and this is, that neither Christ nor his Apostles have laid down any certain or

precise system of church government; but, confining their precepts to the pure doctrines of religion, have, with admirable wisdom, left all Christian associations to regulate the government of their churches in that manner which is best adapted to the spirit of their political constitutions, and to the varying state of mankind in different ages or periods of society.

It is certain that, during the first century from the death of Christ, the several churches which had been instituted by the Apostles, or their successors, were entirely independent of ench other; and the bishops, or presbyters, who governed them, acknowledged no sort of subjection to any common head; not till the second century, was there such a thing known as a general council of the church.

About the middle of the second century, we find that the books of the New Testament had been collected into one volume, and were received as a canon of faith in all the Christian churches. This selection of the inspired books from the compositions of many ministers, or teachers of Christianity, who had written in imitation of their style and had recorded the acts of our Savior and his Apostles, is supposed to have been made by some of the early Fathers of the church. The four Gospels, it is generally believed, had been collected during the lifetime of St. John. The books of the Old Testament had been translated from the Hebrew into Greek by the orders of Ptolemy Philadelphus, in the year 285 before Christ.*

* The most ancient account we have of this Septuagint translation of the Bible is from Aristeas, an officer in the guards of Ptolemy Philadelphus, at the time when it was completed. He informs us that Ptolemy, being desirous of forming a very great library at Alexandria, employed Demetrius Phalereus, a noble Athenian, to procure from different nations all books of any reputation that were among them. Demetrius informed him that the Jews were possessed of a most extraordinary volume, containing the ancient history of that people, and the ordinances of their lawgiver Moses, which he represented as a singular curiosity. Ptolemy immediately sent to Jerusalem to procure this volume, and being desirous of understanding its contents, he requested of Eleazer the High Priest to send him six elders of each of the tribes, men of fidelity and ability, to translate it into the Greek language; in consideration of which favor, he agreed to set at liberty all the Jewish captives, to the amount of a hundred and twenty thousand, whom his father Ptolemy Soter had reduced to slavery: The request was granted; a magnificent copy of the Old Testament, written in letters of gold, and seventy-two learned men, were sent from Jerusalem to Alexandria, where they were received with the utmost respect, and lodged in a palace prepared for their reception.

In modern times, Dupin, Prideaux, and others, have endeavored to discredit many of the circumstances enumerated by Aristeas; but all agree in the main fact, that a translation of the books of the Old Testament was made into Greek under Ptolemy Philadelphus, and lodged in the Alexandrine library.

For four hundred years this translation was in high estimation with the Jews; it was read in their synagogues in preference to the Hebrew, and that even in Jerusalem and Judea. But when they saw that it was equally valued by the Christians, they became jealous of it, and employed Aquila, a heathen proselyte o the Jewish religion, to make a new translation, which he completed about A. D. 128. In this work Aquila took care to give such a turn to all the ancient prophecies relating to the Messiah, that they should not apply to Jesus Christ;

As the Christian religion was received, at first, by many, from the conviction of its truth from external evidence, and without a due examination of its doctrines, it was not surprising that many who called themselves Christians should retain the doctrines of a prevailing philosophy to which they had been accustomed, and endeavor to accommodate these to the system of revelation, which they found in the sacred volumes. Such, for example, were the Christian Gnostics, who intermixed the doctrines of the oriental philosophy concerning the two separate principles, a good and an evil, with the precepts of Christianity, and admitted the authority of Zoroaster, as an inspired personage, equally with that of Jesus Christ. Such likewise were the sect of the Ammonians, who vainly endeavored to reconcile together the opinions of all the different schools of the pagan philosophy, and attempted, with yet greater absurdity, to accommodate all these to the doctrines of Christianity. From this confusion of the pagan philosophy with the plain and simple doctrines of the Christian religion, the church, in this period of its infant state, suffered in a most essential manner. The Christian doctors began now to introduce that subtle and obscure erudition which tends to perplex and bewilder, instead of enlightening the understanding. The effect of this in involving religion in all the perplexity of the scholastic philosophy, and thus removing its doctrines beyond the comprehension of the mass of mankind, was, with great justice, condemned by many of the wisest fathers of the church; and hence sprung those inveterate and endless controversies between faith and reason, religion and philosophy, which began at that early period, and have, unfortunately, continued to the present day.

We have remarked, that hitherto the Christian churches were entirely independent of each other. About the middle of the second century, the Greek churches began to unite into general associations; the whole churches of a province forming one body, and agreeing to be governed by general rules of discipline, which were concerted and framed by a council of the elders, or deputies from each particular church. These assemblies the Greeks termed Synods, and the Latin churches, following the same example, termed these general meetings Concilia; and the rules of discipline there enacted were called Canons. As it was necessary for the maintenance of order in these assemblies that some person of authority should preside, the right of presiding was conferred, by an election of the several bishops, either upon some one of themselves possessing eminent virtue or abilities, or, not improbably, on the

and other translations on the same insidious principle were made by Symmachus and Theodotion.

Those who desire more particular accounts of the Septuagint translation may consult Prideaux' Connections, part 2. b. i.; Hody de Bibliorum Textibus; Ow en's Inquiry into the Septuagint versions; Blair's Lectures on the Canon; and Michaelis's Introduction to the New Testament.