PREFACE.

I thought at first that this Sixth Book would finish the series of volumes which I have devoted to the history of the origins of Christianity. It is certain that at the death of Antoninus, circa A.D. 160, the Christian religion had become a complete religion, having all its sacred books, all its grand legends, the germ of all its dogmas, the essential parts of its liturgies; and in the eyes of most of its adherents, it was a religion standing by itself, separated from and even opposed to Judaism. I, however, thought it right to add a last work, containing the ecclesiastical history of the reign of Marcus Aurelius, to the preceding books. In the truest sense, the reign of Marcus Aurelius belongs to the origins of Christianity. Montanism is a phenomenon of about the year 170, and is one of the most notable events of early Christianity. After more than a century had elapsed since those strange hallucinations which had possessed the apostles at the Last Supper at Jerusalem, suddenly in some remote districts of Phrygia there sprung up again prophecy, the glossolalia, those graces which the author of the Acts of the Apostles praises so much. But it was too late: under Marcus Aurelius, religion, after the confused manifestations of Gnosticism, had more need of discipline than of miraculous gifts. The resistance that orthodoxy, as represented by the episcopate, was able to offer to the prophets of Phrygia, was the decisive act of the constitution of the Church. It was admitted that, above individual inspiration, there existed the average judgment of the universal conscience. This average opinion, which will triumph in the course of the history of the Church, and which, representing as it did relative good sense, constituted the power of that great institution, was already perfectly characterised under Marcus Aurelius. A description of the first struggles which thus took place between individual liberty and ecclesiastical authority, seemed to me to be a necessary part of the history which I wished to trace of rising Christianity.

But besides that, there was another reason that decided me to treat the reign of Marcus Aurelius in its relations to the Christian community in the fullest detail. It is partial and unjust to represent the endeavours of Christianity as an isolated fact, as a unique, and, in a manner, a miraculous attempt at religious and social reform. Christianity was not alone in attempting what it alone was able to carry out. Timidly still in the first century, openly and brilliantly in the second, all virtuous men of the ancient world were longing for an improvement in morals and in the laws, and piety thus became a general requirement of the time. With regard to high intellectual culture, the century was not what the preceding age had been; there were no men of such large minds as Cæsar, Lucretius, Cicero and Seneca, but an immense work of moral amelioration was going on in all directions, and philosophy, Hellenism, the Eastern creeds and Roman probity, contributed equally to this. The fact that Christianity has triumphed is no reason for being unjust towards those noble attempts which ran parallel with its own, and which only failed because they were too aristocratic, and did not possess enough of that mystic character which was formerly necessary in order to attract the people. In order to be perfectly just, the two attempts ought to be studied together, allowances ought to be made for both, and it ought to be explained why one has succeeded whilst the other has not.

The name of Marcus Aurelius is the most noble among all that noble school of virtue which tried to save the ancient world by the force of reason, and thus a thorough study of that great man belongs essentially to our subject. Why did not that reconciliation between the Church and the Empire, which took place under Constantine, take place under Marcus Aurelius? It is all the more important to settle this question, as already in this volume we shall see that the Church identifies her destinies with those of the Empire.

In the latter half of the second century, some Christian doctors of the highest authority seriously faced the possibility of making Christianity the official religion of the Roman world, and it might almost be said that they divined the great events of the fourth century. Looked at closely, that resolution by which Christianity, having entirely changed its past, has become the protégé, or perhaps we had better say the protector, of the State, from having been persecuted by it, ceases to be surprising. St Justin and Melito foresaw this quite clearly. St Paul’s principle, “All power is of God,” will bear its fruits, and the Gospel will become, what Jesus certainly did not foresee, one of the bases of absolution. Christ will have come into the world to guarantee the crowns of princes, and in our days a Roman Pontiff has tried to prove that Jesus Christ preached and died to preserve the fortunes of the wealthy, and to consolidate capital.

As we advance in this history, we shall find that documents become more certain, and preliminary discussions less necessary. The question of the Fourth Gospel has been so often treated in the preceding volumes, that we need not return to that subject now. The falseness of the Epistles to Timothy and Titus, which are attributed to St Paul, has been already demonstrated, and the apocryphal character of the Second Epistle of St Peter is shown by the few pages which are devoted to that work. The problems of the epistles attributed to St Ignatius, and of the epistle attributed to St Polycarp, are absolutely identical, and attention need only be drawn to what has been said in the introduction to our preceding work. Nobody has any further doubt about the approximate age of the Pastor of Hermas. The account of Polycarp’s death bears the same characteristics of authenticity as the epistle to the faithful at Lyons and Vienne, which will be mentioned in our last book, and to discriminate between the authentic and the supposititious works of St Justin, does not require the same lengthy explanation as the introductions to the former volumes naturally did. It can plainly be seen, and all signs seem to point to the fact, that we are approaching the end of the age of origins. Ecclesiastical history is about to begin. The same interest is felt in it, but everything takes place in the full light of day, and for the future, criticism will no longer encounter those obscurities which can only be got over by hypotheses or bold speculation. Hic cestus artemque repono. After Irenæus and Clement of Alexandria, our old works on Ecclesiastical History of the seventeenth century are almost sufficient. Any one who reads in Fleury the two hundred and twenty pages that correspond to our seven volumes, will perceive all the difference. The seventeenth century only cared to know what was quite clear, and all origins are obscure; but for the philosophic mind, they are of unequalled interest. Embryogeny is from its very essence the most interesting of sciences, for by it we can penetrate the secrets of nature, its plastic force, its final aims, and its inexhaustible fecundity.

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.

CHAPTER I.

HADRIAN.

Trajan’s health was daily growing worse, and so he set out for Rome, leaving the command of the army at Antioch to Hadrian, his second cousin, and grand-nephew by marriage. He was forced to stop at Selinus, on the coast of Cilicia, by inflammation of the bowels, and there he died August 11, 117, at the age of sixty-four. The condition of affairs was very unfortunate: the East was in a state of insurrection; the Moors, the Bretons, the Sarmatians were becoming menacing, and Judea, subjugated but still in a state of suppressed agitation, appeared to be threatening a fresh outbreak. A somewhat obscure intrigue, which appears to have been directed by Plotina and Matidias, bestowed the Empire on Hadrian, under these critical circumstances.

It was an excellent choice, for though he was a man of equivocal morals, he was a great ruler. Intellectual, intelligent, and eager to learn, he had more greatness of mind than any of the Cæsars, and from Augustus down to Diocletian, no other Emperor did so much for the constitution as he did. His administrative capacities were extraordinary, as, although he administered too much, according to our ideas, he nevertheless administered well. He was the first to give the Imperial Government a definite organisation, and his reign marked a principal epoch in the history of Roman law.

Up till his time, the house of the sovereign had been the house of the highest personage in the land,—an establishment composed like any other of servants, freemen, and private secretaries. Hadrian organised the palace, and for the future it was necessary to be a knight in order to arrive at any office in the household, and the servants in Cæsar’s palace became public functionaries. A permanent council of the prince, composed chiefly of jurisconsults, undertook all definite public powers; those senators who were specially attached to the government already were made comtes (counts); everything was done through regular offices, in the constitution of which the senate took its proper share, and not through the direct will of the prince. It was still a state of despotism, but of despotism which was analogous to that of the old French royalty, kept in check by independent councils, law courts, and magistrates.

The social ameliorations which took place were still more important, for everywhere a really good and great spirit of liberalism was manifested; the position of slaves was guaranteed, the condition of women was raised, paternal authority was restricted within certain limits, and every remaining vestige of human sacrifices was abolished. The Emperor’s personal character responded to the excellence of these reforms, for he was most affable towards those of lowly station, and never would allow himself to be deprived of his greatest pleasure—that of being amiable—under the pretext of his imperial greatness.

In spite of all his failings, he was a man of a quick, unbiassed, original intellect. He admired Epictetus and understood him, without, however, feeling obliged to follow out his maxims. Nothing escaped him, and he wished to know everything; and as he did not possess that insolent pride and that fixed determination which altogether excluded the true Roman from all knowledge of the rest of the world, Hadrian had a strong inclination for everything that was strange, and would wittily make fun of it. The East, above all, had strong attractions for him, for he saw through Eastern impostures and charlatanism, and they amused him. He was initiated into all their absurd rites, fabricated oracles, compounded antidotes, and made fun of the medicine; and, like Nero, he was a royal man of letters and an artist, while the ease with which he learnt painting, sculpture, and architecture was surprising. Besides this, he also wrote tolerable poetry, but his taste was not pure, and he had his favourite authors and singular preferences; in a word, he was a literary smatterer, and a theatrical architect. He adopted no system of religion or of philosophy, but neither did he deny any of them, and his distinguished mind was like a weather-cock, which moves its position with every wind; his elegant farewell to life, which he murmured a few moments before his death,

“Animula, vagula, blandula,”

gives us his measure exactly. For him, whatever he examined into ended in a joke, and he had a smile for everything that was an object of his curiosity. The sovereign power itself could not make him more than half serious, and his bearing always had that easy grace and negligence of the most fluctuating and changeable man that ever existed.

All that naturally made him tolerant. He did not indeed abrogate the laws which indirectly struck at Christianity, and so put it continually in the wrong, and he even allowed them to be applied more than once, but he personally very much modified the effect of them. In this respect he was superior to Trajan, who, without being a philosopher, had very fixed ideas about State affairs, and to Antoninus and Marcus Aurelius, who were men of high principle, but who thought that they did right in persecuting the Christians. In this respect Hadrian’s laxity of morals was not without a good effect, for it is the peculiarity of a monarchy that the defects of sovereigns serve the public good even more than their better qualities. The immorality of a really witty man, of a crowned Lucian, who looks upon the whole world as some frivolous game, was more favourable to liberty than the serious gravity and lofty morality of the most perfect Emperors.

Hadrian’s first care was to settle the difficulties of the accession which Trajan had left him. He was a distinguished military writer, but no great general. He clearly saw how impossible it would be to keep the newly conquered provinces of Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Assyria, and so he gave them up. That must have been a very solemn hour, when, for the first time, the Roman eagles retreated, and when the Empire was obliged to acknowledge that it had exceeded its programme of conquest, but it was an act of wisdom. Persia was as inaccessible for Rome as Germany, and the mighty expeditions which Crassus, Trajan, and Julian had led into that part of the world failed, whilst less ambitious expeditions—those of Lucius Verus and of' Septimus Severus, whose object was not to attack the very foundations of the Parthian Empire, but to detach the feudatory provinces which bordered on the Roman Empire, from it—succeeded. The difficulty of relinquishing conquests, which was so humiliating to the Roman mind, was increased by the uncertainty of Hadrian’s adoption by Trajan. Lucius Quietus and Marcus Turbo had an almost equal right to adoption with him, from the importance of the last commission that they had carried out. Quiltus was killed, and it may be supposed that, eager as they were to find out the deaths of their enemies, in order to discover in them a token of celestial vengeance, the Jews saw in this tragic death a punishment for the new evils which the fierce Berber had inflicted on them.

Hadrian was a year on his return journey to Rome, thus at once beginning those roaming habits which were to make his reign one continual rush through the provinces of the Empire. After another year devoted to the gravest cares of government administration, which was fertile in constitutional reforms, he started on an official progress (tour) and successively visited Gaul, the banks of the Rhine, Britain, Spain, Mauritania and Carthage, and his vanity and antiquarian tastes made him dream of becoming the founder of cities, and the restorer of ancient monuments. Moreover, he did not approve of the idleness of garrison life for soldiers, and he found a means of occupying them in great public works, and that is the reason for these innumerable constructions—roads, ports, theatres—temples which date from Hadrian’s reign. He was surrounded by a crowd of architects, engineers, and artists, who were enrolled like a legion. In each province where he set his foot, everything seemed to be restored and to spring up afresh. At the Emperor’s suggestion, enormous public companies were formed to carry out great public works, and generally the State appeared as a shareholder. If any city had the smallest title to celebrity, or was mentioned in classical authors, it was sure to be restored by this archæological Cæsar; thus he beautified Carthage and added a new quarter to it; and in all directions towns which had fallen into decay rose up from their ruins, and took the name of Colonia Ælia Hadriana.

After a short stay in Rome, during which he extended the circumference of the pomœsium (the symbolical, not actual wall of the city), he started, during the course of the year 121, on another journey, which lasted nearly four years and a half, and during which he visited nearly the whole of the East. This journey was even more brilliant than the former, and it might have been said that the ancient world was coming to life again beneath the footsteps of a beneficent deity. Thoroughly acquainted with ancient history, Hadrian wished to see everything, was interested in everything, and wished to have everything restored that had existed formerly. Men sought to revive the lost arts, in order to please him, and a neo-Egyptian style became the fashion, as did also a neo-Phœnician. Philosophers, rhetoricians, critics, swarmed about him, and he was another Nero without his follies. A number of ancient civilisations which had disappeared, aspired after their resuscitation, not actually, but in the writings of historians and archæologists. Thus Herennius, Philo of Byblos, tried—very likely under the direct inspiration of the Emperor himself—to discover ancient Phœnicia. New fêtes, the Hadrianian Games, which the Greeks introduced—recalled for the last time the splendour of Hellenic life; it was like a universal restoration to life of the ancient world, a brilliant restoration indeed, but it was hardly sincere, and rather theatrical, and each country found, in Rome’s comprehensive bosom, its former titles of nobility again, and became attached to them. Whilst studying that singular spectacle, one cannot help thinking of that and of resurrection from the dead which our own century has witnessed, when, in a moment of universal goodwill, it began to restore all things, to rebuild Gothic churches, to re-establish pilgrimages which had fallen into neglect, and to reintroduce fêtes and ancient customs.

Hadrian, the turn of whose mind was more Greek than Roman, favoured this ecclectic movement, and contributed powerfully towards it, and what he did in Asia Minor was really prodigious. Cyzicus, Nicaea, Nicomedia, sprang up again, and everywhere temples of the most splendid works of architecture, immortalised the memory of that learned sovereign, who seemed to wish that another world, in all the freshness of its youth, should date from him. Syria was no less favoured. Antioch and Daphne became the most delightful places of abode in the world, and the combinations of picturesque architecture, the imagination of the landscape painter, and the forces of hydraulic power, were exhausted there. Even Palmyra was partially restored by the great imperial architect, and, like a number of other towns, took the name of Hadrianople from him.

Never had the world had so much enjoyment or so much hope. The Barbarians beyond the Rhine and the Danube were hardly thought about, for the liberal spirit of the Emperor caused a sort of feeling of universal contentment; and the Jews themselves were divided into two parties. Those who were massed at Bether, and in the villages south of Jerusalem, seemed to be possessed by a sort of sombre rage. Their one idea was to take the city, to which access was denied them, by force, and to restore to the hill which God had chosen for his own, its former honours. Hadrian had not at first been obnoxious to the more moderate party, especially to the half-Christian, half-Essenian survivors of the Egyptian catastrophe under Trojan. They could imagine that he had ordered the death of Quietus to punish him for his cruelty towards the Jews, and perhaps for a moment they conceived the hope that the ecclectic Emperor would undertake the restoration of Israel, as another caprice amongst so many. In order to inculcate these ideas, a pious Alexandrian took a form of thought that had already been consecrated by success. In his poem he supposed that a Sybil, sister of Isis, had had a disordered vision of the trials which were reserved for the latter centuries.

Hatred for Rome bursts out at the very beginning:—

O Virgin, enervated and wealthy daughter of Latin Rome, who hast joined the ranks of slavery whilst drunk with wine, for what nuptials hast thou reserved thyself! How often will a cruel mistress tear these delicate locks!

The author, who is a Jew and a Christian at the same time, looks upon Rome as the natural enemy of the saints, and to Hadrian alone he pays the homage of admiring him thoroughly. After enumerating the Roman Emperors, from Julius Cæsar to Trajan, by the nonsensical process of ghematria, the Sybil sees a man ascend the throne—

Who has a skull of silver, who will give his name to a sea. He will be unequalled in every way and know everything. Under thy reign O excellent, O eminent and brilliant sovereign, and under thy offspring, the events which I am about to mention shall take place.

According to custom, the Sybil now unfolds the most gloomy pictures; every scourge is let loose at the same time, and mankind becomes altogether corrupt. These are the throes of the Messianic child-birth. Nero, who had been dead for more than fifty years, was still the author’s nightmare. That destructive dragon, that actor, that murderer of his own relations, and assassin of the chosen people, that kindler of numberless wars, will return to put himself on an equality with God. He weaves the darkest plots amongst the Medes and Persians who have received him; and, borne through the air by the Fates, he will soon arrive to be once more the scourge of the West. The author vomits forth an invective, fiercer still than that with which he began:—

Unstable, corrupted, reserved for the very lowest destinies, the beginning and end of all suffering, because in thy bosom creation perishes and is born again continually, source of all evil, scourge, the point where everything ends for mortal men, who has ever loved thee? who does not detest thee internally? what dethroned king has ended his life in peace within thy walls? By thee the whole world has been changed in its innermost recesses. Formerly there existed in the human breast a splendour like a brilliant sun; it was the rays of the unanimous spirits of the prophets, which brought to all the nourishment of life, and thou hast destroyed these good gifts. Therefore, O imperious mistress, origin and cause of all these great evils, sword and disaster shall fall on thee . . . Listen, O scourge of humanity, to the harsh voice which announces thy misfortunes.

A divine race of blessed Jews, come down from heaven, shall inhabit Jerusalem, which shall extend as far as Jaffa, and rise to the clouds. There shall be no more trumpets or war, but on every side eternal trophies shall rise, trophies consecrating victories over evil.

Then there shall come down from heaven once more an extraordinary man, who has stretched out his hands over a fruitful wood, the best of the Hebrews, who formerly stopped the sun in his course by his beautiful words and his holy lips.

This is doubtlessly Jesus, Jesus, in an allegorical manner, by his crucifixion, playing the part of Moses stretching out his arms, and of Joshua the saviour of the people.

Cease at length to break thy heart, O daughter of divine race, O treasure, O only lovely flower, delightful brightness, exquisite plant, cherished germ, gracious and beautiful city of Judea, always filled with the sound of inspired hymns. The impure feet of the Greeks, their hearts filled with plots, shall not tread thy soil under them, but thou shalt be surrounded by the respect of thy illustrious children, who shall deck thy table in accord with the sacred muses, with sacrifices of all kinds, and with pious prayers. Then the just who have suffered pain and anguish will find more pleasure than they have suffered ills. These, on the contrary, who have hurled their sacrilegious blasphemies towards heaven will be reduced to silence and to hide themselves till the face of the world changes. A rain of burning fire shall descend from heaven, and men shall no longer gather in the sweet fruits of the earth; there shall be no more sowing, no more labour, till mortals recognise the supreme, immortal, eternal God, and till they leave off honouring mortals, dogs, and vultures, to which Egypt wishes men to offer the homage of profane mouths and foolish lips. Only the sacred soil of the Hebrews will bear those things that are refused to other men; brooks of honey shall burst from the rocks and springs, and milk like ambrosia shall flow for the just, because they have hoped, with ardent piety and lively faith, in one only God, the Father of all things, One and Supreme.

At last the runaway parricide, who has been announced three times, enters upon the scene again. The monster inundates the earth with blood, and captures Rome, causing such a conflagration as has never been seen. There is a universal overturning of everything in the world; all kings and aristocrats perish, in order to prepare peace for just men—that is to say, for Jews and Christians, and the author’s joy at the destruction of Rome breaks out a third time.:—

Parricides, leave your pride and your culpable haughtiness, for you have reserved your shameful embraces for children and placed young girls, who were pure up till that time, in houses of ill-fame where they have been subjected to the vilest outrages . . . Keep silence, wicked and unhappy city, thou that wast formerly full of laughter. In thy bosom the sacred virgins will no longer find again the holy fire that they kept alive, for that fire, which was so preciously preserved, went out of its own accord, when I saw for the second time another temple fall to the ground, given up to the flames by impure hands, a temple which flourishes still, a permanent sanctuary of God, built by the saints, and incorruptible throughout eternity . . . It is not, indeed, a god made of common clay that this race adores; amongst them the skilful workman does not shape marble; and gold, which is so often employed to seduce men’s souls, is no object of their worship, but by their sacrifices and their holy hecatombs they honour the great God whose breath animates every living thing.

CHAPTER II.

THE RE-BUILDING OF JERUSALEM.

During his peregrinations in Syria, Hadrian saw the site where Jerusalem had stood. For fifty-two years the city remained in its state of desolation, and offered to the eye nothing but a heap of immense blocks of stone lying one on another. Only a few groups of miserable houses, belonging to Christians for the most part, stood out from the top of Mount Sion, and the site of the Temple was full of jackals. One day, when Rabbi Aquiba came on a pilgrimage to the spot with some companions, a jackal rushed out of the place where the Holy of Holies had stood. The pilgrims burst into tears, and said to each other: “What! is this the place of which it is written that any profane person who approaches it shall be put to death, and here are jackals roaming about in it!” Aquiba, however, burst out laughing, and proved to them the connexion between the various prophecies so clearly, that they all exclaimed: “Aquiba, thou hast consoled us! Aquiba, thou has consoled us!”

These ruins inspired Hadrian with the thought with which all ruins inspired him, namely, the desire to rebuild the ruined city, to colonise it, and to give it his name or that of his family Thus Judea would become once more restored to cultivation, and Jerusalem, raised to the rank of a fortified place in the hands of the Romans, would serve as a check upon the Jewish population. All the towns of Syria, moreover,—Gerasae, Damascus, Gaza, Peah,—were being rebuilt in the Roman manner, and were inaugurating new eras. Jerusalem was too celebrated to be an exception to this movement of historical dilettantism and of general restoration.

It is very probable that if the Jews had been less unanimous in their views, if some Philo of Byblos had existed amongst them to represent to him the Jewish past as nothing but a glorious and interesting variety amongst the different literatures, religions, and philosophies of humanity, the curious and intelligent Hadrian would have been delighted, and re-built the Temple, not exactly as the Doctors of the Law would have wished it, but in his ecclectic manner, like the great amateur of ancient religions that he was. The Talmud is full of conversations between Hadrian and celebrated rabbis, which of course are fictitious, but which correspond very well with the character of this Emperor, who had a great mind, and was a great talker, very fond of asking questions, curious about strange matters, anxious to know everything, that he might make fun of it afterwards. But the greatest insult that can be shown to absolutists is to be tolerant towards them, and in this respect the Jews resembled exactly the enthusiastic Catholics of our days. Men of such convictions will not be satisfied with their reasonable share; they want to be everything. It is the highest indignity for a religion which looks upon itself as the only true one to be treated like a sect amongst many others; they would rather be outside the pale of the law, and be persecuted; and this violent situation appears to them a mark of divinity. The faithful are pleased at persecution, for in the very fact that men hate them, they see a mark of their prerogative, for the wickedness of men, according to them, is naturally an enemy to truth.

There is nothing to prove that when Hadrian wished to rebuild Jerusalem, be consulted the Jews, or wished to come to any agreement with them. Nothing either leads us to believe that he entered into any relations with the Christians of Palestine, who, externally, had less to distinguish them from the Jews than Christians of other countries. In the eyes of the Christians, all the prophecies of Jesus would have been overthrown if the Temple had been rebuilt, whilst amongst the Jews there was a general expectation that it would be rebuilt. The Judaism of Jabneh, without Temple, without worship, had appeared as a short interregnum, and all uses which presupposed a still existing Temple, were preserved. The priests continued to receive the tithe, and the precepts of Levitical purity were still strictly observed. The obligatory sacrifices were adjourned till the Temple should be rebuilt, but Jews alone could rebuild it; the slightest deviation from any injunction of the Law, would have been quite enough to cause the cry of Sacrilege to be raised. It was better in the eyes of pious Jews, to see the sanctuary inhabited by beasts of prey, than to owe its re-building to a profane jester, who afterwards would not have failed to utter some epigram about those extraordinary gods whose altars he nevertheless restored.

For the Jews, Jerusalem was something almost as sacred as the Temple itself. In fact, they did not distinguish one from the other, and at that time they already called the city by the name of Beth hammigdas. The only feeling which the hasidim felt when they heard that the city of God was going to be rebuilt without them, was one of rage. It was very shortly after the extermination which Quietus and Turbo had carried out, and Judea was weighed down by an extraordinary terror. It was impossible to move, but from that time forward it was allowable to foresee in the future a revolution that should be even more terrible than those which had preceded it,

CHAPTER III.

THE RELATIVE TOLERANCE OF HADRIAN—THE FIRST APOLOGISTS.

The period was one of toleration. Colleges and religious societies were on the increase everywhere. In A.D. 124, the Emperor received a letter from Quintus Licinus Silvanus Granianus, Pro-consul of Asia, which was written in a spirit very much the same as that which dictated to Pliny that beautiful letter of his, so worthy of an upright man. Roman functionaries of any weight all objected to a procedure which admitted implicit crimes that individuals were supposed to have committed, because of the mere name they bore. Granianus showed how unjust it was to condemn Christians on the strength of vague rumours, which were the fruit of popular imagination, without being able to convict them of any distinct crime, except that of their Christian profession. The drawing by lot for the appointments to the Consular Provinces having taken place a short time afterwards, Caius Minutius Fundanus, a philosopher and distinguished man of letters, a friend of Pliny and of Plutarch, who introduces him as asking questions in one of his philosophic dialogues, succeeded Granianus, and Hadrian answered Fundanus by the following rescript

Hadrian to Minicius Fundanus. I have received the letter which Licinius Granianus, an illustrious man whom you have succeeded, wrote to me. The matter seemed to me to demand inquiry, for fear lest people who are otherwise peacefully disposed may be disquieted, and so a free field be opened to calumniators. If therefore the people of your province have, as they say, any weighty accusations to bring against the Christians, and if they can maintain their accusation before the tribunals, I do not forbid them to take legal steps; but I will not allow them to go on sending petitions and raising tumultuous cries. In such a case, the best thing is for you yourself to hear the matter. Therefore if anyone comes forward as an accuser, and proves that the Christians break the laws, sentence them to punishments commensurate to the gravity of the offence. But, by Hercules, if anybody denounces one of them calumniously, punish the libeller still more severely according to the degree of his malice.

It would seem that Hadrian gave similar replies to other questions of the same nature. Libels against the Christians were multiplying everywhere, and they paid very well, for the informer got part of the property of the accused if he were found guilty. Above all, in Asia the provincial meetings, accompanied by public games, almost invariably ended in executions. To crown the festivities, the crowd would demand the execution of some unfortunate creatures. The redoubtable cry:—The Christians to the lions, became quite common in the theatres, and it was a very rare occurrence when the authorities did not yield to the clamour of the assembled people. As has been seen, the Emperor opposed such wickedness as far as he could; the laws of the Empire were really alone to blame for giving substance to vague accusations which the caprice of the multitude interpreted according to its own pleasure.

Hadrian spent the winter of 125-126 at Athens. In this meeting-place for all men of culture he always experienced the greatest enjoyment. Greece had become the plaything to amuse all Roman men of letters. Quite reassured as to the political consequences, they adopted, the easy liberalism of restoring the Pnyx, the popular assemblies, the Areopagus; of raising statues to the great men of the past, of giving the ancient constitutions another trial, and of setting up Pan-hellenism—the confederation of the so-called free states— again. Athens was the centre of all this childish folly. Enlightened Mæcenases—especially Herod Atticus, one of the most distinguished spirits of the age, and those Philopappuses, the last descendants of the Kings of Commagene and of the Seleucidæ, who about this time raised a monument on the hill of the Museum, which still exists,—had taken up their abode there.

This world of professors, of philosophers, and of men of enlightenment, was Hadrian’s real element. His vanity, his talent, his taste for brilliant conversation, were quite at their ease amongst colleagues whom he honoured by making himself their equal, without, however, the least yielding his royal prerogative. He was a clever arguer, and thought that he only owed the advantage, which of course always remained with him, to his own personal talent. It was an unlucky thing for those who hurt his feelings or who got the better of him in an argument. Then the Nero whom, though carefully hidden, he always had in him, suddenly woke up. The number of new professorial chairs that he founded, or of literary, pensions that he bestowed, is incalculable. He took his titles of archon and agonothetes quite seriously. He himself drew up a constitution for Athens, by combining in equal proportions the laws of Draco and of Solon, and wished to see whether they would work satisfactorily. The whole city was restored. The temple of the Olympian Jupiter, near the river Ilisus, begun by Pisistratus, and one of the wonders of the world, was finished, and the Emperor took the title of Olympian. Within the city, a vast square, surrounded by temples, porticos, gymnasia, establishments for public instruction, dated from him. All that is certainly very far from possessing the perfection of the Acropolis, but these buildings excelled anything that had ever been seen, by the rarity of their marbles and the richness of their decorations. A central Pantheon contained a catalogue of the temples which the Emperor had built, repaired or ornamented, and of the gilts which he had bestowed on Greek or barbarian cities; and a library, open to every Athenian citizen, occupied a special wing. On an arch, which remains to our day, Hadrian was made equal to Theseus, and one of the Athenian quarters was called Hadrianopolis.

Hadrian’s intellectual activity was sincere, but he lacked a scientific mind. In those meetings of sophists all questions, human and divine, were discussed, but none were settled, nor does it seem that they went so far as complete rationalism. In Greece the Emperor was looked upon as a very religious and even as a superstitious man. He wished to be initiated into the mysteries of Eleusis, and, on the whole, Paganism was the only thing that gained by all this. As, however, liberty of discussion is a good thing, good always results from it. Phlegon, Hadrian’s secretary, knew a little about the legend concerning Jesus, and the wide expansion which the spirit of controversy assumed under Hadrian gave rise to an altogether new species of Christian literature, the apologetic, which sheds so much brightness over the century of the Antonines.

Christianity, preached at Athens seventy-two years previously, had borne its fruit. The Church at Athens had never had the adherents nor the stability of certain others; its peculiar character was to produce individual Christian thinkers, and so apologetic literature naturally sprang from it.

Several persons, who were specially called philosophers, had adhered to the doctrine of Jesus. The name philosopher implied severity of morals, and a distinguishing dress,—a sort of cloak, which sometimes made the wearer the subject of the jokes, but more often, the respect, of the passers by. When they embraced Christianity, the philosophers took care neither to repudiate their name nor their dress, and from that there proceeded a category of Christians unknown till then. Writers and talkers by profession, these converted philosophers became, from the very first outset, the doctors and polemical members of the sect. Initiated into Greek culture, they were far greater dialecticians, and had greater aptitude for controversy, than purely apostolic preachers, and from that moment Christianity had its advocates. They disputed, and others disputed with them. In the eyes of the government they were much more likely to be taken seriously than those good people without any education who were initiated into an eastern superstition. Up till then Christianity had never ventured to address a direct demand to the Roman authorities to have the false position in which it found itself rectified. Certainly the characters of some of the preceding Emperors did not by any means invite any such explanations, and any petition would have been rejected unread. Hadrian’s curiosity, his facile mind, the idea that he was pleased when some new fact or argument was presented to him, now encouraged overtures which would have had no object under Trajan. To this was added an aristocratic feeling, which was alike flattering to the sovereign and the apologist. Christianity was already beginning to let the policy be seen which it was to follow from the beginning of the fourth century, and which consisted, above all, in treating with sovereigns over the heads of the people. “We will dispute with you, but it is too much honour for the common herd to give it our reasons.”

The first attempt of this sort was the work of a certain Quadratus, an important personage of the third Christian generation, and of whom it was said that he had even been a disciple of the Apostles. He sent an apology for Christianity to the Emperor, which has been lost, but which was very highly thought of during the first centuries. He complained of the annoyances to which wicked people subjected the faithful, and proved the harmlessness of the Christian faith. He went still further, and tried to convert Hadrian by arguments drawn from the miracles of Jesus. Quadratus alleged that even in his time some of those whom the Saviour had healed or raised from the dead were known to be alive. Hadrian would certainly have been very much amused to see one of those venerable centenarians, and his freedman Phlegon would have embellished his treatise on cases of longevity with the fact, but it would not have convinced him. He had witnessed so many other miracles, and the only conclusion he drew from them was that the number of incredible things in this world is infinite. In his teratological collections, Phlegon had introduced several of the miracles of Jesus, and certainly Hadrian had conversed with him more than once on this subject.

Another apology, written by a certain Aristides, an Athenian philosopher and a convert to Christianity, was also presented to Hadrian. Nothing is known about it, except that amongst the Christians it was held in as high repute as the one of which Quadratus was the author. Those who had the opportunity of reading it, admired its eloquence, the author’s intellect, and the good use he made of passages from heathen philosophers to prove the truth of the doctrines of Jesus.

These writings, striking as they were by their novelty, could not be without their effect upon the Emperor. Singular ideas with regard to religion crossed his mind, and it seems that more than once he showed Christianity marks of true respect. He had a large number of temples or basilicas built, which bore no inscription, nor had they any known purpose. Most of them were unfinished or not dedicated, and they were called hadrianea, and these empty, statueless temples lead us to believe that Hadrian bad them built so purposely. In the third century, after Alexander Severus had really wished to build a temple to Christ, the Christians spread the idea that Hadrian had determined to do the same, and that the hadrianea were to have served to introduce the new religion. They said that Hadrian had been stopped because, on consulting the sacred oracles, it was found that if such a temple were built the whole world would turn Christian, so that all the other temples would be abandoned. Several of these hadrianea, especially those of the Tiberiad and Alexandria, became, in fact, churches in the fourth century.

Even the follies of Hadrian with Antinous possessed an element of the Christian apology. Such a monstrosity seems the culminating point of the reign of the devil. That recent God, whom all the world knew, was made great use of to beat down the other gods, who were more ancient and so easy to lay hold of. The Church triumphed, and later the period of Hadrian was looked upon as the luminous point in a splendid epoch in which the truths of Christianity shone without any obstacle in all eyes. They owed some thanks to a sovereign whose defects and good qualities had had such favourable results. His immorality, his superstitions, his empty initiation into impure mysteries were not forgotten; but in spite of all, Hadrian remained, at any rate in the opinion of part of Christianity, a serious man, endowed with rare virtues, who gave to the world the last of its beautiful days.

CHAPTER IV.

THE JOHANNINE WRITINGS.

It would appear that about this time a mystical book was heard of, of which the faithful thought a great deal; it was a new Gospel, far superior, as was said, to those which were already known; a really spiritual Gospel, as much above St Mark and St Matthew as mind is above matter. That Gospel was the production of that disciple whom Jesus loved,—of St John, who, having been his most intimate friend, naturally knew much that others were ignorant of, so as even to be able on many points to rectify the manner in which they had represented matters. The text in question was a great contrast to the simplicity of the first Evangelical narratives; it put forward much higher pretensions, and certainly it was the intention of those who propagated it that it should replace those humble accounts of the life of Jesus with which men had been contented hitherto. The writer, who was still spoken of in a mysterious manner, had leant upon the Master’s breast, and alone knew the divine secrets of his heart.

This new work came from Ephesus, that is to say, from one of the principal homes of the dogmatic elaboration of the Christian religion. It is quite possible that John may have passed his old age and finished his days in that city. It is at least quite certain that in the early ages of Christianity there were those at Ephesus who claimed St John as their own, and did all they could for his aggrandisement. St Paul had his Churches which ardently cherished his memory, and St Peter and St James had also their families by spiritual adoption. The adherents of St John, therefore, wished that he should be in the same position; they desired to make him St Peter’s equal; and it was maintained, to the detriment of the latter, that he had held the first rank in the Gospel history, and as the existing accounts did not bear out these pretensions sufficiently, recourse was had to one of those pious frauds which, in those days, caused nobody any scruples. Thus it may be explained how, shortly after the apostolic age, there emerged obscurely from Ephesus a class of books which were destined to obtain in later times a higher rank than all the other inspired writings in the system of Christian theology.

It can never be admitted that St John himself wrote these words, and it is even very doubtful whether they were written with his consent in his old age, and by any one of his own immediate surroundings. It seems most probable that one of the Apostle’s disciples who was a depository of many of his reminiscences, thought himself authorised to speak and to write in his name—some twenty-five or thirty years after his death—what he had not, to his followers' great regret, authoritatively put down during his lifetime. Certainly Ephesus had its own traditions about the life of Jesus, and, if I may venture to say so, a life of Jesus for its own particular use. These traditions dwelt especially in the memory of two persons who were looked upon, in those parts, as the two highest authorities with regard to Gospel history, namely, one man who bore the same name as the Apostle John, and who was called Presbeteros Johannes, and a certain Aristion, who knew many of the Lord’s discourses by heart. At about this time Papias consulted these two men as oracles, and carefully noted their traditions, which he intended to insert into his great work, The Discourses of the Lord. One remarkable feature in the Presbuteros was the opinion which he gave regarding St Mark’s Gospel. He considered it altogether insufficient, and written in complete ignorance of the exact order of the events of the life of Jesus. Presbuteros Johannes evidently thought that he knew the real facts much better, and, if he really wrote it, his tradition must altogether differ from the plan of that of Mark.

We are inclined to think that the fourth Gospel represents the traditions of this Presbuteros and of Aristion, which might go back as far as the Apostle John. It seems, moreover, that to prepare the way for this pious fraud a preliminary Catholic Epistle, attributed to John, was published preliminarily, which was intended to accustom the people of Asia to the style which it was intended to make them receive as that of the Apostle. In it the attack against the Docetæ—who at that time formed the great danger to Christianity in Asia—was opened. An ostentatious stress was laid on the value of the Apostle’s testimony, as he had been an eye-witness of the Gospel facts. The author, who is a skilful writer after his own fashion, has very likely imitated the style of St John’s conversation, and that small work is conceived in a grand and lofty spirit, in spite of some Elcesaitic peculiarities. Its doctrine is excellent, and it inculcates mutual charity, love for mankind, and hatred for a corrupt world; and its touching, vehement, and penetrating style is absolutely the same as that of the Gospel; and its faults—its prolixity, and dryness—the results of interminable discourses full of abstruse metaphysics and personal allegations, are far less striking in the Epistle.

'The style of the pseudo-Johannic writings is something quite by itself, no model for which existed before the Presbuteros. It has been too much admired; for whilst it is ardent and occasionally even sublime, it is somewhat inflated, false, and obscure, and it altogether lacks simplicity. The author relates nothing, he merely demonstrates dogmatically, and his long account of miracles, and of those discussions which turn on misapprehensions, and in which the opponents of Jesus are made to play the parts of idiots, are most fatiguing. How preferable to all this verbiose pathos is the charming style, altogether Hebrew as it is, of the Sermon on the Mount, and that clearness of narrative which constitutes the charm of the first Evangelists. No need for them to repeat continually that they that saw it bear record, and that their record is true; for their sincerity, unconscious of any possible objection, has not that feverish thirst for those repeated attestations which go to prove that incredulity and doubt have already sprung up. One might almost say, from the slightly exalted style of this new narrator, that he feared that he might not be believed, and that he sought to dupe the religious belief of his readers by his own emphatic assertions.

Whilst insisting strongly on his qualities as an eye-witness, and on the value of his own testimony, the author of the fourth Gospel never once says I, John, for his name does not appear in the whole course of the work, but only figures as its title; but there is not the slightest doubt that John is the disciple intended or designated in a hidden manner in different passages of the book, nor is there any doubt that the forger intended to cause it to be believed that that mysterious personage was the author of the book. It was merely one of those small literary artifices such as Plato is so fond of affecting, and the result is that the recital is often very elaborate, and contains investigations, observations, and literary pranks which are totally unworthy of an Apostle. Thus John mentions himself without mentioning his own name, and praises himself without doing it openly, and he does not debar himself from that literary method which consists in showing, in a very carefully-managed semi-light, those secrets which one keeps to oneself without revealing them to every chance corner. How pleasant it is to be guessed at, and to allow others to draw conclusions favourable to oneself, to which oneself only gives a half expression.

The two objects which the author had in view were to prove the divinity of Jesus to those who did not believe in Him, but, even more than that, to make a new system of Christianity prevail. As miracles were the proofs, above all others, of His divine mission, he improves on the accounts of the wonders that disfigure the earlier Gospels. It seems on the other hand that Cerinthus was one of the manufacturers of these strange books. He had become almost like John’s spectre, and the versatility of his mind now attracted him to, and then repelled him from, those ideas which were agitating religious circles at Ephesus, so that at the same time he was regarded as the adversary whom the Johannine writings were striving to combat, and as the veritable author of those writings; and the obscurity that reigns over the Johannine question is so dense that it cannot be said that it must be wrong to attribute the authorship to him. If it be a fact, it would correspond very well to what we know of Cerinthus, who was in the habit of covering his thoughts under the cloak of an apostolic name, and it would explain the mystery as to what became of that book for nearly fifty years, and the vehement opposition which it encountered. The ardour with which Epphianius combats this opinion would lead us to believe that it is not without foundation, for in those dark days everything was possible; and if the Church, when it venerates the fourth Gospel as the work of St John, is the dupe of him whom she looks upon as one of her most dangerous enemies, it is not, after all, any stranger than so many other errors which make up the web of the religious history of humanity.

CHAPTER V.

THE BEGINNING OF A SYSTEM OF CHRISTIAN
PHILOSOPHY.

That religious philosophy which serves as the basis for all those exemplications which were so foreign to the mind of Jesus, is by no means original. Philo had expounded its essential principles more harmoniously and logically. Both Philo and the author of the fourth Gospel attach very little importance to the fulfilment of the words of the Messiah or to apocalyptic belief. All the imagination of popular Judaism is replaced by metaphysics in the structure of which Egyptian theology and Greek philosophy had their full share. The idea of Incarnate Reason, i.e., of Divine Reason assuming a finite shape, is quite Egyptian. From the earliest ages down to the Hermes Trismegistos books, Egypt proclaimed a God, living alone in substance, but eternally begetting his own likeness, one, and yet twofold at the same time. The Sun is that firstborn, proceeding eternally from the Father, that Word who made everything that exists, and without whom nothing has been made. On the other hand, it had for a long time been the tendency of Judaism, in order to escape from its somewhat dry system of theology, to create a variety of the Deity by personifying abstract attributes, such as Wisdom, the Divine Word, Majesty, the Presence. Already in the ancient books of wisdom, in the Proverbs and in Job, Wisdom personified plays the part of an assessor to the Divinity. Metaphysics and Theology, so severely restrained by the Mosaic law, took their revenge, and would soon invade everything.

The expression dabar, in Chaldean, memara, i.e., “the Word,” become especially fruitful. Ancient texts made God speak on all solemn occasions, which justified such phrases as: “God does everything by His word; God created everything by His word.” Thus people were led to regard “the Word” as a divine minister, as an intermediary by whom God works on the outer world. By degrees this intermediary was substituted for God in visible manifestations in apparitions, in all relations of the Deity with man. That mode of expression had much greater consequences amongst the Egyptian Jews who spoke Greek. The word Logos, corresponding to the Hebrew dabar, and the Chaldean memara, and having the twofold meaning of The Word, and also of Reason, enabled them to enter into a whole world of ideas in which they reunited, on the one hand, the symbols of Egyptian theology which are mentioned above, and on the other, certain Platonic speculations. The Alexandrine Book of Wisdom, which is attributed to Solomon, already delights in those theories. There the Logos appears as the metationos, the assessor of the Deity, and it soon became usual to attribute to the Logos all that ancient Jewish philosophy, said of the Divine Wisdom. The Breath of God (rouah), which is mentioned at the beginning of Genesis as life giving, becomes a sort of Demiurge by the side of dabar.

Philo combined such forms of expression with his notions of Greek philosophy. His Logos is the Divine in the universe—it is an exteriorised God; it is the legislator, the revealer, the organ of God as regards spiritual man. It is the Spirit of God,—the wisdom of Holy Scripture. Philo has no idea of the Messiah, and establishes no connection between his Logos and the divine being which was dreamt of by his compatriots in Palestine. He never departs from the abstract, and for him the Logos is the place of spirits just as space is the place of bodies; and he goes so far as to call it “a second God,” or “the man of God;” that is to say, God, considered as anthropomorphous. The end of man is to know the Logos, to contemplate reason; that is to say, God and the universe. By that knowledge man finds life, the true manna that nourishes.

Although such ideas were, by their origin, as far as possible, removed from Messianic ideas, one can see that a sort of effusion might be brought about between them. The possibility of a full incarnation of the Logos is quite in accordance with Philo’s ideas. It was a generally received opinion, that in all the various divine manifestations in which God wished to make Himself visible, it was the Logos who assumed the human form. These ideas were favoured by numerous passages in the most ancient historical books, where “the Angel of Jehovah,” Maleak Jehovah, indicates the divine appearance which shows itself to men, when God, who is ordinarily hidden, reveals Himself to their eyes. This Maleak Jehovah frequently does not differ at all from Jehovah himself, and it is a habit with translators of a certain period to substitute that word for Jehovah, whenever God is supposed to have appeared on earth, and thus the Logos came to play the part of an anthropomorphous God. It was therefore natural that the appearance of the Messiah should he attributed to the Logos, and that Messiah should be considered as the incarnate Logos.

Certainly the author of the book of Daniel had no idea that his Son of Man had anything in common with the Divine Wisdom, whom, in his time, some Jewish thinkers were already elevating into a personality; but with the Christians the two ideas were very easily reconciled. Already, in the Apocalypse the triumphant Messiah is called “the Word of God,” and in St Paul’s later Epistles, Jesus is separated almost altogether from his human nature. In the fourth Gospel, the identification of Christ and the Word is an accomplished fact, and the national avenger of the Jews has totally disappeared under a metaphysical conception; henceforth, Jesus is the Son of God, not by virtue of a simple Hebrew metaphor, but in a strictly theological sense. The very slight reputation in which the writings of Philo were held in Palestine, and amongst the popular classes of Jews, must be the only explanation why Christianity did not bring about such a necessary evolution till such a late period, but this evolution took effect in several directions simultaneously, for St Justin has a theory which is very similar to that of pseudo-John, and yet he did not take it from the gospel that bears his name.

Side by side with the theory of the Logos and of the Holy Spirit was developed that of the Paraclete, who was not kept very distinct from the former. In Philo’s philosophy, Paraclete was an epithet of, or an equivalent for, Logos. For Christians he became a sort of substitute for Jesus, proceeding from the Father as he did, and who was to console the disciples for the absence of their Master when he should have left them. That Spirit of Truth, which the world does not know, is to inspire the Church throughout all time. Such a manner of raising abstract ideas into personalities was quite in keeping with the fashion of the time. Allius Aristides, who was a contemporary and a compatriot of the author of the fourth Gospel, expresses himself in his sermon on Athēnē, in a manner which is hardly distinguishable from that of the Christians:—

She dwells in her father, closely united to his essence; she breathes in him, and is his companion and counsellor. She sits at his right hand and is the supreme minister of his orders, and their wills are so conjoined that to her may be attributed all her father’s acts.

It is well known that Isis played the same part with regard to Ammon.

The profound revolution which each idea must introduce into the manner of looking at the life of Jesus is self-evident. For the future he was to have no more human qualities, and would know neither temptation nor weakness. In him everything existed before it happened; everything was settled a priori, nothing happened naturally; He knew his life in advance, and did not pray to God to save him from that fatal hour. One fails to see why he lived this life which was forced upon him, gone through merely as a part, without any sincerity about it. But, however revolting such a change may be to our feelings, it was necessary. The Christian conscience desired more and more that everything in the life of their founder should be supernatural. Marcion, without knowing the writings of pseudo-John, did exactly the same thing as he did, for he manipulated St Luke’s Gospel till he had got rid of every trace of Judaism or reality from it. Gnosticism was to go even further, for that school Jesus was to become a mere entity, an won, an eternal intelligence that had never lived. Valentine and Basilides really only go a step further along the road on which the author of the fourth Gospel had gone. They all use the same specific terms: Father (in the metaphysical sense), Word, Archē, Life, Truth, Grace, Paraclete, Fulness, Only Son. The origins of Gnosticism and that of the fourth Gospel meet in the far distance; they both start from the same point in the horizon without our being able, on account of the distance, to point out more precisely the circumstances which attended their common appearance, for in such a thick atmosphere the visual rays of criticism are apt to become confused.

Naturally, the conditions under which a book became known, were so different then to what they are now, that we must not be surprised at singularities which would be inexplicable in these days. Nothing is more deceiving than to imagine to ourselves writings of that date, as a printed book, offered to everybody’s reading, with newspapers to review the new work, favourably or otherwise. All the Gospels were written for restricted circles of readers, and no edition aspired to being the last and final one. It was a species of literature which could be practised at will, like the legends of Hasan and Hossein amongst the modern Persians. The fourth Gospel was a composition of the same order. In the first instance the author may have written it for himself and a few friends as his conception of the life of Jesus. There is no doubt that he communicated his work with great reserve to those who knew that such a work could not have originated with John, and up till the end of the second century the work encountered nothing but indifference and opposition. During that time the Gospels which are called synoptic give the outlines of the life of Jesus, and the tone of the discourses attributed to him is that of Matthew and Luke. Towards the end of the second century, however, the idea of a fourth Gospel was accepted, and pious legends and mystic reasons were discovered to support this tetrad.

To sum up, it seems most probable that, several years after the Apostle John’s death, somebody or other determined to write in his name, and to his honour a gospel that should represent, or should be supposed to represent, his traditions. The definite success of the book was just as brilliant as its beginning had been obscure. This fourth Gospel, the last to appear, which had been manipulated in so many respects, where Philonian tirades were substituted for the actual discourses of Jesus, took more than half a century to assume its place, but then it triumphed all along the line. It was very convenient for the theological and apologetic requirements of the time, to have a sort of metaphysical drama which could escape from the objections which a Celsus was already preparing, instead of a small, very human history of a Jewish prophet in Galilee. The Divine Word in the bosom of God; the Word creating all things; the Word made flesh, dwelling amongst men, so that certain privileged mortals had the happiness of seeing and even touching him! flaying regard to the especial turn of the Greek intellect, which seized upon Christianity at a very early date, this seemed most sublime, and a whole system of theology after the manner of Plotinus might be extracted from it. The freshness of the Galilean idyl, illuminated by the sun of the kingdom of God, was but little to the taste of true Greeks. They naturally preferred a gospel in which they were transported to abstract dreams, and from which the belief in the approaching end of the world was banished. In the present instance, there was no mention of a material appearance in the clouds, no more parables, no persons possessed of devils, nothing about the kingdom of God or of the Jewish Messiah, no millennium, not even any more Judaism. It was forgotten and condemned; the Jews are held up to reprobation as enemies of the truth, for they would not receive the Word which came amongst them. The author will know nothing of them, except that they killed Jesus; just as amongst the modern Persian Shīies, the name of Arab is synonymous with an impious man and a miscreant, as Arabs slew the holiest amongst the founders of Islam.

The literary faults of the fourth Gospel thus make up its general character. It frees Christianity from a number of its original chains, and gives it free scope for that which is essential for any innovation, i.e., ingratitude towards what has preceded it. The author seriously believes that no prophet ever came out of Galilee. Christian metaphysics already sketched out in the Epistle to the Colossians, and in that which is called the Epistle to the Ephesians, are fully developed in the fourth Gospel. It would be dear to all those who, humiliated at the fact that Jesus was a Jew, would neither hear of Judeo-Christianity, nor of the millennium, and who would have liked to have burnt the Apocalypse. Thus the fourth Gospel takes its stand, in the great work of separating Judaism from Christianity, far above St Paul. He wished that Jesus had abrogated the Law, but he never denies that he lived under the Law. His disciple St Luke, by a certain devout improvement, presents Jesus to our view as fulfilling all the precepts of the Law. St Paul thought that the prerogatives of the Jews were still very great; whilst, on the other hand, the fourth Gospel shows a great antipathy to the Jews, both as a nation and as a religious society. Jesus, speaking to them, says: “Your law,” and there is no question now of justification by faith or by works, for the problem has gone far beyond the bounds of those simple terms. The knowledge of the truth and science have now become essential, and men are to be saved by their gnosis, their initiation into certain secret mysteries, so that Christianity has become a sort of hidden philosophy which certainly neither Paul nor Peter ever dreamt of.

The future belonged altogether to transcendental idealism. This Gospel, attributed to the well-beloved disciple, which transports us at first into the pure atmosphere of the Spirit and of Love, which substitutes the love of truth for everything else, and proclaims the sway of Mount Gerizim and of Jerusalem equally at an end, was bound in time to become the fundamental Gospel of Christianity. No doubt it will be said that this was a great historical and literary error; but it was also a theological and political necessity of the first order. The idealist is always the worst revolutionary, and a definite rupture with Judaism was the indispensable condition of the foundation of a new religious system. The only chance of success that Christianity had was, that it should be a perfectly pure form of worship, independent of any material creed. “God is a spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.” If Jesus is understood in such a manner, he is no longer a prophet, and Christianity under that aspect is no longer a sect of Judaism; it becomes the Religion of Reason, and thus it came about that the fourth Gospel imparted consistency and stability to the Apostolic work. Whoever its author was, he was the cleverest of all the apologists. He was, successful in bringing Christianity out of its old beaten tracks that had got too narrow for it; which all the Christian orators of our time have attempted in vain. He betrayed Jesus in order to save him, just as those preachers do who put on a pretence of liberalism, and even of socialism, to win over those who may possibly be seduced by those words through a pious fraud. The author of the fourth Gospel has withdrawn Jesus from the Jewish reality in which he was lost, and has launched him boldly into metaphysics. That purely spiritual philosophical manner of understanding Christianity, to the detriment of facts, and to the profit of the mind, found in this singular book an example to encourage, and authority to justify it.

Only those who are not well acquainted with religious history will be surprised to see such a part filled by an anonymous writer in the history of Christianity. The editors of the Thora, most of the Psalmists, the author of the book of Daniel, the first editor of the Hebrew Gospel, the author of the Epistles to Timothy and Titus, which are attributed to St Paul, gave works of the greatest importance to the world, and yet they are anonymous. If it is admitted that the Gospel and the Epistle which is so closely connected with it are the work of Presbuteros Johannes, it might be thought that it would be all the less difficult to accept those writings as the works of St John, since the forger’s name was John, and he appears often to have been confounded with the apostle. He was merely called Presbuteros, and after the falsely so-called Epistle of John, there are two short letters by some one who seems to call himself “The Elder.” The style, the thoughts, and the doctrine are very nearly the same as in the Gospel and Epistle said to be written by St John. We believe that Presbuteros was also the author of them; but this time he did not wish to pass off his slight works as those of John; and, like the letters to Timothy and Titus, they ought rather to be called specimens of the pastoral style than Epistles. Thus, in the first, the name of the person for whom it is intended is left a blank, and is filled up with the formula: “To the Elect Lady;” In the second, the person to whom it is written is given as Gaius, which was often the equivalent for our So and so. In these short letters some resemblance to the pseudo-Johannine Epistle, and to those of St Paul, has been discovered, and it is probable that our Presbuteros has sometimes concealed his identity behind these anonymous presbuteroi who had seen the Apostles, and whose traditions Irenæus so mysteriously reproduces.

At the end of the third century two tombs were mentioned at Ephesus, which were held in the highest veneration, and to both of which the name of John was given. In the fourth century when, from the passage in Papias, the idea of the distinct existence of Presbuteros Johannes was being firmly established, one of these tombs was allotted to the Apostle and the other to the Presbuteros. We shall never know the exact truth of those extraordinary combinations in which history, legends, fable, and, up to a certain point, pious fraud were all united in proportions which we cannot separate now. An Ephesian called Polycrates, who was destined to become, one day, with his whole family, the centre of Asiatic Christianity, was converted A.D. 131, and this Polycrates fully admitted the pseudo-Johannine tradition, and cited it most confidently in his old age.

Everybody allows that the last chapter of the fourth Epistle is an appendix which was added after the work had been written, though possibly it was added by the author himself; in any case, the source from which it was drawn is the same. It was desirable to complete all that had to do with the relations between Peter, and John by some touching feature, and the author shows that he is a great partisan of Peter, and does his best to pay homage to him in his rank as supreme pastor which was attributed to him in various degrees. He also makes a point of explaining the views that prevailed about the long life of John, and of showing how the aged Apostle might die without the edifice of the promises of Jesus and of Christian hopes falling into ruins at his decease. Men began to fear that the unequalled privilege of those who had seen the Word during his life on earth might discourage future generations, and already that profound saying, which was attributed to Jesus, “Blessed are those that have not seen and yet have believed,” was incorporated into a Gospel anecdote.

With the Johannine writings begins the era of Christian philosophy and of abstract speculation, which had hitherto found but little room in the world, whilst at the same time dogmatic intolerance increased most lamentably. The more fact of saluting a heretic was represented as an act of communion with him. How far we are from Jesus here! He wished us to salute everybody, even at the risk of saluting the unworthy, in imitation of our Heavenly Father, who looks on all with a paternal eye, but yet how it was to be obligatory to ascertain the opinions of anyone before saluting him. The essence of Christianity was transferred to the realm of dogma; gnosis was every thing, and salvation consisted in knowing Jesus and knowing him in a certain manner. Theology, that is to say, a rather unwholesome application of the intellect, was the result of the fourth Gospel, and the Byzantine world, from the beginning of the fourth century, wore itself out by this study, which would have had just as fatal consequences for the West if the demon of subtility had not found firmer muscles and less volatile brains to deal with.

In this matter Christianity decidedly turned its back on Judaism; and Gnosticism, which is the highest expression of speculative Christianity, had some reason for pushing its hatred of Judaism to the highest point. The latter made religion consist in outward observances, and left everything that bordered on philosophic dogma as a matter of private opinion, and the Cabala and Pantheism would naturally find an easy development by the side of observances which were carried to the minutest details. A Jewish friend of mine, as liberal a thinker as can be found, and at the same time a scrupulous Talmudist, said to me, “One makes up for the other. Close observances are a compensation for wideness of ideas, and our poor humanity has not enough intelligence to support liberty in two directions at the same time. You Christians did wrong in insisting that the bonds of communion should consist in certain beliefs, for a man does what he pleases, but he believes what he can, and I would rather go without pork all my life, than be obliged to believe in the dogmas of the Trinity and of the Incarnation.”

CHAPTER VI.

PROGRESS OF THE EPISCOPATE.

The progress of the Church in discipline and in her hierarchy was in proportion to her progress in dogma. Like every living body she developed an astonishing instinctive cleverness in completing all that was still wanting for her solid foundation and her perfect equilibrium. As the hopes for the end of the world, and of the reappearance of Messiah become fainter, Christianity obeyed two natural tendencies; the one to reconcile itself with the empire as well as it could, and then to organise itself so that it might become lasting. The first church at Jerusalem, the first churches of St Paul, were not established with any view to their endurance, for they were only so many assemblies of the saints at the end of the world, who were preparing themselves by prayer and divine rapture for the coming of God. The Church felt that now the time had come for her to be an abiding city and a real society.

The strangest movement that ever took place in a democracy took place within the Church. The ecclesia, the voluntary reunion of persons meeting on a footing of equality amongst themselves, is the most democratic thing that can be imagined; but the ecclesia, the club has that fatal defect which causes every association of that kind to fall to pieces, and that defect is anarchy, the ease with which schisms arise. But more fatal still are the contentions for pre-eminence in the midst of small confraternities which have been founded on an altogether spontaneous vocation. That seeking after the highest place was the principal evil which affected the Christian churches, and which caused the greatest trouble to the simple and faithful members of the flock. It was thought that this danger might be prevented by supposing that Jesus, in a similar case, could have taken a child and said to the contending parties, “This is the greatest.” On different occasions the Master had, as was said, opposed the ecclesiastical primacy, brotherly as it was, to that of the depositories of worldly authority who were given to assume a masterful manner. But that was not enough, and the association of Christians would soon be menaced by a great danger, if some salutary institution did not rescue it from its own internal abuses.

Every ecclesia presupposes a small hierarchy of its own,—what we call in these days a committee, a president, assessors, and a small body of assistants. Democratic clubs take care that these functions shall be as limited as possible both as to time and privileges, but there is something precarious in that, and the result has been that no club has outlived the circumstances which called it into existence. The synagogues had a much longer continuance, although the personnel was never a clerical body. The reason for that is, the subordinate position which Judiasm held for centuries, so that the pressure from without counterbalanced the unwholesome effects of internal divisions. If the Christian Church had suffered from the same want of discretion, she would no doubt have missed her destinies; and if ecclesiastical powers had continued to be regarded as emanating from the Church itself, she would have lost all her hieretic and theocratic character; but, on the other hand, it was fated that the clergy should monpolise the Christian Church, and should substitute itself in her place. Speaking in her name, representing itself in everything as her sole authorised agents, that clergy would constitute her strength, but would at the same time be her canker-worm, and the chief cause of her future decline.

History has no example of a more wonderful transformation. What happened in the Christian Church is just what would happen in a club, if the members were to abdicate all their powers into the hands of the committee, and the committee to abdicate theirs into the hands of the president, so that neither those who were present, nor the seniors in office, would have any deliberative voice; no influence, no control over the management of the funds, so that the president might be able to say “I, alone, am the club.” The presbutoroi (the elders), the episcopi (the officers, overseers), very soon became the only representatives of the church, and very shortly after another and even more important revolution took place. Amongst the presbutoroi and the episcopi there was one, who, because he habitually took the principal seat, became presbuteros, or episcopos par excellence. The form of worship contributed very powerfully towards this. Only one priest could be celebrant of the eucharist at the same time, and he obtained an extreme importance; and that episcopos became, with surprising rapidity, the chief amongst the presbyterate and those of the whole church. His seat, placed apart from the others, assumed the shape of an arm-chair, and became the seat of honour—the sign of the Primacy, and from that time such church had only one chief presbyter, who called himself episcopos, to the exclusion of all the rest. By his side were to be seen a number of deacons, widows, a council of presbutoroi, but the great step had been taken; the bishop had become the sole successor of the apostles, the professor of the true religion was altogether thrust aside. The apostolic authority, which was supposed to be transmitted by the imposition of hands, had altogether destroyed the authority of the community, and then, the bishops of the different churches coming to an understanding amongst themselves, will, as we shall see, constitute the universal church into a sort of oligarchy, which will hold synods, censure its own members, decide questions of faith, and, in herself, constitute a real sovereign power.

Within a hundred years the change was almost accomplished. When Hegesippus, during the second half of the second century, travelled throughout the whole of Christendom, he remarked nothing but the bishops; everything for him resolves itself into a question of canonical succession, and the living sentiment of the churches exists no longer. We shall show that that revolution was not accomplished without protest, and that the author of the Pastor, for example, still tried, in opposition to the growing influence of the bishops to maintain the equal authority of the presbutoroi. But aristocratic tendency carried the day; on the one side were the shepherds, on the other, the flocks. The primitive equality existed no longer, and, henceforth the Church was to be nothing but an instrument in the hands of those who directed her; and they held their authority, not from the community in general, but from a spiritual heredity from a pretended transmission which went back in a continuous line to the apostles themselves. It will be seen at once that the representative system could not even in the slightest degree become the system of the Christian Church.

In one sense it may be said that this was a falling off, a diminution of that spontaneity which had hitherto been such a creative power. It was evident that ecclesiastical forms were about to absorb and to destroy the work of Jesus, and that all free manifestations of Christian life would soon be stopped. Under episcopal censorship, the glossolalia, prophecy, the creation of legends, and the production of new sacred books, would be withered-up faculties, and the Christian graces would be reduced to official sacraments. In another sense, however, such a transformation was an essential condition of the strength of Christianity. In the first place, the concentration of their forces became necessary, as soon as the churches became at all numerous, for relations between these small religious societies would have been quite impossible, unless they had an accredited representative who was entitled to act for them. It is, moreover, an incontestable fact that, without episcopacy, the churches which were momentarily drawn together by the recollections of Jesus would have been dispersed again. The divergencies of doctrine, the different turns of thought, and, above all, rivalries and unsatisfied self-love, would have had a vast influence on disunion and dismemberment, and, at the end of three or four centuries, Christianity would have come to an end like the worship of Nithras, or, like so many sects, have ended, being unable to withstand the force of time. Democracy is at times eminently creative, but only on the conditions that conservative and aristocratic institutions spring from it, which prevent the revolutionary fever to be prolonged indefinitely.

That is the real miracle of infant Christianity. It produced order, a hierarchy, authority, obedience from the ready subjection of men’s wits; it organised the crowd and disciplined anarchy, and it was the spirit of Jesus with which his disciples were so deeply imbued, that spirit of meekness, of self-denial, of forgetfulness of the present, the pursuit of spiritual joys which destroys ambition, that preference for a childlike mind, these words of Jesus, “Let him who would be first among you become as he that serveth,” that worked this miracle. The impression which the apostles left behind them also did its share. They and their immediate vicars had an uncontested power over all the churches, and as episcopacy was supposed to have inherited apostolic powers, the apostles governed even after their death. The idea that the chief officer of the Church holds his mandate from the members of that Church who have appointed does not appear once in the literature of that time, and thus the Church escaped, by the supernatural origin of her power, from anything that is defective in delegated authority. Legislative and executive authority can come from the majority, but the sacraments and the dispensations of divine grace have nothing to do with universal suffrage, for such privileges come only from heaven, or, according to the Christian formularies, from Jesus Christ, who is himself the source of all grace and of all good.

Properly speaking, the bishops had never been nominated by the whole community. It was quite sufficient for the spontaneous enthusiasm of the first churches that he should be designated by the Holy Ghost, that is to say, that electoral means should be employed which extreme simplicity alone could excuse. After the apostolic age, and when it became necessary that that sort of divine right with which the apostles and their immediate disciples were supposed to be invested, should be supplemented by some ecclesiastical decision, the elders chose their president from among themselves, and submitted his name to popular approval. As this choice was never made without the people’s opinion having been consulted in the first instance, this approval, or rather the vote by raising the hand, was nothing more than a mere formality, but it was enough to preserve the recollection of the gospel ideal, according to which the spirit of Jesus essentially dwelt in the community, The election of deacons was also of a double nature, for they were nominated by the bishop, but they had to be approved by the community before the choice could be valid. It is a general law of the Church that the inferior never nominates his superior, and this is one of the reasons which still gives to the Church, in spite of the totally different tendency of modern democracy, such a great power of reaction.

In the churches of St Paul this movement towards a hierarchy and an episcopate was particularly felt. The Jewish Christian churches, which had less life in them, remained synagogues, and did not land so immediately in clericalism, and thus, by writings attributed to St Paul, arguments for the doctrine which it was sought to inculcate were created. There was no controverting an epistle of St Paul, and several passages of the authentic epistles of that apostle already taught the doctrine of a hierarchy and of the authority of the elders. For the sake of even more decisive arguments, three short epistles were forged, which were supposed to have been written by Paul to his disciples Timothy and Titus. The author of these apocryphal epistles had not got the Acts of the Apostles, and he only knew the apostolical journeys of St Paul vaguely and not in detail. As very few people had any more precise notions about them, he was not gravely compromised, and, besides, at that period, there was such a lack of critical feeling, that it did not strike any one that texts must necessarily agree. Some passages in those three epistles are also so beautiful, that the question might be asked, whether the forger had not some authentic letters of St Paul in his possession which he embodied in his apocryphal compositions?

These three short works, evidently the production of the same pen, and written most likely at Rome, are a sort of treatise on ecclesiastical duties, a first attempt at false decretals, a code for the use of churchmen. Episcopacy is a grand thing, and the bishop is a sort of model of perfection, set up before his subordinates. He must, therefore, be irreprehensible in the eyes of the faithful and of others; he must be sober, chaste, amiable, kind, just, not proud, given to hospitality, moderate, inoffensive, free from avarice, and earning his livelihood honestly. He may drink a little wine for his health’s sake, but he must not marry more than once. His family must be grave like himself, and his sons submissive, respectful and free from any suspicion of dissolute morals. If anyone cannot rule his own house, how can he take care of the Church of God? Orthodox above everything; attached to the true faith, the sworn enemy of error, and he is to preach and to teach. For such functions neither a novice must be taken, lest such a rapid elevation should make him be lifted up with pride, nor a man capable of a sudden attack of rage, nor anyone exercising a calling that is looked down upon, for even unbelievers ought to respect a bishop, and not have anything to say against him.

The deacons must be as perfect as the bishops; serious, not double-tongued, drinking little wine, not given to filthy lucre, holding the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience. So must their wives be grave, not slanderers, sober, faithful in all things. They must be husbands of one wife, ruling their children and their own houses well, and as a trial is necessary for such difficult functions, no one is to be raised to them till after a kind of noviciate.

Widows were an order in the Church, and their first duty was to perform their household duties, if they had any to fulfil. They who were widows indeed, and desolate, ought to trust in God, and continue in supplications and prayers night and day, but such as live in pleasure are dead whilst they live. These interesting but feeble persons were subject to a certain rule; they had a female superior, and every Church had side by side with its deacon also its widow, whose duty it was to watch over the younger widows, and to exercise a sort of female diaconate. The author of the false epistles to Timothy and Titus wishes that the widow thus chosen should not be less than sixty years of age, having been the wife of one man, well reported of for good works, if she have brought up children, if she have lodged strangers, if she have washed the saints' feet. But he instructs Timothy to refuse the younger widows, for they will wax wanton against Christ and marry, and withal they learn to be idle, wandering about front house to house, and not only idle, but tattlers also, and busybodies, speaking things that they ought not. “I will therefore that the younger widows marry, bear children, guide the house, give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully. For some are already turned aside from Satan.” (1 Tim. v. passim.) Widows who are without means are to be relieved by the Church, whereas those who have relations are to be kept at their expense.

From all this may be seen what a complete society the church already was. Every class had its own particular functions in it, and represented a member of the social body; all had their duties, were it only slaves, the power of the precepts of Jesus was to be admired by their virtuous life. As examples of this, slaves were particularly relied upon, and they are reminded that none can honour the new doctrine mere than they. If their master were a heathen, they were to be counted worthy of all honour, that the name of God and His doctrine might not be blasphemed; and if they had believing masters, they were not to be despised because they were brethren, but they were to be served because they were faithful and beloved, partakers of the benefit. Of course there was no word of emancipation. The aged men were to be sober, grave, temperate, sound in faith; the aged women, in behaviour such as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things, for they should be like catechists and teach the young women to be sober and love their husbands and their children; to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God might not be blasphemed. The young men were to he exhorted to be sober minded.

The married women’s part is humble indeed, but still a beautiful one.

In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shame-facedness and sobriety, not with plaited hair, or gold or pearls or costly array; but (which becometh women professing godliness) with good works. Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve, and Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. Nevertheless she shall be saved in childbearing, if she continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.” (1 Tim. ii. 9-15.)

All should be submissive, as subjects, obedient, gentle, inoffensive, enemies to revolution, interested in the preservation of public peace, which alone would allow them to lead their usual holy life. They need not be surprised if they were persecuted, that was the natural lot of Christians. They ought to be the very opposite to the heathen. A man who only follows the dictates of nature is the slave of his desires, carried away by sensuality, wicked, envious, hating and hateful. The transformation which makes the natural man one of the elect is not the fruit of his own merits, but of the compassion of Jesus Christ, and of the efficacy of his sacraments.

This short Epistle, which is already quite Catholic, is a true type of the ecclesiastical spirit, and for seventeen centuries has been the manual of the clergy, the gospel of seminaries, the rule of that spiritual policy as it is carried out by the Church. Piety, which is the soul of the priest, the secret of his resignation and of his authority, is the foundation of this spirit. But the pious priest has his rights; those of reprimanding and correcting—respectfully, indeed, in the case of old people, but always with firmness. “Preach the word, be instant in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering and doctrine” (2 Tim. iv. 2). Simple in his life, asking only for food and raiment, the “Man of God,” as our author calls him, was sure to be an austere man, often an imperious ruler. “Rebuke not an elder, but intreat him as a father, and the younger men as brethren; the elder women as mothers, the younger as sisters, in all purity.” After that one feels that the Christian society cannot be a free one, for every individual member of it will be watched and censured, and will not have the right to say to his fellow citizen, “What business is my belief or my conduct to you? I am doing you no wrong.” The believer will say that in believing differently to what he does, he is being wronged, and that he has the right of protesting. Against such an idea, so totally opposed to liberty, princes and laymen must rightly soon revolt. “A man that is an heretic after a first and second admonition reject.” (Titus iii. 10.) Nothing could be less in keeping with the maxims of a man of liberal education. The heretic has his opinions as well as you, and he may be right, and politeness certainly requires you to pretend to believe so in his presence. The world is no monastery, and the advantages, which, as is alleged, are obtained by censure and accusation, bring more evils in their train than they hoped to avoid.

In the Epistles to Timothy and Titus orthodoxy has made as much progress as episcopacy. Already there is a rule of faith, a Catholic centre in existence, which excludes everything that does not receive its life from the parent stem as dead branches. The heretic is a guilty man, a dangerous being, who must be avoided. He has every vice, is capable of every crime, and acts which are even laudable in the Christian priest, such as a wish to direct women on certain matters of internal government, are acts of usurpation on his part. The heretics of whom the author is thinking seem to be the Essenes, the Elkasaites, Jewish Christian sectaries, who occupied their minds with genealogies of æons, who insisted on certain acts of abstinence and on a rigorous distinction between things pure and impure, who condemned marriage, and who yet were great seducers of women, whom they overcame by holding out to them the bait of an easy way of expiating their sins, whilst at the same time they might procure sensual pleasure for themselves. One feels that this is approaching very near to Gnosticism and Montanism, and the proposition, that the resurrection was already an accomplished fact reminds us of Marcion. The expressions concerning Christ’s Divinity gain in vigour, though still surrounded by some difficulties. A wonderful amount of good practical sense rules everything, however. The ardent pietist who composed these Epistles, does not for a moment lose himself in the dangerous paths of quietism. He repeats almost ad nauseam that the woman has no right to devote herself to the spiritual life, except when she has no family duties to fulfil; that her principal duty is to bear and bring up children, and that it is a mistake to pretend to serve the Church if everything is not well ordered at home. Besides that, the piety which our author preaches is one of an altogether spiritual kind, and is one of feeling in which bodily exercise (1 Tim. iv. 8) and abstinence profit little. St Paul’s influence is felt, a sort of mystic sobriety, and, amidst the strangest aberrations of faith in a supernatural direction, these writings contain a large amount of what is upright and sincere.

The composition of the Epistles to Timothy and Titus most likely coincided with what may be called the publication of St Paul’s Epistles. Up till that time those letters had been scattered, and each church had kept those which had been addressed to them, whilst several had been lost. At about the period of which we are now speaking they were collected, and the three short epistles, which were looked upon as a necessary complement of St Paul’s writings, were embodied with them. They were most likely published at Rome, and the order which the first editor adopted has always been preserved. They were divided into two categories, Epistles to churches and to individuals, and in each of these categories the epistles were arranged according to stichometry, that is, according to the number of lines in the manuscript. Certain copies soon contained the Epistle to the Hebrews, and its very place at the end of the volume, out of all order as regards its length, ought to suffice to prove that it was incorporated into St Paul’s Epistles at some later period.

CHAPTER VII.

FORGED APOSTOLICAL WRITINGS.—THE CHRISTIAN BIBLE.

Meanwhile, however, the world would persist in not coming to an end, and it required all that inexhaustible measure of patience, self-denial and gentleness which formed the basis of the character of every Christian, when they saw how slowly the prophecies of' Jesus were being accomplished. The years went by, and the vast Northern glorious light in the centre of which, it was believed, the Son of Man would appear did not yet begin to dawn in the clouds. Men grew weary of seeking for the cause of this delay, and whilst some grew discouraged, others murmured. St Luke, in his Gospel, announced that he would avenge his Elect speedily, that the long-suffering of God would come to an end, and that, by praying day and night under their persecution, the elect would obtain justice like the importunate widow did over the unjust judge. Nevertheless, they began to be tired of waiting. That generation which was not to have passed away before the appearance of Christ in His Glory must all have been dead. More than fifty years had passed since those events had taken place, which were only to precede the accomplishment of the prophecies of Jesus by a very little. All the towns in Judea had heard Christian preachers, and malicious men began to make this the occasion of mocking. The reply of the faithful was that the first rule of the true believer was not to calculate dates. “He will come like a thief in the night,” said the wise; “The appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which in his own times he shall show,” says the author of the Epistle to Timothy; and, meanwhile, that good and practical pastor laid down rules which, admitting the approaching end of the world, did not contain much sense, and men aspired to escape from that provisional state in which those who believed in the hourly appearance of the Messiah would always have remained enthralled.

Then it was that a pious writer, in order to make these doubts cease, had the idea of disseminating amongst the faithful an epistle that was attributed to Peter. The Churches of St Paul had just collected their master’s works, and made important additions to them. It appears that a Christian of Rome, who belonged to that group which wished to reconcile St Peter and St Paul at any price, wished to enlarge the very slight literary legacy which the Galilean apostle had left behind him. Already there was one epistle which bore the name of the chief of the apostles, and by taking it for a foundation, and embodying in it phrases borrowed from all sides, there resulted a “Second Epistle of Peter” which, it was hoped, would circulate on the same footing as the former.

Nothing was neglected in the composition of the second epistle to make it coextensive in authority with the first. Whilst composing this little work, the author certainly had before him the short letter of the Apostle Jude, and, no doubt, supposing that it was very little known, he did not scruple to incorporate it almost wholly into his own writing. He was penetrated by the spirit of St Paul’s Epistles, of which he possessed the complete edition; and he also made use of the Apocalypse of Esdras or of Baruch. He even attributed to Peter expressions and direct allusions to gospel facts, and to an allegation in St Paul’s Epistles, which certainly never found place in anything that Cyphus dictated. The pious forger’s object was to reassure the faithful about the long delay of Messiah’s second coming, to show that Peter and Paul were agreed on this fundamental mystery of the Christian faith, and to combat the errors of Gnosticism. In several churches his Epistle was favourably received, but protests were also raised against it, which the orthodox canon of Scripture did not put an end to for a long time.

The teaching of the Epistle, however, is quite worthy of the apostolic age, by its purity and loftiness of thought. The Elect become participators of the divine nature because they renounce the corruptions of the world. Patience, sobriety, piety, paternal love, horror of heresy, to wait, to be always waiting and expecting, is the whole Christian life (2 Peter iii. 1, et seq.).

With the Second Epistle of Peter ended, about a hundred years after the death of Jesus, the cycle of writings, which were called, later on, the New Testament, in contradiction to the Old. This second Bible, which was inspired by Jesus, although there is not a single line of his in it, was far from admitting any settled canon; many small works, all more or less pseudo-epigraphs, were admitted by some and discarded by others. The new writings were, as yet, very little circulated, and very unequally read, and the list was not looked upon as final; and we shall see that other works, such as the Pastor of Hermas, take their place by the side of writings which were already sacred, almost on a footing of equality. Yet the idea of a new revelation was already fully accepted. In the so-called “Second Epistle of St Peter,” St Paul’s Epistles are ranked amongst the Scriptures, and this was not the first time that such an expression had been used. Christianity had thus its sacred book, an admirable collection, which would be sure to make its fortune in those far ages when the immediate recollection of its origin was lost, and no religions were worth anything except by their written texts.

Of course the Jewish Bible maintained all its authority, and continued to be looked upon as the direct revelation of God. That ancient Canon and the apocryphal writings that had been appended to it (such as the Book of Enoch, the Assumption of Moses, etc., etc.) were looked upon, above all, as the immediate revelation of God. It was not touched; whereas, with regard to the new Scriptures, neither additions nor suppressions, nor arbitrary manipulations were forbidden. Nobody had any scruple in attributing to the Apostles and Christ himself such words and writings as they thought good, useful, and worthy of such a divine origin. If they had not said all those beautiful things, they could have said them, and that was enough. An ecclesiastical usage, that of reading aloud in churches, was an incentive to these sort of frauds, and made them almost necessary. In their meetings, the reading of the prophetical and apostolical writings was to take up all the time that was not occupied by the mysteries and the sacraments. The prophetical and the genuine apostolical writings were soon exhausted, and so something fresh was required: and to provide for the constantly occurring requirements of these readings, any edifying work was eagerly welcomed, as long as it had the slightest appearance of apostolicity, or bore the most distant resemblance to the writings of the ancient prophets.

CHAPTER VIII.

MILLENARIANISM—PAPIAS.

The most different tendencies were apparent in the Church of Jesus, which demonstrated the wonderful fecundity of the newly-awakened conscience in the bosom of humanity; but which at the same time created an immense danger for that newly-born institution. Thousands of hands, so to say, were tearing the new religion to pieces, some wishing to keep it within the Jewish pale, whilst others wished to sever every bond between it and that Judaism from which it had sprung. The second coming of Jesus, and the idea of his rule for a thousand years, were the two questions which brought these two contrary feelings most prominently forward. The Gnostics, and, up to a certain point, the author of the Epistle of St John, no longer paid any regard to the fundamental doctrines of the first century. They did not any longer trouble themselves much about the end of the world: it was relegated to the background, where it had scarcely any meaning, and these lofty dreams ought now to be forgotten by every one. In Asia Minor the greater number of Christians lived upon that idea, and refused to go any further in search of the truth as to the meaning of Jesus; and in close approximation to that school where, it would seem, the Johannistic writings were being thought out, a man who might have some intercourse with the authors of these writings was working on a totally different, or rather I should say on a totally opposite, line of thought.

But we must speak of Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis, the most striking personality at a period when two Christians could still differ from each other to an extent which we cannot picture to ourselves now. It has often been thought that Papias was one of St John’s disciples, but this must certainly be a mistake. He never saw any of the Apostles, as he belongs to the third generation of Christians, but no doubt he consulted those who had seen them. He was a very careful man, a searcher after truth in his own fashion, and one who knew the Scriptures thoroughly. He made it his occupation zealously to collect the words of Jesus, to comment on those words in their most literal sense, to classify them according to their matter, and, in a word, to gather together all the traditions of the apostolic age which had already disappeared. He therefore undertook an investigation of vast extent, which he carried on according to rules such as a sound judgment would prescribe. Dissatisfied with the small books which were said to be an exact picture of the life of Jesus, he thought he could do better, and laid claim to giving the true interpretation of Jesus' doctrine. He only believed in original teaching, and so he spent his life in questioning those who might know something about primitive tradition.

“I am not,” he says, in his preface, “like most of those who allow themselves to be captivated by a flow of words; all I cared for were those which teach the truth. Full of mistrust for the extraordinary precepts which have got about, I only wish to know those that the Saviour had entrusted to his disciples, and which spring from truth itself. If, for example, I were to meet any one who had been a follower of the elders, I should ask him, What did Andrew say? What did Peter say? What did Philip, Thomas, James, John, or any other of the disciples of our Lord say? What do Aristion and Presbuteros Johannes, disciples of the Saviour, say? For I did not think that all the books could bring me so much profit as data collected from living and permanent tradition.”

No Apostle had been alive for some time when Papias conceived this project, but there were still persons living who had known some of the members of that first upper chamber. The daughters of Philip, who had reached an extreme old age, and who were not quite in their right mind, filled Hierapolis with their wonderful stories, and Papias had seen them. At Ephesus and at Smyrna Presbuteros Johannes and Aristion both asserted that they were the depositants of precious traditions which it seems they said they had received from the Apostle John. Papias did not belong to that school which was attached to John, and from which it is said the fourth Gospel proceeded, though it is probable that he knew Aristion and Presbuteros. His was composed, in a great part, of quotations borrowed from conversations of these two persons who in his eyes were evidently the best representatives of the apostolic chain and of the authentic doctrine of Jesus. It is needless to say that the Jewish Christian Papias does not mention the Apostle St Paul, either directly or indirectly.

This attempt to reconstruct the teaching of Jesus by mere oral tradition a hundred years after his death would have been a paradox if Papias had refused to make use of the written texts, and in this respect his method was not so exclusive as he seems to imply in his preface. Whilst preferring oral tradition, and whilst, perhaps, not assigning any absolute value to any of the texts which were in circulation, he read the Gospels of which copies came into his possession. It is certainly vexing that we cannot judge for ourselves how much he knew in this respect. But here Eusebius appears to have been very far-sighted. According to his usual custom, he read the works of Papias pen in hand, to note his quotations from the canonical writings, and he only found two of our Gospels—that of St Mark and of St Matthew—mentioned. Papias noticed a curious opinion of Presbuteros on Mark’s Gospel, and the citations by which this latter traditionalist excused, as he imagined, the disorder and the fragmentary character of the compilation of the said Evangelist. As to the Gospel attributed to St Matthew, Papias looked upon it as a free and tolerably faithful translation of the Hebrew work written by the Apostle of that name, and he valued it especially on account of the authentic words of Jesus which were to be found in it. Besides this, he met with an anecdote in Papias, which formed part of the Gospel according to the Hebrews, but he is not sure that the Bishop of Hierapolis took them from that Gospel.

Thus it will be seen that this learned man who was so well acquainted with the Scriptures, who had been in the habit of associating, so it was said, with the disciples of John, and had learnt from them the words of Jesus, did not yet know St John’s Gospel, a work which appears to have been produced only a few miles from the town in which he was living. Certainly if Eusebius had found any traces of it in the writings of the Bishop of Hierapolis, he would have mentioned it, just as he tells us that he found quotations from the first Epistle of John. It is a singular fact that Papias, who does not know St John’s Gospel, knows the Epistle attributed to him, and which is, in a manner, intended to prepare the way for the Gospel. Perhaps the forgers communicated this Epistle to him, but not the Gospel, as they feared his stringent criticism, or perhaps some time elapsed between the Epistle and the Gospel. One can never touch on this question of the writings said to be John’s without meeting with contradictions and anomalies.

From this mass of conscientious research Papias composed five books which he called Exegeses or “Expositions of the Words of the Saviour,” and which he certainly looked upon as a correct representation of the teachings of Jesus. The disappearance of this work is the most regrettable loss which the field of primitive Christian literature has ever sustained. If we had Papias' book, no doubt a large number of difficulties which confront us in that obscure history would be removed, and most likely that is the very reason why we do not possess it. His work was written from so personal a point of view that it became a scandal for orthodoxy. The four Gospels had an authority which excluded every other, and in fifty years we shall find mystical reasons why there should be four and why there could not be more than four. No author who declared that he did not think much of those holy texts could possibly be looked upon with favour.

Besides this, Papias, although he seems to be a very severe critic, was really extremely credulous. He added things to the Gospels which, not being protected by the authority of inspiration, seemed shocking and absurd. St Mark, with his ponderous thaumaturgy, appears reasonable beside the extravagant wonders which he alleges. The teaching and the parables which he attributes to Jesus are, to say the least of it. extraordinary and absurd, and the whole had that fabulous character which the Gospel accounts, or at least those of the first three, avoided so carefully. The miracles that he attributed to Philip, on the authority of his old, half-crazy daughters, exceeded everything, and those which he alleged Justus Barsabbas worked, went beyond tradition, whilst his account of the death of St John, and especially that of Judas, was such as nobody had ever heard before. He even seemed to be versed in the dreams of Gnosticism when he asserts that God gave the government of the world to angels, who acquitted themselves badly of their duty.

But his wild millenarianism damaged Papias more than anything else in the mind of all the orthodox. His mistake was that he accepted the apocalypse of the year 68 in the sense that its author meant. With the Seer of Patmos he admitted that after the first resurrection of the dead Christ would reign personally on earth for a thousand years. This is what he makes Jesus say, according to a tradition that had been handed down by the presbuteroi:—

A day will come in which vines shall grow, each of which shall contain ten thousand stems; and each stem shall have ten thousand branches; and each branch, ten thousand shoots; and on each shoot there shall be ten thousand grapes; and each grape, when pressed, shall produce twenty-five thousand hogsheads of wine. And when one of the saints shall seize one of the bunches of grapes, another bunch will cry out, “Take me for I am better; and bless God for me.” And each grain of wheat shall produce ten thousand ears; and each ear shall produce ten thousand grains; and each grain, ten thousand pounds of flour. And it shall be the same with the fruit trees as with all cereals, with herbs, according to their different properties. And all animals that live on the simple fruits of the earth shall be peaceful and kind towards each other, obedient and respectful towards men.

It was added that Judas refused to believe all these fine things, and from the day that he heard his Master speak thus he became a semi-unbeliever.

Besides this, Papias did not make use of any great amount of discernment in his choice of the words of Jesus when he attributed to him such which appear to have been scattered about in the Jewish apocalypses, and which may be seen more particularly in the Apocalypse of Baruch. His book was directly opposed to the proposition which the other held so dear, and proved how valuable the written Gospels were, by checking the manner in which the traditional words of Jesus were degraded. Already Montanist ideas, with their simple materialism, were making themselves felt, and, like certain Gnostics, Papias could not understand any perfect innocence of life without a total abstention from animal food. The relative good sense of the Galilean dreams had disappeared to make way for the extravagancies of the far East, and so the impossible was sought after, and a sort of subversive gentleness of humanity, such as India alone, as the price of her political annihilation, has been able to realise in life.

The orthodox Church perceived the danger of these chimeras very quickly, and the millenium, above all, became an object of repugnance for every Christian of common sense. Minds who, like Origen, Dionysius of Alexandria, Eusebius, and the Hellenistic Fathers, saw nothing but a revealed philosophy in Jesus, made it their chief business not to attribute to him or to the apostles an opinion which daily became more self-evidently absurd, and to remove from the very threshold of Christianity that fatal objection that the dominant idea of its founders was a manifest dream. Every possible means were sought for to get rid of the apocalypse, and the fidelity of Papias, who was most strongly imbued of all the ecclesiastical writers with the primitive ideas to tradition, was fatal to him. Men strove to forget him, his works were not copied, and only curious readers cared for his writings: and Eusebius, whilst respecting him, says clearly that he was a man of small mind, without any judgment.

Papias' mistake was that of being too conservative, and by being the friend of tradition he seemed to be behind everybody else. The progress of Christianity would naturally make of him an inconvenient man, and a witness to be suppressed, whilst in his own time he certainly responded to the state of many men’s minds. The millennists looked upon him as their principal authority; Irenæus esteems him openly, and places him immediately after the Apostles, on the same footing as Polycarp, and calls him by a name which is very appropriate to his character: “A Father of the Church.”Ἀρχαῖος ἀνήρ (vide Liddell and Scott in verb:)—Translator. The Bishop of Lyon thought that his discourses on the vines of the kingdom of David were beautiful and authentic. Irenæus allows these dreams of a concrete idealism, coarse as they may be, whilst Justin has heard of them, and Tertullian and Commodian exceed the materialism of Papias himself. St Hippolytus, Methodius, Nepos, Bishop of Arsinœ in Egypt, Victorinus Pettavius, Lanctantius, the Apollinarists, St Ambrose, Sulpicius-Severus—or St Martin—believe the old tradition in this respect. Up to the fifth century the faithful who were most oxthodox Christians maintained that after the coming of Antichrist, and the destruction of all the nations, there would be a resurrection of the just only; that those who were then on the earth, good and bad, would be preserved alive: the good to obey the just who had been raised as their princes, and the bad to be altogether subject to them. A Jerusalem, consisting altogether of gold, cypress, and cedar, rebuilt by the nations, who should come, led by their kings, to work at the re-erection of its walls,—a restored Temple, which should become the centre of the world,—crowds of victims around the altar,—the gates of the city open day and night in order to receive the tribute of the people,—pilgrims coming in their due order according as they were allowed to come every week, every month, or every year,—the saints, the patriarchs, and the prophets passing a thousand years in one perpetual Sabbath in perfect agreement with the Messiah, who would give them a hundred fold all that they have given up for him—this was the essentially Jewish Paradise of which many dreamed, even in the times of St Jerome and St Augustine. Orthodoxy fought against these ideas; but as they were openly expressed in many passages of the Fathers, they were never strictly qualified as heresies. St Epiphanius, who was a man of most strict research, who tried to enlarge his catalogue of heresies by making two or three sects out of one, has not devoted a special chapter to the millenarians—and to be consistent he must first of all have got rid of the Apocalypse of the received Canon of Scripture; and so, in spite of the most ingenious attempts of the Greek Fathers, every attempt to do so was unsuccessful.

Besides this there were degrees in the materialism of those simple believers. Some, like Irenæus, saw in the first resurrection nothing but a beginning of incorruption, a means of becoming accustomed to the sight of God, a period during which the saints would enjoy the conversation and the companionship of the angels, and would treat about spiritual matters with them. Others only dreamt of a gross paradise of eating and drinking. They asserted that the saints would spend all that time in feasts of carnal pleasure, and that children would be born during Messiah’s reign; that the lords of that new world would wallow in gold and precious stones, and that every creature would immediately obey their slightest desire.

The ideas of the infinite, of the immortality of the soul, were so far absent from these Jewish dreams that a thousand years seemed enough for the most exacting minds. A man must have been very greedy of life if at the end of that time he had not been surfeited with it. In our eyes, a paradise of a thousand years seems only a small thing, as every year would bring us nearer to the time when everything would vanish. The last years which preceded annihilation would seem to us to be a hell, and the thought of the year 999, would be quite enough to poison the happiness of the foregoing years. But it is no good to ask for logic to try and solve the intolerable destiny which falls to the lot of man. Carried away irresistibly to believe in what is right, and cast into a world that is injustice itself, requiring an eternity to make good his claims, and stopped short by the grave, what can he do? He clings to the coffin and yields his flesh to his fleshless bones, his life to the brain full of rottenness, light to the closed eye, and pictures to himself chimeras that he would laugh at in a child, so that he may not have to avow that God has been able to mock his own creatures to the extent of laying upon them the burden of duty without any future recompense.

CHAPTER IX.

THE COMMENCEMENT OF GNOSTICISM.

At this period Christianity was a newborn child, and when it emerged from its swaddling-clothes, a most dangerous sort of croup threatened to choke it. The root of this illness was partly internal, partly external, and in some respects the child had been born with the germs of it. In a great measure, however, the illness came from without, and the unhealthy locality in which the young Church dwelt caused it a sort of poisoning to which it very nearly succumbed.

As the Church grew more numerous and began to develop a hierarchy, the docility and self-denial of the faithful began to have its merit. It seemed to be irksome to walk like a lost sheep amongst the close ranks of the whole herd, and so men wished to leave the crowd and have rules for themselves: the universal law seemed to be a very commonplace matter. In all directions small aristocracies were formed in the Church which threatened to rend the seamless robe of Christ, and two of them were marked by rare originality. One was the aristocracy of piety, Montanism; the other, the aristocracy of science, was Gnosticism.

This latter was the first to develop itself. To minds that were initiated into the philosophical subtleties of the times, the ideas and the government of the Church must have appeared very humble, for the via media of relative good sense to which orthodoxy adhered did not suit all men’s minds, and refined intellects asserted that they had loftier ideas about the dogmas and the life of Jesus than the vulgar herd who took matters literally, and gave themselves up without reasoning to the direction of their pastors; and sublimity of doctrine was sought, whereas it ought to have been received with the cheerfulness of a pure heart, and embraced with a simple faith.

Jesus and his immediate disciples had altogether neglected that part of the human intellect which desires to know; with knowledge they had nothing to do, and they only addressed themselves to the heart and the imagination. Cosmology, psychology, and even lofty theological speculations, were a blank page for them, and very likely they were right. It was not the part of Christianity to satisfy any vain curiosity; it came to console those who suffer, to touch the fibres of moral sense, and to bring man into relation not with some one or abstract logos, but with a heavenly Father full of kindness, who is the author of all the harmonies and of all the joys of the universe. Especially towards the end of his life St Paul felt the want of a speculative theology, and his ideas became assimilated to those of Philo, who a century before had striven to impart a rationalistic turn of mind to Judaism. About the same time the Churches of Asia Minor launched forth into a sort of cabala which connected the part of Jesus with a chimerical ontology and an indefinite series of avatars. The school from which the fourth Gospel sprung felt the same need of explaining the miracles of Galilee by theology, and so Jesus became the Divine logos made flesh, and the altogether Jewish idea of the future appearing of the Messiah was replaced by the theory of the Paraclete. Cerinthus obeyed an analogous tendency. At Alexandria this thirst for metaphysics was even more pronounced, and produced strange results, which it is time for us to study now.

In that city a crude and unwholesome mass of all theologies and all cosmogonies had been formed, which, however, was often traversed by rays of genius, and which was a doctrine that set up the pretension of having discovered the formula of the absolute, and gave himself the ambiguous title of Gnosis—“perfect science.” The man who was initiated into the chimerical doctrine was called Gnosticos—the man of perfect knowledge. At that time, Alexandria was, after Rome, the spot where men’s minds were in the most unsettled state. Frivolity and superficial eclecticism produced altogether unforeseen effects, and everything got mixed up together in those wild and fantastic brains. Thanks to an often unconscious charlatanism, the weightiest problems of life were turned into mere cases of filching, and every question about God and the world were solved by juggling with words and hollow formulas, and real science was dispensed with by tricks of legerdemain. It must be remembered that the great scientific institutions founded by the Ptolomies had disappeared or fallen into complete decay, and the only guide which can prevent mankind from talking nonsense—that is, exact science—existed no longer.

Philosophy did exist still, and was trying to raise its head again, but great minds were scarce. Platonism had gained the upper hand over all the other Greek systems in Egypt, and in Syria, which was a great misfortune, for Platonism is always dangerous, unless corrected by a scientific education. There were no more any men of taste refined enough to appreciate the wonderful art in Plato’s Dialogues, for most received those charming philosophical fancies in a clumsy spirit; but instruction such as they conveyed, which rather satisfied the imagination than the reason, would please Eastern ideas. The germ of mysticism which they contained made its impress on those races who could not receive pure and simple rationalism. Christianity followed the general fashion, and already Philo had sought to make Platonism the philosophy of Judaism, and those Fathers of the Church who had any weight were Platonists.

To accommodate itself to this unnatural fusion, Greek genius, healthy and intelligible as it was, had to make many sacrifices. Philosophers were to believe in ecstasies, in miracles, in supernatural relations between God and man. Plato becomes a theosophist and a mystagogue, and the invocation of good spirits is taken as a serious matter, and whilst the scientific spirit disappears altogether, that habit of mind which was fortified by mysteries begins to gain the upper hand. In those small religious assemblies of Eleusius and Thrace, where men were in the habit of throwing dust into their own eyes so as to imagine that they knew the unknowable, it was already asserted that the body was the prison of the soul, that the actual world was a decadence from the divine world; teaching was divided into esoteric and exoteric, and men into spiritual, animal, and material beings. The habit of clothing doctrine in a mythical form after the manner of Plato, and of explaining ancient texts allegorically after the manner of Philo, became general. The highest bliss was to be initiated into pretended secrets, into a superior gnosis. These ideas of a chimerical intellectual aristocracy daily gained ground. and the truth was looked upon as a privilege reserved for a small number of the initiated, and thus every master became a charlatan who sought to increase the number of his customers by selling them the secret of the absolute.

The fields of the propaganda of the gnosis and of Christianity in Alexandria were very closely allied. Gnostics and Christians resembled each other in their ardent wish to penetrate into religious mysteries without any positive science, of which they were both equally ignorant, and this brought about their sublime amalgamation. On the one hand, the Gnostics, who alleged that they embraced every belief, and accustomed as they were to look upon the gods of the nations as divine æons much inferior to the supreme God, wished to understand Christianity, and received Jesus enthusiastically as an incarnate æon to be placed side by side with so many others, giving him a chief place in their formulae of the philosophies of history. On the other hand, Christians who had any intellectual requirements, and who wished to attach the Gospel to some system of philosophy, found what they required in the obscure metaphysics of the Gnostics. Then there happened something quite analogous to what happened about fifty years ago, when a certain philosophical system, whose programme, like that of Gnosticism, was to explain everything, and to understand everything, adopted Christianity, and proclaimed itself to be Christian in a superior sense, and Catholic and Protestant theologians might be seen at the same time adopting a number of philosophical ideas which they thought were compatible with their theology, because they did not wish to appear strange to their century.

The Fathers of the Church insist upon it that all this rank and poisonous growth had its origin in the Samaritan sects which sprang from Simon of Gitto (Simon Magus), and he certainly seems already to have presented most of the features which characterise Gnosticism. The Great Announcement, which he certainly did not write himself, but which most likely represents his doctrines, is an altogether Gnostic work. His followers Menander, Cleobius, and Dosistheus seem to have had the same views, and all Catholic writers make Menander to be the father of all the great Gnostics of Hadrian’s time. If we are to believe Plotinus on the other hand, a travestied and disfigured Platonic philosophy was the only origin of Gnosticism. Such explanations appear to be altogether insufficient to account for such a complicated fact. There were Christian, Jewish, Samaritan Gnostics, but there were also non-Christian Gnostics. Plotinus, who wrote a whole book against them, never imagined that he had anything to do with a Christian sect. The systems of the Samaritan Gnostics, those of Basilides, of Valentinus, of Saturninus, present such shrinking similarities that one must suppose that they have a common origin, though they do not seem to have borrowed from each other. They must therefore have dipped into an earlier source, to which Philo, Apollos, and St Paul, when he wrote his Epistle to the Colossians, contributed, and from which the Jewish cabala also seems to have proceeded.

It is an impossible task to unravel all that contributed to the formation of that strange religious philosophy. Neo-platonism, a tissue of poetical dreams, the ideas that men had in consequence of apocryphal traditions about Pythagorism, already supplied models for a mythical philosophy bordering on religion. About the very time when Basilides, Valentinus, and Saturninus were developing their dreams, one of Hadrian’s pensioned orators, Philo of Byblos, gave to the world the old Phœnician theogonies, mixed up as it seems with the Jewish cabala, under a form of divine genealogies which were very analogous to those of the first Gnostics. The Egyptian religion, which was still in a very flourishing state, with its mysterious ceremonies and its striking symbols, Greek mysteries and classical polytheism interpreted in an allegorical sense. Orphism, with its empty formulas; Brahminism, which had become a theory of endless emanations; Buddhism, oppressed by the dream of an expiatory existence, and by its myriads of Buddhas; ancient Persian Dualism, which was so contagious, and to which perhaps the ideas of the Messiah and of the millenium owed their first existence, all these in turn appeared as profound and seductive dogmas to the imaginations of men who were beside themselves between hopes and fears. India, and, above all, Buddhism, were known in Alexandria, and from them the Egyptians borrowed the doctrine of metampsychosis, learning to look on life as the imprisonment of the soul in the body, and the theory of successive deliverances. Gnosticos has the same meaning as Buddha—“he who knows.” Following the Persian view, they took the dogma of two principles independent one of the other,—the identification of matter with evil, the belief that the passions which corrupt the soul are emanations from the body, the division of the world into ministeries or adminstrations which have been entrusted to genii. Judaism and Christianity were mixed up together in this farrago of nonsense, and more than one believer in Jesus thought that he could graft the Gospels on to a ludicrous system of theology which seemed to say something without explaining anything in reality, whilst more than one Israelite was already playing a prelude to the follies of the cabala, which is, as a matter of fact, nothing but Jewish Gnosticism.

As we have said, the Church of Alexandria was soon tinged with these chimeras. Philo and Plato already had many readers amongst the faithful who had any education. Many joined the Church, already imbued with philosophy, and found Christian teaching poor and meagre, whilst the Jewish Bible seemed to them to be still more feeble, and, in imitation of Philo, they saw in it nothing but an allegory. They applied the same method to the Gospel, and in some fashion remodelled it, to which it lent itself easily, on account of its plastic character. All the peculiarities of the life of Jesus regained something sublime, according to these new evangelists; all his miracles became symbolical, and the follies of the Jewish ghemetria were heightened and aggravated. Like Cerinthus, these new doctors treated the Old Testament as a secondary revelation, and could not understand why Christianity should maintain any bond of union with that particular God, Jehovah, who is no absolute being. Could there be any stronger proof of his weakness than the state of ruin and desolation in which he had left his own city, Jerusalem? Certainly, they said, Jesus could see further and higher than the founders of Judaism, but his apostles did not comprehend him, and the texts which were supposed to represent his doctrine had been falsified. The gnosis alone, thanks to secret tradition, was in possession of the truth, and a vast system of successive emanations contains the whole secret of philosophy and history. Christianity, which was the last act of the tragedy that the universe is constantly playing, was the work of the æon Christos, who, by his intimate union with the man Jesus, saved everything that could be saved in humanity.

It will be seen that the Christianity of those sectaries was that of Cerinthus and the Ebionites. Their Gospel conformed to the Hebrew Gospel, and they described the scene of the baptism of Jesus as it was related in that Gospel, and believed, with the Docetm, that Jesus had nothing human but his appearance. The Galilean accounts appeared to them nothing but childish nonsense, altogether unworthy of the Deity, and which must be explained allegorically. For them the man Jesus was nothing, the æon Christos was everything; and his earthly life, far from being the basis of doctrine, was nothing but a difficulty to be got rid of at any price.

The ideas of the first Christians about the appearance of the Messiah in the heavens, about the Resurrection, and the Last Judgment, were looked upon as antiquated. The moment of the Resurrection for every individual was that at which he became a gnosticos. A certain relaxation of morals was the consequence of these false aristocratic ideas; mysticism has always been a moral danger, for it too easily gives rise to the idea that by initiation man is dispensed from the obligation of ordinary duties. “Gold,” said these false Christians, “can be dragged through the mire without becoming soiled.” They smiled when scruples about meats offered to idols were mentioned to them; they were present at plays and at gladiatorial games; and they were accused of speaking lightly of offences against chastity, and of saying,—“What is of the flesh is flesh, and what is of the spirit is spirit;” and they expressed their antipathy for martyrdom in terms that must have hurt the feelings of real Christians most profoundly. As Christ had not suffered, why should they suffer for him?” The real testimony which they ought to render to God,” they said, “was to know him as he is, it is an act of suicide for a man to confess God by his death.” According to them, the martyrs were nearly always wrong, and the pains that they suffered were the just chastisement for crimes that would have merited death, and which remained hidden. Far from complaining, they ought to be thankful to the law which transformed their just punishment into an act of heroism, and if there were a few rare cases of innocent martyrs, they were analogous to the sufferings of childhood, and fate only was to be blamed for it.

The sources of piety, however, were not yet corrupted by a proud rationalism, which generally frees itself from material practices. A liturgy, veiled in secrecy, offered abundant sacramental consolation to the faithful of those singular Churches, and life became a mystery, each one of whose acts was sacred. Baptism was a solemn ceremony, and recalled the worship of Mithra. The formula which the officiating minister pronounced was in Hebrew, and immersion there followed the anointing, which the Church adopted later. Extreme unction for the dying was also administered in a manner which would naturally create a great effect, and which the Catholic Church has imitated. Amongst the sectaries, worship, like dogma, was further removed from Jewish simplicity than in the churches of Peter and Paul, and the Gnostics admitted several Pagan rites, chants, hymns, and painted or sculptured representations of Christ.

In this respect their influence on the history of Christianity was of the highest order, arid they formed the bridge by which a number of Pagan practices were introduced into the Church. In the Christian propaganda they played a principal part, for, by means of Gnosticism, Christianity first of all proclaimed itself as a new religion which was destined to endure, and which possessed a form of worship and sacraments, and which could produce an art of its own. By means of Gnosticism, the Church effected a juncture with the ancient mysteries, and appropriated to herself all that they possessed that satisfied popular requirements. Thanks to it, in the fourth century, the world could pass from Paganism to Christianity without noticing it, and, above all, without guessing that it was becoming Jewish. The eclecticism and the ingratitude of the Catholic Church are here shown in a wonderful manner. Whilst repudiating and anathematising the chimeras of the Gnostics, orthodoxy received a number of happy popular devotional inspirations from them, and from the theurgical the Church advanced to the sacramental view. Her feasts, her sacraments, her art were in a great measure taken from those sects which she condemned. Christianity, pure and simple, has not left any material object, for primitive Christian archeology is Gnostic. In those small, free, and inventive sects life was without rule but full of vitality. Their very metaphysics already made themselves felt, and faith was obliged to reason. By the side of the Church there was henceforth to be found the school; by the side of the elder, the teacher.

Moreover, some men of rare talent, making themselves the organs of those doctrines which had hitherto been without authority, withdrew them from that state of individual speculation in which they might have remained indefinitely, and raised them to the height of a real event in the history of humanity.

CHAPTER X.

BASILIDES, VALENTINUS, SATURNINUS, CARPOCRATES.

Basilides, who seems to have come from Syria to live at Alexandria, in Lower Egypt. and in the adjacent departments, was the first of those foreign dogmatisers to whom one hesitates at times to give the name of Christian. He is said to have been a disciple of Menander, and seems to have had two courses of instruction: the one, which was intended for the initiated, was restricted to religions of abstract metaphysics which were more in keeping with those of Aristotle than those of Christ, and the other was a sort of mythology, founded, like the Jewish cabala, on abstractions, which men took for realities. The metaphysics of Basilides remind us of those of Hegel, because of their unhealthy grandeur. His system owed much to the Stoic cosmogony. Universal life is a development of a πανσπερμα. Just as the seed contains the trunk, the roots, the flowers, and the fruits of the future plant, so the future of the universe is only an evolution. Filiation is the secret of everything; the species is the child of the genius, and is only an expansion of it.The aspiration of creatures is towards the good. Progress is made by that mind which stops between two boundaries (Μεθόριον πνεῠμα),—which, having, as it were, one foot in the ideal and the other in the material world, makes the ideal circulate amongst the material, and continually raises it. A sort of universal groaning of nature, a melancholy feeling of the universe, calls us to final repose, which will consist in the general unconsciousness of individuals in the bosom of God, and in the absolute extinction of every desire. “The good tidings” of progress were brought into the world by Jesus, the son of Mary. Already, before him, chosen heathens and Jews had caused the spiritual element to triumph over the material; but Jesus completely separated these two elements, so that only the spiritual element remained. Thus death could take nothing from him. All men ought to imitate him, to attain the same end. They will do so by receiving the “glad tidings,” that is to say, the transcendent gnosis, eagerly.

In order to make these ideas more accessible, Basilides gave them a cosmogonic form analogous to those which were common in the religions of Phœnicia, Persia, and Assyria. It was a sort of divine epopæia, having for its heroes divine attributes personified, and whose diverse episodes represented the strife between good and evil. The good is the supreme god, ineffable and lost in himself. His name is Abraxas. That eternal being develops himself in seven perfections, which form with the Being himself the divine ogdoade. The seven perfections, Nous, Logos, Sophia, etc., by pairing together, have produced the orders of inferior angels (æons, worlds), to the number of three hundred and sixty-five, That number is made up by the letters of the word Abraxas added together according to their numerical value.

The angels of the last heaven, whose prince is Jehovah, created the earth, which is the most mediocre of the worlds, the most sullied by matter, on the model furnished by Sophia, but under the empire of necessities, which made a mixture of good and evil out of it. Jehovah and the demiurges divided the government of this world between them, and distributed the provinces and the nations amongst themselves. Those are the local gods of the different countries. Jehovah chose the Jews: he is an invading and a conquering God. The Law, his work, is a mixture of material and spiritual views. The other local gods were obliged to coalesce against this aggressive neighbour, who, in spite of the division that had been agreed upon, wished to subjugate all nations to his own.

To put an end to this war of the gods, the supreme God sent the prince of the æons, the Nous, his first son, with the mission to deliver men from the power of the demiurge angels. The Nous did not exactly become incarnate. At the moment of baptism the Nous attached to itself the person of the man Jesus, and did not leave it till the moment of the Passion. According to some disciples of Basilides, a substitution took place at that moment, and Simon of Cyrene was crucified in Jesus' stead. The persecutions to which Jesus and the apostles were subjected by the Jews arose from the anger of Jehovah, who, seeing that his rule was threatened, made a last effort to avert the dangers of the future.

The place which Basilides attributed to Jesus in the economy of the world’s history does not differ essentially from that which is attributed to him in the Epistle to the Colossians and in the pseudo-Johannine Gospel. Basilides knew some words of Hebrew, and had certainly taken his Christianity from the Ebionites. He gave a so-called Glaucias, St Peter’s interpreter, as his master. He made use of the New Testament very nearly as it had been formed by general consent, excluding certain books, particularly the epistles to the Hebrews, to Titus and to Timothy, admitting St John’s Gospel. He wrote twenty-four books of allegorical Expositions of the Gospel, without our being able to tell exactly what texts he made use of. After the example of all the sects that surrounded the Church, and, in a measure, sucked her, Basilides composed apocryphal books,—esoteric traditions attributed to Matthias; revelations borrowed from chimerical people, Barcabban and Barcoph; prophecies of Cham. Like Valentinus, he seems to have composed sacred psalms or canticles. Lastly, besides the commentary on the received Gospels that he had edited, there was a gospel analogous to that of the Hebrews, of the Egyptians, and of the Ebionites, which differed little from that of Matthew, which bore the name of Basilides. His son, Isidore, carried on his teaching, wrote commentaries on the apocryphal prophets, and developed his myths. Weak Christians easily allowed themselves to be seduced by these dreams. A learned and esteemed Christian writer, Agrippa Castor, constituted himself its ardent adversary as soon as it appeared.

Theurgy is generally the ordinary companion of religious intemperance. The disciples of Basilides did not invent, but they adopted, the magic virtues of the word Abraxas. They were also reproached with a very lax state of morals. It is certain that when so much importance is attached to metaphysical formulas, simple and good morality seems to be a humble and almost indifferent matter. A man who has become perfect by gnosis can allow himself anything. It seems that Basilides did not say that, but he was made to say it, and that was to a certain point the consequence of his theosophy. The saying which was attributed to him,—“We are men, the others are only swine and dogs,” was, after all, only the brutal translation of the more acceptable saying,—“I am speaking for one in a thousand.” The taste for mystery which that sect had, its habit of avoiding the light and hiding itself from the eyes of the multitude, the silence that was exacted from the initiated, gave rise to those rumours. Many calumnies were mixed up with all that. Thus Basilides was accused of having maintained, like all the Gnostics, that it was no crime to renounce apparently the beliefs for which one was persecuted; to lend oneself to acts indifferent in themselves, which the civil law exacted; even to go so far as to curse Christ, so long as in one’s mind one distinguished between the aeon Nous and the man Jesus. Now we have the original text of Basilides, and we find in it a much more moderate criticism of martyrdom than that which his opponents attribute to him. It is true that, attributing no importance whatever to the real Jesus, the Gnostics had no reason to die for him. On the whole they were only semi-Christians. Perhaps the superstitions which sprang from the sect were not the faults of Basilides. Some of his maxims were very beautiful, but his style, from the fragments which we possess, appears to have been obscure and pretentious.

Valentinus was certainly superior to him. Something sorrowful, a gloomy and icy resignation makes a sort of bad dream out of the system of Basilides. Valentinus penetrates everything with love and pity. The redemption of Christ has for him a feeling of joy; his doctrine was a consolation for many, and real Christians adopted, or at least admired him.

That celebrated, enlightened man, born, as it seems, in Lower Egypt, was educated in the schools of Alexandria, and first taught there. He would also appear to have dogmatised in Cyprus. Even his enemies allow that he had genius, a vast amount of knowledge, and rare eloquence. Gained over by the great seductions of Christianity, and attached to the Church, but nourished on Plato, and full of the recollections of profane learning, he was not satisfied with the spiritual nourishment which the pastors gave to the simple: he wanting something higher. He conceived a sort of Christian rationalism, a general system of the world, in which Christianity would have a place in the first rank, but would not be everything. Enlightened and tolerant, he admitted a heathen as well as a Jewish revelation. A number of things in the Church’s teaching appeared to him coarse and inadmissible by a cultivated mind. He called the orthodox “Galileans,” not without a shade of irony. With nearly all the Gnostics, he denied the resurrection of the body, or rather maintained that, as far as regards those who are perfect, the resurrection is accomplished already,—that it consists in the knowledge of the truth,—that the soul alone can be saved.

If Valentinus had limited himself to cherishing these thoughts internally, to speaking about them to his friends, and to not frequenting the Church except in so far as it answered to his feelings, his position would have been altogether correct. But he wanted more: with his ideas, he wished to have a place of importance in the Church; and he was wrong, for the order of speculation in which he delighted was not one which the Church could encourage. The Church’s object was the amelioration of morals and the diminution of the people’s sufferings, not science or philosophy. Valentinus ought to have been satisfied with being a philosopher. Far from that, he tried to make disciples, like the ecclesiastics. When he had insinuated himself into any one’s confidence, he proposed different questions to him, in order to prove the absurdity of orthodoxy. At the same time, he tried to persuade him that there was something better than that: he expounded that superior wisdom with mystery. If objections were made to him, he would let the discussion drop with an air that seemed to say, “ You will never be anything but a simple believer.” His disciples showed themselves equally unconceivable. When they were asked questions, they wrinkled their brows, contracted their faces, and slipped away, saying, “O depth” If they were pressed, they affirmed the common faith amidst a thousand ambiguities, then returned to their avowal, baffled their opponent, and escaped, saying, “You do not understand anything about the matter.”

Already it was the essence of Catholicism not to suffer any aristocracy,—that of elevated philosophy no more than that of pretentious piety. Valentinus’s position was a very false one. In order to make himself acceptable to the people, he conformed his discourses to those of the Church; but the bishops were on their guard, and excluded him. The simple believers allowed themselves to be caught; they even murmured because the bishops drove such good Catholics out of their communion. Useless sympathy! for already the Episcopate had restricted the Church on all sides. Valentinus thus remained in the state of an unfortunate candidate for the pastoral ministry. He wrote letters, homilies, and hymns of a lofty moral tone. The fragments by him that have been preserved have vigour and brilliancy, but their phraseology is eccentric. It resembles the mania which the Saint Simonians had of building up great theories in abstract language to express realities which were almost paltry. His general system had not that appearance of good sense that succeeds with the masses. The pretended Gospel of St John, with its far simpler combinations of the Logos and the Paraclete, had far greater success.

Valentines starts, like all the Gnostics, from a system of metaphysics whose fundamental principle is that God manifests himself by successive emanations, of which the world is the most humble. The world is a work which is too imperfect for an infinite workman t it is the miserable copy of a divine model at the beginning. The Abyss (Bythos), inaccessible, unfathomable, which is also called Proarché, Propator, Silence (Sigè) is its eternal companion. After centuries of solitude and of dumb contemplation of its being, the Abyss wishes at length to appear in the outer world, and with his companion begets a syzygia, Nous or Monogenes and Alethia (Truth); they beget Logos and Zoe, who in their turn beget Anthropos and Ecclesia. Together with the primordial couple those three syzygias form the ogdoade, and with other syzygias emanated from Logos and Zoe, from Anthropos and Ecclesia the divine Pleroma, the plenitude of the divinity which for the future is conscious of its own existence. These couples fall from perfection in measure as they get further and further from the first source; at the same time, the love of perfection, the regret, the desire to return to their first principle, are awakened in them. Sophia especially makes a bold attempt to embrace the invisible Bythos, who only reveals himself by his Monogenes (only son). She continually wears herself out, extends herself to embrace the invisible; drawn away by the sweetness of her love, she is on the point of being absorbed by Bythos, of being annihilated. The whole Pleroma is in confusion. In order to re-establish harmony, Nous or Monogenes engender Christos and Pneuma, who pacify the æons, and make equality reign amongst them. Then, out of gratitude for Bythos, who has pacified them, the moons bring together all their perfections, and form the æon Jesus, the firstborn of creation, as Monogenes had been the firstborn of the emanation. Thus Jesus becomes in the inferior world what Christos had been in the divine Pleroma.

In consequence of the ardour of her insensate passion, Sophia had produced by herself a sort of hermaphrodite abortion without consciousness, Hakamoth, also called Sophia Prunicos, or Prunice, who, driven from the Pleroma, moved about in the void and the night. Moved by compassion for this unfortunate being, Christos, leaning on Stauros (the cross), comes to her aid, gives the erring æon a determinate form and consciousness; but he does not give her knowledge, and Hakamoth, again rejected from the Pleroma, is cast into space. Given up to all the violence of her desires, she brings forth, on the one hand, the soul of the world, and all psychic substances; and on the other, matter. In her, anguish alternates with hope. At one time she feared her annihilation; at other times the recollection of her lost past filled her with joy. Her tears formed the moist element; her smile was the light; her sadness, opaque matter. At last the æon Jesus came to save her, and, in her delight, the poor delivered creature gave birth to the spiritual element,—the third of the elements that constitute the world. Hakamoth, or Prunice, nevertheless does not rest; agitation is her essence; there is a work of God going on in her; she endures a continual flow of blood. The bad part of her activity is concentrated on the demons; the other part, re-united to matter, implants in it the germ of a fire which shall devour it some day.

With the psychic element Hakamoth creates the demiurge, which serves her as an instrument for organising the remaining beings. The demiurge creates the seven worlds, and man in the last of these worlds. But the surprising thing is that a superior and altogether divine principle is revealed in man, and that is the spiritual element, which Hakamoth had imparted to her work from oversight. The creator is jealous of his own creature; he lays a snare for him (the prohibition to eat the fruit of Paradise); man falls into it. He would have been eternally lost except for the love which his mother Hakamoth bore him. The redemption of each world has been accomplished by a special saviour. The saviour of men was the son Jesus, clothed by Hakamoth with the spiritual principle; with the psychic principle by the demiurge; with the material principle by Mary; identified lastly with Christos, who, on the day of his baptism, descended on to him in the form of a dove, and did not leave him again till after his condemnation by Pilate. The spiritual principle will persevere in Jesus till the agony on the cross. The psychic and the material principles alone will suffer, and will rise to heaven through the ascension. There were Gnostics before Jesus, but he came to reunite them and to form them into a Church by the Holy Spirit. The Church is made up neither of bodies nor of souls, but of spirits: the Gnostics alone form her component parts. At the end of the world matter will be devoured by the internal fire which she hides within herself; Christ will reign instead of the demiurge, and Hakamoth will definitely enter into the Pleroma, which will, thenceforward, be pacified.

Men by their very nature, and independently of their efforts, are divided into three categories, according as the material element, the psychic or animal element, and the spiritual element predominate in them. The heathen are the material men who are irrevocably devoted to the works of the flesh. The simple faithful, the generality of Christians, are the psychic men; in virtue of their intermediate essence, they can rise or fall, lose themselves in matter, or be absorbed into the spirit. The Gnostics are the spiritual men, whether they be Christians, whether they be Jews, like the prophets, or heathens, like the sages of Greece. The spiritual men will some day be joined to the Pleroma. The material men will die altogether; the psychic men will be damned or saved according to their works. External worship is only a symbol, which, though it is good for the psychic mind, is altogether useless for men who give themselves up to pure contemplation. It is an eternal error of the mystic sects who put into their chimeras the initiation above good works, which they leave to the simple. That is the reason why every gnosis, whatever it may do, arrives at indifference to works and contempt for practical virtue, that is to say, at immorality.

There is certainly something grand in these strange myths. When it is a question of the infinite, of things which can only be known partially and secretly, which cannot be expressed without being strained, pathos itself has its charms; one takes pleasure in it, like in those somewhat unhealthy poems whose taste one blames, though one cannot help liking them. The history of the world, conceived like an embryo which is seeking for life, which painfully attains consciousness, which troubles everything by its movements, whilst those movements themselves become the cause of progress and end in the full realisation of the vague instincts of the ideal, such are the ideas which are not very far removed from those which we choose at times to express our views about the development of the infinite. But all that could not be reconciled to Christianity. Those metaphysics of dreamers, that system of morality thought out by recluses, that brahminical pride which would have brought back the rule of castes had it been allowed its own way, would have killed the Church, if the Church had not taken the initiative. It was not without reason that orthodoxy kept a middle position between the Nazarenes, who only saw the human side of Jesus, and the Gnostics, who saw nothing but his divine nature. Valentinus made fun of the simple eclecticism which induced the Church to wish to join two contrary elements together. The Church was right. There is no medium between regulated faith and free thought. Whoever does not admit authority puts himself outside the pale of the Church, and ought to turn philosopher. “They speak like the Church,” Irenæus said, “but they think differently.” It was a sad game to play. Valentinus was led to hypocrisy and fraud by the same reasons as Basilides was. To free himself from apostolic chains, he claimed to attach himself to secret traditions and to an esoteric teaching which Jesus was said not to have imparted to any except the most spiritually-minded of his disciples. Valentinus said that he had received that hidden doctrine from a pretended Theodades or Theodas, a disciple of St Paul. He appears to have called this the Gospel of Truth. Valentinus' Gospel, at any rate, approximated very closely to that of the Ebionites. In it the duration of the appearances of the risen Jesus was extended over eighteen months.

These despairing efforts to reconcile God and man in Jesus, resulted from difficulties that were inherent in the nature of Christianity. In fact, the travail which was agitating the Christian conscience in Egypt manifested itself also in Syria. Gnosticism appeared in Antioch almost at the same time as it did in Alexandria. Saturninus, or Satorniles, who was said to have been a pupil of Menander, like Basilides was, put forth views which were analogous to those of the latter, though they bore an even stronger impress of Persian dualism. The Pleroma and matter—Bythos and Satan—are the two poles of the universe. The kingdoms of good and evil are the two confines on which they meet. Near those confines the world came into existence, and it was the work of the seven last Eons or demiurges who were wandering in the realms of Satan. Those æons (Jehovah is one of them) divide the government of their work between them, and each appropriates a planet. They do not know the inaccessible Bythos; but Bythos is favourable to them, reveals himself to them by a ray of his beauty, and then hides himself from their admiration. The divine image ceaselessly haunts them, and they create man in the likeness of that image.

Man, as he left the hand of the demiurges, was pure matter. He crawled on the earth like a worm, and had no intelligence. A spark from the Pleroma gives him true life. He thinks, and rises to his feet. Then Satan is filled with rage, and dreams of nothing but of opposing this regenerate man, the mixed work of the demiurges and of God, a man who shall spring entirely from himself. Side by side with divine humanity there is for the future the satanic humanity. To crown the evil, the demiurges revolt against God, and separate creation from that superior principle from which it ought to draw its life. The divine spark no longer circulates between the Pleroma and humanity—between humanity and the Pleroma. Man is devoted to evil and to error. Christ saves him by suppressing the action of the God of the Jews, but the strife between the good and evil men continues. The former are the Gnostics; the soul is entirely in them, and consequently they live eternally. On the other hand, the body cannot rise again: it is condemned to perish. Whatever propagates the body propagates the empire of Satan, and, consequently, marriage is an evil. It weakens the divine principle in man, by subdividing that principle to infinity.

It will be seen that all those sects were equally incapable of giving a serious basis to morality. They even had difficulty in avoiding the breakers of secret debauches and accusations of infamy. Alexandria could not stop on that slippery ground. That extraordinary city was destined to see, at its most brilliant period, all the evils of the age burst forth within it in all their energy. Carpocrates drew from it the deductions of an unwholesome philosophy, which carried the exaggerations of an intemperate supernaturalism amongst all orders, and tossed men to and fro between asceticism and immorality, rarely leaving him in the golden mean of reason. Carpocrates and his son Epiphanes did not recoil before any of the excesses of sensual mysticism, as they proclaimed the indifference of actions, the community of women, the holiness of all perversions, as means of delivering the spirit from the flesh. That deliverance of the spiritual man which wrests souls from the wicked demiurges to reunite them to the supreme God, was the work of the sages Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Jesus, etc. The statues of those sages were adored,—they were crowned,—incense and even sacrifices were offered to them. According to Carpocrates, Jesus, the son of Joseph, had been the justest man of his time. After having practised Judaism, he recognised its vanity, and by that act of disdain he merited deliverance. Nowhere is it forbidden to aspire to equal and even to surpass him in holiness. His resurrection is an impossibility; his soul alone has been received into heaven; his body remained on earth. The apostles—Peter, Paul, and the others—were not inferior to Jesus, but if any one could arrive at a more perfect contempt for the world of the demiurges, that is to say, for reality, he would surpass him. The Carpocratians claimed to exercise that power by magical operations, by philtres, by witchcraft. It is clear that they were not true members of the Church of Jesus. Nevertheless, the sectaries took the name of Christians, and the orthodox were in despair at it. As a matter of fact, in their conventicles, abominations, such as the calumniators of the Christians reproached the faithful with, took place, and this usurpation of the name caused deplorable prejudices to take deep root amongst the multitude.

Far from exhibiting the slightest complaisance towards the culpable mysteries, the Church only held them in abhorrence and visited them with the most violent anathemas which she could find in her sacred texts. What was said of the Nicolaitanes at the beginning of the Apocalypse was brought to mind. By the name Nicolaitanes, the Seer of Patmos most likely intends to designate St Paul’s partisans: at any rate such a designation has nothing at all to do with the Deacon Nicholas, who was one of the Seven in the Primitive Church of Jerusalem. But that false identification was soon accredited. Scandalous stories were told against the alleged heresiarch which very much resembled those which were told about the Carpocratians. Many aberrations took place on all sides, and no paradox was without its defender. People were found who took the part of Cain, of Esau, of Korah, of the Sodomites, of Judas himself. Jehovah was the evil,—a tyrant filled with hatred, and it had been right to brave his laws. These were kinds of literary paradoxes; just as thirty or forty years ago it was the fashion to set up criminals as heroes, because they were supposed to be in revolt against bad social order. There was a Gospel of Judas. In excuse for this latter, it was said that he had betrayed Jesus with a good intention, because he had found out that his master wished to ruin the truth. The traitor’s conduct was also explained by a motive of interest for humanity. The powers of the world (that is to say, Satan and his agents) wished to stop the work of salvation, by preventing Jesus from dying. Judas, who knew that the death of Jesus on the cross was beneficial, broke the charm, by giving him up to his enemies. Thus he was the purest of spiritual men. These singular Christians were called Cainites. Like Carpocrates, they taught that, in order to be saved, it was necessary to have done all sorts of actions, and, in some manner, to have exhausted all the experiences of life: it is said that they placed the perfection of enlightenment in the commission of the darkest deeds. Every act has an angel who presides over it, and they invoked that angel whilst they were doing the act. Their books were worthy of their morals. They had the Gospel of Judas, and some other writings which were made to exhort men to destroy the work of the Creator; one book in particular, called The Ascension of St Paul, into which they seem to have introduced horrible abominations.

These were aberrations without any real object, and which certainly the serious-minded Gnostics rejected just as much as the orthodox Christians. The really grave part about it was the destruction of Christianity, which was at the bottom of all these speculations. In reality the living Jesus was suppressed, and only a phantom Jesus, without any efficacy for the conversion of the heart, was left. Moral effort was replaced by so-called science; dreams took the place of Christian realities, and every man arrogated to himself the right to carve out as he chose a Christianity according to his fancy, from the dogmas and earlier books. This was no longer Christianity, it was a strange parasite which was trying to pass for a branch of the tree of life. Jesus was no longer a fact without analogy; he was one of the apparitions of the divine spirit. Docetism, which reduced all the human life of Jesus to a mere appearance, was the basis of all these errors. Still, moderate with Basilides and Valentinus, it becomes absolute with Saturninus, and with Marcion we shall see that the whole of the Saviour’s earthly career is reduced to a pure appearance.

CHAPTER XI.

THE LAST REVOLT OF THE JEWS.

After staying in Jerusalem for two years, Hadrian got tired of doing nothing, and again began to think of his travels. First of all he paid a visit to Mauritania, and then directed his course for the second time to Greece and the East. He stayed at Athens for nearly a year, and consecrated the edifices that he had ordered to be erected during his first journey; and Greece had one long festival, and seemed but to live in him. In every direction classic recollections revived, and Hadrian made them durable by monuments and columns, and founded temples, libraries, and professorial chairs. The ancient world before dying made its pilgrimage to the places from which it had sprung, and seemed as if it were uttering its last eulogy. The Emperor presided like a pontiff at these innocent solemnities, which hardly amused anybody now but those who were empty-headed and idle.

The august traveller then continued his journey through the East, and visited Armenia, Asia Minor, Syria, and Judea. As far as outward appearances went, he was everywhere received as a guardian spirit, and medals which were struck for the occasion bade him welcome in every province. That of Judea is still in existence. Alas; what a falsehood. Below the inscription ADVENTVI AVG. IVDAEAE is to be seen the Emperor in a noble and worthy attitude receiving Judea with kindness, and she is presenting her sons to him. Already the Emperor has the handsome and gentle look of the Antonines, and seems to be the impersonification of calm civilisation educating fanaticism. Children go before him bearing palms, whilst in the middle a Pagan altar and a bull symbolise religious reconciliation; and Judea, a patera in her hand, seems to share in the sacrifice that is being prepared. This is how official optimism instructs sovereigns. The opposition between the East and the West was actually getting more and more accentuated, and the signs of this were so certain that the Emperor could not doubt them—his benevolent eclecticism was, however, at times singularly unsettled.

From Syria Hadrian went to Egypt by way of Petra. His discontent and his ill temper with the peoples of the East increased daily. A short time before Egypt had been in a state of great agitation. The ancient worships, which were springing into life again, caused a certain amount of fermentation, for it was so long since an Apis had been seen that these ancient chimeras were beginning to be forgotten, when suddenly a clamour arose; that miraculous animal had been found, and as everybody wished to possess it, all tried to get it from the others. The hold of Christianity over Egypt was not so strong as it was elsewhere, for many heathen superstitions were mixed up with it. All these follies only served to amuse Hadrian, and a letter which be wrote about that time to his brother-in-law Servian, has been preserved to us:—

I have found that Egypt, my dear Servian, which you praised to me, to be a very flighty country, hanging by a thread, turning round with every breath of fashion. There, those who adore Serapis are Christians at the same time, and men who call themselves bishops of Christ are devoted to Serapis. There is not a president of a synagogue, not a Samaritan, not a Christian priest, who does not supplement his functions by those of the astrologer, of the diviner, and the charlatan. The patriarch himself, when he comes to Egypt, is forced by some to adore Serapis, and by the others to adore Christ. It is a seditious, futile, and irrelevant education, and a rich and productive city, where nobody lives in idleness. Some are glassblowers, others papermakers, others again dyers, and all understand and practise some trade. The gouty can find something to do, the shortsighted can obtain employment, the blind are not without occupation, and even the one-armed are not idle. Money is their only god, the divinity which Christians, Jews, people of all sorts, adore. One regrets to find such a low state of morals in a city which by its manufactures and its grandeur is worthy of being the capital of Egypt. I have granted it everything; I have restored its ancient privileges, and given it new ones, and I forced them to thank me whilst I was there; but I had scarcely left when they began to talk about my son Verus, and to say, what no doubt you know, about Antinous. The only revenge that I wish to have is that they may always be forced to eat their own fowls, fecundated in a manner that I do not like to mention. I have sent you some glasses of prismatic colours, which the priests of the temple offered me: they are specially dedicated to you and to my sister. Have them used on festive occasions, only take care that our Africanus does not make too good use of them.

CHAPTER XII.

DISAPPEARANCE OF THE JEWISH NATION.

The immediate consequence of this mad act of rebellion was a real persecution of Judaism. The Jews were weighed down by a tribute that was heavier still than the fiscus judaicus imposed by Vespasian. The exercise of the most essential practices of the Mosaic religion—circumcision, the observance of the Sabbath and of feasts, apparently insignificant simple usages were forbidden, under pain of death; and even those who taught the Law were prosecuted. Renegade Jews, who had turned spies, tracked the faithful who met in the most secret places to study the sacred code, and the Jews were reduced to reading it on the roofs of the houses. The doctors of the Law were cruelly persecuted, and rabbinical ordination entailed the death penalty both on the ordainer and on the ordinee. There were many martyrs in Judea and Galilee, and throughout the whole of Syria it was a crime to be a Jew. It was now, it appears, that the two brothers, Julianus and Pappus, who are celebrated in Jewish tradition for having preferred death to an apparent violation of the Law committed in public, were executed, and though water in a coloured glass was offered them so that they might pretend to think that they had drunk Pagan wine, they refused to take it.

About that period the schools of the Casuists were chiefly taken up with the question of those precepts which might be broken in order to avoid death, and those for which martyrdom ought to be suffered. The doctors generally admit that in times of persecution all observances may be renounced as long as three prohibited things, idolatry, fornication (i.e., unlawful unions), and murder are abstained from. This sensible principle was put forward: “It is suicide to resist the Emperor’s orders.” It was admitted that religious worship might be kept secret, and that the circumcision of children might be announced by the sound of hand-mills instead of with the usual noisy demonstrations. It was also pointed out that, according to Leviticus xviii. 5, the observance of the Law gives life, and so that consequently any one who dies for the Law is responsible for his own death, so that when a man found himself between the two precepts to observe the Law and to preserve his own life, he ought to obey the second, which is the more commanding, at any rate when death is certain, just as, in the case of a serious illness, it is lawful to take remedies which may contain some impure substance. There was another point on which all were agreed, and this was that it was better to suffer death than to violate the slightest commandment publicly; and lastly, they agreed in placing the duty of teaching above all other obligations. At Lydda especially these questions were agitated, and that city had its celebrated martyrs, who were called the murdered of Lydda.

The great doubt about Providence that takes possession of the Jew as soon as he is no longer prosperous and triumphant, made the position of those martyrs a particularly cruel one. The Christian, depending as he does altogether on the future life, is never firmer in his faith than when he is being persecuted; but the Jewish martyr has not the same light. “Where is now your God?” is the ironical question which he constantly fancies that he hears from Pagan lips. To the very last Rabbi Ishmael ben Elischa never ceased to fight against the ideas that sprang up in his mind, and in the minds of his companions, against divine justice. “Do you still trust in your God?” he was asked, and his answer was, “Though he slay me yet will I trust in him,” using the words of Job that have been badly translated.

Aquiba, who had been a prisoner for a long time, nevertheless kept up a correspondence with his disciples. “Prepare for death, terrible days are coming,” was the sentence always on his lips. He was put to death because the was betrayed to the Romans for imparting profound doctrine. He is said to have been flayed alive with red-hot iron hooks. Whilst he was being torn to pieces he cried incessantly, “Jehovah is our God! Jehovah is our only God!” and he laid a stress on the word “only” (ehad), till he expired, when a heavenly voice was heard saying, “Happy Aquiba, as you died whilst uttering that word ‘only.’”

It was not till late, and by means of successive experiences, that Israel arrived at the idea of immortality. Martyrdom made this belief almost a necessity. Nobody could pretend that those scrupulous observers of the Law who died for it had their reward here below. The answer that sufficed for cases like those of Job and Tobias did not suffice here. How could any one talk of a long and happy life for heroes who were expiring under a terrible death? Either God was unjust, or the saints who were thus tormented were great culprits. In the middle ages there were martyrs who accepted this latter doctrine with a kind of despair, and when they were being led to execution, they would maintain that they had deserved it, for they had been guilty of all sorts of crimes. But such a paradox must necessarily be very rare. The reign of a thousand years which was reserved for the martyrs, was the first solution of that difficult problem which was attempted. Then it came to be a received opinion that ascensions to heaven in heart and mind, that revelations, the contemplation of the divine secrets of the cabala, were the martyr’s reward. As the apocalyptic spirit was lost, the tikva, that is, the invincible confidence of man in the justice of God, assumed forms that were analogous to the enduring paradise of Christians. But that article of faith was never an absolute dogma amongst the Jews; no trace of it is found in the Thora; and how could it be supposed that God had expressly deprived the saints of old of such a fundamental dogma?

From thenceforward all hopes of seeing the Temple raised up again were lost, and the Jews had even to give up the consolation of living near the holy places. The species of worship that the Jewish people vowed to the soil which they thought God had given them, was the evil that the Roman authorities wished to cure at any price, so that for the future they might cut off the root of Jewish wars. An edict drove the Jews from Jerusalem and its neighbourhood under pain of death, and the very sight of Jerusalem was refused them. Only once a year, on the anniversary of the taking of the city, did they obtain authorisation to come and weep over the ruins of the Temple, and to anoint a hollow stone, which they thought marked the site of the Holy of Holies, with oil; and even that permission was dearly bought. “On that day,” says St Jerome, “you might see a mournful crowd, a miserable people, who received no pity, assemble and draw near. Decrepit women, old men in rags, all are weeping, and whilst their cheeks are covered with tears, and they raise their livid arms, and tear their thin hair, a soldier comes up and calls on them for payment, so that they may have the right to weep a little longer.” The rest of Judea was also prohibited ground to the Jews, but not so strictly, for certain localities, such as Lydda, always preserved their Jewish quarters.

The Samaritans, who had taken no part in the revolt, hardly suffered less than the Jews. Mount Gerizim, like Mount Moriah, had its temple of Jupiter; the prohibition of circumcision attacked them in the free exercise of their religion; and the memory of Bar-Coziba seems to have been execrated by them.

The construction of Ælia Capitolina went on more actively than ever, and everything was done to efface the recollection of the past, which had been so threatening. The old name of Jerusalem was almost forgotten, and Ælia took its place throughout the whole of the East, so that a hundred and fifty years later Jerusalem had become a name in ancient geography which nobody knew any more. The city was full of profane edifices, forums, baths, theatres, tetranymphea, etc. Statues were erected in all directions, and the subtle Jewish mind tried to discover mocking allusions in them, which Hadrian’s engineers certainly never intended. Thus over the gate leading to Bethlehem there was a piece of sculpture in marble which they thought resembled a pig, and in that they saw a most insulting piece of irony towards the vanquished people, whilst they forgot that the wild boar was a Roman emblem, and figured on the standards of the legions. The circumference of the city was slightly altered towards the south, and became about what it is now. Mount Zion remained outside the enclosure, and was covered with kitchen gardens. Those parts of the city which were not rebuilt afforded a mass of loose stones which served as a stone quarry for the new buildings. The foundations of Herod’s temple (the present harâm) excited wonder by their strength, and soon the Christians declared that these tremendous layers of stones would only be dislodged at the coming of Antichrist.

On the site of the Temple, as has been said, was raised the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus. Bacchus, Serapis, Astarte, the Dioscuri were associated there with the principal god. As usual, statues of the Emperor were scattered broadcast, and one of them at least was equestrian; whilst the statues of Jupiter and Venus were also set up near Golgotha. When, in later years, the Christians settled their sacred topography, they were scandalised at this proximity, and looked upon it as an outrage; and in the same way they thought that the Emperor had intended to profane Bethlehem by setting up the worship of Adonis there.

Antoninus, Marcus Aurelius, and Verus occupied themselves in beautifying the city, and improving the highroads that led to it, and these public works irritated the real Jews. “In spite of all, the works of this nation are admirable,” said Rabbi Juda bar Ilaï one day to two of his friends who were seated with him. “They build forums, construct bridges, and establish baths.” “That is much to their merit!” replied Simeon ben Jochaï; “they do it all for their own benefit: they put brothels into the forums; they have the baths for their own amusement, and they construct the bridges so that they may receive the tolls.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE TALMUD.

The Law, with that calmness of mind that it produced, acted like a sedative which quickly restored serenity to the troubled spirit of Israel. The Jewish quarters of the West do not appear to have suffered much from the follies of their co-religionists of the East. Even in the East peaceable Israelites had not participated in the strife, and soon became reconciled to the conquerors. Some ventured to believe that heaven was favourable to the Romans, and that, after all, the Law, when it was strictly observed in families, always gave the Jews a modus vivendi. Thus order was re-established in Syria sooner than one might have thought. The fugitives from Jerusalem went either to the East to Palmyra, or else into the South towards Yemen, or else to Galilee. That latter country above all received a new impulse from the emigration, and for centuries afterwards remained an almost exclusively Jewish country.

After the extermination of the year 67, Galilee had been lost to Judaism for some time. Perhaps the revolt of 117 was the reason that the beth-din was transported thither. After the defeat of Bar-Coziba, the inhabitants who had been driven from the South took refuge there in a body and repopulated the villages, and then the beth-din became definitely Galilean. That tribunal had its seat first of all at Ouscha, then in the villages near Sephoris, at Schefaram, at Beth-Shearim, and at Sephoris itself; then it was established at Tiberias, and was not moved till the Mussulman conquest. Whilst Darom was almost forgotten and its schools were declining, whilst even Lydda was falling with wretchedness and ignorance, and was losing the right of fixing the embolismic calculations, Galilee became the centre of Judaism. Meïron, Safat, Gischala, Alma, Casioun, Kafr-Baram, Kafr-Nabarta, Ammouka, were the chief localities of this new development, and were filled with Jewish monuments, and these, nearly all of them reverenced in the Middle Ages as tombs of the prophets, can still be seen in the midst of a country which for the third and fourth time has become desert and desolate. Tiberias was, in a measure, the capital of that kingdom of disputation and subtlety where the last remains of original Jewish activity were exhausted.

In fact, in that tranquil country, restored to its favourite retired and studious life, the family life and that of the synagogue, Israel definitely renounced its earthly visions, and sought the kingdom of God, not like Jesus in the ideal, but in the rigorous observance of the Law. From that time forward proselytism disappears by degrees from amongst that people who had been its most ardent followers. A law of Antoninus put a stop to the restrictive measures of Hadrian, and allowed the Jews to circumcise their children; but Modestinus the lawyer draws attention to the fact that such permission applied only to their own children, and exposed those who should perform that operation on any one who was not a Jew to capital punishment. Only some madmen, the Siccani, continued their religious ambush, and forced the unhappy wretches whom they could surprise in their houses to choose between circumcision and the dagger. The majority knew nothing of these aberrations. It renounced heroism, and made martyrdom useless by those clever distinctions between the precepts which may be transgressed in order to save one’s life and those for which one must suffer death. And from this sprung a singular spectacle: Judaism, which had given the first martyr to the world, now left the monopoly of it to Christians, so much so that in certain persecutions Christians might be seen figuring as Jews, so that they might enjoy the immunities of Judaism. The latter only had martyrs whilst it was revolutionary; as soon as it renounced politics it settled down altogether, and was satisfied with that tolerance, so closely bordering on independence, that was accorded to it. On the other hand, Christianity, which never had anything to do with politics, reckoned martyrs amongst its ranks, till it in turn became triumphant and persecuting.

It was the Talmud that created the Jewish people during that long period of repose. The doctors of old had taught the Law without any logical order, solely according to the cases that were brought before them. Then in their teaching they had followed the order of the hooks of the Pentateuch. With Rabbi Ben Aquiba a fresh distribution was introduced, a kind of classification according to matter, necessitating divisions and subdivisions, like a Corpus juris. Thus a second code, the Mischna, was formed side by side with the Thora. The Scriptures were no longer taken as the foundation, and, to speak truly, with that taste for arbitrary interpretation that had been introduced, the Scriptures had become almost useless. It was no longer a question of understanding the will of the legislator clearly, it was a question of finding at any price, in the Bible, arguments in favour of traditional decisions, and verses to which received precepts could be attached. It is the destiny of religions that the sacred books should always be thus destroyed by commentaries. Sacred books alone do not form religions; it is the force of circumstances, involving a thousand wants of which the first originator could not have dreamt. Thus the coincidence between the sacred books and the religious state of any period is never perfect; the coat does not fit well enough, and then the commentator and the traditionalist come and settle matters. Thus it happens that, instead of studying the sacred book by itself, it was thought better, after a certain time, to read it in the codes which have been extracted from it, or rather which have been adapted to it.

The attempt to codify the oral Jewish law was made in different directions at the same time. We have no longer the Mischna of Rabbi Aquiba, nor many others that existed. The Mischna of Juda the Holy, written sixty years later, has thrown those that preceded it into oblivion, but he neither invented all the divisions nor all the titles. Many of the treatises in his compilation had been completely drawn up before his time. Besides that, after Aquiba, the original schools disappeared, and the doctors, full of respect for their predecessors, who seemed to them to be surrounded by the halo of martyrdom, tried no new methods—they were mere compilers.

Thus the Jews made a new Bible for themselves, which rather threw the first one into the shade, at the same time that the Christians did. The Mischna was their Gospel, their New Testament. The distance between the Christian and the Jewish book is enormous. The simultaneous appearance of the Talmud and the Gospel from the same race of people,—of a slight masterpiece of elegance, lightness, and moral subtlety, and of a ponderous monument of pedantry, of miserable casuistry, and religious formalism, is one of the most extraordinary phenomenons of history. These twins are certainly the most dissimilar creatures that ever issued from the womb of the same mother. There is something barbarous and unintelligible, a disheartening contempt for language and form, an absolute lack of distinction and of talent, that make the Talmud one of the most repulsive books that exist. The disastrous consequences of one of the greatest faults that the Jewish people ever committed, which was to turn their back on Greek discipline, which was the source of all classical culture, are clearly felt in it. That rupture with reason itself placed Israel in a state of deplorable isolation. It was a crime to read a foreign book. Greek literature seemed to be a toy, a female ornament, an amusement beneath the notice of a man who was preoccupied with the study of the Law, a childish science which a man ought to teach his son “ at an hour which is neither day nor night.” As the Thora says, “You shall study the law day and night.” Thus the Thora came to be regarded as the embodiment of all philosophy and all science, and dispensing with any other study. Christianity was less exclusive, and took a large portion of Hellenic tradition into its bosom. Separated from that great source of life, Israel fell into a state of poverty, or rather of intellectual aberration, from which it did not emerge till it came under the influence of the so-called Arabian system of philosophy, that is to say, under the influence of a singularly refracted ray of Greek light.

There certainly are in this confused medley of the Talmud some excellent maxims, more than one precious pearl of the kind as those which Jesus adopted and idealised. and which the Evangelists made divine in writing them. From the point of view of the preservation of the individuality of the Jewish people, Talmudism was an heroic party, and such as could scarcely be found in the history of a race. The Jewish nation, dispersed from one end of the world to the other, had no other nationality than the Thora; to maintain this scattered whole, without clergy, bishops, pope, or holy city, without any central theological college, an iron chain was required, and nothing binds men together so firmly as common duties. The Jew, carrying all his religion with him, requiring neither temples nor clergy for his worship, enjoyed incomparable freedom in his emigrations to the end of the world. His absolute idealism made him indifferent to material things; faithfulness to the recollections of his race—the confession of faith (the schema) and the practice of the Law, sufficed him. When one is present at any ceremony in a synagogue, at first sight everything seems modern, borrowed, common-place. In the construction of their places of worship the Jews have never sought a style of architecture which would be peculiar to them. The ministers of religion, with their bands, their three-cornered hat, and their stole, look like parish priests; the sermon is formed on the model of the Catholic pulpit; the lamps, the seats, all the furniture, has been bought in the same shop that supplies the neighbouring parish. Nothing in the singing or the music goes further back than the fifteenth century. Some portions of the worship even are imitations of the Catholic form. The originality and the antiquity suddenly burst forth in the profession of faith: 'Hear, O Israel, Adonai, our God, is One, holy is His name!” This headstrong proclamation, this persistent cry, which in the end has carried away and converted the world, constitutes the whole of Judaism. That people has made God, and yet there never was a people less given to disputing about God.

One very sensible feature, in fact, was to have chosen practice, and not dogma as the basis for religious communion. The Christian is united to the Christian by the same belief; the Jew is united to the Jew by the same observances. By making the union of souls bear on truths of the metaphysical order, Christianity prepared the way for schisms without number; by reducing the profession of faith to the schema, that is to say, to the affirmation of the Divine Unity and to the outward bond of ritual, Judaism got rid of the logical disputes from its midst. The season for excommunication amongst the Jews was generally acts, not opinions. The Cabala always remained a matter for free speculation, and never became a compulsory article of faith; the immortality of the soul was regarded as a consoling hope, and it was allowed without difficulty that religious practices would be abolished when Messiah came, when Jewish principles would be universally adopted. Even the belief concerning Messiah had a doubt cast upon it by a learned doctor, and the Talmud gives his opinion without blaming it. That was very judicious. It is perfect nonsense to be compelled to believe any particular doctrine, whilst the greatest external strictness may be allied to entire liberty of thought. That is the reason of that philosophical independence which ruled in Judaism during the Middle Ages down to our days. Eminent doctors, the oracles of the synagogue, such as Maimonides and Mendelsohn, were pure rationalists. A book like the Iccarim. (Fundamental Principles) of Joseph Albo, which proclaimed that religion and prophecy are only a form of symbolism which is destined to ameliorate man’s moral condition, that all divine laws can be modified, that individual punishments and rewards in the future life are nothing but figures of speech, that such a book, I say, should become celebrated and not incur any anathema, is a fact that is without example in any other religion. And piety did not suffer for it. Those men who had no hope in a future life endured martyrdom with admirable courage, and died accusing themselves of imaginary crimes, so that their death might not be too strong an objection against the justice of God.

Great disadvantages counterbalanced the advantages of that severe discipline to which Israel submitted in order to retain the unity of its race. Their ritual united co-religionists amongst themselves, but separated them from the rest of the world, and condemned them to an isolated life. The chains of the Talmud forged those of the Ghetto. The Jewish people, which up till then had been so devoid of superstition, became its most thorough type, and the mocking allusions that Jesus made to the Pharisees were justified. For centuries their literature turned chiefly on the sacred furniture and vestments, and on slaughter houses. That other Bible became a prison in which the new Judaism carried on its unhappy life of reclusion up to our days. Enclosed in that unwholesome encyclopedia, the Jewish intellect got so sharp that it went wrong. For the Israelites the Talmud became a sort of Organon, in every respect inferior to that of the Greeks. The Jewish doctors put forward the same claims as the jurists who in the sixteenth century declared that they could find a whole system of intellectual culture in Roman Law. In our time, this vast collection, which still serves as the basis for Jewish education in Hungary and in Poland, may be considered as the principal source of the defects which may be remarked occasionally amongst the Jews of those countries. The belief that Talmudic studies supply the place of all others, and make those who devote themselves to them fitted for everything, is the great cause of that presumption, that subtlety, that want of general culture, which so often destroy really fine qualities in the Israelite.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE MUTUAL HATRED OF JEWS AND CHRISTIANS.

The Jewish catastrophe of the year 134 was almost as advantageous for the Christians as that of the year 70 had been. In their eyes, everything that savoured of the law of Moses must have appeared to be abrogated without a chance of return; faith alone, and the merits of the death of Jesus, were all that remained. Hadrian did a signal service to Christianity when he prevented a Jewish restoration of Jerusalem. Ælia, peopled, like all the colonies were, by veterans and common people from different parts, was no fanatical city, but, on the contrary, a centre disposed to receive Christianity. As a rule, the colonies were inclined to adopt the religious ideas of the countries to which they were transported. They would not have thought of embracing Judaism, but Christianity, on the other hand, received everybody. During the whole course of its three thousand years of history, it was only for those two hundred years, from Hadrian to Constantine, that human life had unfolded freely within its bosom idolatrous forms of worship, established on the ruins of the Jewish religion, complacently adopted more than one Jewish practice. The Pool of Bethesda continued to be a place of healing, even for the heathen, and to work its miracles as in the times of Jesus and of the apostles, in the name of the great impersonal God. For their part, the Christians continued, without exciting any feeling except one of pious admiration in the breasts of the worthy veterans who formed the colony, to perform their cures by means of oil and sacred washings. The traditions of that Church of Jerusalem were distinguished by a special character of superstition, and, of course, thaumaturgy. The holy places, especially the cave and the manger at Bethlehem, were shown, even to the heathen. Journeys to those places sanctified by Jesus and the apostles, began within the first years of the third century, and replaced the former pilgrimages to the temple of Jehovah. When St Paul took a deputation of his churches to Jerusalem, he took them to the Temple, and surely he was thinking neither of Golgotha nor of Bethlehem. Now on the other hand, men strove to retrace the life of Jesus, and a topography of the Gospel was formed. The site of the Temple was known, and, close to it, the stela of James, the Martyr, brother of the Saviour, was venerated.

Thus the Christians reaped the fruits of their prudent conduct during the insurrection of Bar-Coziba. They had suffered for Rome that had persecuted them; and in Syria, at least, they found the prize of their meritorious fidelity. Whilst the Jews were punished for their ignorance and their blindness, the Church of Jesus, faithful to the Spirit of her Master, and, like Him, indifferent to politics, was peaceably developing in Judea and the neighbouring countries. The expulsion of the Jews was also the lot of those Christians who were circumcised and kept the Law, but not of those uncircumcised Christians who only practised the precepts of Noah. That latter circumstance made such a difference for their whole life that men were classified by it, and not by faith or disbelief in Jesus. The Hellenistic Christians formed a group in Ælia, under the presidency of a certain Mark. Till then, what was called the Church of Jerusalem had had no priest who was not circumcised, and, more than that, out of regard for the old Jewish nucleus, nearly all the faithful of that Church united the observation of the Law with belief in Jesus. From that time the Church in Jerusalem was wholly Hellenistic, and her bishops were all Greeks, as they were called. But this second Church did not inherit the importance of the former one. Hierarchically subordinate to Cæsarea, she only occupied a relatively humble position in the universal Church of Jesus, and nothing more was heard of the Church of Jerusalem till two hundred years later.

In those countries the controversy with the Jews became an object of paramount importance. The Christians thought them much more difficult to convert than the heathen, and they were accused of subtlety and of bad faith in the discussions. It was alleged that as beforehand they had made up their minds to baffle their antagonists, they only looked at minutiæ, at slight inexactitudes, in which they easily got the better. What was said to them about the life of Jesus irritated them, and no doubt the antipathy that they felt for the accounts of the virginal birth of the pretended Messiah, inspired them with the fable of the soldier and of the prostitute who, according to them, were the real authors of that birth, which was allowed to be irregular. Arguments taken from the Scriptures did not affect them any more, and they lost their patience when certain passages were brought up against them in which it appeared as if God were mentioned in the plural. The passage in Genesis: “Let us make man in our own image,” particularly irritated them. A pretty Haggada was invented to guard against that objection: “When God was dictating the Pentateuch to Moses, and He got to the word naase, ‘let us make,’ Moses was very much astonished, and refused to write it down, and vehemently rebuked the Eternal for thus striking a mortal blow at Monotheism. The Eternal, however, maintained his wording, and said, 'Let him who wishes to be deceived, deceive himself’!” The Jews generally admitted that wherever in the Bible there was a passage that was favourable to the plurality of the Divine persons, God, by special providence, has so disposed matters that the refutation is found side by side with it.

The essential matter for the Christians was to prove that Jesus had accomplished all the texts of the prophets and the psalms which were thought to apply to the Messiah. Nothing can equal the arbitrariness with which the Messianic application was carried out. The Christian exegesis was the same as that of the Talmud and of the Midraschim: it was the very denial of the historical meaning. The texts were cut up like so much dead matter, and every phrase, separated from its context, was applied without scruple to the prominent prejudice of the moment. Already the Evangelists who wrote at second hand, especially pseudo-Matthew, had sought for prophetic reasons for all the facts of the life of Jesus. Men went much further than that. Not only did Christian exegetes torture the Septuagint version so as to obtain from it anything that might fit into their thesis and abuse the new translators who weakened the arguments which they drew from it, but they forged some passages. The wood of the cross was introduced into Psalm xcvi. 10, where it had never figured; the descent into hell, into Jeremiah; and when the Jews cried out, protesting that nothing like it was found in the text, they were told that they had mutilated the text out of pure spite and bad faith, and that,. for example, they had cut the account of the prophet being sawn in two by a wood saw out of the book of Isaiah, because that passage brought to mind the crime which they had committed against Jesus, too well. A convinced and ardent apologist finds no difficulty in anything. They referred to the official registers of the returns of Quirinius, which never existed, and to a pretended report of Pilate to Tiberius, that had been forged.

Dialogue seemed to be a convenient form by which to attain to the wished-for object in these controversies. A certain Ariston of Pella, doubtlessly the same from whom Eusebius has borrowed the account of the Jewish war under Hadrian, wrote a discussion that was supposed to have taken place between Jason, a Jew who had been converted to Christianity and Papiscus, a Jew of Alexandria, who obstinately adhered to his ancient faith. As usual, the war was waged by means of Biblical texts; Jason proved that all the Messianic passages were accomplished in Jesus. The admirers of the book asserted that Jason’s Hebraic arguments were so strong, and his eloquence so gentle, that there was no resisting it. Papiscus, in fact, at the end of the dialogue, his heart enlightened by the infusion of the Holy Ghost, recognised the truth of Christianity, and asked Jason to baptise him. However, the book was not received with unanimous approval. The author appeared almost too simple-minded, and it was thought what he wrote about the Scripture bordered on the ridiculous. Celsus eagerly seized the opportunity of making fun of it, and Origen only defended it in an embarrassed manner, allowing that it was one of the least valuable books that had ever been written in the defence of religion, and recognising it as more fit to instruct the simple than to satisfy the learned. Eusebius and St Jerome gave it up altogether; it was not copied, and so it was lost.

Another very inferior book that appeared in Judea has preserved for us the echo of these intestine broils. The author made use of the wills or rather of the recommendations that he put into the mouths of the patriarchs, Jacob’s sons, as the basis of his writing. The language of the original is that Greek interspersed with Hebraisms which is the language of the greater part of the New Testament writings. The quotations are taken from the Septuagint. The author was a born Jew, but he belonged to Paul’s party, for he speaks of the great apostle in a tone of enthusiasm, and he shows himself most severe towards his former co-religionists, whom he accuses of felony and treason. In the work, traces of nearly all the writings in the New Testament are to be found, and the two Bibles are comprehended under the common term of “The Holy Books,” and the book of Enoch is quite confidently quoted as being inspired. Never was the divinity of Jesus spoken of in grander terms. It was because they had slain Jesus and denied his resurrection that the Jews were captives, dispersed over the whole world, given up to the influence of Satan and of demons. Since their apostacy, the spirit of God has gone over to the heathen. Israel will again be gathered together from the dispersion, but it will have the disgrace of not associating itself till late with the converted Gentiles.

A striking vision expresses the sentiments of the author with regard to his ancient race. Napthali relates that one day in a dream he saw himself sitting with his brothers and his father on the shore of the lake Jabneh where they saw a vessel sailing at random. It was laden with mummies, and had neither crew nor captain, and its name was The Ship of Jacob. The patriarchal family embarked on it, but soon a terrible tempest arose, and the father, who was holding the rudder, disappeared like a phantom; Joseph saved himself on the mast, the others escaped on ten planks, Levi and Juda on the same one. The shipwrecked men were dispersed in all directions; but Levi, clothed in sackcloth, prayed to the Lord, when the tempest was stilled, the vessel reached the land in the midst of a profound calm, the ship-wrecked men found their father Jacob again, and joy became universal.

The intention of the author of the testaments of the twelve patriarchs had been to enrich the list of the writings contained in the sacred canon; his book is of the same order as the pseudo-Daniel, the pseudo-Esdras, the pseudo-Baruch, the pseudo-Enoch. Its success, however, was not the same. By its declamatory tone and its emphatic commonplaceness, by an exaggerated severity towards the pleasures of love and the luxury of women, by its severe tirades against the Jews, the book was calculated to edify the pious faithful; but the time for great successes with regard to frauds in the Canon of Scripture was passed; already a tolerably strong hedge surrounded the sacred volume and prevented fresh compositions being furtively inserted. so the book was only received in very restricted fractions of the Church. However, as it was altogether Christian and anti-Jewish, it did not share in the reprobation with which the Greek Church visited apocryphal Jewish and Judeo-Christian literature. Copies of it were multiplied, and the original Greek was preserved in a good number of manuscripts.

The philosopher Justin of Neapolis, in Samaria, was a much more valuable defender whom the Church acquired at about that period. His father, Priscus, or his grandfather, Bacchius, doubtlessly belonged to the colony which Vespasian established at Sychem, and which procured for that town the name of Flavia Neapolis. His family was heathen, and gave him a careful Hellenistic education. Justin had more heart and religious requirements than rational faculties. He read Plato, tried the different philosophical schools of his time, and as happens to ardent but not very judicious minds, he found satisfaction in none of them. He required the impossible from those schools. He wanted a complete solution of all the problems which the universe and the human conscience raise. The sincere avowal of powerlessness which his different masters made to him attracted him towards the disciples of Jesus. He was the first man who became a Christian through scepticism, the first who embraced the supernatural, that is to say, the negation of reason, because he was out of temper with reason.

He has related to us, with too much art for his account to be looked upon as an exact autobiography, how he went through all the sects, his errors, the charm which the Jewish revelation exercised on him when he knew it, and the manner in which the prophets led him to Christ. What struck him above all was the eight of the morality of the Christians and the spectacle of their indomitable firmness. The other forms of Judaism, by which he was surrounded, especially the sect of Simon Magus, only filled him with disgust. The philosophical turn which Christianity was already assuming had great attractions for him. He adhered to the dress of the philosophers, that pallium which was nothing but an index of an austere life devoted to asceticism, and which many Christians were fond of wearing. In his eyes his conversion was no rupture with philosophy. He was fond of repeating that he had only begun to be a real philosopher from that day; that he had only abandoned the writings of Plato for those of the prophets, and profane philosophy for a new philosophy—the only sure system, the only one which gives repose and peace to those who profess it.

The attraction which Rome possessed over all the sectaries made itself felt by Justin. Shortly after his conversion he set out for the capital of the world, and there it was that he composed those Apologies, which, by the side of Quadratus and Aristides, were the first manifestation of Christianity to the eyes of a public initiated to philosophy. His antipathy for the Jews, which was inflamed by the recollection of the recent acts of violence of Bar-Coziba, inspired him with another work, whose exegesis was as singular as that of Ariston of Pella, and in which error and injustice have perhaps been pushed even further.

In fact, the parts were changed. The heathen entered the Church in crowds, and became its most numerous members. The two great bonds that attached the new worship to Judaism—the Passover and the Sabbath—were getting looser day by day. Whilst in St Paul’s day the Christian who did not observe the law of Moses was hardly tolerated, and was constrained to make all kinds of humiliating concessions, it was now the Judaising Christian whom it was not wished to exclude from the Church. If he was irreproachable in his faith in Jesus Christ and in his obedience to the commandments, if he was persuaded of the inefficacy of the Law, if he only wished to observe a part of it by way of a pious remembrance, if he would not in any way trouble those Gentiles whom Jesus Christ had truly circumcised and brought out of error, if he was not guilty of any propaganda to persuade those latter to submit to the same practices as he did himself, if he did not hold up these practices as obligatory and necessary for salvation, he might be saved. This, at any rate, was what men of large mind admitted. But there were others who neither dared to have intercourse nor to live with those who observed the Law in any shape.

“As for me,” Justin says, “I believe that when a person, from weakness of understanding, wishes to observe as much as he can of that Law which was imposed upon the Jews because of the hardness of their heart, when, at the same time, that person hopes in Jesus Christ, and is determined to satisfy all the eternal and natural duties of justice and of piety, that he makes no difficulty in living with other Christians without wishing to induce them to be circumcised or keep the Sabbath, I believe, I repeat, that such a person ought to be received to friendly intercourse in every way. But any Jews who pretend to believe in Jesus Christ and wish to force the faithful Gentiles to observe the Law, I reject absolutely. . . . Those who, after having known and confessed that Jesus is the Christ, abandon their faith because they are persuaded by these obstinate-minded men in order to go over to the Law of Moses, whatever may be their reason for doing so, will find no salvation unless they acknowledge their fault before their death.”

CHAPTER XV.

ANTONINUS PIUS.

Hadrian returned to Rome, which he did not leave again, in 135. Roman civilisation had just exterminated one of its most dangerous enemies, Judaism. On all sides there was peace, the respect of peoples, the barbarians apparently submissive, and the mildest maxims of government introduced and carried out.

Trajan had been perfectly right in believing that men can be governed whilst they are treated with civility. The idea that the State was not only tutelary but also benevolent was taking deep root. Hadrian’s private conduct gave rise to grave reproach; his character got worse as his health became worse, but the people did not notice it. Unexampled splendour and well-being which enveloped everything like a brilliant halo, hid the defective sides of the social organisation. To speak the truth, these defective sides were capable of being corrected. The door was open to any progress. Stoic philosophy was penetrating the legislature, and introducing into it the idea of the rights of man, of civil equality, and of the uniformity of provincial administration. The privileges of the Roman aristocracy were daily disappearing, and the chiefs of society believed in and were working for progress. They were philosophers who, without looking for Utopia, yet desired the greatest possible application of reason to human affairs. That was worth a great deal more than the fanatical and inapplicable Thora, which at best was only good for a very small nation. Men had reason to be satisfied with life, and behind that fine generation of statesmen one could perceive another wiser, more serious, more upright still.

Hadrian was amusing himself, and he had the right to do so. His curious and active mind dreamt of all sorts of chimeras at one and the same time, but his judgment was not sure enough to preserve him from faults of taste. At the foot of the hills of Tibur he had a villa built which was, as it were, the album of his journeys and the pandemonium of celebrity. It might have been called the noisy and somewhat bold fair of a dying world. Everything was there: false Egyptian, false Greek, the Lyceum, the Academy the Prytaneum, the Canous, the Alpheus, the vale of Tempe, the Elysian Fields, Tartarus; temples, libraries, theatres, a hippodrome, a naumachia, baths. It was a strange place, and yet attractive I For it was the last place in which men amused themselves, where men of intellect went to sleep to the empty noise of “greedy Acheron.” At Rome the chief care of the fantastic emperor was that senseless tomb, that vast mausoleum, where Babylon was outdone, and which, stripped of its ornaments, has been the citadel of Papal Rome. His buildings covered the world; the atheneums that he founded, the encouragement that he gave to letters and fine arts, and the immunities that he granted to professors, rejoiced the hearts of all men of learning. Unhappily superstition, eccentricity, and cruelty more and more gained the upper hand over him as his physical forces left him. He had built himself an elysium, in order not to believe in it, and a hell, to laugh at it; a hall of philosophers, to make fun of them; a canopus, to point out the impostures of priests, and to recall to his mind the foolish festivals of Egypt, that had made him laugh so much. Now, everything seemed to him hollow and empty: nothing more supported him.

Perhaps some martyrdoms which took place during his reign, and for which there seems to have been no motive, are to be attributed to the caprices and disorders of his last months. Telesphorus was then the head of the Church at Rome; he died confessing Christ, and passed to the number of the glories of the faith.

The death of this amateur Cæsar was sad and without dignity, for no really lofty moral sentiment animated him. Nevertheless, in him the world lost a powerful support. The Jews alone triumphed over the agonies of his last moments. It was customary amongst them not to mention him except saying after his name, “May God smash his leg.” He was sincerely attached to civilisation, and understood well what it would come to in time. With him ancient literature and art came to an end. He was the last emperor who believed in glory, just as Ælius Verus was the last man who knew how to enjoy delicate pleasures. Human affairs are so frivolous that brilliancy and splendour must take their share in them. A world will not hold together without that; Louis XIV. knew it, and men lived and live still in his sun of gilded copper. In his own fashion, Hadrian marked a summit, after which a rapid descent commenced. Certainly Antoninus and Marcus Aurelius were vastly his superiors in virtue, but under them the world was getting sad and losing its gaiety, was beginning to wear the monk’s cowl and become Christian; superstition was on the increase. Hadrian’s art, although it also had its gnawing worm, still holds to principles: it is a clever and wise art; afterwards the decadence set in with irresistible force. Ancient society perceives that all is in vain; now, the day when one makes that discovery, one is near death. The two accomplished sages who are going to reign are two ascetics, after their own fashion. Lucius Verus and Faustina will be the unclassed survivors of the ancient elegance. It really was from that time that the world bade farewell to joy, treated the muses as seductresses, will no longer listen to anything but what keeps up its melancholy, and becomes changed into a vast hospital.

Antoninus was a St Louis as far as heart and rectitude went, with much more judgment, and a wider range of intellect. He was the most perfect sovereign that ever reigned. He was even superior to Marcus Aurelius, as the reproaches of weakness which may be addressed to the latter cannot be applied to him. To enumerate his virtues would be to enumerate all the qualities of which a perfect man can command. In him all the world saluted an incarnation of the mythical Numa Pompilius. He was the most constitutional of sovereigns, and, of the same time, simple, economical, quite taken up with good deeds and public works, far from any excess, free from rhetoric and any affectation of mind. By his means philosophy really became a power; everywhere philosophers were richly pensioned; already he was surrounded by ascetics, and the general direction of the education of Marcus Aurelius was his work.

Thus the world’s ideal seemed to have been attained, wisdom reigned, and for twenty-three years the world was governed by a father. Affectation, false taste in literature, fell to the ground; people became simple; public instruction became an object of lively solicitude. The condition of the whole world was ameliorated; excellent laws, especially in favour of slaves, were carried; the relief of those who suffered became the object of universal care. The preachers of moral philosophy even surpassed the successes of Dion Chrysostom; the seeking for frivolous applause was the rock which they had to avoid. A provincial aristocracy of upright people who wished to do right, had succeeded the cruel aristocracy of Rome. The force and the loftiness of the ancient world were being lost, and men were becoming good, gentle, patient, humane. As always happens, socialistic ideas profited by that largeness of views and made their appearance, but general good sense and the force of established order prevented them from becoming a public evil.

The similarity between these aspirations and those of Christianity was striking, but a profound difference separated the two schools, and was bound to make them hostile to each other. By its hope in the approaching end of the world, by its badly-concealed wishes for the ruin of ancient society, Christianity in the midst of the beneficent empire of the Antonines became a subverter that it was necessary to combat. Always pessimistic, inexhaustible in mournful prophecies, the Christian, far from being of service to national progress, showed that he disdained it. Nearly all the Catholic doctors looked upon war between the empire and the Church as necessary, as the last act in the strife between God and Satan; they boldly affirmed that persecution would last till the end of time. The idea of a Christian empire, though it sometimes presented itself to their mind, seemed to them a contradiction and an impossibility.

Whilst the world again began to live, the Jews and Christians wished more obstinately than ever that it should be approaching its last hour. We have seen the false Baruch exhaust himself in vague announcements. The Judeo-Christian Sibyl never ceased thundering the whole time. The ever-increasing splendour of Rome was a terrible insult to divine truth, to the prophets, to the saints, and so they boldly denied the happiness of the century. All the natural scourges, which continued to be tolerably numerous, were represented as signs of implacable anger. The past and present earthquakes in Asia were made the most of as signs of fearful terrors. According to the fanatics, the only cause of these calamities was the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem. Rome, the harlot, had given herself up to a thousand lovers, who have intoxicated her; in her turn she shall be a slave. Italy, covered with blood from civil wars, had become the haunt of wild beasts. The new prophets, to express the ruin of Rome, employed nearly the same images which had served the Seer of 69 to depict his sombre rage.

It was difficult for a society to put up with such attacks, without replying. The Sibylline books which contained those which were attributed to the pretended Hystaspes, and which announced the destruction of the empire, were condemned by the Roman authorities, and those who possessed them or read them were condemned to death. The uneasy search into the future was a crime under the empire; in fact, such vain curiosity almost always served as a cloak or a wish for revolutions and incitements to murder.

It would certainly have been worthy of the wise emperor, so many humane reforms, if he had despised the intemperate imagination without a real object, and if he had abrogated the severe laws which, under Roman despotism, weighed on the liberty of worship and of meeting; but evidently no one about thought of it, any more than any one did who was about Marcus Aurelius. The unfettered thinker alone can be quite tolerant; now Antoninus observed and scrupulously maintained the ceremonies of the Roman worship. The policy of his predecessors had been unvarying in that respect. They saw in Christianity a secret anti-social sect which dreamt of the overthrow of the empire; like all the men who were attached to the old Roman principles, they believed it necessary to repress it. There was no necessity for special edicts: the laws against cœtus illiciti and illicita collegia were numerous. The Christians came in a quite regular manner under the power of those laws. It must be observed, first of all, that the true spirit of liberty, as we understand it, was not understood by any one at that time; and that Christianity, when it became the master, did not practise it any more than the heathen emperors; in the second place, that the abrogation of the law of illicit societies would most likely in fact have been the ruin of the empire, founded essentially on this principle that the State cannot admit any society which differs from it into its midst. The idea was wrong, according to our ideas; however, it is quite certain that it was the corner-stone of the Roman constitution. The foundations of the empire would have been thought to be overthrown if those repressive laws which were looked upon as essential conditions to the stability of the State had been relaxed.

The Christians seemed to understand this. Far from finding fault with Antoninus personally, they rather looked upon him as having ameliorated their lot. A fact which does this sovereign infinite honour, is that the principal advocate of Christianity ventured to address him with full confidence, in order to obtain redress from a legal situation which he reasonably found unjust and unbecoming in such a fortunate reign. They went further, and there is no doubt that during the first years of Marcus Aurelius different rescripts were forged in the name of Antoninus, which, supposed to be addressed to the Lariseans, the Thessalonians, the Athenians, to all the Greeks, to the Asiatic States, were so favourable to the Church that if Antoninus had really countersigned them he would have been very inconsistent in not turning Christian. These documents only prove one thing,—the opinion which the Christians retained of the excellent emperor. He did not show himself less benevolent towards the Jews, who no longer menaced the empire. The laws forbidding circumcision, which had been the consequence of Bar-Coziba’s revolt, were abrogated, as far as they were vexatious. The Jew was at perfect liberty to sacrifice his sun, but the penalty for practising the operation on a non-Jew was castration, that is, death. Civil jurisdiction within the community does not appear to have been restored to the Jews till later.

Such was the rigour of the established legal order, such was the popular effervescence against the Christians, that even 'during this reign one is sorry to find many martyrs. Polycarp and Justin are the most illustrious amongst them, but they were not the only ones. Asia Minor was stained with the blood of very many judicial murders, which were all provoked by riots; we shall see Montanism rise up like a hallucination of that intoxication for martyrdom. In Rome, the book of the false Hernias will appear to us as if it came out of a bath of blood. Prejudice for martyrdom, questions relating to renegades, or to those who had shown some weakness, fill up the whole book. Justin has described to us on every page Christians as victims who expect nothing but death; their very name, like in the time of Pliny, was a crime.

Jews and heathens persecute us on all sides; they rob us of our possessions, and only leave us our life when they cannot deprive us of it. They cut off our heads, nail us to the cross, expose us to wild beasts, torture us with chains, with fire, with the most horrible torments. But the more ills we have to endure, the more the number of the faithful increases. The vine-grower prunes his vines to make them shoot out anew; he cuts off the branches that have borne fruit, to make it throw out others more vigorous and fruitful; the same thing happens to God’s people, which is like a fertile vine, planted by its band and that of our Lord Jesus Christ.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE CHRISTIANS AND PUBLIC OPINION.

In order to be just, one must picture to oneself the prejudices amongst which the public then lived. Christianity was very little known. The lower classes do not like distinctions, or for some to live apart by themselves, for others to be more Puritan than they are, and to abstain from feasts and their usages. When one hides oneself, they always suppose that there is something to hide. In all time secret religious rites have provoked certain calumnies, which are always the same. The mysteries by which they are surrounded cause others to believe in unnatural debaucheries, in infanticide, incest, even in anthropophagy. They are tempted to believe that it is a secret camorra, organised in opposition to the laws. Besides this, informing had in ancient law, in spite of the efforts of good emperors, an importance which fortunately it no longer possesses, and thence sprang a type of libel, drawn up, so to say, in advance, from which no Christian could escape.

Everything was certainly false in those popular rumours, but some badly-understood fact seemed to give some substance to them. Certain inquiries had turned out to the detriment of those who were inculpated. The apologists do not deny it: respect for the matter which had been judged stops them, but they charge the sectaries with the evil, and ask that the faults of some may not be laid to all. The nocturnal gatherings, the signs of recognition, certain eccentric symbols, everything that had anything to do with the mystery in the Eucharist, the sacramental phrases with regard to the body and blood of Christ, excited suspicion. That bread which the Christian woman ate in secret before every meal must have appeared to be a philtre. A number of practices seemed tokens of the crime of magic, which was punished with death. The custom of the faithful to call each other brother and sister, and above all the holy kiss, the kiss of peace, which was given without distinction of sex at the most solemn moment of the assemblage, would be sure to provoke the most unfavourable interpretations in the mind of a public that was incapable of understanding this golden age of purity. The idea of meetings where all familiarities and promiscuities were allowed, naturally arose from such facts, which were distorted by malice and sarcasm.

The accusation of atheism was even more redoubtable. It entailed the punishment of death as a parricide, and worked up all superstitions at once. The undissembled aversion of the Christians for the temples, statues, and altars was constantly productive of some incident. There was no scourge, no earthquake, for which they were not held responsible. Every act of sacrilege, every fire in a temple, was attributed to them. Christians and Epicureans were confounded in this respect, and their secret presence in any town caused consternation, which was worked upon to raise the mob. The lower classes were thus the centre of hatred for the Christians. What the authentic acts of the martyrs treat with the greatest contempt, and as the worst enemies of the saints, are the ruffians of the large towns. The faithful never looked upon themselves as belonging to the people; they seemed in the towns to form the respectable middle class, very respectful towards the authorities, and very much disposed to come to an understanding with them. To defend themselves before the people seemed to the bishops to be a disgrace: they would only argue with the authorities. How plain it is that the very day the government would relax its rigour, Christianity and it would soon come to an understanding! How clear it is that Christianity would be delighted to be the religion of the government. A singular thing is that the only portion of heathen society with which the Christians had any analogy of opinion was the group of Epicureans. The name of Atheists was equally assigned to the disciples of Jesus and those of Epicurus. They had, in fact, this feature in common, that they denied, though certainly from very different reasons, the puerilely supernatural and the ridiculous wonders in which the people believed. In them the Epicureans saw the impostures of the priests, the Christians the impostures of the devil. What aggravated the case of the Christians was that by their exorcisms they were supposed to be able to stop local wonders, and to impose silence on the oracles which made the fortune of a city or of a country. When Alexander of Abonotica saw that his frauds were discovered, he said,—“There is nothing surprising in that; Pontus is full of Atheists and Christians!” That frightened the people, and restored to the impostor a momentary popularity. He burnt the books of Epicurus, and ordered the partisans of both sects to be stoned. Amastris, a Christian and Epicurean town, was particularly hateful to him. At the beginning of his mysteries there was a cry: “ If there is any Atheist, Christian, or Epicurean here, let him go out!” He himself said: “Put the Christians out!” and the mob replied: “Put the Epicureans out!” In that superstitious country the name Epicurean was synonymous with accursed. Like that of Christian, any one who bore it ran the risk of his life, or at least was put under the ban of society.

The Christians made use of the arguments of free-thinkers and of the incredulous to turn the popular beliefs into ridicule, and to fight against fatalism. The oracles were an object of mockery to all men of intellect and common sense; the Christians applauded this quizzing. One curious fact is that of Œnomaüs of Gadara, a Cynic philosopher, who having been deceived by a false oracle, lost his temper, and took his revenge in a book called The Deceits Unveiled, in which he wittily ridiculed as an imposture the superstition of which he had for a moment been the dupe. This book was eagerly received by Jews and Christians. Eusebius has inserted it entire in his Evangelical Preparations, and the Jews appear to have put the author on a footing with Balaam, in the class of involuntary apologists of Israel, and of the apostles amongst the heathen.

The Christians and Stoics, between whom there was really more resemblance than between the Christians and the Epicureans, never blended. The Stoics did not make a parade of contempt for public worship. The courage of the Christian martyrs seemed to them foolish obstinacy, an affectation of tragical heroism, a determination to die, which merited nothing but blame. These crowds of infatuated individuals of Asia irritated them. They confounded them with vain and proud Cynics who sought for theatrical deaths, and burnt themselves alive, in order that they might be spoken about.

There was certainly more than one point of resemblance between the Christian philosopher and the Cynic; austere dress, constant declamation against the century, an isolated life, open resistance to the authorities. The Cynics, besides a dress which was analogous to that of the begging friars in the Middle Ages, had a certain organisation, novices, superiors. They were the public professors of virtue, censors, bishops, “angels of the gods,” in their own manner; a pastoral vocation was attributed to them, a mission from Heaven to preach and give advice, a mission that required celibacy and perfect renunciation. Christians and Cynics excited the same antipathy in moderate men, because of their common contempt for death. Celsus reproaches Jesus, like Lucian reproaches Peregrinus, with having spread abroad that fatal error. “What will become of society,” men asked themselves, “if this spirit gets the upper hand, if criminals no longer fear death?” But the immorality, the coarse impudence of the Cynics, would not allow such a confusion, unless to very superficial observers. Nothing that is known of the Cynics authorises the belief that they were anything but attitudinarians and villainous fellows.

There is no doubt that in many cases the provocation came from the martyrs. But civil society is wrong to allow itself to be drawn into acts of rigour, even towards those who seem to ask for them. The atrocious cruelty of the Roman penal code creates a martyrology which is itself the source of a vast legendary literature, full of unlikelihoods and exaggeration. Criticism, in exposing what is untenable in the accounts of the acts of the martyrs, has sometimes gone to the opposite extreme. The documents which were at first represented as reports of the trials of the martyrs, have been mostly found to be apocryphal. As the texts of historians, properly so called, relating to persecutions are rare and short; as the collections of Roman laws contain next to nothing about the matter, it was natural that the greatest reserve should be imposed on it. One might be tempted to believe that the persecutions really were only a slight matter, that the number of martyrs was inconsiderable, and that the whole ecclesiastical system on this point is nothing but an artificial structure. By degrees light was thrown on the subject. Even freed from legendary exaggeration, the persecutions remain one of the darkest pages of history, and a disgrace to ancient civilisation.

Certainly if we were reduced to the acts of the martyrs to know about the persecutions, scepticism could have a free course. The composition of the acts of the martyrs became at a certain period a species of religious literature for which the imagination, and a certain pious enthusiasm, were much more consulted than authentic documents. With the exception of the letter relative to Polycarp’s death, that which contains the account of the sufferings of the heroes of Lyons, the acts of the martyrs of Africa, and some other accounts which bear the stamp of being written in the most serious manner, one must allow that the documents of this character, which have been too easily accepted as sincere, are nothing but pious romances. We know also that the historians of the empire were singularly poor in detail on what refers to the Christians as well as on other matters. The true documents concerning the persecutions which the Church had to suffer, are the works that compose the primitive Christian literature. These works need not be by the authors to whom they are attributed, to have authority on such a question. There was such a widespread taste at that date for attributing documents, that a great number of those books which have been left to us by the first two centuries are by uncertain authors; but that does not prevent these books from being exact mirrors of the time at which they were written. The first Epistle attributed to St Peter, the Revelation of St John, the fragment that is called the Epistle of Barnabas, the Epistle of Clement Romanus, even though it be not by him, the totally or partially apocryphal Epistles of St Ignatius and Polycarp, the Sibylline poems that belong to the first or second century, all the original documents that Eusebius has preserved for us on the origin of Montanism, the controversies between the Gnostics and the Montanists about martyrdom, the Pastor of Hermas, the Apologies of Aristides and of Quadratus, of St Justin, Tatian, Athenagoras, show at each page a state of violence that weighs on the thoughts of the writer, besets him in a measure, and leaves him with no just appreciation of the situation.

From Nero to Commodus, except at short intervals, one might say that the Christian lived continually with the prospect of being put to death before his eyes. Martyrdom is the basis of Christian apology. To listen to the controversialists of the period, it is the sign of the truth of Christianity. The orthodox Church alone has martyrs; the dissenting sects, the Montanists, for example, made ardent efforts to prove that they were not deprived of that supreme criterion of truth. The Gnostics are put under the ban by all the Churches, above all because they declared martyrdom to be useless. In fact then, as Tertullian wishes, persecution was the natural state of the Christian. The details of the acts of the martyrs may be mostly wrong, but the terrible picture that they lay before us, was nevertheless a reality. One has often drawn a wrong picture to oneself of that terrible strife which has surrounded the origins of Christianity with a brilliant halo and impressed on the most beautiful centuries of the empire a hideous blot of blood: one has not exaggerated its gravity. The persecutions were an element of the first order in the formation of that great association of men which was the first to make its rights triumph over the tyrannical pretensions of the State.

As a matter of fact, men die for their opinions, not for certainties—for what they believe, and not for what they know. A scholar who has discovered a theorem has no need to die in order to attest the truth of that theorem; he proves his demonstration, and that is enough. On the other hand, as soon as it is a question of beliefs, the great sign and the most efficacious demonstration is to die for them. That is the explanation of the extraordinary success which some of the religious attempts of the East have obtained.

“You Europeans will never understand anything about religions,” said to me the most intelligent of Asiatics, “for you have never had the opportunity of seeing them formed amongst yourselves; whereas we, on the contrary, see them formed every day. I was there whilst people who were cut to pieces and burnt, suffered the most horrible tortures for days, danced and jumped for joy because they were dying for a man whom they had never known (the Bab), and they were the greatest men of Persia. I, who am now speaking to you, was obliged to stop my legend, which in a manner preceded me, to prevent the people from getting killed for me.”

Martyrdom does not at all prove the truth of a doctrine, but it proves the impression that it has made on men’s minds, and that is all that is needed for success. The finest victories of Christianity, the conversion of a Justin, of a Tertullian, were brought about by the spectacle of the courage of the martyrs, of their joy under torments, and of the sort of infernal rage which urged the world on to persecute them.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE SECTS AT ROME—THE CERYGMAS—THE ROMAN CHRISTIAN—DEFINITIVE RECONCILIATION OF PETER AND PAUL.

Rome was at the highest period of her grandeur: her sway over the world seemed uncontested; no cloud was visible on the horizon. Far from growing weaker, the movement that led the provincials, above all those of the East, to come there in crowds, increased in intensity. The Greek speaking population was more considerable than ever. The insinuating Græculus, who was good for every trade, was driving the Italian from the domesticity of great houses; Latin literature was daily losing ground, whilst Greek was becoming the literary, philosophical, and religious language of the enlightened classes, just as it was the language of the lower classes. The importance of the Church of Rome was measuring itself with that of the city itself. That Church, which was still quite Greek, had an uncontested superiority over the others. Hyginus, her chief, obtained the respect of the whole Christian world. Rome was then for the provinces what Paris is in its brilliant days, the city of all contacts, all fecundations. Whoever wished to find a place of mark aspired to go thither; nothing was consecrated but what had received its stamp at that universal exhibition of the productions of the entire universe.

Gnosticism, with its ambition of setting the fashion in Christian preaching, especially yielded to that tendency. None of the Gnostic schools sprang from Rome, but nearly all came to an end there. Valentinus was the first to try it. That daring sectary may even have had the idea of seating himself on the episcopal throne of the unrivalled city. He showed every appearance of Catholicism, and preached in the absurd style that he had invented. Its success was mediocre; that pretentious philosophy, that unquiet curiosity, scandalised the faithful. Hyginus drove the innovator from the Christian pulpit. From that time forward the Roman Church indicated the purely practical tendency which was always to distinguish her, and showed herself ready quickly to sacrifice science and talent to edification.

Another heterodox doctor, Cerdon, appeared at Rome about that time. He was a native of Syria, and introduced doctrines which differed but little from those of the Gnostics of that country. His manner of distinguishing God from the Creator; of placing another unknown god above God, the father of Jesus; of representing one of the gods as just, the other as good, sounds contrary to right. Cerdon found that this world was as imperfect a work as that Jehovah Himself to Whom it was attributed, and who was represented as subject to human passions. He rejected all the Jewish books in a mass, as well as all the passages in Christian writings, from which it might result that Christos had been able to take real flesh. It was quite simple: matter seemed to him to be a deterioration, an evil. The Resurrection was repugnant to him for the same reason. The Church censured him; he submitted, and retracted his opinions, then began to dogmatise afresh, either in public or private. Thence arose a most equivocal position. His life was spent in leaving the Church and joining it again, in doing penance for his errors, and in maintaining them afresh. The unity of the Church was too strong in Rome for Cerdon to be able to dream of forming a separate congregation there as he would certainly have done in Syria. He exercised his influence over a few isolated individuals, whom the apparent depth of his language and of doctrines which were then quite novel seduced. A certain Lucain or Lucian is particularly quoted amongst his disciples, without mentioning the celebrated Marcion, who, as we shall see, sprang from him.

The abstract Gnosticism of Alexandria and Antioch, appearing under the form of a bold philosophy, found little favour in the capital of the world. It was the Ebionites, the Nazarenes, the Elkasaites, the Essenes, which were all Gnostic heresies in a way, but of a moderate and Judeo-Christian Gnosticism in their affinities, it was those heresies, I say, that swarmed at Rome, which made the legend of Peter, and created the future of that great Church. The mysterious formulas of Elkasaism were usual in their midst, especially for the baptismal ceremony. The neophyte, presented on the edge of a river or a fountain of flowing water, took heaven and earth, air and water, to witness that it was his firm resolve to sin no more. For these sectaries, who sprang from Juda, Peter and James were the two corners of the Church of Jesus. We have often remarked that Rome was always the principal home of Judeo-Christianity. The new spirit, represented by the school of Paul, was checked there by a highly conservative one. In spite of the efforts of conciliatory men, the apostle of the Gentiles had here also obstinate adversaries. Peter and Paul fought their last battle before becoming definitely reconciled in the bosom of the Universal Church for eternity.

The life of the two apostles was beginning to be much forgotten. They had been dead about seventy-seven years; all who had seen them had disappeared, the greater portion without leaving any writings behind them. One was at perfect liberty to embroider on that still virgin canvas. A vast Ebionite legend had been formed in Rome and was settled at about the time at which we have arrived. St Peter’s journeys and sermons were its principal object. In it the missionary journeys of the chief of the apostles, especially along the coasts of Phœnicia; the conversions which be had effected; his strifes, especially with the great Antichrist who at that time was the spectre of the Christian conscience, Simon Magus, were related. But often in hidden words, under that abhorred name was hidden another personage, the false Apostle Paul, the enemy of the Law, the destroyer of the true Church. The true Church was that of Jerusalem, over which James, the Lord’s brother presided. No apostolate was valid which could not produce letters emanating from that central college. Paul had none, he was therefore an intruder. He was the “enemy” who came behind the real sower to sow the bad seed. With what force, too, Peter exposed his impostures, his false allegations of personal revelations, his ascension into the third heaven, his pretensions of knowing things about Jesus which those who had heard the Gospel had not heard, his disciples' exaggerated conceptions of the divinity of Jesus! At Antioch especially Peter’s triumph was complete. Simon had succeeded in turning the people of that city away from the truth. By a series of clever manœuvres Peter brought one of the victims of Simon’s sorceries, to whom the magician had imparted his own form, to show himself to the people of Antioch. What was their astonishment on hearing him whom they took for the Samaritan magician, retract in these terms:—

I have lied about Peter he is the true apostle of the prophet who was sent by God for the salvation of the world. The angels beat me last night for having calumniated him. Do not listen to me if I speak against him in the future!

Naturally all Antioch returned to Peter and cursed his rival.

CHAPTER XVIII.

EXAGGERATION OF ST PAUL'S IDEAS—MARCION.

The great peculiarity of Christianity, the fact of a new religion springing from another religion, and becoming by degrees the negation of the one that had preceded it, naturally gave rise to the most opposite phenomena, till the two forms of worship were completely separated. The reaction would be of two kinds amongst those who did not exactly keep their balance on the narrow edge of orthodoxy. Some, going beyond Paul’s principles, fancied that the religion of Jesus had no connection with the religion of Moses. Others, Judeo-Christians, looked upon Christianity as a mere continuation of the Jewish religion. In general, it was the Gnostics who inclined to the former idea, but those dreamers seemed to be attacked by a sort of practical incapacity. An ardent, intelligent man was found to give the necessary cohesion to the divergent elements, and to form a lasting Church, side by side with that which already called itself—

The Universal Church, the great Church of Jesus.

Marcion was a native of Sinope, a city full of activity, which had already given the two Aquilas, and would later give Theodation, as participators in the religious disputes of the time. He was the son of the bishop of that city, and appears to have been a sailor. Although born a Christian, he had seriously examined his faith, and had devoted himself to the study of Greek philosophy, especially of Stoicism. To that he joined an ascetic appearance and great austerity. His father, as is alleged, was obliged to drive him from his Church, as he was dangerous to the orthodoxy of his faithful hearers.

We have already remarked several times on the sort of attraction which brought to Rome, under the pontificate of Hyginus and in the first years of Pius, all those whom the phosphorescent lights of growing Gnosticism seduced. Marcion arrived in the eternal city at the moment when Cerdon unsettled the most sincere believers by his brilliant metaphysics. Marcion, like all the sectaries, first of all showed himself a zealous Catholic. The Church of Rome possessed such great importance that all those who felt any ecclesiastical ambition aspired to govern her. The rich Sinopean apparently made the community a present of a large sum of money, but his hopes were disappointed. He had not that spirit which the Church of Rome has always required in her clergy. Intellectual superiority was but little valued there. His ardent curiosity, his vivacity of thought, and his learning, all appeared dangerous. It could easily be seen that they would not allow him to remain quietly within the narrow limits of orthodoxy. Cerdon, like he did, expiated his pretensions to dogmatic originality in isolation. Marcion became his disciple. The transcendent theories of Gnosticism, taught by that master, must have appeared to be the highest form of Christianity to a mind imbued with philosophical doctrines. Moreover, Christian dogma was so little settled as yet that every one of strong individuality aspired to impress it with his own seal. That is enough to explain the intricate roads in which this great man lost himself, without it being necessary to put any faith in the everyday calumnies by which ecclesiastical writers strive to show that the leader of every sect, when he separates himself from the majority of the faithful, obeys the lowest motives.

Marcion’s theology only differed from that of the Gnostics of Syria and Egypt by its simplicity. The distinction between the good God and the just God, between the invisible God and the demiurge, between the God of the Jews and the God of the Christians, formed the basis of his system. Matter was the eternal evil. The ancient Law, Jehovah’s work, which was essentially material, interested, severe, cruel and loveless, had only one object: to subject the other peoples, Egyptians, Canaanites, etc., to Jehovah’s people, and it did not even succeed in procuring their happiness, as Jehovah was continually obliged to console them by the promise of sending them his Son. It would have been vain to have expected that salvation from Jehovah if the Supreme God, who was good and invisible and unknown to the world till then, had not sent his Son Jesus, that is to say meekness itself under the apparent form of a man, to combat the influence of the demiurge and to introduce the law of love. The Jews will have their Messiah, son of their God, that is to say, of the demiurge. Jesus is by no means that Messiah; his mission, on the contrary, was to abolish the Law, the prophets, and the works of that demiurge generally; but his disciples understood him wrongly: Paul was the only true apostle. Marcion imposed the task upon himself of finding the ideas of Jesus again which had been obliterated and maladroitly brought back to Judaism by those who succeeded him.

That was already Manichæism, with its dangerous antithesis, making its appearance in the field of Christian beliefs. Marcion supposes that there are two Gods, one of whom is good and gentle, the other who is severe and cruel. The absolute condemnation of the flesh led him to look upon the continuation of the human race as only serving to prolong the reign of the evil demiurge; he objected to marriage, and would not admit married people to baptism. No sect sought for martyrdom more, nor reckoned, proportionately, more confessors of the faith. According to the Marcionites, martyrdom was the highest Christian liberation, the most beautiful form of deliverance from this world, which is an evil. Bodies do not rise, only the souls of true Christians are brought back to existence. Besides, all souls are not equal, and only arrive at perfection by a series of transmigrations.

It will be seen that the doctrine of the Epistles to the Colossians and Ephesians, and that of the fourth Gospel, was far exceeded. Everything Jewish in the Church became mere dross which must be eliminated. Marcion looked upon Christianity as an entirely new religion, and one without precedent. In that he was a disciple of Paul who had lost his way. Paul believed that Jesus had abolished Judaism, but he did not mistake the divine character of the ancient Law. Marcion, on the contrary, declared that there was no appearance of God in history till Jesus. The Law of Moses was the work of a particular demiurge (Jehovah) whom the Jews adored, and who, to keep them in the fetters of theocracy, gave them priests, and sought to retain them by promises and threats. Such a Law, without any superior character, was powerless against evil. It represented justice but not kindness. The appearance of Christ was the manifestation of a complete God who was kind and just at the same time. The Old Testament was not only different from Christianity, it was contrary to it. Marcion wrote a work called Antithesis, in which the two Testaments were put in flagrant contradiction. Apelles, his disciple, wrote a book to show that Moses had written nothing concerning God but what was false and unbecoming.

A chief objection to that theory arose from the different Gospels which were then in circulation, and which more or less agreed with what we call the synoptic type. The fourth Gospel had as yet but very little circulation, and Marcion did not know it, otherwise he would have preferred it to the others. In the generally admitted accounts about Jesus, the Jewish impress can be seen on every page; Jesus speaks as a Jew and acts as a Jew. Marcion imposed the difficult task upon himself of changing all that. He composed a Gospel in which Jesus was no longer a Jew, or rather, was no longer a man; he wanted a life of Jesus which should be that of a pure won. Taking St Luke’s Gospel as his basis, which may be called Paul’s Gospel up to a certain point, he remodelled it according to his own ideas, and was not satisfied till Jesus had no more ancestors, parents, forerunners, or masters. If Jesus had only been known to us from texts of that nature, one might doubt whether he had really existed, or whether he were not an à priori fiction, detached from any tie with reality. In such a system, Christ was not born (for Marcion, birth was a stain), did not suffer, did not die. All the Gospel passages in which Jesus recognised the Creator as his father, were suppressed. After his descent into hell he took to heaven with him those persons who were cursed in the Old Testament—Cain, the Sodomites, etc. These poor wanderers, interesting, like all those who have revolted under an ancient fallen régime, came to meet him and were saved. On the other hand, Jesus left Abel, Noah, Abraham, who were servants of the demiurge, that is to say, of the God of the Old Testament, in the dark places of oblivion, as their only merit consisted in having obeyed a tyrant’s laws. It was that God of the Old Testament who caused Jesus to be put to death, and thus worthily crowned an era which had been the reign of evil.

It would be impossible to take up a position more utterly opposed to the ideas of Peter, James, and Mark. The last conclusions had been drawn from St Paul’s principles. Marcion put no author’s name to his Gospel, but he certainly looked upon it as “the Gospel according to Paul.” Jesus is no more a man at all, he is the first ideal appearance of a good God, nearly like Schleiermacher understood it sixteen centuries later. A very fine system of morality, summed up in a striving after good, resulted from this spiritualistic and rationalistic philosophy. Marcion was the most original of the Christian masters of the second century after the author of the pseudo-Johannistic writings. But the belief in two gods, which was the foundation of his system, and the colossal historical error which it contained in representing a religion which sprang from Judaism as contrary to Judaism, were profound blemishes which must prevent such a doctrine from becoming those of the Catholicity.

Its success was extraordinary at first: Marcion’s doctrines spread very quickly over the whole Christian world, but they met with strenuous opposition. Justin, who was then in Rome, combated the innovator in writings which we have not got any longer. Polycarpus received the new ideas with the most lively indignation. It appears that Meliton wrote against them. Several anonymous priests attacked them, and furnished Irenæus with the weapons that he was to use later. Marcion’s position in the Church was a very false one. Like Valentinus and Cerdon, he wished to be part of the Church, and doubtless to preach in it; now the Church of Rome much preferred docility and mediocrity to originality and vigorous logic. Like Valentinus, Marcion made semi-retractations, and retreated; all was useless: the incompatibility was too strong. After being condemned twice, a definite excommunication drove him from the Church. The sum of money which he had given in the first warmth of his faith was refunded to him, and he returned to Asia Minor, where he continued to display immense activity in the propagation of error. It seems that in his latter years he instituted fresh negotiations to attach himself to the Church again, but death prevented their success. Often a certain timidity of character is associated with great speculative boldness, and Marcion seems often to have contradicted himself. On the other hand, such an end answered so perfectly to the wants of orthodox polemics that one must suspect it of having been invented. Apelles restored the Marcionite school to an almost orthodox deism.

In any case, Marcion remains the boldest innovator whom Christianity has known, not even excepting St Paul. He never denied the connection between the two Testaments; Marcion opposed them to each other as two antitheses. He even went so far as to claim the right of' re-making the life of Jesus according to his own fashion, and of systematically altering the Gospels. Even St Paul’s Epistles, which he adopted, were arranged and mutilated by him in order to efface the quotations from the Old Testament, and Abraham’s name, which he hated.

This was the third attempt to make the life of Jesus the life of an abstract being instead of a Galilean reality. The results of different tendencies, which were all equally necessary,—of the wish to idealise a life which became that of a God,—of the desire of denying that that God had a family lineage or country upon earth,—of the impossibility for the Greek Christian to admit that Christianity had anything in common with Judaism, which he despised, these three attempts had very different successes. The author of the pseudo-Johannistic writings set to work in an inconsistent and incoherent manner, but which possessed the advantage of letting an historical biography of Jesus subsist side by side with the theology of the Logos. His attempt was the only one that succeeded, for, whilst looking upon modern Judaism as an evil, and imagining that Truth had descended from heaven with the Logos, he admits that the true Israel has had its mission, and that the world, far from being the work of a demiurge who was hostile to God, was created by the Logos. The Gnostics drowned the Gospel in metaphysics, eliminated every Jewish element, dissatisfied even the Deists, and so destroyed their future. Marcion’s speculations were of a more sober kind; but Christianity was already too much formed, its texts were too settled, its Gospels too much valued, for Catholic opinion to be shaken. Marcion then was nothing but the mere head of a sect, though it is true it was by far the most numerous before that of Arius. The rage with which orthodoxy pursued him is the best proof of the profound impression that he made on the minds of his contemporaries.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE CATHOLIC APOLOGY—ST JUSTIN.

A principal fact which may clearly be seen developing from this time forward, is that in the midst of these agitated waves there is a sort of immovable rock, a doctrine between the two extremes, which resists the most diverse attacks, Judeo-Christian and Gnostic exaggerations, and constitutes a central orthodoxy which is destined to triumph over all sects. That universal doctrine which laid claim to priority over all particular doctrines, and to go as far back as the apostles, constitutes the Catholic Church in opposition to heresies. Gnosticism, especially an invincible obstacle in that sort of ecclesiastical tribunal, this was a question of life or death for the Christian religion. The extravagant tendencies of the innovators would have been the annihilation of all unity. Now, as nearly always happens, anarchy created authority, and thus it may be said that in the formation of the Catholic Church Gnosticism and Marcionism played the principal part by antithesis.

A man who is very highly esteemed for his profane studies, and his knowledge of the Scriptures—Justin of Neapolis, in Samaria, who had been residing in Rome for several years—taught Christian philosophy and fought energetically for the orthodox majority. He was used to and fond of polemics. Valentinians, Marcionites, Samaritan Jews, heathen philosophers, were in turn the object of his attacks. Justin was not a man of great intellect; he did not know much of philosophy and criticism, and, above all, his exegesis would be looked upon as very defective in our time; but he gives proof of general good sense; he had that sort of mediocre credulity which allows a man to reason sensibly from puerile premisses, and to stop in time so as only to be half ridiculous. His general treatise against heresies, his particular writings against the Valentinians and Marcionites, have been lost, but his works for the general defence of Christianity had an extraordinary success amongst the faithful, and they were copied and imitated; thus, Justin was, in a manner, the first Christian doctor, in the classic sense of the word, whose works have been preserved to no in a relatively complete state.

CHAPTER XX.

ABUSES AND PENITENCE—NEW PROPHECIES.

The Church was like the pious Israel at the time when it built its new temple; with the one hand they fought, with the other they built. The philosophic prepossessions were the act of a very small number. The great Christian work was moral and popular. The Church of Rome especially showed Itself more and more indifferent to these extravagant speculations which delighted minds full of the intellectual activity of the Greeks, but corrupted by the reveries of the East. The disciplinary organisation was the principal work at Rome; that extra-ordinary city applied to that its thoroughly practical genius and its strong energy.

Penitence had always been a fundamental institution of Christianity. The elect of the future city of God should be absolutely pure. To avoid sin was impossible; it was therefore necessary that means should be found for recovering lost grace. The Church accordingly at an early period erected itself into a tribunal, and transformed repentance into public penitence, imposed by authority and accepted by the delinquent. A mass of questions which were to trouble the Church for a century and a half date from that time. How could people, after having fallen often, become penitent again? Do those means of reconciliation apply to all time? The hypothesis of murder was scarcely thought of; the gentle and timid manners of the sect forbade the idea of a Christian assassin; but adultery in a little congregation of brethren and sisters was common enough. Apostacy, indeed, seeing the bitterness of the persecutions, was not rare. Some, to avoid punishment, went even so far as to curse Christ; some became the denouncers of their brethren; while others contented themselves with a simple denial, “I am not a Christian.” They were ashamed of Christ without exactly blaspheming him.

It was this last category of persons who caused the greatest embarrassment. The Church was a source of such gentleness, that the day after their fall, the apostates, the denouncers of their brethren, experienced cruel remorse. They would have desired to re-enter the assembly they had betrayed. The situation of those unfortunates was distressing. Despairing of their salvation, they became the prey of frightful terrors. They could be seen prowling around the Church where they had tasted so many spiritual joys. There was no connection between them and the faithful. With a severity which Jesus would not have approved, but which the gravity of the circumstances excused, they were treated as people infected by the itch, and were called by a cruel pleasantry “the savages, the solitary ones.” Many went to see the confessors in prison and found a sort of austere joy in the hard words which those addressed to them. The larger portion of the faithful considered them as totally dead to the Church, and would not admit that there could be any place of penitence for them there. Some, less harsh, distinguished between those who had blasphemed Christ or denounced their brethren and those who had simply denied their faith; these latter could be admitted to repentance. Others, more indulgent still, accorded penitence to those who had denied with the mouth and not with the heart. There was a danger of pushing rigour too far, for the Jews sought to gain to the synagogue those the Church had thus expelled.

Besides those great culprits, there were the weak, the uncertain, the worldly—Christians in some sense ashamed, and who dissembled as to their faith, and were thus led unceasingly into semi-apostacies. The Christian profession was something so strict that, if the Christian did not live in the society of his brethren, he was exposed to continual mockery. As he existed only with the end of the world before his mind, the Christian of that time was quite sequestered from public life. Those who were obliged to mix themselves in temporal affairs were led more and more to forsake the society of the saints, and soon to disdain them, to blush for them as brethren, to hear them laughed at without replying. Half-dead to the spiritual life, they fell into doubt. They became rich; they made a separate company, in virtue of the principle that man is led almost necessarily to cultivate the society of persons who have the same fortune as himself. They shunned meeting with the servants of God, fearing that they would ask for alms. The company of the faithful appeared humble; those quitted it in order to lead a more brilliant life with the Gentiles. These worldlings did not abandon God, but they deserted the Church; they kept the faith, but ceased to practise it. Some became repentant, and gave themselves up to works of charity; others, brought into the society of the Pagans, became like them, and abandoned themselves to pleasure. This equivocal middle course did not dispose them to martyrdom. At the least sound of persecution they made an appearance of returning to idols, to escape being disturbed.

CHAPTER XXI.

ROMAN PIETISM—THE SHEPHERD OF HERMAS.

One book had in this fashion a durable success, and served during several centuries for the nourishment of Christian piety. It had as its author a brother of Pius, the bishop of Rome. This personage, who doubtless occupied a considerable place in the Church, conceived the project of striking a great blow, sufficient to awaken the saints. He pretended that, fifty or sixty years before, in the time of the persecution of Domitian, a certain Hermas, an elder of the Church of Rome, had had a revelation. Clement, the guarantee for all the pious frauds of Roman Ebionism, covered the book with his authority, and was believed to have it addressed to the churches of the whole world.

Hermas, a foundling born in slavery, had been sold, by the proprietor of slaves who had brought him up, to a Roman lady named Rhoda. He had doubtless succeeded in buying his liberty, and setting himself up in life; for at the opening of the work, he is under the blow of annoyances which his wife, his children, and his affairs have caused him, as these last, in consequence of the disagreement of his family, proceed very badly. His sons had even committed the greatest crime of which a Christian could be culpable; they had blasphemed Christ to escape persecution, and had denounced their parents. In the midst of these sorrows, poor Hermas found out Rhoda, whom he had not seen for many years. The small consolation he had in her household rendered his heart sensitive, it would appear; he began to love his old mistress like a sister. One day, seeing her bathe in the Tiber, he presented his hand to her to help her out of the river, and said to her, “Howhappy should I be if I had a wife as beautiful and accomplished!” His thought did not go further, and such a reflection was all the more excusable that his wife was bitter, disagreeable, and full of defects. But the severity of Christian morals was so great that the quiet Platonic love of Hermas was remarked in heaven by the jealous watcher of pure souls; and he was to be convicted of it as of a crime.

Some time after—in fact, as he was going to his country house, situated at Cuma, ten stadia from the Campanian Way, and while he admired the beauty of God’s works, he slept when travelling. In spirit he traversed rivers, ravines, mountain crevasses, and, returning to the plain, began to pray to the Lord and to confess his sin.

Now, while he prayed, the heaven was opened, and he saw the woman he had desired saying to him, “Good day, Hermas.” Having looked at her, “Mistress, what are you doing here?” asked he. And she replied, “I have been brought here to accuse you of your sins before the Lord.” “What! are you my accuser?” “No; but listen to the words I am speaking to you. God, who dwells in heaven, who has created all things that exist out of nothing, and has made them great for the holy Church, is angry with you, because you have sinned in regard to me.” “I have sinned in regard to you!” replied Hermas; “and in what way? Have I ever said an improper word to you? Have I not always treated you as my mistress? Have I not always respected you as my sister? Why do you represent me falsely, oh, woman, for wicked and impure acts?” And then, smiling, she said to him, “For a righteous man like you desire alone is a great sin; but pray to God and he will pardon your sins and those of all your household and those of all the saints.” After she had said these words, the heavens were closed, and Hermas was afraid. “If this is to be looked on as sin, how is it possible to be saved?”

As he was plunged in these reflections, he saw before him a great armchair covered with white cloth. An aged female, richly dressed, having a book in her hand, came and sat down in it. Having saluted Hermas by name, “Why are you sad, Hermas—you who are usually so patient, equable, and always smiling?” “I am,” said Hermas, “under the stroke of reproaches from a very virtuous woman, who has told me that I have sinned regarding her.” “Ah, fie!” said she to me, “that this evil should be on the part of one of God’s servants—a man respectable and well tried, the chaste, simple, and innocent Hermas! Perhaps, indeed, there has some sentiment taken possession of your heart on the subject. But that is not the reason God is angry with you.” The good Hermas breathed hard while the old woman informed him that the true cause of God’s anger was his weakness as the father of a family. He did not restrain his wife and children with sufficient severity; this was the cause of the ruin of his temporal affairs. The old woman then read out of her book some terrible words which Hernias did not remember, and finished by some good words which he recollected.

The following year, at the same period, as he went to his country house at Cuma, Hermas saw the same old woman walking and reading a little book. She explained to him the object of the book, which was to exhort all men to repentance, for the times of persecution were drawing very near. A handsome young man appeared. “Who, do you think, is that old woman from whom you have received the book?” “The sibyl perhaps,” answered Hermas, his mind pre-occupied by the neighbourhood of Cuma. “No; she is the Church.” “Why then is she old?” “Because she has been first created, and the world has been made for her.” The old woman enjoined Hermas to send two copies of the book—the one to Clement, the other to the Deaconess Grapte. “Clement,” said she, “will address the book to the cities without, for there is in that his special work. Grapte will send it to the widows and orphans, and you will read it in the city for the elders who preside over the Church. This little book is naturally the work of the pretended Hermas. The heavenly origin of it is thus attested.”

The third vision is more mysterious. The old woman appeared again to Hermas, after some fasts and prayers. They arranged to meet in the country. Hermas arrived first; to his great astonishment he found himself in front of an ivory bench; on the bench was placed a linen pillow, covered with very fine gauze. He began to pray and confess his sins. The old woman arrived with six young people. She made Hermas sit at her left (the right being reserved for those who have suffered for God the lash, the prison, tortures, the cross, the wild beasts). Hermas then saw the six young men build a square tower, emerging from the bosom of the water. Some thousands of men served them, and brought the stones to them. Among the stones, those drawn from the channel of the water were hewn. Those were the most perfect; they joined so well that the tower appeared a monolith. Among the others, the young men made a selection. Around the tower was a pile of rubbishy materials, either because they had defects, or because they were not cut as they should have been.

“The tower,” said the old woman, “is the Church—that is, I, who have appeared to you, and who shall appear to you again. . . The six young men are the angels created first, to whom the Lord has entrusted the care of developing and governing his creation; those who carry the stones are the inferior angels. The beautiful white stones, which are dressed no finely, are the apostles, bishops, doctors, deacons, living or dead, who have been chaste, and who have lived on a good understanding with the faithful. The stones which are drawn from the channel of the water, represent those who have suffered death for the name of the Lord. Those which have been rejected, and remain near the tower, represent those who have sinned, and who wish to repent. If they did this while the building was going on they might be employed in it; but once the building is completed, they are of no more use. The stones which are broken and rejected are the wicked there is no more place for them. Those which are thrown to a distance from the tower, which roll into the road, and from thence into the wilderness, are the unsteady, who, after they have believed, have quitted the true path. Those which fall near the water and cannot enter it, are the souls who desire baptism, but recoil before the holiness of religion and the necessity of renouncing their lusts. As to the beautiful white but round stones, and which cannot in consequence be used in a square building, these are the rich who have embraced the faith. When persecution comes, their riches and business make them renounce the Lord. They will be useless to the building except when their riches are curtailed, just as to make a round stone enter into a square construction, it would be necessary to cut off a large portion. Judge this by yourself, Hermas; when you were rich you were useless, now that you are ruined, you are useful and fit to live.”

Hermas asks his informant as to the proximity more or less of the consummation of the times. “Fool,” replies the old woman, “do you not see that the tower is yet being built? When it shall be finished, the end will be; now it advances towards completion. Ask no more!”

The fourth vision is again on the Campanian Way. The Church, which has appeared up till now throwing aside all the signs of old age, and with all the marks of rejuvenation, now appears in the style of a girl wonderfully arrayed. A frightful monster (perhaps Nero) would have devoured her, but for the help of the angel Thegri, who presides over the fierce beasts. This monster is the herald of a fearful persecution which is at hand. Some tortures shall be passed through which nothing but purity of heart can enable one to escape. The world shall perish in fire and blood.

There is here only the mise en scene, in some sense preliminary. The essential part of the book commences with the appearance of a venerable personage in shepherd dress, clothed with a white beast’s skin, with a scrip hung on his shoulders, and a crook in his hand. It is the guardian angel of Hermas, clothed as the angel of penitence, who is sent by the venerable angel to be his companion all the rest of his life. This shepherd, who now takes speech till the end of the book, recites a little treatise on Christian morals, embellished with symbols and apologues. Chastity is the favourite virtue of the author. To think of another woman than one’s own wife is a crime. A man ought to take back his wife after her first act of adultery, expiated by repentance, but not after her second. Second marriages are permissible, but it is better not to involve oneself in them. The good conscience of Hermas shows in his taste for gaiety. Gaiety is a virtue, sadness distresses the Holy Spirit, and chases him from a soul, for the spirit is given joyfully to man. The continually sad prayer of a man does not go up to God. Sadness is like the drop of vinegar, which spoils the good wine. God is good, and the commandments impossible without him are easy with him. The devil is powerful, but he has no power over the true believer.

An affecting asceticism filled up the entire life of the Christian. The cares of business hindered from the service of God: it was necessary to withdraw from these. Fasting is recommended: now fasting consists in withdrawing every morning to one’s retreat; in purifying one’s thoughts from the remembrances of the world; in not eating all day anything but bread and water; in saving what you might have spent, and giving it to the widows and orphans, who will pray for you. Repentance is necessary even to the righteous for their venial sins. Certain severe angels are charged with over-looking them, and with punishing not only their sins but even those of their family. All the misfortunes of life were held to be chastisements inflicted by these angels on “penitenital pastors.” The penitent should afflict himself voluntarily, should humble himself, seek adversities and sorrows, or at least accept those which come upon him, as expiations. It would seem, according to this view, that penitence imposes on God—forces his hand. No, penitence is a gift of God. To those whom God foresees to be going to sin still, he does not accord the favour.

In the weighty questions relating to public penitence, Hermas avoids exaggerated severity; he has comparisons which shall irritate Tertullian, and give him, on the part of that fanatic, the name of “the friend of adulterers.” He explains the delay in the appearing of Christ by a decree of the mercy of God which allows sinners the chance of a last and definitive appeal. He who has blasphemed Christ to escape punishment, those who have denounced their brethren, are dead for ever: they resemble dry branches into which the sap can no longer ascend; but yet is their lot irrevocable? In certain cases, mercy is brought into the author’s mind; for the sons of Hermas, who were blasphemers of Christ and traitors to the Church, were admitted to pardon, for their father’s sake. Those who have simply denied Jesus can repent. “As to him who has denied from the heart,” says Hermas, “I do not know if he can live.” It is necessary also to distinguish the past from the future. To those who henceforth would deny Christ, there is no pardon; but those who had this misfortune before may be admitted to penitence. Sinners who have not blasphemed God nor betrayed his servants may return to penitence; but they hasten onwards; death threatens; the tower is about to be finished, and then the stones which have not been employed would be irrevocably rejected. For great crimes, there is but one repentance; for the lesser faults, it is allowable to repent more than once; but he who is constantly falling is a suspected penitent, and penitence will serve him in no wise.

A perfume of chastity, somewhat unhealthy, is breathed from the vision of the mountain of Arcadia, and the twelve virgins. The fêtes which are given in the dream, one would say, were the imagination of a poor faster. Twelve beautiful girls, fine and strong as caryatides, stand at the gate of the future temple, and pass the stones for the construction with their open arms.

“Thy shepherd will not come to-night,” they said “if he does not come thou wilt remain with us.” “No,” said I to them; “if he does not come, I shall return home, and to-morrow I will come back.” “Thou shouldst confide in us,” they replied; “thou canst not leave as!” “Where would you have me remain?” “Thou shalt sleep with us like a brother, and not as a man,” they answered; “for thou art our brother henceforth; we shall remain with you, for we love you very much” I blushed to remain in their company, but, lo! she who seemed to be their leader, began to embrace me; seeing which, the others imitated, causing me to make the tour of the building, and to play with me. And, as I was young, I began also to play with them. Some executed choruses, some danced, and others sang. As for me, I walked silently with them round the building, and was joyful with them. As it was late, I wished to return to the house, but they would not allow me, and I remained with them over night, sleeping by the side of the tower. The virgins had stretched out their linen tunics on the ground, and did nothing but pray. I prayed also with them incessantly, and the virgins rejoiced to see me pray thus: and I remained there till next morning at the second hour with the virgins. Then the shepherd arrived, and he addressed himself to them, “You have not done him any harm?” asked he, looking at them. “My lord,” I said to him, “I have only had the pleasure of abiding with them.” “Of what have you eaten? said he. “My lord,” said I to him; “I have lived all the night on the words of the Lord.” “Did they receive you well?” asked he. “Yes, my lord,” said I to him.

Those virgins are the “holy spirits,” the gifts of the Holy Ghost, the spiritual powers of the Son of God, and also the fundamental virtues of the Christian. A man cannot be saved except through these. The guardian angel of Hermas giving good testimony to the purity of his house—the twelve virgins who wish to have extreme propriety around them, and are repelled by the slightest defilement, consent to dwell there. Hermas promises that they shall always have with him a residence suited to their tastes.

CHAPTER XXII.

ORTHODOX ASIA—POLYCARPUS.

Although Asia was already disturbed by the sectarian spirit, it nevertheless continued to be, next to Rome, the province in which Christianity flourished the most. It was the most pious country in the world; the country in which credulity offered to the inventors of new religions the most fertile field. To become a god was a very easy matter; incarnations, the terrestrial alternations of the immortals, were looked upon as ordinary events: every kind of imposture succeeded. People were still full of the recollection of Apollonius of Tyana—the legend regarding him increased day by day. An author, who took the name of Mœragenes, wrote the most marvellous stories about him; then a certain Maximus of Æges composed a book exclusively devoted to the extraordinary things which Apollonius had done at ages in Cilicia. In spite of the railleries of Lucian, “the tragedy,” as he calls it, succeeded astonishingly. Later, about the year 200, Philostratus wrote at the request of the Syrian lady, Julia Domna, that insipid romance which passed for an exquisite hook, and which, according to a very serious Pagan writer, should have been entitled, “Sojourn of a God among Men.” Its success was immense. Because of it, Apollonius came to be considered as the first of sages, a veritable friend of the gods, as a god himself. His image was to be seen in the sanctuaries; temples were even dedicated to him. His miracles, his beautiful speeches, afforded edification for all classes. He was a sort of Christ of Paganism; and undoubtedly the intention of opposing an ideal of beneficent holiness to that of the Christians was not foreign to his apotheosis. In the last days of the struggle between Christianity and Paganism he was compared only to Jesus, and his life, as revealed in his letters, was preferred to the Gospels, the work of grosser minds. A Paphlagonian charlatan, Alexander of Abonoticus, attained through his assurance a success no less prodigious. He was a very handsome man. He had a superb presence, a most melodious voice, hair of enormous length, which it was pretended he had inherited from Perseus, and passed as one who predicted the future with the frantic enthusiasm of the ancient soothsayers. He enclosed a small serpent in a goose’s egg, broke the egg before the multitude, and made believe that it was an incarnation of Esculapius, who had chosen for his abode the city of Abonoticus. The god attained maturity in a few days. The people of Abonoticus were astonished soon to see on a canopy an enormous serpent with a human head, splendidly clothed, opening and closing its mouth and brandishing its sting. It was Alexander himself who was thus decked out, he having coiled round his chest and about his neck a tame serpent, whose tail hung down in front. He had made himself a head of linen, which he had besmeared artistically enough; and by means of horse hair he made the jaws and the sting move. The new god was called Glycon, and people came from every part of the empire to consult it. Abonoticus became the centre of unbridled thaumaturgy. The result was an abundant manufacture of painted images, talismans, idols of silver and of bronze, which had an extraordinary popularity. Alexander was powerful enough to raise in his district a genuine persecution against the Christians and the Epicureans who refused to believe in him. He established a cult which, in spite of its wholly charlatanistic and even obscene character, had much vogue, and attracted a multitude of religious people. But the most singular thing of all was that Romans of high standing, such as Severian, legate of Cappadocia, and Rutilianus, a man of consular dignity, one of the first men of his time, were his dupes, and that the impostor succeeded in having the name of Abonoticus changed to Ionopolis. He required also that the coinage of that city should bear henceforth on the one side the effigy of Glycon, on the other his own, with the arms of Perseus and of Esculapius. Actually the coins of Abonoticus, at the time of Antonine and Marcus Aurelius, bore the figure of a serpent with the head of a man with long hair and beard, and on the obverse the word ΓΛΥΚΟΝ. The coins of the same city, with the medal of Lucius Verus, bore the serpent and the name ΙΩΝΟΠΟΛΕΙΤΩΝ. Under Marcus Aurelius we shall see this ridiculous religion assume an incredible importance. It lasted until the second half of the third century.

Nerullinus, at Troas, succeeded in a fraudulent enterprise of the same kind. His statue uttered oracles, cured maladies; sacrifices were offered to it, and it was crowned with flowers. It was especially the absurd ideas about medicine, the belief in medical dreams, in the oracles of Esculapius, etc., which kept the minds of people in that state of superstition. We are dumfounded at seeing Galian himself addicted to similar follies. More incredible still is the career of that Ælius Aristides, religious sophist, devout Pagan, a sort of bishop or saint, pressing pious materialism and credulity to its utmost limits; yet this did not prevent him from being one of the most admired and most honoured men of his age. The Epicureans alone repudiated these follies unreservedly. There were still some men of intellect, such as Celsus, Lucian, Demonax, who could laugh at it. Soon, however, there shall be no more such, and credulity will reign mistress over a debased world. The name of Atheist was dangerous, for it put him to whom it was attributed without the pale of the law, and exposed him even to the scaffold; yet one was an Atheist because he denied the local superstitions and stood up against charlatans. We can conceive how such devices must have been favourable to the propagation of Christianity. We do not perhaps exaggerate much when we admit that nearly the half of the population had avowed Christianity. In certain cities, such as Hierapolis, Christianity was publicly professed. Some inscriptions, still decipherable, attest beneficent foundations which were to be distributed at Easter and at Pentecost. Co-operative associations of workmen, societies for mutual succour, were there skilfully organised. These manufacturing cities, which contained for a long time colonies of Jews, who perhaps had carried with them thence the industries of the East, were ready to receive every social idea of the age. Works of charity were wonderfully developed. Nursing institutions and establishments for foundlings were there. The labourer, so depised in ancient times, attained, through association, to dignity of existence and to happiness. That interior life, all the more active because it was not disturbed by politics, made of Asia Minor a field closed to all the religious strifes of the times. The directions in which the Church was divided there were singularly visible; for nowhere else was the Church in such a state of fermentation, or showed its internal labour more distinctly. Conservatives and Progressists, Judeo-Christians and enemies of Judaism, Millenarians and Spiritualists, were there opposed as two armies, who, after having fought, finished by breaking their ranks and fraternising together. There had lived, or was still living, a whole Christian world which did not know St Paul. Papias, the most narrow-minded of the Fathers of his times; Melito, almost as materialistic as he; the ultra-conservative Polycarpus; the presbyteri who taught Irenæus his unpolished Millenarianism; the chiefs of the Montanist movement, who pretended to have witnessed again the scenes of the first supper at Jerusalem. There too were to be found, or had come thence, the men who had most boldly launched themselves into innovations—the author of the fourth Gospel, Cerdo, Marcion, Praxeas, Noetus, Apollinarius of Hierapolis, the Aloges, who, full of aversion for the Apocalypse, Millenarianism, Montanism, gave the hand to Gnosticism and to philosophy. Spiritual exercises which had disappeared elsewhere, continued to flourish in Asia. They had prophets there—a certain Quadratus, and one Amnia of Philadelphia.

People gloried especially over the considerable number of martyrs and confessors. Asia Minor witnessed numerous executions, in particular crucifixions. The different Churches made a boast of this, alleging that persecution was the privilege of truth; a matter that is debateable, seeing that all those sects had martyrs; at times, the Marcionites and Montanists had more than the orthodox. No calumny then was spared by the latter in order to depreciate the martyrs of their rivals. These enmities endured to the death. We see the confessors, while expiring for the same Christ, turning their backs on one another, in order to avoid all that might resemble a mark of communion. Two martyrs, born at Eumenia, namely, Caine and Alexander, who were executed at Apamea Kibotos, went the length of taking the most minute precautions in order that it might not be thought that they adhered to the inspirations of Montanus and of his wives. Such conduct shocks us, but we must not forget that, according to the opinions of the times, the last words and the last acts of martyrs possessed a high importance. Martyrs were consulted on questions of orthodoxy; from the depths of their dungeons they reconciled dissentients, and gave certificates of absolution. They were regarded as being charged by the Church with the rôle of pacificators, and with a sort of doctrinal mission.

Far from being hurtful to propagandism, these divisions were serviceable to it. The churches were rich and numerous. Nowhere else did the episcopate contain so many capable, moderate, and courageous men. We may cite Thraseas, Bishop of Eumenia; Sagaris, Bishop of Laodicea; Papirius, whose birthplace is not known; Apollinaris of Hierapolis, who was destined to play a considerable part in the capital controversies which were soon to divide the Churches of Asia; Polycrates, the future Bishop of Ephesus, the descendant of a family seven members of which before him had been bishops. Sardis possessed a real treasure, the learned Bishop Melito, who already had prepared himself for the vast labours which, later on, rendered his name celebrated. Like Origen, at a subsequent date, he was anxious that his chastity should be distinctly attested. His erudition resembled much that of Justin and of Tatian. His theology had also a little of the materialistic dulness which was a characteristic of these two doctors; for he thought that God had a body. He appears to have been reproached by Papias for his apocalyptic ideas. Miltiades, on his part, was a laborious author, a zealous polemic, who struggled against the heathen, the Jews, the Montanists, the ecstatic prophets, and made an apology for Christian philosophy, which he addressed to the Roman authorities.

The aged Polycarpus, in particular, enjoyed high authority at Smyrna. He was more than an octogenarian, and it would seem that he was believed to have inherited his longevity from the Apostle John. He was accredited with the gift of prophecy: it was alleged that each word that he uttered would come to pass. He himself lived in the belief that the world was full of visions and of presages. Night and day he prayed, including in his prayers the wants of the entire world. As everybody admitted that he had lived several years with the Apostle John, people believed that they still possessed in him the last witness of the apostolic age. People surrounded him; everybody sought to please him; a mark of his esteem was regarded as a high favour. His person was charming in the extreme. The docile Christians adored him; a band of disciples and of admirers pressed around him, eager to render him every service. But he was not popular in the city. His intolerance, the pride of orthodoxy, which he did not pretend to dissimulate, and which he communicated to his disciples, wounded deeply both the Jews and the heathen; the latter knew but too well that the disdainful old man looked upon them as wretches.

Polycarpus had all the peculiarities of an old man; he had a certain manner of acting and speaking which made a vivid impression on young auditors. His conversation was fluent, and when he went to sit down on the place which he affected—doubtless one of the terraces of the slopes of Mount Pagus, whence one could see the sparkling gulf, and its beautiful surrounding of mountains, it was known beforehand what he was going to say. “John and others who have seen the Lord;” this was the way in which he always commenced. He would tell about the intimacy he had had with them, what he had heard them say about Jesus, and about his preaching. An echo of Galilee was thus made to resound, at a distance of a hundred and twenty years, upon the shores of another sea. He repeated constantly that those men had been ocular witnesses, and that he had seen them. He made no more difficulty than did the Evangelists in regard to borrowing from the presbyteri the maxims best adapted to the second century, at the epoch in which they were reputed to have lived. To so many other obscure traditions in regard to the origins of Christianity, a new source, more troublesome than the others, was now about to be added.

The impression which Polycarpus produced was not less profound. A long time after, his disciples would remind one another of the bench on which he sat, his gait, his habits, his bodily peculiarities, his manner of speaking. Every one of his words were graven on their hearts. Now in the circle which surrounded him there was a young Greek, of about fifteen years of age, who was destined to play one of the leading parts in ecclesiastical history. His name was Irenæus, who afterwards transmitted to us the image—doubtless often false, yet, at the same time, in many respects very vivid—of the last days of the apostolic world, whose setting sun he had, in a sort of way, been a witness of. Irenæus was born a Christian, which did not prevent him from frequenting the schools of Asia, where he acquired an extensive knowledge of the poets, and of the profane philosophers, especially of Homer and of Plato. He had for a young friend and co-disciple, if one may so express oneself, near the old man, a certain Florinus, who held a somewhat important posit on at court, and who, subsequently, embraced at Rome the Gnostic ideas of Valentinus.

Polycarpus, in the eyes of every one, was regarded as the perfect type of orthodoxy. His doctrine was the materialistic Millenarianism of the old apostolic school. Far from having broken with Judaism, he conformed to the practices of the moderate Judeo-Christians. He resented the foolish embellishments which the Gnostics had introduced into the Christian teaching, and appears to have ignored the Gospel which in his time already circulated under the name of John. He held to the simple and unctuous manner of the apostolic catechesis, and would not have anything at all added to it. Everything that had the resemblance of a new idea put him beside himself. His hatred of heretics was intense, and some of the anecdotes which he delighted to tell about John were destined to make the violent intolerance which, in his opinion, formed the basis of the apostle’s character, appear in a strong light. When any one dared to give vent in his presence to some doctrine analogous to that of the Gnostics, some theory calculated to introduce a little of rationalism into the Christian theology, he would get up, stop his ears, and take to flight, exclaiming, “Oh, good God, to what times hast thou reserved me, that I should have to put up with such language!” Irenæus was permeated to a large extent with the same spirit, but the sweetness of his character served to correct it in practice. The idea of holding fast to the apostolic teaching became the basis of orthodoxy, in opposition to the presumption of the Gnostics and Montanists, who pretended to have re-discovered the actual doctrine of Jesus, which, in their opinion, had been corrupted by his immediate disciples.

Following the example of Paul, Ignatius, and other celebrated pastors, Polycarpus wrote many letters to the neighbouring Churches and to individuals, in order to instruct and exhort them. Only one of these letters has been preserved to us. It is addressed to the faithful at Philippi, as touching some confessors who were destined to martyrdom, who chanced to be with them on their way from Asia to Rome. Like all the apostolic or pseudo-apostolic writings, it is a short treatise addressed to each of the classes of the faithful which composed the Church. Some serious doubts might be raised against the authenticity of this epistle if it were not certain that Irenæus had known it, and held it to be a work of Polycarpus. Without this authority, we should rank this short treatise with the epistles of St Ignatius, in that class of writings of the end of the second century by which it was sought to cover, by the most revered names, the anti-Agnostic doctrines, and those which were favourable to the episcopate. The document, which is somewhat commonplace, possesses nothing that is specially befitting the character of Polycarpus. The imitation of the apostolic writings, particularly the false Epistles to Titus and Timothy, the first of Peter, and the Epistles of John, makes itself fully felt in it. The author makes no distinction between the authentic writings of the apostles and those which have been attributed to them. He evidently knew the Epistle of St Clement by heart. The way in which lie reminds the Philippians that they have an epistle from Paul, is suspicious. What singular things all those hypotheses are! The Gospel attributed to John is not cited, whilst a phrase of the pseudo-Johannine epistle is brought in. Docility, submission to the bishop, enthusiasm for martyrdom, after the example of Ignatius, horror of heresies, which, like Docetism, overthrew the faith in the reality of Jesus; such were the dominant ideas of the author. If Polycarpus is not the author, we can at least say that if he had been resuscitated a few years after his death, and had seen the compositions which were read as his, he would not have protested, and would have even found that people had correctly enough interpreted his thoughts. Irenæus at Lyons may have been deceived in this matter like every one else. If it was an error, he recognised in this fragment the perfect character of the faith and the teaching of his master.

Polycarpus, in those years of extreme old age, was regarded as the President of the Church of Asia. Some grave questions, which at first had barely been stated, began to agitate these Churches. With his ideas of hierarchy and of ecclesiastical unity, Polycarpus naturally thought of turning towards the Bishop of Rome, to whom almost the whole world about that time acknowledged a certain authority in composing the divisions in Churches. The controversial points were numerous; it appears, moreover, that the two heads of the Churches—Polycarpus and Anicetus—had some petty grievances against one another. One of the questions in controversy was in regard to the celebration of Easter. In the early days, all the Christians continued to make Easter their principal feast. They celebrated that feast on the same day as the Jews, the 14th Nisan, no matter on what day of the week that day fell. Persuaded, according to the allegations of all the ancient Gospels, that Jesus, on the eve of his death, had eaten the Passover with his disciples, they regarded such a solemnity rather as a commemoration of the supper than as a memorial of the resurrection. When Christianity became separated more and more from Judaism, such a manner of viewing it was found to be much out of place. First, a new tradition was circulated, according to which Jesus before his death had not eaten the Passover; but died on the same day as the Jewish Passover, thus substituting himself for the Paschal Lamb. Besides this, that purely Jewish feast wounded the Christian conscience, especially in the Churches of St Paul. The great feast of the Christians was the resurrection of Jesus, which occurred, in any case, the Sunday after the Jewish Passover. According to this idea, the feast was celebrated on the Sunday which followed the Friday next after the 14th of Nisan.

At Rome this practice prevailed, at least from the pontificates of Xystus and Telesphoros (about 120). In Asia, people were much divided. Conservatives like Polycarpus, Melito, and all the old school, held to the ancient Jewish practice, in conformity with the first Gospels and with the usage of the Apostles John and Philip. It hence happened that people did not pray or fast on the same days. It was not till about twenty years after that this controversy attained in Asia the proportions of a schism. At the epoch in which we now are, it had only just had its birth, and was no doubt one of the least important among the questions about which Polycarpus felt himself obliged to go to Rome to have an interview with Pope Anicetus. Perhaps Irenæus and Florinus accompanied the old man on that journey, which being undertaken during the summer, according to the customs of navigation of the age, had nothing fatiguing about it. The interview between Polycarpus and Anicetus was very cordial. The discussion upon certain points appears to have been somewhat lively; but they understood one another. The question of Easter had not yet reached maturity. For a long time before this, the Church of Rome had acted upon the principle of exhibiting in this matter great tolerance. Conservatives of the Jewish order, when they came to Rome, practised their rites without anybody finding fault with them, or without causing any one to cease fraternising with them. The Bishops of Rome sent the Eucharist to some of the bishops who followed in this particular another rule. Polycarpus and Anicetus observed between them the same rule. Polycarpus could not persuade Anicetus to renounce a practice which the Bishops of Rome had followed before him. Anicetus, on his part, forebore when Polycarpus said to him that he held by the rule of John and the other apostles with whom he had lived upon a footing of familiarity. The two religious chiefs continued in full communion with one another, and Anicetus even bestowed on Polycarpus an honour almost unexampled. He was willing, in fact, that Polycarpus should, in the assembly of the faithful at Rome, pronounce instead of him, and in his presence, the words of the eucharistic consecration. These ardent men were full of too passionate a sentiment to rest the unity of souls upon the uniformity of rites and exterior observances. Later, Rome will display the greatest pertinacity to make her rites prevail To speak the truth, the point at issue, in this matter of Easter, was not merely a simple difference of calendar. The Roman rite, in choosing for its base the grand Christian festival the anniversaries of the death and the resurrection of Jesus, created the holy week—that is to say, a whole cycle of consecrated days, to the mysterious commemorations during which fasting was continued. In the Asiatic rite, on the contrary, the fast terminated on the evening of the 14th Nisan: Good Friday was no longer a day of sadness. If that usage had prevailed, the scheme of the Christian festivals would have been arrested in its development.

The orthodox bishops had still too many common enemies for them to pay attention to pitiful liturgic rivalries. The Gnostic and Marcionite sects inundated Rome, and threatened to put the orthodox Church in a minority. Polycarpus was the declared adversary of such ideas. Like Justin, with whom he was probably in accord, he inveighed fiercely against the sectaries. The rare privilege which he possessed of having seen the immediate disciples of Jesus, gave him an immense authority. He pleaded, as was his custom, the teaching of the apostles, of which he alleged he was the only living auditor, and maintained as a simple rule of faith the tradition which ascended by an unbroken chain to Jesus himself. Nor was he free from rudeness. One day he encountered in a public place a man who, for a thousand reasons, should have commanded his respect—Marcion himself. “Do you not recognise me? “ said the latter to him. “Yes,” responded the passionate old man; “I recognise the first-born of Satan.” Irenæus cannot enough admire this response, which shows how very narrow the Christian mind had already become. Jesus had much more wisely remarked: “He who is not for you is against you.” Is one always quite sure of not being oneself the first-born of Satan? How much more wise it is, instead of anathematising at first him who chooses a different path from oneself, to apply oneself to discover in what points one may be right, what method he employs in looking at things, and if there is not in his manner of observing some grain of truth that one ought to assimilate.

But that tone of assurance exercises a great efficacy upon semi-cultured men. Many Valentinians and Marcionites saw Polycarpus at Rome, and returned to the orthodox Church. Polycarpus hence left in the capital of the world a venerated name. Irenæus and Florinus in all probability remained at Rome after the departure of their master; these two minds, so different from one another, were destined to pursue paths the most opposite.

An immense result was accomplished. The rule of' prescription was laid down. The true doctrine will henceforth be that which is generally professed by the apostolic Churches, which it has always been. Quod semper quod ubique. Between Polycarpus and Valentin the matter is quite clear. Polycarpus held to the apostolic tradition; Valentin, whatever he may say himself, has not got it. Individual Churches formed by their union the Catholic Church, the absolute depository of the truth. He who prefers his own ideas to those of this universal authority is a sectary, a heretic.

CHAPTER XXIII.

MARTYRDOM OF POLYCARPUS.

Polycarpus returned to Symrna, as far as we can make out, in the autumn of 154. A death worthy of him awaited him there. Polycarpus had always professed the doctrine that one ought not to court martyrdom; but many people who were not possessed of his virtue were not so prudent as he. To be in the vicinage of the sombre enthusiasts of Phrygia was dangerous. A Phrygian named Quintus, a Montanist formerly, came to Smyrna and attracted a few enthusiasts, who followed his example of self-denunciation, and provoked penal condemnation. Sensible men blamed them, and said, with good reason, that the Gospel did not demand such a sacrifice. Besides these fanatics, several Smyrniote Christians were also imprisoned. Amongst them were found some Philadelphians, whom either accident had conducted to Smyrna or whom the authorities, after arresting them, had caused to be transferred to Smyrna—a city of very considerable importance, in which were celebrated great games. The number of those so detained was about a dozen. According to the hideous usage of the Romans, it was in the stadium, in default of an amphitheatre, that their execution took place.

The tortures endured by these unfortunates were of the most horribly atrocious character. Some were so lacerated by whips that their veins, their arteries, and the whole of their intestines were exposed. Onlookers wept over them, but they could not extort from them either a murmur or a plaint. The idea was hence spread abroad that the martyrs of Christ, during the torture, were separated from the body, and that Christ himself assisted them, and spoke with them. Fire produced on them the effect of a delicious coolness. Exposed to wild beasts, dragged over sand full of jagged shells, they appeared insensible to pain.

One only succumbed, and that was rightly the one who had compromised the others. The Phrygian was punished for his boasting. In sight of the wild beasts he began to tremble. The men of the pro-consul who surrounded him urged him to give in; he consented to take the oath and the sacrifice. In that the faithful saw a sign from heaven, and the condemnation of those who of their own accord sought for death. Such conduct, arising from pride, was considered as a sort of defiance of God. It was admitted that the courage to endure martyrdom came from on high, and that God, in order to demonstrate that he was the source of all strength, was pleased sometimes to show the greatest examples of heroism in those who, put to the proof, had been, distrustful of themselves, almost cowards.

People admired especially a young man named Germanicus. He gave to his companions in agony an example of superhuman courage. His struggle with the wild beasts was admirable. The pro-consul, Titus Statius Quadratus, a philosophic and moderate man, a friend of Ælius Aristides, exhorted him to take pity on his own youth. He thereupon set himself to excite the wild beasts, to call to them, to tease them, in order that they might despatch him more quickly from a perverse world. Such heroism, far from touching the multitude, only irritated it. “Death to Atheists! Let Polycarpus be brought!” was the general cry.

Polycarpus, although blaming the foolish act of Quintus, had not at first any desire to flee. Yielding to eager solicitations, he consented, however, to withdraw into a small country house, situated at no great distance from the city, where he passed several days. They came thither to arrest him. He quitted the house precipitately and took refuge in another; but a young slave, when put to the torture, betrayed him. A detachment of mounted police came to take him. It was a Friday evening, the 22d February, at dinner-hour, the old man was at table in an upper room of the villa; he might still have escaped, but he said, “Let God’s will be done!” He quietly came downstairs, spoke with the police, gave them something to eat, and asked only an hour in which to pray unmolested. He made then one of those long prayers to which he was accustomed, in which he included the whole Catholic Church. The night was passed in this manner. The following morning, Saturday, 23d February, he was placed upon an ass, and they departed with him.

Before reaching the city, Herod, the Irenach, and his father Nicetas, appeared in a carriage. They had had some relations with the Christians. Alces, sister of Nicetas, appears to have been affiliated with the Church. They, it is said, placed the old man in the carriage between them, and attempted to gain him over. “What harm can it be,” said they, “in order to save one’s life, to say Kyrios Kesar, to make sacrifice, and the rest?” Polycarpus was inflexible. It seems that the two magistrates then flew into a passion, said hard words to him, and ejected him so rudely from the carriage as to peel the skin off his leg.

He was taken to the stadium, which was situated about midway up Mount Pagus. The people were already assembled there; there was a tumultuous noise. At the moment the old man was brought in, the noise redoubled; the Christians alone heard a voice from heaven saying: “Be strong, be manly, Polycarpus!” The bishop was led to the pro-consul, who employed the ordinary phrases in such circumstances.

“From the respect that thou owest to thy age, etc., aware by the fortune of Cæsar, cry as every one does, ‘Death to Atheists’”

Polycarpus thereupon cast a severe look upon the multitude which covered the steps, and pointed to them with his hand.

“Yes, certainly,” said he, “no more Atheists,” and he raised his eyes to heaven with a deep sigh. “Insult Christ,” said Statius Quadratus.

“It is now eighty-six years that I have served him, and he has never done me any injury,” said Polycarpus. “I am a Christian. If thou wishest to know what it is to be a Christian,” added he, “grant me a day’s delay, and give me thy attention.”

“Persuade, then, the people to that,” responded Quadratus.

“With thee it is worth one’s while to discuss,” responded Polycarpus. “We hold it as a principle to render to the powers and to the established authorities, through God, the honours which are their due, provided that these marks of respect do no injury to our faith. As for these people there, I will never deign to condescend to make my apology to them.”

The pro-consul threatened him in vain with wild beasts and with fire. It was necessary to announce to the people that Polycarpus held obstinately to his faith. Jews and Pagans cried out for his blood.

“Look at him, the doctor of Asia—the father of the Christians,” said the former.

“Behold him, the destroyer of our gods, he who teaches not to sacrifice, not to adore,” said the latter. At the same time they demanded of Philippe of Tralles, asiarch and high priest of Asia, to let loose a lion upon Polycarpus. Philippe drew attention of the multitude to the fact that the games with the wild beasts were at an end.

“To the fire, then!” So was the shout which went up from all sides. The people dispersed themselves amongst the shops and the baths to search for wood and fagots. The Jews, who were numerous at Smyrna, and always strongly incensed against the Christians, exhibited in this work, as usual, a zeal wholly peculiar to them.

While the funeral pile was being made ready, Polycarpus took off his girdle, divested himself of all his garments, and attempted also to take off his shoes. This was not accomplished without some difficulty; for in ordinary times the faithful who surrounded him were in the habit of insisting on relieving him from that trouble, as they were jealous of the privilege of touching him. He was placed in the centre of the apparatus which was used for fixing the victim, and they were about to begin to nail him to it.

“Leave me thus,” said he; “He who gives me the fortitude to endure the fire will bestow on me also the strength to remain immovable on the pile, without its being necessary for you to nail me to it.”

They did not nail him, they simply bound him. So, with his hands tied behind his back, he had the look of a victim; and the Christians who watched him from afar saw in him a ram chosen from amongst the whole flock to be offered up to God as a burnt-offering. During this time he prayed and thanked God for having included him in the number of the martyrs.

The flames then began to rise. The exaltation of the faithful witnesses of this spectacle was at its height. As they were some distance from the pile, they might indulge in the most singular illusions. The fire seemed to them to round itself into a vault above the body of the martyr, and to present the aspect of a ship’s sail filled with the wind. The old man, placed amidst that chapelle ardent, appeared to them not as flesh which burned, but as bread being baked, or as a mass of gold and silver in the furnace. They imagined that they felt a delicious odour like that of incense, or of the most precious perfumes (probably the vine branches, and the light wood of the pile had something to do with this). They even declared afterwards that Polycarpus had not been burned, that the confector was obliged to give him a thrust with a poignard, and that there flowed from the wound so much blood that the fire was extinguished by it.

The Christians naturally attached the greatest value to their possessing the body of the martyr. But the authorities hesitated to give it to them, fearing that the martyr would become the object of a new worship. “They might be capable,” said they, laughing, “of abandoning the Crucified One for him.” The Jews mounted guard near to the funeral pile, to watch what they were going to do. The centurion on duty showed himself favourable to the Christians, and allowed them to take these bones, “more precious than the most precious stones, and than the purest gold.” They were calcined. In order to reconcile this fact with the marvellous recital, they pretended that it was the centurion who had burned the body. They put the ashes into a consecrated place, where people resorted every year to celebrate the anniversary of the martyrdom, and to incite one another to walk in the steps of the holy old man.

The fortitude of Polycarpus made a deep impression on the Pagans themselves. The authorities, not wishing a renewal of similar scenes, put an end to executions. The name of Polycarpus continued to be celebrated at Smyrna, whilst people soon forgot the eleven or twelve Smyrniotes or Philadelphians who had suffered before him. The Churches of Asia and of Galatia, at the news of the death of their great pastor, asked the Smyrniotes for the details of what had taken place. Those of Philomelium, in Phrigian Parorea, exhibited, in particular, a touching zeal. The Church of Smyrna caused one of the elders to write down the account of the martyrdom, in the form of a circular epistle, which was addressed to the different Churches. The faithful of Philomelium, who were not far off, were charged with transmitting the letter to the brethren at a distance.

The copy of the Philomelians, copied by a certain Evarestur, and carried by one named Marcion, served subsequently as the basis of the original edition. As happens frequently in the publication of circular letters, the finales of the different copies were made to dovetail the one into the other. This rare fragment constitutes the most ancient example known of the Acts of Martyrdom. It was the model which people imitated, and which furnished the form and the essential parts of those kinds of compositions. Only the imitations had not the naturalness and simplicity of the original. It seems that the author of the false Ignatian letters had read the Smyrniote epistle. There is the closest connection between these writings, and a great similarity of thought. After Ignatius, Polycarpus was the person who copied the most of the thoughts of the false letters and it is in the true or supposed epistle of Polycarpus that he seeks his point d’appui. The idea that martyrdom is the supreme favour that one ought to seek after, and to request of Heaven, found in the Smyrniote encyclical its first and perfect expression. But the enthusiasm for martyrdom is there kept within the limits of moderation. The author of this remarkable writing loses no occasion to show that true martyrdom, the martyrdom conformable with the Gospel, is that which one does not seek after, but which one expects. The provocation appeared to him so blameable, that he experiences a certain satisfaction in showing that the Phrygian fanatic yielded to the entreaties of the pro-consul, and became an apostate.

Frivolous, light-headed, prone to whimsicalities, Asia turned these tragedies into stories, and made a caricature of martyrdom. About that time there lived a certain Peregrinus, a cynic philosopher of Parium, upon the Hellespont, who called himself Protéus, and in regard to whom people boasted of the facility with which he could assume any character, and undertake any adventure. Among these adventures was that of posing as a bishop and a martyr. Having begun life by committing the most frightful crimes, parricide even, he became a Christian, then a priest, a scribe, a prophet, a thiasarch, and chief of the synagogue. He interpreted the sacred books, as composed by himself; he passed for an oracle, for a supreme authority, in fact, on ecclesiastical rules. He was arrested for that offence, and put in chains. This was the commencement of his apotheosis. From that hour he was adored; people raised heaven and earth to affect his escape, and manifested the greatest anxiety in regard to him. In the mornings, at the prison gate, the widows and orphans gathered to see him. The notables obtained, by means of money, the privilege of passing the night in his society. It was a constant succession of dinners and of sacred feasts; people celebrated the Mysteries in close proximity to him; he was called only “the excellent Peregrinus,” and was looked upon as a new Socrates.

All this took place in Syria. These public scandals delighted the Christians; they spared no effort in such a case to render the manifestation a brilliant affair. Envoys arrived from every town in Asia for the purpose of rendering service to the confessor, and of condoling with him. Money flowed in upon him. But it was found that the governor of Syria was a philosopher; he penetrated the secret of our subject, saw that he had but one idea, that of dying in order to render his name celebrated, and he set him free without punishment. Everywhere in his travels Peregrinus revelled in abundance, the Christians surrounded him, and gave him an escort of honour.

“These imbeciles,” adds Lucian, “were persuaded that they were absolutely immortal, that they would live eternally, which was the reason that they held death in contempt, and that many amongst them offered themselves up as sacrifices. Their first legislator had persuaded them that they were all brothers, from the moment that, denying the Hellenistic gods, they adored the Crucified One, their sophist, and lived according to his laws. They had, then, nothing but disdain for things terrestrial, and they held the latter as belonging to all in common But it were useless to say that they had not a serious reason for believing all this. If, then, some impostor, some crafty man, capable of making use of the situation, came to them, they immediately laid their riches at his feet, while he laughed in his sleeve at the silly fools.”

Peregrinus having exhausted his resources, sought, by means of a theatrical death at the Olympian Games, to satisfy the insatiable desire that he had, to wit: to make people speak of him. Pompous and voluntary suicide was, it is well known, the great reproach which the sage philosophers brought against the Christians.

CHAPTER XXIV.

CHRISTIANITY AMONGST THE GAULS—THE CHURCH OF LYONS.

For a short time it was believed that the death of Polycarpus had put an end to persecution, and it would seem that there was in fact an interval of calm. The zeal of the Smyrniotes was but redoubled; and it is about this time that must be placed the departure of a Christian colony, which, setting out probably from Smyrna, carried the Gospel with a bound into distant countries, where the name of Jesus had not yet penetrated. Pothinus, an old man of seventy, probably a Smyrniote and a disciple of Polycarpus, was, it seems, the chief of this new departure.

For a long time a course of reciprocal communication had been established between the ports of Asia Minor and the shores of the Mediterranean of Gaul. The ancient traces of the Phœnicians were not yet wholly effaced. These populations of Asia and Syria, for whom emigration to the East possessed a great attraction, were fond of ascending the Rhone and the Saone, carrying with them a portable bazaar of divers merchandise, or else stopping on the banks of these great rivers, at spots which held out to them the hope of making a living. Vienne and Lyons, the two principal towns of the country, were mostly the points aimed at by the emigrants, who went into Gaul as merchants, servants, workmen, and even as physicians, whom the peasants amongst the Allobroges and Segusiavii did not possess to the same extent. The laborious and industrial population of the great towns on the banks of the Rhone was in a great part composed of those Orientals, who are more gentle, more intelligent, less superstitious than the indigenous population, and, by reason of their insinuating and amiable manners, capable of exercising upon the former a profound influence. The Roman Empire had broken down the barriers of national sentiment, which prevented different peoples from coming into contact. Certain propaganda which the ancient Gaulish institutions, for example, had laid down from the beginning, had become possible. Rome persecuted, but did not use preventive means, so that, far from being hurtful to the development of an opinion aspiring to be universal, she aided it. These Syrians and Asiatics arrived in the East not knowing any tongue except the Greek. Among themselves they did not cast aside that language; they made use of it in their writings, and in all their personal relations; but they quickly acquired Latin, and even Celtic. Greek, moreover, which continued to be spoken in the region of the lower Rhone, was known to a great extent in Vienne and in Lyons.

These Christians of Lyons and Vienne, in setting out from a very limited region, Asia and Phrygia, being almost all compatriots, and having been instructed by the same books and by the same teachings, afford an instance of rare unity. Their intercourse with the Churches of Asia and Phrygia was frequent: in grave circumstances it was to these Churches that they wrote. Like Phrygians generally, they were ardent pietists; but they had not that sectarian tinge which soon made the Montanists a danger, almost a plague, in the Church. Pothinus, who was at first recognised as the head of the Church of Lyons, was a respectable old man, and moderate even in his enthusiasm.

Attains of Pergamos, who like him was a very old man, appears to have been, after the former, the pillar of the Church and the principal authority. He was a Roman citizen and a rather important personage: he knew Latin, and was recognised in every city as the principal representative of the little community. A Phrygian named Alexander, practising the medical profession, was loved and known by all. Initiated into the pious secrets of the saints of Phrygia, he possessed some of the graces, that is to say, the supernatural gifts, of the apostolic age, which had been revived in his native land. Like Polycarpus, he had reached the highest state of the internal spiritual communion. It was, as we see, a corner of Phrygia which chance had transported bodily into Gaul. The continual accessions coming from Asia maintained that first hold and conserved there the spirit of mysticism which had been its primitive character. As soon as he was able, Irenæus, wearied out perhaps by his struggles with Florimus and Blastus, quitted Rome for this Church, composed entirely of the countrymen, disciples, and the friends of Polycarpus.

Communication between Lyons and Vienne was constant: the two Churches, in reality, were but one, and in both the Greek dominated; but in both likewise there existed between the emigrants of Asia and the indigenous population, who spoke Latin or Celtic, the closest relations. The effect of this familiar preaching in the house and in the workshop was rapid and profound. The women especially felt themselves vehemently carried away by it. The Gaulish nature, naturally sympathetic and religious, promptly embraced the new ideas brought by the strangers. Their religion, at once most idealistic and most materialistic, their belief in perpetual visions, their habit of transforming lively and delicate sensations into supernatural intuitions, suited those races very well which were carried away by religious dreams, and which the insufficient worships of Gaul and Rome could not satisfy. The evangelic ministry was sometimes exercised in the Celtic tongue. It is remarkable that amongst the new converts a great number were Roman citizens.

One of the most important conquests was that of a certain Vettius Epagathus, a young noble Lyonese, who, when he had hardly been affiliated to the Church, excelled everybody in piety and in charity, and became one of the most distinguished amongst them. He led so chaste and so austere a life that he was, in spite of his youth, compared to the aged Zacharias, an ascetic who was constantly visited by the Holy Spirit. Devoted to works of mercy, he became the servant of all, and employed his life to the succour of his neighbours with admirable zeal and fervour. It was believed that the Paraclete dwelt in him, and that he acted in all circumstances under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The recollection left by the virtues of Vettius became a popular tradition, which pretended to ascribe to his family the evangelisation of the neighbouring countries. He was in truth the first-fruits of Christ in Gaul. Sanctus, the deacon of Vienne, and especially the maid-servant Blandina, who was much inferior to him in social dignity, equalled him in earnestness. Blandina, above all, worked miracles. She was so slender of body that it was feared she had not the physical strength sufficient to confess Christ. She displayed, on the contrary, the day when the struggle came, an unexampled nervous force; she wearied out the torturers for a whole day; and it might be said that at each torment she experienced a recrudescence of faith and of life.

Such was this Church, which in a bound attained to the highest privileges of the Christian Churches of Asia, and stood out in the centre of a still semi-barbarous country, like a shining beacon. The Christians of Lyons and Vienne, entrusted with the Gospel of John and of the Apocalypse, without having need of the stammering schools through which Christianity had passed, were carried at the very first to the summit of perfection. Nowhere was life more austere, enthusiasm more serious, the desire to create the kingdom of God more intense. Chilasmus, which had its home in Asia Minor, was not less loudly proclaimed in Lyons. Gaul hence entered the Church of Jesus through a triumph hitherto unequalled. Lyons was designated as the religious capital of that country. Fourvieres and Ainai are the two sacred points of our Christian origins. Fourvieres, at the time of the ecclesiastical annals of which we now speak, was still a city wholly Pagan; as for Ainai (Athanacum) it is allowable to suppose that the Christian souvenirs have some reason for attaching themselves to it. This suburb, situated on the islands at the confluence of the rivers, down the river from the Gaulish and Roman city, came to be the lower part of the town, the place where the Orientals disembarked, and where probably they made some sojourn before settling down. But this was undoubtedly the first Christian quarter, and the very ancient church which is to be seen there, is perhaps of all the edifices in France the one which those who love antique souvenirs ought to visit with the most respect. The Lyonese character from this time forth was sketched with all the features which distinguish it—need of the supernatural, fervour of soul, a taste for the irrational, perversity of judgment, ardent imagination, and a profound and sensual mysticism. With this passionate race, high moral instincts do not spring from reason, but from the heart and the bowels. The origin of the Lyonese school in art and literature was already fully traced in that admirable letter upon the frightful drama of 177. It is beautiful, odd touching, sickly. There is mixed up in it a slight aberration of the senses, a something resembling the nervous quivering of the saints of Pepuza.

The relations of Epagathus with the Paraclete savoured already of the city of spiritualism, the city in which, towards the end of the last century, Cagliostro had a temple. The anæstheses of Blandina, her familiar conversations with Christ, whilst the bull is tossing her into the air; the hallucination of the martyrs, believing that they saw Jesus in their sister, at the end of the arena bound naked to a stake—the whole of this legend which on the one hand transports you away from stoicism and where on the other one approaches the cataleptic state, and to the experiences of Salpetriere, seems a subject invented for those poets, painters, thinkers, wholly original and idealistic, who imagine themselves to paint only the soul, but in reality only dupes of the body. Epictetus deports himself better; he has shown in the battle of life as much heroism as Attalus and as Sanctus, but there is no legend concerning him. The hegemonikon alone says nothing to humanity. Man is a very complex being. One can never charm or arouse the multitude with pure truth: one has never made a great man out of a eunuch, nor a great romance without love.

We shall soon witness the most dangerous chimeras of Gnosticism Ending at Lyons a prompt reception, and almost by the side of Blandina the victims of the seductions of Marcus flee from the Church, or come there to confess their sin, in habits of mourning. The charm of the Lyonese, living in a sort of tender decency and of voluptuous chastity; her seductive reserve, implying the secret idea that beauty is a holy thing; her strange facility for letting herself be captivated by the appearances of mysticism and of pity, produced under Marcus Aurelius scenes which might lead one to think they had taken place in our own times. Marseilles, Arles, and the immediate environs received alike under Antonius a first Christian preaching; Nîmes, on the contrary, appeared to have resisted as long as possible the cult which came from the East.

It was about the same time that Africa witnessed the formation of stable Churches which were soon to constitute one of the most original parties of the new religion. Amongst the first founders of African Christianity, the mystic tinge which in a few years was denominated Montanist was no less strong than amongst the Christians of Lyons. It is probable, nevertheless, that the teaching of the kingdom of God was in this case brought from Rome and not from Asia. The Acts of St Perpetua, and in general the Acts of the Martyrs of Africa—Tertullian, and the other types of African Christianity—have an air of fraternity with Pastor Hermas. Assuredly the first bearers of the good news spoke Greek at Carthage, as they did everywhere else. Greek was almost as widespread in that city as Latin; the Christian community at first made use of both languages; soon, however, the language of Rome predominated. Africa thus gave the first example of a Latin Church. In a few years a brilliant Christian literature was produced in that eccentric idiom which the rude Punic genius had drawn, by the twofold influence of barbarism and rhetoric, from the language of Cicero and of Tacitus. A translation of the works of the Old and New Testaments in that energetic dialect responded to the requirements of the new converts, and was for a long time the Bible of the West.

CHAPTER XXV.

THE STRIFE AT ROME—MARTYRDOM OF ST JUSTIN—FRONTON.

Distressing scenes, the consequence of a vicious legislation, under the reign of one of the best of sovereigns, were taking place everywhere. Sentences of death and the denial of justice multiplied. The Christians were often in the wrong. Severity, and the ardent love of the good, by which they were animated, carried them sometimes beyond the bounds of moderation, and rendered them odious to those whom they censured. The father, the son, the husband, the wife, the neighbour, irritated by these prying spies, revenged themselves by denouncing them. Atrocious calumnies were the consequence of these accumulated hatreds. It was about this time that rumours, which up till then had no particular force, assumed a definite form, and became a rooted opinion. The mystery attaching to the Christian reunions, the mutual affection which reigned in the Church, gave birth to the most foolish notions. They were supposed to form a secret society, to have secrets known only to the initiated, to be guilty of shameful promiscuity, and of loves contrary to nature. Some spoke of the adoration of a god with the head of an ass, others of the ignoble homage rendered to the priest. One story which received general currency was this: They presented to the person who was being initiated an infant covered over with paste, in order to train his hand by degrees to murder. The novice struck, the blood poured forth, all drank eagerly, they divided the trembling limbs, and cemented thus their alliance through complicity, and bound themselves to absolute silence. Then they became drunk, lights were extinguished, and in the darkness they all gave themselves up to the most hideous embracements. Rome was a city much given to slander: a multitude of newsmongers and gossips were on the watch for bizarre tales. Those silly tales were repeated, passed off as being of public notoriety, were transformed into outrages and into caricatures. The serious part about it was this, that in the legal processes to which those accusations gave rise they put to the question slaves belonging to Christian houses—women, young boys—who, overcome by the tortures, said all that was wished of them, and afforded a judicial basis for many odious inventions.

The calumnies, moreover, were reciprocal, the Christians retorting on their adversaries the lies invented against themselves. These sanguinary feasts, these orgies, were practised only by the Pagans. Had not their god set them the example in every kind of vice? In some of the most solemn rites of the Roman worship, in the sacrifices to Jupiter Latiaris, did they not indulge in the shedding of human blood? The accusation was inaccurate, but, for all that, it became one of the bases of apologetic Christianity. The immorality of the gods of ancient Olympus afforded the controversialists an easy triumph. When Jupiter himself was only the pure blue sky, he was immoral like nature herself, and this immorality had no results. But morals had now become the essence of religion; people required of the gods examples of citizen-like integrity; examples like those of which mythology is full yielded only scandalous and irrefutable objections.

Above all things it was the public discussions between the philosophers and the apologist which embittered the minds of people, and led to the gravest disturbances. In those discussions people insulted one another, and, unhappily, the parties were not equal. The philosophers had a sort of official position and state function; they received emoluments for making profession of a wisdom which they did not always teach by their example. They ran no risks, and they were wrong in making their adversaries feel that by saying a word they could extinguish them. The Christians, on their side, jeered at the philosophers for accepting emoluments. Those were insipid pleasantries, analogous to those which we have seen exhibited in our times against salaried philosophers. “Could they not,” said people to one another, “wear their beards gratis!” People affected to believe that they rolled in gold, treated them as sordid wretches, as parasites; people objected to their doctrine, on the ground that they knew how to do without men of their manner of life—a life which appeared as one of opulence to some people even poorer than themselves were.

The ardent Justin was at the head of these noisy altercations, where we see him, towards the end of his life, seconded by a disciple more violent yet than himself, we mean the Assyrian Latianus, a man of a gloomy disposition, and filled with hatred against Hellenism. Born a Pagan, he studied literature extensively, and kept a public school of philosophy, not without obtaining a certain reputation as a teacher. Endowed with a melancholy imagination, Latianus was anxious to possess clear ideas upon things which human destiny interdicted him from acquiring. He had traversed, like his master Justin, the whole circle of existing religions and philosophies, had travelled, wished to be initiated into all the pretended religious secrets, and attended the different schools. Hellenism offended him by its apparent levity of morals. Destitute of all literary sentiment, he was incapable of appreciating their divine beauty. The Scriptures of the Hebrews had alone the privilege of satisfying him. They pleased him by their severe morality, their simple style and assurance, by their monotheistic character, and by the peremptory manner in which they put to one side, by means of the creation dogma, the restless curiosities of physics and metaphysics. His contracted and dull mind had found in them that which it wanted. He became a Christian, and met in St Justin the doctor best fitted to comprehend his passionate philosophy; he attached him closely to him, and was in a manner his second in the contests which he sustained against the sophists and the rhetoricians.

Their usual antagonist was a cynic philosopher named Crescentius, a personage, it seems, contemptible enough, who had made a position at Rome by his ascetic appearance and by his long beard. His declamations against the fear of death did not impede him from often menacing Justin and Tatian, and of denouncing them: “Ah, you own, then, that death is an evil!” said they to him in turn, wittily enough. Certainly Crescentius was wrong in abusing thus the protection of the State to his adversaries. But it must be confessed that Justin did not in that case show him all the consideration he deserved. He treated his adversaries as gourmands and impostors; he was right, nevertheless, in reproaching them with the emoluments they accepted. One can be a pensioner without being, for all that, a niggardly and covetous person. A circumstance which occurred about that time in Rome, showed how dangerous it is to oppose persecution to fanaticism, even where fanaticism is aggressive and tantalising.

There was in Rome a very wicked household, in which the husband and the wife seemed to be rivals in infamy. The wife was converted to Christianity by one Ptolemy, abandoned her evils ways, made every effort to convert her husband, and not succeeding in this, thought of a divorce. She was afraid at being accomplice in the impieties of him with whom she lived united by society, sitting at the same table, and sharing the same couch. In spite of the counsels of her family, she sent to him the notifications required by law, and quitted the conjugal abode. The husband protested, entered an action, pleading that his wife was a Christian. The wife obtained several delays. The husband, irritated, directed, as was natural, all his anger against Ptolemy.

He succeeded through a centurion, a friend of his, in having Ptolemy arrested, and whom he persuaded to ask simply of Ptolemy whether he were a Christian. Ptolemy confessed that he was, and was put in prison. After a very cruel detention he was taken before Quintus Lollius Urbicus, prefect of Rome. He was questioned afresh, and made fresh avowals. Ptolemy was condemned to death. A Christian, named Lucius, present at the hearing, interpellated Urbicus. “How can you condemn a man who is neither adulterer, thief, nor murderer, who is guilty of no other crime than of avowing himself a Christian? Your judgment is indeed little in accord with the piety of our Emperor, and with the sentiments of the philosopher son of Cæsar” (Marcus Aurelius). Lucius having avowed himself a Christian, Urbicus condemned him likewise to death. “Thank you,” responded Lucius; “I am obliged to you; I am about to exchange wicked masters for a father who is king of heaven.” A third auditor was seized with the same contagious fury for martyrdom. He proclaimed himself a Christian, and was ordered to be executed with the two others, Justin was moved extremely by this sanguinary drama. As long as Lollius Urbicus was perfect of Rome, he could not protest; but as soon as that function passed to another, Justin addressed to the senate a fresh apology. His own position became precarious. He felt the danger of having for an enemy a man like Crescentius, who by a word could put him out of the way. It was with the presentiment of a near death that he committed to writing that eloquent defence against the exceptional situation to which the Christians were reduced.

There is something bold in the attitude which an obscure philosopher takes before the powerful body which the provincials never designated otherwise than hiera syncletos, “the holy assembly.” Justin brings back these arrogant people to a sentiment of justice and of truth. The éclat of their pretended dignity may create an illusion in them; but whether they like it or like it not they are the brothers and the fellow-creatures of those whom they prosecute. This persecution is the proof of the truth of Christianity. The best among the Pagans have in like manner been persecuted—Musonius, for example—but what a difference! Whilst Socrates has not had a single disciple who has been put to death for him, Jesus has a multitude of witnesses—artisans, common people, as well as philosophers, men of letters—who have offered up their lives for him.

It is to be regretted that some of the enlightened men of which the senate was then composed did not study these beautiful pages. Perhaps they were turned from them by other passages less philosophic, in particular by the absurd demonomania which bristled in each page. Justin challenges his readers to prove a notorious fact, which was, that people brought to the Christians the possessed whom the Pagan exorcists were unable to heal. He held that to be a decisive proof of the eternal fires in which demons shall one day be punished along with the men who have adored them. One page which ought to shock wholly those whom Justin wished to convert, is the one in which, after having established that the violent measures of Roman legislation against. Christianity were the work of demons, he announces that God will soon avenge the blood of his servants, in annihilating the power of the genii of evil, and in consuming all the world by fire (an idea that the worst wretches made use of for the purpose of disorder and pillage). If God differs, said he, it is only to wait until the number of the elect be complete. Till then, he will allow demons and wicked men to do all the evil that they wish.

That which shows indeed what an amount of simplicity of mind Justin combined with his rare sincerity, is the petition by which he finishes his apology. He requests that there should be given to his writing an official approbation, in order to correct the opinion as to what concerns the Christians. “At least,” says he, “such a publicity would be less objectionable than that which is given every day to foolish farces, obscene writings, ballets, Epicurean books, and other compositions of the same sort, which are represented or are read with entire freedom. We see already how much Christianity shows itself favourable to the most immoderate exercise of authority, when this authority shall have been acquired by it”

Justin touches us more, when he regards death with impassability:—

I fully expect, says be, to see myself denounced some day, and put into the stocks by the people whom I have mentioned, at least by this Crescentius, more worthy of being called the friend of noise and of vain show than the friend of wisdom, who goes about every day affirming of as things of which he knows nothing, accusing us in public of atheism and of impiety, in order to gain the favour of an abused multitude. He must have a very wicked soul to decry us thus, since even the man of ordinary morality makes a point of not passing judgment upon things of which he is ignorant. If he pretends that he is perfectly instructed in our doctrine, it must be that the baseness of his mind has prevented him from comprehending its majesty. If he understood it thoroughly, there is nothing which obliges him to decry it, if it be not the fear of being himself regarded as a Christian. Understand, in fact, that I, having proposed some questions to him on the subject, have clearly perceived, and I have even convinced him that he knows nothing about them. And to demonstrate to the whole world that what I say is the truth, I declare that if you are still ignorant of this dispute I am ready to renew it in your presence. The latter would indeed be a truly royal work. For, if you were to see the questions which I proposed to him and the responses he made to them, you could not doubt his ignorance, nor his little love for the truth.

The forecasts of St Justin were but too well justified. Crescentius denounced him when he ought to have contented himself by refuting him, and the courageous doctor was put to death. Tatian escaped the snares of the Cynic. We cannot enough regret, for the sake of the memory of Antonine (or, if it is wished, of Marcus Aurelius), that the courageous advocate of a cause which was then that of liberty of conscience should have suffered martyrdom under his reign. If Justin called his rival “impostor,” or “shark,” as Tatian informs us, he deserved the full penalty which attached to the crime of proffering insults in public. But Crescentius may have been no less offensive, and he escaped punishment. Justin was therefore punished for being a Christian. The law was formal, and the conservators of the Roman common weal hesitated to abrogate it. How many precursors of the future suffered similarly under the reign of the just and pious St Louis!

The attacks of Crescentius were but an isolated circumstance. In the first century, some of the most enlightened men were wholly ignorant of Christianity; but this is no longer possible. Everybody has an opinion on the subject. The first rhetorician of the times, L. Cornelius Fronton, certainly wrote an invective against the Christians. That discourse is lost; we do not know in what circumstances it was composed, but we can form some idea of it from that which Municius Felix puts into the mouth of his Cæcilius. The work was not like that of Celsus, consecrated to exegetical discussion; it was nothing more than a philosophical treatise. It consisted of several considerations on the man of the world, and on politics. Fronton accepted without examination the most calumnious rumours against the Christians. He believed or affected to believe what was told of their nocturnal mysteries and of their sanguinary repasts. A very honest man, but an official man, he had a horror of a sect of men of no social standing. Satisfied with a sort of vague belief in Providence, which he capriciously associated with a polytheistic devotion, he held to the established religion, not because he alleged it was true, but because it was the ancient religion, and formed part of the prejudices of a true Roman. There is no doubt that in his declamation he only took up a patriotic point of view, so as to preach the respect that was due to national institutions, and that be only stood up in his conservative zeal against the foolish pretension of illiterate people of mean condition aspiring to reform beliefs. Perhaps he wound up ironically in regard to the impotence of that unique God who, too much occupied to be able to govern everything well, abandoned his worshippers to death, and with a few railleries upon the resurrection of the flesh.

The discourse of Fronton appealed only to the lettered. Fronton rendered a very bad service to Christianity in inculcating his ideas on the illustrious pupil whom he educated with so much care, and who came to be called Marcus Aurelius.

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE APOCRYPHAL GOSPELS.

If we accept the apologists, such as Aristides, Quadratus, and Justin, who addressed themselves to the Pagans, and the pure traditionists, such as Papias and Hegesippus, who regarded the new revelation as essentially consisting in the words of Jesus, almost all the Christian writers of the age we have just left had the idea of augmenting the list of sacred writings susceptible of being read in the Church. Despairing of succeeding in this through their private authority, they assumed the name of some apostle or of some apostolic personage, and made no scruple in attributing to themselves the inspiration which was indiscriminately enjoyed by the immediate disciples of Jesus. This vein of apocryphal literature was now exhausted. Pseudo-Hermas only half succeeded. We shall see the Reconnaissances of pseudo-Clementine and the pretended Constitutions of the twelve apostles equally stamped with suspicion in respect of canonicity. The numerous Acts of Apostles which were produced everywhere had only a partial success. No Apocalypse appeared again to disturb seriously the masses. The success of public readings had, up to this point, been the criterions of canonicity. A Church admitted such a writing imputed to an apostle or to an apostolic personage to the public reading. The faithful were edified. The rumour was spread in the neighbouring Churches that a very beautiful communication had been made in such a community, on such a day; people wished to see the new writing, and thus, little by little, this writing came to be accepted, provided that it did not contain some stumbling-block. But as time went on people became critical, and successes such as those which the Epistles to Titus and to Timothy, the Second Epistle to Peter, obtained, were no longer renewed.

The fertility of evangelical invention was in reality exhausted; the age of great legendary creation was past; people no longer invented anything of importance; the success of psuedo-John was the last. But the liberty of remodelling was sufficiently extensive, at least outside the Churches of St Paul. Although the four texts which became subsequently canonical, had already a certain vogue, they were far from excluding similar texts. The Gospel of the Hebrews retained all its authority. Justin and Tatian probably made use of it. The author of the Epistles of St Ignatius (second half of the second century) cites it as a canonical and accepted text. No text, in fact, destroyed the tradition or suppressed its rivals. Books were rare, and badly preserved. Dionysius of Corinth, at the end of the second century, speaks of the falsifiers of the “Scriptures of the Lord,” which induces the belief that the retouching continued for more than a hundred years after the compilation of our Mathew. Hence the indecisive form in the sayings of Jesus which is to be remarked in the apostolic fathers. The source is always vaguely indicated; great variations are produced in the citations up to the time of St Irenæus. Sometimes the words of Isaiah and Enoch are put forth for the words of Jesus. There is no longer any distinction between the Bible and the Gospel, and some words of Luke are cited with this heading, “God says.”

The Gospels thus were until about the year 160 and even beyond that, private writings designed for small circles. Each of the latter had its own, and for a long time individuals did not scruple to complete and to continue already accepted texts. The compilation had not taken a definite form. The texts were added to, they were abridged; such and such a passage was discussed, and the Gospels in circulation were amalgamated, so as to form a single and more portable work. The oral transmission, on the other hand, continued to play a part. A multitude of sayings were not written down: it would have been necessary to determine the whole tradition. Many of the evangelical elements were yet sporadic. It was thus that the beautiful anecdote of the woman taken in adultery circulated. It was made use of as best it might in the fourth Gospel. The phrase, “Be good money changers,” which is cited as being “in the Gospel,” and as “scripture,” did not find a corner anywhere in it.

Certain abridgements which were threatened to be made were much more serious. Every detail which represented Christ as a man, appeared scandalous. The fine verse of Luke, where Jesus weeps over Jerusalem, was condemned by the uncultured sectaries who pretended that weeping was a token of weakness. The consoling angel and the bloody sweat on the Mount of Olives provoked objections and analogous mutilations. But orthodoxy, already dominant, prevented these individual conceits from seriously compromising the integrity of the texts already sacred.

In truth, amidst all this chaos, order was established. In like manner, between opposing doctrines an orthodoxy was designed, just as from amongst a multitude of Gospels four texts tended to become more and more canonical, to the exclusion of others. Mark, pseudo-Matthew, Luke, and pseudo-John, tended towards an official consecration. The Gospels of the Hebrews, which at first equalled them in value, but of which the Nazarenes and the Ebionites made a dangerous use, began to be discarded. The Gospels of Peter and the twelve apostles appeared to have various defects, and were suppressed by the bishops. How was it that people did not go still further, and were not tempted to reduce the four Gospels to one only, either by suppressing three, or in making a unity of the four, after the manner of the Diatesseron of Tatian, or in constructing a sort of Gospel a priori, like Marcion? The honesty of the Church never appears to greater advantage than in this circumstance. With a light heart she placed herself in the most embarrassing situation. It was impossible that some of these contradictions of the Gospels should have escaped observation. Celsus was already keenly alive to them. People preferred for the future to be exposed to the most terrible objections, than that the writings regarded by so many persons as inspired should be condemned. Each of the four great Gospels had its clientèle, if one may thus express oneself. To wrench them out of the hands of those who admired them would have been an impossibility. Besides, it might have resulted in condemning to oblivion a multitude of beautiful details in which we recognise Jesus, although the order of the narration was different. The tetractys gained the day, except in imposing upon ecclesiastical criticism the strangest of tortures—that of making a text accord with four texts discordant.

In any case, the Catholic Church no longer now accords to any person the right to revise from top to bottom the anterior texts, like as has been done by Luke and pseudo-John. We have passed from the age of living tradition to the age of moribund tradition. The book, which until now had been nothing, became everything for the people, who were already removed from the ocular witnesses by two or three generations. Towards the year 180, the revolution will be complete. The Catholic Church will declare the last of the Gospels rigorously closed. There are four Gospels. Irenæus tells us it is necessary to have four, and it is impossible there can be more than four; for there are four climates, four winds, four corners of the world, calling each for a defender; four revelations, that of Adam, of Noah, of Moses, and of Jesus; four animals in the cherub, and four mystic beasts in the Apocalypse. Each of these monsters who for the prophet of the year 69 were simple animated ornaments of the throne of God, became the emblem of one of the four accepted texts. It was admitted that the Gospel was like the cherub, tetramorphous. To put the four texts in accord, to harmonise the one with the other, was the difficult task which shall henceforth be pursued by those who attempt to form to themselves a conception, be it ever so little reasonable, of the life of Jesus.

The most original endeavour to get out of this confusion was certainly that of Tatian, the disciple of Justin. His Diatesseron was the first essay at harmonising the Gospels. The Synoptics, together with the Gospel of the Hebrews and the Gospels of Peter, were the basis of his labour. The text which resulted from it resembled closely enough the Gospel of the Hebrews; the genealogies, as well as everything which connected Jesus with the race of David, were wanting in it. The success of the book of Tatian was at first very considerable; many of the Churches adopted it as a convenient résumé of evangelical history, but the heresies of the author rendered the orthodoxy suspicious; in the end, the hook was withdrawn from circulation, and the diversity of texts finally gained the day in the Church Catholic.

It was not thus with the numerous sects which sprang up everywhere. It did not please the latter that evangelical productions had in a manner become crystalised, and that there was no longer any reason for writing new lives of Jesus. The Gnostic sects desired to renew continually the texts, in order to satisfy their ardent fantasy. Almost all the heads of sects had Gospels bearing their names, after the example set by Basilides, or after the manner of Marcion, according to their good pleasure. That of Apelles was drawn, like so many others, from the Gospel of the Hebrews. Markos drew from every source the authentic and the apocryphal. Valentinus, as we have seen, pretended to ascend to the apostles through personal traditions given to him. People quoted a Gospel according to Philip, which was greatly prized by certain sects, and another that they called “The Gospel of Perfection.” The names of the apostles furnished a sufficient guarantee for all these frauds. There was hardly one of the twelve who had not a Gospel imputed to him. No more Gospels were invented, it is true, but people wanted to know the details which had been omitted in the four inspired ones. The infancy of Christ, in particular, excited the liveliest curiosity. People would not admit that he, whose life had been a prodigy, had lived for some years as an obscure Nazarene.

Such was the origin of that which is called “Apocryphal Gospels,” a long series of feeble productions, the commencement of which may be safely placed about the middle of the second century. It would be doing an injury to Christian literature to place those insipid compositions on the same footing with the masterpieces of Mark, Luke, and Matthew. The apocryphal Gospels are the Pouranas of Christianity; they have for their basis the canonical Gospels. The author takes these Gospels as a theme from which he never deviates; he seeks simply to elucidate and perfect by the ordinary processes of the Hebraic legend. Luke already had followed the same course. In his deductions in regard to the infancy of Jesus, and the birth of John the Baptist, he uses processes of amplification; his pious mechanism of mise en scene is the prelude to the apocryphal Gospels. The authors of the latter make the utmost use of the sacred rhetoric, which, however, was employed by Luke with discretion. Their innovations were few, imitated, and exaggerated. They did for the canonical Gospels what the authors of the Post-Homerica have done for Homer, what the comparatively modern authors of Dionysiacso or Argonautics have done for the Greek epopee. They dealt with those parts which the canonists, for good reasons, neglected; they added that which might have happened, that which appeared probable; they developed the situations by means of artificial reconciliations borrowed from the sacred texts. Finally, they sometimes proceeded by monographs, and sought to construct legend out of all the evangelical personages in the scattered details which had reference to them. They thus limited themselves in everything to embroidering on a given canvas. This was so different from the assurance of the old evangelists, who spoke as if inspired from on high, and pushed boldly forward, each in his way, the details of their narratives, without troubling themselves whether they contradicted one another. The fabricators of the apocryphal Gospels were timid. They cited their authorities; they were restricted by the canonists. The faculty for creating the myth was altogether wanting; they could no longer even invent a miracle. As for details, it is impossible to conceive anything more contemptible, more pitiful. It is the tiresome verbiage of an old gossip, the vulgar and familiar style of a literature of wet nurses and nursery maids. Like the degenerate Catholicism of modern times, the authors of the apocryphal Gospels on their part descended to the puerile side of Christianity—the infant Jesus, the Virgin Mary, Saint Joseph. The veritable Jesus, the Jesus of public life, was beyond them, and frightened them.

The real cause of this sad debasement was a total change in the manner of comprehending the supernatural. The canonical Gospels maintained themselves with a rare dexterity on the verge of a false situation, which, however, was full of charm. Their Jesus is not God, since his whole life is that of a man. He weeps, and allows himself to be moved by pity: he is filled with deity: his attitude is compatible with art, with imagination, and with moral sense. His thaumaturgy, in particular, is that which is becoming to a divine envoy. In the apocryphal Gospels, on the contrary, Jesus is a supernatural spectre, without bodily corporeity. In him humanity is a lie. In his cradle you would take him for an infant: but wait a little: miracles start up round about him; this infant calls out to you, “I am the Logos.” The thaumaturgy of this new Christ is material, mechanical, immoral; it is the juggleries of a magician. Wherever he passes, he acts as a magnetic force. Nature is unhinged, and beside itself by the effect of his vicinage. Each word of his is followed by miraculous effects, “for good as well as for evil.” Doubtless the canonical Gospels were sometimes not free from this defect; the episodes of the swine of the Gergesenes, of the fig-tree that was cursed, could have only inspired in contemporaries a rather barren moral reflection: “The author of such acts must indeed be powerful.” But these cases are rare, whilst in the apocryphal the true notion of Jesus, at once human and divine, is perfectly obliterated. In becoming a pure déva, Jesus lost all which had rendered him amiable and affecting. People were constrained, logically enough, to deny his personal identity, to make of him an intermittent spectre, which showed itself to his disciples now young, now old, now an infant, now an old man, now tall, now short, and sometimes so tall that its head touched the sky.

The oldest and the least objectionable of these insipid rhapsodies is the narrative of the birth of Mary, of her marriage, of the birth of Jesus, reputed to be written by a certain James, a narrative to which has been given the erroneous title of Protevangel of James. A Gnostic book, the Genna Marias, which appears to have been known to St Justin, may have served as the first foundation of it. No book has had so much importance as the latter as regards the history of the Christian festivals and Christian art. The parents of the Virgin, Anne and Joachim; the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple, and the idea that she had been brought up as if in a convent; the marriage of the Virgin; the meeting of the widowers, the circumstance of the miraculous wands, the picture of which, in certain parts, has been sketched so admirably. The whole of this comes from this curious writing. The Greek Church regarded it as semi-inspired, and admitted it in the public readings in the churches, at the feasts of St Joachim, of St Anne, of the Conception, of the Nativity, of the Presentation of the Virgin. Its Hebrew colouring is still sufficiently distinct. Some pictures of the manners of the Jews recall at times the Book of Tobias. There are distinct traces of Ebionite Judeo-Christianity and of Docetism; in it marriage is almost reprobated.

Many passages of that singular book are not destitute of grace, nor even of a certain naïveté, The author applies to the birth of Mary, and to all the circumstances of the infancy of Jesus, the methods of narration the germ of which was already to be found in Luke and Matthew. The anecdotes in regard to the infancy of Jesus in Luke and in Matthew are ingenious imitations of what is recounted in the ancient books and in the modern agadas about the birth of Samuel, Samson, Moses, Abraham, and Isaac. In this class of writings there was an habitual introduction giving the history of all the great men, several species of commonplaces, always the same, and topics of pious invention. The infant destined to play an extraordinary part must be born of aged parents for long sterile, “so as to demonstrate that the child was a favour bestowed by God, and not the fruit of an unbridled passion.” It was held that the Divine power shone out to more advantage when human agency was absent. The result of long expectation and of assiduous prayers, the future great man was announced by an angel, at some solemn moment. It was thus in the case of Samson and of Samuel. According to Luke, the birth of John the Baptist occurred under such conditions. It is believed that it was the same in the case of Mary. Her birth, like that of John and of Jesus, was preceded by an annunciation, accompanied with prayers and with canticles. Anne and Joachim are the exact counterparts of Elizabeth and Zacharias. Some go even beyond that, and embellish the infancy of Anne. This retrospective application of the methods of evangelical legend becomes a fruitful source of fables responding to the requirements, constantly springing up, of Christian piety. People could no longer consider Mary, Joseph, and their ancestors as ordinary personages. The cult of the Virgin, which later on attained so enormous proportions, had already made invasions in every quarter.

A multitude of details, sometimes puerile yet always conforming to the sentiment of the times, or susceptible of removing the difficulties which the ancient Gospels presented, were disseminated by means of these compositions, at first not avowed, or even condemned, but which finished soon in being right. The case of the nativity was completed; the ox and the ass take definitely their places in it. Joseph is depicted as a widower four score years old, the simple protector of Mary. We could have wished that the latter had remained a virgin after as well as before the birth of Jesus. She was made to be of a royal and sacerdotal race, being descended at once from David and from Levi. People cannot represent to themselves that she died like a simple woman. They already speak of her ascension to heaven. The assumption was created, like so many other festivals, by the cycle of apocryphas.

An accent of lively piety distinguishes all the compositions of which we have just been speaking, whilst one cannot read without being disgusted the Gospel of Thomas—an insipid work, which does as little honour as possible to the Christian family, very old though it be, which produced it. It is the point of departure of these flat merveilles in regard to the infancy of Jesus which, by reason of their very dullness had a success so disastrous in the East. In them Jesus figures as an enfant terrible, wicked, rancorous, the dread of his parents and of everybody. He kills his companions, transforms them into he-goats, blinds their parents, confounds his masters, demonstrates to them that they know nothing about the mysteries of the alphabet, and forces them to ask pardon of him. People flee from him as from a pestilence. Joseph in vain beseeches him to remain quiet. This grotesque image of an omnipotent and omniscient gamin is one of the greatest caricatures that was ever invented, and certainly those who wrote it had too little wit for one to credit them with the intention of having meant it as a piece of irony. It was not without a theological design, that, contrary to the perfect system of tact of the old evangelists as regards the thirty years of obscure life, it was desired to be shown that the divine nature in Jesus was never idle, and that he continually performed miracles. Everything which made the life of Jesus a human life was vexatious. “This infant was not a terrestrial being,” says Zachæus of him; he can subdue fire; perhaps he existed before the creation of the world. He is either something great, or a god, or an angel, or one I don't know what. This deplorable Gospel appears to be the work of the Marcosians. The Nessenes and the Manicheans appropriated it to themselves, and spread it over the whole of Asia. The inept Oriental Gospel, known by the name of the Gospel of the Infancy, brought into vogue especially by the Nestorians of Persia, is only, in act, an amplification of the Gospel according to Thomas. It passes in all the East as the work of Peter, and as the Gospel par excellence. If India knew any Gospel, it was this one. If Krechnaism embraced any Christian element, it is from this source that it came. The Jesus of whom Mahomet heard speak, is that of the puerile Gospels, a fantastic Jesus, a spectre proving his superhuman nature by means of an extravagant thaumaturgy.

The passion of Jesus owed likewise its development to a cycle of legends. The pretended Acts of Pilate were the framework which was made use of in which to group this order of ideas, with which were readily associated the better polemics against the Jews. It is only in the fourth century that the episodes, of an almost epic character, which were supposed to have taken place in the descent of Jesus to Hades, were put into writing. Later, these legends in regard to the subterranean life of Jesus were joined to the false Acts of Pilate, and formed the celebrated work called the Gospel of Nicodemus.

This base Christian literature, borrowed from a wholly popular state of mind, was in general the work of the Judaising and Gnostic sects. The disciples of St Paul had no part in them. It was created, to all appearances, in Syria. The apocryphal of Egyptian origin, The History of Joseph the Carpenter, for example, are more recent. Although of humble origin, and tainted with an ignorance truly sordid, the apocryphal Gospels assumed very early an importance of the first order. They pleased the multitude, offered rich themes for preaching on, enlarged considerably the circle of the evangelic personnel—St Anne, St Joachim, the Veronica, St Longinus—from that somewhat tainted source. The most beautiful Christian festivals—the Assumption, the Presentation of the Virgin—have no basis in the canonical Gospels; but they have in the apocryphas. The rich chasing of the legends which have made Christmas the jewel of the Christian year, is drawn for the most part from the apocryphas. The same literature has created the infant Jesus. The devotion to the Virgin finds there almost all its arguments. The importance of St Joseph proceeds entirely from them. Christian art finally owes to these compositions—very feeble, from a literary point of view, but singularly simple and plastic—some of its finest subjects. Christian iconography, whether Byzantine or Latin, has all its roots there. The Peregrine school would not have had any Sposalizio; the Venetian school no assumption, no presentation; the Byzantine school no descent of Jesus into limbo, without the apocryphas. The crib of Jesus without them would have lacked its most beautiful details. Their recommendation was their very inferiority. The canonical Gospels were too strong a literature for the people. Some vulgar narratives, often base, were nearer the level of the multitude than the Sermon on the Mount, or the discourses of the fourth Gospel.

So the success of these fraudulent writings was immense. From the fourth century the most instructed Greek fathers—Epiphanes, Gregory of Nyssa—adopted them without reserve. The Latin Church hesitated, even put forth efforts to take them out of the hands of the faithful, but did not succeed. The Golden Legend draws largely upon it. In the Middle Ages the apocryphal Gospels enjoyed an extraordinary popularity; they have even an advantage over the canonical Gospels, which is this: not being a sacred Scripture, they can be translated into the vulgar tongue. Whilst the Bible is in a manner put under lock and key, the apocryphas are in everybody’s hands. The Miniaturists were ardently attached to them; the Rhymers seized upon them; the Mystics represented them dramatically in the porches of the Churches. The first modern author of a life of Jesus—Ludolphe le Chartreux—made them his principal document. Without theological pretension these popular Gospels have succeeded in suppressing, in a certain measure, the canonical Gospels; Protestantism also has declared war against them, and devotes itself to proving that they are the work of the devil.

CHAPTER XXVII.

APOCRYPHAL ACTS AND APOCALYPSES.

The literature of the false Acts pursues a line quite different from that of the false Gospels. The Acts of the Apostles, the individual work of Luke, were not produced, like the narrative of the life of Jesus, from the diversities of parallel compilations. Whilst the canonical Gospels served as a basis for the amplifications of the apocryphal Gospels, the apocryphal Acts have little connection with the Acts of Luke. The narratives of the preaching and of the death of Peter and Paul never received a final revision. Pseudo-Clement has used them as a literary pretext rather than a direct subject of narrative. The apostolic history was thus the roof of a romantic tissue which never assumed a definite literary form, and which people never cease revising. A sort of résumé of these fables, tainted with a strong Gnostic and Manichean colour, appeared under the name of a pretended Leucius or Lucius, a disciple of the apostles. The Catholics, who regretted that they could not make use of the book, sought to amend it. The final result of that successive emendation was the compilation made in the fifth or sixth centuries under the name of the false Abdias.

Almost all those who compiled this sort of works were heretics; but the orthodox, after subjecting them to corrections, soon adopted them. These heretics were very pious people, and at the same time highly imaginative. After they had been anathematised, their books were found to be edifying, and the Churches did their very best to have them introduced into their religious readings. It is in this way that many of the books, many of the saints, many of the festivals of the orthodox Church are the productions of heretics. The fourth Gospel was in this respect one of the most striking examples. This singular book made its way amazingly. It was read more and more, and, apart from the Churches of Asia, which were too well acquainted with its origin, it was accepted on all hands with admiration, and as being the work of the Apostle John.

The false Acts of the Apostles have no more originality than the apocryphal Gospels. In this order, similarly, the individual fancy did not succeed much better in making itself felt. This was plainly visible in that which concerned the legend of Paul. A priest of Asia, a greet admirer of the apostle, thought to satisfy his piety by constructing a short charming romance in which Paul converted a beautiful young girl of Iconium, named Hecla, who was drawn to him by an invincible attraction, and made of her a martyr of virginity. The priest did not conceal his game well; he was questioned, nonplussed, and finished by avowing that he had done all this out of love for Paul. The book succeeded none the lees for this, and it was only banished from the Canon with the other apocryphal writings about the fifth or sixth centuries.

St Thomas, the apostle preferred by Gnostics, and later, by the Manicheans, inspired in the same way acts in which the horror of certain sects for marriage is set forth with the utmost energy. Thomas arrived in India while the nuptials of the daughter of the king were in preparation. He so strongly persuaded the fiancés as to the inexpediency of marriage, the wicked sentiments which result from the fact of having begotten children, the crimes which are the consequence of esprit de famille, and the troubles of housekeeping, that they passed the night seated by the side of one another. On the morrow their relations were astonished at finding them in this position, full of a sweet gaiety, and free from any of the ordinary embarrassments incident to such circumstances. The young couple explain to them that bashfulness has no longer any meaning for them, since the cause of it has disappeared. They have exchanged the transient nuptials for the joys of a never-ending paradise. The strange hallucinations to which these moral errors gave scope, are all vividly depicted throughout the entire book. The first outline of a Christian hell, with its categories of torments, is found traced there. This singular writing, which constituted a part of certain Bibles, recalls the theology of the pseudo-Clementine romance, and that of the Elkasaites. In it the Holy Ghost is, like as with the Nazarenes a feminine principle, ‘the mother misericordiæ.’ Water represents the purifying element of the soul and of the body; the unction of oil is then the seal of baptism, like as with the Gnostics. The sign of the cross already possesses all its supernatural virtues, as well as a sort of magic.

APPENDIX. I.

It is admitted pretty generally that the Jewish war under Hadrian entailed a siege and a final destruction of Jerusalem. So large a number of texts represent this view, that it at the first glance rash to call the fact in question. Nevertheless, the chief critics who have considered it—Scaliger, Henry de Valois, and P. Pazi—had perceived the difficulties of such an assertion, and rejected it.

And to commence with, what is it that Hadrian should have besieged and destroyed? The demolition of Jerusalem under Titus was entire, even exceeding that usual to military operations.

In admitting that a population of so many thousands of persons was able to dwell within the ruins which the victor of 70 left behind, it is clear in such a case that this heap of ruins was incapable of supporting a siege. Even while admitting that from the time of Titus to Hadrian some timid attempts of Jewish restoration might have been brought about, in spite of the “Legio Xa. Fratensis” who encamped on the ruins, one is not inclined to suppose that these attempts were of such a nature as to give the place any importance whatever in a military point of view.

It is also very true that a great many savants, with whose opinions we coincide, think that the restoration of Jerusalem, under the name of “Ælie Capitolina,” began in the year 122 or thereabouts.

It is of no use to the adversaries of our theme to lay great stress on that argument, because they unhesitatingly admit that Ælia Capitolina was not commenced to be built till after the last destruction of Jerusalem by Hadrian. But no matter! If, as we think, Ælia Capitolina had been in existence for about ten years at the time that the revolt of Bar-Coziba broke out, about 133, how can one conceive that the Romans would have had occasion to take it! Ælia would not again have possessed walls capable of sustaining a siege. How, moreover, suppose that the “Legio Xa. Fratensis” had left their positions knowing that it would be obliged to reconquer them. It may be said that the same thing occurred under Nero, when Gessius Florus abandoned Jerusalem, but the situation was totally different.

Gessius Florus found himself in the midst of a great city in revolution. The “Legio Xa. Fratensis” was situated in the midst of a population of veterans and squatters, all friendly to the Roman cause. Their retreat would not have explained itself in any fashion, and the siege which would have followed would have been a siege in a manner without purpose.

When one examines the texts, very scarce, which relate to the War of Hadrian, it is necessary to make a large distinction. The texts really historical not only do not speak of a capture and a destruction of Jerusalem, but by the style in which they are couched, they exclude such an event.

The oratorial and apologetic texts, on the contrary, where the second revolt of the Jews is cited, “non ad narrandum, sed ad probandum,” for the purpose of serving the arguments and the declamations of the preacher or of the polemic, imply that all the events that happened under Hadrian were as if they happened under Titus. It is clear that it is the first series of texts that deserves the preference. Criticism has for a long time refused to trust to the precision of documents drawn up in a style whose essence is to be inaccurate.

The historical texts reduce themselves unhappily into two in the question which concerns us, but both are excellent. There is, to commence with, the narrative of Dion Caasius, who appeared not to have been here abridged by Xiphilin; there is in the second place, that of Eusebius, who copied Ariston de Pella, a contemporary writer of events, and living close at hand to the seat of the war. These two narratives are in accord with one another. They do not speak a single word of a siege, nor of a destruction of Jerusalem. For an attentive reader of the two tales cannot admit that such a fact would have passed unnoticed. Dion Cassius is very particular; he knows that it was the construction of Ælia Capitolina which occasioned the revolt; he gives well the character of the war, which happened to be a war of little cities, of fortified market towns, of subterranean works—or rural war, if one is permitted thus to express oneself.

He insists on facts so secondary as that of the ruin of the pretended tomb of Solomon. How is it possible that he could have neglected to speak of the catastrophe of the principal city?

The omission of all notice about Jerusalem is still less understood in the narrative of Eusebius or rather of Ariston de Pella. The great event of the war for Eusebius is the siege of Bether, “the neighbouring town to Jerusalem;” of Jerusalem itself not a word. It is true that the chapter of the “Historie Ecclesiastique” relative to that event has for the title: Ἡ κατὰ Ἀνδριανὸν ὑστάτη Ἰουδαίων πολιορχίας, as the chapter relative to the war of Vespasian; and of Titus has for title (I. III. C.V.) Περὶ τῆς μετὰ τὸν Χριστὸν ὑστάτης Ἰουδαίων πολιορχίας; but the word adapts itself well to the whole of the campaign of Julius Severus, which consisted in sieges of little cities. In section 3 of the chapter relative to the war of Adrian, the word πολιορχία is used to designate the operations of the capture of Bether.

In his “Chronique” Eusebius follows the same plan. In his “Demonstration Evangélique,” and in his “Theophaive,” on the contrary, he points to that fact, and when he is no longer borne out by the very words of Ariston de Pella, he allows himself to be led away by the resemblance which has deranged nearly all the Jewish and Christian tradition. He pictures the events of the year 135 on the model of the events of the year 70, and he speaks of Hadrian as having contributed with Titus to the accomplishment of the prophecies on the annihilation of Jerusalem. This double destruction doubly serves him to realise a passage of Zacharias,Zach. xiv. 1 et seq. and to furnish a basis for the theory which he advances of a Church of Jerusalem lasting from Titus to Hadrian.Euseb. H.E., iv. 5. St Jerome presents the same contradiction. In his “Chronique,” mapped out on that of Eusebius, he follows Eusebius as an historian. Then he forgets that solid base, and speaks, as do all the fathers of the orator school, of the siege and destruction of Jerusalem under Hadrian.In Dan. xiv., Joel i., Habakkuk ii., Jerem. xxxi., Ezekiel v. 24., Zach. viii. 14. TertullianContra, Jud. 13. and St John ChrysostomIn Judæos, Homil. v. 2. Opp. 1, pp. 64-5 (Montf.) Cf. Seudas at the word βδελυγμα; Chronique d’Alex, year 119. express themselves in the same way. One knows how dangerous it is to introduce into history these vague phrases, well known to preachers and to apologists of all times. Still less is it necessary that we should examine the passages in the Talmud where the same assertion presents itself, mixed up with those historical monstrosities which destroy the value of the mentioned passages. In the Talmud the confusion of the war of Titus and that which took place under Hadrian is constant. The description of Bether is copied from that of Jerusalem—the duration of the siege is the same.

Is not this the proof that he had not separate mementoes of a new siege of Jerusalem, for the good reason that there had not been one. When the tale was started of a siege by a sort of argument a priori, it is possible that one a posteriori should be started also to give it in history a basis which it had not. Naturally, for it is on the first siege on which one falls back for that. That confusion has been the trap where the whole popular history of the Jewish mishaps has suffered itself to be taken. How can we prefer such blunders to strong arguments which, drawn from solitary historical evidence, we now have in the question Dion Cassibus or Ariston de Pella?

Two grave objections remain for me to solve: only can they smooth away the doubts on the theory which I maintain. The first is derived from a passage of Appius. This historian, enumerating the successive destructions which overthrew the walls of Jerusalem, puts one before the other, and on the same line the destruction of Titus and that of Hadrian.

The passage of Appius furnishes in every case a strong inaccuracy—he supposes that Jerusalem was walled under Hadrian. Appius foolishly supposes that the Jews, after Titus, re-erected their town, and fortified it. His ignorance on that point shows that he is not guided by the aforesaid comparison, but by the coarser similarity which has deceived every one. The difficulties of the campaign, the numberless πολιορχίαι of which it is full, show that even a contemporary who had not proof of the facts was able to commit a like error.

Assuredly more grave is the objection derived from the study of the old coins. It is certain that the Jews during the revolt did not coin nor stamp money. Such an operation seems at the first glance not to have been possible at Jerusalem. The types of these moneys lead to that idea. The “legend” is most often, “For the liberation of Jerusalem;” on some others, the figure of a temple surmounted by a star.

Jewish coin study is full of uncertainties, and it is dangerous to oppose it to history; it is history, on the contrary, which serves to throw a light upon it. Besides, the objection about which we speak has emboldened certain numismatic students of our days to deny absolutely the occupation of Jerusalem by the followers of Bar-Coziba. One will admit that the insurgents were able to coin money at Bether quite as well as at Jerusalem, if one thinks of the miserable plight in which in that supposition Jerusalem was. On the other hand, it seems that the types of coins of the second revolt had been imitated or taken directly from those of the first revolt, and on those of the Asmoneans. There is here an important point which deserves the attention of numismatists; for one could find here a means of solving the difficulties which yet hover over the entire groups of the autonomous coinage of Israel.

We wish to speak chiefly of the coins with the “impression” of Simeon Nasi of Israel. We fall into the greatest misrepresentation when we seek to find this Simeon in Bargioras, in Bar-Coziba, in Simeon, son of Gamaliel, etc. None of these persons could coin money. They were revolutionaries, or men of high authority, but not sovereigns. If one or the other had placed his name on the money, he would have marred the republican spirit and jealousy of the rebels, and so, up to a certain point, their religious ideas.

A similar matter would be mentioned by Josephus in the first revolt, and the identity of that Simeon would not be so doubtful as this is. It is never asked if the French Revolution had any coins with the effigy of Marat, or of Robespierre. This Simon, I believe, is no other than Simon Maccabeus, the first Jewish sovereign who coined money, and whose coins ought to be much sought after by orthodox persons. As the aim which they established was to overcome the scruples of the religious, such a counterfeit would suffice for the exigencies of the time. It had also the advantage of not putting into circulation only those types acknowledged by all. I think then, that neither in the first nor in the second revolt, that they had money struck in the name of a person then alive. The “Eleaser-Hac-Cohen” of certain coins ought probably to explain this in an analogous manner, which the numismatists will hit upon. I strongly think that the latter revolt had not a proper stamp, and they could best imitate the earlier ones. A material circumstance confirms that hypothesis. On the coins in question, in fact, one never sees שמעון—one frequently sees שמענו or שמצ. These two forms are so frequent that one can see a simple fault as to the position of the letters. In the second, in a great many cases, we cannot help thinking that the last two letters have disappeared. It is not impossible that the alteration of the name of Simeon was made expressly to imply a prayer,—“Hear me” or “Hear us.” It is, at all events, contrary to all probability that one sees in the name of Simeon the true name of Bar-Coziba. How is it that this royal name of the false Messiah, written on an abundant coinage, would remain unknown to St Justin, to Aristion de Pella, to the Talmudists, who clearly speak of the money of Bar-Coziba. Still less can on see any president of the Sanhedrim whose authority would have been recognised by Bar-Coziba.

So anyway, one is led to think that the coinage of Bar-Coziba did not consist but in impressions done from a religious motive, and that the types which bear these impressions were of the ancient Jewish types, which I conclude were for the rebellion of the time of Hadrian. By this are raised some enormous difficulties which the Jewish numismatism presents:—Firstly. That these persons unknown to history or these rebels should have coined money like sovereigns. Secondly, The unlikelihood that there is that these miserable insurgents caused issues of money so handsome and so considerable. Thirdly. The employment of the archaic Hebrew character, which was out of use in the second century of our era. Supposing that it had been attempted to bring back the national character, they would not have given them fashioned so grand and handsome. Fourthly, The form of the temple tetrastyle surmounted by a star. This form does not correspond either more or less to that of the temple of Herod. For one knows the scrupulous nicety that the ancient masters took to reproduce the features of the principal temple of the city exactly, by slight but very expressive touches.

The temple of the Jewish money, on the contrary, without the triangular pediment, and with its gate of a singular fashion, represents the second temple, that of the time of the Maccabees, which appears to have been tolerably shabby. If we reject that hypothesis, and which must belong to the second revolt, the types which bear the figure of the temple, and the era of “the liberation of Jerusalem,” we say that the deliverance of Jerusalem, and the reconstruction of the temple, were the only object of the revolts. It is not impossible that they portrayed these two events upon their money before they were realised. One takes for a fact that which one aspires to with such efforts. Bether, before all, was a sort of provisionary Jerusalem, a sacred asylum of Israel.

The numismatism of the Crusades presents, besides, identically the same phenomena. After the loss of Jerusalem, in fact, the later authority, transported to St Jean de Acre, continued to mint money bearing the effigy of the Holy Sepulchre, with the words “+Sepulchri Domini,” or “REX IERLM.” The moneys of John of Brienne, who never possessed Jerusalem, present, also the image of the Holy Sepulchre. “This markedly characteristic type,” says M. de Vogüé, “seems to be on the part of deposed kings a protestation against the invasion, and a maintenance of their rights in misfortune and exile.” There are also moneys with the title ‘Tvrris Davit, struck a long time after the taking of Jerusalem by the Mussulman. It must be admitted, however, that much of the Jewish money of the second revolt was struck away from Jerusalem. Every one, in fact, agrees that if the revolted were masters of Jerusalem, they were quickly driven out. One finds coins of the second and third year of the revolt. M. Caxdoni explained by this difference of the situation, the difference of the legends ישראל לחרות, and לחרות ירושלם, the second only answering to the epoch when the rebels were masters of Jerusalem.

Be that as it may, the possibility of a coinage struck at Bether is placed beyond doubt.

APPENDIX II.

The epoch when the book of Tobit was composed is very difficult to fix. In our time, the distinguished critics M. M. Hitzig, Volkmar Grætz, have ascribed that writing to the time of Trajan or of Hadrian. M. Grætz connects it with the circumstances which followed the war of Bar-Coziba, and in particular to the interdiction which according to him was made by the Romans as to the interment of the corpses of the massacred Jews. But besides the fact of a similar interdiction is not founded except upon that of passages of the Talmud stripped of serious historical value, the characteristic importance attributed in our book to the good work of interring the dead, explained itself in a manner much more profound, as we are just now going to show.

Three great reasons, in our opinion, preclude us from accepting the Book of Tobit as being at a date so early,—forbid us to descend, at least for the composition of the book, beyond the year 70.

Firstly, The prophecy of Tobit (xiii. 9 et seq., xiv. 4 et seq.), which ought naturally to be taken as a “prophetia post eventum,” clearly mentions the destruction of Jerusalem by Nabuchodnosor (xiv. 4); the return of Zerubabel; the construction of the second temple, a temple very little to be compared to the first, very unworthy of the divine majesty (xiv. 5). But the dispersion of Israel would have its end, and again the temple would be rebuilt, with all the magnificence described by the prophets, to serve as a centre for the religion of the whole world.

For the old prophet there was no destruction of the second temple; that temple would be the advent of the glory of Israel, would not disappear, except to give place to the eternal temple. M. Volkmar, M. Hitzig observe, it is true, that in the Fourth Book of Esdras, in Judith, and in much of the apocryphal book, the destruction of the temple by Nabuchodnosor is identified with the destruction of the temple by Titus, and that the reflections which are placed in the mouth of the fictitious prophet are those which happen after the year 70.

But this opinion, besides being of such secondary application, is not here admissible. Evidently the verse 5 xiv. refers to the second temple. The remark that the new temple was very different from the first—for it was anything but majestic—is an allusion to Esd. iii. 12, told in the style of Josephus, Ant. xi. iv. 2. Still more this important passage would lead one to think that at the time when the Book of Tobit was written, Herod had not as yet put forth his hand on the second temple in order that he might rebuild it, an event which took place the 19th year before J.C.

The critics whom I now am fighting apply here the system, getting greatly into fashion, which seeks to base upon a passage of the pseudo Epistle of Barnabas, and according to whom there had been under the reign of Hadrian, a commencement of the rebuilding of the temple undertaken by consent with the Jews. It is to this reconstruction that may apply the passage of Tobit xiv. 5. But I have shown elsewhere that the interpretation of the false passage of Barnabas is wrong.

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