To
ROBERT BROWNING, esq.

AUTHOR OF "A DEATH IS THE DESERT," AND OF MANY OTHER POEMS OF THE DEEPEST INTEREST TO ALL STUDENTS OF SCRIPTURE,

I DEDICATE

THESE VOLUMES WITH SINCERE ADMIRATION AND ESTEEM.

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PREFACE.

I complete in these volumes the work which has absorbed such leisure as could be spared from many and onerous duties during the last twelve years. My object has been to furnish English readers with a companion, partly historic and partly expository, to the whole of the New Testament. By attention to the minutest details of the original, by availing myself to the best of my power of the results of modern criticism, by trying to concentrate upon the writings of the Apostles and Evangelists such light as may be derived from Jewish, Pagan, or Christian sources, I have endeavoured to fulfil my ordination vow and to show diligence in such studies as help to the knowledge of the Holy Scriptures. The " Life of Christ" was intended mainly as a commentary upon the Gospels. It was written in such a form as should reproduce whatever I had been able to learn from the close examination of every word which they contain, and should at the same time set forth the living reality of the scenes recorded. In the " Life of St. Paul" I wished to incorporate the details of the Acts of the Apostles with such biographical incidents as can be derived from the Epistles of St. Paul; and to take the reader through the Epistles themselves in a way which might enable him, with keener interest, to judge of their separate purpose and peculiarities, by grasping the circumstances under which each of them was written. The present volumes are an attempt to set forth, in their distinctive characteristics, the work and the writings of St. Peter, St. James, St. Jude, St. John, and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews. If my effort has been in any degree successful, the reader should carry away from these pages some conception of the varieties of religious thought which prevailed in the schools of Jerusalem and of Alexandria, and also of those phases of theology which are represented by the writings of the two greatest of the twelve Apostles.

In carrying out this design I have gone, almost verse by verse, through the seven Catholic Epistles, the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the Revelation of St. John—explaining their special difficulties, and develop­ing their general characteristics. Among many Christians there is a singular ignorance of the Books of Scripture as a whole. With a wide knowledge of particular texts, there is a strange lack of familiarity with the bearings of each separate Gospel and Epistle. I have hoped that by considering each book in connexion with all that we can learn of its author, and of the circumstances under which it was written, I might perhaps contribute to the intelligent study of Holy Writ. There may be some truth in the old motto, Bonus textuarius bonus theologus; but he whose knowledge is confined to "texts," and who has never studied them, first with their context, then as forming fragments of entire books, and lastly in their relation to the whole of Scripture, incurs the risk of turning theology into an erroneous and artificial system. It is thus that the Bible has been misinterpreted by substituting words for things; by making the dead letter an instrument wherewith to murder the living spirit; and by reading into Scripture a multitude of meanings which it was never intended to express. Words, like the chameleon, change their colour with their surroundings. The very same word may in different ages involve almost opposite connotations. The vague and differing notions attached to the same term have been the most fruitful sources of theological bitterness, and of the internecine opposition of contending sects. The abuse of sacred phrases has been the cause, in age after age, of incredible misery and mischief. Texts have been perverted to sharpen the sword of the tyrant and to strengthen the rod of the oppressor—to kindle the fagot of the Inquisitor and to rivet the fetters of the slave. The terrible wrongs which have been inflicted upon mankind in their name have been due exclusively to their isolation and perversion. The remedy for these deadly evils would have been found in the due study and comprehension of Scripture as a whole. The Bible does not all lie at a dead level of homogeneity and uniformity. It is a progressive revelation. Its many-coloured wisdom was made known " fragmentarily and multifariously "—in many parts and in many manners.

In the endeavour to give a clearer conception of the books here considered I have followed such different methods as each particular passage seemed to require. I have sometimes furnished a very close and literal translation; sometimes a free paraphrase; sometimes a rapid abstract; sometimes a running commentary. Avoiding all parade of learned references, I have thought that the reader would generally prefer the brief expression of a definite opinion to the reiteration of many bewildering theories. Neither in these, nor in the previous volumes, have I wilfully or consciously avoided a single difficulty. A passing sentence often expresses a conclusion which has only been formed after the study of long and tedious monographs. In the footnotes especially I have compressed into the smallest possible space what seemed to be most immediately valuable for the illustration of particular words or allusions. In the choice of readings I have exercised an independent judgment. If my choice coincides in most instances with that of the Revisers of the New Testament, this has only arisen from the fact that I have been guided by the same principles as they were. These volumes, like the " Life of Christ" and the " Life of St. Paul," were written before the readings adopted by the Revisers were known, and without the assistance which I should otherwise have derived from their invaluable labours. [I take this opportunity of thanking the Rev. John de Soyres and Mr. "W. R. Brown for the assistance which they have rendered in preparing this book for the press.]

The purpose which I have had in view has been, I trust, in itself a wortby one, however much I may have failed in its execution. A living writer of eminence has spoken of his works in terms which, in very humble measure, I would fain apply to my own. "I have made," said Cardinal Newman—in a speech delivered in 1879—"many mistakes. I have nothing of that high perfection which belongs to the writings of the saints, namely, that error cannot be found in them. But what, I trust, I may claim throughout all I have written is this—an honest intention; an absence of personal ends ; a temper of obedience; a willingness to be corrected; a dread of error; a desire to serve the Holy Church and " (though this is perhaps more than I have any right to say) " through the Divine mercy a fair measure of success."

F. W. FARRAR,
St. Margaret's Sectary, Westminster, June 11th, 1882.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS.

Volume I.

CHAPTER I.
moral condition of the world.

Degradations which accompanied the Decadence of Paganism—The Slaves—The Rich and Noble—The Emperor—Fatal Degeneracy—Greeklings—Literature, Art, the Drama—The Senate — Scepticism and Superstition—Stoic Virtue—The Holy .Toy of Christians ....

CHAPTER II.
the rise of the antichrist.

The Nemesis of Absolutism—Reign of Nero—Christians and the Roman Government—St. Paul and the Empire—Horrors of Cassarism—The Palace of the Antichrist—Agrippina the Younger—Infancy of Nero— Evil Auguries—Intrigues of Agrippina—Her Marriage with Claudius— Her Career as Empress—Her Plots to Advance her Son—Her Crimes— Her Peril—Murder of Claudius—Accession of Nero . . . .17

CHAPTER III.
the features of the antichrist.

Successful Guilt—Fresh Crimes—The "Golden Quinquennium"—Follies of Nero—Threats of Agrippina—Jealousy of Britannicus—Murder of Britannicus—Nero estranged from Agrippina—Influence of Poppaea— Plot to Murder Agrippina—Burrus and Seneca—Murder of Agrippina—A Tormented Conscience—The Depths of Satan . . . .35

CHAPTER IV.
the burning of rome, and the first persecution.

The Era of Martyrdom—The Fire of Rome—Was Nero Guilty ?—Devastation of the City—Confusion and Agony—The Golden House—Nero Sanpeeted—The Christians Accused—Strangeness of this Circumstance— Tacitus—Popular Feeling against the Christians—Secret Jewish Sug­gestions—Poppaea a Proselyte—Incendiarism attributed to Christians— Jisthetic Cruelty—A Huge Multitude—Dreadful Forms of Martyrdom—Martyrs on the Stage—The Antichrist—Retribution—Awful Omens
—The Revolt of Vindex—Suicide of Nero—Expectation of his Return....... 51

CHAPTER V.
writings of the apostles and early christians.

Annals of the Church—End of the Acts—Obscurity of Details—Little known about the Apostles—St. Andrew—St. Bartholomew—St. Mat­thew—St. Thomas—St. James the Less—St. Simon Zelotcs—Judas— Late and Scanty Records—Writings of the Great Apostles—Invaluable as illustrating different Phases of Christian Thought—They Explain the opposite Tendencies of Heretical Development—The Revelation—The Epistle to the Hebrews—The Seven Catholic Epistles—The Epistle of St. Jude—The Epistle of St. James—The Epistles of St. Peter-Catholicity of St. Peter—The Three Epistles of St. John—Genuineness of these Writings—Contrasts between different Apostles—Difference between St. Paul and St. John—Superiority of the New Testament to the Writings of the Apostolic Fathers—The Epistle of St. Clemens— Its Theological and Intellectual Weakness—The Epistle of Barnabas— Its exaggerated Panlinism—Its extravagant Exegesis—The Christian Church was not ideally Pure—Yet its Chief Glory was in the Holiness of its Standard ........... 81

CHAPTER VI.
st. peter.

Outline of his early Life—Events recorded in the Acts—Complete Tin-certainty as to his Subsequent Career—Legends—Dom'me quo vadis?— The Legends embellished and Doubtful—Legend about Simon Magus —Was Peter Bishop of Rome?—Improbability of the Legend about his Crucifixion head downwards —His Martyrdom—His Visit to Rome....... 109

CHAPTER VII.
special features of the first epistle of st. peter.

Date of the Epistle—Its certain Genuineness—Style of the Epistle—A Christian Treatise—Natural Allusions to Events in the Gospels—Vivid Expressions—Resemblance to the Speeches in the Acts—Allusions to the Law—Resemblances to St. Paul and St. James—Plasticity of St. Peter's Nature—Struggle after Unity—Originality—His View of redemption —His View of faith—His Views upon regeneration and baptism— Not Transcendental hut Practical—Christ's Descent into Hades—Great Importance of the Doctrine—Attempts to explain it away—Reference to the Epistle to the Galatians—Addressed to both Jews and Gentiles— Crisis at which it was Composed—A Time of Persecution—Keynote of the Letter—Analysis

CHAPTER VIII.
 the first epistle of st. peter.

Title which he Adopts—Address—Provinces of Asia—Thanksgiving—Ex­hortation to Hope—Special Appeals—Duty of Blameless Living—Duty of Civil Obedience—Humble Submission—Address to Servants—To Christian Wives—Exhortation to Love and Unity—Christ Preaching to the Spirits in Prison—Obvious Import of the Passage—Ruthlessness of Commentators—The approaching End—Address to Elders—Conclusion...... 151

CHAPTER IX.
peculiarities of the second epistle.

Overpositiveness in the Attack and Defence of its Genuineness—Its Canonicity—Exaggeration of the Arguments urged in its Favour—Extreme Weakness of external Evidence—Tardy Acceptance of the Epistle— Views of St. Jerome, &c.—Cessation of Criticism—The Unity of its Structure—Outline of the Letter—Internal Evidence—Resemblances to First Epistle—Difference of Style—Peculiarity of its Expressions—Difference in general Form of Thought—Irrelevant Arguments about the Style—Marked Variations—Dr. Abbott's Proof of the Resemblance to Josephus—Could Josephus have Read it?—Reference to the Second Advent—What may be urged against these Difficulties—Priority of St. Jude—Extraordinary Relation to St. Jude—Method of Dealing with the stranger Phenomena of St. Jude's Epistle—Possible Counter-con­siderations—Allusion to the Transfiguration—Ancientness of the Epistle—Superiority of the Epistle to the Post-Apostolic Writings— The Thoughts may have been Sanctioned and Adopted by St. Peter.....

CHAPTER X.
the second epistle of st. peter.

page Reasons for offering a Literal Translation of the Epistle—Translation and Notes—Abrupt Conclusion—Its Authenticity—Who was the Author?—Jude, the Brother of James— Not an Apostle—One of the Brethren of the Lord—Wby he does not use this Title—Wby he calls himself "Brother of James"—Story of his Grandchildren—Circumstances which may have called forth the Epistle—Corruption of Morals—Who were the Offenders thus Denounced ?—Resemblances to Second Epistle of St. Peter—Translation and Notes—Style of Greek—Simplicity of Structure—Fondness for Apocryphal Allusions—Methods of Dealing with these Peculiarities— "Verbal Dictation"—Rabbinic Legends—Corrupt, Gnosticising Sects.... 220

CHAPTER XII.
judaism, the septuagint, etc.

Unity of Christian Faith—Diversity in Unity—Necessity and Blessing of the Diversity—Individuality of the Sacred Writers—Phases of Christian Truth—Alexandrian Christianity—The Jews and Greek Philosopby—Hebraism and Hellenism—Glories of Alexandria—Prosperity of the Jews in Alexandria—The Diapleuston—Favour shown the Jews by the Ptolemies—The Septuagint—Delight of the Hellenists—Anger of the Hebraists—Effects on Judaism—Bias of the Translators—Harmless Variations from the Hebrew—Hagadoth—Avoidance of Anthropomorphism and Anthropopatby—Deliberate Manipulation of the Original—Aristobulus—The Wisdom of Solomon—Semi-Ethnic Jewish Literature—Philo not wholly Original ..... 247

CHAPTER XIII.
philo and the doctrine of the logos.

Family of Alexander the Alubarch—Life of Philo—Classification of his Works—Those that bear on the Creation—On Abraham—Allegorising Fancies—The Life of Moses—Arbitrary Exegesis—Meanings of the word logos—Personification of the Logos—The High Priest—A Cup­bearer—Other Comparisons—Vague Outlines of the Conception—Con­trast with St. John .......... 266

CHAPTER XIV.
philonish—allegory—the catechetical school.

Influence of Philo on the Sacred Writers—Sapiential Literature of Alexandria—Defects of Philonism—The School of St. Mark—Motto of the Alexandrian School—Allegory applied to the Old Testament—The Parties of the Kabbalists—History of Allegory in the Alexandrian School—Allegory in the Western Church . . . . . .277

CHAPTER XV.
authorship and style of the epistle to the hebrews.

Continuity of Scripture—Manifoldness of Wisdom—Ethnic Inspiration— The Epistle Alexandrian—External Evidence—Summary—Superficial Custom—Misuse of Authorities—Later Doubts and Hesitations—In­dolent Custom—Phrases common to the Author with St. Paul— Differences of Style not explicable—The Epistle not a Translation— Fondness of the Writer for Sonorous Amplifications .... 285

CHAPTER XVI.
theology of the epistle to the hebrews.

Difference from the Theological Conceptions of St. Paul—Three Cardinal Topics—"The People"—Christianity and Judaism—Alexandrianism of the Writer—Prominence of the Jews—Method of treating Scripture—Indebtedness to Philo—Particular Expressions—"The Cutter-Word"—Stern Passages—Melchizedek-Priesthood of Christ—Superiority to Philo—Fundamental Alexandrianism—Judaism not regarded as a Law but as a System of Worship—"The Pattern shewn thee in the Mount"—Effectiveness of the Argument—A Prae-existent Ideal—The World of Ideas—View of hope—faith, in this Epistle and in St. Paul—righteousness—Christology—redemption—Prominence given to priesthood and sacrifice—Peculiar Sentences—The Author could not have been St. Paul .......... 301

CHAPTER XVII.
who wrote the epistle to the hebrews ?

Absence of Greeting—Certainties about the Writer—By some known Friend of St. Paul—Yet not by aquila—Nor by titus—Nor by silas—Nor by st. barnabas—Nor by st. ci.emens of rome—Nor by st. mark—Nor by st. luke—Strong Probability that the Writer was apollos—This would not necessarily be known to the Church of Alexandria— Suggested by Luther—Generally and increasingly Accepted—Date of the Epistle—Allusion to Timotby—Addressed to Jewish Christians— Not Addressed to the Church of Jerusalem—Nor to Corinth—Nor to Alexandria—May have been Addressed to Rome—Or to Ephesus—"They of Italy "—Apollos ......... 330

CHAPTER. XVIII.
the epistle to the hebrews.

SECTION I.
THE SUPERIORITY OF CHRIST.

Comparison between Judaism and Christianity—Outline of the Epistle— Its Keynotes — Striking Opening — Christ Superior to Angels— Peculiar Method of Scriptural Argument—Use of Quotations—An Admitted Method—Partial Change of View—The Style of Argument less important to us . ......... 340

SECTION II.
A SOLEMN EXHORTATION.

Translation and Notes—Christ Superior to Moses—Parallelism of Structure
—Appeal ............ 358

SECTION III.
THE HIGH PRIESTHOOD OF CHRIST.

Transitional Exhortation—Qualifications of High Priesthood—Sketch of the great Argument of the Epistle—Translation and Notes—Explanation of Difficulties respecting the Nature of Christ—Digression—Post-Baptismal Sin—Indefectibility of Grace—Calvinistic View of the Passage—Arminian View—Neither View Tenable—Obvious Limita­tions of the Meaning of the Passage—"Near a Curse"—"For Burning"—A Better Hope . ........ 368

SECTION IV.
THE ORDER OF MELCHIZEDEK.

Translation and Notes—All that is known of Melchizedek—Salem— El six Eliun—Allusion in Psalm ex.—Hagadoth—Philo—Mystery attached to Melchizedek—Fantastic Bypotheses—Who Melchizedek was—Only Important as a Type—Semitic Phraseology and Modes of Arguing from the Silence of Scripture—Translation and Notes—Argument of the Passage—Superiority of the Melchizedek to the Levitic Priesthood in Seven Particulars—Summary and Notes ...... 391

SECTION V.
THE DAY OF ATONEMENT.

Grandeur of the Day—Translation and Notes—A New Covenant—Its Superior Ordinances of Ministration—Translation and Notes—Symbolism of Service—The Tabernacle, not the Temple—"Vacua omnia "— Contents of the Ark—The Tliumiaterion—Censer (?)—Altar of Incense—Translation and Notes—Meanings of the word Diutheke—-An obvious Play on its Second Meaning of "Testament"—Translation and Notes— Familiarity with the Hagadoth and the Halacha—Grandest Phase of Levitic Priesthood—Feelings Inspired by the Day—Careful Preparation of the High Priest—Legendary Additions to the Ritual—Peril of the Function—Chosen as the Highest Point of Comparison— Superiority of Christian Privileges in every respect . . . . 409

SECTION VI.
A RECAPITULATION.

Translation and Notes—Triumphant Close of the Argument—Summary... 440

SECTION VII.
A THIRD SOLEMN WARNING.

Exhortation—Its Solemnity—Translation and Notes ... 446

SECTION VIII.
THE GLORIES OF FAITH.

Faith—What is Faith ?—Exhibited in its Issues—Beginning of the Illustration—Instances from each Period of Sacred History—Translation and Notes ........... 451

SECTION IX.
FINAL EXHORTATIONS.

Exhortation to Endurance—God's Fatherhood—Translation and Notes— Faith and Patience—Superior Grandeur of Christianity—Moral Appeal of the last Chapter—Translation and Notes—Modern Controversies— "We have, an Altar "—Explanation of the Passage—Exhortation to Obedience—Final Clauses—Their Bearing on the Authorship of the Epistle ........... 461

JUDAIC CHRISTIANITY.

CHAPTER XIX.
"the lord's brother."

A New Phase of Christianity—The Name "James "—The Author was not James the Son of Zebedee—Untenable Arguments—Nor James the Son of Alphsous—Untenable Arguments—Alphaeus—He is James, Bishop of Jerusalem, and the Lord's Brother—Is he Identical with the Son of Alphseus?—"Neither did His Brethren Believe on Him"—Paucity of Jewish Names—Helvidian Theory—The Simplest and Fairest Explanation of the Language of the Evangelists—The Language not Absolutely Decisive—Dogma of the Anpartlicnia—The Evangelists give no Hint of it—What the Gospels Say—Utter Baselessness of the Theory of St. Jerome—Entirely Untrue that the Terms "Cousins " and "Brothers" are Identical—The Theory an Invention due to a priori Conceptions—Not a single Argument can be Adduced in its favour—Tendencies which Led to the Dogma of the Aeiparthenia— Unscriptural and Manichaean Disparagement of the Sanctity of Marriage—The Theory arises from Apollinarian Tendencies—Theory of Epiphanius—Derived from the Apocryphal Gospels—Their Absur­dities and Discrepancies—Conclusion ....... 483

CHAPTER XX.
life and character of st. james.

Inimitable Truthfulness of Scripture Narrative—Childhood and Training of St. James—A Boy's Education—"A Just Man"—Levitic Precision— The Home at Nazareth—Familiarity with Scripture—"Wisdom"— Knowledge of Apocryphal Books —Curious Phenomenon—A Nazaritc— Scrupulous Holiness—A Lifelong Vow— Shadows over the Home at Nazareth—Alienation of Christ's " Brethren "—Their Interferences—His Calm and Gentle Rebukes—Their Last Interference—Their Complete Conversion—Due to the Resurrection—"He was Seen of James"—Legend in the Gospel of the Hebrews—St. James and St. Paul—Death of the Son of Zebedee—James, Bishop of Jerusalem— Deep Reverence for his Character—Obliam—St. James and St. Peter— Bearing of St. James in the Synod of Jerusalem—Wisdom which he Showed—Importance of the Question at stake—His Decision—Its Results—"Certain from James"—A Favourite of the Ebionites— Judaic Type of his Character and of his Views—The Results of his Training—"The Just"—Title which he Adopts—Unfortunate Advice to St. Paul—Martyrdom of St. James—Josephus—Hegesippus— Narrative of Hegesippus—Talmudic Legends of St. James—Rapid Retribution ............ 510

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VOLUME ONE

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The World

 

Chapter I

 

Moral Condition of the World

 

“Quem vocet divum populus ruentis
Imperi rebus? 
Prece qua fatigent
Virgines sanctae minus audientem
Carmina Vestam?” 
Hor. Od. I, ii, 25

“Nona aetas agitur perjoraque saecula ferri
Temporibus, quorum sceleri non invenit ipsa
Nomen, et a nullo posuit natura metallo.”
Juv Sat. xiii, 28-30

 “From Mummius to Augustus the Roman city stands as the living mistress of a dead world, and from Augustus to Theodusius the mistress becomes as lifeless as her subjects.”  Freeman’s Essays, ii, 330

 

The epoch which witnessed the early growth of Christianity was an epoch of which the horror and the degradation have rarely been equalled, and perhaps never exceeded, in the annals of mankind. Were we to form our sole estimate of it from the lurid picture of its wickedness, which St. Paul in more than one passage has painted with a few powerful strokes, we might suppose that we were judging it from too lofty a standpoint. We might he accused of throwing too dark a shadow upon the crimes of Paganism, when we set it as a foil to the lustre of an ideal holiness. But even if St. Paul

2 - THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.

had never paused amid his sacred reasonings to affix his terrible brand upon the pride of Heathenism, there would still have been abundant proofs of the abnormal wickedness which accompanied the decadence of ancient civilisation. They are stamped upon its coinage, cut on its gems, painted upon its chamber-walls, sown broadcast over the pages of its poets, satirists, and historians. " Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee, thou wicked servant! " Is there any age which stands so instantly condemned by the bare mention of its rulers as that which reealls the successive names of Tiberius, Grains, Claudius, Nero, Gralba, Otho, and Vitellius, and which after a brief gleam of better examples under Vespasian and Titus, sank at last under the hideous tyranny of a Domitian ? Is there any age of which the evil characteristics force themselves so instantaneously upon the mind as that of which we mainly learn the history and moral condition from the relics of Pompeii and Herculaneum, the satires of Persius and Juvenal, the epigrams of Martial, and the terrible records of Tacitus, Suetonius, and Dion Cassius ? And yet even beneath this lowest deep, there is a lower deep; for not even on their dark pages are the depths of Satan so shamelessly laid bare to human gaze as they are in the sordid fictions of Petronius and of Apuleius. But to dwell upon the crimes and the retributive misery of that period is happily not my duty. I need but make a passing allusion to its enormous wealth; its unbounded self-indulgence ; its coarse and tasteless luxury; its greedy avarice ; its sense of insecurity and terror;1 its apatby,

1 2 Cor. vii. 10; " Interciderat sortis hmnanae commercium vi metiis," Tac. Ann. vi. 19; " Favor interims occnpaverat animos," id. iv. 76. See the very remarkable passage of Pliny (" At Hercnle homini plurima ex homine mala snnt," S. N. vii. 1).

3 - THE SLAVES.

debauchery, and cruelty;1 its hopeless fatalism ;2 its unspeakable sadness and weariness;3 its strange extravagances alike of infidelity and of superstition.4

At the lowest extreme of the social scale were millions of slaves, without family, without religion, without possessions, who had no recognised rights, and towards whom none had any recognised duties, passing normally from a childhood of degradation to a manhood of hardship, and an old age of unpitied neglect.5 Only a little above the slaves stood the lower classes, who formed the vast majority of the freeborn inhabitants of the Roman Empire. They were, for the most part, beggars and idlers, familiar with the grossest indignities of an unscrupulous dependence. Despising a life of honest industry, they

1 Mart. Ep. ii. 66; Juv. vi. 491.

2 Lucan, Phars. i. 70, 81; Suet. Tib. 69; Tac. Agric. 42; Ann. iii. 18, iv. 26; " Sed mihi haec et talia audienti in incerto jndicinaixest, fatone/ res mortalinm et necessitate immntabili an forte volvantur," Ann. vi. 22; Plin. H. N. ii. 7; Sen. De Benef. iv. 7.

3 Tacitus, with all his resources, finds it difficult to vary his language in describing so many suicides.

4 See my Witness of History to Christ, p. 101; Seekers after God, p. 38. The " tanrobolies " and " kriobolies " (baths in the blood of bulls and rams) mark the extreme sensuality of superstition. See Dollinger, Gentile and Jew, ii. 179; De Pressense, Trois Premiers Swcles, ii. 1—60, etc.

5 Some of the lociclassici on Roman slavery are: Cic. De Bep. xiv. 23; Jnv. vi. 219, x. 183, xiv. 16—24; Sen. Ep. 47 ; De Ira, iii. 35, 40; De Clem. 18; Controv. v. 33; De Vit. Beat. 17; Plin. H. N. xxxiii. 11; Plut. Cato, 21. Vedius Pollio and the lampreys (Plin. H. N. ix. 23). In the debate on the murder of Pedanius Secundus (Tac. Ann. xiv. 42—45) many eminent senators openly advocated the brutal law that when a master was murdered, his slaves, often to the number of hundreds, should be put to death. These facts, and many others, will be found collected in Wallon, De FEselavage dans I'Antiquite ; Friedlander, Sittengesch. Horns ; Becker, Gallus, E. T. 199—225; Dollinger, Judenth.u.Heidenth. ix. 1, § 2. It is reckoned that in the Empire there cannot have been fewer than 60,000,000 •slaves (Le Maistre, Du Pape, i. 283). They were so numerous as to be divided according to their nationalities (Tac. Ann. iii. 53), and every slave was regarded as a potential enemy (Sen. Ep. xlvii.).

 

4 - THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.

asked only for bread and the games of the Circus, and were ready to support any Government, even the most despotic, if it would supply these needs. They spent their mornings in lounging about the Forum, or in dancing attendance at the levees of patrons, for a share in whose largesses they daily struggled.1 They spent their afternoons and evenings in gossiping at the Public Baths, in listlessly enjoying the polluted plays of the theatre, or looking with fierce thrills of delighted horror at the bloody sports of the arena. At night, they crept up to their miserable garrets in the sixth and seventh stories of the huge insulae—the lodging-houses of Borne —into which, as into the low lodging-houses of the poorer quarters of London, there drifted all that was most wretched and most vile.2 Their life, as it is described for us by their contemporaries, was largely made up of squalor, misery, and vice.

Immeasurably removed from these needy and greedy freemen, and living chiefly amid crowds of corrupted and obsequious slaves, stood the constantly diminishing throng of the wealtby and the noble.3 Every age in its decline has exhibited the spectacle of selfish luxury side by side with abject poverty; of—

" Wealth, a monster gorged Mid starving populations :"—

but nowhere, and at no period, were these contrasts so startling as they were in Imperial Rome. There a whole

1 Suet. Net. 16; Mart. iv. 8, viii. 50; jut. i. 100,128, iii. 269, etc.

2 jut. Sat. iii. 60—65; Athen. i. 17, § 36; Tac. Ann. xt. 44, " quo cuncta undiqne atrocia aut pudenda confluunt;" VitniT. ii. 8; Suet. Ner. 38. There were 44,000 insulae in Rome to only 1,780 dom/us (Becker, Gallus, E. T., p. 232).

3 Among the 1,200,000 inhabitants of ancient Rome, eTen in Cicero's time, there were scarcely 2,000 proprietors (Cic. De Off. ii. 21).

5 - WEALTH AND LUXURY.

population might be trembling lest they should be starved by the delay of an Alexandrian corn-ship, while the upper classes were squandering a fortune at a single banquet,1 drinking out of myrrhine and jewelled vases worth hundreds of pounds,2 and feasting on the brains of peacocks and the tongues of nightingales.3 As a consequence disease was rife, men were short-lived, and even women became liable to gout.4 Over a large part of Italy, most of the freeborn population had to content themselves, even in winter, with a tunic, and the luxury of a toga was reserved only, by way of honour, to the corpse.5 Yet at this very time, the dress of Roman ladies displayed an unheard-of splendour. The elder Pliny tells us that he himself saw Lollia Paulina dressed for a betrothal feast in a robe entirely covered with pearls and emeralds, which had cost forty million sesterces,8 and which was known to be less costly than some of her other dresses.7 Gluttony, caprice,

1 See Tac. Ann. iii. 55. 400,000 sesterces (Juv. xi. 19). Taking the standard of 100,000 sesterces to be in the Augustan age £1,080 (which is a, little below the calculation of Hultsch), this would be £4,320. 30,000,000 sesterces (Sen. Up. xcv.; Sen. ad Helv. 9). In the days of Tiberius three mullets had sold for 30,000 sesterces (Suet. Tib. 34). Even in the days of Pompey Romans had adopted the disgusting practice of preparing for a dinner by taking an emetic. Yitellius set on the table at one banquet 2,000 fish and 7,000 birds, and in less than eight months spent in feasts a sum that would now amount to several millions.

2 Plin. H. N. viii. 48, xxxvii. 18.

3 "Portenta luxuriae," Sen. Up. ex.; Plin. H. N. ix. 18, 32, x. 51, 72. Petron. 93; jut. xi. 1—55, v. 92—100; Macrob. Sat. iii. 12,13; Sen. Up. Ixxxix. 21; Mart. Ep. Ixx. 5; Lampridius, Elagab.20; Suet. Vitell. 13. On the luxury of the age in general, see Sen. De Brev. Vit. 12; Ep. xcv.

4 Sen. Ep. xcv. 15—29. At Herculanenm many of the rolls discovered were cookery books.

5 Juv. i. 171; Mart. ix. 58, 8.

6 £432,000.

7 Pliny, H. JV. ix. 35, 56. He also saw Agrippina in a robe of gold tissue, id. xxxiii. 19.

6  - THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.

extravagance, ostentation, impurity, rioted in the heart of a society which knew of no other means by which to break the monotony of its weariness, or alleviate the anguish of its despair.

" On that hard Pagan world disgust
And secret loathing fell; Deep weariness and sated lust
Made human life a hell. In his cool hall, with haggard eyes,
The Roman noble lay ; He drove abroad in furious guise
Along the Appian Way; He made a feast, drank fierce and fast,
And crowned his hair with flowers— No easier nor no quicker past
The impracticable hours."

At the summit of the whole decaying system— necessary, yet detested—elevated indefinitely above the very highest, yet living in dread of the very lowest, oppressing a population which he terrified, and terrified by the population which he oppressed1—was an Emperor, raised to the divinest pinnacle of autocracy, yet conscious that his life hung upon a thread;2—an Emperor who, in the terrible phrase of Gibbon, was at once a priest, an atheist, and a god.3

The general condition of society was such as might have been expected from the existence of these elements. The Romans had entered on a stage of fatal degeneracy

1 Juv. iv. 153; Suet. Vomit. 17.

2 Tac. Ann. vi. 6; Suet. Claud. 35.

3 " Coelum decretum," Tac. Ann. i. 73; " Dis aequa potestas Caesaris," Juv. iv. 71; Plin. Paneg. 74-5, " Civitas nihil felicitati suae putat adstrui, posse nisi ut Di Caesarem imitentur." (Cf. Suet. Jul. 88; Kb. 13, 58; Aug. 59; Calig. 33; Vesp. 23; Vomit. 13.) Lncan, vii. 456 ; Philo, Leg. ad Gaium passim; Dion Cass. Ixiii. 5, 20; Martial, passim,; Tert. Apol. 33, 34; Boissier, La Rel. Bomaine, i. 122—208.

7 - FAMILY LIFE.

from the first day of their close intercourse with Greece.1 Greece learnt from Rome her cold-blooded cruelty ; Rome learnt from Greece her voluptuous corruption. Family life among the Romans had once been a sacred thing, and for 520 years divorce had been unknown among them.2 Under the Empire marriage had come to he regarded with disfavour and disdain.3 Women, as Seneca says, married in order to be divorced, and were divorced in order to marry; and noble Roman matrons counted the years not by the Consuls, but by their discarded or discarding husbands.4

To have a family was regarded as a misfortune, because the childless were courted with extraordinary assiduity by crowds of fortune-hunters.5 When there were children in a family, their education was left to be begun under the tutelage of those slaves who were otherwise the most decrepit and useless,6 and was carried on, with results too fatally obvious, by supple, accomplished, and abandoned Greeklings.7 But indeed no system of education could have eradicated the influence of the domestic circle. No care8 could have prevented

1 The degeneracy is specially traceable in their literature from the days of Plautus onwards.

2 The first Roman recorded to have divorced his wife was Sp. Oarvilins Ruga, b.c. 234 (Dionys. ii. 25; Aul. Gell. xvii. 21).

3 Hor. Od. iii. 6, 17. " Baraqne in hoc aevo quae velit esse parens," Ov. Nux, 15. Hence the Lex Papia Poppaea, the Jus trium liberorum, etc. Suet. Oct. 34; Aul. Gell. i. 6. See Ghainpagny, Les Cesars, i. 258, seq.

4 " Non consulnm numero sed maritorum annos suos computant," Sen. De Senef. iii. 16; " Bepudium jam votum erat, et quasi matrimonii fructns," Tert. Apol. 6; " Corrumpere et corrumpi saeculum vocatur," Tac. Germ. 19. Oomp. Suet. Calig. 34.

5 Tac. Germ. 20; Ann. xiii. 52; Plin. H. N. xiv. procem; Sen. ad Marc. Consol. 19; Plin. Epp. iv. 16 ; Juv. Sat. xii. 114, seq.

6 Plut. De Lib. Educ.

7 Juv. vii. 187, 219.

8 Juv. Sat. xiv.

8 - THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.

the sons and daughters of a wealthy family from catching the contagion of the vices of which they saw in their parents a constant and unblushing example.1

Literature and art were infected with the prevalent degradation. Poetry sank in great measure into exaggerated satire, hollow declamation, or frivolous epigrams. Art was partly corrupted by the fondness for glare, expensiveness, and size,2 and partly sank into miserable triviality, or immoral prettinesses,3 such as those which decorated the walls of Pompeii in the first century, and the Pare aux Cerfs in the eighteenth. Greek statues of the days of Phidias were ruthlessly decapitated, that their heads might be replaced by the scowling or imbecile features of a Grains or a Claudius. Nero, professing to be a connoisseur, thought that he improved the Alexander of Lysimachus by gilding it from head to foot. Eloquence, deprived of every legitimate aim, and used almost solely for purposes of insincere display, was tempted to supply the lack of genuine fire by sonorous euphony and theatrical affectation. A training in rhetoric was now understood to be a training in the art of emphasis and verbiage, which was rarely used for any loftier purpose than to make sycophancy plausible, or to embellish sophistry with speciousness.* The Drama, even in Horace's days, had degenerated into a vehicle for

1 Juv. Sat. xiv. passim; Tac. De Orat. 28,29; Quinct. i. 2; Sen. De Ira, ii. 22; Up. 95.

2 It was the age of Colossi (Plin. H. N. xxxiv. 7; Mart. Up. i. 71, viii. 44; Stat. Sylv. i. 1, etc.).

3 'Panrojpcu/>(a. Cic. AM. xv. 16; Plin. xxxv. 37. See Champagny, Les Cesars, iv. 138, who refers to Vitruv. vii. 5 ; Propert. ii. 5; Plin. H. N. xiv. 22, and xxxv. 10 (the painter Arellius, etc.).

4 Tac. Dial. 36—41; Ann. xv. 71; Sen. Up. cvi. 12; Petron. Satyr, i. Dion Cass. lix. 20.

9 - PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS.

the exhibition of scenic splendour or ingenious machinery. Dignity, wit, pathos, were no longer expected on the stage, for the dramatist was eclipsed by the swordsman or the rope-dancer.1 The actors who absorbed the greatest part of popular favour were pantomimists, whose insolent prosperity was generally in direct proportion to the infamy of their character.2 And while the shamelessness of the theatre corrupted the purity of all classes from the earliest age,3 the hearts of the multitude were made hard as the nether millstone with brutal insensibility, by the fury of the circus, the atrocities of the amphitheatre, and the cruel orgies of the games.* Augustus, in the document annexed to his will, mentioned that he had exhibited 8,000 gladiators and 3,510 wild beasts. The old warlike spirit of the Romans was dead among the gilded youth of families in which distinction of any kind was certain to bring down upon its most prominent members the murderous

1 Juv. xiv. 250 ; Suet. Nero, 11; Galb. 6.

2 Mnester (Tac. Ann. xi. 4, 36); Paris (Juv. vi. 87, vii. 88); Alitnrus (Jos. Vit. 3); Pylades (Zosim. i. 6); Batbyllus (Dion Cass. liv. 17; Tac. Ann. i. 54).

3 Isidor. xviii. 39.

4 " Mera homicidia sunt," Sen. Up. vii. 2; " Nihil est nobis . . . cum insania circi, cum impudieitia theatri, cum atrocitate arenae, cum vanitato xysti," Tert. Apol. 38. Cicero inclined to the prohibition of games which imperilled life (De Legg. ii. 15), and Seneca (I. c.) expressed his compassionate disapproval, and exposed the falsehood and sophism of the plea that after all the sufferers were only criminals. Yet in the days of Claudius the number of those thus butchered was so great that the statue of Augustus had to be moved that it might not constantly be covered with a veil (Dion Cass. Ix. 13, who in the same chapter mentions a lion that had been trained to devour men). In Claudius's sham sea-fight we are told that the incredible number of 19,000 men fought each other (Tac. Ann. xii. 56). Titus, the " darling of the human race," in one day brought into the theatre 5,000 wild beasts (Suet. Tit. 7), and butchered thousands of Jews in the games at Berytus. In Trajan's games (Dion Cass. Ixviii. 15) 11,000 animals and 10,000 men had to fight.

10 - THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.

suspicion of irresponsible despots. The spirit which had once led the Domitii and the Fabii " to drink delight of battle with their peers " on the plains of Gaul and in the forests of Germany, was now satiated by gazing on criminals fighting for dear life with bears and tigers, or upon bands of gladiators who hacked each other to pieces on the encrimsoned sand.1 The languid enervation of the delicate and dissolute aristocrat could only be amused by magnificence and stimulated by grossness or by blood.2 Thus the gracious illusions by which true Art has ever aimed at purging the passions of terror and pity, were extinguished by the realism of tragedies ignobly horrible, and comedies intolerably base. Two phrases sum up the characteristics of Roman civilisation in the days of the Empire—heartless cruelty, and unfathomable corruption.3

If there had been a refuge anywhere for the sentiments of outraged virtue and outraged humanity, we might have hoped to find it in the Senate, the members of which were heirs of so many noble and austere traditions. But—even in the days of Tiberius—the Senate, as Tacitus tells us, had rushed headlong into the most servile flattery,4 and this would not have been possible if its members had not been tainted by the prevalent deterioration. It was

1 Suet. Claud. 14,21, 34; Ner. 12; Calig. 35 ; Tac. Ann. xiii. 49; Plin. Paneg. 33.

2 Tac. Ann. xv. 32.

3 Eph. iv. 19; 2 Cor. vii. 10. Merivale, vi. 462; Champagny, Les Cesars, iv. 161, seq. Seneca, describing the age in the tragedy of Octavia, says:— "Saecnlo premimur gravi Quo scelera regnant, saevit impietas furens/' etc. -Oct. 379—437.

4 Tac. Ann. iii. 65, vi. 2, xiv. 12, 13, etc.

 

11 - THE SENATE.

 

before the once grave and pure-minded Senators of Rome—the greatness of whose state was founded on the sanctity of family relationships—that the Censor Metellus had declared in a.u.c. 602, without one dissentient murmur, that marriage could only be regarded as an intolerable necessity.1 Before that same Senate, at an earlier period, a leading Consular had not scrupled to assert that there was scarcely one among them all who had not ordered one or more of his own infant children to be exposed to death.2 In the hearing of that same Senate in a.d. 59, not long before St. Paul wrote his letter to Philemon, C. Cassius Longinus had gravely argued that the only security for the life of masters was to put into execution the sanguinary Silanian Law, which enacted that, if a master was murdered, every one of his slaves, however numerous, however notoriously innocent, should be indiscriminately massacred.3 It was the Senators of Rome who thronged forth to meet with adoring congratulations the miserable youth who came to them with his hands reeking with the blood of matricide.4 They offered thanksgivings to the gods for his worst cruelties,5 and obediently voted Divine honours

1 Comp. Tac. Ann. ii. 37, 38, iii. 34, 35, xv. 19; Aul. Gell. N. A.i.S; Liv. Epit. 59.

2 This abandonment of children was a normal practice (Ter. Heaut. iv. 1,37; Ovid, Amor. ii. 14; Suet.Ca%.5; Oct. 65; Juv. Sat. vi. 592; Plin. Up. iv. 15 [comp. ii. 20] ; Sen. ad Marciam, 19 ; Controv. x. 6). Angus-tine (De Civ. Dei, iv. 11) tells us that there was a goddess Levana, so called " qnia levat infantes; " if the father did not take the newborn child in his arms, it was exposed (Tac. Hist. v. 5; Germ. 19; Tert. Apol. 9; Ad Natt. 15; Minuc. Fel. Octav. xxx. 31; Stobaen's Floril. Ixxv. 15; Epictet. i. 23; Paulus, Dig. xxv. 3, etc. And see Denis, Idees morales dans I'Antiquite, ii. 203).

3 Tac. Ann. xiv. 43,44; v. supra, p. 3.

4 Tac. Ann. xiv. 13 : " festo cultu Senatum."

5 "Quotiens fugas et caedes jussit princeps, totiens grates Deis actas," Tac. Ann. xiv. 64.

12 - THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.

to the dead infant, four months old, of the wife whom he afterwards killed with a brutal kick.1

And what was the religion of a period which needed the sanctions and consolations of religion more deeply than any age since the world began? It is certain that the old Paganism, was—except in country places— practically dead. The very fact that it was necessary to prop it up by the buttress of political interference shows how hollow and ruinous the structure of classic Polytheism had become.2 The decrees and reforms of Claudius were not likely to reassure the faith of an age which had witnessed in contemptuous silence, or with frantic adulation, the assumption by Gaius of the attributes of deity after deity, had tolerated his insults against their sublimest objects of worship, and encouraged his claim to a living apotheosis.3 The upper classes were " destitute of faith, yet terrified at scepticism." They had long learnt to treat the current mythology as a mass of worthless fables, scarcely amusing enough for even a schoolboy's laughter, 4 but they were the ready dupes of every wandering quack who chose to assume the character of a mathemalicus or a mage? Their official religion was a decrepit The-agony; their real religion was a vague and credulous fatalism, which disbelieved in the existence of the gods,

1 Tac. Ann. xvi. 6; Suet. Ner. 25; Dion Cass. Ixii. 27.

2 Suet. Tib. 36.

3 Suet. Calig. 51. See Mart. Ep. v. 8, where he talks of the " edict of our Lord and God," i.e., of Domitian; and vii. 60, where he says that he shall pray to Domitian, and not to Jupiter.

4 "Esse aliquos manes et subterranea regna . . . Nee pneri credunt nisi qui nondum aere lavantnr." —Juv. Sot. ii. 149,152,

5 Tac. H. i. 22; Ann. vi. 20, 21, xii. 68; Juv. Sat. xiv. 248, iii. 42, vii. 200, etc.; Suet. Aug. 94; Tib. 14; Ner. 26; Otho, 4; Vomit. 15, etc.

13 - DECAY OF PAGANISM.

or held with Epicurus that they were careless of mankind.1 The mass of the populace either accorded to the old beliefs a nominal adherence which saved them the trouble of giving any thought to the matter,2 and reduced their creed and their morals to a survival of national habits; or else they plunged with eager curiosity into the crowd of foreign cults3—among which a distorted Judaism took its place 4—such as made the Romans familiar with strange names like Sabazius and Anchialus, Agdistis, Isis, and the Syrian goddess.5 All men joined in the confession that "the oracles were dumb." It hardly needed the wail of mingled lamentations as of departing deities which swept over the astonished crew of the vessel off Palodes to assure the world that the reign of the gods of Hellas was over —that "Great Pan was dead."

Such are the scenes which we must witness, such are the sentiments with which we must become familiar, the moment that we turn away our eyes from the spectacle of the little Christian churches, composed chiefly as yet of slaves and artisans, who had been taught to imitate a Divine example of humility and sincerity, of purity and love.

1 Lucr. vi. 446—465; jut. Sat. vii. 189—202, x. 129, xiii. 86—89; Plin. H. N. ii. 21; Quinct. Instt. v. 6, § 3; Tac. H. I 10—18, ii 69—82; Agric. 13; Germ. 33; Awn,, vi. 22, etc.

2 Juv. Sat. iii. 144, vi. 342, xiii. 75—83.

3 "Nee turba deonun talis ut est hodie," Juv. Sat. xiii. 46; " Igno-bilem Deorum turbam qiiam longo aevo longa superstitio congessit," Sen. Ep. 110. See Boissier, Les Religions Etrangeres (Bel. Bom. i. 374-450); Liv. xxxix. 8; Tae. Ann. ii. 85; Val. Max. I. iii. 2.

4 Juv. Sat. xiv. 96—106; Jos. Antt. xviii. 3 ; Pers. Sat. v. 180.

5 Cic. De Legg. ii. 8; De Div. ii. 24; Tert. ad Natt. i. 10; Juv. Sat. xiv. 263, xv. 1—32.

6 Plut. De Def. Orac., p. 419. Some Christian writers connect this remarkable story with the date of the Crucifixion. See Niedner, Lehrbucli d. Chr. K. G., p. 64.

14 - THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.

There were, indeed, a few among the Heathen who lived nobler lives and professed a purer ideal than the Pagans around them. Here and there in the ranks of the philosophers a Demetrius, a Musonius Rufus, an Epictetus ; here and there among Senators an Helvidius Priseus, a Paetus Thrasea, a Barea Soranus; here and there among literary men a Seneca or a Persius—showed that virtue was not yet extinct. But the Stoicism on which they leaned for support amid the terrors and temptations of that awful epoch utterly failed to provide a remedy against the universal degradation. It aimed at cherishing an insensibility which gave no real comfort, and for which it offered no adequate motive. It aimed at repressing the passions by a violence so unnatural that with them it also crushed some of the gentlest and most elevating emotions. Its self-satisfaction and exclusiveness repelled the gentlest and sweetest natures from its communion. It made a vice of compassion, which Christianity inculcated as a virtue; it cherished a haughtiness which Christianity discouraged as a sin. It was unfit for the task of ameliorating mankind, because it looked on human nature in its normal aspects with contemptuous disgust. Its marked characteristic was a despairing sadness, which became specially prominent in its most sincere adherents. Its favourite theme was the glorification of suicide, which wiser moralists had severely reprobated,1 but which many Stoics belauded as the one sure refuge against oppression and outrage.2 It was a philosophy which was indeed able to lacerate the heart with a righteous indignation against

1 Virg. JEn. vi. 450, seq.; Tune. Disp. i. 74; Cic. De Senect. 73; De Hep. vi. 15; Somn. Scip. 3; Sen. Ep. 70. Comp. Epict. Enchir. 52.

2 Both Zeno and Cleanthes died by suicide. For the frequency of suicide under the Empire see Tac. Ann. vi. 10, 26, xv. 60; Hist. v. 26; Suet. K6. 49; Sen. De Benef. ii. 27; Up. 70; Plin. Up. i. 12, iii. 7, 16, vi. 24. For its glorification, Lucan, Phars. iv.:—

 "Mors ntinam pavidos vitae snbdncere nolles, Sed virtns te sola daret."

Mortes repentinae, hoc est summa vitae felicitas," Plin. H. N. vii. 53, cf. 51. The practice of suicide became in the days of Trajan almost a " national usage " (see Merivale, vii. 317, viii. 107). The variety of Latin phrases for suicide shows the frequency of the crime. On the pride of Stoicism see Tac. Ann. xiv. 57; Juv. xiii. 93.

15 - STOICISM AND CHRISTIANITY.

the crimes and follies of mankind, but which vainly strove to resist, and which scarcely even hoped to stem, the ever-swelling tide of vice and misery. For wretchedness it had no pity; on vice it looked with impotent disdain. Thrasea was regarded as an antique hero for walking out of the Senate-house during the discussion of some decree which involved a servility more than usually revolting.1 He gradually drove his few admirers to the conviction that, even for those who had every advantage of rank and wealth, nothing was possible but a life of crushing sorrow ended by a death of complete despair.2 St. Paul and St. Peter, on the other hand, were at the very same epoch teaching in the same city, to a few Jewish hucksters and a few Gentile slaves, a doctrine so full of hope and brightness that letters, written in a prison with torture and death in view, read like idylls of serene happiness and paeans of triumphant joy. The graves of these poor sufferers, hid from the public eye in the catacombs, were decorated with an art, rude indeed, yet so triumphant as to make

1 On the motion against the memory of Agrippina (Tac. Ann. xiv. 12). He had also opposed the execution of Antistins (id. xiv. 48). It was further remembered against him that he had not attended the obsequies of the deified Poppaea, or offered sacrifice for the preservation of Nero's " divine voice."

2 Suet. Ner. 37.
 

16 - THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.

their subterranean squalor radiant with emblems of all that is brightest and most poetic in the happiness of man.1 While the glimmering taper of the Stoics was burning pale, as though amid the vapours of a charnel-house, the torch of Life upheld by the hands of the Tarsian tent-maker and the Galilaean fisherman had flashed from Damascus to Antioch, from Antioch to Athens, from Athens to Corinth, from Corinth to Ephesus, from Ephesus to Rome.

1 "There the ever-green leaf protests in sculptured silence that the winter of the grave cannot touch the saintly soul; the blossoming branch speaks of vernal suns beyond the snows of this chill world; the good shepherd shows from his benign looks that the mortal way so terrible to nature had become to those Christians as the meadow-path between the grassy slopes and beside the still waters." (Martineau, Hours of Thought, p. 155.)

 

Chapter II.

 

The Rise of the Antichrist

" Hie hostis Denm Hominnmque templis expnlit superos snis, Civesque patria; spiritom fratri abstnlit Hausit crnorem matris;—et Incem videt!" —SEN. Octav. 239.

"Praestare Neronem Securum valet haec aetas." —jut. Sat. viii. 173.

All the vice, all the splendour, all the degradation of Pagan Home seemed to be gathered up in the person of that Emperor who first placed himself in a relation of direct antagonism against Christianity. Long before death ended the astute comedy in which Augustus had so gravely borne his part, 1 he had experienced the Nemesis of Absolutism, and foreseen the awful possibilities which it involved. But neither he, nor any one else, could have divined that four such rulers as Tiberius, Gaius, Claudius, and Nero—the first a sanguinary tyrant, the second a furious madman, the third an uxorious imbecile, the fourth a heartless buffoon—would in succession afflict and horrify the world. Yet these rulers sat upon the breast of Borne with the paralysing spell of a nightmare. The concentration of the old prerogatives of many offices in the

1 On his death-bed he asked his friends "whether he had fitly gone through the play of life," and, if so, begged for their applause like an actor on the point of leaving the stage (Suet. Octav. 99).

18 - THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.

person of one who was at once Consul, Censor, Tribune, Pontifex Maximus, and perpetual Imperator, fortified their power with the semblance of legality, and that power was rendered terrible by the sword of the Praetorians, and the deadly whisper of the informers. No wonder that Christians saw the true type of the Antichrist in that omnipotence of evil, that apotheosis of self, that disdain for humanity, that hatred against all mankind besides, that gigantic aspiration after the impossible, that frantic blasphemy and unlimited indulgence, which marked the despotism of a Gaius or a Nero. The very fact that their power was precarious as well as gigantic—that the lord of the world might at any moment be cut off by the indignation of the canaille of Rome, nay, more, by the revenge of a single tribune, or the dagger-thrust of a single slave1—did but make more striking the resemblance which they displayed to the gilded monster of Nebuchadnezzar's dream. Their autocracy, like that visionary idol, was an image of gold on feet of clay. Of that colossus many a Christian would doubtless be reminded when he saw the huge statue of Nero, with the radiated head and the attributes of the sun-god, which once towered 120 feet high on the shattered pediment still visible beside the ruins of the Flavian Amphitheatre.2

The sketch which I am now presenting to the reader is the necessary introduction to the annals of that closing epoch of the first century, which witnessed the early struggle of Christianity with the Pagan power. In the thirteen years of Nero's reign all the worst elements

1 Out of 43 persons in Lipsius's Stemma Caesarum, 32 died violent deaths, i.e., nearly 75 per cent.

2 Suet. Ner. 31; Mart. Spect. Ep. 2.

19 - CHRISTIANITY AND ROME.

of life which had long mingled with the sap of ancient civilisation seem to have rushed at once into their scarlet flower. To the Christians of that epoch the dominance of such an Emperor presented itself in the aspect of wickedness raised to superhuman exaltation, and engaged in an impious struggle against the Lord and against His saints.

Till the days of Nero the Christians had never been brought into collision with the Imperial Government. We may set aside as a worthless fiction the story that Tiberius had been so much interested in the account of the Crucifixion forwarded to him by Pontius Pilate, as to consult the Senate on the advisability of admitting Jesus among the gods of the Pantheon.1 It is very unlikely that Tiberius ever heard of the existence of the Christians. In its early days the Faith was too humble to excite any notice out of the limits of Palestine. Gaius, absorbed in his mad attempt to set up in the Holy of Holies " a desolating abomination," in the form of a huge image of himself, entertained a savage hatred of the Jews, but had not learned to discriminate between them and Christians. Claudius, disturbed by tumults in the Ghetto of Jewish freedmen across the Tiber, had been taught to look with alarm and suspicion on the name of Christus distorted into "Chrestus;" but his decree for the expulsion of the Jews from Rome, which had been a dead letter from the first, only affected Christianity by causing the providential migration of Prisca and Aquila, to become at Corinth and Ephesus

1 Ps. Clem. Horn. i. 6; Tert. Apol. 5; Euseb. H. K ii. 2; Jer. Chron. Pascli. i. 430. Braun (De Tiberii Christum in Deorwm numerum referendi consilio, Bonn, 1834) vainly tried to support this fable. Tiberius, more than any Emperor, was "circa Deos et religiones negligeiitior" (Suet. Tib. 69).

20 - THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.

the hosts, the partners, and the protectors of St. Paul.1 Nero was destined to enter into far deadlier and closer relations with the nascent Faith, and to fill so vast a space in the horrified imaginations of the early Christians as to become by his cruelties, his blasphemies, his enormous crimes, the nearest approach which the world has yet seen to the "Man of Sin." He was the ideal of depravity and wickedness, standing over against the ideal of all that is sinless and Divine. Against the Christ was now to be ranged the Antichrist,—the man-god of Pagan adulation, in whom was manifested the consummated outcome of Heathen crime and Heathen power.

Up to the tenth year of Nero's reign the Christians had many reasons to be grateful to the power of the Roman Empire. St. Paul, when he wrote from Corinth to the Thessalonians, had indeed seen in the fabric of Roman polity, and in Claudius, its reigning representative, the "check" and the "checker " which must be removed before the coming of the Lord. 2 Yet during his stormy life the Apostle had been shielded by the laws of Borne in more than one provincial tumult. The Roman politarchs of Thessalonica had treated him with humanity. He had been protected from the infuriated Jews in Corinth by the disdainful justice of Grallio. In Jerusalem the prompt interference of Lysias and of Festus had sheltered him from the plots of the Sanhedrin. At Caesarea he had appealed to Caesar as hig best security from the persistent hatred of Ananias and the Sadducees. If we have taken a correct view of the latter part of his career,

1 See Tert. Apol. 3; ad Natt. i. 3; my Life and Work of St. Paul, i. 559. I cannot accept the view of Herzog (Real-Encyld., s.v. Claudius), that Chrestus was some seditious Roman Jew.

2 Life and Work of St. Paul, i. 584, fg.

21 - THE EMPERORS.

his appeal had not been in vain, and he owed the last two years of his missionary activity to the impartiality of Roman Law. Hence, apart from the general principle of submission to recognised authority, he had special reason to urge the Roman Christians "to be subject to the higher powers," and to recognise in them the ordinance of God.1 With the private wickednesses of rulers the Christians were not directly concerned. Rumours, indeed, they must have heard of the poisoning of Claudius and of Britannicus; of Nero's intrigues with Acte; of his friendship with the bad Otho; of the divorce and legal assassination of Octavia; of the murders of Agrippina and Poppaea, of Burrus and Seneca. Other rumours must have reached them of nameless orgies, of which it was a shame even to speak. But knowing how the whole air of the bad society around them reeked with lies, they may have shown the charity that hopeth all things, and imputeth no evil, and rejoiceth not in iniquity, by tacitly setting aside these stories as incredible or false. It was not till a.d. 64, when Nero had been nearly ten years on the throne, that the slow light of History fully revealed to the Church of Christ what this more than monster was.

A dark spirit was walking in the house of the Caesars —a spirit of lust and blood which destroyed every family in succession with which they were allied. The Octavii, the Claudii, the Domitii, the Silani, were all hurled into ruin or disgrace in their attempt to scale, by intermarriage with the deified race of Julius, "the dread summits of Csesarean power." It has been well said that no page even of Tacitus has so sombre and tragic an eloquence as the mere Stemma Caesarum. The great

1 Rom. xiii. 1—7.

22 - THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.

Julius, robbed by death of his two daughters, was succeeded by his nephew Augustus,1 who, in ordering the assassination of Caesarion, the natural son of Julius by Cleopatra, extinguished the direct line of the greatest of the Caesars. Augustus by his three marriages was the father of but one daughter, and that daughter disgraced his family and embittered his life. He saw his two elder grandsons die under circumstances of the deepest suspicion; and being induced to disinherit the third for the asserted stupidity and ferocity of his disposition, was succeeded by Tiberius, who was only his stepson, and had not a drop of the Julian blood in his veins. Tiberius had but one son, who was poisoned by his favourite, Sejanus, before his own death. This son, Drusus, left but one son, who was compelled to commit suicide by his cousin, Gaius; and one daughter, whose son, Eubellius Plautus, was put to death by order of Nero. The marriage of Germanicus, the nephew of Tiberius, with the elder Agrippina, grand-daughter of Augustus, seemed to open new hopes to the Roman people and the imperial house. Germanicus was a prince of courage, virtue, and ability, and the elder Agrippina was one of the purest and noblest women of her day. Of the nine children of this virtuous union six alone survived. On the parents, and the three sons in succession, the hopes of Borne were fixed. But Germanicus was poisoned by order of Tiberius, and

1 It is characteristic of the manners of the age that Julius Caesar had married four times, Augustus thrice, Tiberius twice, Gaius thrice, Claudius six times, and Nero thrice. Yet Nero was the last of the Caesars, even of the adoptive line. No descendants had survived of the offspring of so many unions, and, as Merivale says, "a large proportion, which it would be tedious to calculate, were the victims of domestic jealousy and politic assassination" (Hist. vi. 366).

23 - THE STEMMA CAESARUM.

Agrippina was murdered in banishment after the endurance of the most terrible anguish. Their two elder sons, Nero and Drusus, lived only long enough to disgrace themselves, and to be forced to die of starvation.1 The third was the monster Grains. Of the three daughters, the youngest, Julia Livia, was put to death by the orders of Messalina, the wife of her uncle Claudius. Drusilla died in prosperous infamy, and Agrippina the younger, after a life of crime so abnormal and so detestable that it throws into the shade even the monstrous crimes of many of her contemporaries, murdered her husband, and was murdered by the orders of the son for whose sake she had waded through seas of blood.

That son was Nero! Truly the Palace of the Caesars must have been haunted by many a restless ghost, and amid its vast and solitary chambers the guilty lords of its splendour must have feared lest they should come upon some spectre weeping tears of blood. In yonder corridor the floor was still stained with the life-blood of the murdered Graius ;2 in that subterranean prison the miserable Drusus, cursing the name of his great-uncle Tiberius, tried to assuage the pangs of hunger by chewing the stuffing of his mattress ;3 in that gilded saloon Nero had his private interviews with the poison-mixer, Locusta, whom he salaried among "the instruments of his government;" 4

1 Tac. Ann. v. 3, vi. 24

2 "The Verres of a single province sank before the majesty of the law, and the righteous eloquence of his accuser; against the Verres of the world there was no defence except in the dagger of the assassin" (Freeman, Essays, ii. 330).

3 Tac. Ann. vii. 23.

4 Tac. Ann. xii. 66, xiii. 5.
 

24 - THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.

in that splendid hall Britannicus fell into convulsions after tasting his brother's poisoned draught ; that chamber, bright with the immoral frescoes of Arellius, witnessed the brutal kick which caused the death of the beautiful Poppaea. Fit palace for the Antichrist—fit temple for the wicked human god!—a temple which reeked with the memory of infamies—a palace which echoed with the ghostly footfall of murdered men!

Agrippina the Second, mother of Nero, was the Lady Macbeth of that scene of murder, but a Lady Macbeth with a life of worse stains and a heart of harder steel. Born at Cologne in the fourteenth year of the reign of Tiberius, she lost her father, Germanicus, by poison when she was three years old, and her mother, Agrippina, first by exile when she was twelve years old, and finally by murder when she was seventeen. She grew up with her wicked sisters and her wicked brother Gaius in the house of her grandmother Antonia, the widow of the elder Drusus. She was little more than fourteen years old when Tiberius married her to Cnseus Domitius Ahenobarbus. The Domitii were one of the noblest and most ancient families of Home, but from the time that they first emerged into the light of history they had been badly pre-eminent for the ferocity of their dispositions. They derived the surname of Ahenobarbus, or brazen-beard, from a legend of their race intended to account for their physical peculiarity. [Suet. Ner. 1; Pint. Mmil. 25.] Six generations earlier, the orator Crassus had said of the Domitius Ahenobarbus of that day, "that it was no wonder his beard was of brass, since his mouth was of iron and his heart of lead." But though the traditions of cruelty and treachery had been carried on from gene-

25 - THE FATHER OF NERO.

ration to generation,1 they seemed to have culminated in. the father of Nero, who added a tinge of meanness and vulgarity to the brutal manners of his race. His loose morals had been shocking even to a loose age, and men told each other in disgust how he had cheated in his praetorship; how he had killed one of his freedmen only because he had refused to drink as much as he was hidden; how he had purposely driven over a poor boy on the Appian Road; how in a squabble in the Forum he had struck out the eye of a Roman knight; how he had been finally banished for crimes still more shameful. It was a current anecdote of this man, who was "detestable through every period of his life," that when, nine years - after his marriage, the birth of his son Nero was announced to him, he answered the congratulations of his friends with the remark, that from himself and Agrippina nothing could have been born but what was hateful, and for the public ruin.

Agrippina was twenty-one when her brother Grains succeeded to the throne. Towards the close of his reign she was involved in the conspiracy of Lepidus, and was banished to the dreary island of Pontia. Grains seized the entire property both of Domitius and of Agrippina. Nero, their little child, then three years old, was handed over as a penniless orphan to the charge of his aunt Domitia, the mother of Messalina. This lady entrusted the education of the child to two slaves, whose influence is perhaps traceable for many

1 "The grandfather of Nero had been cheeked by Augustus from the bloodshed of his gladiatorial shows . . . his great-grandfather,' the best of his race,' had changed sides three times, not without disgrace, in the civil wars . . . his great-great-grandfather had rendered himself infamous by cruelty and treachery at Pharsalia, and was also charged with most un-Roman pusillanimity " (see Suet. Ner. 1—5; Merivale, vi. 62, seq).

26 - THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.

subsequent years. One of them, was a barber, the other a dancer.

On the accession of Claudius, Agrippina was restored to her rank and fortune, and once more undertook the management of her child. He was, as we see from his early busts, a child of exquisite beauty. His beauty made him an object of special pride to his mother. Prom this time forward it seems to have been her one desire to elevate the boy to the rank of Emperor. In vain did the astrologers warn her that his elevation involved her murder. To such dark hints of the future she had but one reply—Occidat dum imperet! "Let him slay me, so he do but reign ! "

By her second marriage, with Crispus Passienus, she further increased her already enormous wealth. She bided her time. Claudius was under the control of his freedmen, Narcissus and Pallas, and of the Empress Messalina, who had borne him two children, Britannicus and Octavia. The fierce and watchful jealousy of Messalina was soon successful in securing the banishment and subsequent murder of Julia, the younger sister of Agrippina,1 and in spite of the retirement in which the latter strove to withdraw herself from the furious suspicion of the Empress, she felt that her own life and that of her son were in perpetual danger. A story prevailed that when Britannicus, then about seven years old, and Nero, who was little more than three years older,2 had ridden side by side in the Trojan equestrian game, the favour of the populace towards the latter had been so openly manifested that Messalina had despatched emissaries to strangle him in bed, and

1 Suet. Claud. 29.

2 Tacitus says two years; but see Merivale, v. 517, vi. 88.

27 - AGRIPPINA.

 

that they had been frightened from doing so by seeing a snake glide from under the pillow.1 Meanwhile, Messalina was diverted from her purpose by the criminal pursuits which were notorious to every Roman with the single exception of her husband. She was falling deeper and deeper into that dementation preceding doom which at last enabled her enemy Narcissus to head a palace conspiracy and to strike her to the dust. Agrippina owed her escape from a fate similar to that of her younger sister solely to the infatuated passion of the rival whose name through all succeeding ages has been a byword of guilt and shame.

But now that Claudius was a widower, the fact that he was her uncle, and that unions between an uncle and niece were regarded as incestuous, did not prevent Agrippina from plunging into the intrigues by which she hoped to secure the Emperor for her third husband. Aided by the freedman Pallas, brother of Felix, the Procurator of Judaea, and by the blandishments which her near relationship to Claudius enabled her to exercise, she succeeded in achieving the second great object of her ambition. The twice-widowed matron became the sixth wife of the imbecile Emperor within three months of the execution of her predecessor. She had now but one further design to accomplish, and that was to gain the purple for the son whom she loved with all the tigress affection of her evil nature. She had been the sister and the wife, she wished also to be the mother of an Emperor.

The story of her daring schemes, her reckless cruelty,

1 Suetonius thinks that the story rose from a snake's skin which his mother gave him as an amulet, and which for some time he wore in a bracelet (Ner. 6).

28 - THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.

her incessant intrigues, is recorded in the stern pages of Tacitus. During the five years of her married life,1 it is probable that no day passed without her thoughts brooding upon the guilty end which she had kept steadily in view during so many vicissitudes. Her first plan was to secure for Nero the hand of Octavia, the only daughter of Claudius. Octavia had long been betrothed to the young and noble Lucius Junius Silanus, a great-great-grandson of Augustus, who might well be dreaded as a strong protector of the rights of his young brother-in-law, Britannicus. As a favourite of the Emperor, and the betrothed of the Emperor's daughter, Silanus had already received splendid honours at the hands of the Senate, but at one blow Agrippina hurled him into the depths of shame and misery. The infamous Vitellius— Vitellius who had once begged as a favour a slipper of Messalina, and carried it in his bosom and kissed it with profound reverence—Vitellius who had placed a gilded image of the freedman Pallas among his household gods —trumped up a false charge against Silanus, and, as Censor, struck his name off the list of the Senate. His betrothal annulled, his praetorship abrogated, the high-spirited young man, recognising whose hand it was that had aimed this poisoned arrow at his happiness, waited till Agrippina's wedding-day, and on that day committed suicide on the altar of his own Penates. The next step of the Empress was to have her rival Lollia Paulina charged with magic, to secure her banishment, to send a tribune to kill her, and to identify, by personal inspection, her decapitated head. Then Calpurnia was driven from Rome because Claudius, with perfect inno-

1 She was married in A.D. 49, and poisoned her husband in October, A.D. 54,

29 - ADOPTION OF NERO.

cence, had praised her beauty. On the other hand, Seneca was recalled from his Corsican exile, in order to increase Agrippina's popularity by an act of ostensible mercy, which restored to Rome its favourite writer, while it secured a powerful adherent for her cause and an eminent tutor for her son. The next step was to effect the betrothal of Octavia to Nero, who was twelve years old. A still more difficult and important measure was to secure his adoption. Claudius was attached to his son Britannicus, and, in spite of his extraordinary fatuity, he could hardly fail to see that his son's rights would he injured by the adoption of an elder boy of most noble birth, who reckoned amongst his supporters all those who might have natural cause to dread the vengeance of a son of Messalina. Claudius was an antiquary, and he knew that for 800 years, from the days of Attus Clausus downwards, there had never been an adoption among the patrician Claudii. In vain did Agrippina and her adherents endeavour to poison his mind by whispered insinuations about the parentage of Britannicus. But he was at last overborne, rather than convinced, by the persistence with which Agrippina had taken care that the adoption should be pressed upon him in the Senate, by the multitude, and even in the privacy of his own garden. Pallas, too, helped to decide his wavering determination by quoting the precedents of the adoption of Tiberius by Augustus, and of Gaius by Tiberius. Had he but well weighed the fatal significance of those precedents, he would have hesitated still longer ere he sacrificed to an intriguing alien the birthright, the happiness, and ultimately the lives of the young son and daughter whom he so dearly loved.

And now Agrippina's prosperous wickedness was