Establishment of Christianity, in its Civil and Political State. — Section I.

God forbid that we should dare to mix the sacred with the profane! We seek not to fathom the depths of the ways of Providence. We are men, and we address men only.

When Antony, and after him Augustus, had given Jud?a to the Arabian, Herod — their creature and their tributary — that prince, a stranger among the Jews, became the most powerful of all kings. He had ports on the Mediterranean — Ptolemais and Ascalon; he built towns; he erected a temple to Apollo at Rhodes, and one to Augustus in C?sarea; he rebuilt that of Jerusalem from the foundation, and converted it into a strong citadel. Under his rule, Palestine enjoyed profound peace. In short, barbarous as he was to his family, and tyrannical towards his people, whose substance he consumed in the execution of his projects, he was looked upon as a Messiah. He worshipped only C?sar, and he was also worshipped by the Herodians.

The sect of the Jews had long been spread in Europe and Asia; but its tenets were entirely unknown. No one knew anything of the Jewish books, although we are told that some of them had already been translated into Greek, in Alexandria. The Jews were known only as the Armenians are now known to the Turks and Persians, as brokers and traders. Further, a Turk never takes the trouble to inquire, whether an Armenian is a Eutychian, a Jacobite, one of St. John’s Christians, or an Arian. The theism of China, and the much to be respected books of Confucius, were still less known to the nations of the west, than the Jewish rites.

The Arabians, who furnished the Romans with the precious commodities of India, had no more idea of the theology of the Brahmins than our sailors who go to Pondicherry or Madras. The Indian women had from time immemorial enjoyed the privilege of burning themselves on the bodies of their husbands; yet these astonishing sacrifices, which are still practised, were as unknown to the Jews as the customs of America. Their books, which speak of Gog and Magog, never mention India.

The ancient religion of Zoroaster was celebrated; but not therefore the more understood in the Roman Empire. It was only known, in general, that the magi admitted a resurrection, a hell, and a paradise; which doctrine must at that time have made its way to the Jews bordering on Chald?a; since, in Herod’s time, Palestine was divided between the Pharisees, who began to believe the dogma of the resurrection, and the Sadducees, who regarded it only with contempt.

Alexandria, the most commercial city in the whole world, was peopled with Egyptians, who worshipped Serapis, and consecrated cats; with Greeks, who philosophized; with Romans, who ruled; and with Jews, who amassed wealth. All these people were eagerly engaged in money-getting, immersed in pleasure, infuriate with fanaticism, making and unmaking religious sects, especially during the external tranquillity which they enjoyed when Augustus had shut the temple of Janus.

The Jews were divided into three principal factions. Of these, the Samaritans called themselves the most ancient, because Samaria (then Sebaste) had subsisted, while Jerusalem, with its temple, was destroyed under the Babylonian kings. But these Samaritans were a mixture of the people of Persia with those of Palestine.

The second, and most powerful faction, was that of the Hierosolymites. These Jews, properly so called, detested the Samaritans, and were detested by them. Their interests were all opposite. They wished that no sacrifices should be offered but in the temple of Jerusalem. Such a restriction would have brought a deal of money into their city; and, for this very reason, the Samaritans would sacrifice nowhere but at home. A small people, in a small town, may have but one temple; but when a people have extended themselves over a country seventy leagues long, by twenty-three wide, as the Jews had done — when their territory is almost as large and populous as Languedoc or Normandy, it would be absurd to have but one church. What would the good people of Montpellier say, if they could attend mass nowhere but at Toulouse?

The third faction were the Hellenic Jews, consisting chiefly of such as were engaged in trade or handicraft in Egypt and Greece. These had the same interests with the Samaritans. Onias, the son of a high priest, wishing to be a high priest like his father, obtained permission from Ptolemy Philometor, king of Egypt, and in particular from the king’s wife, Cleopatra, to build a Jewish temple near Bubastis. He assured Queen Cleopatra that Isaiah had foretold that the Lord should one day have a temple on that spot; and Cleopatra, to whom he made a handsome present, sent him word that, since Isaiah had said it, it must be. This temple was called the Onion; and if Onias was not a great sacrificer, he commanded a troop of militia. It was built one hundred and sixty years before the Christian era. The Jews of Jerusalem always held this Onion in abhorrence, as they did the translation called the Septuagint. They even instituted an expiatory feast for these two pretended sacrileges. The rabbis of the Onion, mingling with the Greeks, became more learned (in their way) than the rabbis of Jerusalem and Samaria; and the three factions began to dispute on controversial questions, which necessarily make men subtle, false, and unsocial.

The Egyptian Jews, in order to equal the austerity of the Essenes, and the Judates of Palestine, established, some time before the birth of Christianity, the sect of the Therapeut?, who, like them, devoted themselves to a sort of monastic life, and to mortifications. These different societies were imitations of the old Egyptian, Persian, Thracian, and Greek mysteries, which had filled the earth, from the Euphrates and the Nile to the Tiber. At first, such as were initiated into these fraternities were few in number, and were looked upon as privileged men; but in the time of Augustus, their number was very considerable; so that nothing but religion was talked of, from Syria to Mount Atlas and the German Ocean.

Amidst all these sects and worships, the school of Plato had established itself, not in Greece alone, but also in Rome, and especially in Egypt. Plato had been considered as having drawn his doctrine from the Egyptians, who thought that, in turning Plato’s ideas to account, his word, and the sort of trinity discoverable in some of his works, they were but claiming their own.

This philosophic spirit, spread at that time over all the known countries of the west, seems to have emitted, in the neighborhood of Palestine, at least a few sparks of the spirit of reasoning. It is certain that, in Herod’s time, there were disputes on the attributes of the divinity, on the immortality of the soul, and the resurrection of the body. The Jews relate, that Queen Cleopatra asked them whether we were to rise again dressed or naked?

The Jews, then, were reasoners in their way. The exaggerating Josephus was, for a soldier, very learned. Such being the case with a military man, there must have been many a learned man in civil life. His contemporary, Philo, would have had reputation, even among the Greeks. St. Paul’s master, Gamaliel, was a great controversialist. The authors of the “Mishna” were polymathists.

The Jewish populace discoursed on religion. As, at the present day, in Switzerland, at Geneva, in Germany, in England, and especially in the Cévennes, we find even the meanest of the inhabitants dealing in controversy. Nay, more; men from the dregs of the people have founded sects: as Fox, in England; Münzer, in Germany; and the first reformers in France. Indeed, Mahomet himself, setting apart his great courage, was nothing more than a camel-driver.

Add to these preliminaries that, in Herod’s time, it was imagined, as is elsewhere remarked, that the world was soon to be at an end. In those days, prepared by divine providence, it pleased the eternal Father to send His Son upon earth — an adorable and incomprehensible mystery, which we presume not to approach.

We only say, that if Jesus preached a pure morality; if He announced the kingdom of heaven as the reward of the just; if He had disciples attached to His person and His virtues; if those very virtues drew upon Him the persecutions of the priests; if, through calumny, He was put to a shameful death; His doctrine, constantly preached by His disciples, would necessarily have a great effect in the world. Once more let me repeat it — I speak only after the manner of this world, setting the multitude of miracles and prophecies entirely aside. I maintain it, that Christianity was more likely to proceed by His death, than if He had not been persecuted. You are astonished that His disciples made other disciples. I should have been much more astonished, if they had not brought over a great many to their party. Seventy individuals, convinced of the innocence of their leader, the purity of His manners, and the barbarity of His judges, must influence many a feeling heart.

St. Paul, alone, became (for whatever reason) the enemy of his master Gamaliel, must have had it in his power to bring Jesus a thousand adherents, even supposing Jesus to have been only a worthy and oppressed man. Paul was learned, eloquent, vehement, indefatigable, skilled in the Greek tongue, and seconded by zealots much more interested than himself in defending their Master’s reputation. St. Luke was an Alexandrian Greek, and a man of letters, for he was a physician.

The first chapter of John displays a Platonic sublimity, which must have been gratifying to the Platonists of Alexandria. And indeed there was even formed in that city a school founded by Luke, or by Mark (either the evangelist or some other), and perpetuated by Athenagoras, Pant?nus, Origen, and Clement — all learned and eloquent. This school once established, it was impossible for Christianity not to make rapid progress.

Greece, Syria, and Egypt, were the scenes of those celebrated ancient mysteries, which enchanted the minds of the people. The Christians, too, had their mysteries, in which men would eagerly seek to be initiated; and if at first only through curiosity, this curiosity soon became persuasion. The idea of the approaching end of all things was especially calculated to induce the new disciples to despise the transitory goods of this life, which were so soon to perish with them. The example of the Therapeut? was an incitement to a solitary and mortified life. All these things, then, powerfully concurred in the establishment of the Christian religion.

The different flocks of this great rising society could not, it is true, agree among themselves. Fifty-four societies had fifty-four different gospels; all secret, like their mysteries; all unknown to the Gentiles, who never saw our four canonical gospels until the end of two hundred and fifty years. These various flocks, though divided, acknowledged the same pastor. Ebionites, opposed to St. Paul; Nazarenes, disciples of Hymeneos, Alexandros, and Hermogenes; Carpocratians, Basilidians, Valentinians, Marcionites, Sabellians, Gnostics, Montanists — a hundred sects, rising one against another, and casting mutual reproaches, were nevertheless all united in Jesus; all called upon Jesus; all made Jesus the great object of their thoughts, and reward of their travails.

The Roman Empire, in which all these societies were formed, at first paid no attention to them. They were known at Rome only by the general name of Jews, about whom the government gave itself no concern. The Jews had, by their money, acquired the right of trading. In the reign of Tiberius four thousand of them were driven out of Rome; in that of Nero the people charged them and the new demi-Christian Jews with the burning of Rome.

They were again expelled in the reign of Claudius, but their money always procured them readmission; they were quiet and despised. The Christians of Rome were not so numerous as those of Greece, Alexandria and Syria. The Romans in the earlier ages had neither fathers of the church nor heresiarchs. The farther they were from the birthplace of Christianity, the fewer doctors and writers were to be found among them. The church was Greek; so much so, that every mystery, every rite, every tenet, was expressed in the Greek tongue.

All Christians, whether Greek, Syrian, Roman, or Egyptian, were considered as half Jewish. This was another reason for concealing their books from the Gentiles, that they might remain united and impenetrable. Their secret was more inviolably kept than that of the mysteries of Isis or of Ceres; they were a republic apart — a state within the state. They had no temples, no altars, no sacrifice, no public ceremony. They elected their secret superiors by a majority of voices. These superiors, under the title of ancients, priests, bishops, or deacons, managed the common purse, took care of the sick and pacified quarrels. Among them it was a shame and a crime to plead before the tribunals or to enlist in the armed force; and for a hundred years there was not a single Christian in the armies of the empire.

Thus, retired in the midst of the world and unknown even when they appeared, they escaped the tyranny of the proconsuls and pr?tors and were free amid the public slavery. It is not known who wrote the famous book entitled “Τ?ν ?ποστ?λων Δ?δαχα?” (the Apostolical Constitutions), as it is unknown who were the authors of the fifty rejected gospels, of the Acts of St. Peter, of the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, and of so many other writings of the first Christians; but it is likely that the “Constitutions” are of the second century. Though falsely attributed to the apostles, they are very valuable. They show us what were the duties of a bishop chosen by the Christians, how they were to reverence him, and what tribute they were to pay him. The bishop could have but one wife, who was to take good care of his household: “Μι?? ?νδρα γεγεν?μενον γυναι??? μονογ?μου ??λ?ν το? ?δ?ου ο??ου προεστ?τα.”

Rich Christians were exhorted to adopt the children of poor ones. Collections were made for the widows and orphans; but the money of sinners was rejected; and, nominally, an innkeeper was not permitted to give his mite. It is said that they were regarded as cheats; for which reason very few tavern-keepers were Christians. This also prevented the Christians from frequenting the taverns; thus completing their separation from the society of the Gentiles.

The dignity of deaconess being attainable by the women, they were the more attached to the Christian fraternity. They were consecrated; the bishop anointing them on the forehead, as of old the Jewish kings were anointed. By how many indissoluble ties were the Christians bound together!

The persecutions, which were never more than transitory, did but serve to redouble their zeal and inflame their fervor; so that, under Diocletian, one-third of the empire was Christian. Such were a few of the human causes that contributed to the progress of Christianity. If to these we add the divine causes, which are to the former as infinity to unity, there is only one thing which can surprise us; that a religion so true did not at once extend itself over the two hemispheres, not excepting the most savage islet.

God Himself came down from heaven and died to redeem mankind and extirpate sin forever from the face of the earth; and yet he left the greater part of mankind a prey to error, to crime, and to the devil. This, to our weak intellects, appears a fatal contradiction. But it is not for us to question Providence; our duty is to humble ourselves in the dust before it.
§ II.

Several learned men have testified their surprise at not finding in the historian, Flavius Josephus, any mention of Jesus Christ; for all men of true learning are now agreed that the short passage relative to him in that history has been interpolated. The father of Flavius Josephus must, however, have been witness to all the miracles of Jesus. Josephus was of the sacerdotal race and akin to Herod’s wife, Mariamne. He gives us long details of all that prince’s actions, yet says not a word of the life or death of Jesus; nor does this historian, who disguises none of Herod’s cruelties, say one word of the general massacre of the infants ordered by him on hearing that there was born a king of the Jews. The Greek calendar estimates the number of children murdered on this occasion at fourteen thousand. This is, of all actions of all tyrants, the most horrible. There is no example of it in the history of the whole world.

Yet the best writer the Jews have ever had, the only one esteemed by the Greeks and Romans, makes no mention of an event so singular and so frightful. He says nothing of the appearance of a new star in the east after the birth of our Saviour — a brilliant phenomenon, which could not escape the knowledge of a historian so enlightened as Josephus. He is also silent respecting the darkness which, on our Saviour’s death, covered the whole earth for three hours at midday — the great number of graves that opened at that moment, and the multitude of the just that rose again.

The learned are constantly evincing their surprise that no Roman historian speaks of these prodigies, happening in the empire of Tiberius, under the eyes of a Roman governor and a Roman garrison, who must have sent to the emperor and the senate a detailed account of the most miraculous event that mankind had ever heard of. Rome itself must have been plunged for three hours in impenetrable darkness; such a prodigy would have had a place in the annals of Rome, and in those of every nation. But it was not God’s will that these divine things should be written down by their profane hands.

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