Among the ancient Romans you will not find, from Romulus until the
days when the Christians disputed with the priests of the empire,
a single man persecuted on account of his opinions. Cicero doubted
everything; Lucretius denied everything; yet they incurred not
the least reproach. Indeed, license went so far that Pliny, the
naturalist, began his book by saying that there is no god, or that,
if there is, it is the sun. Cicero, speaking of the lower regions,
says: “There is no old woman so stupid as to believe in them (_Non
est anus tam excors quæ credat_).” Juvenal says: “Even the children
do not believe (_Nec pueri credunt_).” They sang in the theatre at
Rome: “There is nothing after death, and death is nothing (_Post
mortem nihil est, ipsaque mors nihil_).” We may abhor these maxims,
or, at the most, forgive a people whom the light of the gospel had
not reached; but we must conclude that the Romans were very tolerant,
since they did not excite a single murmur.
The great principle of the Senate and people of Rome was, “Offences
against the gods are the business of the gods (_Deorum offensa diis
curæ_).” They dreamed only of conquering, governing, and civilising
the world. They were our legislators and our conquerors; and Cæsar,
who gave us roads, laws, and games, never attempted to compel us to
abandon our druids for him, great pontiff as he was of our sovereign
nation.
The Romans did not profess all cults, or assign public functions to
all, but they permitted all. They had no material object of worship
under Numa, no pictures or statues; though they presently erected
statues to “the gods of the great nations,” whom they learned from
the Greeks. The law of the Twelve Tables, _Deos peregrinos ne
colunto_ [“Foreign gods shall not be worshipped”], means only that
public cult shall be given only to the superior divinities approved
by the Senate. Isis had a temple at Rome until Tiberius destroyed it.
The Jews were engaged in commerce there since the time of the Punic
war, and had synagogues there in the days of Augustus. They kept them
almost always, as in modern Rome. Can there be a clearer proof that
toleration was regarded by the Romans as the most sacred line of the
law of nations?
We are told that, as soon as the Christians appeared, they were
persecuted by the Romans, who persecuted nobody. It seems to me that
the statement is entirely false, and I need only quote St. Paul
himself in disproof of it. In the _Acts of the Apostles_ (xxv. 16)
we read that, when Paul was dragged before the Roman Governor by the
Jews in some religious quarrel, Festus said: “It is not the manner of
the Romans to deliver any man to die before that he which is accused
have the accusers face to face, and have license to answer for
himself.” These words are the more remarkable for a Roman magistrate,
because he seems to have had nothing but contempt for Paul. Deceived
by the false light of his reason, he took Paul for a fool, and
said: “Much learning doth make thee mad.” He was, therefore, having
regard only to the equity of Roman law in giving his protection to a
stranger for whom he had no esteem.
Thus the Holy Spirit, in inspiring _Acts_, testifies that the Romans
were just, and did not persecute. It was not the Romans who fell upon
Paul, but the Jews. St. James, the brother of Jesus, was stoned by
the order of a Jewish Sadducee, not of a Roman. The Jews alone stoned
St. Stephen; and St. Paul, in holding the cloaks of the executioners,
certainly did not act as a Roman citizen.[14]
The first Christians had, no doubt, no cause of quarrel with the
Romans; their only enemies were the Jews, from whom they were
beginning to separate. We know the fierce hatred that sectarians
always have for those who leave the sect. There were probably
disturbances in the synagogues at Rome. Suetonius says, in his life
of Claudius: “Judæos impulsore Christo assidue tumultuantes Roma
expulit.”[15] He was wrong in saying that they were instigated by
Christ, and was not likely to be well informed in detail about
a people so much despised at Rome as the Jews were; but he was
not mistaken as to the subject of the quarrels. Suetonius wrote
under Hadrian, in the second century, when the Christians were
not distinct from the Jews in Roman eyes. His words show that the
Romans, instead of oppressing the first Christians, rather coerced
the Jews who persecuted them. They wished the Roman synagogue to
deal as indulgently with their separated brethren as the Senate did.
The banished Jews returned soon afterwards, and even attained high
positions, in spite of the laws which excluded them, as Dio Cassius
and Ulpian tell us. Is it possible that, after the ruin of Jerusalem,
the emperors should lavish honours on the Jews, and persecute, and
hand over to the executioner or the beasts, Christians, who were
regarded as a Jewish sect?
It is said that Nero persecuted them. Tacitus tells us that they were
accused of setting fire to Rome, and were abandoned to the fury of
the people. Was that on account of their religious belief? Certainly
not. Shall we say that the Chinese who were slain by the Dutch a
few years ago in the suburbs of Batavia were sacrificed on account
of religion? However much a man may wish to deceive himself, it is
impossible to ascribe to intolerance the disaster that befell a few
half-Jewish, half-Christian men and women at Rome under Nero.[16]