In the midst of this nation, thus disposed to feed on hope and chimera,
a new prophet arose, whose sectaries in process of time have changed the
face of the earth. A poor Jew, who pretended to be descended from the
royal house of David,1 after being long unknown in his own country,
emerges from obscurity, and goes forth to make proselytes. He succeeded
amongst some of the most ignorant part of the populace. To them he
preached his doctrines, and taught them that he was the Son of God,
the deliverer of his oppressed nation, and the Messiah announced by the
prophets. His disciples, being either impostors, or themselves deceived,
rendered a clamorous testimony of his power, and declared that his
mission had been proved by miracles without number. The only prodigy
which he was incapable of effecting, was that of convincing the Jews,
who, far from being touched with his beneficent and marvellous works,
caused him to suffer an ignominious death. Thus the Son of God died
in the sight of all Jerusalem; but his followers declare that he was
secretly resuscitated three days after his death. Visible to them alone,
and invisible to the nation which he came to enlighten and convert to
his doctrine, Jesus, after his resurrection, say they, conversed some
time with his disciples, and then ascended into heaven, where, having
again become equal to God the father, he shares with him the
adorations and homages of the sectaries of his law. These sectaries, by
accumulating superstitions, inventing impostures, and fabricating dogmas
and mysteries, have, by little and little, heaped up a distorted and
unconnected system of religion which is called Christianity, after the
name of Christ its founder.
1 The Jews say that Jesus was the son of one Pandira, or
Panther, who had seduced his mother Mary, a milliner, the
wife of Jochanan. According to others, Pandira, by some
artifice, enjoyed her several times, while she thought him
her husband; after which, she becoming pregnant, her
husband, suspicious of her fidelity, retired into Babylon.
Some say that Jesus was taught magic in Egypt, from whence
he went and exercised his art in Galilee, where he was put
to death.--Vide Peiffer, Theol. Jud. and Mahom. &c.
Principia. Lypsiae, 1687.
The different nations, to which the Jews were successively subjected,
had infected them with a multitude of Pagan dogmas. Thus the Jewish
religion, Egyptian in its origin, adopted many of the rites and opinions
of the people, with whom the Jews conversed. We need not then be
surprised, if we see the Jews, and the Christians their successors,
filled with notions borrowed of the Phenicians, the Magi or Persians,
the Greeks, and the Romans. The errors of mankind respecting religion
have a general resemblance; they appear to differ only by their
combinations. The commerce of the Jews and Christians with the Grecians
made them acquainted with the philosophy of Plato, so analogous to the
romantic spirit of the orientals, and so conformable to the genius of a
religion which boasts in being inaccessible to reason.1 Paul, the most
ambitious and enthusiastic of the apostles, carried his doctrines,
seasoned with the sublime and marvellous, among the people of Greece and
Asia, and even the inhabitants of Rome. He gained proselytes, as every
man who addresses himself to the imagination of ignorant people may do;
and he may be justly styled the principal founder of a religion, which,
without him, could never have spread far; for the rest of its followers
were ignorant men, from whom he soon separated himself to become the
leader of his own sect.2
1 Origen says, that Celsus reproached Christ with having
borrowed many of his maxims from Plato. See Origen contra
Cel. chap. i. 6. Augustin confesses, that he found the
beginning of the Gospel of John, in Plato. See S. Aug. Conf.
I. vii. ch. 9, 10, 11. The notion of the word is evidently
taken from Plato; the church has since found means of
transplanting a great part of Plato, as we shall hereafter
prove.
2 The Ebionites, or first Christians, looked upon St. Paul
as an apostate and an heretic, because he wholly rejected
the law of Moses, which the other apostles wished only to
reform.
The conquests of the Christian religion were, in its infancy, generally
limited to the vulgar and ignorant. It was embraced only by the most
abject amongst the Jews and Pagans. It is over men of this description
that the marvellous has the greatest influence.1 An unfortunate God, the
innocent victim of wickedness and cruelty, and an enemy to riches and
the great, must have been an object of consolation to the wretched. The
austerity, contempt of riches, and apparently disinterested cares of
the first preachers of the gospel, whose ambition was limited to the
government of souls; the equality of rank and property enjoined by their
religion, and the mutual succours interchanged by its followers; these
were objects well calculated to excite the desires of the poor, and
multiply Christians. The union, concord, and reciprocal affection,
recommended to the first Christians, must have been seductive to
ingenious minds: their submissive temper, their patience in indigence,
obscurity, and distress, caused their infant sect to be looked upon as
little dangerous in a government accustomed to tolerate all sects. Thus,
the founders of Christianity had many adherents among the people,2 and
their opposers and enemies consisted chiefly of some idolatrous priests
and Jews, whose interest it was to support the religion previously
established. By little and little, this new system, covered with the
clouds of mystery, took deep root, and became too strong and extensive
to be suppressed. The Roman government saw too late the progress of an
association it had despised. The Christians now become numerous,
dared to brave the Pagan gods, even in their temples. The emperors and
magistrates, disquieted at such proceedings, endeavoured to extinguish
the sect which gave them umbrage. They persecuted such as they could
not reclaim by milder means, and whom their fanaticism had rendered
obstinate. The feelings of mankind are ever interested in favour of
distress; and this persecution only served to increase the number of the
friends of the Christians. The fortitude and constancy with which they
suffered torment, appeared supernatural and divine in the eyes of those
who were witnesses to it; their enthusiasm communicated itself, and
produced new advocates for the sect, whose destruction was attempted.
1 The first Christians were, by way of contempt, called
Ebionites, which signifies beggars or mendicants. See Origen
contra Celsum, lib. ii. et Euseb. Hist. Eccles. lib. iii. c.
37. Ebion, in Hebrew, signifies poor. The word Ebion has
since been personified into the meaning of an heretic, or
the leader of a sect, who were excluded from sacred things,
and scarcely considered as men. It promised them that they
should one day have their turn, and that, in the other life,
they should be happier than their masters.