After this explanation, let Christians no longer boast the marvellous
progress of their religion. It was the religion of poverty; it announced
a God who was poor. It was preached by the poor, to the poor and
ignorant. It gave them consolation in their misery. Even its gloomy
ideas were analogous to the disposition of indigent and unhappy men. The
union and concord so much admired in the earlier Christians, is by no
means surprising. An infant and oppressed sect naturally remain united,
and dread a separation of interests. It is astonishing that, in
those early days, men who were themselves persecuted and treated as
malcontents, should presume to preach intolerance and persecution. The
tyranny exercised against them wrought no change in their sentiments.
Tyranny only irritates the human mind, which is always invincible, when
those opinions are attacked to which it has attached its welfare. Such
is the inevitable effect of persecution. Yet Christians, who ought to
be undeceived by the example of their own sect, have to this day been
incapable of divesting themselves of the fury of persecution.
The Roman emperors, having themselves become Christians, that is to
say, carried away by a general torrent, which obliged them to avail
themselves of the support of a powerful sect, seated religion on the
throne. They protected the church and its ministers, and endeavoured to
inspire their courtiers with their own ideas. They beheld with a jealous
eye those who retained their attachment to the ancient religion. They,
at length, interdicted the exercise of it, and finished by forbidding it
under the pain of death. They persecuted without measure those who held
to the worship of their ancestors. The Christians now repaid the Pagans,
with interest, the evils which they had before suffered from them. The
Roman empire was shaken with convulsions, caused by the unbridled zeal
of sovereigns and those pacific priests, who had just before preached
nothing but mildness and toleration. The emperors, either from policy or
superstition, loaded the priesthood with gifts and benefactions, which
indeed were seldom repaid with gratitude. They established the
authority of the latter; and at length respected as divine what they had
themselves created. Priests were relieved from all civil functions, that
nothing might divert their minds from their sacred ministry.1 Thus the
leaders of a once insignificant and oppressed sect became independent.
Being at last more powerful than kings, they soon arrogated to
themselves the right of commanding them. These priests of a God of
peace, almost continually at variance with each other, communicated the
fury of their passions to their followers; and mankind were astonished
to behold quarrels and miseries engendered, under the law of grace,
which they had never experienced under the peaceful reign of the
Divinities, who had formerly shared without dispute the adoration of
mortals.
Such was the progress of a superstition, innocent in its origin, but
which, in its course, far from producing happiness among mankind, became
a bone of contention, and a fruitful source of calamities.
_Peace upon earth, and good will towards men._
Thus is the gospel announced, which has cost the human race more blood
than all other religions of the earth taken collectively.