God: that he is our witness every moment, and everywhere conscious, as
we are ourselves, of our words, acts, and thoughts; and will bring us
all to a strict account at last for whatever he has thus witnessed that
has been contrary to that rigid law of holy living which he has
established over us in Christ. Must not this act upon us most
beneficially? We believe that in himself he is perfect purity, and that
he demands of us that we be so in our degree also. We can impute to him
none of the acts, such as the believers in the Greek and Roman religions
freely ascribe to their Jove, and so have not, as others have, in such
divine example, a warrant and excuse for the like enormities. This one
God too we also regard as our judge, who will in the end sit upon our
conduct throughout the whole of our lives, and punish or reward
according to what we shall have been, just as the souls of men,
according to your belief, receive their sentence at the bar of Minos and
Rhadamanthus. And other similar truths are wrapt up with and make a part
of this great primary one. Wherefore it is most evident, that nothing
can be more false and absurd than to think and speak of us as atheists
and for that reason a nuisance in the state.
'But it is not only that we are atheists, but that, through our atheism,
we are to be looked upon as disorderly members of society, disturbers
of the peace, disaffected and rebellious citizens, that we hear on every
side. I do not believe that this charge has ever been true of any, much
less of all. Or if any Christian has at any time and for any reason
disobeyed the laws, withheld his taxes when they have been demanded, or
neglected any duties which, as a citizen of Rome, he has owed to the
Emperor, or any representative of him, then so far he has not been a
Christian. Christ's kingdom is not of this world--though, because we so
often and so much speak of a kingdom, we have been thought to aim at one
on earth--it is above; and he requires us while here below to be
obedient to the laws and the rulers that are set up over us, so far as
we deem them in accordance with the everlasting laws of God and of
right; to pay tribute to whomsoever it is due; here in Rome to Cæsar;
and, wherever we are, to be loyal and quiet citizens of the state. And
the reception of his religion tends to make such of us all. Whoever
adopts the faith of the gospel of Jesus will be a virtuous, and holy,
and devout man, and therefore, both in Rome, in Persia, and in India,
and everywhere, a good subject.
'We defend not nor abet, great Emperor, the act of that holy but
impetuous and passionate man, who so lately, in defiance of the imperial
edict and before either remonstrance or appeal on our part, preached on
the very steps of the capitol, and there committed that violence for
which he hath already answered with his life. We defend him not in that;
but neither do we defend, but utterly condemn and execrate the
unrighteous haste, and the more than demoniac barbarity of his death.
God, we rejoice in all our afflictions to believe, is over all, and the
wicked, the cruel, and the unjust, shall not escape.
'Yet it must be acknowledged that there are higher duties than those
which we owe to the state, even as there is a higher sovereign to whom
we owe allegiance than the head of the state, whether that head be king,
senate, or emperor. Man is not only a subject and a citizen, he is first
of all the creature of God, and amenable to his laws. When therefore
there is a conflict between the laws of God and the king, who can doubt
which are to be obeyed?--'
'Who does not see,' cried Porphyrius vehemently, 'that in such
principles there lurks the blackest treason? for who but themselves are
to judge when the laws of the two sovereigns do thus conflict? and what
law then may be promulged, but to them it may be an offence?'
'Let not the learned Porphyrius,' resumed Probus, 'rest in but a part of
what I say. Let him hear the whole, and then deny the principle if he
can. I say, when the law of God and the law of man are opposite the one
to the other, we are not to hesitate which to obey and which to break;
our first allegiance is due to Heaven. And it is true that we ourselves
are to be the judges in the case. But then we are judges under the same
stern laws of conscience toward God, which compel us to violate the law
of the empire, though death in its most terrific form be the penalty.
And is it likely therefore that we shall, for frivolous causes, or
imaginary ones, or none at all, hold it to be our duty to rebel against
the law of the land? To think so were to rate us low indeed. They may
surely be trusted to make this decision, whose fidelity to conscience in
other emergences brings down upon them so heavy a load of calamity. I
may appeal moreover to all, I think, who hear me, of the common faith,
whether they themselves would not hold by the same principle? Suppose
the case that your supreme god--"Jupiter greatest and best"--or the god
beyond and above him, in whom your philosophers have faith--revealed a
law, requiring what the law of the empire forbids, must you not, would
you not, if your religion were anything more than a mere pretence, obey
the god rather than the man? Although therefore, great Emperor, we blame
the honest Macer for his precipitancy, yet it ought to be, and is, the
determination of us all to yield obedience to no law which violates the
law of Heaven. We having received the faith of Christ in trust, to be by
us dispensed to mankind, and believing the welfare of mankind to depend
upon the wide extension of it, we will rather die than shut it up in our
own bosoms--we will rather die, than live with our tongues tied and
silent--our limbs fettered and bound! We must speak, or we will die--'
Porphyrius again sprang from his seat with intent to speak, but the
Emperor restrained him.
'Contend not now, Porphyrius; let us hear the Christian. I have given
him his freedom. Infringe it not.'
'I will willingly, noble Emperor,' said Probus, 'respond to whatsoever
the learned Tyrian may propose. All I can desire is this only, that the
religion of Christ may be seen, by those who are here, to be what it
truly is; and it may be, that the questions or the objections of the
philosopher shall show this more perfectly than a continued discourse.'
The Emperor, however, making a sign, he went on.
'We have also been charged, O Emperor, with vices and crimes, committed
at both our social and our religious meetings, at which nature revolts,
which are even beyond in grossness what have been ever ascribed to the
most flagitious of mankind.'--Probus here enumerated the many rumors
which had long been and still were current in Rome, and, especially by
the lower orders, believed; and drew then such a picture of the
character, lives, manners, and morals of the Christians, for the truth
of which he appealed openly to noble and distinguished persons among the
Romans then present,--not of the Christian faith, but who were yet well
acquainted with their character and condition, and who would not refuse
to testify to what he had said--that there could none have been present
in that vast assembly but who, if there were any sense of justice within
them, must have dismissed forever from their minds, if they had ever
entertained them, the slanderous fictions that had filled them.
To report to you, Fausta, this part of his defence, must be needless,
and could not prove otherwise than painful. He then also refuted in the
same manner other common objections alleged against the Christians and
their worship; the lateness of its origin; its beggarly simplicity; the
low and ignorant people who alone or chiefly, both in Rome and
throughout the world, have received it; the fierce divisions and
disputes among the Christians themselves; the uncertainty of its
doctrines; the rigor of its morality, as unsuited to mankind; as also
its spiritual worship; the slowness of its progress, and the little
likelihood that, if God were its author, he would leave it to be trodden
under foot and so nearly annihilated by the very people to whom he was
sending it; these and other similar things usually urged against the
Christians, and now for the first time, it is probable, by most of the
Romans present, heard, refuted, and explained, did Probus set forth,
both with brevity and force; making nothing tedious by reason of a
frivolous minuteness, nor yet omitting a single topic or argument, which
it was due to the cause he defended, to bring before the minds of that
august assembly. He then ended his appeal in the following manner:
'And now, great Emperor, must you have seen, in what I have already
said, what the nature and character of this religion is; for in denying
and disproving the charges that have been brought against it, I have, in
most particulars, alleged and explained some opposite truth or doctrine,
by which it is justly characterized. But that you may be informed the
more exactly for what it is you are about to persecute and destroy us,
and for what it is that we cheerfully undergo torture and death sooner
than surrender or deny it, listen yet a moment longer. You have heard
that we are named after Jesus, Jesus of Nazareth in Galilee, who, in the
reign of Tiberius, was born in Judea, and there lived and taught, a
prophet and messenger of God, till he was publicly crucified by his
bitter enemies the Jews. We do not doubt, nay, we all steadfastly
believe, that this Jesus was the Son of the Most High God, by reason of
his wonderful endowments and his delegated office as the long-looked-for
Messiah of the Jews. As the evidences of his great office and of his
divine origin, he performed those miracles that filled with astonishment
the whole Jewish nation, and strangers from all parts of the world; and
so wrought even upon the mind of your great predecessor, the Emperor
Tiberius, that he would fain receive him into the number of the gods of
Rome. And why, O Emperor, was this great personage sent forth into the
world, encircled by the rays of divine power and wisdom and goodness, an
emanation of the self-existent and infinite God? And why do we so honor
him, and cleave to him, that we are ready to offer our lives in
sacrifice, while we go forth as preachers of his faith, making him known
to all nations as the universal Saviour and Redeemer? This Jesus came
into the world, and lived and taught; was preceded by so long a
preparation of prophetic annunciation, and accompanied by so sublime
demonstrations of almighty power, to this end, and to this end only,
that he might save us from our sins, and from those penal consequences
in this world and in worlds to come, which are bound to them by the
stern decrees of fate. Yes, Aurelian, Jesus came only that he might
deliver mankind from the thraldom of every kind of wickedness, and raise
them to a higher condition of virtue and happiness. He was a great moral
and religious teacher and reformer, endowed with the wisdom and power of
the supreme God. He himself toiled only in Judea; but he came a
benefactor of Rome too--of Rome as well as of Judea. He came to purge it
of its pollutions; to check in their growth those customs and vices
which seem destined, reaching their natural height and size, to overlay
and bury in final ruin the city and the empire; he came to make us
citizens of Heaven through the virtues which his doctrine should build
up in the soul, and so citizens of Rome more worthy of that name than
any who ever went before. He came to heal, to mend, to reform the
state; not to set up a kingdom in hostility to this, but in unison with
it; an inward, invisible kingdom in every man's heart, which should be
as the soul of the other.
'It was to reform the morals of the state, to save it from itself, that
you, Aurelian, in the first years of your reign, applied those energies
that have raised the empire to more than its ancient glory. You aimed to
infuse a love of justice and of peace, to abate the extravagances of the
times, to stem the tide of corruption that seemed about to bear down
upon its foul streams the empire itself, tossing upon its surface a wide
sea of ruin. It was a great work--too great for man. It needed a divine
strength and a more than human wisdom. These were not yours; and it is
no wonder that the work did not go on to its completion. Jesus is a
reformer; of Rome and of the world also. The world is his theatre of
action; but with him there is leagued the arm and the power of the
Supreme God; and the work which he attempts shall succeed. It cannot but
succeed. It is not so much he, Jesus of Nazareth, who has come forth
upon this great errand of mercy and love to mankind, as God himself in
and through him. It is the Great God of the Universe, who, by Jesus
Christ as his agent and messenger, comes to you, and would reform and
redeem your empire, and out of that which is transitory, and by its
inherent vice threatened with decay and death, make a city and an empire
which, through the energy of its virtues, shall truly be eternal. Can
you not, O Emperor, supposing the claims of this religion to a divine
origin to be just, view it with respect? Nay, could you not greet its
approach to your capital with pleasure and gratitude, seeing its aim is
nothing else than this, to purify, purge, and reform the state, to heal
its wounds, cleanse its putrifying members, and infuse the element of a
new and healthier life? Methinks a true patriot and lover of Rome must
rejoice when any power approaches and offers to apply those remedies
that may, with remotest probability only, bid fair to cure the diseases
of which her body is sick, nigh unto death.
'Such, Aurelian, was and is the aim of Jesus, in the religion which he
brought. And of us, who are his ministers, his messengers--who go forth
bearing these glad tidings of deliverance from sin and corruption, and
of union with God--our work is the same with his. We but repeat the
lessons which he gave. Are we, in so doing, enemies of Rome? Are we not
rather her truest friends? By making men good, just, kind, and honest,
are we not at the same time making them the best citizens? Are there in
Rome better citizens than the Christians?
'You will now perhaps, Aurelian, desire to be told by what instruments
Christianity hopes to work such changes. It is simply, O Emperor, by the
power of truth! The religion which we preach uses not force. Were the
arm of Aurelian at this moment the arm of Probus, he could do no more
than he now does with one, which, as the world deems, is in the
comparison powerless as an infant's. In all that pertains to the soul,
and its growth and purification, there must be utmost freedom. The soul
must suffer no constraint. There must be no force laid upon it, but the
force of reason and the appeal of divine truth. All that we ask or want
in Rome is the liberty of speech--the free allowance to offer to men
the truth in Christ, and persuade them to consider it. With that we will
engage to reform and save the whole world. We want not to meddle with
affairs of state, nor with the citizen's relations to the state; we have
naught to do with the city, or its laws, or government, beyond what was
just now stated. We desire but the privilege to worship God according to
our consciences, and labor for the moral welfare of all who will hear
our words.
'And if you would know what the truth is we impart, and by which we
would save the souls of men, and reform the empire and the world, be it
known to you that we preach Jesus Christ and him crucified, whom God
raised up and sent into the world to save it by his doctrine and life,
and whom--being by the Jews hung upon a cross--God raised again from the
dead. We preach him as the Son of God with power, by whom God has been
revealed to mankind in his true nature and perfections, and through
whom, he and he only is to be worshipped. In the place of Jupiter, we
bring you a revelation of the God and Father of Christ Jesus our
Lord--creator of the universe, who will call all men into judgment at
last, rewarding or punishing according to what they have done. Through
Jesus, we preach also a resurrection from the dead. We show, by
arguments which cannot be refuted, that this Jesus, when he had been
crucified and slain, and had lain three days in the tomb, was called
again to life, and taken up to Heaven, as an example of what should
afterwards happen to all his followers. Through him has immortality been
plainly brought to light and proved, and this transporting truth we
declare wherever we go. Through Jesus, we preach also repentance; we
declare to men their wickedness; we show them what and how great it is;
and exhort them to repentance, as what can alone save them from the
wrath to come.
'This, O Emperor, is the great work which we, as apostles of Jesus, have
to do, to convince the world how vile it is; how surely their
wickedness, unrepented of, will work their misery and their ruin, and so
lead them away from it, and up the safe and pleasant heights of
Christian virtue. We find Rome sunk in sensuality and sin; nor only
that, but ignorant of its own guilt, dead to the wickedness into which
it has fallen, and denying any obligations to a different or better
life. Such do we find, indeed, not Rome only, but the world itself, dead
in trespasses and sin. We would rouse it from this sleep of death. We
desire first of all, to waken in the souls of men a perception of the
guilt of sin! a feeling of the wide departure of their lives from the
just demands of the being who made them. The prospect of immortality
were nothing without this. Longer life were but a greater evil were we
not made alive to sin and righteousness. Life on earth, Aurelian, is not
the best thing, but virtuous life: so life without end is not the best
thing, but life without fault or sin. But to the necessity of such a
life men are now insensible and dead. They love the prospect of an
immortal existence, but not of that purity without which immortality
were no blessing. But it is this moral regeneration--this waking up of
men dead in sin, to the life of righteousness, which is the great aim of
Christianity. Repentance! was the first word of its founder when he
began preaching in Judea; it is the first word of his followers wherever
they go, and should be the last. This, O Aurelian, in few words, is the
gospel of Jesus--"Repent and live forever!"
'In the service of this gospel, and therefore of you and the world, we
are content to labor while we live, to suffer injury and reproach, and
if need be, and they to whom we go will not understand us, lay down our
lives. Almost three hundred years has it appealed to mankind; and though
not with the success that should have followed upon the labor of those
who have toiled for the salvation of men, yet has it not been rejected
everywhere, nor has the labor been in vain. The fruit that has come of
the seed sown is great and abundant. In every corner of the earth are
there now those who name the name of Christ. And in every place are
there many more, than meet the eye, who read our gospels, believe in
them, and rejoice in the virtue and the hope which have taken root in
their souls. Here in Rome, O Aurelian, are there multitudes of
believers, whom the ear hears not, nor the eye sees, hidden away in the
security of this sea of roofs, whom the messengers of your power never
could discover. Destroy us, you may; sweep from the face of Rome every
individual whom the most diligent search can find, from the gray-haired
man of fourscore to the infant that can just lisp the name of Jesus, and
you have not destroyed the Christians; the Christian church still
stands--not unharmed, but founded as before upon a rock, against which
the powers of earth and hell can never prevail; and soon as this storm
shall have overblown, those other, and now secret, multitudes, of whom I
speak, will come forth, and the wilderness of the church shall blossom
again as a garden in the time of spring. God is working with us, and
who therefore can prevail against us!
'Bring not then, Aurelian, upon your own soul; bring not upon Rome, the
guilt that would attend this unnecessary slaughter. It can but defer for
an hour or a day the establishment of that kingdom of righteousness,
which must be established, because it is God's, and he is laying its
foundations and building its walls. Have pity too, great Emperor, upon
this large multitude of those who embrace this faith, and who will not
let it go for all the terrors of your courts and judges and engines;
they will all suffer the death of Macer ere they will prove false to
their Master. Let not the horrors of that scene be renewed, nor the
greater ones of an indiscriminate massacre. I implore your compassions,
not for myself, but for these many thousands, who, by my ministry, have
been persuaded to receive this faith. For them my heart bleeds; them I
would save from the death which impends. Yet it is a glorious and a
happy death, to die for truth and Christ! It is better to die so,
knowing that by such death the very church itself is profited, than to
die in one's own bed, and only to one's self. So do these thousands
think; and whatever compassion I may implore for them, they would each
and all, were such their fate, go with cheerful step, as those who went
to some marriage supper, to the axe, to the stake, or the cross.
Christianity cannot die but with the race itself. Its life is bound up
in the life of man, and man must be destroyed ere that can perish.
Behold then, Aurelian, the labor that is thine!'
Soon as he had ceased, Porphyrius started from his seat and said,
'It is then, O Romans, just as it has ever been affirmed. The Galileans
are atheists! They believe not in the gods of Rome, nor in any in whom
mankind can ever have belief. I doubt not but they think themselves
believers in a God. They think themselves to have found one better than
others have; but upon any definition, that I or you could give or
understand, of atheism, they are atheists! Their God is invisible; he is
a universal spirit, like this circumambient air; of no form, dwelling in
no place. But how can that without effrontery be called a being, which
is without body and form; which is everywhere and yet nowhere; which,
from the beginning of the world has never been heard of, till by these
Nazarenes he is now first brought to light, or, if older, exists in the
dreams of the dreaming Jews, whose religion, as they term it, is so
stuffed with fable, that one might not expect, after the most exact and
laborious search, to meet with so much as a grain of truth. Yet,
whatever these Galileans may assert, their speech is hardly to be
received as worthy of belief, when, in their very sacred records, such
things are to be found as contradict themselves. For in one place--not
to mention a thousand cases of the like kind--it is said that Jesus, the
head of this religion, on a certain occasion walked upon the sea; when,
upon sifting the narrative, it is found that it was but upon a paltry
lake, the lake of Galilee, upon which he performed that great feat!--a
thing to which the magic of which he is accused--and doubtless with
justice--was plainly equal; while to walk upon the sea might well have
been beyond that science. How much of what we have heard is to be
distrusted also, concerning the love which these Nazarenes bear to
Rome. We may well pray to be delivered from the affection of those,
whose love manifests itself in the singular manner of seeking our
destruction. He who loves me so well as to poison me that I may have the
higher enjoyment of Elysium, I could hardly esteem as a well-wisher or
friend. These Jewish fanatics love us after somewhat the same fashion.
In the zeal of their affection they would make us heirs of what they
call their heavenly kingdom, but in the meanwhile destroy our religion,
deprive us of our ancient gods, and sap the foundations of the state.
'Romans, in spite of all you have heard of another sort, I hope you will
still believe that experience is one of your most valuable teachers, and
that therefore you will be slow to forsake opinions which have the
sanction of venerable age, under which you have flourished so happily,
and your country grown to so amazing a height of glory and renown. I
think you would deserve the fate which this new-made religion would
bring you to, if you abandoned the worship of a thousand years, for the
presumptuous novelty of yesterday. Not a name of greatness or honor can
be quoted of those who have adorned this foreign fiction; while all the
great and good of Greece and Rome, philosophers, moralists, historians,
and poets, are to be found on the side of Hellenism. If we cast from us
that which we have experienced to be good, by what rule and on what
principle can we afterward put our trust in anything else? And it is
considerable, that which has ever been asserted of this people, and
which I doubt not is true, that they have ever been prying about with
their doctrines and their mysteries among the poor and humbler sort,
among women, slaves, simple and unlearned folks, while they have never
appealed to, nor made any converts of, the great and the learned, who
alone are capable of judging of the truth of such things.