Another cause of the peculiar animosity felt against the Christians was

the constant interference with domestic life, arising from the great

number of female conversions. The Christian teacher was early noted for

his unrivalled skill in playing on the chords of a woman’s heart.(802) The

graphic title of “Earpicker of ladies,”(803) which was given to a

seductive pontiff of a somewhat later period, might have been applied to

many in the days of the persecution; and to the Roman, who regarded the

supreme authority of the head of the family, in all religious matters, as

the very foundation of domestic morality, no character could appear more

infamous or more revolting. “A wife,” said Plutarch, expressing the

deepest conviction of the Pagan world, “should have no friends but those

of her husband; and, as the gods are the first of friends, she should know

no gods but those whom her husband adores. Let her shut the door, then,

against idle religions and foreign superstitions. No god can take pleasure

in sacrifices offered by a wife without the knowledge of her

husband.”(804) But these principles, upon which the whole social system of

Paganism had rested, were now disregarded. Wives in multitudes deserted

their homes to frequent the nocturnal meetings(805) of a sect which was

looked upon with the deepest suspicion, and was placed under the ban of

the law. Again and again, the husband, as he laid his head on the pillow

by his wife, had the bitterness of thinking that all her sympathies were

withdrawn from him; that her affections belonged to an alien priesthood

and to a foreign creed; that, though she might discharge her duties with a

gentle and uncomplaining fidelity, he had for ever lost the power of

touching her heart—he was to her only as an outcast, as a brand prepared

for the burning. Even to a Christian mind there is a deep pathos in the

picture which St. Augustine has drawn of the broken-hearted husband

imploring the assistance of the gods, and receiving from the oracle the

bitter answer: “You may more easily write in enduring characters on the

wave, or fly with feathers through the air, than purge the mind of a woman

when once tainted by the superstition.”(806)

I have already noticed the prominence which the practice of exorcism had

acquired in the early Church, the contempt with which it was regarded by

the more philosophic Pagans, and the law which had been directed against

its professors. It is not, however, probable that this practice, though it

lowered the Christians in the eyes of the educated as much as it elevated

them in the eyes of the populace, had any appreciable influence in

provoking persecution. In the crowd of superstitions that were invading

the Roman Empire, exorcism had a prominent place; all such practices were

popular with the masses; the only form of magic which under the Empire was

seriously persecuted was political astrology or divination with a view to

discovering the successors to the throne, and of this the Christians were

never accused.(807) There was, however, another form of what was deemed

superstition connected with the Church, which was regarded by Pagan

philosophers with a much deeper feeling of aversion. To agitate the minds

of men with religious terrorism, to fill the unknown world with hideous

images of suffering, to govern the reason by alarming the imagination, was

in the eyes of the Pagan world one of the most heinous of crimes.(808)

These fears were to the ancients the very definition of superstition, and

their destruction was a main object both of the Epicurean and of the

Stoic. To men holding such sentiments, it is easy to perceive how

obnoxious must have appeared religious teachers who maintained that an

eternity of torture was reserved for the entire human race then existing

in the world, beyond the range of their own community, and who made the

assertion of this doctrine one of their main instruments of success.(809)

Enquiry, among the early theologians, was much less valued than

belief,(810) and reason was less appealed to than fear. In philosophy the

most comprehensive, but in theology the most intolerant, system is

naturally the strongest. To weak women, to the young, the ignorant, and

the timid, to all, in a word, who were doubtful of their own judgment, the

doctrine of exclusive salvation must have come with an appalling power;

and, as no other religion professed it, it supplied the Church with an

invaluable vantage-ground, and doubtless drove multitudes into its pale.

To this doctrine we may also, in a great degree, ascribe the agony of

terror that was so often displayed by the apostate, whose flesh shrank

from the present torture, but who was convinced that the weakness he could

not overcome would be expiated by an eternity of torment.(811) To the

indignation excited by such teaching was probably due a law of Marcus

Aurelius, which decreed that “if any one shall do anything whereby the

weak minds of any may be terrified by superstitious fear, the offender

shall be exiled into an island.”(812)

There can, indeed, be little doubt that a chief cause of the hostility

felt against the Christian Church was the intolerant aspect it at that

time displayed. The Romans were prepared to tolerate almost any form of

religion that would tolerate others. The Jews, though quite as obstinate

as the Christians in refusing to sacrifice to the emperor, were rarely

molested, except in the periods immediately following their insurrections,

because Judaism, however exclusive and unsocial, was still an unaggressive

national faith. But the Christian teachers taught that all religions,

except their own and that of the Jews, were constructed by devils, and

that all who dissented from their Church must be lost. It was impossible

that men strung to the very highest pitch of religious excitement, and

imagining they saw in every ceremony and oracle the direct working of a

present dæmon, could restrain their zeal, or respect in any degree the

feelings of others. Proselytising with an untiring energy, pouring a

fierce stream of invective and ridicule upon the gods on whose favour the

multitude believed all national prosperity to depend, not unfrequently

insulting the worshippers, and defacing the idols,(813) they soon stung

the Pagan devotees to madness, and convinced them that every calamity that

fell upon the empire was the righteous vengeance of the gods. Nor was the

sceptical politician more likely to regard with favour a religion whose

development was plainly incompatible with the whole religious policy of

the Empire. The new Church, as it was then organised, must have appeared

to him essentially, fundamentally, necessarily intolerant. To permit it to

triumph was to permit the extinction of religious liberty in an empire

which comprised all the leading nations of the world, and tolerated all

their creeds. It was indeed true that in the days of their distress the

apologists proclaimed, in high and eloquent language, the iniquity of

persecution, and the priceless value of a free worship; but it needed no

great sagacity to perceive that the language of the dominant Church would

be very different. The Pagan philosopher could not foresee the ghastly

histories of the Inquisition, of the Albigenses, or of St. Bartholomew;

but he could scarcely doubt that the Christians, when in the ascendant,

would never tolerate rites which they believed to be consecrated to

devils, or restrain, in the season of their power, a religious animosity

which they scarcely bridled when they were weak. It needed no prophetic

inspiration to anticipate the time, that so speedily arrived, when, amid

the wailings of the worshippers, the idols and the temples were shattered,

and when all who practised the religious ceremonies of their forefathers

were subject to the penalty of death.

There has probably never existed upon earth a community whose members were

bound to one another by a deeper or a purer affection than the Christians,

in the days of the persecution. There has probably never existed a

community which exhibited in its dealings with crime a gentler or more

judicious kindness, which combined more happily an unflinching opposition

to sin with a boundless charity to the sinner, and which was in

consequence more successful in reclaiming and transforming the most

vicious of mankind. There has, however, also never existed a community

which displayed more clearly the intolerance that would necessarily follow

its triumph. Very early tradition has related three anecdotes of the

apostle John which illustrate faithfully this triple aspect of the Church.

It is said that when the assemblies of the Christians thronged around him

to hear some exhortation from his lips, the only words he would utter

were, “My little children, love one another;” for in this, he said, is

comprised the entire law. It is said that a young man he had once confided

to the charge of a bishop, having fallen into the ways of vice, and become

the captain of a band of robbers, the apostle, on hearing of it, bitterly

reproached the negligence of the pastor, and, though in extreme old age,

betook himself to the mountains till he had been captured by the robbers,

when, falling with tears on the neck of the chief, he restored him to the

path of virtue. It is said that the same apostle, once seeing the heretic

Cerinthus in an establishment of baths into which he had entered,

immediately rushed forth, fearing lest the roof should fall because a

heretic was beneath it.(814) All that fierce hatred which during the Arian

and Donatist controversies convulsed the Empire, and which in later times

has deluged the world with blood, may be traced in the Church long before

the conversion of Constantine. Already, in the second century, it was the

rule that the orthodox Christian should hold no conversation, should

interchange none of the most ordinary courtesies of life, with the

excommunicated or the heretic.(815) Common sufferings were impotent to

assuage the animosity, and the purest and fondest relations of life were

polluted by the new intolerance. The Decian persecution had scarcely

closed, when St. Cyprian wrote his treatise to maintain that it is no more

possible to be saved beyond the limits of the Church, than it was during

the deluge beyond the limits of the ark; that martyrdom itself has no

power to efface the guilt of schism; and that the heretic, who for his

master’s cause expired in tortures upon the earth, passed at once, by that

master’s decree, into an eternity of torment in hell!(816) Even in the

arena the Catholic martyrs withdrew from the Montanists, lest they should

be mingled with the heretics in death.(817) At a later period St.

Augustine relates that, when he was a Manichean, his mother for a time

refused even to eat at the same table with her erring child.(818) When St.

Ambrose not only defended the act of a Christian bishop, who had burnt

down a synagogue of the Jews, but denounced as a deadly crime the decree

of the Government which ordered it to be rebuilt;(819) when the same

saint, in advocating the plunder of the vestal virgins, maintained the

doctrine that it is criminal for a Christian State to grant any endowment

to the ministers of any religion but his own,(820) which it has needed all

the efforts of modern liberalism to efface from legislation, he was but

following in the traces of those earlier Christians, who would not even

wear a laurel crown,(821) or join in the most innocent civic festival,

lest they should appear in some indirect way to be acquiescing in the

Pagan worship. While the apologists were maintaining against the Pagan

persecutors the duty of tolerance, the Sibylline books, which were the

popular literature of the Christians, were filled with passionate

anticipations of the violent destruction of the Pagan temples.(822) And no

sooner had Christianity mounted the throne than the policy they

foreshadowed became ascendant. The indifference or worldly sagacity of

some of the rulers, and the imposing number of the Pagans, delayed, no

doubt, the final consummation; but, from the time of Constantine,

restrictive laws were put in force, the influence of the ecclesiastics was

ceaselessly exerted in their favour, and no sagacious man could fail to

anticipate the speedy and absolute proscription of the Pagan worship. It

is related of the philosopher Antoninus, the son of the Pagan prophetess

Sospitra, that, standing one day with his disciples before that noble

temple of Serapis, at Alexandria, which was one of the wonders of ancient

art, and which was destined soon after to perish by the rude hands of the

Christian monks, the prophetic spirit of his mother fell upon him. Like

another prophet before another shrine, he appalled his hearers by the

prediction of the approaching ruin. The time would come, he said, when the

glorious edifice before them would be overthrown, the carved images would

be defaced, the temples of the gods would be turned into the sepulchres of

the dead, and a great darkness would fall upon mankind!(823)

And, besides the liberty of worship, the liberty of thought and of

expression, which was the supreme attainment of Roman civilisation, was in

peril. The new religion, unlike that which was disappearing, claimed to

dictate the opinions as well as the actions of men, and its teachers

stigmatised as an atrocious crime the free expression of every opinion on

religious matters diverging from their own. Of all the forms of liberty,

it was this which lasted the longest, and was the most dearly prized. Even

after Constantine, the Pagans Libanius, Themistius, Symmachus, and Sallust

enforced their views with a freedom that contrasts remarkably with the

restraints imposed upon their worship, and the beautiful friendships of

St. Basil and Libanius, of Synesius and Hypatia, are among the most

touching episodes of their time. But though the traditions of Pagan

freedom, and the true catholicism of Justin Martyr and Origen, lingered

long, it was inevitable that error, being deemed criminal, should be made

penal. The dogmatism of Athanasius and Augustine, the increasing power of

the clergy, and the fanaticism of the monks, hastened the end. The

suppression of all religions but one by Theodosius, the murder of Hypatia

at Alexandria by the monks of Cyril, and the closing by Justinian of the

schools of Athens, are the three events which mark the decisive overthrow

of intellectual freedom. A thousand years had rolled away before that

freedom was in part restored.

The considerations I have briefly enumerated should not in the smallest

degree detract from the admiration due to the surpassing courage, to the

pure, touching, and sacred virtues of the Christian martyrs; but they in

some degree palliate the conduct of the persecutors, among whom must be

included one emperor, who was probably, on the whole, the best and most

humane sovereign who has ever sat upon a throne, and at least two others,

who were considerably above the average of virtue. When, combined with the

indifference to human suffering, the thirst for blood, which the

spectacles of the amphitheatre had engendered, they assuredly make the

persecutions abundantly explicable. They show that if it can be proved

that Christian persecutions sprang from the doctrine of exclusive

salvation, the fact that the Roman Pagans, who did not hold that doctrine,

also persecuted, need not cause the slightest perplexity. That the

persecutions of Christianity by the Roman emperors, severe as they

undoubtedly were, were not of such a continuous nature as wholly to

counteract the vast moral, social, and intellectual agencies that were

favourable to its spread, a few dates will show.

We have seen that when the Egyptian rites were introduced into Rome, they

were met by prompt and energetic measures of repression; that these

measures were again and again repeated, but that at last, when they proved

ineffectual, the governors desisted from their opposition, and the new

worship assumed a recognised place. The history of Christianity, in its

relation to the Government, is the reverse of this. Its first introduction

into Rome appears to have been altogether unopposed. Tertullian asserts

that Tiberius, on the ground of a report from Pontius Pilate, desired to

enrol Christ among the Roman gods, but that the Senate rejected the

proposal; but this assertion, which is altogether unsupported by

trustworthy evidence, and is, intrinsically, extremely improbable, is now

generally recognised as false.(824) An isolated passage of Suetonius

states that in the time of Claudius “the Jews, being continually rioting,

at the instigation of a certain Chrestus,”(825) were expelled from the

city; but no Christian writer speaks of his co-religionists being

disturbed in this reign, while all, with a perfect unanimity, and with

great emphasis, describe Nero as the first persecutor. His persecution

began at the close of A.D. 64.(826) It was directed against Christians,

not ostensibly on the ground of their religion, but because they were

falsely accused of having set fire to Rome, and it is very doubtful

whether it extended beyond the city.(827) It had also this peculiarity,

that, being directed against the Christians not as Christians, but as

incendiaries, it was impossible to escape from it by apostasy. Within the

walls of Rome it raged with great fury. The Christians, who had been for

many years(828) proselytising without restraint in the great confluence of

nations, and amid the disintegration of old beliefs, had become a

formidable body. They were, we learn from Tacitus, profoundly unpopular;

but the hideous tortures to which Nero subjected them, and the conviction

that, whatever other crimes they might have committed, they were not

guilty of setting fire to the city, awoke general pity. Some of them, clad

in skins of wild beasts, were torn by dogs. Others, arrayed in shirts of

pitch, were burnt alive in Nero’s garden.(829) Others were affixed to

crosses. Great multitudes perished. The deep impression the persecution

made on the Christian mind is shown in the whole literature of the Sibyls,

which arose soon after, in which Nero is usually the central figure, and

by the belief, that lingered for centuries, that the tyrant was yet alive,

and would return once more as the immediate precursor of Antichrist, to

inflict the last great persecution upon the Church.(830)

Nero died A.D. 68. From that time, for at least twenty-seven years, the

Church enjoyed absolute repose. There is no credible evidence whatever of

the smallest interference with its freedom till the last year of the reign

of Domitian; and a striking illustration of the fearlessness with which it

exhibited itself to the world has been lately furnished in the discovery,

near Rome, of a large and handsome porch leading to a Christian catacomb,

built above ground between the reigns of Nero and Domitian, in the

immediate neighbourhood of one of the principal highways.(831) The long

reign of Domitian, though it may have been surpassed in ferocity, was

never surpassed in the Roman annals in the skilfulness and the persistence

of its tyranny. The Stoics and literary classes, who upheld the traditions

of political freedom, and who had already suffered much at the hands of

Vespasian, were persecuted with relentless animosity. Metius Modestus,

Arulenus Rusticus, Senecio, Helvidius, Dion Chrysostom, the younger

Priscus, Junius Mauricus, Artemidorus, Euphrates, Epictetus, Arria,

Fannia, and Gratilla were either killed or banished.(832) No measures,

however, appear to have been taken against the Christians till A.D. 95,

when a short and apparently not very severe persecution, concerning which

our information is both scanty and conflicting, was directed against them.

Of the special cause that produced it we are left in much doubt. Eusebius

mentions, on the not very trustworthy authority of Hegesippus, that the

emperor, having heard of the existence of the grandchildren of Judas, the

brother of Christ, ordered them to be brought before him, as being of the

family of David, and therefore possible pretenders to the throne; but on

finding that they were simple peasants, and that the promised kingdom of

which they spoke was a spiritual one, he dismissed them in peace, and

arrested the persecution he had begun.(833) A Pagan historian states that,

the finances of the Empire being exhausted by lavish expenditure in public

games, Domitian, in order to replenish his exchequer, resorted to a severe

and special taxation of the Jews; that some of these, in order to evade

the impost, concealed their worship, while others, who are supposed to

have been Christians, are described as following the Jewish rites without

being professed Jews.(834) Perhaps, however, the simplest explanation is

the truest, and the persecution may be ascribed to the antipathy which a

despot like Domitian must necessarily have felt to an institution which,

though it did not, like Stoicism, resist his policy, at least exercised a

vast influence altogether removed from his control. St. John, who was then

a very old man, is said to have been at this time exiled to Patmos.

Flavius Clemens, a consul, and a relative of the emperor, was put to

death. His wife, or, according to another account, his niece Domitilla,

was banished, according to one account, to the island of Pontia, according

to another, to the island of Pandataria, and many others were compelled to

accompany her into exile.(835) Numbers, we are told, “accused of

conversion to impiety or Jewish rites,” were condemned. Some were killed,

and others deprived of their offices.(836) Of the cessation of the

persecution there are two different versions. Tertullian(837) and

Eusebius(838) say that the tyrant speedily revoked his edict, and restored

those who had been banished; but according to Lactantius these measures

were not taken till after the death of Domitian,(839) and this latter

statement is corroborated by the assertion of Dion Cassius, that Nerva,

upon his accession, “absolved those who were accused of impiety, and

recalled the exiles.”(840)

When we consider the very short time during which this persecution lasted,

and the very slight notice that was taken of it, we may fairly, I think,

conclude that it was not of a nature to check in any appreciable degree a

strong religious movement like that of Christianity. The assassination of

Domitian introduces us to the golden age of the Roman Empire. In the eyes

of the Pagan historian, the period from the accession of Nerva, in A.D.

96, to the death of Marcus Aurelius, in A.D. 180, is memorable as a period

of uniform good government, of rapidly advancing humanity, of great

legislative reforms, and of a peace which was very rarely seriously

broken. To the Christian historian it is still more remarkable, as one of

the most critical periods in the history of his faith. The Church entered

into it considerable indeed, as a sect, but not large enough to be

reckoned an important power in the Empire. It emerged from it so increased

in its numbers, and so extended in its ramifications, that it might fairly

defy the most formidable assaults. It remains, therefore, to be seen

whether the opposition against which, during these eighty-four years, it

had so successfully struggled was of such a kind and intensity that the

triumph must be regarded as a miracle.

Nearly at the close of this period, during the persecution of Marcus

Aurelius, St. Melito, Bishop of Sardis, wrote a letter of expostulation to

the emperor, in which he explicitly asserts that in Asia the persecution

of the pious was an event which “had never before occurred,” and was the

result of “new and strange decrees;” that the ancestors of the emperor

were accustomed to honour the Christian faith “like other religions;” and

that “Nero and Domitian alone” had been hostile to it.(841) Rather more

than twenty years later, Tertullian asserted, in language equally distinct

and emphatic, that the two persecutors of the Christians were Nero and

Domitian, and that it would be impossible to name a single good sovereign

who had molested them. Marcus Aurelius himself, Tertullian refuses to

number among the persecutors, and, even relying upon a letter which was

falsely imputed to him, enrols him among the protectors of the

Church.(842) About a century later, Lactantius, reviewing the history of

the persecutions, declared that the good sovereigns who followed Domitian

abstained from persecuting, and passes at once from the persecution of

Domitian to that of Decius. Having noticed the measures of the former

emperor, he proceeds: “The acts of the tyrant being revoked, the Church

was not only restored to its former state, but shone forth with a greater

splendour and luxuriance; and a period following in which many good

sovereigns wielded the Imperial sceptre, it suffered no assaults from its

enemies, but stretched out its hands to the east and to the west; ... but

at last the long peace was broken. After many years, that hateful monster

Decius arose, who troubled the Church.”(843)

We have here three separate passages, from which we may conclusively infer

that the normal and habitual condition of the Christians during the

eighty-four years we are considering, and, if we accept the last two

passages, during a much longer period, was a condition of peace, but that

peace was not absolutely unbroken. The Christian Church, which was at

first regarded simply as a branch of Judaism, had begun to be recognised

as a separate body, and the Roman law professedly tolerated only those

religions which were expressly authorised. It is indeed true that with the

extension of the Empire, and especially of the city, the theory, or at

least the practice, of religious legislation had been profoundly modified.

First of all, certain religions, of which the Jewish was one, were

officially recognised, and then many others, without being expressly

authorised, were tolerated. In this manner, all attempts to resist the

torrent of Oriental superstitions proving vain, the legislator had

desisted from his efforts, and every form of wild superstition was

practised with publicity and impunity. Still the laws forbidding them were

unrevoked, although they were suffered to remain for the most part

obsolete, or were at least only put in action on the occasion of some

special scandal, or of some real or apprehended political danger. The

municipal and provincial independence under the Empire was, however, so

large, that very much depended on the character of the local governor; and

it continually happened that in one province the Christians were

unmolested or favoured, while in the adjoining province they were severely

persecuted.

As we have already seen, the Christians had for many reasons become

profoundly obnoxious to the people. They shared the unpopularity of the

Jews, with whom they were confounded, while the general credence given to

the calumnies about the crimes said to have been perpetrated at their

secret meetings, their abstinence from public amusements, and the belief

that their hostility to the gods was the cause of every physical calamity,

were special causes of antipathy. The history of the period of the

Antonines continually manifests the desire of the populace to persecute,

restrained by the humanity of the rulers. In the short reign of Nerva

there appears to have been no persecution, and our knowledge of the

official proceedings with reference to the religion is comprised in two

sentences of a Pagan historian, who tells us that the emperor “absolved

those who had been convicted of impiety,” and “permitted no one to be

convicted of impiety or Jewish rites.” Under Trajan, however, some serious

though purely local disturbances took place. The emperor himself, though

one of the most sagacious, and in most respects humane of Roman

sovereigns, was nervously jealous of any societies or associations among

his subjects, and had propounded a special edict against them; but the

persecution of the Christians appears to have been not so much political

as popular. If we may believe Eusebius, local persecutions, apparently of

the nature of riots, but sometimes countenanced by provincial governors,

broke out in several quarters of the Empire. In Bithynia, Pliny the

Younger was the governor, and he wrote a very famous letter to Trajan, in

which he professed himself absolutely ignorant of the proceedings to be

taken against the Christians, who had already so multiplied that the

temples were deserted, and who were arraigned in great numbers before his

tribunal. He had, he says, released those who consented to burn incense

before the image of the emperor, and to curse Christ, but had caused those

to be executed who persisted in their refusal, and who were not Roman

citizens, “not doubting that a pertinacious obstinacy deserved

punishment.” He had questioned the prisoners as to the nature of their

faith, and had not hesitated to seek revelations by torturing two

maid-servants, but had “discovered nothing but a base and immoderate

superstition.” He had asked the nature of their secret services, and had

been told that they assembled on a certain day before dawn to sing a hymn

to Christ as to a god; that they made a vow to abstain from every crime,

and that they then, before parting, partook together of a harmless feast,

which, however, they had given up since the decree against associations.

To this letter Trajan answered that Christians, if brought before the

tribunals and convicted, should be punished, but that they should not be

sought for; that, if they consented to sacrifice, no inquisition should be

made into their past lives, and that no anonymous accusations should be

received against them.(844) In this reign there are two authentic

instances of martyrdom.(845) Simeon, Bishop of Jerusalem, a man, it is

said, one hundred and twenty years old, having been accused by the

heretics, was tortured during several days, and at last crucified.

Ignatius, the Bishop of Antioch, was arrested, brought to Rome, and, by

the order of Trajan himself, thrown to wild beasts. Of the cause of this

last act of severity we are left in ignorance, but it has been noticed

that about this time Antioch had been the scene of one of those violent

earthquakes which so frequently produced an outburst of religious

excitement,(846) and the character of Ignatius, who was passionately

desirous of martyrdom, may have very probably led him to some act of

exceptional zeal. The letters of the martyr prove that at Rome the faith

was openly and fearlessly professed; the Government during the nineteen

years of this reign never appears to have taken any initiative against the

Christians, and, in spite of occasional local tumults, there was nothing

resembling a general persecution.

During the two following reigns, the Government was more decidedly

favourable to the Christians. Hadrian, having heard that the populace at

the public games frequently called for their execution, issued an edict in

which he commanded that none should be punished simply in obedience to the

outcries against them, or without a formal trial and a conviction of some

offence against the law, and he ordered that all false accusers should be

punished.(847) His disposition towards the Christians was so pacific as to

give rise to a legend that he intended to enrol Christ among the

gods;(848) but it is probable that, although curious on religious matters,

he regarded Christianity with the indifference of a Roman freethinker; and

a letter is ascribed to him in which he confounded it with the worship of

Serapis.(849) As far as the Government were concerned, the Christians

appear to have been entirely unmolested; but many of them suffered

dreadful tortures at the hands of the Jewish insurgents, who in this

reign, with a desperate but ill-fated heroism, made one last effort to

regain their freedom.(850) The mutual hostility exhibited at this time by

the Jews and Christians contributed to separate them in the eyes of the

Pagans, and it is said that when Hadrian forbade the Jews ever again to

enter Jerusalem, he recognised the distinction by granting a full

permission to the Christians.(851)

Antoninus, who succeeded Hadrian, made new efforts to restrain the

passions of the people against the Christians. He issued an edict

commanding that they should not be molested, and when, as a consequence of

some earthquakes in Asia Minor, the popular anger was fiercely roused, he

commanded that their accusers should be punished.(852) If we except these

riots, the twenty-three years of his reign appear to have been years of

absolute peace, which seems also to have continued during several years of

the reign of Marcus Aurelius; but at last persecuting edicts, of the exact

nature of which we have no knowledge, were issued. Of the reasons which

induced one of the best men who have ever reigned to persecute the

Christians, we know little or nothing. That it was not any ferocity of

disposition or any impatience of resistance may be confidently asserted of

one whose only fault was a somewhat excessive gentleness—who, on the death

of his wife, asked the Senate, as a single favour, to console him by

sparing the lives of those who had rebelled against him. That it was not,

as has been strangely urged, a religious fanaticism resembling that which

led St. Lewis to persecute, is equally plain. St. Lewis persecuted because

he believed that to reject his religious opinions was a heinous crime, and

that heresy was the path to hell. Marcus Aurelius had no such belief, and

he, the first Roman emperor who made the Stoical philosophy his religion

and his comfort, was also the first emperor who endowed the professors of

the philosophies that were most hostile to his own. The fact that the

Christian Church, existing as a State within a State, with government,

ideals, enthusiasms, and hopes wholly different from those of the nation,

was incompatible with the existing system of the Empire, had become more

evident as the Church increased. The accusations of cannibalism and

incestuous impurity had acquired a greater consistency, and the latter are

said to have been justly applicable to the Carpocratian heretics, who had

recently arisen. The Stoicism of Marcus Aurelius may have revolted from

the practices of exorcism or the appeals to the terrors of another world,

and the philosophers who surrounded him probably stimulated his hostility,

for his master and friend Fronto had written a book against

Christianity,(853) while Justin Martyr is said to have perished by the

machinations of the Cynic Crescens.(854) It must be added, too, that,

while it is impossible to acquit the emperor of having issued severe

edicts against the Christians,(855) the atrocious details of the

persecutions in his reign were due to the ferocity of the populace and the

weakness of the governors in distant provinces; and it is inconceivable

that, if he had been a very bitter enemy of the Christians, Tertullian,

writing little more than twenty years later, should have been so ignorant

of the fact as to represent him as one of the most conspicuous of their

protectors.

But, whatever may be thought on these points, there can, unhappily, be no

question that in this reign Rome was stained by the blood of Justin

Martyr, the first philosopher, and one of the purest and gentlest natures

in the Church, and that persecution was widely extended. In two far

distant quarters, at Smyrna and at Lyons, it far exceeded in atrocity any

that Christianity had endured since Nero, and in each case a heroism of

the most transcendent order was displayed by the martyrs. The persecution

at Smyrna, in which St. Polycarp and many others most nobly died, took

place on the occasion of the public games, and we may trace the influence

of the Jews in stimulating it.(856) The persecution at Lyons, which was

one of the most atrocious in the whole compass of ecclesiastical history,

and which has supplied the martyrology with some of its grandest and most

pathetic figures, derived its worst features from a combination of the

fury of the populace and of the subserviency of the governor.(857) Certain

servants of the Christians, terrified by the prospect of torture, accused

their masters of all the crimes which popular report attributed to them,

of incest, of infanticide, of cannibalism, of hideous impurity. A fearful

outburst of ferocity ensued. Tortures almost too horrible to recount were

for hours and even days applied to the bodies of old men and of weak

women, who displayed amid their agonies a nobler courage than has ever

shone upon a battle-field, and whose memories are immortal among mankind.

Blandina and Pothinus wrote in blood the first page of the glorious

history of the Church of France.(858) But although, during the closing

years of Marcus Aurelius, severe persecutions took place in three or four

provinces, there was no general and organised effort to suppress

Christianity throughout the Empire.(859)

We may next consider, as a single period, the space of time that elapsed

from the death of Marcus Aurelius, in A.D. 180, to the accession of

Decius, A.D. 249. During all this time Christianity was a great and

powerful body, exercising an important influence, and during a great part

of it Christians filled high civil and military positions. The hostility

manifested towards them began now to assume a more political complexion

than it had previously done, except perhaps in the later years of Marcus

Aurelius. The existence of a vast and rapidly increasing corporation, very

alien to the system of the Empire, confronted every ruler. Emperors like

Commodus or Heliogabalus were usually too immersed in selfish pleasures to

have any distinct policy; but sagacious sovereigns, sincerely desiring the

well-being of the Empire, either, like Marcus Aurelius and Diocletian,

endeavoured to repress the rising creed, or, like Alexander Severus, and

at last Constantine, actively encouraged it. The measures Marcus Aurelius

had taken against Christianity were arrested under Commodus, whose

favourite mistress, Marcia, supplies one of the very few recorded

instances of female influence, which has been the cause of so much

persecution, being exerted in behalf of toleration;(860) yet a Christian

philosopher named Apollonius, and at the same time, by a curious

retribution, his accuser, were in this reign executed at Rome.(861) During

the sixty-nine years we are considering, the general peace of the Church

was only twice broken. The first occasion was in the reign of Septimus

Severus, who was for some time very favourable to the Christians, but who,

in A.D. 202 or 203, issued an edict, forbidding any Pagan to join the

Christian or Jewish faith;(862) and this edict was followed by a

sanguinary persecution in Africa and Syria, in which the father of Origen,

and also St. Felicitas and St. Perpetua, perished. This persecution does

not appear to have extended to the West, and was apparently rather the

work of provincial governors, who interpreted the Imperial edict as a sign

of hostility to the Christians, than the direct act of the emperor,(863)

whose decree applied only to Christians actively proselytising. It is

worthy of notice that Origen observed that previous to this time the

number of Christian martyrs had been very small.(864) The second

persecution was occasioned by the murder of Alexander Severus by

Maximinus. The usurper pursued with great bitterness the leading courtiers

of the deceased emperor, among whom were some Christian bishops,(865) and

about the same time severe earthquakes in Pontus and Cappadocia produced

the customary popular ebullitions. But with these exceptions the

Christians were undisturbed. Caracalla, Macrinus, and Heliogabalus took no

measures against them, while Alexander Severus, who reigned for thirteen

years, warmly and steadily supported them. A Pagan historian assures us

that this emperor intended to build temples in honour of Christ, but was

dissuaded by the priests, who urged that all the other temples would be

deserted. He venerated in his private oratory the statues of Apollonius of

Tyana, Abraham, Orpheus, and Christ. He decreed that the provincial

governors should not be appointed till the people had the opportunity of

declaring any crime they had committed, borrowing this rule avowedly from

the procedure of the Jews and Christians in electing their clergy; he

ordered the precept “Do not unto others what you would not that they

should do unto you” to be engraven on the palace and other public

buildings, and he decided a dispute concerning a piece of ground which the

Christians had occupied, and which the owners of certain eating-houses

claimed, in favour of the former, on the ground that the worship of a god

should be most considered.(866) Philip the Arab, who reigned during the

last five years of the period we are considering, was so favourable to the

Christians that he was believed, though on no trustworthy evidence, to

have been baptised.

We have now reviewed the history of the persecutions to the year A.D. 249,

or about two hundred years after the planting of Christianity in Rome. We

have seen that, although during that period much suffering was

occasionally endured, and much heroism displayed, by the Christians, there

was, with the very doubtful exception of the Neronian persecution, no

single attempt made to suppress Christianity throughout the Empire. Local

persecutions of great severity had taken place at Smyrna and Lyons, under

Marcus Aurelius; in Africa and some Asiatic provinces, under Severus;

popular tumults, arising in the excitement of the public games, or

produced by some earthquake or inundation, or by some calumnious

accusation, were not unfrequent; but there was at no time that continuous,

organised, and universal persecution by which, in later periods,

ecclesiastical tribunals have again and again suppressed opinions

repugnant to their own; and there was no part of the Empire in which whole

generations did not pass away absolutely undisturbed. No martyr had fallen

in Gaul or in great part of Asia Minor till Marcus Aurelius. In Italy,

after the death of Nero, with the exception of some slight troubles under

Domitian and Maximinus, probably due to causes altogether distinct from

religion, there were, during the whole period we are considering, only a

few isolated instances of martyrdom. The bishops, as the leaders of the

Church, were the special objects of hostility, and several in different

parts of the world had fallen; but it is extremely questionable whether

any Roman bishop perished after the apostolic age, till Fabianus was

martyred under Decius.(867) If Christianity was not formally authorised,

it was, like many other religions in a similar position, generally

acquiesced in, and, during a great part of the time we have reviewed, its

professors appear to have found no obstacles to their preferment in the

Court or in the army. The emperors were for the most part indifferent or

favourable to them. The priests in the Pagan society had but little

influence, and do not appear to have taken any prominent part in the

persecution till near the time of Diocletian. With the single exception of

the Jews, no class held that doctrine of the criminality of error which

has been the parent of most modern persecutions; and although the belief

that great calamities were the result of neglecting or insulting the gods

furnished the Pagans with a religious motive for persecution, this motive

only acted on the occasion of some rare and exceptional catastrophe.(868)

In Christian times, the first objects of the persecutor are to control

education, to prevent the publication of any heterodox works, to institute

such a minute police inspection as to render impossible the celebration of

the worship he desires to suppress. But nothing of this kind was

attempted, or indeed was possible, in the period we are considering. With

the exception of the body-guard of the emperor, almost the whole army,

which was of extremely moderate dimensions, was massed along the vast

frontier of the Empire. The police force was of the scantiest kind,

sufficient only to keep common order in the streets. The Government had

done something to encourage, but absolutely nothing to control, education,

and parents or societies were at perfect liberty to educate the young as

they pleased. The expansion of literature, by reason of the facilities

which slavery gave to transcription, was very great, and it was for the

most part entirely uncontrolled.(869) Augustus, it is true, had caused

some volumes of forged prophecies to be burnt,(870) and, under the tyranny

of Tiberius and Domitian, political writers and historians who eulogised

tyrannicide, or vehemently opposed the Empire, were persecuted; but the

extreme indignation these acts elicited attests their rarity, and, on

matters unconnected with politics, the liberty of literature was

absolute.(871) In a word, the Church proselytised in a society in which

toleration was the rule, and at a time when municipal, provincial, and

personal independence had reached the highest point, when the ruling

classes were for the most part absolutely indifferent to religious

opinions, and when an unprecedented concourse of influences facilitated

its progress.

When we reflect that these were the circumstances of the Church till the

middle of the third century, we may readily perceive the absurdity of

maintaining that Christianity was propagated in the face of such a fierce

and continuous persecution that no opinions could have survived it without

a miracle, or of arguing from the history of the early Church that

persecution never has any real efficacy in suppressing truth. When, in

addition to the circumstances under which it operated, we consider the

unexampled means both of attraction and of intimidation that were

possessed by the Church, we can have no difficulty in understanding that

it should have acquired a magnitude that would enable it to defy the far

more serious assaults it was still destined to endure. That it had

acquired this extension we have abundant evidence. The language I have

quoted from Lactantius is but a feeble echo of the emphatic statements of

writers before the Decian persecution.(872) “There is no race of men,

whether Greek or barbarian,” said Justin Martyr, “among whom prayers and

thanks are not offered up in the name of the crucified.”(873) “We are but

of yesterday,” cried Tertullian, “and we fill all your cities, islands,

forts, councils, even the camps themselves, the tribes, the decuries, the

palaces, the senate, and the forum.”(874) Eusebius has preserved a letter

of Cornelius, Bishop of Rome, containing a catalogue of the officers of

his Church at the time of the Decian persecution. It consisted of one

bishop, forty-six presbyters, seven deacons, seven subdeacons, forty-two

acolytes, fifty-two exorcists, readers, and janitors. The Church also

supported more than fifteen hundred widows, and poor or suffering

persons.(875)

The Decian persecution, which broke out in A.D. 249, and was probably

begun in hopes of restoring the Empire to its ancient discipline, and

eliminating from it all extraneous and unpatriotic influences,(876) is the

first example of a deliberate attempt, supported by the whole machinery of

provincial government, and extending over the entire surface of the

Empire, to extirpate Christianity from the world. It would be difficult to

find language too strong to paint its horrors. The ferocious instincts of

the populace, that were long repressed, burst out anew, and they were not

only permitted, but encouraged by the rulers. Far worse than the deaths

which menaced those who shrank from the idolatrous sacrifices, were the

hideous and prolonged tortures by which the magistrates often sought to

subdue the constancy of the martyr, the nameless outrages that were

sometimes inflicted on the Christian virgin.(877) The Church, enervated by

a long peace, and deeply infected with the vices of the age, tottered

beneath the blow. It had long since arrived at the period when men were

Christians not by conviction, but through family relationship; when the

more opulent Christians vied in luxury with the Pagans among whom they

mixed, and when even the bishops were, in many instances, worldly

aspirants after civil offices. It is not, therefore, surprising that the

defection was very large. The Pagans marked with triumphant ridicule, and

the Fathers with a burning indignation, the thousands who thronged to the

altars at the very commencement of persecution, the sudden collapse of the

most illustrious churches, the eagerness with which the offer of

provincial governors to furnish certificates of apostasy, without exacting

a compliance with the conditions which those certificates attested, was

accepted by multitudes.(878) The question whether those who abandoned the

faith should afterwards be readmitted to communion, became the chief

question that divided the Novatians, and one of the questions that divided

the Montanists from the Catholics, while the pretensions of the confessors

to furnish indulgences, remitting the penances imposed by the bishops, led

to a conflict which contributed very largely to establish the undisputed

ascendancy of the episcopacy. But the Decian persecution, though it

exhibits the Church in a somewhat less noble attitude than the

persecutions which preceded and which followed it, was adorned by many

examples of extreme courage and devotion, displayed in not a few cases by

those who were physically among the frailest of mankind. It was of a kind

eminently fitted to crush the Church. Had it taken place at an earlier

period, had it been continued for a long succession of years,

Christianity, without a miracle, must have perished. But the Decian

persecution fell upon a Church which had existed for two centuries, and it

lasted less than two years.(879) Its intensity varied much in different

provinces. In Alexandria and the neighbouring towns, where a popular

tumult had anticipated the menaces of the Government, it was extremely

horrible.(880) In Carthage, at first, the proconsul being absent, no

capital sentence was passed, but on the arrival of that functionary the

penalty of death, accompanied by dreadful tortures, was substituted for

that of exile or imprisonment.(881) The rage of the people was especially

directed against the bishop St. Cyprian, who prudently retired till the

storm had passed.(882) In general, it was observed that the object of the

rulers was much less to slay than to vanquish the Christians. Horrible

tortures were continually employed to extort an apostasy, and, when those

tortures proved vain, great numbers were ultimately released.

The Decian persecution is remarkable in Christian archæology as being, it

is believed, the first occasion in which the Christian catacombs were

violated. Those vast subterranean corridors, lined with tombs and

expanding very frequently into small chapels adorned with paintings, often

of no mean beauty, had for a long period been an inviolable asylum in

seasons of persecution. The extreme sanctity which the Romans were

accustomed to attach to the place of burial repelled the profane, and as

early, it is said, as the very beginning of the third century, the

catacombs were recognised as legal possessions of the Church.(883) The

Roman legislators, however unfavourable to the formation of guilds or

associations, made an exception in favour of burial societies, or

associations of men subscribing a certain sum to ensure to each member a

decent burial in ground which belonged to the corporation. The Church is

believed to have availed itself of this privilege, and to have attained,

in this capacity, a legal existence. The tombs, which were originally the

properties of distinct families, became in this manner an ecclesiastical

domain, and the catacombs were, from perhaps the first, made something

more than places of burial.(884) The chapels with which they abound, and

which are of the smallest dimensions and utterly unfit for general

worship, were probably mortuary chapels, and may have also been employed

in the services commemorating the martyrs, while the ordinary worship was

probably at first conducted in the private houses of the Christians. The

decision of Alexander Severus, which I have already noticed, is the

earliest notice we possess of the existence of buildings specially devoted

to the Christian services; but we cannot tell how long before this time

they may have existed in Rome.(885) In serious persecution, however, they

would doubtless have to be abandoned; and, as a last resort, the catacombs

proved a refuge from the persecutors.

The reign of Decius only lasted about two years, and before its close the

persecution had almost ceased.(886) On the accession of his son Gallus, in

the last month of A.D. 251, there was for a short time perfect peace; but

Gallus resumed the persecution in the spring of the following year, and

although apparently not very severe, or very general, it seems to have

continued to his death, which took place a year after.(887) Two Roman

bishops, Cornelius, who had succeeded the martyred Fabianus, and his

successor Lucius, were at this time put to death.(888) Valerian, who

ascended the throne A.D. 254, at first not only tolerated, but warmly

patronised the Christians, and attracted so many to his Court that his

house, in the language of a contemporary, appeared “the Church of the

Lord.”(889) But after rather more than four years his disposition changed.

At the persuasion, it is said, of an Egyptian magician, named Macrianus,

he signed in A.D. 258 an edict of persecution condemning Christian

ecclesiastics and senators to death, and other Christians to exile, or to

the forfeiture of their property, and prohibiting them from entering the

catacombs.(890) A sanguinary and general persecution ensued. Among the

victims were Sixtus, the Bishop of Rome, who perished in the

catacombs,(891) and Cyprian, who was exiled, and afterwards beheaded, and

was the first Bishop of Carthage who suffered martyrdom.(892) At last,

Valerian, having been captured by the Persians, Gallienus, in A.D. 260,

ascended the throne, and immediately proclaimed a perfect toleration of

the Christians.(893)

The period from the accession of Decius, in A.D. 249, to the accession of

Gallienus, in A.D. 260, which I have now very briefly noticed, was by far

the most disastrous the Church had yet endured. With the exception of

about five years in the reigns of Gallus and Valerian, the persecution was

continuous, though it varied much in its intensity and its range. During

the first portion, if measured, not by the number of deaths, but by the

atrocity of the tortures inflicted, it was probably as severe as any upon

record. It was subsequently directed chiefly against the leading clergy,

and, as we have seen, four Roman bishops perished. In addition to the

political reasons that inspired it, the popular fanaticism caused by great

calamities, which were ascribed to anger of the gods at the neglect of

their worship, had in this as in former periods a great influence.

Political disasters, which foreshadowed clearly the approaching downfall

of the Empire, were followed by fearful and general famines and plagues.

St. Cyprian, in a treatise addressed to one of the persecutors who was

most confident in ascribing these things to the Christians, presents us

with an extremely curious picture both of the general despondency that had

fallen upon the Empire, and of the manner in which these calamities were

regarded by the Christians. Like most of his co-religionists, the saint

was convinced that the closing scene of the earth was at hand. The

decrepitude of the world, he said, had arrived, the forces of nature were

almost exhausted, the sun had no longer its old lustre, or the soil its

old fertility, the spring time had grown less lovely, and the autumn less

bounteous, the energy of man had decayed, and all things were moving

rapidly to the end. Famines and plagues were the precursors of the day of

judgment. They were sent to warn and punish a rebellious world, which,

still bowing down before idols, persecuted the believers in the truth. “So

true is this, that the Christians are never persecuted without the sky

manifesting at once the Divine displeasure.” The conception of a converted

Empire never appears to have flashed across the mind of the saint;(894)

the only triumph he predicted for the Church was that of another world;

and to the threats of the persecutors he rejoined by fearful menaces. “A

burning, scorching fire will for ever torment those who are condemned;

there will be no respite or end to their torments. We shall through

eternity contemplate in their agonies those who for a short time

contemplated us in tortures, and for the brief pleasure which the

barbarity of our persecutors took in feasting their eyes upon an inhuman

spectacle, they will be themselves exposed as an eternal spectacle of

agony.” As a last warning, calamity after calamity broke upon the world,

and, with the solemnity of one on whom the shadow of death had already

fallen, St. Cyprian adjured the persecutors to repent and to be

saved.(895)

The accession of Gallienus introduced the Church to a new period of

perfect peace, which, with a single inconsiderable exception, continued

for no less than forty years. The exception was furnished by Aurelian, who

during nearly the whole of his reign had been exceedingly favourable to

the Christians, and had even been appealed to by the orthodox bishops, who

desired him to expel from Antioch a prelate they had excommunicated for

heresy,(896) but who, at the close of his reign, intended to persecute. He

was assassinated, however, according to one account, when he was just

about to sign the decrees; according to another, before they had been sent

through the provinces; and if any persecution actually took place, it was

altogether inconsiderable.(897) Christianity, during all this time, was

not only perfectly free, it was greatly honoured. Christians were

appointed governors of the provinces, and were expressly exonerated from

the duty of sacrificing. The bishops were treated by the civil authorities

with profound respect. The palaces of the emperor were filled with

Christian servants, who were authorised freely to profess their religion,

and were greatly valued for their fidelity. The popular prejudice seems to

have been lulled to rest; and it has been noticed that the rapid progress

of the faith excited no tumult or hostility. Spacious churches were

erected in every quarter, and they could scarcely contain the multitude of

worshippers.(898) In Rome itself, before the outburst of the Diocletian

persecution, there were no less than forty churches.(899) The Christians

may still have been outnumbered by the Pagans; but when we consider their

organisation, their zeal, and their rapid progress, a speedy triumph

appeared inevitable.

But before that triumph was achieved a last and a terrific ordeal was to

be undergone. Diocletian, whose name has been somewhat unjustly associated

with a persecution, the responsibility of which belongs far more to his

colleague Galerius, having left the Christians in perfect peace for nearly

eighteen years, suffered himself to be persuaded to make one more effort

to eradicate the foreign creed. This emperor, who had risen by his merits

from the humblest position, exhibited in all the other actions of his

reign a moderate, placable, and conspicuously humane nature, and, although

he greatly magnified the Imperial authority, the simplicity of his private

life, his voluntary abdication, and, above all, his singularly noble

conduct during many years of retirement, displayed a rare magnanimity of

character. As a politician, he deserves, I think, to rank very high.

Antoninus and Marcus Aurelius had been too fascinated by the traditions of

the Republic, and by the austere teaching and retrospective spirit of the

Stoics, to realise the necessity of adapting institutions to the wants of

a luxurious and highly civilised people, and they therefore had little

permanent influence upon the destinies of the Empire. But Diocletian

invariably exhibited in his legislation a far-seeing and comprehensive

mind, well aware of the condition of the society he ruled, and provident

of distant events. Perceiving that Roman corruption was incurable, he

attempted to regenerate the Empire by creating new centres of political

life in the great and comparatively unperverted capitals of the provinces;

and Nicomedia, which was his habitual residence, Carthage, Milan, and

Ravenna, all received abundant tokens of his favour. He swept away or

disregarded the obsolete and inefficient institutions of Republican

liberty that still remained, and indeed gave his government a somewhat

Oriental character; but, at the same time, by the bold, and, it must be

admitted, very perilous measure of dividing the Empire into four sections,

he abridged the power of each ruler, ensured the better supervision and

increased authority of the provinces, and devised the first effectual

check to those military revolts which had for some time been threatening

the Empire with anarchy. With the same energetic statesmanship, we find

him reorganising the whole system of taxation, and attempting, less

wisely, to regulate commercial transactions. To such an emperor, the

problem presented by the rapid progress and the profoundly anti-national

character of Christianity must have been a matter of serious

consideration, and the weaknesses of his character were most unfavourable

to the Church; for Diocletian, with many noble qualities of heart and

head, was yet superstitious, tortuous, nervous, and vacillating, and was

too readily swayed by the rude and ferocious soldier, who was impetuously

inciting him against the Christians.

The extreme passion which Galerius displayed on this subject is ascribed,

in the first instance, to the influence of his mother, who was ardently

devoted to the Pagan worship. He is himself painted in dark colours by the

Christian writers as a man of boundless and unbridled sensuality, of an

imperiousness that rose to fury at opposition, and of a cruelty which had

long passed the stage of callousness, and become a fiendish delight, in

the infliction and contemplation of suffering.(900) His strong attachment

to Paganism made him at length the avowed representative of his party,

which several causes had contributed to strengthen. The philosophy of the

Empire had by this time fully passed into its Neoplatonic and Pythagorean

phases, and was closely connected with religious observances. Hierocles

and Porphyry, who were among its most eminent exponents, had both written

books against Christianity, and the Oriental religions fostered much

fanaticism among the people. Political interests united with superstition,

for the Christians were now a very formidable body in the State. Their

interests were supposed to be represented by the Cæsar Constantius

Chlorus, and the religion was either adopted, or at least warmly favoured,

by the wife and daughter of Diocletian (the latter of whom was married to

Galerius(901)), and openly professed by some of the leading officials at

the Court. A magnificent church crowned the hill facing the palace of the

emperor at Nicomedia. The bishops were, in most cities, among the most

active and influential citizens, and their influence was not always

exercised for good. A few cases, in which an ill-considered zeal led

Christians to insult the Pagan worship, one or two instances of Christians

refusing to serve in the army, because they believed military life

repugnant to their creed, a scandalous relaxation of morals, that had

arisen during the long peace, and the fierce and notorious discord

displayed by the leaders of the Church, contributed in different ways to

accelerate the persecution.(902)

For a considerable time Diocletian resisted all the urgency of Galerius

against the Christians, and the only measure taken was the dismissal by

the latter sovereign of a number of Christian officers from the army. In

A.D. 303, however, Diocletian yielded to the entreaties of his colleague,

and a fearful persecution, which many circumstances conspired to

stimulate, began. The priests, in one of the public ceremonies, had

declared that the presence of Christians prevented the entrails from

showing the accustomed signs. The oracle of Apollo, at Miletus, being

consulted by Diocletian, exhorted him to persecute the Christians. A

fanatical Christian, who avowed his deed, and expiated it by a fearful

death, tore down the first edict of persecution, and replaced it by a

bitter taunt against the emperor. Twice, after the outburst of the

persecution, the palace at Nicomedia, where Diocletian and Galerius were

residing, was set on fire, and the act was ascribed, not without

probability, to a Christian hand, as were also some slight disturbances

that afterwards arose in Syria.(903) Edict after edict followed in rapid

succession. The first ordered the destruction of all Christian churches

and of all Bibles, menaced with death the Christians if they assembled in

secret for Divine worship, and deprived them of all civil rights. A second

edict ordered all ecclesiastics to be thrown into prison, while a third

edict ordered that these prisoners, and a fourth edict that all

Christians, should be compelled by torture to sacrifice. At first

Diocletian refused to permit their lives to be taken, but after the fire

at Nicomedia this restriction was removed. Many were burnt alive, and the

tortures by which the persecutors sought to shake their resolution were so

dreadful that even such a death seemed an act of mercy. The only province

of the Empire where the Christians were at peace was Gaul, which had

received its baptism of blood under Marcus Aurelius, but was now governed

by Constantius Chlorus, who protected them from personal molestation,

though he was compelled, in obedience to the emperor, to destroy their

churches. In Spain, which was also under the government, but not under the

direct inspection, of Constantius, the persecution was moderate, but in

all other parts of the Empire it raged with fierceness till the abdication

of Diocletian in 305. This event almost immediately restored peace to the

Western provinces,(904) but greatly aggravated the misfortunes of the

Eastern Christians, who passed under the absolute rule of Galerius.

Horrible, varied, and prolonged tortures were employed to quell their

fortitude, and their final resistance was crowned by the most dreadful of

all deaths, roasting over a slow fire. It was not till A.D. 311, eight

years after the commencement of the general persecution, ten years after

the first measure against the Christians, that the Eastern persecution

ceased. Galerius, the arch-enemy of the Christians, was struck down by a

fearful disease. His body, it is said, became a mass of loathsome and

fœtid sores—a living corpse, devoured by countless worms, and exhaling the

odour of the charnel-house. He who had shed so much innocent blood, shrank

himself from a Roman death. In his extreme anguish he appealed in turn to

physician after physician, and to temple after temple. At last he relented

towards the Christians. He issued a proclamation restoring them to

liberty, permitting them to rebuild their churches, and asking their

prayers for his recovery.(905) The era of persecution now closed. One

brief spasm, indeed, due to the Cæsar Maximian, shot through the long

afflicted Church of Asia Minor;(906) but it was rapidly allayed. The

accession of Constantine, the proclamation of Milan, A.D. 313, the defeat

of Licinius, and the conversion of the conqueror, speedily followed, and

Christianity became the religion of the Empire.

Such, so far as we can trace it, is the outline of the last and most

terrible persecution inflicted on the early Church. Unfortunately we can

place little reliance on any information we possess about the number of

its victims, the provocations that produced it, or the objects of its

authors. The ecclesiastical account of these matters is absolutely

unchecked by any Pagan statement, and it is derived almost exclusively

from the history of Eusebius, and from the treatise “On the Deaths of the

Persecutors,” which is ascribed to Lactantius. Eusebius was a writer of

great learning, and of critical abilities not below the very low level of

his time, and he had personal knowledge of some of the events in Palestine

which he has recorded; but he had no pretensions whatever to impartiality.

He has frankly told us that his principle in writing history was to

conceal the facts that were injurious to the reputation of the

Church;(907) and although his practice was sometimes better than his

principle, the portrait he has drawn of the saintly virtues of his patron

Constantine, which we are able to correct from other sources, abundantly

proves with how little scruple the courtly bishop could stray into the

paths of fiction. The treatise of Lactantius, which has been well termed

“a party pamphlet,” is much more untrustworthy. It is a hymn of exultation

over the disastrous ends of the persecutors, and especially of Galerius,

written in a strain of the fiercest and most passionate invective, and

bearing on every page unequivocal signs of inaccuracy and exaggeration.

The whole history of the early persecution was soon enveloped in a thick

cloud of falsehood. A notion, derived from prophecy, that ten great

persecutions must precede the day of judgment, at an early period

stimulated the imagination of the Christians, who believed that day to be

imminent; and it was natural that as time rolled on men should magnify the

sufferings that had been endured, and that in credulous and uncritical

ages a single real incident should be often multiplied, diversified, and

exaggerated in many distinct narratives. Monstrous fictions, such as the

crucifixion of ten thousand Christians upon Mount Ararat under Trajan, the

letter of Tiberianus to Trajan, complaining that he was weary of

ceaselessly killing Christians in Palestine, and the Theban legion of six

thousand men, said to have been massacred by Maximilian, were boldly

propagated and readily believed.(908) The virtue supposed to attach to the

bones of martyrs, and the custom, and, after a decree of the second

Council of Nice, in the eighth century, the obligation, of placing saintly

remains under every altar, led to an immense multiplication of spurious

relics, and a corresponding demand for legends. Almost every hamlet soon

required a patron martyr and a local legend, which the nearest monastery

was usually ready to supply. The monks occupied their time in composing

and disseminating innumerable acts of martyrs, which purported to be

strictly historical, but which were, in fact, deliberate, though it was

thought edifying, forgeries; and pictures of hideous tortures, enlivened

by fantastic miracles, soon became the favourite popular literature. To

discriminate accurately the genuine acts of martyrs from the immense mass

that were fabricated by the monks, has been attempted by Ruinart, but is

perhaps impossible. Modern criticism has, however, done much to reduce the

ancient persecutions to their true dimensions. The famous essay of

Dodwell, which appeared towards the close of the seventeenth century,

though written, I think, a little in the spirit of a special pleader, and

not free from its own exaggerations, has had a great and abiding influence

upon ecclesiastical history, and the still more famous chapter which

Gibbon devoted to the subject rendered the conclusions of Dodwell familiar

to the world.

Notwithstanding the great knowledge and critical acumen displayed in this

chapter, few persons, I imagine, can rise from its perusal without a

feeling both of repulsion and dissatisfaction. The complete absence of all

sympathy with the heroic courage manifested by the martyrs, and the frigid

and, in truth, most unphilosophical severity with which the historian has

weighed the words and actions of men engaged in the agonies of a deadly

struggle, must repel every generous nature, while the persistence with

which he estimates persecutions by the number of deaths rather than by the

amount of suffering, diverts the mind from the really distinctive

atrocities of the Pagan persecutions. He has observed, that while the

anger of the persecutors was at all times especially directed against the

bishops, we know from Eusebius that only nine bishops were put to death in

the entire Diocletian persecution, and that the particular enumeration,

which the historian made on the spot, of all the martyrs who perished

during this persecution in Palestine, which was under the government of

Galerius, and was therefore exposed to the full fury of the storm, shows

the entire number to have been ninety-two. Starting from this fact,

Gibbon, by a well-known process of calculation, has estimated the probable

number of martyrs in the whole Empire, during the Diocletian persecution,

at about two thousand, which happens to be the number of persons burnt by

the Spanish Inquisition during the presidency of Torquemada alone,(909)

and about one twenty-fifth of the number who are said to have suffered for

their religion in the Netherlands in the reign of Charles V.(910) But

although, if measured by the number of martyrs, the persecutions inflicted

by Pagans were less terrible than those inflicted by Christians, there is

one aspect in which the former appear by far the more atrocious, and a

truthful historian should suffer no false delicacy to prevent him from

unflinchingly stating it. The conduct of the provincial governors, even

when they were compelled by the Imperial edicts to persecute, was often

conspicuously merciful. The Christian records contain several examples of

rulers who refused to search out the Christians, who discountenanced or

even punished their accusers, who suggested ingenious evasions of the law,

who tried by earnest and patient kindness to overcome what they regarded

as insane obstinacy, and who, when their efforts had proved vain,

mitigated by their own authority the sentence they were compelled to

pronounce. It was only on very rare occasions that any, except conspicuous

leaders of the Church, and sometimes persons of a servile condition, were

in danger; the time that was conceded them before their trials gave them

great facilities for escaping, and, even when condemned, Christian women

had usually full permission to visit them in their prisons, and to console

them by their charity. But, on the other hand, Christian writings, which

it is impossible to dispute, continually record barbarities inflicted upon

converts, so ghastly and so hideous that the worst horrors of the

Inquisition pale before them. It is, indeed, true that burning heretics by

a slow fire was one of the accomplishments of the Inquisitors, and that

they were among the most consummate masters of torture of their age. It is

true that in one Catholic country they introduced the atrocious custom of

making the spectacle of men burnt alive for their religious opinions an

element in the public festivities.(911) It is true, too, that the immense

majority of the acts of the martyrs are the transparent forgeries of lying

monks; but it is also true that among the authentic records of Pagan

persecutions there are histories which display, perhaps more vividly than

any other, both the depth of cruelty to which human nature may sink, and

the heroism of resistance it may attain. There was a time when it was the

just boast of the Romans, that no refinements of cruelty, no prolongations

of torture, were admitted in their stern but simple penal code. But all

this was changed. Those hateful games, which made the spectacle of human

suffering and death the delight of all classes, had spread their

brutalising influence wherever the Roman name was known, had rendered

millions absolutely indifferent to the sight of human suffering, had

produced in many, in the very centre of an advanced civilisation, a relish

and a passion for torture, a rapture and an exultation in watching the

spasms of extreme agony, such as an African or an American savage alone

can equal. The most horrible recorded instances of torture were usually

inflicted, either by the populace, or in their presence, in the

arena.(912) We read of Christians bound in chairs of red-hot iron, while

the stench of their half-consumed flesh rose in a suffocating cloud to

heaven; of others who were torn to the very bone by shells, or hooks of

iron; of holy virgins given over to the lust of the gladiator, or to the

mercies of the pander; of two hundred and twenty-seven converts sent on

one occasion to the mines, each with the sinews of one leg severed by a

red-hot iron, and with an eye scooped from its socket; of fires so slow

that the victims writhed for hours in their agonies; of bodies torn limb

from limb, or sprinkled with burning lead; of mingled salt and vinegar

poured over the flesh that was bleeding from the rack; of tortures

prolonged and varied through entire days. For the love of their Divine

Master, for the cause they believed to be true, men, and even weak girls,

endured these things without flinching, when one word would have freed

them from their sufferings. No opinion we may form of the proceedings of

priests in a later age should impair the reverence with which we bend

before the martyr’s tomb.

FOOTNOTES

1 The opinions of Hume on moral questions are grossly misrepresented

by many writers, who persist in describing them as substantially

identical with those of Bentham. How far Hume was from denying the

existence of a moral sense, the following passages will show:—“The

final sentence, it is probable, which pronounces characters and

actions amiable or odious, praiseworthy or blameable ... depends on

some internal sense or feeling which nature has made universal in

the whole species.”—_Enquiry Concerning Morals_, § 1. “The

hypothesis we embrace ... defines virtue to be whatever mental

action or quality gives to the spectator the pleasing sentiment of

approbation.”—Ibid. Append. I. “The crime or immorality is no

particular fact or relation which can be the object of the

understanding, but arises entirely from the sentiment of

disapprobation, which, by the structure of human nature, we

unavoidably feel on the apprehension of barbarity or

treachery.”—Ibid. “Reason instructs us in the several tendencies of

actions, and humanity makes a distinction in favour of those which

are useful and beneficial.”—Ibid. “As virtue is an end, and is

desirable on its own account without fee or reward, merely for the

immediate satisfaction it conveys, it is requisite that there should

be some sentiment which it touches, some internal taste or feeling,

or whatever you please to call it, which distinguishes moral good

and evil, and which embraces the one and rejects the other.”—Ibid.

The two writers to whom Hume was most indebted were Hutcheson and

Butler. In some interesting letters to the former (Burton’s _Life of

Hume_, vol. i.), he discusses the points on which he differed from

them.

2 “The chief thing therefore which lawgivers and other wise men that

have laboured for the establishment of society have endeavoured, has

been to make the people they were to govern believe that it was more

beneficial for everybody to conquer than to indulge his appetites,

and much better to mind the public than what seemed his private

interest ... observing that none were either so savage as not to be

charmed with praise, or so despicable as patiently to bear contempt,

they justly concluded that flattery must be the most powerful

argument that could be used to human creatures. Making use of this

bewitching engine, they extolled the excellency of our nature above

other animals ... by the help of which we were capable of performing

the most noble achievements. Having, by this artful flattery,

insinuated themselves into the hearts of men, they began to instruct

them in the notions of honour and shame, &c.”—_Enquiry into the

Origin of Moral Virtue._

3 “I conceive that when a man deliberates whether he shall do a thing

or not do it, he does nothing else but consider whether it be better

for himself to do it or not to do it.”—Hobbes _On Liberty and

Necessity._ “Good and evil are names that signify our appetites and

aversions.”—Ibid. _Leviathan_, part i. ch. xvi. “Obligation is the

necessity of doing or omitting any action in order to be

happy.”—Gay’s dissertation prefixed to King’s _Origin of Evil_, p.

36. “The only reason or motive by which individuals can possibly be

induced to the practice of virtue, must be the feeling immediate or

the prospect of future private happiness.”—Brown _On the

Characteristics_, p. 159. “En tout temps, en tout lieu, tant en

matière de morale qu’en matière d’esprit, c’est l’intérêt personnel

qui dicte le jugement des particuliers, et l’intérêt général qui

dicte celui des nations.... Tout homme ne prend dans ses jugements

conseil que de son intérêt.”—Helvétius _De l’Esprit_, discours ii.

“Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign

masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what

we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do.... The

principle of utility recognises this subjection, and assumes it for

the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear the

fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and of law. Systems which

attempt to question it, deal in sounds instead of sense, in caprice

instead of reason, in darkness instead of light.”—Bentham’s

_Principles of Morals and Legislation_, ch. i. “By the principle of

utility is meant that principle which approves or disapproves of

every action whatsoever, according to the tendency which it appears

to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose

interest is in question.”—Ibid. “Je regarde l’amour éclairé de

nous-mêmes comme le principe de tout sacrifice moral.”—D’Alembert

quoted by D. Stewart, _Active and Moral Powers_, vol. i. p. 220.

4 “Pleasure is in itself a good; nay, even setting aside immunity from

pain, the only good; pain is in itself an evil, and, indeed, without

exception, the only evil, or else the words good and evil have no

meaning.”—Bentham’s _Principles of Morals and Legislation_, ch. x.

5 “Good and evil are nothing but pleasure and pain, or that which

occasions or procures pleasure or pain to us. Moral good and evil

then is only the conformity or disagreement of our voluntary actions

to some law whereby good or evil is drawn on us by the will and

power of the law maker, which good and evil, pleasure or pain,

attending our observance or breach of the law by the decree of the

law maker, is that we call reward or punishment.”—Locke’s _Essay_,

book ii. ch. xxviii. “Take away pleasures and pains, not only

happiness, but justice, and duty, and obligation, and virtue, all of

which have been so elaborately held up to view as independent of

them, are so many empty sounds.”—Bentham’s _Springs of Action_, ch.

i. § 15.

6 “Il lui est aussi impossible d’aimer le bien pour le bien, que

d’aimer le mal pour le mal.”—Helvétius _De l’Esprit_, disc. ii. ch.

v.

7 “Even the goodness which we apprehend in God Almighty, is his

goodness to us.”—Hobbes _On Human Nature_, ch. vii. § 3. So

Waterland, “To love God is in effect the same thing as to love

happiness, eternal happiness; and the love of happiness is still the

love of ourselves.”—_Third Sermon on Self-love._

8 “Reverence is the conception we have concerning another, that he

hath the power to do unto us both good and hurt, but not the will to

do us hurt.”—Hobbes _On Human Nature_, ch. viii. § 7.

9 “The pleasures of piety are the pleasures that accompany the belief

of a man’s being in the acquisition, or in possession of the

goodwill or favour of the Supreme Being; and as a fruit of it, of

his being in the way of enjoying pleasures to be received by God’s

special appointment either in this life or in a life to

come.”—Bentham’s _Principles of Morals and Legislation_, ch. v. “The

pains of piety are the pains that accompany the belief of a man’s

being obnoxious to the displeasure of the Supreme Being, and in

consequence to certain pains to be inflicted by His especial

appointment, either in this life or in a life to come. These may be

also called the pains of religion.”—Ibid.

10 “There can be no greater argument to a man of his own power, than to

find himself able not only to accomplish his own desires, but also

to assist other men in theirs; and this is that conception wherein

consisteth charity.”—Hobbes _On Hum. Nat._ ch. ix. § 17. “No man

giveth but with intention of good to himself, because gift is

voluntary; and of all voluntary acts, the object to every man is his

own good.”—Hobbes’ _Leviathan_, part i. ch. xv. “Dream not that men

will move their little finger to serve you, unless their advantage

in so doing be obvious to them. Men never did so, and never will

while human nature is made of its present materials.”—Bentham’s

_Deontology_, vol. ii. p. 133.

11 “Pity is imagination or fiction of future calamity to ourselves,

proceeding from the sense of another man’s calamity. But when it

lighteth on such as we think have not deserved the same, the

compassion is greater, because there then appeareth more probability

that the same may happen to us; for the evil that happeneth to an

innocent man may happen to every man.”—Hobbes _On Hum. Nat._ ch. ix.

§ 10. “La pitié est souvent un sentiment de nos propres maux dans

les maux d’autrui. C’est une habile prévoyance des malheurs où nous

pouvons tomber. Nous donnons des secours aux autres pour les engager

à nous en donner en de semblables occasions, et ces services que

nous leur rendons sont, à proprement parler, des biens que nous nous

faisons à nous-mêmes par avance.”—La Rochefoucauld, _Maximes_, 264.

Butler has remarked that if Hobbes’ account were true, the most

fearful would be the most compassionate nature; but this is perhaps

not quite just, for Hobbes’ notion of pity implies the union of two

not absolutely identical, though nearly allied, influences, timidity

and imagination. The theory of Adam Smith, though closely connected

with, differs totally in consequences from that of Hobbes on this

point. He says, “When I condole with you for the loss of your son,

in order to enter into your grief, I do not consider what I, a

person of such a character and profession, should suffer if I had a

son, and if that son should die—I consider what I should suffer if I

was really you. I not only change circumstances with you, but I

change persons and characters. My grief, therefore, is entirely upon

your account.... A man may sympathise with a woman in child-bed,

though it is impossible he should conceive himself suffering her

pains in his own proper person and character.”—_Moral Sentiments_,

part vii. ch. i. §3.

12 “Ce que les hommes ont nommé amitié n’est qu’une société, qu’un

ménagement réciproque d’intérêts et qu’un échange de bons offices.

Ce n’est enfin qu’un commerce où l’amour-propre se propose toujours

quelque chose à gagner.”—La Rochefoucauld, _Max._ 83. See this idea

developed at large in Helvétius.

13 “La science de la morale n’est autre chose que la science même de la

législation.”—Helvétius _De l’Esprit_, ii. 17.

14 This doctrine is expounded at length in all the moral works of

Hobbes and his school. The following passage is a fair specimen of

their meaning:—“Moral philosophy is nothing else but the science of

what is good and evil in the conversation and society of mankind.

Good and evil are names that signify our appetites and aversions,

which in different tempers, customs, and doctrines of men are

different ... from whence arise disputes, controversies, and at last

war. And therefore, so long as man is in this condition of mere

nature (which is a condition of war), his private appetite is the

measure of good and evil. And consequently all men agree in this,

that peace is good, and therefore also that the ways or means of

peace, (which, as I have showed before) are justice, gratitude,

modesty, equity, mercy, and the rest of the laws of nature are good

... and their contrary vices evil.”—Hobbes’ _Leviathan_, part i. ch.

xvi. See, too, a striking passage in Bentham’s _Deontology_, vol.

ii. p. 132.

15 As an ingenious writer in the _Saturday Review_ (Aug. 10, 1867)

expresses it: “Chastity is merely a social law created to encourage

the alliances that most promote the permanent welfare of the race,

and to maintain woman in a social position which it is thought

advisable she should hold.” See, too, on this view, Hume’s _Inquiry

concerning Morals_, § 4, and also _note_ x.: “To what other purpose

do all the ideas of chastity and modesty serve? Nisi utile est quod

facimus, frustra est gloria.”

16 “All pleasure is necessarily self-regarding, for it is impossible to

have any feelings out of our own mind. But there are modes of

delight that bring also satisfaction to others, from the round that

they take in their course. Such are the pleasures of benevolence.

Others imply no participation by any second party, as, for example,

eating, drinking, bodily warmth, property, and power; while a third

class are fed by the pains and privations of fellow-beings, as the

delights of sport and tyranny. The condemnatory phrase, selfishness,

applies with especial emphasis to the last-mentioned class, and, in

a qualified degree, to the second group; while such terms as

unselfishness, disinterestedness, self-devotion, are applied to the

vicarious position wherein we seek our own satisfaction in that of

others.”—Bain _On the Emotions and Will_, p. 113.

17 “Vice may be defined to be a miscalculation of chances, a mistake in

estimating the value of pleasures and pains. It is false moral

arithmetic.”—Bentham’s _Deontology_, vol. i. p. 131.

18 “La récompense, la punition, la gloire et l’infamie soumises à ses

volontés sont quatre espèces de divinités avec lesquelles le

législateur peut toujours opérer le bien public et créer des hommes

illustres en tous les genres. Toute l’étude des moralistes consiste

à déterminer l’usage qu’on doit faire de ces récompenses et de ces

punitions et les secours qu’on peut tirer pour lier l’intérêt

personnel à l’intérêt général.”—Helvétius _De l’Esprit_, ii. 22. “La

justice de nos jugements et de nos actions n’est jamais que la

rencontre heureuse de notre intérêt avec l’intérêt public.”—Ibid.

ii. 7. “To prove that the immoral action is a miscalculation of

self-interest, to show how erroneous an estimate the vicious man

makes of pains and pleasures, is the purpose of the intelligent

moralist. Unless he can do this he does nothing; for, as has been

stated above, for a man not to pursue what he deems likely to

produce to him the greatest sum of enjoyment, is, in the very nature

of things, impossible.”—Bentham’s _Deontology_.

19 “If the effect of virtue were to prevent or destroy more pleasure

than it produced, or to produce more pain than it prevented, its

more appropriate name would be wickedness and folly; wickedness as

it affected others, folly as respected him who practised

it.”—Bentham’s _Deontology_, vol. i. p. 142. “Weigh pains, weigh

pleasures, and as the balance stands will stand the question of

right and wrong.”—Ibid. vol. i. p. 137. “Moralis philosophiæ caput

est, Faustine fili, ut scias quibus ad beatam vitam perveniri

rationibus possit.”—Apuleius, _Ad Doct. Platonis_, ii. “Atque ipsa

utilitas, justi prope mater et æqui.”—Horace, _Sat._ I. iii. 98.

20 “We can be obliged to nothing but what we ourselves are to gain or

lose something by; for nothing else can be ‘violent motive’ to us.

As we should not be obliged to obey the laws or the magistrate

unless rewards or punishments, pleasure or pain, somehow or other,

depended upon our obedience; so neither should we, without the same

reason, be obliged to do what is right, to practise virtue, or to

obey the commands of God.”—Paley’s _Moral Philosophy_, book ii. ch.

ii.

21 See Gassendi _Philosophiæ Epicuri Syntagma_. These four canons are a

skilful condensation of the argument of Torquatus in Cicero, _De

Fin._ i. 2. See, too, a very striking letter by Epicurus himself,

given in his life by Diogenes Laërtius.

22 “Sanus igitur non est, qui nulla spe majore proposita, iis bonis

quibus cæteri utuntur in vita, labores et cruciatus et miserias

anteponat.... Non aliter his bonis præsentibus abstinendum est quam

si sint aliqua majora, propter quæ tanti sit et voluptates omittere

et mala omnia sustinere.”—Lactantius, _Div. Inst._ vi. 9. Macaulay,

in some youthful essays against the Utilitarian theory (which he

characteristically described as “Not much more laughable than

phrenology, and immeasurably more humane than cock-fighting”),

maintains the theological form of selfishness in very strong terms.

“What proposition is there respecting human nature which is

absolutely and universally true? We know of only one, and that is

not only true but identical, that men always act from

self-interest.”—Review of Mill’s _Essay on Government_. “Of this we

may be sure, that the words ‘greatest happiness’ will never in any

man’s mouth mean more than the greatest happiness of others, which

is consistent with what he thinks his own.... This direction (Do as

you would be done by) would be utterly unmeaning, as it actually is

in Mr. Bentham’s philosophy, unless it were accompanied by a

sanction. In the Christian scheme accordingly it is accompanied by a

sanction of immense force. To a man whose greatest happiness in this

world is inconsistent with the greatest happiness of the greatest

number, is held out the prospect of an infinite happiness hereafter,

from which he excludes himself by wronging his fellow-creatures

here.”—_Answer to the Westminster Review’s Defence of Mill._

23 “All virtue and piety are thus resolvable into a principle of

self-love. It is what Scripture itself resolves them into by

founding them upon faith in God’s promises, and hope in things

unseen. In this way it may be rightly said that there is no such

thing as disinterested virtue. It is with reference to ourselves and

for our own sakes that we love even God Himself.”—Waterland, _Third

Sermon on Self-love_. “To risk the happiness of the whole duration

of our being in any case whatever, were it possible, would be

foolish.”—Robert Hall’s _Sermon on Modern Infidelity_. “In the moral

system the means are virtuous practice; the end, happiness.”—

Warburton’s _Divine Legation_, book ii. Appendix.

24 “There is always understood to be a difference between an act of

prudence and an act of duty. Thus, if I distrusted a man who owed me

a sum of money, I should reckon it an act of prudence to get another

person bound with him; but I should hardly call it an act of

duty.... Now in what, you will ask, does the difference consist,

inasmuch as, according to our account of the matter, both in the one

case and the other, in acts of duty as well as acts of prudence, we

consider solely what we ourselves shall gain or lose by the act? The

difference, and the only difference, is this: that in the one case

we consider what we shall gain or lose in the present world; in the

other case, we consider also what we shall gain or lose in the world

to come.”—Paley’s _Moral Philosophy_, ii. 3.

25 “Hence we may see the weakness and mistake of those falsely

religious ... who are scandalised at our being determined to the

pursuit of virtue through any degree of regard to its happy

consequences in this life.... For it is evident that the religious

motive is precisely of the same kind, only stronger, as the

happiness expected is greater and more lasting.”—Brown’s _Essays on

the Characteristics_, p. 220.

26 “If a Christian, who has the view of happiness and misery in another

life, be asked why a man must keep his word, he will give this as a

reason, because God, who has the power of eternal life and death,

requires it of us. But if an Hobbist be asked why, he will answer,

because the public requires it, and the Leviathan will punish you if

you do not. And if one of the old heathen philosophers had been

asked, he would have answered, because it was dishonest, below the

dignity of man, and opposite to virtue, the highest perfection of

human nature, to do otherwise.”—Locke’s _Essay_, i. 3.

27 Thus Paley remarks that—“The Christian religion hath not ascertained

the precise quantity of virtue necessary to salvation,” and he then

proceeds to urge the probability of graduated scales of rewards and

punishments. (_Moral Philosophy_, book i. ch. vii.)

28 This view was developed by Locke (_Essay on the Human

Understanding_, book ii. ch. xxi.) Pascal, in a well-known passage,

applied the same argument to Christianity, urging that the rewards

and punishments it promises are so great, that it is the part of a

wise man to embrace the creed, even though he believes it

improbable, if there be but a possibility in its favour.

29 Cudworth, in his _Immutable Morals_, has collected the names of a

number of the schoolmen who held this view. See, too, an interesting

note in Miss Cobbe’s very learned _Essay on Intuitive Morals_, pp.

18, 19.

30 E.g. Soame Jenyns, Dr. Johnson, Crusius, Pascal, Paley, and Austin.

Warburton is generally quoted in the list, but not I think quite

fairly. See his theory, which is rather complicated (_Divine

Legation_, i. 4). Waterland appears to have held this view, and also

Condillac. See a very remarkable chapter on morals, in his _Traité

des Animaux_, part ii. ch. vii. Closely connected with this doctrine

is the notion that the morality of God is generically different from

the morality of men, which having been held with more or less

distinctness by many theologians (Archbishop King being perhaps the

most prominent), has found in our own day an able defender in Dr.

Mansel. Much information on the history of this doctrine will be

found in Dr. Mansel’s _Second Letter_ to Professor Goldwin Smith

(Oxford, 1862).

31 Leibnitz noticed the frequency with which Supralapsarian Calvinists

adopt this doctrine. (_Théodicée_, part ii. § 176.) Archbishop

Whately, who from his connection with the Irish Clergy had admirable

opportunities of studying the tendencies of Calvinism, makes a

similar remark as the result of his own experience. (_Whately’s

Life_, vol. ii. p. 339.)

32 “God designs the happiness of all His sentient creatures.... Knowing

the tendencies of our actions, and knowing His benevolent purpose,

we know His tacit commands.”—Austin’s _Lectures on Jurisprudence_,

vol. i. p. 31. “The commands which He has revealed we must gather

from the terms wherein they are promulgated. The commands which He

has not revealed we must construe by the principle of

utility.”—Ibid. p. 96. So Paley’s _Moral Philosophy_, book ii. ch.

iv. v.

33 Paley’s _Moral Philosophy_, book i. ch. vii. The question of the

disinterestedness of the love we should bear to God was agitated in

the Catholic Church, Bossuet taking the selfish, and Fénelon the

unselfish side. The opinions of Fénelon and Molinos on the subject

were authoritatively condemned. In England, the less dogmatic

character of the national faith, and also the fact that the great

anti-Christian writer, Hobbes, was the advocate of extreme

selfishness in morals, had, I think, a favourable influence upon the

ethics of the church. Hobbes gave the first great impulse to moral

philosophy in England, and his opponents were naturally impelled to

an unselfish theory. Bishop Cumberland led the way, resolving virtue

(like Hutcheson) into benevolence. The majority of divines, however,

till the present century, have, I think, been on the selfish side.

_ 34 Moral Philosophy_, ii. 3.

_ 35 Essay on the Human Understanding_, ii. 28.

_ 36 Principles of Morals and Legislation_, ch. iii. Mr. Mill observes

that, “Bentham’s idea of the world is that of a collection of

persons pursuing each his separate interest or pleasure, and the

prevention of whom from jostling one another more than is

unavoidable, may be attempted by hopes and fears derived from three

sources—the law, religion, and public opinion. To these three

powers, considered as binding human conduct, he gave the name of

sanctions; the political sanction operating by the rewards and

penalties of the law; the religious sanction by those expected from

the ruler of the universe; and the popular, which he

characteristically calls also the moral sanction, operating through

the pains and pleasures arising from the favour or disfavour of our

fellow-creatures.”—_Dissertations_, vol. i. pp. 362-363.

37 Hume on this, as on most other points, was emphatically opposed to

the school of Hobbes, and even declared that no one could honestly

and in good faith deny the reality of an unselfish element in man.

Following in the steps of Butler, he explained it in the following

passage:—“Hunger and thirst have eating and drinking for their end,

and from the gratification of these primary appetites arises a

pleasure which may become the object of another species of desire or

inclination that is secondary and interested. In the same manner

there are mental passions by which we are impelled immediately to

seek particular objects, such as fame or power or vengeance, without

any regard to interest, and when these objects are attained a

pleasing enjoyment ensues.... Now where is the difficulty of

conceiving that this may likewise be the case with benevolence and

friendship, and that from the original frame of our temper we may

feel a desire of another’s happiness or good, which by means of that

affection becomes our own good, and is afterwards pursued, from the

combined motives of benevolence and self-enjoyment?”—Hume’s _Enquiry

concerning Morals_, Appendix II. Compare Butler, “If there be any

appetite or any inward principle besides self-love, why may there

not be an affection towards the good of our fellow-creatures, and

delight from that affection’s being gratified and uneasiness from

things going contrary to it?”—_Sermon on Compassion._

38 “By sympathetic sensibility is to be understood the propensity that

a man has to derive pleasure from the happiness, and pain from the

unhappiness, of other sensitive beings.”—Bentham’s _Principles of

Morals and Legislation_, ch. vi. “The sense of sympathy is

universal. Perhaps there never existed a human being who had reached

full age without the experience of pleasure at another’s pleasure,

of uneasiness at another’s pain.... Community of interests,

similarity of opinion, are sources from whence it

springs.”—_Deontology_, vol. i. pp. 169-170.

39 “The idea of the pain of another is naturally painful. The idea of

the pleasure of another is naturally pleasurable.... In this, the

unselfish part of our nature, lies a foundation, even independently

of inculcation from without, for the generation of moral

feelings”—Mill’s _Dissertations_, vol. i. p. 137. See, too, Bain’s

_Emotions and the Will_, pp. 289, 313; and especially Austin’s

_Lectures on Jurisprudence_. The first volume of this brilliant work

contains, I think without exception, the best modern statement of

the utilitarian theory in its most plausible form—a statement

equally remarkable for its ability, its candour, and its uniform

courtesy to opponents.

40 See a collection of passages from Aristotle, bearing on the subject,

in Mackintosh’s _Dissertation_.

41 Cic. _De Finibus_, i. 5. This view is adopted in Tucker’s _Light of

Nature_ (ed. 1842), vol. i. p. 167. See, too, Mill’s _Analysis of

the Human Mind_, vol. ii. p. 174.

_ 42 Essay_, book ii. ch. xxxiii.

43 Hutcheson _On the Passions_, § 1. The “secondary desires” of

Hutcheson are closely related to the “reflex affections” of

Shaftesbury. “Not only the outward beings which offer themselves to

the sense are the objects of the affection; but the very actions

themselves, and the affections of pity, kindness, gratitude, and

their contraries, being brought into the mind by reflection, become

objects. So that by means of this reflected sense, there arises

another kind of affection towards those very affections

themselves.”—Shaftesbury’s _Enquiry concerning Virtue_, book i. part

ii. § 3.

44 See the preface to Hartley _On Man_. Gay’s essay is prefixed to

Law’s translation of Archbishop King _On the Origin of Evil_.

45 “The case is this. We first perceive or imagine some real good; i.e.

fitness to promote our happiness in those things which we love or

approve of.... Hence those things and pleasures are so tied together

and associated in our minds, that one cannot present itself, but the

other will also occur. And the association remains even after that

which at first gave them the connection is quite forgotten, or

perhaps does not exist, but the contrary.”—Gay’s _Essay_, p. lii.

“All affections whatsoever are finally resolvable into reason,

pointing out private happiness, and are conversant only about things

apprehended to be means tending to this end; and whenever this end

is not perceived, they are to be accounted for from the association

of ideas, and may properly enough be called habits.”—Ibid. p. xxxi.

46 Principally by Mr. James Mill, whose chapter on association, in his

_Analysis of the Human Mind_, may probably rank with Paley’s

beautiful chapter on happiness, at the head of all modern writings

on the utilitarian side,—either of them, I think, being far more

valuable than anything Bentham ever wrote on morals. This last

writer—whose contempt for his predecessors was only equalled by his

ignorance of their works, and who has added surprisingly little to

moral science (considering the reputation he attained), except a

barbarous nomenclature and an interminable series of classifications

evincing no real subtlety of thought—makes, as far as I am aware, no

use of the doctrine of association. Paley states it with his usual

admirable clearness. “Having experienced in some instances a

particular conduct to be beneficial to ourselves, or observed that

it would be so, a sentiment of approbation rises up in our minds,

which sentiment afterwards accompanies the idea or mention of the

same conduct, although the private advantage which first existed no

longer exist.”—Paley, _Moral Philos_. i. 5. Paley, however, made

less use of this doctrine than might have been expected from so

enthusiastic an admirer of Tucker. In our own day it has been much

used by Mr. J. S. Mill.

47 This illustration, which was first employed by Hutcheson, is very

happily developed by Gay (p. lii.). It was then used by Hartley, and

finally Tucker reproduced the whole theory with the usual

illustration without any acknowledgment of the works of his

predecessors, employing however, the term “translation” instead of

“association” of ideas. See his curious chapter on the subject,

_Light of Nature_, book i. ch. xviii.

48 “It is the nature of translation to throw desire from the end upon

the means, which thenceforward become an end capable of exciting an

appetite without prospect of the consequences whereto they lead. Our

habits and most of the desires that occupy human life are of this

translated kind.”—Tucker’s _Light of Nature_, vol. ii. (ed. 1842),

p. 281.

49 Mill’s _Analysis of the Human Mind_. The desire for posthumous fame

is usually cited by intuitive moralists as a proof of a naturally

disinterested element in man.

50 Mill’s _Analysis_.

51 Hartley _On Man_, vol. i. pp. 474-475.

52 “Benevolence ... has also a high degree of honour and esteem annexed

to it, procures us many advantages and returns of kindness, both

from the person obliged and others, and is most closely connected

with the hopes of reward in a future state, and of self-approbation

or the moral sense; and the same things hold with respect to

generosity in a much higher degree. It is easy therefore to see how

such associations may be formed as to engage us to forego great

pleasure, or endure great pain for the sake of others, how these

associations may be attended with so great a degree of pleasure as

to overrule the positive pain endured or the negative one from the

foregoing of a pleasure, and yet how there may be no direct explicit

expectation of reward either from God or man, by natural consequence

or express appointment, not even of the concomitant pleasure that

engages the agent to undertake the benevolent and generous action;

and this I take to be a proof from the doctrine of association that

there is and must be such a thing as pure disinterested benevolence;

also a just account of the origin and nature of it.”—Hartley _On

Man_, vol. i. pp. 473-474. See too Mill’s _Analysis_, vol. ii. p.

252.

53 Mill’s _Analysis_, vol. ii. pp. 244-247.

54 “With self-interest,” said Hartley, “man must begin; he may end in

self-annihilation;” or as Coleridge happily puts it, “Legality

precedes morality in every individual, even as the Jewish

dispensation preceded the Christian in the world at large.”—_Notes

Theological and Political_, p. 340. It might be retorted with much

truth, that we begin by practising morality as a duty—we end by

practising it as a pleasure, without any reference to duty.

Coleridge, who expressed for the Benthamite theories a very cordial

detestation, sometimes glided into them himself. “The happiness of

man,” he says, “is the end of virtue, and truth is the knowledge of

the means.” (_The Friend_, ed. 1850, vol. ii. p. 192.) “What can be

the object of human virtue but the happiness of sentient, still more

of moral beings?” (_Notes Theol. and Polit._ p. 351.) Leibnitz says,

“Quand on aura appris à faire des actions louables par ambition, on

les fera après par inclination.” (_Sur l’ Art de connaître les

Hommes._)

55 E.g. Mackintosh and James Mill. Coleridge in his younger days was an

enthusiastic admirer of Hartley; but chiefly, I believe, on account

of his theory of vibrations. He named his son after him, and

described him in one of his poems as:—

“He of mortal kind

Wisest, the first who marked the ideal tribes

Up the fine fibres through the sentient brain.”

_Religious Musings._

56 This position is elaborated in a passage too long for quotation by

Mr. Austin. (_Lectures on Jurisprudence_, vol. i. p. 44.)

57 Hobbes defines conscience as “the opinion of evidence” (_On Human

Nature_, ch. vi. §8). Locke as “our own opinion or judgment of the

moral rectitude or pravity of our own actions” (_Essay_, book i. ch.

iii. § 8). In Bentham there is very little on the subject; but in

one place he informs us that “conscience is a thing of fictitious

existence, supposed to occupy a seat in the mind” (_Deontology_,

vol. i. p. 137); and in another he ranks “love of duty” (which he

describes as an “impossible motive, in so far as duty is synonymous

to obligation”) as a variety of the “love of power” (_Springs of

Action_, ii.) Mr. Bain says, “conscience is an imitation within

ourselves of the government without us.” (_Emotions and Will_, p.

313.)

58 “However much they [utilitarians] may believe (as they do) that

actions and dispositions are only virtuous because they promote

another end than virtue, yet this being granted ... they not only

place virtue at the very head of the things which are good as means

to the ultimate end, but they also recognise as a psychological fact

the possibility of its being to the individual a good in itself....

Virtue, according to the utilitarian doctrine, is not naturally and

originally part of the end, but it is capable of becoming so....

What was once desired as an instrument for the attainment of

happiness has come to be desired ... as part of happiness.... Human

nature is so constituted as to desire nothing which is not either a

part of happiness or a means of happiness.”—J. S. Mill’s

_Utilitarianism_, pp. 54, 55, 56, 58.

59 “A man is tempted to commit adultery with the wife of his friend.

The composition of the motive is obvious. He does not obey the

motive. Why? He obeys other motives which are stronger. Though

pleasures are associated with the immoral act, pains are associated

with it also—the pains of the injured husband, the pains of the

wife, the moral indignation of mankind, the future reproaches of his

own mind. Some men obey the first rather than the second motive. The

reason is obvious. In these the association of the act with the

pleasure is from habit unduly strong, the association of the act

with pains is from want of habit unduly weak. This is the case of a

bad education.... Among the different classes of motives, there are

men who are more easily and strongly operated on by some, others by

others. We have also seen that this is entirely owing to habits of

association. This facility of being acted upon by motives of a

particular description, is that which we call disposition.”—Mill’s

_Analysis_, vol. ii. pp. 212, 213, &c. Adam Smith says, I think with

much wisdom, that “the great secret of education is to direct vanity

to proper objects.”—_Moral Sentiments_, part vi. § 3.

60 “Goodness in ourselves is the prospect of satisfaction annexed to

the welfare of others, so that we please them for the pleasure we

receive ourselves in so doing, or to avoid the uneasiness we should

feel in omitting it. But God is completely happy in Himself, nor can

His happiness receive increase or diminution from anything befalling

His creatures; wherefore His goodness is pure, disinterested bounty,

without any return of joy or satisfaction to Himself. Therefore it

is no wonder we have imperfect notions of a quality whereof we have

no experience in our own nature.”—Tucker’s _Light of Nature_, vol.

i. p. 355. “It is the privilege of God alone to act upon pure,

disinterested bounty, without the least addition thereby to His own

enjoyment.”—Ibid. vol. ii. p. 279. On the other hand, Hutcheson

asks, “If there be such disposition in the Deity, where is the

impossibility of some small degree of this public love in His

creatures, and why must they be supposed incapable of acting but

from self-love?”—_Enquiry concerning Moral Good_, § 2.

61 “We gradually, through the influence of association, come to desire

the means without thinking of the end; the action itself becomes an

object of desire, and is performed without reference to any motive

beyond itself. Thus far, it may still be objected that the action

having, through association, become pleasurable, we are as much as

before moved to act by the anticipation of pleasure, namely, the

pleasure of the action itself. But granting this, the matter does

not end here. As we proceed in the formation of habits, and become

accustomed to will a particular act ... because it is pleasurable,

we at last continue to will it without any reference to its being

pleasurable.... In this manner it is that habits of hurtful excess

continue to be practised, although they have ceased to be

pleasurable, and in this manner also it is that the habit of willing

to persevere in the course which he has chosen, does not desert the

moral hero, even when the reward ... is anything but an equivalent

for the suffering he undergoes, or the wishes he may have to

renounce.”—Mill’s _Logic_ (4th edition), vol. ii. pp. 416, 417.

62 “In regard to interest in the most extended, which is the original

and only strictly proper sense of the word disinterested, no human

act has ever been or ever can be disinterested.... In the only sense

in which disinterestedness can with truth be predicated of human

actions, it is employed ... to denote, not the absence of all

interest ... but only the absence of all interest of the

self-regarding class. Not but that it is very frequently predicated

of human action in cases in which divers interests, to no one of

which the appellation of self-regarding can with propriety be

denied, have been exercising their influence, and in particular fear

of God, or hope from God, and fear of ill-repute, or hope of good

repute. If what is above be correct, the most disinterested of men

is not less under the dominion of interest than the most interested.

The only cause of his being styled disinterested, is its not having

been observed that the sort of motive (suppose it sympathy for an

individual or class) has as truly a corresponding interest belonging

to it as any other species of motive has. Of this contradiction

between the truth of the case and the language employed in speaking

of it, the cause is that in the one case men have not been in the

habit of making—as in point of consistency they ought to have

made—of the word interest that use which in the other case they have

been in the habit of making of it.”—Bentham’s _Springs of Action_,

ii. § 2.

63 Among others Bishop Butler, who draws some very subtle distinctions

on the subject in his first sermon “on the love of our neighbour.”

Dugald Stewart remarks that “although we apply the epithet selfish

to avarice and to low and private sensuality, we never apply it to

the desire of knowledge or to the pursuits of virtue, which are

certainly sources of more exquisite pleasure than riches or

sensuality can bestow.”—_Active and Moral Powers_, vol. i. p. 19.

64 Sir W. Hamilton.

65 Cic. _De Fin._ lib. ii.

66 “As there is not any sort of pleasure that is not itself a good, nor

any sort of pain the exemption from which is not a good, and as

nothing but the expectation of the eventual enjoyment of pleasure in

some shape, or of exemption from pain in some shape, can operate in

the character of a motive, a necessary consequence is that if by

motive be meant _sort_ of motive, there is not any such thing as a

bad motive.”—Bentham’s _Springs of Action_, ii. § 4. The first

clauses of the following passage I have already quoted: “Pleasure is

itself a good, nay, setting aside immunity from pain, the only good.

Pain is in itself an evil, and indeed, without exception, the only

evil, or else the words good and evil have no meaning. And this is

alike true of every sort of pain, and of every sort of pleasure. It

follows therefore immediately and incontestably that there is no

such thing as any sort of motive that is in itself a bad

one.”—_Principles of Morals and Legislation_, ch. ix. “The search

after motive is one of the prominent causes of men’s bewilderment in

the investigation of questions of morals.... But this is a pursuit

in which every moment employed is a moment wasted. All motives are

abstractedly good. No man has ever had, can, or could have a motive

different from the pursuit of pleasure or of shunning

pain.”—_Deontology_, vol. i. p. 126. Mr. Mill’s doctrine appears

somewhat different from this, but the difference is I think only

apparent. He says: “The motive has nothing to do with the morality

of the action, though much with the worth of the agent,” and he

afterwards explains this last statement by saying that the “motive

makes a great difference in our moral estimation of the agent,

especially if it indicates a good or a bad habitual disposition, a

bent of character from which useful or from which hurtful actions

are likely to arise.”—_Utilitarianism_, 2nd ed. pp. 26-27.

67 This truth has been admirably illustrated by Mr. Herbert Spencer

(_Social Statics_, pp. 1-8).

68 “On évalue la grandeur de la vertu en comparant les biens obtenus

aux maux au prix desquels on les achète: l’excédant en bien mesure

la valeur de la vertu, comme l’excédant en mal mesure le degré de

haine que doit inspirer le vice.”—Ch. Comte, _Traité de

Législation_, liv. ii. ch. xii.

69 M. Dumont, the translator of Bentham, has elaborated in a rather

famous passage the utilitarian notions about vengeance. “Toute

espèce de satisfaction entraînant une peine pour le délinquant

produit naturellement un plaisir de vengeance pour la partie lésée.

Ce plaisir est un gain. Il rappelle la parabole de Samson. C’est le

doux qui sort du terrible. C’est le miel recueilli dans la gueule du

lion. Produit sans frais, résultat net d’une opération nécessaire à

d’autres titres, c’est une jouissance à cultiver comme toute autre;

car le plaisir de la vengeance considérée abstraitement n’est comme

tout autre plaisir qu’un bien en lui-même.”—_Principes du Code

pénal_, 2me partie, ch. xvi. According to a very acute living writer

of this school, “The criminal law stands to the passion of revenge

in much the same relation as marriage to the sexual appetite” (J. F.

Stephen, _On the Criminal Law of England_, p. 99). Mr. Mill observes

that, “In the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth, we read the complete

spirit of the ethics of utility” (_Utilitarianism_, p. 24). It is

but fair to give a specimen of the opposite order of extravagance.

“So well convinced was Father Claver of the eternal happiness of

almost all whom he assisted,” says this saintly missionary’s

biographer, “that speaking once of some persons who had delivered a

criminal into the hands of justice, he said, God _forgive_ them; but

they have secured the salvation of this man at _the probable risk of

their own_.”—Newman’s _Anglican Difficulties_, p. 205.

_ 70 De Ordine_, ii. 4. The experiment has more than once been tried at

Venice, Pisa, &c., and always with the results St. Augustine

predicted.

71 The reader will here observe the very transparent sophistry of an

assertion which is repeated ad nauseam by utilitarians. They tell us

that a regard to the remote consequences of our actions would lead

us to the conclusion that we should never perform an act which would

not be conducive to human happiness if it were universally

performed, or, as Mr. Austin expresses it, that “the question is if

acts of this class were generally done or generally forborne or

omitted, what would be the probable effect on the general happiness

or good?” (_Lectures on Jurisprudence_, vol. i. p. 32.) The question

is nothing of the kind. If I am convinced that utility alone

constitutes virtue, and if I am meditating any particular act, the

sole question of morality must be whether that act is on the whole

useful, produces a net result of happiness. To determine this

question I must consider both the immediate and the remote

consequences of the act; but the latter are not ascertained by

asking what would be the result if every one did as I do, but by

asking how far, as a matter of fact, my act is likely to produce

imitators, or affect the conduct and future acts of others. It may

no doubt be convenient and useful to form classifications based on

the general tendency of different courses to promote or diminish

happiness, but such classifications cannot alter the morality of

particular acts. It is quite clear that no act which produces on the

whole more pleasure than pain can on utilitarian principles be

vicious. It is, I think, equally clear that no one could act

consistently on such a principle without being led to consequences

which in the common judgment of mankind are grossly and scandalously

immoral.

72 There are some very good remarks on the possibility of living a life

of imagination wholly distinct from the life of action in Mr. Bain’s

_Emotions and Will_, p. 246.

73 Bentham especially recurs to this subject frequently. See Sir J.

Bowring’s edition of his works (Edinburgh, 1843), vol. i. pp. 142,

143, 562; vol. x. pp. 549-550.

74 “Granted that any practice causes more pain to animals than it gives

pleasure to man; is that practice moral or immoral? And if exactly

in proportion as human beings raise their heads out of the slough of

selfishness they do not with one voice answer ‘immoral,’ let the

morality of the principle of utility be for ever condemned.”—Mill’s

_Dissert_. vol. ii. p. 485. “We deprive them [animals] of life, and

this is justifiable—their pains do not equal our enjoyments. There

is a balance of good.”—Bentham’s _Deontology_, vol. i. p. 14. Mr.

Mill accordingly defines the principle of utility, without any

special reference to man. “The creed which accepts as the foundation

of morals, utility or the great happiness principle, holds that

actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness,

wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of

happiness.”—_Utilitarianism_, pp. 9-10.

75 The exception of course being domestic animals, which may be injured

by ill treatment, but even this exception is a very partial one. No

selfish reason could prevent any amount of cruelty to animals that

were about to be killed, and even in the case of previous ill-usage

the calculations of selfishness will depend greatly upon the price

of the animal. I have been told that on some parts of the continent

diligence horses are systematically under-fed, and worked to a

speedy death, their cheapness rendering such a course the most

economical.

76 Bentham, as we have seen, is of opinion that the gastronomic

pleasure would produce the requisite excess of enjoyment. Hartley,

who has some amiable and beautiful remarks on the duty of kindness

to animals, without absolutely condemning, speaks with much aversion

of the custom of eating “our brothers and sisters,” the animals.

(_On Man_, vol. ii. pp. 222-223.) Paley, observing that it is quite

possible for men to live without flesh-diet, concludes that the only

sufficient justification for eating meat is an express divine

revelation in the Book of Genesis. (_Moral Philos._ book ii. ch.

11.) Some reasoners evade the main issue by contending that they

kill animals because they would otherwise overrun the earth; but

this, as Windham said, “is an indifferent reason for killing fish.”

77 In commenting upon the French licentiousness of the eighteenth

century, Hume says, in a passage which has excited a great deal of

animadversion:—“Our neighbours, it seems, have resolved to sacrifice

some of the domestic to the social pleasures; and to prefer ease,

freedom, and an open commerce, to strict fidelity and constancy.

These ends are both good, and are somewhat difficult to reconcile;

nor must we be surprised if the customs of nations incline too much

sometimes to the one side, and sometimes to the other.”—_Dialogue._

78 There are few things more pitiable than the blunders into which

writers have fallen when trying to base the plain virtue of chastity

on utilitarian calculations. Thus since the writings of Malthus it

has been generally recognised that one of the very first conditions

of all material prosperity is to check early marriages, to restrain

the tendency of population to multiply more rapidly than the means

of subsistence. Knowing this, what can be more deplorable than to

find moralists making such arguments as these the very foundation of

morals?—“The first and great mischief, and by consequence the guilt,

of promiscuous concubinage consists in its tendency to diminish

marriages.” (Paley’s _Moral Philosophy_, book iii. part iii. ch.

ii.) “That is always the most happy condition of a nation, and that

nation is most accurately obeying the laws of our constitution, in

which the number of the human race is most rapidly increasing. Now

it is certain that under the law of chastity, that is, when

individuals are exclusively united to each other, the increase of

population will be more rapid than under any other circumstances.”

(Wayland’s _Elements of Moral Science_, p. 298, 11th ed., Boston,

1839.) I am sorry to bring such subjects before the reader, but it

is impossible to write a history of morals without doing so.

79 See Luther’s _Table Talk_.

80 Tillemont, _Mém. pour servir à l’Hist. ecclésiastique_, tome x. p.

57.

81 Τό τε ἀληθεύειν καὶ τὸ εὐεργετεῖν. (Ælian, _Var. Hist._ xii. 59.)

Longinus in like manner divides virtue into εὐεργεσία καὶ ἀλήθεια.

(_De Sublim._ § 1.) The opposite view in England is continually

expressed in the saying, “You should never pull down an opinion

until you have something to put in its place,” which can only mean,

if you are convinced that some religious or other hypothesis is

false, you are morally bound to repress or conceal your conviction

until you have discovered positive affirmations or explanations as

unqualified and consolatory as those you have destroyed.

82 See this powerfully stated by Shaftesbury. (_Inquiry concerning

Virtue_, book i. part iii.) The same objection applies to Dr.

Mansel’s modification of the theological doctrine—viz. that the

origin of morals is not the will but the nature of God.

83 “The one great and binding ground of the belief of God and a

hereafter is the law of conscience.”—Coleridge, _Notes Theological

and Political_, p. 367. That our moral faculty is our one reason for

maintaining the supreme benevolence of the Deity was a favourite

position of Kant.

84 “Nescio quomodo inhæret in mentibus quasi sæculorum quoddam augurium

futurorum; idque in maximis ingeniis altissimisque animis et

exsistit maxime et apparet facillime.”—Cic. _Tusc. Disp._ i. 14.

85 “It is a calumny to say that men are roused to heroic actions by

ease, hope of pleasure, recompense—sugar-plums of any kind in this

world or the next. In the meanest mortal there lies something

nobler. The poor swearing soldier hired to be shot has his ‘honour

of a soldier,’ different from drill, regulations, and the shilling a

day. It is not to taste sweet things, but to do noble and true

things, and vindicate himself under God’s heaven as a God-made man,

that the poorest son of Adam dimly longs. Show him the way of doing

that, the dullest day-drudge kindles into a hero. They wrong man

greatly who say he is to be seduced by ease. Difficulty, abnegation,

martyrdom, death, are the allurements that act on the heart of man.

Kindle the inner genial life of him, you have a flame that burns up

all lower considerations.”—Carlyle’s _Hero-worship_, p. 237 (ed.

1858).

86 “Clamat Epicurus, is quem vos nimis voluptatibus esse deditum

dicitis, non posse jucunde vivi nisi sapienter, honeste, justeque

vivatur, nec sapienter, honeste, juste nisi jucunde.”—Cicero, _De

Fin._ i. 18.