THE DANGER OF FALSE LEGENDS AND PERSECUTION.
Mankind has been too long imposed upon by falsehood; it is therefore
time that we should come to the knowledge of the few truths that can
be distinguished from amidst the clouds of fiction which cover Roman
history from the times of Tacitus and Suetonius, and with which the
annals of the other nations of antiquity have almost always been
obscured.
Can any one, for example, believe that the Romans, a grave and
modest people, could have condemned Christian virgins, the children
of persons of the first quality, to common prostitution? This is
assuredly very inconsistent with the noble austerity of that nation
from whom we received our laws, and who punished so rigorously the
least transgression of chastity in their vestals. These shameful
stories may indeed be found in the _Actes Sincères_ of Ruinart. But
should we believe those acts before the “Acts of the Apostles”? The
_Actes Sincères_ tell us from Bollandus that there were in the city
of Ancira seven Christian virgins, each of them upwards of seventy,
whom the governor, Theodectes, ordered to be deflowered by the
young men of the place; but these poor maidens having escaped this
disaster—as indeed there was great reason they should—he compelled
them to assist stark naked at the mysteries of Diana, at which, by
the way, no one ever assisted but in a veil. St. Theodotus, who,
though indeed nothing more than an innkeeper, was not the less pious
for that, besought God devoutly that he would be pleased to take away
the lives of these holy maidens lest they should yield to temptation.
God heard his prayer. The governor ordered them all to be thrown into
a lake with stones about their necks; immediately after which they
appeared to Theodotus, and begged of him, “that he would not suffer
their bodies to be devoured by the fishes.” These, it seems, were
their own words.
Hereupon the innkeeper saint and some of his companions went in the
night-time to the side of the lake, which was guarded by a party of
soldiers, a heavenly torch going all the way before, to light them.
When they came to the place where the guards were posted, they saw
a heavenly horseman armed cap-a-pie, with a lance in his hand, who
fell upon the soldiers and dispersed them, while St. Theodotus drew
the dead bodies of the virgins out of the water. He was afterwards
carried before the governor, who ordered his head to be struck off,
without the heavenly horseman interfering to prevent it. However
disposed we may be to pay all due reverence to the true martyrs of
our holy religion, we must confess it is very hard to believe the
story of Bollandus and Ruinart.
Need I add to this the legend of young St. Romanus? Eusebius tells
us, that having been condemned to be burnt, he was accordingly thrown
into the fire, when some Jews, who were present, made a mock of
Jesus Christ, who suffered his followers to be burnt when God had
delivered Shadrac, Meshach, and Abednego out of the fiery furnace.
No sooner had the Jews uttered this blasphemy than they beheld St.
Romanus walking triumphant and unhurt forth from the flaming pile;
this being reported to the emperor, he gave orders for his being
pardoned, telling the judge that he would not have an affair upon
his hands with God—a strange expression for Diocletian! The judge,
however, notwithstanding the emperor’s clemency, ordered St. Romanus
to have his tongue cut out; and, though he had executioners at hand,
commanded the operation to be performed by a surgeon. Young Romanus,
who had from his birth labored under an impediment of speech, no
sooner lost his tongue than he spoke distinctly, and with great
volubility. Upon this, the surgeon received a severe reprimand; when,
in order to show that he had performed his operation, _secundum
artem_, he laid hold of a man who was going by, from whom he cut just
the same portion of tongue as he had done from St. Romanus, on which
the patient instantly died, for, adds our author very learnedly,
“Anatomy teaches us that a man cannot live without his tongue.” If
Eusebius did really write such stuff, and it has not been added by
some other hand, what degree of credit can we give to his history?
We have the relation of the martyrdom of St. Felicitas and her seven
children, who are said to have been condemned to death by the wise
and pious Antoninus, but without giving us the author’s name, who,
most probably, possessed of more zeal than veracity, had a mind to
imitate the history of the Maccabees. He begins his relation in the
following manner: “St. Felicitas was by birth a Roman, and lived in
the reign of Antoninus.” It is clear by these words that the author
did not live at the same time with St. Felicitas. He says that they
were judged before the prætor in the Campus Martius, whereas the
Roman prefect’s tribunal was not in the Campus Martius, but in the
Capitol, for, although the Comitia had been held there formerly, yet
at this time it was used only as a place for reviewing the soldiers,
for chariot races, and for military games. This alone is sufficient
to detect the fiction.
The author adds furthermore, that after sentence was passed, the
emperor committed the care of seeing it executed to different judges,
a circumstance which is entirely repugnant to the usual forms in
those times, and in every other.
We also read of St. Hippolytus, who is said to have been drawn in
pieces by horses, as was Hippolytus, the son of Theseus. But a
punishment of this kind was not known among the ancient Romans; and
this fabulous story took its rise wholly from the similitude of names.
And here we may make one observation, that in the multitude of
martyrologies, composed wholly by the Christians themselves, we
almost always read of a great number of them coming of their own
accord into the prison of their condemned brother, following him
to execution, saving the blood as it flows from him, burying his
dead body and performing miracles with his relics. Now, if the
persecution was levelled only at the religion, would not the authors
of it have destroyed those who thus openly declared themselves
Christians, administered comfort and assistance to their brethren
under sentence, and were moreover, charged with working enchantments
with their inanimate remains? Would they not have treated them as
we have treated several different sects of Protestants, whom we
have butchered and burnt by hundreds, without distinction of age or
sex? Is there amongst all the authenticated accounts of the ancient
persecutions a single instance like that of St. Bartholomew, and
the massacre in Ireland? Is there one that comes near to the annual
festival, which is still celebrated at Toulouse, and which for its
cruelty deserves to be forever abolished, where the inhabitants of a
whole city go in procession to return thanks to God, and felicitate
one another, for having, two hundred years ago, massacred upwards of
four thousand of their fellow subjects?
With horror I say it, but it is an undoubted truth, that we, who
call ourselves Christians, have been persecutors, executioners, and
assassins! And of whom? Of our own brethren. It is we who have razed
a hundred towns to their foundations with the crucifix or Bible in
our hands, and who have continually persevered in shedding torrents
of blood, and lighting the fires of persecution, from the reign of
Constantine to the time of the religious horrors of the cannibals
who inhabited the Cévennes; horrors which, praised be God, no longer
exist.
Indeed, we still see at times some miserable wretches of the more
distant provinces sent to the gallows on account of religion.
Since the year 1745 eight persons have been hanged of those called
predicants or ministers of the gospel, whose only crime was that of
having prayed to God for their king in bad French, and giving a drop
of wine, and a morsel of leavened bread, to a few ignorant peasants.
Nothing of all this is known in Paris, where pleasure engrosses the
whole attention, and where they are ignorant of everything that
passes, not only in foreign kingdoms, but even in the more distant
parts of their own. The trials in these cases frequently take up less
time than is used to condemn a deserter. The king wants only to be
informed of this, and he would certainly extend his mercy on such
occasions.
We do not find that the Roman Catholic priests are treated in this
manner in any Protestant country: there are above a hundred of
them,[29] both in England and Ireland, publicly known to be such, and
who have yet been suffered to live peaceably and unmolested, even
during the last war.
Shall we then always be the last to adopt the wholesome sentiments
of other nations? They have corrected their errors, when shall we
correct ours? It has required sixty years to make us receive the
demonstrations of the great Newton: we have but just begun to dare
to save the lives of our children by inoculation, and it is but of
very late date that we have put in practice the true principles
of agriculture; when shall we begin to put in practice the true
principles of humanity, or with what face can we reproach the
heathens with having made so many martyrs, when we ourselves are
guilty of the same cruelties in the like circumstances?
Let it be allowed that the Romans put to death a number of Christians
on account of their religion only: if so, the Romans were highly
blamable; but shall we commit the same injustice, and while we
reproach them for their persecutions, be persecutors ourselves?
If there should be any one so destitute of honesty, or so blinded
with enthusiasm, as to ask me here, why I thus undertake to lay open
our errors and faults, and to destroy the credit of all our false
miracles and fictitious legends, which serve to keep alive the zeal
and piety of many persons; and should such a person tell me that some
errors are absolutely necessary; that, like ulcers, they give a vent
to the humors of the body, and by being taken away would compass its
destruction, thus would I answer him:
“All those false miracles by which you shake the credit due to real
ones, the numberless absurd legends with which you clog the truths
of the Gospel, serve only to extinguish the pure flame of religion
in our hearts.” There are too many persons, who, desirous of being
instructed, but not having the time for acquiring instruction, say:
“The teachers of my religion have deceived me, therefore there is no
religion: it is better to throw myself into the arms of Nature than
those of Error; and I had rather place my dependence on her law than
in the inventions of men.” Others again unhappily go still greater
lengths; they perceive that imposture has put a bridle in their
mouths, and therefore will not submit even to the necessary curb of
truth; they incline towards atheism, and run into depravity because
others have been impostors and persecutors.
Such are undeniably the consequences of pious frauds and
superstitious fopperies. Mankind in general reason but by halves:
it is certainly a very vicious way of arguing to say, that because
the golden legend of Voraginus, and the “Flower of Saints” of the
Jesuit Ribadeneira, abound in nothing but absurdities, therefore
there is no God: that the Catholics have massacred a great number
of Huguenots, and the Huguenots in their turn have murdered a great
number of Catholics, therefore there is no God: that certain bad men
have made use of confession, the holy communion, and all the other
sacraments, as a means for perpetrating the most atrocious crimes,
and therefore there is no God. For my part, I, on the contrary,
should conclude from thence that there is a God, who after this
transitory life, in which we have wandered so far from the true
knowledge of Him, and have seen so many crimes committed under the
sanction of His holy name, will at length deign to comfort us for the
many dreadful calamities we have suffered in this life; for if we
consider the many religious wars, and the forty papal schisms, which
have almost all of them been bloody; if we reflect upon the multitude
of impostures, which have almost all proved fatal; the irreconcilable
animosities excited by differences in opinions, and the numberless
evils occasioned by false zeal, I cannot but believe that men have
for a long time had their hell in this world.