isles. There the Pamphylian sea divides itself from the Lycian; and
the floods, meeting several ways and breaking against the promontory,
swell into terrible billows rising higher than the cliffs. But when we
were now in great peril of our lives, the Lord had mercy on us. For he
sent a star which, seeming to settle upon our top-sail, by a left-hand
course directed our vessel again into the sea, just when it was ready
to be dashed upon the cliffs. I had often before heard speak of these
marvellous stars, but never yet had seen them; and although Artemidorus
had taught me that they were no gods but mere effects of causes
according to nature, yet, in such extreme peril, being filled with
thankfulness for our deliverance, I could not but join myself with the
mariners and the rest of the crew in doing worship to the twin-gods.
That very night—having often before of late had visions of a man seated
on the clouds and encompassed with brightness—there came to me another
such vision, but of more than usual splendor, and he beckoned to me and
said that the stars had been sent by him, and not by these twin-gods
whom I had ignorantly worshipped. But I shook off the dream as being a
mere phantasm of the night, not knowing that it was from the Lord.
Escaping from the peril of the seas, we sailed through the Arches,
and thence were driven onwards, not however to Ephesus, whither we
desired to have come, but to Piræus. There, owing to the sickness
of Philemon, we spent some days, during which I lodged in the house
of Molon the rhetorician; and when at last my master returned to
Colossæ, I persuaded him to suffer me to remain at Athens for a while,
that I might study rhetoric and attain the true Attic pronunciation
and idiom, so that I might be the more useful to him as amanuensis
and secretary. But I had other reasons for desiring to remain. For
besides the delights and novelties of the city—which were all new to
me because I had not been able to persuade Philemon to spend more than
two days there when we last came to Greece to visit Lebadea—I had
already conceived a love for Eucharis, Molon’s only daughter. But, of
this, more hereafter. Meantime it chanced that Philemon, returning to
Colossæ, much infected with the superstition of the Christians (as
Artemidorus termed it), had caused the latter to suppose that I also
was in the same condition of mind; which (to my shame be it spoken)
was far from the truth. However, Artemidorus taking it to be true, and
being sorely incensed against me, wrote the following letter which I
will here set down, being the last I received from him on this matter:
§ 2. HOW ARTEMIDORUS REBUKED ME, SUPPOSING THAT I WAS IN DANGER OF
BECOMING A CHRISTIAN.
“ARTEMIDORUS TO ONESIMUS, HEALTH:
“So Onesimus thinks it possible to reconcile philosophy with the vilest
and falsest of superstitions. Come now and let me demonstrate to you,
if your ears are not yet altogether stopped against the truth, 1st, the
blasphemy and absurdity of your new religion; 2nd, the uselessness of
it; 3rd, the self-conceit of it; 4th, the uncertainty of it; 5th, the
folly and puerility and degradation of the man who stoops his neck to
the yoke of it.
“To begin, then, it is blasphemous. For it teaches that the Supreme God
has sent down his only son in the shape of a man to deliver men from
sin. What! are we to suppose that the Son of the Supreme can be made
like unto a mortal? As if a convention of frogs around a puddle should
croak among themselves debating which is the greater sin, and should
say, ‘Behold, the Supreme God has sent down his only son, in the shape
of a frog, verily born of a frog, to deliver all the race of frogs from
their iniquities;’ or as if a number of worms should examine their
souls and say ‘Alas, alas, we are fallen away from the divine image of
the Supreme; and therefore our Father in heaven hath sent unto us his
Son made in the image of a worm.’ Away with this impiety of likening
the Architect of the Universe to sinful frogs and self-introspective
worms! For if there be a God—which I do not myself believe, but if
there be one—doubtless he is as little like a man as a frog or a worm,
but infinitely superior to all his creatures, and transcending all
their knowledge.
“But sin forsooth is a terrible evil, and the usefulness of this new
religion consists in this, that it is to ‘take away _sins_.’ Which
of the Greek or Roman philosophers, of any note, has recognized this
absurd fiction of _sin_? It is a mere Jewish fantasy, unknown among
other nations, except where it may have been insinuated by these
vagrant proselytizers into the minds of a few women and children or
imbecile dotards. Error there may be; but sin cannot be, whether
there be gods or not. For if there be no gods there can be no sin;
and if there be gods, who made all things, it is inconceivable that
they should have made sin. Nor, if sin had any existence, could it
be increased or diminished. For all rational people know that there
neither were formerly, nor are there now, nor will there be again,
more or fewer evils in the world than have always existed; the nature
of all things, and the generation of all things, being always one and
the same. And whereas these Christians profess, ‘We were sinners by
nature, but the All-Merciful hath changed us’—they ought to be taught
that no one even by chastisement, much less by merciful treatment, can
effect a complete change in those who are sinners by nature as well as
by custom. Hence this boast of removing sins is an imposture, and the
religion that makes the boast is useless. Moreover what an insult is
it to their superior god that these men should admit that he made them
after a certain pattern and then changed his mind and desired to remake
them! Or else they are forced to introduce a certain Satan, who by his
devices, perverted men forsooth from the divine image, and so for a
time overcame the superior god. But it is clear, even to a blind man,
that a superior god, overcome, though but for a time, by an inferior
god, is for that time, no longer superior, much less Supreme and
All-Powerful. Therefore your religion is proved to be not only useless,
but blasphemous.
“In the third place, mark the impudence of it and the self-conceit. For
admitting that the superior god could send his son as a man, can we
possibly believe that he would send him as a Jew, and not as a Greek,
or as a Roman, or as a man of no particular nation? I have heard you
laugh at Zeus in the comedy when he wakes up after his day’s debauch
and despatches Hermes to the Athenians and Lacedæmonians to complain
that they curtail his sacrifices and keep him on short commons. But
why do you not laugh at your own superior god who, awakening after the
slumber of many thousands of years, despatches his son to one single
nation, and that the smallest and vilest and most contemptible upon
earth? Moreover consider how exacting and impudent is your religion
beyond all others. Heracles, Asclepius, and Romulus, claim not to be
the only children of God, but leave room for others also. And how
many others! Worship, if you will, him who was put to death upon the
cross, but set not your selves above the Getæ who worship Zamolxis, or
the Cilicians who worship Mopsus, or the Acrananians who pay divine
honors to Amphilochus, or the Thebans who do the same to Amphiaraus,
or the Lebedians who (in company with yourself) pay reverence to
Trophonius. For how is your Syrian saviour better than the Theban, or
the Cilician, or any other of the host of his rival saviours? Nay, he
is inferior, if we are to trust that which is reported concerning him
and them by the followers of each. For Christus did but show himself to
men in times past, whereas these others, if you are to believe those
who worship them, are still to be seen in human form in their temples,
appearing with all distinctness.
“Next, as to the uncertainty of your new religion. Consider that just
such another as your Christus, might come into the world to-morrow,
and indeed such are continually coming forward in the market-place of
every town in Asia, who are wont to say, ‘I am God, or I am the Son of
God, or I am the Divine Spirit. I am come to save you because ye, O
men, are perishing for your iniquities;’ and they persuade their dupes
by promises or threats: ‘Blessed is he who does me homage; on all the
rest I will send down eternal fire.’ And then the followers of such an
one in a confident voice call on us saying, ‘Believe that he whom we
preach is the Son of God, although indeed he died the death of a slave;
yea, believe it the more on this very account.’ If these people bring
forward a Christus every year, what is to be done by those who ‘seek
salvation?’ Must they cast dice to decide to which of all the saviours
they should pay homage?
“But lest you should imagine that I am entirely dependent upon you
for my knowledge of this sect, understand that both here, and in
Hierapolis, and in Ephesus, I have made search concerning it; and I am
become an adept in their ridiculous jargon which speaks of ‘the narrow
way’ and ‘the gates that open of themselves;’ and ‘those who are being
slaughtered that they may live;’ and about ‘death made to cease in the
world;’ and how ‘the Lord doth reign from the tree;’ and of ‘the tree
of life’ and ‘the resurrection of life by the tree.’ All this talk
of timber, forsooth, because their ringleader was not only slain on
the cross of wood but also a maker of crosses, being a carpenter by
trade! And I suppose if, instead of being crucified, he had been cast
down a precipice, or into a pit, or hanged by the neck, or if, instead
of being a carpenter by trade, he had been a leather-cutter, or a
stone-mason or a worker in iron, then these absurd people would have
exalted to the skies a ‘precipice of life,’ or a ‘pit of resurrection,’
or a cord of immortality,‘ or a ‘stone of blessing,’ or a ‘sacred
leather.’ What child would not be ashamed of such babble as this!
“And this brings me to my last point, the shame and disgrace that any
philosopher must needs bring both upon himself and upon philosophy,
in stooping to so puerile a superstition. If you know not this, at
least your new friends know it; for like the hyena, they seldom attack
a full-grown man, but for the most part children or imbeciles; and
to the best of their power they would destroy reason saying (like
so many Metragurtæ, or Mithræ, or Sabbadii) ‘Do not examine, but
believe,’ ‘Your faith will save you,’ ‘The wisdom of the world is
evil, foolishness is good.’ For this cause, because they distrust the
wise and sober, they prefer to decoy the young, saying to them, ‘If ye
would attain to the knowledge of the truth, ye must leave your fathers
and tutors and go with the women to the women’s apartments, or to
the leather shop, or to the fuller’s shop, that he may there attain
perfection.’ And they retail the sayings of these illiterate creatures
as if they were repeating the precepts of a Socrates: ‘Simon the
fuller, or Eleazar the leather cutter, or John the fisherman affirmed
this, or that.’ I say nothing also of the immorality of a religion,
which asserts that God will receive the unrighteous, if he humble
himself, because of his unrighteousness, but he will not receive the
righteous man who approaches him adorned with righteousness from the
first. All these immoral theories, these lies, and myths, and vile
superstitions, are taught by the Christians; and taught in the name
of whom? Of one who died as a slave after being deserted (according
to their own confession) by his most devoted followers. And taught
for what cause? Simply because a phantom of him was seen after his
death by a half frantic woman and some dozen of his other companions
who conspired together for the purpose of deception. For my part, if
I must needs give a reason why this most absurd religion attracts the
multitude, I should say that it is because the multitude in their
inmost heart, prefer falsehood to truth; and if I desired a new proof
that the world is governed by chance, or by fate, and not by gods,
I should discern it in the growth of this pernicious superstition.
Farewell and return speedily to thyself.”
§ 3. OF MY REPLY TO ARTEMIDORUS.
I was astonished at the passion of his letter; and though I was at this
time neither a Christian nor likely to become one, the injustice of my
friend moved me to say somewhat on the other side. My reply was to this
effect:
“ONESIMUS TO ARTEMIDORUS, HEALTH.
“Your vehemence surprises me. That I am not, and shall not be, a
Christian, must be clear from my previous letters; and that which I saw
in Jerusalem has set me, even more than before, against the Jews and
all things Jewish. Nevertheless, Artemidorus, I am far from agreeing
with you in all your condemnation of this sect, which you seem to me,
of set purpose to misunderstand.
“And why do you vent dogmas on me? How know you that God is unknowable?
Were it not more seemly for a philosopher to conjecture, and not to
know, where knowledge is impossible? Why, therefore, should a man be
ashamed of conjecturing (in Plato’s company, I think), that the most
perfect image of the Supreme God is neither a frog, nor a worm, but a
righteous man? And if man be at all like unto the Supreme Goodness,
then to be virtuous, I suppose is to be most like Him; and to be sinful
is to be most unlike Him, a calamity from which the Supreme Being
Himself might naturally desire to deliver mankind. However, I purpose
not to argue with you, for I cannot think that you yourself believe in
your own arguments, you who say that there is no difference between
sin and error; or else I suppose you will be consistent and blame your
slaves equally if Glaucus to-morrow commits theft or murder, and little
Chresimus says that five and six make ten.
“But one word concerning Christus himself. It is but a few weeks ago
that I heard you praise some Roman or other for saying that we ought
to choose out some noble life, to be as it were a carpenter’s rule,
by which we might straighten our own crooked life; why will you not
praise me, then, if upon finding this Christus to be a truly great
and noble man, I make his life the rule of mine? But you reply, ‘What
do you know that is noble and heroic in him?’ I will answer this
question when we meet. Meantime let me say that though I know but
little, it is more than enough to assure me (for your letter proves it)
that you know nothing of him. Do not again suppose that I am likely
to be a Christian. I am prevented from this by arguments, and by
feelings still more powerful than arguments. Yet I have at least this
advantage, Artemidorus, over you, that I have not yet allowed prejudice
unphilosophically to blind my eyes to the truth, and that, after
studying the life of Christus, the store of the examples of great men,
which you yourself have exhorted me to treasure up in my heart, is now
enriched by the example of one more man, both good and great, who has
been able, according to your own avowal (perchance by the mere memory
of his goodness), to convert fullers and leather-cutters and thieves
and adulterers into decent citizens. Farewell and be thyself.”
Although I spoke thus in defence of the Lord Jesus against the
reproaches of Artemidorus, yet was I very far from following the Lord,
yea and perhaps all the farther that I had learned to talk admiringly
of him as of a man on a level with Socrates and Pythagoras and
others. For this kind of admiration took up that place in my heart
which should have been filled by faith or trust, and left no room
for them. Nor indeed was I fit at that time to come to the Saviour
because my eyes were not yet opened to discern my own sins so as to
desire forgiveness; for the Saviour calls unto himself the “weary
and heavy-laden,” but I was not yet weary enough nor felt as yet the
burden of my sinfulness. And as for all those questionings of words,
and traditions, and proofs, on which Artemidorus had set me, they had
taught me indeed many new things about the Lord Jesus, and what other
people believed concerning him, but they had not taught me the Lord
himself, so that I might know him and love him and believe in him. And
when at last I began to draw nigh unto him and to listen to his words
and to meditate on them, behold, I was called away from my instructors
in Antioch, and found afterwards no one like-minded who was willing to
set forth before me the very words of the Lord; but, on the contrary,
those of the brethren whom I met in Jerusalem cared not so much for the
Lord as for the Law of Moses, and drove me back from him when I was
desirous to draw near.
But why do I blame others when I was myself mainly to blame? For I
erred in the pride of my heart, because I preferred the wisdom of
the Greeks to the wisdom of the Lord Jesus. Therefore didst thou, O
All-Wise, permit me to have my heart’s desire, and to serve the Greek
Philosophy and to take that yoke upon my neck, that I might prove
it and know it, whether that service were freedom indeed; and then
didst thou make me to pass through the dark valley of affliction and
didst suffer my wandering steps to stumble and sink in the mire of
wickedness, to the intent that I might understand at last that the
Wisdom of the Greeks, for all the beauty of it and the pleasant sound
of it, has no power to lift up a drowning soul from the deep waters of
sin.
§ 4. OF EUCHARIS AND OF MY LIFE AT ATHENS.
Partly perhaps because Eucharis had lived with her father some years
in Rome, (where women lead not so sequestered a life as in Asia and
at Athens) and partly for want of slaves, and because her mother had
died when she was still in tender years, but also in great measure
because of the ability of her mind and the depth and extent of her
knowledge, Eucharis was rather as a pupil and companion to Molon than
as a daughter and housewife. Her grace and beauty were more than equal
to her learning; but that by which she drew my heart to herself was
the gentleness of her disposition and the singular modesty with which
she bore her many accomplishments. For though she was the flower of
the house and the delight of her old father, yet did she never in any
wise strain or try his affection by caprice or humors; yea rather, by
reason of his poverty, and because he had scarce a slave whom he could
call his own, she, to whom all should have ministered, was content
and glad to minister both to the old man and to his friends, and this
with all willingness and aptness, and yet so modestly and quietly
that her coming was as noiseless as the sunshine, and we only knew
that she had departed because the brightness seemed to have passed
out of the chamber. When I became the old man’s pupil, and in no long
time the most intimate of all his pupils, I obtained also a share in
the pleasure of her constant and familiar society; and, by degrees,
gaining the liking of my old tutor, I was helped to the friendship of
his daughter as well; and conceiving for her an affection more intimate
than friendship, I was blessed at last, in return, with the certainty
of her undivided love.
The time had now come for me to put the kindness of Philemon to the
proof. From the first, he had treated me rather as a son than as a
slave; and, whithersoever I had accompanied him, his carriage towards
me had always been such as to lead even those who knew that I had once
been a slave, to suppose that I had been long ago emancipated. So I
straightway wrote to him, telling him of my affection for Eucharis,
and how I had obtained the consent of Molon; and although I did not
venture to express the hope that he would make me free at once, yet I
besought him to make some promissory emancipation (after the custom
common in Asia) that I might be free, on condition of serving him
faithfully for such period as he might please to name. This limited
request I made, rather for form’s sake than as supposing that he would
stand upon conditions; for, remembering his constant kindness, I looked
for nothing less than that he should wholly emancipate me at once.
So having sent off this letter I confidently waited for an answer.
Meanwhile I spent the time pleasantly in the society of Eucharis, and
Molon, and my companions in learning; and I also took a great delight
in the beauties and antiquities of Athens.
The dreams and visions with which I had been visited in Syria, and
still more while I was tempest-tossed sailing to Peiræus, soon ceased
after I had been some few days in the house of Molon. Each day brought
with it some new thing to see or hear. Though the streets of Athens
were not to be compared with those of Antioch, being small and mean and
narrow and not evenly built, yet the public buildings and temples and
theatres far surpassed anything I had seen in any city of Asia; and
as for the statues of the gods, they fairly ravished the heart with
their beauty. Moreover an edge was given to every pleasure of sight by
the hearing of some history or legend; how Demosthenes spoke in yonder
place of assembly, and in these groves and porches walked Aristotle
amid his disciples, or Plato taught, or Socrates conversed, and here
the tyrant was slain by Aristogeiton, and there Pericles pronounced the
funeral oration over them that fell in the wars. Also, it so chanced
that, besides the daily sight of the palæstra and the attendance at
the lectures, the Dionysian festival with its customary plays came
round while I was still at Athens. I had seen plays before in Asia, yet
these so enchanted me with the beauty of the masks and choruses and the
marvellous skill of the actors that I was well-nigh swallowed up with
the glory of the drama; and finding occasion to be introduced to some
of the actors, I frequented their society and heard them rehearse, and
sometimes myself practised recitations in their presence, endeavoring
to gain some knowledge of their art. Amid all these engaging pursuits
and delights, the time passed as if upon wings; and in the evening the
greatest delight of all, after the thousand pleasant distractions of
the day, was to talk with Eucharis and her father concerning all that I
had seen and heard.
We conversed together of all matters of art and letters and philosophy,
and not seldom about my own life, the sorrows of the past, and what
remained in the future; and, as was natural, my travels in Syria were
not forgotten. Yet about these I spoke seldom and sparingly, lest I
should be forced to make mention of the Christians; concerning whom at
that time I was loth, I scarce know why, to say aught either for good
or evil. But on the last day of our being together, some fate (as I
then called it) decreed that I should no longer keep silence concerning
them. It was after this manner. We had been conversing together, Molon
and I, touching the Pythagoreans, by what bond of fellowship their
society was in former times bound together, and by what cause that bond
was broken. And thereupon I all unwittingly let fall some words (and
repented as soon as they had been spoken) how a certain Christus, a
Syrian, had founded a society, somewhat akin to the Pythagorean sect.
Then Eucharis straightway would have give me some account of this
Christus and his society; and when I made as if I had not heard her,
and afterwards would have put her off on some pretext—saying that the
matter was not worth her hearing, or that I knew not much of it for
certain, and the like—she looking steadfastly upon me and perceiving
(I suppose) that I was in some confusion, besought me not to hide
from her anything that I knew. So I, not finding any escape, began to
describe to her the new Brotherhood or Commonwealth or Christus, as I
conceived it; and being carried onward I spoke more freely than I had
intended, and summing up all that I had heard and some things that I
had imagined, I described how wealth and violence were to have no more
power in the world, and there was to be no more oppression, and sin was
to be taken away by forgiveness; and those that the world counted great
were to be cast down, and he that was humblest and made himself least
was to be lifted up and, in a word, the most willing servant of all was
to be king of all; and all the nations of the earth were to be as one
Family, wherein Christus was to be the Elder Brother, and the Father
was none other than the Supreme God; and how (as his followers averred)
he had foretold that he should be slain, yea, and declared that he
would willingly die, but that, overcoming death, he should manifest
himself to his disciples after death, and be constantly with them; and
how his disciples alleged that somewhat of this kind had indeed come
to pass, for that many of them had seen him in apparitions by day or
dreams by night; and lastly how (whatever error else there might be
among this sect) this Christus of a truth appeared to have a marvellous
power to turn the vile and wicked to lives of virtue and purity.