AN ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. BOOK I. CONTAINING THE HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH PART I. COMPREHENDING THE EXTERNAL HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. CHAPTER I. Concerning the Civil and Religious State of the World at the CENT. 1. I. A GREAT part of the world was subject to the Roman empire, when JESUS CHRIST made his appear The state of ance upon earth. The remoter nations, which had sub- the Roman mitted to the yoke of this mighty empire, were ruled empire. either by Roman governors invested with temporary commissions, or by their own princes and laws, in subordination to the republic, whose sovereignty was to be acknowleged, and from which the conquered kings, who were continued in their dominions, derived their borrowed majesty. At the same time, the Roman people and their venerable senate, though they had not lost all shadow of liberty, were in reality reduced to a state of servile submission to Augustus Cæsar, who, by artifice, perfidy, and blood-shed, had acquired an enormous degree of power, and united in his own person the pompous titles of emperor, sovereign, CENT. I. The incon which pro pontiff, censor, tribune of the people, proconsul; in a word, all the great offices of the statea. II. The Roman government, considered both with veniences respect to its form and its laws, was certainly mild ceeded from and equitable. But the injustice and avarice of the corrupt the prætors and proconsuls, and the ambitious lust tion of its of conquest and dominion, which was the premagistrates. dominant passion of the Roman people, together with administra The advan arose from the rapacious proceedings of the publicans, by whom the taxes of the empire were levied, were the occasions of perpetual tumults and insupportable grievances; and among the many evils which thence arose we may justly reckon the formidable armies, that were necessary to support these extortions in the provinces, and the civil wars which frequently broke out between the oppressed nations and their haughty conquerors. III. It must, at the same time, be acknowleged, tages which that this supreme dominion of one people, or rather its extent. of one man, over so many kingdoms, was attended with many considerable advantages to mankind in general, and to the propagation and advancement of Christianity in particular; for, by the means of this almost universal empire, many nations, different in their languages and in their manners, were more intimately united in social intercourse. Hence a passage was opened to the remotest countries, by the communications which the Romans formed between the conquered provinces. Hence also the nations, whose manners were savage and barbarous, were civilised See for this purpose the learned work of Augustin_Campianus, entitled, de officio et potestate Magistratuum Romanorum et jurisdictione, lib. i. cap. i. p. 3, 4, &c. Genevæ, 1725. b See Moyle's Essay on the Constitution of the Roman Government, in the posthumous works of that author, vol. i. as also Scip. Maffei Verona illustrata, lib. ii. See, for an illustration of this point, Histoire des grands Chemins de l'Empire Romain, par Nicol. Bergier, printed in the year 1728. See also the very learned Everard Otto, de tutela Viarum publicarum, part ii. joys peace. by the laws and commerce of the Romans. And by CENT. I. this, in short, the benign influence of letters and philosophy was spread abroad in countries which had lain before under the darkest ignorance. All this contributed, no doubt, in a singular manner, to facilitate the progress of the Gospel, and to crown the labors of its first ministers and heralds with success d IV. The Roman empire, at the birth of Christ, The Roman was less agitated by wars and tumults, than it had empire enbeen for many years before; for, though I cannot assent to the opinion of those who, following the account of Orosius, maintain, that the temple of Janus was then shut, and that wars and discords absolutely ceased throughout the world, yet it is certain, that the period, in which our Saviour descended upon earth, may be justly styled the Pacific Age, if we compare it with the preceding times; and indeed the tranquillity that then reigned, was necessary to enable the ministers of Christ to execute, with success, their sublime commission to the human race. nations. V. The want of ancient records renders it im- The state possible to say any thing satisfactory or certain con- of the other cerning the state of those nations, who did not receive the Roman yoke; nor, indeed, is their history essential to our present purpose. It is sufficient to observe, with respect to them, that those who inhabited the eastern regions were strangers to the sweets of liberty, and groaned under the burthen of an oppressive yoke. Their softness and effeminacy, both in point of manners and bodily constitution, contributed to make them support their slavery with an unmanly patience; and even the religion they professed riveted their chains. On the contrary, the northern nations enjoyed, in their frozen dwellings, the blessings of sacred freedom, which their government, their re d Origen, among others, makes particular mention of this, in the second book of his answer to Celsus. e See Jo. Massoni Templum Jani, Christo nascente, reseratum, Roterodami, 1706. CENT. I. superstition; ligion, a robust and vigorous frame of body and spirit, derived from the inclemency and severity of their climate, all united to preserve and maintain f. All sunk in VI. All these nations lived in the practice of the most abominable superstitions; for, though the notion of one Supreme Being was not entirely effaced in the human mind, but shewed itself frequently, even through the darkness of the grossest idolatry; yet all nations, except that of the Jews, acknowleged a number of governing powers, whom they called gods, and one or more of which they supposed to preside over each particular province or people. They worshiped these fictitious deities with various rites; they considered them as widely different from each other in sex and power, in their nature, and also in their respective offices; and they appeased them by a multiplicity of ceremonies and offerings, in order to obtain their protection and favor; so that, however different the degrees of enormity might be, with which this absurd and impious theology appeared in different countries, yet there was no nation, whose sacred rites and religious worship did not discover a manifest abuse of reason, and very striking marks of extravagance and folly. but not of the same kind. VII. Every nation then had its respective gods, over which presided one more excellent than the rest; yet in such a manner that this supreme deity was himself controlled by the rigid empire of the fates, or what the philosophers called Eternal Necessity. The gods of the East were different from those of the Gauls, the Germans, and the other northern nations. The Grecian divinities differed widely from those of the Egyptians, who deified plants, animals, and a great variety of the productions both of nature and art 5. Each people also had a particular manner "Fere itaque imperia (says Seneca) penes eos fuere populos, "qui mitiore cœlo utuntur: in frigora septemtrionemque vergen"tibus immansueta ingenia sunt, ut ait poeta, suoque simillima "cœlo." Seneca de Irâ, lib. ii. cap. xvi. g See the discourse of Athanasius, entitled, Oratio contra Gentes, in the first volume of his works. of worshiping and appeasing their respective deities, entirely different from the sacred rites of other countries. In process of time, however, the Greeks and Romans became as ambitious in their religious pretensions, as in their political claims. They maintained, that their gods, though under different names, were the objects of religious worship in all nations, and therefore they gave the names of their deities to those of other countries h. This pretension, whether supported by ignorance or other means, troduced inexpressible darkness and perplexity into the history of the ancient superstitions, and has been also the occasion of innumerable errors in the writings of the learned. in CENT. I. dissensions VIII. One thing, indeed, which, at first sight, No wars or appears very remarkable, is, that this variety of occasioned by this This fact affords a satisfactory account of the vast variety of number of gods who bore the name of Jupiter, and the multi- religions. tudes that passed under those of Mercury, Venus, Hercules, Juno, &c. The Greeks, when they found, in other countries, deities that resembled their own, persuaded the worshipers of these foreign gods, that their deities were the same with those who were honored in Greece, and were, indeed, themselves convinced that this was the case. In consequence of this, they gave the names of their gods to those of other nations, and the Romans in this followed their example. Hence we find the names of Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, Venus, &c. frequently mentioned in the more recent monuments and inscriptions which have been found among the Gauls and Germans, though the ancient inhabitants of those countries worshiped no gods under such denominations. I cannot think that this method of the Greeks and Romans has introduced so much confusion into mythology as Dr. Mosheim here imagines. If indeed there had been no resemblance between the Greek and Roman deities, and those of other nations, and if the names of the deities of the former had been given to those of the latter in an arbitrary and undistinguishing manner, the reflexion of our historian would be undeniably true. But it has been alleged by many learned men, with a high degree of probability, that the principal deities of all nations resembled each other extremely in their essential characters; and, if so, their receiving the same names could not introduce much confusion into mythology, since they were probably derived from one common source. If the Thor of the ancient Celts was the same in dignity, character, and attributes, with the Jupiter of the Greeks and Romans, where was the impropriety of giving the same name? |