to the rules of this holy Religion that if a modest and honest Heathen was to estimate Christianity by the lives of its Professors he would certainly proscribe it as the vilest Religion in the world Being offended hereat I resolved to stand in the ways and see and enquire for the good old way the Paths wherein the ancient Christians walk'd for I could not think that this had always been the unhappy fate and portion of Christianity and that if the footsteps of true Christian piety and simplicity were any where to be found it must be in those times when as S. Hierom notes the blood of Christ was yet warm in the breasts of Christians and the faith and spirit of Religion more brisk and vigorous In pursuance of this design I set my self to a more close and diligent reading of the first Fathers and ancient monuments of the Church than ever I had done before especially for the three or four first Centures for much lower I did not intend to go because the life and spirit of Christianity did then visibly decline apace noting as I went along whatever contributed to my satisfaction in this affair Had I consulted my own ease and quiet I might have gone a nearer way to work and have taken up with what I could have pick'd up of this nature in Baronius the Centuries c. But I could not satisfie my self and I presume it would as little have satisfied the Reader with shreds with things taken upon trust and borrowed at the second hand For the same reason I made little use of the Lives of the Saints especially in such instances whereof there was the least cause to doubt and the spurious and suppositious Writings of the Fathers seldom making use of any but such as are of unquestionable credit and authority And because the testimony of an enemy is ever accounted of great moment and regard I have been careful to add the testimonies that have been given to Christians and to their Religion by the known and professed Adversaries of the Christian Faith such as Pliny Lucian Porphyry Julian c. more whereof we might have been furnished with had those Writings of theirs against the Christian Religion been extant which the zeal of the first Christian Princes industriously banished out of the world What other Authors of later date I have borrowed any light from in this discourse I have faithfully produced in the margent Two Books indeed I met with which at first sight I well hoped would have wholly saved me the labour of this search the one written by a person of our own Nation the other by a Florentine of great name and note but my hopes were very much frustrated in both For the first I no sooner looked into it but found my self wretchedly imposed upon by the Title his Elder times and Christians not to say any thing of his intermixtures of things nothing to his purpose seldom reaching any higher than the middle-Ages of the Church little or nothing being remark'd of the first Ages of Christianity the only thing I aimed at For the other which I met not with till I had almost finished this search I found it miserably thin and empty containing little else but short glosses upon some few passages out of Tertullian from whence I did not enrich my self with any one observation which I had not made before There is indeed an Epistle of Fronto's the learned Chancellor of the Vniversity of Paris concerning this Affair but it contains only some general intimations and seems to have been designed by him as appears from that and some other of his Epistles as the ground-work of a larger and more particular discourse But his death happening some few years after the date of that Epistle cut off all hopes of prosecuting so excellent a design These are all that I know of who have attempted any thing in this subject none whereof coming up to the curiosity of my design I was forced to resume the task I had undertaken and to go on with it through those ancient Writers of the Church the result of which search is laid together in this Book Whether I have discharged my self herein to the satisfaction of the Reander I know not sure I am I have endeavoured what I propounded to my self viz. a Specimen of Primitive Christianity in some of the most considerable branches and instances of Religion Here he will find a Piety active and zealous shining through the blackest clouds of malice and cruelty afflicted innocence triumphant notwithstanding all the powerful or politick attempts of men or Devils a patience unconquerable under the biggest persecutions a charity truly Catholick and unlimited a simplicity and upright carriage in all transactions a sobriety and temperance remarkable to the admiration of their enemies and in short he will here see the divine and holy Precepts of the Christian Religion drawn down into action and the most excellent genius and spirit of the Gospel breathing in the hearts and lives of these good old Christians Here he will find a real and evident confutation of that senseless and absurd calumny that was fastned upon Christianity as if it required no more than an easie and credulous temper of mind as if under a pretence of kindness and indulgence to sinners it ministred to all vice and wickedness Celsus confidently begins the charge There be some amongst the Christians says he that will neither give nor receive a reason of their faith who are wont to cry out don't examine but believe and thy faith will save thee the wisdom of this world is evil but foolishness good and useful Julian carries on the charge somewhat higher as if the Christian Religion were not only content with a naked and an empty Faith but gave encouragement to sin by assuring its most desperate Proselytes of an easie pardon In the conclusion of his Caesars after he had assigned the Roman Emperours their particular Tutelar Deities he delivers over Constantine the Great the first Christian Emperour to the Goddess of Pleasure who having effeminately trick'd and dress'd him up brought him to the Goddess Asotia or intemperance where he finds 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 his Son Constantius probably for the passage is a little disturbed and obscure for which reason probably the Translator passed it by and took no notice of it making this universal Proclamation Whoever is an adulterer or a murderer whoever is an impure profligate wretch let him come boldly for I declare that being washed in this water Baptism he shall immediatly be cleansed nay although he again commit those sins let him but knock his breast and beat his head and I will make him clean Much to the same purpose Zosimus as good a friend to Christianity as either of the former spitefully charges it upon Constantine the Great that being haunted with the conscience of his prodigeous Villanies and having no hopes given him by the Gentile Priests
of God appear in the world to establish the most excellent Religion that ever was communicated to Mankind but he met with the most fierce and vigorous opposition persecuted and devoted to death assoon as he was born followed all his life with fresh assaults of malice and cruelty his credit traduced and slandered his Doctrine despised and slighted and himself at last put to death with the most exquisite arts of torture disgrace And if they thus served the Master of the house how much more them of the houshold the disciple not being above his Master nor the servant above his Lord. Therefore when he gave commission to his Apostles to publish this Religion to the world he told them beforehand what hard and unkind reception they must look to meet with that he sent them forth as Sheep in the midst of Wolves that they should be delivered up to the Councils and scourged in the Synagogues and be brought before Kings and Governours and be hated of all men for his names sake nay so high should the quarrel arise upon the account of Religion that men should violate some of the nearest Laws of Nature betray their friends and kinsfolk the Brother delivering up the Brother to death and the Father the Child the Children rising up against their Parents and causing them to be put to death This he well foresaw and the event truly answered it would be the fate of its first appearing in the world and indeed considering the present state and circumstances of the world at that time it could not reasonably be expected that the Christian Religion should meet with a better entertainment for the genius and nature of its Doctrine was such as was almost impossible to escape the frowns and displeasure of men a Doctrine it was that call'd men off from lusts and pleasures and offered violence to their native inclinations that required the greatest strictness and severity of life obliged men to deny themselves to take up their Cross and to follow the steps of a poor crucified Saviour and that upon little other encouragement at present than the invisible rewards of another world It introduced new Rites and Ceremonies unknown to those of former Ages and such as did undermine the received and established principles of that Religion that for so many Generations had governed the world it revealed and brought to light such truths as were not only contrary to the principles of mens education but many of them above the reach of natural comprehension too deep for the line of humane reason to fathom or find out Upon these and such like accounts Christianity was sure to encounter with mighty prejudices and potent opposition and to it did for no sooner did it peep abroad in the world but it was every where spoken against Princes and Potentates and the greatest powers and policies of the world did for some Ages confederate and combine together to extirpate and banish it out of the world and certainly if Arms and Armies if strength and subtilty if malice and cruelty could have stifled it it had been smothered in its infancy and first delivery into the world But notwithstanding all these oppositions it still lifted up his head in triumph and outbrav'd the fiercest storms of persecution and as Tertullian told their Enemies by every exquisite act of cruelty they did but tempt others to come over to the party the oftner they were mowed down the faster they sprang up again the blood of Christians making the Churches soil more fat and fertile Hereupon the great enemy of mankind betook himself to other counsels and sought to undermine what he saw he could not carry by open assault and battery he studied to leaven the minds of men with false and unjust prejudices against Christianity and to burden it with whole loads of reproaches and defamations knowing no speedier way to hinder its reception than to blast its reputation For this purpose all the arts of spite and malice were mustred up and Christians confidently charged with all those crimes that could render them and their Religion vile and infamous Now the things that were charged upon the Christians were either such as respected their Religion or such as concern'd their outward state and condition or such as related to their moral carriage and behaviour with some things relating to the matter or manner of their Worship we shall consider them in order and how the Christians of those times vindicated themselves from these imputations The Christian Religion at its first coming abroad into the world was mainly charged with these two things Impiety and Novelty For the first 't was commonly cryed out against as a grand piece of Atheism and Impiety as an affront to their Religion and an undermining the very being and existence of their gods this is the sum of the charge as we find it in the ancient Apologists more particularly Caecilius the Heathen in Minucius Felix accuses the Christians for a desperate undone and unlawful faction who by way of contempt did snuff and spit at the mention of their gods deride their worship sooff at their Priests and despise their Temples as no better than Charnel-houses and heaps of bones and ashes of the dead for these and such like reasons the Christians were every where accounted a pack of Atheists and their Religion the Atheism and seldom it is that Julian the Emperor calls Christianity by any other name Thus Lucian bringing in Alexander the Impostor setting up for an Oracle-monger ranks the Christians with Atheists and Epicureans as those that were especially to be banished from his mysterious Rites In answer to this charge the Christians pleaded especially these three things First that the Gentiles were for the most part incompetent Judges of such cases as these as being almost wholly ignorant of the true state of the Christian Doctrine and therefore unfit to pronounce sentence against it Thus when Crescens the Philosopher had traduced the Christians as atheistical and irreligious Justin Martyr answers that he talked about things which he did not understand feigning things of his own head only to comply with the humour of his seduc'd disciples and followers that in reproaching the Doctrine of Christ when he did not understand it he discovered a most wicked and malignant temper and shewed himself far worse than the most simple and unlearned who are not wont rashly to bear witness and determine in things not sufficiently known to them Or if he did understand its greatness and excellency then he shewed himself much more base and dis-ingenuous in charging upon it what he knew to be false and concealing his inward sentiments and convictions for fear lest he should be suspected to be a Christian But Justin well knew that he was miserably unskilful in matters of Christianity having formerly had conferences and disputations with him about these things and therefore offer'd the Senate of Rome to whom he then presented his
to Nature and Reason and to a life of temperance and all other virtues and the same he urges frequently in other places and what greater kindness and benefit could be done to men Does Celsus call upon us says he to bear Offices for the good of our Country let him know that the Country is much more beholden to Christians than to the rest of men while they teach men piety towards God the tutelar Guardian of the Country and shew them the way to that heavenly City that is above which they that live well may attain to though here they dwell in the smallest City in the world Nor do the Christians thus employ themselves because they shun the publick Offices of the civil life but only reserve themselves for the more divine and ncessary services of the Church in order to the good and happiness of men for this they think very just and reasonable that they should take care of all men of them of their own party that they may every day make them better of others that they may draw them to the belief and practice of piety and Religion that so worshipping God in truth and doing what they can to instruct others they may be united to the great God and to his blessed Son who is the wisdom truth and righteousness and by whom it is that every one is converted to a pious and religious life Theodoret discoursing against the Gentiles of the excellency of the Laws of Christ above any that were given by the best Philosophers or wisest men amongst the Heathens gives them instances of whole Nations whom Christianity had brought off from the most brutish and savage manners he tells them of the Persians who by the Laws given them by Zarada lived in incestuous mixtures with their own Mothers Sisters and Daughters looking upon it as a lawful and warrantable practice till entertaining Christianity they threw off those abominable Laws and submitted to that temperance and chastity which the Gospel requires of us And whereas before they were wont to cast out the bodies of their dead to be devoured by Beasts and Birds of prey since they embraced the Christian Religion they abstained from that piece of inhumanity and decently committed them to the earth from which they could not be restrained either by the Laws of their Country or the bitterness of those torments which they underwent The Massagetes who thought it the most miserable thing in the world to dye any other than a violent death and therefore made a Law that all persons arrived to old age should be offered in Sacrifice and eaten no sooner submitted to Christianity but abhorred those barbarous and abominable Customs The Tibarens who used to throw aged persons down the steepest Rocks left it off upon their embracing of the Gospel Upon the same account the Hyrcani and the Caspians reformed their manners who were formerly wont to keep Dogs on purpose to devour the bodies of the dead Nor did the Scythians any longer together with their dead bury those alive who had been their nearest friends and kindred So great a change says my Author did the Laws of Christ make in the manners of men and so easily were the most barbarous Nations perswaded to entertain them a thing which Plato though the best of all Philosophers could never effect amongst the Athenians his own Fellow Citizens who could never induce them to govern the Common-wealth according to those Laws and Institutions which he had prescribed them Nay where the Gospel did not produce this effect to reclaim men from their vices and vanities and to bring them over to the Religion of the crucified Saviour yet had it this excellent influence upon the world that it generally taught them better lessons refin'd their understandings and filled their minds with more useful and practical notions about Religion than they had before To which purpose it 's mainly observable that those Philosophers who lived in the time of Christianity after the Gospel publickly appeared in the world wrote in a much more divine strain entertained more honourable and worthy sentiments about God and Religion and the duties of men in their several capacities than those of their Sect that went before them Of which I conceive no account can be given so satisfactory as this that the genius and spirit of the Gospel began then to fly abroad and to breathe in a freer air and so could not but leave some tincture and savour upon the spirits of men though its most inveterate Enemies Besides that many of them did more nearly converse with the Writings of Christianity which they read either out of curiosity or with a design to confute and answer them This doubtless sharpned the edge of their understandings and furnished them with better notions more useful precepts and rules of life than are to be met with in any of the old Philosophers witness those excellent and uncommon strains of piety that run through the Writings of Seneca Epictetus Antoninus Arrian Plutarch Hierocles Plotinus and the rest that lived in those first Ages of the Gospel of which I could give considerable instances were it necessary to my purpose I shall only as a specimen set down that Prayer wherewith Simplicius Enemy enough to Christianity concludes his Comment upon Epictetus and thus he makes his address to God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I Beseech thee O Lord thou that art the Father and guide of our rational powers grant that we may be mindful of those noble and generous natures with which thou hast invested us and assist us that as persons endued with self-moving principles we may cleanse our selves from all bodily and brutish passions that we may subdue and govern them and in a due and decent manner use them only as Organs and instruments Help us through the light of the truth accurately to correct our reason and to unite it to those things that have a real existence And in the third place I beseech my Saviour that he would perfectly dispel the mist that is before the eyes of our minds that according to that of the Poet we may rightly understand what belongs either to God or man Besides the matter of this Prayer which is very sublime and spiritual the manner of its composure is considerable consisting of three parts and those addressed as it were to three persons answerable to those in the blessed Trinity the Lord or Father the Saviour or Christ and the light of truth which even in Scripture is a common Periphrasis of the Holy Spirit whether he intended this I will not say sure I am it looks very like it But enough of this Secondly That they ordinarily wrought such miracles as were incomparably beneficial to the world in curing diseases raising the dead and rescuing possessed persons from the merciless rage and cruelty of the Devil we may observe that in those primitive times there were innumerable multitudes of possessed persons beyond what were
in the Ages either before or since the Divine Providence doubtless permitting it to be so that by this means there might be a fairer occasion of commending Christianity to the world and there is nothing which we more commonly meet with in the Writings of the ancient Fathers than testimonies concerning their triumphant power over evil spirits Justin Martyr discoursing of the end of Christ's coming into the world for the salvation of men and the subversion of Devils tells the Senate that these things are so you may know by what is done before your eyes for many that were possessed by Devils throughout the whole world and even in this City of yours whom all your Inchanters Sorcerers and Conjurers were not able to cure many of us Christians adjuring them by the name of Jesus Christ who was crucified under Pontius Pilate have perfectly cured and do still cure disarming and driving out of men those Daemons that had seized upon them and the same he affirms more than once and again in his discourse with Trypho the Jew Ironaeus arguing against the Hereticks tells us that the true Disciples of Christ did in his name many strange things for the good of others according as every one had received his gift some so signally expelling Devils that those out of whom they were cast came over to the Faith others foretelling future events others curing men of the most grievous distempers by putting their hands upon them and restoring them to their former health many that have been raised from the dead and afterwards lived many years amongst us and indeed innumerable says he are the gifts which God has every where bestowed upon his Church whereby in the name of the crucified Jesus many and great miracles are daily done to the great advantage of the world Tertullian appeals to the Heathens as a thing commonly known amongst them that they daily restrained the power of Devils and cast them out of men and he tells Scapula the President that he might be satisfied of this from his own Records and those very advocates who had themselves reaped this benefit from Christians as for instance a certain Notary and the Kinsman and Child of another besides divers other persons of note and quality not to speak of the meaner sort who had been recovered either from Devils or from desperate Diseases nay Severus the Father of Antoninus having been cured by being anointed with Oyl by Proculus a Christian he kept him in his Palace till his death whom Antoninus knew well having been himself nursed by a Christian and in his Apologie he challenges the Heathens to produce any possessed person before the publick Tribunals and the evil spirit being commanded by any Christian shall then as truly confess himself to be a Devil as at other times he falsely boasts himself to be a god And elsewhere putting the case that the Christians should agree to retire out of the Roman Empire he asks them what protection they would then have left against the secret and invisible attempts of Devils who made such havock both of their souls and bodies whom the Christians so freely expelled and drove out that it would be a sufficient piece of revenge that hereby they should leave them open to the uncontrouled possession of those evil spirits 'T were endless to produce all the testimonies of this nature that might be fetch'd from Origen Minucius Faelix Cyprian Arnobius Lactantius Eusebius and all the old Apologists for the Christian Religion some whereof I have briefly noted in the Margin who constantly pleaded this as a mighty and uncontroulable argument of the truth and divinity of their Religion and of their great usefulness to mankind nay this miraculous power continued in the Church some considerable time after Constantine and the world was become Christian as appears from S. Basil Nazianzen and others and though I do not give heed to all the miracles which are reported by S. Hierom in the lives of Hilarion Paulus and some others or by Palladius in his Historia Lausiaca yet doubtless many of them were very true and real God withdrawing this extraordinary power as Christianity gained faster footing in the world and leaving the Church to those standing methods by which it was to be managed and governed to the end of the world And yet notwithstanding the case was thus plain and evident how much the world was beholden to Christians yet were they looked upon as the pests of humane society counted and called the common enemies of mankind as Tertullian complains that they were the causes of all publick calamities and that for their sakes it was that vengeance did so often remarkably haunt the Roman Empire This was the common out-cry if the City be besieged says Tertullian if any thing happen ill in the Fields in the Garrisons in the Islands presently they cry out ' t is because of the Christians they conspire the ruine of good men and thirst after the blood of the innocent patronizing their hatred with this vain pretence that the Christians are the cause of all publick misfortunes and calamities if Tiber overflow the walls if the Nile do not as 't is wont overflow the fields if the Heaven do not keep its accustomed course if an Earthquake happen if a Famine or a Plague presently the cry is away with the Christians to the Lions Thus Demetrian the Proconsul of Afric objected to S. Cyprian that they might thank the Christians that wars did oftener arise that Plagues and Famines did rage so much and that immoderate and excessive rains hindred the kindly seasons of the year The same Arnobius tells us the Heathens were wont to object at every turn and to conclude it as sure as if it had been dictated by an Oracle that since the Christians appeared in the world the world had been well-nigh undone mankind has been over-run with infinite kinds of evil and the very gods themselves had withdrawn that solemn care and providence wherewith they were wont to superintend humane affairs Nay so hot and common was this Charge amongst the Pagans that when the Goths and Vandals broke in upon the Roman Empire S. Augustine was forced to write those excellent Books De Civit. Dei purposely to stop the mouth of this objection as upon the same account and at his request Orosius wrote his seven Books of History against the Pagans Omitting some of the answers given by the Fathers as being probably less solid and not so proper in this case such as that 't was no wonder if miseries happened and things grew worse in this old age of time the world daily growing more feeble and decrepit and that these things had been foretold by God and therefore must necessarily come to pass two arguments largely and strongly pleaded by S. Cyprian that those evils were properly resolvable into natural causes and that every thing is
threefold apparition or manifestation commemorated upon that day which all hapned though not in the same year yet upon the same day of the year The first was the appearance of the Star which guided the wise men to Christ The second was the famous appearance at the baptism of Christ when all the persons in the holy Trinity did sensibly manifest themselves the Father in the voice from Heaven the Son in the River Jordan and the Holy Ghost in the visible shape of a Dove This was ever accounted a famous Festival and as S. Chrysostom tells us was properly called Epiphany because he came in a manner into the world incognito but at his baptism openly appeared to be the Son of God and was so declared before the world At this time it was that by his going into the River Jordan he did sanctifie water to the mystical washing away of sin as our Church expresses it in memory whereof Chrysostom tells us they used in this Solemnity at midnight to draw water which they looked upon as consecrated this day and carrying it home to lay it up where it would remain pure and uncorrupt for a whole year sometimes two or three years together the truth whereof must rest upon the credit of that good man The third manifestation commemorated at this time was that of Christs divinity which appeared in the first miracle that he wrought in turning water into Wine therefore 't was called Bethphania because it was done in the house at that famous Marriage in Cana of Galilee which our Saviour honoured with his own presence All these three appearances contributed to the Solemnity of this Festival But beside these there was another sort of Festivals in the primitive Church kept in commemoration of Martyrs for the understanding of which we are to know that in those sad and bloody times when the Christian Religion triumphed over persecution and gained upon the world by nothing more than the constant and resolute sufferings of its professors whom no threatnings or torments could baffle out of it the people generally had a vast reverence for those who suffered thus deep in the cause of Christianity and laid down their lives for the confirmation of it They looked upon Confessors and Martyrs as the great Champions of their Religion who resisted unto blood and dyed upon the spot to make good its ground and to maintain its honour and reputation and therefore thought it very reasonable to do all possible honour to their memories partly that others might be encouraged to the like patience and fortitude and partly that virtue even in this world might not lose its reward Hence they were wont once a year to meet at the Graves of Martyrs there solemnly to recite their sufferings and their triumphs to praise their virtues and to bless God for their pious examples for their holy lives and their happy deaths for their Palms and Crowns These anniversary Solemnities were called memoriae martyrum the memories of the Martyrs a title mentioned by Cyprian but certainly much older than his time and indeed when they were first taken up in the Church is I think not so exactly known the first that I remember to have met with is that of Polycarp whose martyrdom is placed by Eusebius anno 168. under the third Persecution concerning whose death and sufferings the Church of Smyrna of which he was Bishop giving an account to the Church of Philomelium and especially of the place where they had honourably entomb'd his bones they do profess that so far as the malice of their Enemies would permit them and they prayed God nothing might hinder it they would assemble in that place and celebrate the Birth-day of his Martyrdom with joy and gladness where we may especially observe that this Solemnity is stiled his Birth-day and indeed so the primitive Christians used to call the days of their death and passion quite contrary to the manner of the Gentiles who kept the Natalitials of their famous men looking upon these as the true days of their nativity wherein they were freed from this Valley of tears these regions of death and born again unto the joys and happiness of an endless life The same account Origen gives if that Book be his a very ancient Authour however we keep says he the memories of the Saints of our Ancestors and friends that dye in the faith both rejoycing in that rest which they have obtained and begging for our selves a pious consummation in the faith and we celebrate not the day of their nativity as being the inlet to sorrow and temptation but of their death as the period of their miseries and that which sets them beyond the reach of temptations And this we do both Clergie and People meeting together inviting the poor and needy and refreshing the Widows and the Orphans that so our Festival may be both in respect of them whom we commemorate the memorial of that happy rest which their departed souls do enjoy and in respect of us the odour of a sweet smell in the sight of God Under Constantine these days were commanded to be observed with great care and strictness enjoining all his Lieutenants and Governours of Provinces to see the memorials of the Martyrs duly honoured and so sacred were they accounted in those days that it was thought a piece of prophaneness to be absent from them therefore S. Basil thought he could not use a more solemn argument to perswade a certain Bishop to come over to him upon this occasion than to adjure him by the respect he bore to the memories of the Martyrs that if he would not do it for his yet he should for their sakes towards whom it was unfit he should shew the least disregard Hence it is that Libanius sometimes takes notice of the Christians under no other character than this Enemies to the gods 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that haunt and frequent Tombs and Sepulchers For the time of these assemblies it was commonly once a year viz. upon the day of their martyrdom for which end they took particular care to keep Registers of the days of the Martyrs passions So Cyprian expresly charges his Clergie to note down the days of their decease that there might be a commemoration of them amongst the memories of the Martyrs Theodoret tells us that in his time they did not thus assemble once or twice or five times in a year but kept frequent memorials oftentimes every day celebrating the memorials of Martyrs with hymns and praises unto God But I suppose he means it of days appointed to the memory of particular Martyrs which being then very numerous their memorials were distinctly fixed upon their proper days the Festival of S. Peter or S. Paul Thomas Sergius Marcellus c. as he there enumerates them For the places these Solemnities were kept at first at the Tombs where the Martyrs had been buried which usually were in the
the several modes and garbs of bravery amongst women yet she thought none so honorable as the manner of her life and that inward brightness that was lodg'd in her mind the only redness that pleased her was that which was the fruit of blushing and modesty no other whiteness but what came through fasting and abstinence leaving fucus's and paintings and living pictures and fading beauty to those that belong to Playes and Theatres and to such for whom to blush and be ashamed is a shame and a disgrace To which I add that of Tertullian who after he had smartly condemned and confuted the Arts of unlawful beauty the vanity of going in too curious costly and excessive dresses concludes with this counsel to the women of his time to cloth themselves with the silks of honesty the fine vestures of piety the purple of modesty and being thus beautified and adorn'd says he God himself will be your Lover CHAP. IV. Of their great Temperance and Abstinence A vicious curiosity about meats and drinks a great temptation Severely forbidden by the Christian Law The ancient Christians curious only of such diet as ministred to health They gratified not ease and delicacy The great inconveniencies of intemperance either in meats or drinks Their chief care about spiritual food For other things content with any provisions manifested in several instances An over-nice and superstitious abstinence from some kinds of food condemned The instance of Alcibiades the Martyr out of Eusebius Christians unjustly accused by the Heathens of excess and prodigality in their feastings Thyestean suppers laid to their charge The charge in both parts of it denied and fully refuted by Tertullian and other Christian Apologists AMongst the many temptations that besiege the life of man there is scarce any into which we are more easily betrayed than into a vicious curiosity about meats and drinks and the excesses of an unruly appetite therefore it is that the Christian Religion does so frequently inculcate upon us the Precepts of Sobriety and Temperance to be temperate in all things to watch and be sober to cast off the works of darkness to walk honestly as in the day not in rioting and drunkenness not in chambering and wantonness not in excess of wine revellings and banquetings to take heed that our hearts be not at any time over-charged with surfeiting and drunkenness and that we be not as the men of the old world brutishly taken up with eating and drinking when the flood came and swept all away The Law of Christ commands us to fast often to keep under the body and to make no provision for the flesh if nature regularly governed be content with little Religion will teach us to be content with less These Rules the first Christians exactly transcribed into their lives being the greatest instances of real abstinence and mortification which they both practised themselves and pressed upon others they knew very well that God had given men a Charter of freedom indifferently to use the Creatures and to enjoy them in some degree not only for necessity but delight but yet were afraid to go so far as they might or to do any thing that might look towards excess or argue an irregular and unsober mind they contented themselves with such provisions as were conducive to health and strength without any studied seeking after those that were more luscious and delightful 'T is very true what S. Basil observes that by reason of mens different ages and course of life their different tempers and constitutions of body and other circumstances no one fixed and certain rule can be prescribed in this case but yet our food and diet ought for the main to be regulated by the general end of it which is not wantonly to please the palate but to minister to health and to repair the weakness and decays of Nature Many says Clemens Alexandrinus like brute beasts live only that they may eat but for us we are commanded to eat that we may live for food and pleasure is not the work and design for which we live in the world our residence here being in order to an incorruptible life and therefore our nourishment ought to be easie and simple and such as is subservient to the two main ends of life health and strength We ought to chuse such food as Justin Martyr tells his friends not as may gratifie our ease and delicacy but make our lives useful and serviceable and if at any time overtaken with want we should quietly acquiesce in that state and therefore a little after he smartly declaims against all excess Wine says he is neither to be drunk daily to excess nor to be used as commonly as water both indeed are Gods Creatures but water necessary wine given only to help and relieve the body which immoderately taken chains up the tongue sparkles fire out of the eyes makes the leggs tremble and the understanding being gone readily takes off its cup of deadly poyson contrary to Gods Ordination it turns the peaceful instruments of Husbandry into Swords and Spears It may indeed be necessary sparingly to drink wine both Winter and Summer but he that drinks it to excess as a man that takes over-much of a medicine like a dog or a swine betrayes his own shame But above all men in the world it least becomes us Christians as if we were votaries to luxury to abuse the Creatures of God and to make use of thirst as a pretence to drunkenness seeing we ought to drink no more than what will serve to quench our thirst not like those who swallowing down wine as men do drink in a burning feaver quickly make an end of themselves through their intemperance Nor are we less to take heed of Gluttony contenting our selves with a spare diet and such only as is necessary not giving way to the infinite and unsatisfied cravings of a nice and intemperate appetite which will have a thousand pretences to defend it self but ruling our selves according to the wise sentence of him who said 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that we are to eat only to satisfie our hunger Thus that ancient Father To this purpose also Clemens Alexandrinus discourses at large representing the great evils and inconveniencies of gluttony and excess that it wasts the Estate ruines the Body by impairing its health debauching the stomach deflouring its tast begetting an ill habitude and temper and sowing it with the seeds of all diseases it dulls the mind and renders it inept and sluggish and prepares it for the entertainment of any vice or wickedness that although we are not absolutely bound to abstain from variety of meats yet we are not to make them our desire or study especially such as savour of niceness and delicacy and are apt to pamper and excite lust and wantonness for though 't is true all things were especially made for mans sake yet is it not convenient to make use of all and at some times less
question and that they had much rather be put to death for their Religion than to have their lives spared to them by which means they became conquerours chosing rather to part with their lives than to do what you impose upon them Let me advise you says he who are ready to despond with every earth-quake that happens to you to compare your selves with them they in all their dangers are securely confident in their God while you at such a time neglect the gods and have little or no regard either to other rites or to the worship of that immortal deity but banish the Christians that worship him and persecute them unto death So forcibly did the Majesty of Truth extort a confession from its greatest enemies The End of the Second Part. Primitive Christianity OR THE RELIGION OF THE Ancient Christians In the first Ages of the Gospel PART III. Of their Religion as respecting other men CHAP. I. Of their Justice and Honesty Christian Religion admirably provides for moral righteousness Do as you would be done by the great Law of Christ This rule highly priz'd by Severus the Emperour The first Christians accounted honesty and an upright carriage a main part of their Religion Their candor and simplicity in their words Abhorring lies and mental reservations though it might save their lives Their veracity such as no need to be put to thir oaths Some few of the Fathers against all swearing Allowed by the greatest part in weighty Cases That they took oaths proved from Athanasius and their taking the Sacramentum militare The form of the oath out of Vegetius The same expresly affirmed of the more antient Christians by Tertullian Why refusing to swear by the Emperours genius Oaths wont to be taken at the holy Sacrament upon the Communion Table or the holy Gospels Some against all oaths only to prevent a possibility of perjury Bearing false witness condemned and strictly punished by the antient Church A famous Instance of divine vengeance pursuing three false accusers Christians careful in the conduct of their actions Their integrity in matters of distributive Justice In commutative Justice avoiding all fraud and over-reaching S. Augustin's instance Nicostratus forced to fly to avoid the punishment of cheating and sacriledge The Christians unjustly accused of Sacriledge by the Heathens The occasion of it Pliny's testimony of the Honesty of Christians Theft and rapine severely condemned Christians for doing all the good they could Their care to right and relieve the oppressed The Gentiles charged Christians with murder and eating mans-flesh A brief representation of the several answers returned to it by the Christian Apologists The true rise of the charge found to spring from the barbarous and inhumane practices of the Gnosticks mentioned by Irenaeus and Epiphanius HAving given some account of the Religion of the antient Christians both as it respected their piety towards God and their sober and vertuous carriage towards themselves we come in the last place to consider it in reference to their carriage towards others which the Apostle describes under the title of righteousness under which he comprehends all that duty and respect wherein we stand obliged to others whereof we shall consider these following instances their justice and integrity in matters of commerce and traffick their mutual love and charity to one another their unity and peaceableness and their submission and subjection to civil Government I begin with the first their just and upright carriage in their outward dealings one great design of the Christian Law is to establish and ratifie that great principle which is one of the prime and fundamental Laws of nature to hurt no man and to render to every one his due to teach us to carry our selves as becomes us in our relations towards men Next to our duty towards God the Gospel obliges us to be righteous to men sincere and upright in all our dealings not going beyond nor defrauding one another in any matter to put away lying and to speak truth to each other as fellow-members of the same Christian brother-hood and society It settles that golden rule as the fundamental Law of all just and equitable commerce that all things whatsoever we would that men should do to us we should even do so to them this being the sum of the Law and the Prophets than which as no rule could have been more equitable in it self so none could possibly have been contrived more short and plain and more accommodate to the common cases of humane life Upon the account of these and such like excellent precepts Alexander Severus the Roman Emperour had so great an honour for our Saviour that he was resolved to build a Temple to him and to receive him into the number of their gods and though he was over-rul'd in this by some who having consulted the Oracle told him that if it were done all men would become Christians and the Temples of the gods would be left naked and empty yet in his most private Chappel he had the Image of Christ amongst those of many Noble Heroes and deified persons to whom he pay'd religious adoration every Morning and particularly for this precept that what we would not have done to our selves we should not do to others which his own Historian confesses he learnt either from the Jews or Christians but most certainly from the Christians in whose mouths it so often was and in whose Gospel it was so plainly written he so highly valued it that in all publick punishments he caused it to be proclaim'd by a common Crier nay was so hugely fond on 't that he caused it to be written upon the walls of his Palace and upon all his publick Buildings that if possible every room in his Court and every place in the City might be a silent Chancery and Court of Equity So vast a reverence had the very enemies of Christianity for the Gospel upon this account that it so admirably provides for the advance of civil righteousness and justice amongst men which however it has been sleighted by some even amongst Christians under the notion of moral Principles yet without it all other Religion is but vain it being a strange piece of folly for any to dream of being godly without being honest or to think of being a disciple of the first while a man is an enemy to the second Table Sure I am the Christians of old look'd upon honesty and an upright carriage as a considerable part of their Religion and that to speak truth to keep their words to perform oaths and promises to act sincerely in all their dealings was as sacred and as dear to them as their lives and beings Speech being the great instrument of mutual commerce and traffick shall be the first instance of their integrity They ever used the greatest candor and simplicity in expressing their mind to one another not pretending what was false nor concealing what was true yea yea and nay nay was the usual
Orphans supporting the aged recruiting the spoyled supplying the imprisoned and those that were in mines bonds or slavery for the profession of Christianity This was the fruit of Primitive devotion Palladius tell us of two Brother Paesius and Esaias Sons of a wealthy Merchant that their Father being dead and resolving upon a more strict and religious course of life they could not agree upon setling their Estates in the same way at last dividing their Estates they disposed them thus The one gave away his whole Estate at once setling it upon Monasteries Churches and Prisons for the relief of such as were in bonds and betaking himself to a Trade for a small maintenance for himself gave himself up to prayer and the severer exercises of Religion The other kept his Estate in his own possession but built a Monastery and taking a few Companions to dwell with him entertain'd all strangers that came that way took care of the sick entertained the aged gave to those that needed and every Saturday and Lords day caused two or three tables to be spread for the refreshment and entertainment of the poor and in this excellent way spent their life Now that this account that we have given of the admirable bounty and charity of the antient Christians is not precarious and meerly what the Christians tell us of themselves we have the testimony of two open enemies of Christianity Julian and Lucian both bitter enemies to Christians and the fiercer because both as 't is supposed apostates from them and their testimony is considerable upon a double account partly because having lived amongst the Christians they exactly knew their ways and manners and partly because being enemies to them they would be sure to speak no more in their commendation than what was true Julian speaking of the Galileans tells us that by their charity to the poor they begot 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the greatest admiration of their Religion in the minds of men And in an Epistle to the High-Priests of Galatia bewailing the desolate state of the heathen-world the ruine of their Temples and the great declension of Paganisme at that time notwitstanding all his endeavours to make it succeed under the influences of his Government he advises the High-Priest to promote the Gentile-interest by the same method which the wicked Religion of the Christians did thrive by i. e. by their bounty to strangers their care in burying of the dead and their holiness of life and elsewhere The poor says he having no care taken of them the wicked Galileans know very well how to make their advantage of it for they give themselves up to humanity and charity and by these plausible and insinuative ways strengthen and encrease their wicked and pernicious party just as men cheat little children with a cake by two or three of which they tempt them to go along with them till having got them from home they clap them under hatches transport and sell them and so for a little seeming pleasure they are condemned to bitterness all their life and no otherwise says he ' t is with them they first inveagle honest minded men with what they call their feasts of Love banquets ministry and attendance upon tables and then seduce them into their wickedness and impiety This as at once it shews his venom and malice according to the humour of the man so it openly bears witness out of the mouth of an emeny to the most excellent and generous spirit of the Gospel The other testimony is that of Lucian who if not a Christian himself for Suidas his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 does no way intimate him to have been a Christian Preacher notwithstanding what the generality of Writers have inferred thence was yet however intimately acquainted with the affairs of Christians who bringing in his Philosopher Peregrinus amongst other Sects joyning himself to the Christians tells us what care they took of him when cast into prison they improved all their interest to have him released But when this could not be granted they officiously used all possible service and respect towards him in the morning old women widows and children flock'd early to the prison-doors and the better sort got leave of the Keepers to sleep with him in the prison all night then they had several sorts of banquets and their sacred discourses Nay some were sent in the name of the rest even from the Cities of Asia to assist and encourage him who brought him great sums of mony under pretence of his imprisonment it being incredible what readiness they shew when any such matter is once noys'd abroad and how little they spare any cost in it After which he tells us of them in general that they equally contemn all the advantages of this life and account them common foolishly taking up their principles about these things without any accurate search into them insomuch that if any subtle and crafty fellow that knows how to improve his advantage come amongst them he grows very rich in a little time by making a prey of that simple and credulous people There 's one circumstance yet behind concerning the love and charity of those times very worthy to be taken notice of and that is the universal extent of it they did good to all though more especially to them of the houshold of faith i.e. to Christians they did not confine their bounty meerly within the narrow limits of a party this or that sect of men but embraced an object of love and pitty where-ever they met it They were kind to all men yea to their bitterest enemies and that with a charity as large as the circles of the Sun that visits all parts of the World and shines as well upon a stinking dung-hil as upon a pleasant Garden 'T is certainly the strange and supernatural doctrine of our Saviour you have heard that it hath been said Thou shalt love thy neighbour and hate thine enemy But I say unto you love your enemies bless them that curse you do good to them that hate you pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you This indeed is the proper goodness and excellency of Christianity as Tertullian observes it being common to all men to love their friends but peculiar only to Christians to love their enemies And Athenagoras I remember principally makes use of this Argument to prove the Divinity of the Christian Religion and challenges all the great Masters of Reason and Learning amongst the Heathens to produce any either of themselves or their Disciples of so pure and refin'd a temper as could instead of hating love their enemies bear curses and revilings with an undisturbed mind and instead of reviling again to bless and speak well of them and to pray for them who lay in wait to take away their lives And yet this did Christians they embraced their enemies pardoned and prayed for them according to the Apostles rule when their
great peace and friendship the difference of the observotion not at all hindering the agreement and harmony of the Churches it being agreed amongst them by common consent says Sozomen speaking of this passage that in keeping this festival they should each follow their own custom but by no means break the peace and communion that was between them for they reckoned it says he a very foolish and unreasonable thing that they should fall out for a few rites and customs who agreed in the main Principles of Religion The Christians of those times had too deeply imbibed that precept of our Saviour love one another as I have loved you to fall out about every nice and trifling circumstance no when highliest provoked and affronted they could forbear and forgive their enemies much more their brethren and were not like the waspish Philosophers amongst the Heathens who were ready to fall foul upon one another for every petty and inconsiderable difference of opinion that was amongst them So Origen tells Celsus Both amongst your Philosophers and Physicians say he there are Sects that have perpetual feuds and quarrels with each other whereas we who have entertained the Laws of the blessed Jesus and have learnt both to speak and to do accordding to his doctrine bless them that revile us being persecuted we suffer it being defamed we entreat nor do we speak dire and dreadful things against those that differ from us in opinion and do not presently embrace those things which we have entertain'd But as much as in us lies we leave nothing unattempted that may perswade them to change for the better and to give up themselves only to the service of the great Creatour and to do all things as those that must give an account of their actions In short Christians were careful not to offend either God or men but to keep and maintain peace with both thence that excellent saying of Ephraem Syrus the famous Deacon of Edessae when he came to die In my whole life said he I never reproached my Lord and Master nor suffered any foolish talk to come out of my lips nor did I ever curse or revile any man or maintain the least difference or controversie with any Christian in all my life CHAP. IV. Of their Obedience and Subjection to Civil Government Magistracy the great hand of publick peace This highly secured by Christianity The Laws of Christ that way express and positive Made good in his own practice and the practice of his Apostles The same spirit in succeeding Ages manifested out of Justin Martyr Polycarp Tertullian and Origen Praying for Rulers and Emperours a solemn part of their publick worship Their ready payment of all Customs and Tributes and their faithfulness in doing it Christians such even under the heaviest oppressions and persecutions and that when they had power to have righted and reveng'd themselves An excellent passage in Tertullian to that purpose The temper of the Christian Souldiers in Julian's Army The famous Story of Mauricius and the Thebaean Legion under Maximinianus reported at large out of Eucherius Lugdunensis The injustice of the charge brought against them by the Heathens of being enemies to Civil Government Accused of Treason Of their refusing to swear by the Emperours genius Their denying to sacrifice for the Emperours safety and why they did so Their refusing to own the Emperours for gods and why Their not observing the solemn Festivals of the Emperours and the reasons of it Accused of Sedition and holding unlawful Combinations An account of the Collegia and Societies in the Roman Empire Christianity forbidden upon that account The Christian Assemblies no unlawful Conventions A vast difference between them and the unlawful factions forbidden by the Roman Laws Their confident challenging their enemies to make good one charge of disturbance or rebellion against them Their Laws and principles quite contrary The Heathens them selves guilty of rebellions and factions not the Christians The Testimony given them by Julian the Emperour A reflection upon the Church of Rome for corrupting the doctrine and practice of Christianity in this affair Their principles and policies in this matter Bellarmin's position that 't is lawful to depose infidel and heretical Princes and that the Primitive Christians did it not to Nero Dioclesian c. only because they wanted power censured and refuted This contrary to the avow'd principles of honest Heathens HOw much Christian Religion transcribed into the lives of its professors contributes to the happiness of men not only in their single and private capacities but as to the publick welfare of humane societies and to the common interests and conveniences of mankind we have already discovered in several instances now because Magistracy and Civil Government is the great support and instrument of external peace and happiness we shall in the last place consider how eminent the first Christians were for their Submission and Subjection to Civil Government And certainly there 's scarce any particular instance wherein Primitive Christianity did more triumph in the world than in their exemplary obedience to the Powers and Magistrates under which they lived honouring their persons revering their power paying their tribute obeying their Laws where they were not evidently contrary to the Laws of Christ and where they were submitting to the most cruel penalties they laid upon them with the greatest calmness and serenity of soul The truth is one great design of the Christian Law is to secure the interests of civil Authority our Saviour has expresly taught us that we are to give unto Caesar the things that are Caesars as well as unto God the things that are Gods And his Apostles spoke as plainly as words could speak it Let every soul be subject to the higher powers for there is no power but of God the powers that be are ordain'd of God Whosoever therefore resisteth the power resisteth the ordinance of God and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation Wherefore you must needs be subject not only for wrath but also for conscience sake for for this cause pay you tribute also for they are Gods Ministers attending continually upon this very thing Render therefore to all their dues tribute to whom tribute is due custom to whom custom fear to whom fear honour to whom honour Where we may take notice both of the strictness and universality of the charge and what is mainly material to observe this charge given the Romans at that time when Nero was their Emperour who was not only an Heathen Magistrate but the first persecutor of Christians a man so prodigiously brutish and tyrannical that the world scarce ever brought forth such another monster 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Orator truly stiles him a beast in the shape of a man The same Apostle amongst other directions given to Titus for the discharge of his office bids him put the people in mind to be subject to principalities and powers and to obey Magistrates
according to the faith and trust that we have in him To the same purpose Athenagoras in his return to this charge Diagoras indeed was guilty of the deepest atheism and impiety but we who separate God from all material being and affirm him to be eternal and unbegotten but all matter to be made and corruptible how unjustly are we branded with impiety It 's true did we side with Diagoras in denying a Divinity when there are so many and such powerful arguments from the creation and government of the world to convince us of the existence of God and Religion then both the guilt and punishment of Atheism might deservedly be put upon us But when our Religion acknowledges one God the maker of the Universe who being uncreate himself created all things by his word we are manifestly wrong'd both in word and deed both in being charged with it and in being punished for it We are accused says Arnobius for introducing prophane Rites and an impious Religion but tell me O ye men of reason how dare you make so rash a charge To adore the mighty God the Soveraign of the whole Creation the Governour of the highest powers to pray to him with the most obsequious reverence under an afflicted state to lay hold of him with all our powers to love him and look up to him is this a dismal and detestable Religion a Religion full of sacriledge and impiety destroying and defiling all ancient Rites is this that bold and prodigious crime for which your Gods are so angry with us and for which you your selves do so rage against us confiscating our Estates banishing our persons burning tearing and racking us to death with such exquisite tortures We Christians are nothing else but the worshippers of the supream King and Governour of the world according as we are taught by Christ our Master search and you 'll find nothing else in our Religion this is the sum of the whole affair this the end and design of our divine Offices before him it is that we are wont to prostrate and bow our selves him we worship with common and conjoin'd devotions from him we beg those things which are just and honest and such as are not unworthy of him to hear and grant So little reason had the Enemies of Christianity to brand it with the note of Atheism and Irreligion CHAP. II. Of the Novelty that was charged upon Christianity Christianity excepted and cried out against as a late novel Doctrine This a common charge continued when Christianity had been some hundreds of years in the world Christianity greatly prejudiced by this charge Men loth to forsake the Religion of their Ancestors What the Christians answered to it Christian Religion the same in substance and effect with that of the ancient Jews in that respect by far the oldest Religion in the World prov'd and urg'd by Tertullian Cl. Alexander Eusebius c. It s lateness and novelty no real prejudice to rational and unbiass'd men The folly and vanity of adhering to absurd and unreasouable Customs and Principles because ancient and of refusing to change opinions for the better An objection if Christ and Christianity were so great blessings to mankind why was it so long before God revealed them answered out of Arnobius THis Artifice proving weak and ineffectual the next charge was its lateness and novelty that it was an upstart Sect and but of yesterdays standing not known in the world many years before whereas the Religion of the Gentiles had uncontroulably and almost universally obtained from Ages and Generations a Doctrine newly sprung up and come as 't were from a far Country 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as 't is in Theophilus Antiochenus a divorce or rending themselves from the institutions of their Ancestors as Tertullian has it This charge begun betimes when S. Paul preached at Athens we find this the first thing charged upon him that he was a setter forth of strange gods because he preached to them Jesus and the resurrection and it was followed with a loud cry in succeeding times you are wont to object to us says Arnobius that our Religion is novel start up not many days ago and that you ought not to desert your ancient way and the Religion of your Country to espouse barbarous and foreign Rites And Eusebius tells us the Heathens were wont to reason thus what strange profession of Religion is this what new way of life wherein we can neither discern the Rites amongst us us'd in Greece nor amongst any Sect of the Barbarians who can deny them to be impious who have forsaken the Customs of their Fathers observed before in all Cities and Countries revolting from a way of Worship which had been universally received from all Ages both by Greeks and Barbarians entertained both in Cities and Villages countenanced and approved by the common vote and consent of all Kings Law-makers Philosophers and the greatest persons whatsoever Nay we may observe that after Christianity had been setled for some hundreds of years in the world and was become the prevailing Religion and had in a manner banished all others out of doors and driven them into corners yet this charge still continued thus Julian the Emperour writing to the people of Alexandria concerning the Galilaeans so he was wont in scorn to call the Christians that he wondered that any of them durst dwell amongst them or that they would suffer these despisers of the Religion of their Country to be in any place amongst them calls Christianity the new Doctrine that had been preached to the world the very same title which Lucian had also long since bestowed upon it where speaking of our Saviour he calls him the great man that was crucified in Palestine who introduced that new Religion into the world So Symmachus some years after Julian a man no less eminent for his parts and eloquence than for his power and authority being Chief Priest and Prefect of Rome confidently owns to the Emperours themselves though they were Christians that he did endeavour to defend the institutions of their Ancestors the setled Rights and Laws of the Country he means them of Religion that he design'd to settle that state of Religion which for so many Ages had been profitable to the Common-wealth and therefore begs of them that what they had received when they were Children now they were old they might leave to their Posterity that they were to be true to the trust that had from so many Ages been devolved upon them and were to follow their Parents as they had happily done their Ancestors that had gone before them So he pleading the cause of Paganism from its antiquity◠and prescription obliquely reflecting upon the novellism of Christianity for more he durst not speak the Emperours to whom he made his address being themselves Christians This indeed must needs be a mighty prejudice against the Christian Religion at its
first coming into the world for all men as they have a natural reverence for Religion so they have a great veneration for Antiquity the Customs and Traditions of their Fathers which they entertain as a most inestimable depositum and for which they look upon themselves as obliged to contend as for that which is most solemn and sacred What more excellent and venerable says the Heathen in Minucius Faelix than to entertain the discipline of our Forefathers to solemnize that Religion that has been delivered to us to worship those Gods the knowledge of whom has been infus'd into us by our Parents not boldly to determine concerning the Deities but to believe those who have been before us To the same purpose Lactantius speaking of the Heathens they go on says he most pertinaciously to maintain and defend the Religion derived down to them from their Ancestors not so much considering what they are as concluding them to be right and good because the Ancients conveyed them to them nay so great the power and authority of antiquity that it 's accounted a kind of impiety to question it or enquire into it Upon these accounts the Gentiles bore so hard upon Christianity beholding it as a Mushroom-Sect sprung up of a sudden and as an incroaching Inmate undermining the established Religions of the world Now we find two pleas especially which the Christians made to this Indictment First That the charge was not wholly and universally true for besides that many principles of Christianity were the same with those of the Law of Nature the Christian Religion was for substance the same with that of the ancient Jewes whose Religion claim'd the precedenncy of all others in the word That the Religion was in substance and effect the same is expresly asserted and proved by Eusebius the ancient Patriarchs were the Christians of the old world who had the same Faith Religion and Worship common with us nay the same name too as he endeavours to prove from that touch not mine anointed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 my Christs or Christians and how far superiour in age they were to any thing that 's recorded of the most ancient Gentiles to their oldest Writers Orpheus Homer Hesiord nay to their very gods themselves is sufficiently made good by many of the ancient Fathers there being at the easiest computation between Moses and Homer above 600 years nay Cadmus the first inventer of Letters among the Graecians was some Ages junior unto Moses Therefore Origen tells Celsus that Moses and the Prophets were not only more ancient than Plato but than Homer himself yea than the very invention of Letters amongst the Graecians who yet were as proud of their antiquity as any other Nation in the World Nay whatever useful and excellent notions the great Masters of Religion amongst the Heathens had amongst them 't is plain they borrowed or more truly stole them from the Writings of the Ancients Jews as is abundantly demonstrated by Eusebius at large as before him it had been done by Clemens of Alexandria and by Tertullian before them both who shews that all their Poets and Philosophers had drunk deep of the Fountain of the Prophets and had forced their best Doctrines and Opinions from thence though subtilly altering and disguising them to make them look more like their own so that upon this consideration the accusation was unjust and false and Christianity appears the oldest Religion in the world Secondly Admit the Christian Religion in a more limited and restrained sense to be of a far later standing than the Religion of the Gentiles yet they pleaded that 't was infinitely reasonable that they should change for the better whenever it offered it self to them that novel truth was better than ancient errour and that they ought not to be eternally bound up in old inveterate Customs and Principles when those which were abundantly more reasonable and satisfactory were presented to them You tell us says Clemens Alex. that you may not subvert the Customs received from your Ancestors but if so why then are we not content without any other food than our Mothers milk to which we were accustomed when we first came into the world why do we encrease or impair our estates and not rather keep them at the same pitch just as we received them from our Fathers why have we left off those toys and sports to which we were wonted while Infants and Children but only because years and discretion although we had no other Tutor would make us quit those childish and trifling vanities That old age says S. Ambrose has true cause to blush that is asham'd to reform 't is not multitude of years but the goodness of manners that makes gray hairs worthy of praise and honour no age is too late to learn nor is it shame to grow better What wilt thou do says Lactantius to the Heathen wilt thou follow Reason or thy Ancestors If Reason then thou must needs relinquish the authority and institutions of thy Forefathers because that way only can be right that is warranted and prescribed by Reason but if piety towards thine Ancestors sway with thee to follow them thou must confess both that they were Fools in devoting themselves to a Religion contrary to Reason and that thou thy self art unwise and simple in worshipping what thou art convinced to be false besides that they had little reason to boast of those goodly Ancestors to whom they adhered so close and upon whose authority they did so much depend as he goes on to demonstrate in the remaining part of that Chapter That you object to us the novelty of our Religion so Arnobius may we not charge some such fault upon the first and most ancient Ages of the world who at first liv'd in a very poor and mean state but by little and little chang'd it into a more liberal and splendid course of life was it any crime that they changed their beasts skins into more comely and ◠convenient Garments or that they were no longer fond of their thatcht Cottages or chose to dwell like wild beasts in Rocks and Caverns when they had learnt to build better habitations 't is natural to all mankind to prefer better before what is worse profitable before what is useless and to seek after what we are assur'd is more grateful and excellent therefore when you charge us with Apostasie from the Religion of the Ancients you should rather consider the cause than the action and not so much upbraid us with what we have left as examine what it is we have entertain'd For if meerly to change our opinion and to pass from ancient Institutions to what 's more late and new be a fault and crime then none so guilty of the charge as your selves who have so oft changed your manners and course of life and by embracing new Rites and Customs have condemned those that went before
not presently evil because it crosses our ease and interest as Arnobius answers passing by these I shall take notice only of two things which the Christians pleaded in this case First That the Gentiles should do very well to seek the true causes of these things nearer home and to enquire whether 't was not for their own sakes that the Divine Providence was thus offended with them there being very just reasons to think so Tertullian points them to such causes as these First their horrible affronting their natural notions of God that when they knew God they glorified him not as God neither were thankful but became vain in their imaginations and their foolish heart was darkned and they changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an Image made like to corruptible man and to birds and four footed beasts and creeping things as S. Paul had told them long before and that therefore 't was reasonable to suppose that God was more angry with them who instead of him worshipped pieces of wood and Statues or at best Genii and Devils than with those who sincerely paid their adorations to him alone Secondly Passing by God the great Master of all goodness and innocence and the severe revenger of all impiety they tumbled themselves in all manner of vice and wickedness and what wonder if the Divine Justice followed close at their heels You are angry says Cyprian that God is angry as if in living ill you deserved well and as if all that has happened to you were not less and lighter than your sins and thou Demetrian who art a Judge of others but in this a Judge of thy self inspect the retirements of thy conscience and behold thy self now who shalt one day be seen naked by all and thou wilt find thy self enslav'd and led captive by some sins or other and why then shouldst thou wonder that the flames of the divine anger should rise higher when the sins of men do daily administer more fuel to it an answer which he there prosecutes to very excellent purpose Thirdly Their prodigious unthankfulness to God for all the former blessings they had received from him so far as they were ingrateful they were highly guilty and God could not but punish them had they sought him whom in part they could not but know and been observant of him they would in this case have found him a much more propitious than an angry Deity as Tertullian tells them Upon these and such like accounts they might well conclude it was that the vengeance of God did press so hard upon them and that therefore they had no true reason to lay the fault at any other door but their own Secondly As to the thing it self as 't was charged upon them they point blank denied it to be true and that for two reasons especially First Because the world had been sadly and frequently pestered with such evils and miseries long before the Christian Religion appeared in it I pray says Tertullian what miseries did overwhelm all the world and even Rome it self before the times of Tiberius i. e. before the coming of Christ have we not read of Hierapolis and the Islands of Delos and Rhodes and Cos destroyed with many thousands of men does not Plato speak of the greatest part of Asia and Afric swallowed up by the Atlantic Sea an Earthquake drank up the Corinthan Sea and the force of the Ocean rent off Sicilia from Italy not to ask where were the Christians the great contemners of your gods but where were your gods themselves when the Flood over-ran the world Palestine had not yet received the Jewish Nation out of Egypt much less had the Christians sat down there when Sodom and Gomorrah and the adjacent parts were burnt up by a shower of fire and Brimstone of which the Country smells to this day Nor could Tuscia and Campania complain of the Christians when a fire from Heaven destroyed the Vulsinii and the Pompeii None as yet worshipped the true God at Rome when Hannibal at Cannae made such a slaughter of the Romans that the very Rings that he took which were the honourable Badges of none but Roman Knights were measured by the Bushel they were all your gods that then had the general worship when the Gauls took the Capitol it self So smartly does that grave man retort their own arguments upon themselves Arnobius fully and elegantly pursues this that in this respect the former times were no better than these which they so much complained of and bids them run over the Annals and Records that were written in all languages and they would find that all Nations had frequently had their common miseries and devastations the clearing of which was likewise the great design Orosius proposed to himself in drawing down the History of the world through all the Ages and Generations of it Secondly Because since the coming of Christianity the world had been in a better and more prosperous state than it was before especially when ever the Christian Religion met with any favour and encouragement the reason of it Tertullian gives although we should compare present with former miseries yet they are much lighter now since God sent Christians into the world for since then innocency has ballanced the iniquities of the Age and there have been many who have interceded with Heaven The Author of the Questions and Answers in Justin Martyr for that it was not Justin himself I think no man can doubt that reads him the man betraying himself openly enough to have liv'd in the times of prevailing Christianity putting this question whether paganism was not the better Religion forasmuch as under it there was great prosperity and abundance whereas 't was quite otherwise since Christianity came in fashion he answers among other things that besides that plenty was no argument of the goodness of any Religion Christians being to be judged of rather by the holiness than the prosperity of their Religion there was so much the more abundance in these times of Christianity by how much there were fewer Wars than was while Paganism governed the world Never were wars more succesfully managed never was prosperity more triumphant than when Christians met with kind entertainment Melito Bishop of Sardis in an Oration which he presented to the Emperour M. Antoninus in behalf of the Christians part whereof is yet extant in Eusebius tells him that Christianity commencing under the Reign of Augustus was a good 〈◊〉 of the prosperity of the Empire and that ever since the majesty of the Roman Empire had encreased of whom he being the Heir and Successor he could not better assure it to himself and his Son than by protecting that Religion that had been born and bred up together with the Empire and for which his Ancestors amongst other Religions had had an esteem and honour that there could be no better argument that this Religion contributed to the happiness of
Coemeteria or Church-yard distinct in those times from their places of Publick Worship and at a great distance from them as being commonly without the Cities Here their burying places where in large Cryptae or Grots under ground where they celebrated these memorials and whither they used to retire for their common devotions in times of great persecution when their Churches were destroyed or taken from them And therefore when Aemilian the Governour of Egypt under the Reign of Valerian would screw up the persecution against Christians he forbad their meetings and that they should not so much as assemble in the places which they called their Church-yards the same priviledge which Maximinus also had taken from them By reason of the darkness of these places and their frequent assembling there in the night to avoid the fury of their Enemies they were forced to use Lights and Lamps in their publick meetings but they who make this an argument to patronize their burning of Lamps and Wax-Candles in their Churches at Noon-day as 't is in all the great Churches of the Roman Communion talk at a strange rate of wild inconsequence I am sure S. Hierom when charged with it denied that they used any in the day time and never but at night when they rose up to their night-devotions He confesses indeed 't was otherwise in the Eastern Churches where when the Gospel was to be read they set up Lights as a token of their rejoycing for those happy and glad tidings that were contained in it light having been ever used as a symbol and representation of joy and gladness A custom probably not much elder than his time Afterwards when Christianity prevailed in the world the devotion of Christians erected Churches in those places the Temples of the Martyrs says Theodoret being spacious and beautiful richly and curiously adorned and shining with great lustre and brightness These Solemnities as the same Author informs us were kept not like the Heathen Festivals with luxury and obsceneness but with devotion and sobriety with divine Hymns and religious Sermons with fervent prayers to God mixed many times with sighs and tears Here they heard Sermons and Orations joined in publick prayers and praises received the holy Sacrament offered gifts and charities for the poor recited the names of the Martyrs then commemorated with their due elogies and commendations and their virtues propounded to the imitation of the hearers For which purpose they had their set Notaries who took the acts sayings and sufferings of Martyrs which were after compiled into particular Treatises and were recited in these annual meetings and this was the first original of Martyrologies in the Christian Church From this custom of offering up prayers praises and alms at those times it is that the Fathers speak so often of oblations and sacrifices at the Martyrs Festivals Tertullian often upon an anniversary day says he we make oblations for them that are departed in memory of their Natalitia or Birth days and to the same purpose elsewhere As oft says Cyprian as by an anniversary commemoration we celebrate the passion days of the Martyrs we always offer sacrifices for them and the same phrases oft occur in many others of the Fathers By which 't is evident they meant no more than their publick prayers and offering up praises to God for the piety and constancy and the excellent examples of their Martyrs their celebrating the Eucharist at these times as the commemoration of Christs Sacrifice their oblation of alms and charity for the poor every one of which truly may and often is stiled a sacrifice or oblation and are so understood by some of the more moderate even of the Romish Church and with good reason for that they did not make any real and formal sacrifices and oblations to Martyrs but only honour them as holy men and friends to God who for his and our Saviours honour and the truth of Religion chose to lay down their lives I find expresly affirmed by Theodoret. These Festivals being times of mirth and gladness were celebrated with great expressions of love and charity to the poor and mutual rejoycings with one another Here they had their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Feasts every one bringing something to the common Banquet out of which the poor also had their share These Feasts at first were very sober and temperate and such as became the modesty and simplicity of Christians as we heard before out of Theodoret and is affirmed before him by Constantine in his Oration to the Saints But degenerating afterwards into excess and intemperance they were every where declaimed against by the Fathers till they were wholly laid aside Upon the account of these Feasts and for the better making provisions for them we may conceive it was that Markets came to be kept at these times and places for of such S. Basil speaks 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Markets held at the memorials and Tombs of Martyrs these he condemns as highly unsuitable to those Solemnities which were only instituted for prayer and a commemoration of the virtues of good men for our incouragement and imitation and that they ought to remember the severity of our otherwise meek and humble Saviour who whipt the Buyers and Sellers out of the Temple when by their marketings they had turned the house of prayer into a den of thieves And the truth is these anniversary commemorations though in their primitive institution they are highly reasonable and commendable yet through the folly and dotage of men they were after made to minister to great superstition and idolatry so plain is it that the best and usefullest things may be corrupted to bad purposes For hence sprung the doctrine and practice of prayer and invocation of Saints and their intercession with God the worshipping of Reliques Pilgrimages and visiting Churches and offering at the Shrines of such and such Saints and such like superstitious practices which in after Ages over-run so great a part of the Christian Church things utterly unknown to the simplicity of those purer and better times CHAP. VIII Of the persons constituting the body of the Church both people and Ministers The people distinguished into several ranks Catechumens of two sorts Gradually instructed in the principles of the Christian Faith Accounted only Christians at large The more recondite mysteries of Christianity concealed from persons till after baptism Three reasons assigned of it How long they remained in the state of Catechumens The several Classes of Penitents the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the faithful Their particular stations in the Church Their great reverence for the Lords Supper The Clergie why called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Of two sorts the highest Bishops Presbyters and Deacons Bishops as superiour to Presbyters how ancient by the most learned opposers of Episcopacy Their office and priviledge what Chorepiscopi who Their power and priviledge above Presbyters
made against their spiritual Guides and Governours and therefore according to the right art of Orators he first commends them for their eminent subjection to them that he might with the more advantage reprove and censure them for their schism afterwards which he does severely in the latter part of the Epistle and towards the end of it exhorts those who had laid the foundation of the Sedition to become subject to their Presbyters and being instructed to repentance to bow the knees of their hearts to lay aside the arrogant and insolent boldness of their tongues and to learn to subject and submit themselves The truth is Bishops and Ministers were then looked upon as the common Parents of Christians whom as such they honoured and obeyed and to whom they repaired for counsel and direction in all important cases 'T is plain from several passages in Tertullian that none could lawfully marry till they had first advised with the Bishop and Clergy of the Church and had asked and obtained their leave which probably they did to secure the person from marrying with a Gentile or any of them that were without and from the inconveniencies that might ensue upon such a match No respect no submission was thought great enough whereby they might do honour to them they were wont to kiss their hands to embrace their feet and at their going from or returning home or indeed their coming unto any place to wait upon them and either to receive or dismiss them with the universal confluence of the people Happy they thought themselves if they could but entertain them in their houses and bless their roofs with such welcome guests Amongst the various ways of kindness which Constantine the Great shewed to the Clergie the Writer of his life tells us that he used to treat them at his own Table though in the meanest and most despicable habit and never went a journey but he took some of them along with him reckoning that thereby he made himself surer of the propitious and favourable influence of the divine presence What honours he did them at the Council of Nice where he refused to sit down till they had given him intimation with what magnificent gifts and entertainments he treated them afterwards the same Author relates at large The truth is the piety of that devout and excellent Prince thought nothing too good for those who were the messengers of God and ministers of holy things and so infinitely tender was he of their honour as to profess that if at any time he should spye a Bishop overtaken in an immodest and uncomely action he would cover him with his own imperial Robe rather than others should take notice of it to the scandal of his place and person And because their spiritual authority and relation might not be sufficient to secure them from the contempt of rude and prophane persons therefore the first Christian Emperours invested them with power even in Civil cases as the way to beget them respect and authority amongst the people Thus Constantine as Sozomon tells us and he sets it down as a great argument of that Princes reverence for Religion ordained that persons contending in Law might if they pleased remove their cause out of the Civil Courts and appeal to the judgment of the Bishops whose sentence should be firm and take place before that of any other Judges as if it had been immediately passed by the Emperour himself and cases thus judged by Bishops all Governours of Provinces and their Officers were presently to put into execution which was afterwards ratified by two Laws one of Arcadius another of Honorius to that purpose This power the Bishops sometimes delegated to their inferior Clergy making them Judges in these cases as appears from what Socrates reports of Silvanus Bishop of Troas that finding a male-administration of this power he took it out of the hands of his Clergie and devolved the hearing and determining causes over to the Laity And to name no more S. Augustine more than once and again tells us how much he was crowded and even oppressed in deciding the contests and causes of secular persons It seems they thought themselves happy in those days if they could have their causes heard and determined by Bishops A pious Bishop and a faithful Minister was in those days dearer to them than the most valuable blessings upon earth and they could want any thing rather than be without them when Chrysostom was driven by the Empress into banishment the people as he went along burst into tears and cryed out ' t was better the Sun should not shine than that John Chrysostom should not preach and when through the importunity of the people he was recalled from his former banishment and diverted into the Suburbs till he might have an opportunity to make a publick vindication of his innocency the people not enduring such delays the Emperour was forced to send for him into the City the people universally meeting him and conducting him to his Church with all expressions of reverence and veneration Nay while he was yet Presbyter of the Church of Antioch so highly was he loved and honoured by the people of that place that though he was chosen to the See of Constantinople and sent for by the Emperours Letters though their Bishop made an Oration on purpose to perswade them to it yet would they by no means be brought to part with him and when the Messengers by force attempted to bring him away he was forced to prevent a tumult to withdraw and hide himself the people keeping a Guard about him lest he should be taken from them nor could the Emperour or his Agents with all their arts effect it till he used this wile he secretly wrote to the Governour of Antioch who pretending to Chrysostom that he had concerns of moment to impart to him invited him to a private place without the City where seizing upon him by Mules which he had in readiness he conveyed him to Constantinople where that his welcome might be the more magnificent the Emperour commanded that all persons of eminency both Ecclesiastical and Civil should with all possible pomp and state go six miles to meet him Of Nazianzen who sat in the same Chair of Constantinople before him I find that when he would have left that Bishoprick by reason of the stirs that were about it and delivered up himself to solitude and a private life as a thing much more suitable to his humour and genius many of the people came about him with tears beseeching him not to forsake his Flock which he had hitherto fed with so much sweat and labour They could not then lose their spiritual Guides but they looked upon themselves as Widows and Orphans resenting their death with a general sorrow and lamentation as if they had lost a common Father Nazianzen reports that when his
off the sacred obligation of thy Baptism and the true faith which thou didst then profess and take upon thee Thesese were the main and most considerable circumstances wherewith Baptism was administred in the primitive Church some whereof were by degrees antiquated and disused other rites there were that belonged only to particular Churches and which as they were suddenly taken up so were as quickly laid aside others were added in after-times till they encreased so fast that the usage and the number of them became absurd and burdensom as may appear by the office for Baptism in the Romish Ritual at this day As a conclusion to this Chapter I had once thought to have treated concerning Confirmation which ever was a constant appendage to Baptism and had noted some things to that purpose but shall supersede that labour finding it so often and so fully done by others in just discourses that nothing considerable can be added to them only I shall give this brief and general account of it all persons baptized in the ancient Church according to their age and capacity persons adult some little time after Baptism Children when arrived to years of competent ripeness and maturity were brought to the Bishop there further to confirm and ratifie that compact which they had made with God in Baptism and by some solemn acts of his ministry to be themselves confirmed and strengthned by having the grace and blessing of God conferred upon them to enable them to discharge that great promise and engagement which they had made to God This was usually performed with the Ceremony of Vnction the person confirmed being anointed by the Bishop or in his absence by an inferiour Minister and indeed Unction was an ancient rite used in the Jewish Church to denote the conferring of gifts or graces upon persons and thence probably amongst other reasons as many other usages were might be derived into the Christian Church though a learned man is of opinion that unction was never used in confirmation but where the person being in case of necessity baptized by some of the inferior Clergy had not been before anointed otherwise those who had received compleat Baptism were not afterwards anointed at their confirmation for which the Council of Orange is most express and clear And indeed that Confirmation was often administred without this unction no man can doubt that knows the state of those times being done only by solemn imposition of the Bishops hands and by devout and pious prayers that the persons confirmed might grow in grace and the knowledge of Christ and be enabled to perform those vows and purposes and that profession of Faith which they had before embraced in Baptism and then again owned before the whole Congregation Till this was done they were not accounted compleat Christians nor admitted to the holy Communion nor could challenge any actual right to those great priviledges of Christianity whence it is that the Ancients so often speak of Confirmation as that which did perfect and consummate Christians as being a means to confer greater measures of that grace that was but begun in Baptism upon all which accounts and almost exactly according to the primitive usage it is still retained and practised in our own Church at this day and happy were it for us were it kept up in its due power and vigour sure I am 't is too plain that many of our unhappy breaches and controversies in Religion do if not wholly in a great measure owe their birth and rise to the neglect and contempt of this excellent usage of the Church CHAP. XI Of the Lords Supper and the administration of it in the ancient Church The persons dispensing this Ordinance who The persons Communicating the Baptized or the Faithful Suspension from this Ordinance according to the nature of the offence The Eucharist sent home to them that could not be present The case of Serapion A custom in some places to give the Sacrament to persons when dead if they dyed before they could receive it and why The Eucharist kept by persons at home Sent abroad This laid aside and in its stead Eulogiae or pieces of consecrated Bread sent from one Church to another as tokens of communion The time of its administration sometimes in the morning sometimes at night varied according to the peace they enjoyed How oft they received the Eucharist At first every day This continued in Cyprian's time Four times a week Afterwards less frequented The usual place of receiving the Church ordinarily not lawful to consecrate it elsewhere Oblations made by persons before their communicating Their Agapae or Love-Feasts what Whether before or after the Sacrament How long continued in the Church The manner of celebrating this Sacrament collected out of the most ancient Authors The holy Kiss The general prayer for the Church and the whole world The consecration of the Sacrament the form of it out of S. Ambrose The Bread common Bread The sacramental Wine mixed with Water This no necessary part of the institution Why probably used in those Countries The posture of receiving not always the same Singing Psalms during the time of celebration Followed with prayer and thanksgiving The whole action concluded with the Kiss of peace THE holy Eucharist or Supper of our Lord being a rite so solemnly instituted and of such great importance in the Christian Religion had place accordingly amongst the Ancients in their publick offices and devotions In speaking to which I shall much what observe the same method I did in treating concerning Baptism considering the persons the time the place and the manner of its celebration The persons administring were the ordinary Pastors and Governours of the Church those who were set apart for the ministration of holy offices the institution was begun by our Lord himself and the administration of it by him committed to his Apostles and to their ordinary successors to the end of the world We find in Tertullian that they never received it from any but the hand of the President which must either be meant of the particular custom of that Church where he lived or of consecration only for otherwise the custom was when the Bishop or President had by solemn Prayers and blessings consecrated the sacramental elements for the Deacons to distribute them to the people as well to those that were absent as to them that were present as Justin Martyr expresly affirms and as the custom generally was afterwards For the persons communicating at this Sacrament at first the whole Church or body of Christians within such a space that had embraced the doctrine of the Gospel and been baptized into the faith of Christ used constantly to meet together at the Lords Table As Christians multiplied and a more exact discipline became necessary none were admitted to this ordinance till they had arrived at the degree of the Faithful for who ever were in the state of the Catechumens i.
endeavours to find out many mystical significations intended by it and seems to intimate as if he had been peculiarly warned of God to observe it according to that manner an argument which that good man often produces as his warrant to knock down a controversie when other arguments were too weak to do it But although it should be granted that our Saviour did so use it in the institution of the Supper the Wines of those Eastern Countries being very strong and generous and that our Saviour as all sober and temperate persons might probably abate its strength with water of which nevertheless the History of the Gospel is wholly silent yet this being a thing in it self indifferent and accidental and no way necessary to the Sacrament could not be obligatory to the Church but might either be done or let alone The posture wherein they received it was not always the same the Apostles at the institution of it by our Saviour received it according to the custom of the Jews at meals at that time lying along on their sides upon Beds round about the Table how long this way of receiving lasted I find not in the time of Dionysius Alexandrinus the custom was to stand at the Lords Table as he intimates in a Letter to Pope Xystus other gestures being taken in as the prudence and piety of the Governours of the Church judged most decent and comely for such a solemn action the Bread and Wine were delivered into the hands of those that communicated and not as the superstition of after-ages brought in injected or thrown into their mouths Cyrill tells us that in his time they used to stretch out their right hand putting their left hand under it either to prevent any of the sacramental Bread from falling down or as some would have it hereby to shadow out a kind of figure of a Cross During the time of administration which in populous Congregations was no little time they sung Hymns and Psalms the compiler of the Apostolical Constitutions particularly mentions the 33. Psalm which being done the whole action was solemnly concluded with prayer and thanksgiving the form whereof is likewise set down by the Author of the Apostolical Constitutions that God had thought them worthy to participate of such sacred mysteries and the people being blessed by the Bishop or the Minister of the Assembly and having again saluted each other with a Kiss of Peace as a testimony of their hearty love and kindness whence Tertullian calls this Kiss signaculum Orationis the Seal of Prayer the Assembly broke up and they returned to their own houses This for the main was the order wherein the first Christians celebrated this holy Sacrament for though I do not pretend to set down every thing in that precise and punctual order wherein they were always done and how should I when they often varied according to time and place yet I doubt not but who ever examines the usages of those times will find that 't is done as near as the nature of the thing would bear The end of the first Part. Primitive Christianity OR THE RELIGION OF THE Ancient Christians In the first Ages of the Gospel PART II. The Religion of the Primitive Christians as to those Vertues that respect themselves CHAP. I. Of their Humility This second branch of Religion comprehended under the notion of Sobriety and discovered in some great instances of it The proper tendency of the Christian Religion to beget humility This divine temper eminently visible in the first Christians made good out of their writings The great humility and self-denial of Cyprian What Nazianzen reports to this purpose of his own Father Their modest declining that just commendation that was due to them Many who suffered refus'd the honourable title of Martyrs Nazianzen's vindication of them against the suggestions of Julian the Apostate The singular meekness and condescension of Nebridius amidst all his honours and relations at Court Their stooping to the vilest Offices and for the meanest persons dressing and ministring to the sick washing the Saints feet kissing the Martyrs chains The remarkable humility of Placilla the Empress and the Lady Paula An excellent discourse of Nyssen's against Pride NExt to Piety towards God succeeds that part of Religion that immediately respects our selves expressed by the Apostle under the general name of Sobriety or the keeping our selves within those bounds and measures which God has set us Vertues for which the Primitive Christians were no less renowned than for the other Amongst them I shall take notice of their Humility their contempt of the World their temperance and sobriety their courage and constancy and their exemplary patience under sufferings To begin with the first Humility is a vertue that seems more proper to the Gospel for though Philosophers now and then spake a few good words concerning it yet it found no real entertainment in their lives being generally animalia gloriae creatures pufft up with wind and emptiness and that sacrific'd only to their own praise and honour whereas the doctrines of the Gospel immediately tend to level all proud and swelling apprehensions to plant the world with mildness and modesty and to cloath men with humility and the ornament of a meek and a quiet spirit By these we are taught to dwell at home and to converse more familiarly with our selves to be acquainted with our own deficiencies and imperfections and rather to admire others than to advance our selves for the proper notion of Humility lies in a low and mean estimation of our selves and an answerable carriage towards others not thinking of our selves more highly than we ought to think nor being unwilling that other men should value us at the same rate Now that this was the excellent spirit of Primitive Christianity will appear if we consider how earnestly they protested against all ambitious and vain-glorious designs how chearfully they condescended to the meanest Offices and Imployments how studiously they declin'd all advantages of applause and credit how ready they were rather to give praise to others than to take it to themselves in honour preferring one another S. Clemens highly commends his Corinthians that all of them were of an humble temper in nothing given to vain-glory subject unto others rather than subjecting others to themselves ready to give rather than receive Accordingly he exhorts them especially after they were fallen into a little faction and disorder still to be humble-minded to lay aside all haughtiness and pride foolishness and anger and not to glory in wisdom strength or riches but let him that glories glory in the Lord and to follow the example of our Lord the Scepter of the Majesty of God who came not in the vain-boasting of arrogancy and pride although able to do whatsoever he pleased but in great meekness and humility of mind appearing in the world without any form or comeliness or any beauty that he
of a second wickedness like to that which they committed against Socrates and lest they again offend against the Majesty of Philosophy it being alas not kindness to the Athenians but cowardise and fear of punishment made him so hastily pack up and be gon and leave his opinions behind him to shift for themselves as well as they could Nay Eunapius himself confesses that in the time of Constantine when Paganism began to go down the wind and Christianity to be advanced and honoured their best Philosophers the great Scholars of Iamblichus took sanctuary at a mysterious secrecy and wisely kept their dogmata and opinions to themselves sealed up under a profound and religious silence No they were the Christians only the very meanest of whom durst stand by and defend naked truth in the face of danger and death it self this being as Eusebius notes one of the most wonderful things in Christian Religion that they who embrace it are not only ready to profess it in words but entertain it with such a mighty affection and sincerity of soul as willingly to prefer the bearing testimony to it even before life it self And indeed this piece of right is done them by Pliny himself where speaking of some who having been accused for Christians to shew how far they were from it readily blasphemed Christ and sacrificed to the gods he adds none of which it 's said that they who are truly Christians can by any means be compelled to do Nay thus much is confessed by the Oracle it self for when Porphyry the great Philosopher and acute enemy of the Christians enquired of Apollo's Oracle what god he should make his address to for the recovery of his wife back from Christianity the Oracle returned him this Answer as himself reported it in his Book 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as 't is corruptly in S. Augustin a Book frequently cited both by Eusebius and Theodoret where by the way in the Latin Version of Theodoret 't is by a strange mistake rendred de Electorum Philosophia as if it had been 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in this Book concerning the Philosophy draw from Oracles he tells us he received this answer that he might as well and to better purpose attempt to write upon the surface of the water or to fly like a bird in the air than to reduce his wife from those wicked sentiments she had taken in And this was so common and notorious that it became in a manner proverbial whence that of Galen when he would express how pertinaciously the Philosophers adhered to those sentiments they had once drunk in and how very hard and almost impossible it was to convince them Sooner says he may a man undeceive a Jew or a Christian and make them renounce the doctrines of Moses or of Christ than Philosophers and Physicians that are once addicted to their several Sects CHAP. VII Of their Exemplary Patience under Sufferings Christianity likely to engage its followers in suffering and why Continual Edicts put forth against Christians The form of those Imperial orders exemplified out of the Acts of the Martyrs The fierce opposition of the Roman Emperours and their probable hopes of having destroyed Christianity evidenced from several Inscriptions to that purpose found in Spain The greatness of the torments Christians endured some of the ordinary kinds of them describ'd The Cross the pain and ignominy of it Persons crucified with their heads downwards The Rack what Catasta ad Pulpitum post Catastam Ungulae one of these kept and ador'd as a Relique at Rome The Wheel Burning Throwing to wild beasts Being condemned to Mines their treatment there and the case of such persons Some of the extraordinary ways of punishment used towards Christians Torn asunder by branches of trees burnt in pitch'd coats boyl'd in pots of oyl or lead c. Their carriage under these sufferings sedate and calm meek and patient Their refusing to make use of opportunities to avoid suffering Whether they might fly and withdraw in times of persecution Allow'd and practis'd in some cases two instanc'd in Where persons were of more than ordinary use and eminency Where they were weak for the present and not like to hold out Prov'd by particular instances Their chearful offering themselves to the rage and fury of their enemies confessed by the relation of their Judges and bitterest Adversaries Tiberianus Arrius Antoninus Lucian The earnest desire of Martyrdom in Ignatius Laurentius Origen and others When unjustly condemned their Judges thanked for condemning them Their glorying in suffering and being crucified Babylas the Martyr's chains buried with him No signs of an impatient mind under their bitterest torments An account of their chearful suffering out of Cyprian Their patience wondred at by their enemies Their grand support under suffering the hopes and assurance of a reward in Heaven The case of the forty Martyrs in S. Basil Psalms sung at the Funeral of Christians and Lights carried before the Corps and why Christianity vastly increased by the patience and constancy of Christians Martyr's account of his conversion by this means Julian generally refused to put Christians to death and why The testimonies of several Heathens corcerning the Christians conrage and patience under sufferings THat the Christian Religion at its first appearing in the World was likely to engage its followers in miseries and sufferings could not be unknown to any that considered the nature of its doctrine and the tendency of its design The severity of its precepts so directly opposite to the corrupt and vicious inclinations of men the purity of its worship so flatly contrary to the loose and obscene rites and solemnities of the Heathens its absolute inconsistency with those Religions which had obtained for so many Ages which then had such firm possessions of the minds of men and all the powers and policies of the world to secure and back them could not prophesie to it any kind or welcome entertainment This Sect for so they call'd it was every where not only spoken but fought against for since men have a natural veneration for Antiquity and especially in matters of Religion they thought themselves concerned to defend that way that had been convey'd to them from their Ancestours and to set themselves with might and main against whatever might oppose it especially the great ones of those times and the Roman Emperours made it their master-design to oppress and stifle this infant Religion and to banish it out of the World Hence those Imperial orders that were dayly sent abroad into all parts of the Empire to command and impower their Governours to ruine and destroy the Christians of which that we may the better apprehend the form of them it may not be amiss to set down one or two of them out of the acts of the Martyrs This following was agreed upon both by the Emperours and the whole Senate of Rome Decius and Valerian Emperours Triumphers
the publick treasury and themselves for ever reduc'd into the condition of slaves These were some of the more usual ways of punishment amongst the Romans though exercis'd towards the Christians in their utmost rigour and severity I omit to speak of Christians being scourg'd and whip'd even to the tiring of their executioners especially with rods called plumbatae whereof there is frequent mention in the Theodosian Code which were scourges made of cords or thongs with leaden bullets at the end of them of their being ston'd to death their being beheaded their being thrust into stinking and nasty prisons where they were set in a kind of stocks with five holes their legs being stretch'd asunder to reach from one end to the other We shall now consider some few of those unusal torments and punishments which were inflicted only upon Christians or if upon any others only in extraordinary cases Such was their being tied to arms of trees bent by great force and strength by certain Engines and being suddainly let go did in a moment tear the Martyr in pieces in which way many were put to death in the persecution at Thebais Sometimes they were clad with coats of paper linnen or such like dawb'd in the inside with pitch and brimstone which being set on fire they were burnt alive Otherwhiles they were shut into the belly of a brazen Bull and a fire being kindled under it were consumed with a torment beyond imagination Sometimes they were put into a great Pot or Caldron full of boyling pitch oyl lead or wax mixed together or had these fatal liquors by holes made on purpose poured into their bowels Some of them were hung up by one or both hands with stones of great weight tied to their feet to augment their sufferings others were anointed all over their bodies with honey and at mid-day fastned to the top of a pole that they might be a prey to flies wasps and such little cattle as might by degrees sting and torment them to death Thus besides many others it was with Marcus Bishop of Arethusa a venerable old man who suffered under Julian the Apostate after infinite other tortures they dawb'd him over with honey and jellies and in a basket fastned to the top of a pole expos'd him to the hottest beams of the Sun and to the fury of such little Insects as would be sure to prey upon him Sometimes they were put into a rotten ship which being turn'd out to sea was set on fire thus they serv'd an Orthodox Presbyter under Valens the Arrian Emperour the same which Socrates reports of fourscore pious and devout men who by the same Emperours command were thrust into a ship which being brought into open Sea was presently fir'd that so by this means they might also want the honour of a burial And indeed the rage and cruelty of the Gentiles did not only reach the Christians while alive but extend to them after death denying them what has been otherwise granted amongst the most barbarous people the conveniency of burial exposing them to the ravage and fierceness of dogs and beasts of prey a thing which we are told the Primitive Christians reckon'd as not the least aggravation of their sufferings Nay where they had been quietly buried they were not suffered many times as Tertullian complains to enjoy the Asylum of the grave but were plucked out rent and torn in pieces But to what purpose is it any longer to insist upon these things sooner may a man tell the stars than reckon up all those methods of misery and suffering which the Christians endured Eusebius who himself was a sad spectatour of some of the later persecutions professes to give over the account as a thing beyond all possibility of expression the manner of their sufferings and the persons that suffered being hard nay impossible to be reckoned up The truth is as he there observes and Cyprian plainly tells Demetrian of it their enemies did little else but set their wits upon the tenters to find out the most exquisite methods of torture and punishment they were not content with those old ways of torment which their forefathers had brought in but by an ingenious cruelty daily invented new striving to excel one another in this piece of hellish art and accounting those the wittiest persons that could invent the bitterest and most barbarous engins of execution and in this they improved so much that Vlpian Master of Records to Alexander Severus the Emperour and the great Oracle of those Times for Law writing several Books de Officio Proconsulis many parcels whereof are yet extant in the body of the Civil Law in the seventh Book collected together the several bloody Edicts which the Emperours had put out against the Christians that he might shew by what ways and methods they ought to be punished and destroyed as Lactantius tells us But this Book as to what concern'd Christians is not now extant the zeal and piety of the first Christian Emperours having banished all Books of that nature out of the World as appears by a Law of the Emperour Theodosius where he commands the Writings of Porphyry and all others that had written against the Christian Religion to be burned The reason why we have no more Books of the Heathens concerning the Christians extant at this day Having given this brief specimen of some few of those grievous torments to which the Primitive Christians were exposed they that would have more must read the Martyrologies of the Church or such as have purposely witten on this subject we come next to consider what was their behaviour and carriage under them this we shall find to have been most sedate and calm most constant and resolute they neither fainted nor fretted neither railed at their enemies nor sunk under their hands but bore up under the heaviest torments under the bitterest reproaches with a meekness and patience that was invincible and such as every way became the mild and yet generous spirit of the Gospel So Justin Martyr tells the Jew We patiently bear says he all the mischiefs which are brought upon us either by men or devils even to the extremities of death and torments praying for those that thus treat us that they may find mercy not desiring to hurt or revenge our selves upon any that injures us according as our great Law-giver has commanded us Thus Eusebius reporting the hard usage which the Christians met with during the times of persecution tells us that they were betrayed and butchered by their own friends and brethren but they as couragious Champions of the true Religion accustomed to prefer an honourable death in defence of the truth before life it self little regarded the cruel usage they met with in it but rather as became true Souldiers of God armed with patience they laughed at all methods of execution fire and sword and the piercings of nails wild beasts and the bottom of
Christian Religion The Gospel principally enjoyns kindness and charity The Primitive Christians eminently of this spirit They accounted all brethren but Christians more especially Their mutual love noted and recorded by their enemies Their mighty zeal and charity for the souls of men to recover them from vice and errour to truth and vertue This the matter of their daily prayer and most serious endeavours even towards their greatest enemies Pamphilus his charity in bestowing Bibles freely upon the poor Preachers maintained for converting the Gentile Phenicians to Christianity The famous story of John's hazarding himself for the regaining a young man debauched by bad companions Monica's care and sollicitude about S. Augustin Some that have sold themselves for slaves that they might convert their Heathen or Heretical Masters Christians not shy of communicating the knowledge of their Religion Their Charity as it respected the necessities of the outward life This noted in several instances of charity Their liberal providing for the poor The bounty of particular persons Divers instances of it The immense charity of Epiphanius exemplary vengeance upon some that abused it The poor accounted the Treasure and Ornaments of the Church represented in the case of Laurentius the Deacon and a story related by Palladius Their visiting and assisting the sick in their own persons eminently noted in the Empress Placilla and the Lady Fabiola The Christians care of their brethren in a great plague at Alexandria Persons appointed on purpose to cure and attend the sick The Parabolani who Their office and number Redemption of Captives Great sums contributed by Cyprian and his people for it Church-plate sold to redeem Christians nay captiv'd enemies Christians embondaging themselves to redeem others The strange charity of Paulinus Bishop of Nola making himself a slave to ransom a poor widows son Their care about the bodies of the dead Decent burial very fit and desirable A piece of piety remarkable in the Christians of those times Their abstaining from the common custome of burning the dead as barbarous The great cost they laid out upon their funerals in embalming intombing c. The Copiatae who What their office and order The Decani or Deans in the Church of Constantinople their number and duty Their providing fit places of Sepulture Their Coemeteria or burying-places in the fields Burying in Cities and Churches when brought in and to whom first granted Their Coemeteria under ground What kind of places they were The great number and vast capacities of them A particular account of one out of Baronius discovered in his time How the Christians were enabled to all these acts of charity At first all in common after by usual contributions The standing stock or treasury of the Church This charity of Christians largely attested by Julian and Lucian Their love and charity universal Doing good to enemies An excellency proper to Christians This manifested in several remakable instances Plainly acknowledged by Julian himself The whole sum'd up in an elegant discourse of Lactantius concerning mercy and charity THat the Christian Religion was immediately designed to improve and perfect the principles of humane nature appears as from many other instances of it so especially from this that it so strictly enjoyns cherishes and promotes that natural kindness and compassion which is one of the prime and essential inclinations of mankind wherever the Gospel is cordially complied with it begets such a sweet and gracious temper of mind as makes us humble affable courteous and charitable ready and disposed to every good work prompt to all offices of humanity and kindness it files off the ruggedness of mens natures banishes a rude churlish and pharisaical temper and infuses a more calm and treatable disposition It commands us to live and love as brethren to love without hypocrisie to have fervent charity amongst our selves and to be kindly affectioned one towards another It lays the sum of our duty toward others in this to love our neighbour as our selves This our Saviour seems to own as his proper and peculiar law and has ratified it with his own solemn sanction A new Commandment I give unto you that you love one another as I have loved you that you also love one another and then makes this the great visible badge of all those who are truly Christians by this shall all men know that you are my Disciples if you have love one to another And so indeed it was in those first and best ages of Religion for no sooner did the Gospel fly abroad into the world but the love and charity of Christians became notorious even to a Proverb the Heathens taking notice of the Christians of those times with this particular remark See how these Christians love one another They were then united in the most happy fraternity a word much used by Christians in those days and objected against them by the Heathens they liv'd as brethren and accounted themselves such not only as being sprung from one common Parent for in this respect that they had Nature for their common Mother they acknowledged the very Heathens to be brethren though otherwise little deserving the name of men but upon much higher accounts viz. that they had one and the same God for their Father drank all of the same spirit of holiness were brought out of the same womb of darkness and ignorance into the same light of truth that they were partakers of the same Faith and co-heirs of the same hope This Lucian himself confesses of them and that it was one of the great Principles that their Master instilled into them that they should all become Brethren after once they had thrown off the Religion of the Gentiles and had embraced the worship of their great crucified Master and given up themselves to live according to his Laws The truth is so ready intire and constant was their kindness and familiarity that the Heathens accused them for having privy marks upon their bodies whereby they fell in love with each other at first sight Indeed they never met but they embraced one another with all the demonstrations of a hearty and sincere affection saluting each other with aâ— holy kiss not only in their own houses but at their Religious Assemblies as a badge and bond of that Christian fellowship and communion that was maintained amongst them But the love and kindness of those Christians of old did not lie only in a smooth complemental carriage or in a parcel of good words depart in peace be you warm'd or fill'd but in the real exercises of charity and mercy Now because the two great objects of Charity are the good of mens souls and their outward and bodily welfare and happiness we shall find that the Primitive Christians were highly eminent and exemplary for both these The soul being of a much higher and nobler nature and consequently infinitely more precious and valuable than the body they were accordingly infinitely careful and solicitous to save mens
we need it which our selves have given unto others And what can more effectually induce us to relieve the indigent than to put our selves into their stead who beg help from us If any be hungry let us feed him is he naked let us cloath him if wronged by a powerful oppressour let us rescue and receive him Let our doors be open to strangers and such who have not where to lay their head Let not our assistance be wanting to Widows and Orphans And which is a mighty instance of charity let us redeem the captiv'd visit and assist the sick who are able to take no care of themselves and for strangers and the poor in case they die let us not suffer them to want the conveniency of a Grave These are the offices and the works of mercy which who-ever does offers up a true and grateful sacrifice to God who is not pleased with the blood of beasts but the charity of men whom therefore he treats upon their own terms has mercy on them whom he sees merciful and is inexorable to those who shut up their bowels against them that ask them In order therefore to our thus pleasing God let us make light of mony and transmit it into the heavenly treasures where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt nor thieves break through and steal nor Tyrants are able to seize and take it from us but where it shall be kept to our eternal advantage under the custody of God himself CHAP. III. Of their Unity and Peaceableness The Laws of Christ tend to beget a peaceable disposition This seen in our Saviour himself in his Apostles and the whole body of Christians The account Justin Martyr gives of them The world over-run with quarrels before Christ's coming The happy alteration that succeeded upon his appearance in it This particularly urged by Eusebius How much Christians contributed to the peace and quietness of the world Their unity among themselves Canonical Epistles the several sorts of them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 What their nature and tendency Differences presently endeavoured to be healed The great care and sollicitude of Constantine that way An eminent instance of condescention and self-denial in Gregory Nazianzen for the peace of the Church Difference in Rituals and lesser matters no hinderance of peace and Christian Communion manifested in the case of Polycarp and Anicetus Bishop of Rome Christians not provoked by every trifling quarrel The difference in this respect between them and the best Philosophers THE primitive Christians being of such a meek compassionate and benevolent temper as we have represented them it cannot be thought but that they were of a very quiet disposition and peaceable conversation and the having been so large in that will excuse me for being shorter in this When our blessed Saviour came to establish his religion in the world he gave a Law suitable to his nature and to the design of his coming into the world and to the exercise of his Government as he is Prince of peace a Law of mildness and gentleness of submission and forbearance towards one another we are commanded to follow peace with all men to follow after the things that make for peace as much as in us lies to live peaceably with all men we are forbidden all feuds and quarrels enjoyned not to revenge our selves but to give place unto wrath to let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamour and evil speaking be put away from us with all malice to be kind one to another tender hearted forgiving one another even as God for Christ's sake forgives us These are the Laws of Christianity which whenever they are duly entertained produce the most gentle and good natur'd principles the most innocent and quiet carriage This eminently appeared in the life of our blessed Saviour who was the most incomparable instance of kindness and civility of peace and quietness we never find him all his life treating any with sharpness and severity but the Scribes and Pharisees who were a pack of surly malicious ill-natur'd fellows and could be wrought upon by no other methods otherwise his mildness and humility the affablity and obligingness of his conversation and his remarkable kindness to his greatest enemies were sufficiently obvious both in his life and death and such was the temper of his Disciples and followers this excellent spirit like leaven spreading it self over the whole mass of Christians turning the brier into a myrtle-â—ree and the Vultur into a Dove See the account which Justin the Martyr gives of them We who formerly valued our mony and estates before all things else do now put them into a common stock and distribute them to those that are in need We who once hated each other and delighted in mutal quarrels and slaughters and according to the custom refused to sit at the same fire with those who were not of our own tribe and party now since the appearance of Christ in the world live familiarly with them pray for our enemies and endeavour to perswade those that unjustly hate us to order their live according to the excellent precepts of Christ that so they may have good hope to obtain the same rewards with us from the great Lord and Judge of all things But for the better understanding of this it may be useful to observe what a remarkable alteration in this respect the Christian Religion made in the world Before Christ's coming the word was generally over-run with feuds and quarrels mighty and almost implacable animosities and divisions reigning amongst Jews and Gentiles the Jews looked upon the Gentiles as dogs and out-casts refus'd all dealings with them even to the denial of courtesies of common charity and civility such as to tell a man the way or to give him a draught of water they reproached them as the vilest and most profligate part of mankind sinners of the Gentiles as the Apostle calls them according to the usual style and title Nor did the Gentiles less scorn and deride the Jews as a pitiful and contemptible generation stopping their noses and abhorring the very sight of them if by chance they met them they looked upon them as an unsociable people as enemies of all Nations that did not so much as wish well to any nay as haters even of mankind as Tacitus and their enemies in Josephus represent them The effect of all which was that they oppressed and persecuted them in every place trod them as dirt under their feet till at last the Romans came and finally took away both their place and Nation Thus stood the case between them till the arrival of the Prince of peace who partly by his death whereby he broke down the partition-wall between Jew and Gentile partly by the healing nature and tendency of his doctrine partly by the quiet and peaceable carriage of his followers did quickly extirpate and remove those mutual feuds and animosities and silence those passionate and quarrelsome divisions
of the expiation of his crimes embraced Christianity being told that in the Christian Religion there was a promise of cleansing from all fin and that as soon as ever any closed with it pardon would be granted to the most profligate offenders As if Christianity had been nothing else but a Receptacle and Sanctuary for Rogues and Villains where the worst of men might be wicked under hopes of pardon But how false and groundless especially as urged and intended by them this impious charge was appears from the whole design and tenour of the Gospel and that more than ordinary vein of piety and strictness that was conspicuous in the lives of its first professors whereof we have in this Treatise given abundant evidence To this representation of their lives and manners I have added some account concerning the ancient Rites and Usages of the Church wherein if any one shall meet with something that does not jump with his own humour he will I doubt not have more discretion than to quarrel with me for setting down things as I found them But in this part I have said the less partly because this was not the thing I primarily designed partly because it has been done by others in just Discourses In some few instances I have remarked the corruption and degeneracy of the Church of Rome from the purity and simplicity of the ancient Church and more I could easily have added but that I studiously avoided controversies it being no part of my design to enquire what was the judgment of the Fathers in disputable cases especially the more abstruse and intricate speculations of Theology but what was their practice and by what rules and measures they did govern and conduct their lives The truth is their Creed in the first Ages was short and simple their Faith lying then as Erasmus observes not so much in nice and numerous Articles as in a good and an holy life At the end of the Book I have added a Chronological Index of the Authors according to the times wherein they are supposed to have lived with an account of the Editions of their Works made use of in this Treatise Which I did not that I had a mind to tell the world either what or how many Books I had a piece of vanity of which had I been guilty it had been no hard matter to have furnish'd out a much larger Catalogue But I did it partly to gratifie the request of the Bookseller partly because I conceived it might not be altogether unuseful to the Reader the Index to give some light to the quotations by knowing when the Author lived especially when he speaks of things done in or near his own time and which must otherwise have been done at every turn in the body of the Book And because there are some Writings frequently made use of in this Book the Authors whereof in this Index could be reduced to no certain date especially those called the Apostolical Canons and Constitutions it may not be amiss here briefly to take notice of them And first for the Canons as I am far from their opinion who ascribe them to the Apostles so I think their great Antagonist Mr. Daillé bends the stick as much too far the other way not allowing them a being in the world till the year 500 or a little before The truth doubtless lies between these two 'T is evident both from the Histories of the Church and many passages in Tertullian Cyprian and others that there were in the most early Ages of Christianity frequent Synods and Councils for setling the Doctrine and Discipline of the Church though their determinations under that notion be not extant at this day Part of these Synodical Decrees so many of them as concern'd the Rites and Discipline of the Church we may conceive some person of learning and judgment gathered together probably about the beginning of the third Century and put them especially the first Fifty for I look not upon the whole eighty five as of equal value and authority if not into the same into some such form and method wherein we now have them stiling them Ecclesiastical or Apostolical Canons not as if they had been composed by the Apostles but either because containing things consonant to the Doctrines and Rules delivered by the Apostles or because made up of usages and traditions supposed to be derived from them or lastly because made by ancient and Apostolic men That many if not all of these Canons were some considerable time extant before the first Nicene Council we have great reason to believe from two or three passages amongst many others S. Basil giving rules about Discipline appoint a Deacon guilty of Fornication to be deposed and thrust down into the rank of Laicks and that in that capacity he might receive the Communion there being says he 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an ancient Canon that they that are deposed should only fall under this kind of punishment the ancients as I suppose following herein that command Thou shalt not punish twice for the same fault This Balsamon joins with the twenty fifth Canon of the Apostles which treats of the very same affair and indeed it cannot in probability be meant of any other partly because there was no ancient Canon that we know of in S. Basils time about this business but that partly because the same sentence is applied as the reason both in the Apostolical and S. Basils Canon Thou shalt not punish twice for the same fault which clearly shews whence Basil had it and what he understands by his ancient Canon Theodoret records a Letter of Alexander Bishop of Alexandria to another of the same name Bishop of Constantinople this Letter was written a little before the Council of Nice where speaking of some Bishops who had received the Arians whom he had excommunicated into Communion he tells him that herein they had done what the Apostolical Canon did not allow evidently referring to the twelfth and thirteenth Canon of the Apostles which state the case about one Bishops receiving those into Communion who had been excommunicated by another To this let me add that Constantine in a Letter to Eusebius commends him for refusing to leave his own Bishoprick to go over to that of Antioch to which he was chosen especially because herein he had exactly observed the rule of Ecclesiastical Discipline and had kept the commands of God and the Apostolical and Ecclesiastical Canon meaning doubtless the fourteenth Apostolick Canon which treats about such removes Nay learned men both formerly and of late have observed divers passages in the Nicene Canons themselves which plainly respect these Canons as might be made appear notwithstanding what Daillé has excepted against it were this a proper place to discourse of it This for the Canons For the Constitutions they are said to have been composed by S. Clemens at the instance and by the direction of the Apostles And this wild and extravagant
opinion has not wanted its Patrons and defenders Turrianus Bovius c. but herein deserted by the more modest and moderate of their own party besides that their Apostolicalness in this sense is by the learned Daillé everlastingly shattered and broken But then he sets them at too wide a distance assigning them to the latter end of the fifth Century when 't is as clear as the Sun that they were extant and in credit with many before the times of Epihanius though somewhat altered now from what they were in his time compiled probably out of many lesser 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Books containing the Doctrines and Rites that had been delivered and practised by ancient and Apostolical persons or at least vented under their names but whether as some conjecture composed by Clemens Alexandrinus and thence by an easie mistake ascribed to Clemens Romanus I am not at leisure to consider In this Class of Writers I may reckon Dionysius the Areopagite absurdly enough asserted by many to be genuine by Daillé thrust down to the beginning of the sixth Century but most probably thought to have been written about the middle of the fourth Age as a person amongst us deservedly of great name and note has shewn in his late Vindication of Ignatius Epistles These are the principal of those Authors who could not be fix'd upon any certain year the rest have in the Index their particular and respective times To which I have added the account of the Editions for the more ready finding if occasion be of any passage quoted out of them One thing indeed there is which I cannot but take notice of it looks so like a piece of vanity and ostentation that the margent is charged with so many quotations but whoever considers the nature of my design will quickly see that it was absolutely necessary and that it concerned me not to deliver any thing without good authority the reason why I have where I could brought them in speaking their own words though to avoid as much of the charge as was possible I omitted the citing Authors in their own Languages and only set them down in English faithfully representing the Authors sense though not always tying my self to a strict and precise translation How pertinent my quotations are the Reader must judge I hope he will find them exact being immediately fetched from the fountain-head here being very few if any that have not been examined more than once For the method into which the Book is cast I chose that which to me seemed most apt and proper following S. Pauls distribution of Religion into piety towards God sobriety towards our selves and righteousness towards others and accordingly divided the discourse into three parts respecting those three great branches of Religion though the first is much larger than either of the other by reason of some preliminary Chapters containing a vindication of the Christians from those crimes that were charged upon them that so the rubbish being cleared and thrown out of the way we might have a fairer prospect of their Religion afterwards The Book I confess is swell'd into a greater bulk than I either thought of or desired but by reason of somewhat a confused Copy never design'd for the Press no certain measures could be taken of it And now if after all this it shall be enquired why these Papers are made publick as I can give no very good reason so I will not trouble my self to invent a bad one It may suffice to intimate that this discourse long since drawn up at leisure hours lay then by me when a tedious and uncomfortable distemper whereby I have been taken off from all publick Service and the prosecution of severer studies gave me too much opportunity to look over my Papers and this especially which peradventure otherwise had never seen the light Indeed I must confess I was somewhat the easilier prevailed with to let this discourse pass abroad that it might appear that when I could not do what I ought I was at least willing to do what I could If he that reads it shall reap any delight and satisfaction by it or be in any measure induced to imitate these primitive virtues I shall think my pains well bestowed if not I am not the first and probably shall not be the last that has written a Book to no purpose THE CONTENTS PART I. CHAP. I. Things charged upon the Primitive Christians respecting their Religion CHAP. II. Of the Novelty that was charged upon Christianity CHAP. III. Things charged upon the Christians respecting their outward condition CHAP. IV. The Charges brought against them respecting their life and manners CHAP. V. Of the positive parts of their Religion And first Of their piety towards God CHAP. VI. Of Churches and places of Publick Worship in the primitive times CHAP. VII Of the Lords-Day and the Fasts and Festivals of the ancient Church CHAP. VIII Of the persons constituting the body of the Church both people and Ministers CHAP. IX Of their usual Worship both private and publick CHAP. X. Of Baptism and the administration of it in the Primitive Church CHAP. XI Of the Lords Supper and the administration of it in the ancient Church PART II. The Religion of the Primitive Christians as to those virtues that respect themselves CHAP. I. Of their Humility CHAP. II. Of their Heavenly-mindedness and contempt of the World CHAP. III. Of their sobriety in respect of their Garb and Apparel CHAP. IV. Of their great Temperance and Abstinence CHAP. V. Of their singular Continence and Chastity CHAP. VI. Of their readiness and constancy in professing their Religion CHAP. VII Of their Patience and Exemplary Carriage under Sufferings PART III. Of their Religion as respecting other men CHAP. I. Of their Justice and Honesty CHAP. II. Of their admirable Love and Charity CHAP. III. Of their Vnity and Peaceableness CHAP. IV. Of their Obedience and Subjection to Civil Government CHAP. V. Of their Penance and the Discipline of the Ancient Church Primitive Christianity OR THE RELIGION OF THE Ancient Christians In the first Ages of the Gospel PART I. CHAP. I. Things charged upon the Primitive Christians respecting their Religion Christian Religion likely to meet with opposition at its first setting out Chiefly undermined by Calumnies and Reproaches Three things by the Heathens charged upon the Christians some things respecting their Religion some their outward condition others their moral carriage and the matters of their worship Their Religion charged with two things Impiety and Novelty The charge of Atheism considered and answered out of the Fathers The Heathens excepted against as incompetent judges of the affairs of Christianity In what sense Christians confessed themselves Atheists The wretched and absurd Deities that were amongst the Heathens and the impure manner of their worship Atheism properly such disowned and denied by Christians The account they gave of their Religion and the God whom they worshipped NO sooner did the Son
Apology if they had not heard the sum of it to hold another conference with him even before the Senate it self which he thought would be a work worthy of so wise and grave a Council or if they had heard it then he did not doubt but they clearly apprehended how little he understood these things or that if he did understand them he knowingly dissembled it to his Auditors not daring to own the truth as Socrates did in the face of danger an evident argument that he was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not a Philosopher but a slave to popular applause and glory Secondly They did in some sort confess the charge that according to the vulgar notion which the Heathens had of their Deities they were Atheists i.e. strangers and enemies to them that the gods of the Gentiles were at best but Daemons impure and unclean spirits who had long imposed upon mankind and by their villanies sophistries and arts of terrour had so affrighted the common people who knew not really what they were and who judge of things more by appearance than by reason that they call'd them gods and gave to every one of them that name which the Daemon was willing to take to himself and that they really were nothing but Devils fallen and apostate spirits the Christians evidently manifested at every turn forcing them to the confessing it while by Prayer and invocating the name of the true God they drove them out of possessed persons and therefore they trembled to encounter with a Christian as Octavius triumphingly tells Caecilius that they entertained the most absurd and fabulous notions of their gods and usually ascrib'd such things to them as would be accounted an horrible shame and dishonour to any wise and good man the Worship and mysterious Rites of many of them being so brutish and filthy that the honester and severer Romans were asham'd on 't and therefore overturn'd their Altars and banished them out of the roll of their Deities though their degenerate posterity took them in again as Tertullian observes their gods themselves so impure and beastly their Worship so obscene and detestable that Julius Firmicus advises them to turn their Temples into Theatres where the secrets of their Religion may be delivered in Scenes and to make their Players Priests and that the common rout might sing the amours the sports and pastimes the wantonnesses and impieties of their gods no places being so fit for such a Religion as they Besides the attributing to them humane bodies with many blemishes and imperfections and subjection to the miseries of humane life and to the laws of mortality they could not deny them to have been guilty of the most horrid and prodigious villanies and enormities revenge and murther incest and luxury drunkenness and intemperance theft and unnatural rebellion against their Parents and such like of which their own Writings were full almost in every page which served only to corrupt and debauch the minds and manners of youth as Octavius tells his adversary where he pursues this argument at large with great eloquence and reason Nay those among them that were most inquisitive and serious and that entertained more abstract and refin'd apprehensions of things than the common people yet could not agree in any fit and rational notion of a Deity some ridiculously affirming one thing and some another till they were divided into a hundred different opinions and all of them farther distant from the truth than they were from one another the vulgar in the mean while making gods of the most brutish objects such as Dogs Cats Wolves Goats Hawks Dragons Beetles Crocodiles c. this Origen against Celsus particularly charges upon the Egyptians When you approach says he their sacred places they have glorious Groves and Chappels Temples with goodly Gates and stately Portico's and many mysterious and religious Ceremonies but when once you are entred and got within their Temples you shall see nothing but a Cat or an Ape or a Crocodile or a Goat or a Dog worshipp'd with the most solemn veneration Nay they deified senseless and inanimate things that had no life or power to help themselves much less their Worshippers Herbs Roots and Plants nay unmanly and degenerate passions fear paleness c. fell down before stumps and statues which owed all their Divinity to the cost and folly of their Votaries despised and trampled on by the sorriest Creatures Mice Swallows c. who were wont to build nests in the very mouth of their gods and Spiders to periwig their heads with Cobwebs being forc'd first to make them and then make them clean and to defend and protect them that they might fear and worship them as he in Minutius wittily derides them in whose Worship there are says he many things that justly deserve to be laught at and others that call for pity and compassion And what wonder now if the Christians were not in the least ashamed to be called Atheists with respect to such Deities and such a Religion as this was Thirdly In the strict and proper notion of Atheism they no less truly than confidently denied the charge and appealed to their severest adversaries whether those who owned such principles as they did could reasonably be stiled Atheists none ever pleaded better and more irrefragable arguments for the existence of a supream infinite Being who made and governs all things by infinite wisdom and almighty power none ever more ready to produce a most clear and candid confession of their faith as to this grand article of Religion than they Although we profess our selves Atheists with respect to those whom you esteem and repute to be gods so their Apologist tells the Senate yet not in respect of the true God the parent and fountain of wisdom and righteousness and all other excellencies and perfections who is infinitely free from the least contagion or spot of evil Him and his only begotten Son who instructed us and the whole Society of good Angels in these divine mysteries and the Spirit of Prophecie we worship and adore honouring them in truth and with the highest reason and ready to communicate these things to any one that 's willing to learn them as we our selves have received them Can we then be Atheists who worship the great Creator of this world not with blood incense and offerings which we are sufficiently taught he stands no need of but exalt him according to our power with prayers and praises in all the addresses we make to him believing this to be the only honour that 's worthy of him not to consume the Creatures which he has given us for our use and the comfort of those that want in the fire by Sacrifice but to approve our selves thankful to him and to sing and celebrate rational hymns and sacrifices pouring out our prayers to him as a grateful return for those many good things which we have received and do yet expect from him
which he there makes good by particular instances and the same answer St. Ambrose gives to Symmachus if nothing but ancient Rites will please you how comes it to pass that there has been a succession of new and foreign Rites even in Rome it self of which he gives him many particular examples In short Arnobius wittily argues thus Our way of Religion you say is new and yours ancient and what does this either hurt our cause or help yours If ours be new 't will in time become old is yours old there was a time when it was new the goodness and authority of Religion is not to be valued by length of time but by the excellency of its worship nor does it become us to consider so much when it begun as what it is we Worship It may not be impertinent in this place to take notice of what the Heathens objected as a branch of this charge that if God's sending Christ into the world was so great a blessing why did this Saviour of mankind come no sooner to reveal this Religion to lead men into the truth to tell the world who this true God was and to reduce us to the adoration of him if so why did God suffer him to stay so long and to be born as 't were but a few hours before in comparison of the preceding Ages of the world To this Arnobius answers with a great deal of modesty and reason that he could not tell that 't were easie to retort the same captious question upon them if 't were so much to the benefit of the world that Hercules Aesculapius Mercury c. should be gods why were they born and deified no sooner that not only posterity but antiquity might have reap'd advantage by them If there was reason in one case then there was also in the other but to assign proper and particular reasons was not possible it not being within the power of such a short-sighted Creature as man is to fathom the depth of the Divine Councils or to discover by what ways or methods he disposes his affairs these things being known only to him who is the grand Parent the Soveraign Lord and Governour of all things that although we are not able to assign the cause why a thing comes to pass in this or that particular manner yet this concludes never a whit the more that the thing is not so or that it is less credible when it has otherwise the most clear and unquestionable evidence and demonstration More particularly he answers that our Saviour cannot be said to have been lately sent in respect of God because in respect of eternity there is nothing late where there is neither beginning nor end there can be nothing too soon nothing too late Time indeed is transacted by parts and terms but these have no place in a perpetual and uninterrupted series of eternal Ages what if that state of things to which he came to bring relief required that season of time to come in what if the condition of ancient and modern times were in this case not alike or call'd for somewhat different methods of cure it may be the great God then chose to send Christ when the state of mankind was more broken and shatter'd and humane nature become more weak and unable to help it self this we are sure of that if what so lately came to pass had been necessary to have been done some thousands of years ago the supream Creator would have done it or had it been necessary to have been done thousands of years hence nothing could have forc'd God to have anticipated the setled periods of time one moment for all his actions are managed by fix'd and eternal reasons and what he has once determined cannot be frustrated by any change or alteration And thus we see how easily and yet how satisfactorily the primitive Christians wip'd off that double imputation of impiety and novelty which the Gentiles had so undeservedly cast upon their Religion CHAP. III. Things charged upon the Christians respecting their outward condition The Christians look'd upon and despis'd by the Heathens as a company of rude and illiterate persons mechanicks silly women and children This Charge considered and largly answered by Origen Christianity provides for the truest and best knowledge it excludes none learned or unlearned Christians not shy of communicating the knowledge of their mysteries to men sober and inquisitive The efficacy of Christianity in prevailing upon men of the acutest parts and greatest learning The Christians accused for being poor and mean This charge universally false Christianity entertain'd by persons of all sorts of the highest as well as the lowest rank Several instances of such Fl. Clemens and Fl. Domitilla Domitian's near kindred Christians another Domitilla Domitian's Neece Acil. Glabrio the Consul Apollonius the Senator and others Philip the Emperour proved to be no Christian the rise of the story whence Though Christianity had had no such persons under its profession this had been no just reasonable prejudice External pomp and grandeur not necessary to Religion The advantages Christians reaped from their meanness and contempt of the world Of their being charged as a people useless and unserviceable to the publick This disowned The opinion that it was not lawful for Christians to bear Arms or Offices particular only to some persons and in some cases and why How much the world was beholden to Christians for reclaiming men from vice and wickedness The Gospel greatly instrumental that way its general influence upon those whom it did not convert the Writings of Philosophers generally better after Christianity appeared and why The excellent Prayer of Simplicius Christians very useful by frequent working beneficial miracles curing diseases raising the dead dispossessing Devils c. This miraculous power continued for several Ages in the Church Christians further traduced as pernicious to the world as the cause of all publick evils and calamities This objected at every turn The occasion of S. Augustine's and Orosius his writing a vindication of it This Charge justly retorted upon the Heathens and they sent to seek the cause of publick calamities nearer home Some few hinted by Tertullian Christians unjustly charged with it because the world was pestered with such evils before Christianity appeared in it The publick State better and more prosperous since Christianity than before It s prosperity ebb'd or increas'd according to the entertainment Christianity found in the world THE second sort of arts which the Enemies of Christianity made use of to render Christians vile and despicable related to the circumstances of their external state and condition in the world where two things were laid to their charge that they generally were a very mean and inconsiderable sort of men and that they were an useless and unserviceable people nay pernicious and mischievous to the world They were looked upon as the lowest and meanest rank of men persons neither considerable for their parts and learning nor for
his liberty against Kings and Princes and only yielding to God whose he wholly is coming off from all the attempts of adversity with victory and triumph So argues that excellent person and who ever reads him in his native language must confess it with equal strength of eloquence and reason where he also briefly touches that objection so common amongst the Heathens that if Christians were so dear to God why then did he suffer them to be oppressed with so many miseries and troubles and not come in to vindicate and relieve them an argument fully cleared by Arnobius Lactantius and other ancient Apologists for the Christian Faith But this was not all they were charged as a very useless and unserviceable people that contributed nothing to the happiness of the Common-wealth nay as destructive and pernicious to humane society and as the procuring cause of all those mischiefs and calamities that befel the world In answer to the first their being useless as to the common good hear what Tertullian says in the case How can this be says he when we live amongst you have the same diet habit manner and way of life we are no Brachmans or Indian Gymnosophists who live in Woods and banish themselves from all civil life we are not unmindful of what we owe to our great Creator and therefore despise none of his Creatures though careful to use them with temperance and sobriety wherefore we live not in the world without the use of your Markets Shambles Bathes Taverns Shops Stables your Marts and other ways of humane commerce we go to Sea with you bear Arms till and improve the ground use merchandize we undergo Trades amongst you and expose our works to your use and how then we can seem unserviceable to your affairs with which and by which we live I see not Certainly says he if any have cause truly to complain of our being unprofitable they are Bawds Panders Pimps Hectors and Ruffians sellers of poyson Magicians Southsayers Wizards and Astrologers and to be unserviceable to these is the greatest serviceableness But besides this they pleaded for themselves that their Religion was highly beneficial to the world and in its own nature contributed to the peace and happiness of mankind it cannot be denied but that some of the Primitive Christians were shie of engaging in Wars and not very forward to undergo publick places of authority and power but besides that this was only the opinion of some private persons and not the common and current practice or determination of the Church it arose partly from some mistaken passages in the Gospel turning Evangelical Counsels into positive precepts but principally because such Offices and Employments were usally clogg'd with such circumstances and conditions as obliged them to some things repugnant to the Christian Law otherwise where they could do it without offering violence to their Religion and their Conscience they shunn'd it not but frequently bore Arms and discharged such Publick Offices as were committed to them as cannot be unknown to any that are never so little vers'd in the History of the first Ages of the Church never were there better more faithful and resolute Souldiers more obedient to the Orders of their Commanders more ready to attempt the most hazardous enterprises never boggling at any thing which they could do without sin of which amongst many others I shall instance only in that of the Thebaean Legion who being commanded upon a bloody and unlawful butchery to destroy and cut off the Christians their brethren meekly returned this answer to the Heathen Emperour Maximianus under whom they served we offer our hands against any Enemy but count it unlawful to embrue them in the blood of the innocent our Swords know how to strike a Rebel or an Enemy but not to wound those who are Citizens and guiltless we remember that we took up Arms for not against friends and fellow Citizens we have always fought for justice and piety and for the safety of the innocent these have been hitherto the price of those dangers that we have run upon we have fought for fidelity which how shall we be able to keep to you if we do not first keep it to our God So far were the Christians of those times from refusing to engage in the service of their Prince Nay those of them who were so bound up by their private sentiments as not to think it lawful yet reckoned they otherways made equivalent compensation thus when Celsus press'd the Christians to undergo publick Offices and to help the Emperours in their Wars Origen answers that they did so though by a divine not humane help by praying for their persons and their prosperity and success above all men says he we fight for the Emperour while we train our selves in exercises of piety and contend by prayers for him But besides these there were several other instances which the Christians pleaded to vindicate themselves from being unserviceable to the good of mankind amongst which I shall at present take notice only of these two First That they really sought to reclaim men from vice and sin to a good and a virtuous life by which means besides that they provided for mens highest and nearest interest the interest of their souls and their eternal happiness in another life they greatly consulted the peace and welfare of the places where they lived for vicious and wicked men are the pests and plagues of humane society that taint and infect others by their bad examples or perswasions and entail vengeance upon the places of their residence whilst good men engage the favour and blessing of heaven and both by their counsels and examples bring over others to sobriety and virtue whereby they establish and strengthen the foundations of Government and the happiness of civil life and none so eminent for this as the Christians of old this is the great triumphant argument wherewith Origen at every turn exalts the honour of Christianity this says he we find in the multitudes of those that believe who are delivered from that sink of vices wherein before they were wont to wallow enquire into the lives of some of us compare our former and our present course and you 'll find in what filthiness and impieties they tumbled before they entertained the Christian Doctrine but since the time that they entred into it how gentle and moderate how grave and constant are they become and some so inflam'd with the love of purity that they forbear even what lawfully they might enjoy how largely are the Churches of God founded by Christ spread over all Nations consisting of such as are converted from innumerable evil ways to a better mind And elsewhere vindicating the Doctrine of Christ from the mischievous cavils of his adversary he tells us how 't was impossible that could be pestilent and hurtful which had converted so many from their vices and debaucheries to a course most agreeable
the Empire with which it began and had grown up than that since the Reign of Augustus no misfortune but on the contrary according to all mens wishes every thing had hapned to be magnificent and prosperous Hence Eusebius notes once and again that the affairs of the Empire commonly flourished while Christianity was protected but when that was persecuted things began to go to rack and their ancient peace and prosperity could not be retrieved till peace and tranquillity was restored to the Christians therefore Cyprian tells the Proconsul that their cruelty to the Christians was one of those crying sins that had provoked God to inflict so many heavy miseries upon them not only refusing to worship God themselves but unjustly persecuting those innocent persons that did with all the methods of rage and fierceness So little hand had the Christians in entailing vengeance upon the world that their Enemies rather wilfully pull'd it down upon their own heads CHAP. IV. The Charges brought against them respecting their life and manners The Primitive Christians accused of the grossest sins Sacriledge Sedition Treason Incest Murder c. The particular consideration of these referred to their proper places What they offered in the general for their vindication considered They openly asserted their innocency and appealed to the known piety of their lives None accounted Christians however eminent in profession unless their lives answerable Their abstaining from appearance of evil or doing any thing that symbolized with the idolatrous Rites of the Heathens Their being willing to be brought to the strictest tryal and to be severely punished if found guilty of those crimes Their complaints of being generally condemned meerly for bearing the name of Christians They greatly gloried in that title This name prohibited by Julian and Christians commanded in scorn to be called Galilaeans The Christians appealed for their vindication to the Consciences of their impartial Enemies and by them acquitted The testimonies of Pliny Ser. Grannianus Antoninus Pius M. Antoninus Trypho the Jew and Apollo's Oracle to this purpose The excellency of Christians if compared with the best of Heathens All such disowned for Christians as did not exactly conform to the rule and discipline of Christianity ALL the attempts that had been hitherto made against the honour and reputation of Christians seemed but like the first skirmishings of an Army in respect of the main Battalia that was yet behind the Charge that was made against their moral carriage and behaviour and here they were accused at every turn of no less than Sacriledge Sedition and High-Treason of incest and promiscuous mixtures of murder and eating the flesh of Infants at their sacramental Feasts These were sad and horrid crimes and had they been true would justly have made Christianity stink in the nostrils of all sober and considering men but they were as false as they were black and hellish the particular Answers to these Charges together with some things relating to matters of Worship shall be considered hereafter according as they fall in in their more proper places I shall only at present take notice of the general vindication which the Christians made of themselves from these Indictments that were brought in against them and the sum of what they pleaded lyes especially in these three things First They did openly assert and maintain their innocency and shew by their lives as well as their Apologies that they were men of quite another make and temper than their Enemies did generally represent them their Religion and way of life was admired by all who says S. Clement to the Corinthians did ever dwell amongst you that did not approve of your excellent and unshaken Faith that did not wonder at your sober and moderate piety in Christ you were forward to every good work adorned with a most virtuous and venerable conversation doing all things in the fear of God and having his Laws and Commands written upon the tables of your hearts They placed Religion then not in talking finely but in living well Amongst us says Athenagoras the meanest and most mechanick persons and old women although not able to discourse and dispute for the usefulness of their profession do yet demonstrate it in their lives and actions they don't indeed critically weigh their words and recite elegant Orations but they manifest honest and virtuous actions while being buffeted they strike not again nor sue them at Law that spoil and plunder them Liberally give to them that ask and love their neighbours as themselves And this we do because we are assured that there is a God that superintends humane affairs who made both us and the whole world and because we must give to him an account of all the transactions of our lives therefore we chuse the most moderate humane and benign and to many the most contemptible course of life for we reckon that no evil in this life can be so great though we should be called to lay down our lives which ought not to be esteemed little and of no value in comparison of that happiness which we hereafter look for from the great Judge of the world promised to those who are of an humble benign and moderate conversation Clemens of Alexandria gives us this short account of them as the fairest possession we give up our selves to God entirely loving him and reckoning this the great business of our lives no man is with us a Christian or accounted truly rich temperate and generous but he that is pious and religious nor does any farther bear the image of God than he speaks and believes what is just and holy so that this in short is the state of us who follow God such as are our desires such are our discourses such as are our discourses such are our actions such as are our actions such is our life so universally good is the whole life of Christians Certainly none were ever greater Enemies to a naked profession and the covering a bad life under the title of Christianity Do any live otherwise than Christ hath commanded 't is a most certain argument they are no Christians though with their tongues they never so smoothly profess the Christian Doctrine for 't is not meer Professors but those who live according to their profession that shall be saved as Justin Martyr declares before the Emperours Let no man says Basil impose upon himself with inconsiderate words saying though I be a sinner yet I am a Christian and I hope that title will be my shelter but hearken sinner all wicked men shall be bundled up together and in the great day of the divine vengeance shall be indifferently thrown into those merciless and devouring Flames Nay so careful were they to avoid all sin that they stood at a wide distance from any thing that though lawful in it self yet seemed to carry an ill colour with it this Origen tells Celsus was the reason why they refused to do any honour
desirous to be scann'd and searched to the bottom and to lye open to the view of all and therefore desired no other favour than that that Apologie which Justin Martyr presented to them might be set out with the Decree of the Senate that so people might come to the true knowledge of their case and they be delivered from false suspicions and these accusations for which they had been undeservedly exposed to so many punishments Thirdly They appealed for their vindication to the judgment and consciences of their more sober and impartial Enemies and were accordingly acquitted by them as guiltless of any hainous crimes Pliny the younger being commanded by the Emperour Trajan to give him an account of the Christians tells him that after the best estimate that he could take and the strictest inquisition that he could make by tortures he found no worse of them than this that they were wont to meet early for the performance of their solemn devotions and to bind themselves under the most sacred obligations to commit no vice or wickedness and that their Religion was nothing else but an untoward and immoderate superstition This is the testimony which that great man who being Proconsul of Bithynia was capable to satisfy himself and who was no less diligent to search into the matter gives concerning them Next after him Serâ—â—us Granianus the Proconsul of Asia writes to the Emperour Adrian Trajans successor to represent to him how unjust it was to put Christians to death when no crime was duly laid to their charge meerly to gratifie the tumultuous clamours of the people to whom the Emperour answers that they should not be unjustly troubled that if any thing was truly prov'd against them he should punish them according to the nature of the fault but if done out of malice or spite he should then accordingly punish the accuser as a calumniator Next to Adrian Antoninus Pius if he be not mistaken for his successor Marcus in his Epistle to the Commons of Asia tells them that they had traduced the Christians and had objected those crimes to them which they could not prove that they were more firm and undaunted in their profession than themselves and had a greater freedom with and confidence towards God and that therefore he resolved to ratifie and follow the determination of his Father After him comes M. Antoninus who having obtained that famous and signal Victory against the Quades in Germany confesses in his Letter to the Senate which Letter though I know 't is questioned by some learned men as now extant whether true and genuine yet that there was such a Letter is evident enough from Tertullian who himself lived within a few years of that time and appeals to it that it was clearly gotten by the prayers of the Christian Legion which he had in his Army and therefore commands that none be molested for being Christians and that if any accuse a Christian for being such without a sufficient crime proved against him he shall be burnt alive for his accusation that a Christian confessing himself to be one shall be safe and secure and that the Governour of the Province shall not drive him to renounce his profession and this he commands to be confirmed by the Decree of the Senate So clear did the Christians appear to their greatest Enemies especially in their more calm and sober intervals Nay Trypho the Jew and that very notion speaks him enemy enough yet confesses them clear of those foul aspersions for when the Martyr had asked him whether he disliked the Christians manners and way of life and whether he really believed that they ate mens flesh and putting out the Candles ran together in promiscuous mixtures the Jew answered that those things whereof they were accused by many were unworthy of belief as being so extreamly abhorrent to humane nature and that the precepts which are commanded in their Gospel which his curiosity had prompted him to read were so great and admirable that he supposed no man could be able to keep and obey them And to instance in no more the Heathen Oracle it self pronounced in favour of the Christians for Apollo giving forth his Oracles not as he was wont by humane voice but out of a dark and dismal cavern confessed it was because of just men that lived upon the earth and when Dioclesian enquired who those just men were one of the Heathen Priests that stood by answered that they were the Christians This Constantine the Great tells he himself heard being then a young man and in company at that time with the Emperour Dioclesian and he there solemnly calls God to witness for the truth of the story From all which it appears how innocent the Christians were of those things which the Gentiles charged upon them how infinitely strict and unblameable in their lives and therefore triumphed over the Heathens in the purity and innocency of their conversations Origen tells Celsus that the Churches of God which had taken upon them the discipline of Christ if compared to the common Societies of men were amongst them like lights in the world For who says he is there but he must needs confess that the worser part of our Church is much better than the popular assemblies as for instance the Church of God at Athens is meek and quiet as endeavouring to approve it self to the great God whereas now the popular assembly of Athens is seditious and tumultuous and no ways to be compared with the Church of God in that City and the same may be said of the Churches of God and the vulgar assemblies which are at Corinth or Alexandria So Minucius Foelix should we Christians be compared with you although our Discipline may seem somewhat inferiour yet we should be found infinitely to transcend you you forbid adultely and then practise it we keep entirery to our own Wives you punish wickedness when committed with us even a wicked thought is sin you stand in awe of those who are conscious of your crimes we of nothing but our consciences without which we cannot be and last of all 't is with your party that the Prison is filled and crowded no Christian is there unless such a one as is either a shame to his Religion or an Apostate from it and a little after he tells his adversary how much they exceeded the best Philosophers who were filthy and tyrannical and only eloquent to declaime against those vices of which themselves were most guilty that we Christians do not measure wisdom by mens habits but by their minds and tempers and do not speak great things but live them having this to boast of that we really attain to those things which they earnestly sought but could not find Thus Lactantius having excellently discoursed of the prodigious debaucheries and wickednesses of the Heathens but which of these things says he can be objected to our people whose
whole Religion is to live without spot or blemish from whence they might easily gather had they any understanding that piety is on our side and that they themselves are vile and impious And Eusebius tells us that in his time the Christian Faith had by gravity sincerity modesty and holiness of life so conquered all opposition that none durst bespatter it or charge it with any of those calumnies which the ancient Enemies of our Religion used to fasten upon it What Religion says Arnobius can be truer more useful powerful just than this which as he elsewhere notes renders men meek speakers of truth modest chaste charitable kind and helpful to all as if most nearly related to us and indeed this is the genuine and natural tendency of the Christian Doctrine and which it cannot but effect where-ever 't is kindly embraced and entertained So true is that which Athenagoras told the Emperours that no Christian could be a bad man unless he were an hypocrite and Tertullian openly declares that when men depart from the discipline of the Gospel they so far cease amongst us to be accounted Christians and therefore when the Heathens objected that some that went under that name were guilty of great enormities and enquired how comes such a one to be a cheat if the Christians be so righteous how so cruel if they be merciful he answers that by this very thing they bore witness that they who were real Christians were not such that there 's a vast difference between the crime and the name the opinion and the truth that they are not presently Christians that are called so but cheat others by the pretence of a name that they shunn'd the company of such and did not meet or partake with them in the offices of Religion that they did not admit those whom meer force and cruelty had driven to deny Christianity much less such as voluntarily transgressed the Christian Discipline and that therefore the Heathens did very ill to call them Christians whom the Christians themselves did disown who yet were not wont to deny their own party CHAP. V. Of the positive parts of their Religion and first of their piety towards God The Religion of the ancient Christians considered with respect to God themselves and other men Their piety seen in two things their detestation of Idolatry and great care about the matters of divine Worship What notion they had of Idolatry their abhorrency of it Their refusing to give divine honour to Angels and created Spirits this condemned by the Laodicean Council Their denying any thing of divine honour to Martyrs and departed Saints The famous instance of the Church of Smyrna concerning S. Polycarp S. Augustine's testimonies to this purpose Their mighty abhorrence of the Heathen Idolatry The very making an Idol accounted unlawful Hatred of Idolatry one of the first principles instilled into new Converts Their affectionate bewailing any that lapsed into this sin Several severe penalties imposed by the ancient Council of Illiberis upon persons guilty of Idolatry They were willing to hazard any thing rather than sacrifice to the Gods Constantius his plot to try the integrity of his Courtiers A double instance of the Christian Souldiers in Julian's Army Their active zeal in breaking the Images of the Heathen gods and assaulting persons while doing sacrifice to them this whether justifiable Notwithstanding all this the Christians accused by the Heathens of Idolatry of worshipping the Sun whence that charge arose Of adoring a Cross Of worshipping an Asses head Christians called Asinarii The absurd and monstrous Picture of Christ mentioned by Tertullian The occasion of this ridiculous fiction whence HAving thus seen with how much clearness the ancient Christians vindicated themselves from those unjust aspersions which their spightful and malicious adversaries had cast upon them we come now to take a more direct and positive view of their Religion which according to S. Pauls division we shall consider as to their piety towards God those virtues which more immediately concern'd themselves and those which respected their behaviour and carriage towards others Their piety towards God appeared in those two main instances of it a serious and hearty detestation of Idolatry and a religious care about the concerns of Divine Worship Idolatry in those times was the prevailing sin of the world the principal crime of mankind the great guilt of the Age and the almost sole cause of mens being brought into judgment as what in a manner contains all sins under it as Tertullian begins his Book upon that subject a crime of the first rank and one of the highest sorts of wickedness as 't is called by the most ancient Council in Spain They looked upon it as a sin that undermined the very being of the Deity and ravished the honour of his Crown Before we proceed any further we shall first enquire what was the notion they generally had of Idolatry and they then accounted that a man was guilty of Idolatry when he gave divine adoration to any thing that was not God not only when he worshipped a material Idol but when he vested any creature with that religious respect and veneration that was only due to God Idolatry says Tertullian robs God denying him those honours that are due to him and conferring them upon others so that at the same time it does both defraud him and reproach him and a little after he expresly affirms that whatever is exalted above the Standard of civil Worship in imitation of the divine excellency is directly made an Idol thus S. Gregory for his solid and excellent learning call'd the Divine a title never given to any besides him but to St. John the Apostle defines Idolatry which says he is the greatest evil in the world to be the translation of that worship that is due to the Creator upon the Creature Accordingly we find them infinitely zealous to assert divine adoration as the proper and incommunicable prerogative of God alone and absolutely refusing to impart religious Worship to any though the best of Creatures surely if any one would think Angels the first rank of created beings creatures of such sublime excellencies and perfections might have challenged it at their hands but hear what Origen says to this we adore says he our Lord God and serve him alone following the example of Christ who when tempted by the Devil to fall down and worship him answered thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and him only shalt thou serve which is the reason why we refuse to give honours to those spirits that preside over humane affairs because we cannot serve two Masters to wit God and Mammon as for these Daemons we know that they have no administration of the conveniencies of mans life yea though we know that they are not Daemons but Angels that have the Government of fruits and seasons and the productions of Animals committed to them we indeed speak well
of them and think them happy that they are intrusted by God to manage the conveniencies of mans life but yet do not give them that honour that is only due to God for this neither does God allow of neither do they desire it but equally love and regard us when we do not as if we did sacrifice to them And when Celsus a little before had smartly pressed him to do honour to Daemons he rejects the motion with great contempt away says he with this counsel of Celsus who in this is not in the least to be hearkned to for the great God only is to be adored and prayers to be delivered up to none but his only begotten Son the first born of every creature that as our High-Priest he may carry them to his Father and to our Father to his God and to our God 'T is true that the Worship of Angels did and that very early as appears from the Apostles caveat against it in his Epistle to the Colossians creep into some parts of the Christian Church but was always disowned and cryed out against and at last publickly and solemnly condemned by the whole Laodicean Council it is not lawful says the thirty fifth Canon of that Council for Christians to leave the Church of God and to go and invocate Angels and to make prohibited assemblies if therefore any one shall be found devoting himself to this private Idolatry let him be accursed forasmuch as he has forsaken the Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God and has delivered up himself to Idolatry From which nothing can be more clear than that it was the sense of these Fathers that the worshipping of Angels was not only down-right Idolatry but a plain apostasie from the Christian Faith Nor were they more peremptory in denying divine honour to Angels than they were to Martyrs and departed Saints for though they had a mighty honour and respect for Martyrs as we shall take notice afterwards as those that had maintained the truth of their Religion and seal'd it with their blood and therefore did what they could to do praise and honour to their memories yet were they far from placing any thing of Religion or divine adoration in it whereof 't will be enough to quote one famous instance The Church of Smyrna writing to the Churches of Pontus to give them an account of the martyrdom of Polycarpus their Bishop tells them that after he was dead many of the Christians were desirous to have gotten the remains of his body possibly to have given them decent and honourable burial but were prevented in it by some Jews who importun'd the Proconsul to the contrary suggesting that the Christians leaving their crucified Master might henceforth worship Polycarpus whereupon they add that this suggestion must needs proceed from ignorance of the true state of Christians this they did say they not considering how impossible 't is that ever we should either forsake Christ who died for the salvation of mankind or that we should worship any other We adore him as the Son of God but the Martyrs as the Disciples and Followes of our Lord we deservedly love for their eminent kindness to their own Prince and Master whose Companions and Fellow-Disciples we also by all means desire to be This instance is so much the more valuable in this case not only because so plain and pertinent but because so ancient and from persons of so great authority in the Church For this is not the testimony of any one private person but of the whole Church of Smyrna according as it had been trained up under the Doctrine and Discipline of Polycarpus the immediate Disciple of S. John This was the Doctrine and practice of Christians then and it held so for some Ages after even down to the times of S. Augustine when yet in many other things the simplicity of the Christian Religion began to decline apace we set apart says he no Temples nor Priests nor divine services nor sacrifices to Martyrs because they are not God but the same who is theirs is our God indeed we honour their memories as of holy men who have stood for the truth even unto death that so the true Religion might appear and those which are false be convinc'd to be so but who ever heard a Priest standing at the Altar built for the honour and worship of God over the body of the holy Martyr to say in his Prayers I offer sacrifice to thee Peter or Paul or Cyprian for in such commemorations we offer to that God who made them both men and Martyrs and has made them partners with holy Angels in the heavenly glory and by these solemnities we both give thanks to the true God for the victories which they have gain'd and also stir up our selves by begging his assistance to contend for such crowns and rewards as they are possessed of so that whatever offices religious men perform in the places of the Martyrs they are only ornaments to their memories not sacrifices or divine services done to the departed as if they were Deities More to the same purpose we may find in that place as also in infinite other places of his Works where were it worth the while I could easily shew that he does no less frequently than expresly assert that though the honour of love respect and imitation yet no religious adoration is due either to Angels Martyrs or departed Saints But the great instance wherein the primitive Christians manifested their detestation of Idolatry was in respect of the idolatrous Worship of the Heathen world the denying and abhorring any thing of divine honour that was done to their gods They looked upon the very making of Idols though with no intention to worship them as an unlawful trade and as inconsistent with Christianity how have we renounced the Devil and his Angels says Tertullian meaning their solemn renunciation in baptism if we make Idols nor is it enough to say though I make them I do not worship them there being the same cause not to make them that there is not to worship them viz. the offence that in both is done to God yet thou dost so far worship them as thou makest them that others may worship them and therefore he roundly pronounces that no Art no Profession no service whatsoever that is employed either in making or ministring to Idols can come short of Idolatry They startled at any thing that had but the least shadow of symbolizing with them in their Idolatry therefore the Ancyran Council condemned them to a two years supension from the Sacrament who sat down with their Heathen friends upon their solemn Festivals in their Idol-Temples although they brought their own Provisions along with them and touched not one bit of what had been offered to the Idol Their first care in instructing new Converts was to leaven them with the hatred of Idolatry those that are to be initiated into our Religion says Origen
Epiphanius and then too met with no very welcome entertainment as may appear from Epiphanius his own Epistle translated by S. Hierom where the story in short is this Coming says he to Anablatha a Village in Palestine and going into a Church to pray I espied a Curtain hanging over the door whereon was painted the Image of Christ or of some Saint which when I looked upon and saw the Image of a man hanging up in the Church contrary to the authority of the Holy Scriptures I presently rent it and advis'd the Guardians of the Church rather to make usd of it as a Winding-sheet for some poor mans burying whereat when they were a little troubled and said 't was but just that since I had rent that Curtain I should change it and give them another I promis'd them I would and have now sent the best I could get and pray' entreat them to accept it and give command that for the time to come no such Curtains being contrary to our Religion may be hung up in the Church of Christ it more becoming your place solicitously to remove whatever is offensive to and unworthy of the Church of Christ and the people committed to your Charge This was written to John Bishop of Jerusalem in whose Diocess the thing had been done and the case is so much the more pressing and weighty by how the greater esteem and value Epiphanius then Bishop of Salamine in Cyprus for his great age and excellent learning had in the Church of God This instance is so home and pregnant that the Patrons of Image-Worship are at a mighty loss what to say to it and after all are forced to cry out against it as supposititious Bellarmine brings no less than nine arguments if such they may be called to make it seem probable but had he been ingenuous he might have given one reason more true and satisfactory than all the rest why that part of the Epistle should be thought forged and spurious viz. because it makes so much against them More might be produced to this purpose but by this I hope 't is clear enough that the honest Christians of those times as they thought it sufficient to pray to God without making their addresses to Saints and Angels so they accounted their Churches fine enough without Pictures and Images to adorn them Their Churches being built and beautified so far as consisted with the ability and simplicity of those days they sought to derive a greater value and esteem upon them by some peculiar consecration for the wisdom and piety of those times thought it not enough barely to devote them to the publick services of Religion unless they also set them apart with solemn Rites of a formal dedication This had been an ancient Custom both amongst Jews and Gentiles as old as Solomons Temple nay as Moses and the Tabernacle When 't was first taken up by Christians is not easie to determine only I do not remember to have met with the footsteps of any such thing in any approved Writer for the Decretal Epistles every one knows what their faith is till the Reign of Constantine in his time Christianity being become more prosperous and successful Churches were every where erected and repaired and no sooner were so but as Eusebius tells us they were solemnly consecrated and the dedications celebrated with great festivity and rejoycing an instance whereof he there gives of the famous Church of Tyre at the dedication whereof he himself made that excellent Oration inserted into the body of his History About the thirtieth year of his Reign he built a stately Church at Jerusalem over the Sepulchre of our Saviour which was dedicated with singular magnificence and veneration and for the greater honour by his imperial Letters he summoned the Bishops who from all parts of the East were then met in Council at Tyre to be present and assisting at the Solemnity The Rites and Ceremonies used at these dedications as we find in Eusebius were a great confluence of Bishops and Strangers from all parts the performance of divine offices singing of hymns and Psalms reading and expounding of the Scriptures Sermons and Orations receiving the holy Sacrament prayers and thanksgivings â—iberal Alms bestowed on the poor and great gifts given to the Church and in short mighty expressions of mutual love and kindness and universal rejoycing with one another What other particular Ceremonies were introduced afterwards concerns not me to enquire only let me note that under some of the Christian Emperours when Paganism lay gasping for life and their Temples were purged and converted into Christian Churches they were usually consecrated only by placing a Cross in them as the venerable Ensign of the Christian Religion as appears by the Law of Theodosius the younger to that purpose The memory of the dedication of that Church at Jerusalem was constantly continued and kept alive in that Church and once a year to wit on the 14. of September on which day it had been dedicated was solemnized with great pomp and much confluence of people from all parts the Solemnity usually lasting eight days together which doubtless gave birth to that custom of keeping anniversary days of commemoration of the dedication of Churches which from this time forwards we frequently meet with in the Histories of the Church and much prevailed in after Ages some shadow whereof still remains amongst us at this day in the Wakes observed in several Counties which in correspondence with the Encoenia of the ancient Church are annual Festivals kept in Country Villages in memory of the dedication of their particular Churches And because it was a custom in some Ages of the Church that no Church should be consecrated till it was endowed it may give us occasion to enquire what Revenues Churches had in those first Ages of Christianity 'T is more than probable that for a great while they had no other publick incomes than either what arose out of those common contributions which they made at their usual Assemblies every one giving or offering according to his ability or devotion which was put into a common stock or treasury or what proceeded from the offerings which they made out of the improvement of their Lands the Apostolick Canons providing that their First-fruits should be partly offered at the Church partly sent home to the Bishops and Presbyters the care of all which was committed to the President or Bishop of the Church for who says the Authour of the fore-cited Canons is fitter to be trusted with the riches and revenues of the Church than he who is intrusted with the precious souls of men and by him disposed of for the maintenance of the Clergie the relief of the poor or whatever necessities of the Church As Christianity encreased and times grew better they obtained more proper and fixed revenues houses and lands being setled upon them for such 't is certain they had even during the times
and in the case of persecution he tells Fabius that if they could not celebrate Dominica solennia their Lords-Day Solemnities in the day time they had the night sufficiently clear with the light of Christ This gave occasion to their spightful Adversaries to calumniate and asperse them the Heathen in Minucius charges them with their night-Congregations upon which account they are there scornfully called latebrosa lucifugax natio an obscure and skulking Generation and the very first thing that Celsus objects is that the Christians had private and clancular Assemblies or Combinations to which Origen answers that if it were so they might thank them for it who would not suffer them to exercise it more openly that the Christian Doctrine was sufficiently evident and obvious and better known through the world than the opinion and sentiments of their best Philosophers and that if there were some mysteries in the Christian Religion which were not communicated to every one 't was no other thing than what was common in the several Sects of their own Philosophy But to return They looked upon the Lords-Day as a time to be celebrated with great expressions of joy as being the happy memory of Christs resurrection and accordingly restrained whatever might savour of sorrow and sadness fasting on that day they prohibited with the greatest severity accounting it utterly unlawful as Tertullian informs us It was a very bitter censure that of Ignatius or whoseever that Epistle was for certainly it was not his that who ever fasts on a Lords-Day is a murderer of Christ however 't is certain that they never fasted on those days no not in the time of Lent it self nay the Montanists though otherwise great pretenders to fasting and mortification did yet abstain from it on the Lords-day And as they accounted it a joyful and good day so they did what ever they thought might contribute to the honour of it No sooner was Constantine come over to the Church but his principal care was about the Lords-day he commanded it to be solemnly observed and that by all persons whatsoever he made it to all a day of rest that men might have nothing to do but to worship God and be better instructed in the Christian Faith and spend their whole time without any thing to hinder them in prayer and devotion according to the custom and discipline of the Church and for those in his Army who yet remained in their Paganism and infidelity he commanded them upon Lords-days to go out into the Fields and there pour out their souls in hearty prayers to God and that none might pretend their own inability to the duty he himself composed and gave them a short form of prayer which he enjoin'd them to make use of every Lords-Day so careful was he that this day should not be dishonoured or mis-imployed even by those who were yet strangers and enemies to Christianity He moreover ordained that there should be no Courts of Judicature open upon this day no Suits or Tryals at Law but that for any works of mercy such as the emancipating and setting free of Slaves or Servants this might be done That there should be no Suits nor demanding debts upon this day was confirmed by several Laws of succeeding Emperours and that no Arbitrators who had the Umpirage of any business lying before them should at that time have power to determine or take up litigious causes penalties being entail'd upon any that transgressed herein Theodosius the Great anno 386. by a second Law ratified one which he had passed long before wherein he expresly prohibited all publick Shews upon the Lords-Day that the worship of God might not be confounded with those prophane Solemnities This Law the younger Theodosius some few years after confirmed and enlarged enacting that on the Lords day and some other Festivals there mentioned not only Christians but even Jews and Heathens should be restrained from the pleasure of all Sights and Spectacles and the Theatres be shut up in every place and whereas it might so happen that the Birth-day or inauguration of the Emperour might fall upon that day therefore to let the people know how infinitely he preferred the honour of God before the concerns of his own majesty and greatness he commanded that if it should so happen that then the imperial Solemnity should be put off and deferred till another day I shall take notice but of one instance more of their great observance of this day and that was their constant attendance upon the Solemnities of publick Worship they did not think it enough to read and pray and praise God at home but made conscience of appearing in the publick Assemblies from which nothing but sickness and absolute necessity did detain them and if sick or in prison or under banishment nothing troubled them more than that they could not come to Church and join their devotions to the common Services If persecution at any time forced them to keep a little close yet no sooner was there the least mitigation but they presently returned to their open duty and publickly met all together No trivial pretences no light excuses were then admitted for any ones absence from the Congregation but according to the merit of the cause severe censures were passed upon them The Synod of Illiberis provided that if any man dwelling in a City where usually Churches were nearest hand should for three Lords Days absent himself from the Church he should for some time be suspended the Communion that he might appear to be corrected for his fault They allowed no separate Assemblies no Congregations but what met in the publick Church if any man took upon him to make a breach and to draw people into corners he was presently condemned and a sutable penalty put upon him When Eustathius Bishop of Sebastia a man petending to great strictness and austerity of life began to cast off the Discipline of the Church and to introduce many odd observations of his own amongst others to contemn Priests that were married to fast on the Lords day and to keep meetings in private houses drawing away many but especially women as the Historian observes who leaving their Husbands were led away with errour and from that into great filthiness and impurity No sooner did the Bishops of those parts discover it but meeting in Council at Gangra the Metropolis of Paphlagonia about the year 340. they condemned and cast them out of the Church passing these two Canons among the rest If any one shall teach that the House of God is to be despised and the assemblies that are held in it let him be accursed If any shall take upon him out of the Church privately to preach at home and making light of the Church shall do those things that belong only to the Church without the presence of the Priest and the leave and allowance of the Bishop let him be accursed
The 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Visiters in every Diocess Of Metropolitans what their power and authority above ordinary Bishops their antiquity Of Patriarchs and in what respects superiour to Metropolitans and Archbishops An account of conforming the external jurisdiction of the Church to the Civil Government of the Roman Empire Presbyters their place and duty Whether they preached in the presence of the Bishop Deacons their Institution office number The Arch-Deacon Of inferiour orders The Subdeacon The Acolythus The Exorcist The Reader The Door-keeper What the nature of their several places Ordination to these Offices how managed The people present at and consenting to the Ordination Sacerdotes praedicarii what The Christian discipline in this case imitated by the Emperour Severus in appointing Civil Officers Great tryals and testimonials to be had of persons to be ordained Clergie-men to rise by degrees The age usually required in those that were to be promoted to the several orders Of Deaconesses their antiquity age and office The great honour and respect shewed to Bishops and Ministers Looked upon as common Parents Nothing of moment done without their leave Their welcome and the honour done them where-ever they came this made good by several instances Bishops invested with power to determine civil controversies The plentiful provision made for them The great priviledges and immunities granted by Constantine and his Successors to the Bishops and Clergie noted out of the Theodosian Code FRom the consideration of time and place we proceed to consider the Persons that constituted and made up their Religious Assemblies and they were either the body of the people or those who were peculiarly consecrated and set apart for the publick ministrations of Religion For the Body of the people we may observe that as Christianity at first generally gain'd admission in great Towns and Cities so all the Believers of that place usually assembled and met together the Christians also of the Neighbour-Villages resorting thither at times of publick Worship But Religion encreasing apace the publick Assembly especially in the greater Cities quickly began to be too vast and numerous to be managed with any order and conveniency and therefore they were forced to divide the body into particular Congregations who had their Pastors and spiritual Guides set over them but still were under the superintendency and care of him that was the President or Bishop of the place And according as the Church could form and establish its discipline the people either according to their seniority and improvement or according to the quality of the present condition they were under began to be distinguished into several ranks and Classes which had their distinct places in the Church and their gradual admission to the several parts of the publick Worship The first were the Catechumens and of these there were two sorts the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or more perfect such as had been Catechumens of some considerable standing and were even ripe for Baptism these might stay not only the reading of the Scriptures but to the very last part of the first Service The others were the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the more rude and imperfect who stood only amongst the Hearers and were to depart the Congregation as soon as the Lessons were read these were as yet accounted Heathens who applied themselves to the Christian Faith and were catechized and instructed in the more plain grounds and rudiments of Religion These principles were gradually delivered to them according as they became capable to receive them first the more plain and then the more difficult Indeed they were very shye of imparting the knowledge of the more recondite Doctrines of Christianity to any till after Baptism So S. Cyril expresly assures us where speaking to the illuminate or Baptized if during the chatechetical exercise says he a Catechumen shall ask thee what that means which the Preachers say tell him not for he is yet without and these mysteries are delivered to thee only The weak understanding of a Catechumen being no more able to bear such sublime mysteries than a sick mans head can large and immoderate draughts of Wine And at the end of his Preface he has this note These Catechetical discourses may be read by those that are to be baptized or the faithful already baptized but to Catechumens or such as are no Christians thou mayst not impart them for if thou dost expect to give an account to God S. Basil discoursing of the Rites and Institutions of Christianity divides them into two parts the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 were those parts of Religion which might 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 be familiarly preached and expounded to the people The 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 were the more sublime and hidden Doctrines and parts of the Christian Faith and these were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 things not rashly and commonly to be divulged but to be lock'd up in silence Of this nature were the Doctrines of the Trinity and Hypostatick Vnion and such like especially of the two Sacraments Baptism and the Lords Supper For though they acquainted their young hearers with so much of them as was necessary to stir up their desires yet as to the main of the things themselves the sacramental Symbols the manner of their celebration the modus of the divine presence at the holy Eucharist the meaning of all those mystical Rites and Ceremonies that were used about them these were carefully concealed both from Strangers and Catechumens and communicated only to those who were solemnly initiated and baptized Hence that ancient form so common in the Sermons and Writings of the Fathers whereby when accidentally discoursing before the people of any of these mysterious parts of Religion they used to fetch themselves off with an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Those that are initiated know what is said This was so usual that this phrase occurs at least fifty times in the Writings of S. Chrysostom only as Casaubon hath observed who has likewise noted three reasons out of the Fathers why they so studiously concealed these parts of their Religion First the nature of the things themselves so sublime and remote from vulgar apprehensions that they would signifie little to Pagans or Catechumens not yet fully instructed and confirmed in the faith and would either be lost upon them or in danger to be derided by them Secondly that hereby the Catechumens and younger Christians might be inflamed with a greater eagerness of desire to partake of the mysteries and priviledges of the Faithful humane nature being desirous of nothing more than the knowledge of what is kept and conceal'd from us To help them forwards in this S. Augustine tells us that in their publick prayers they were wont to beg of God to inspire the Catechumens with a desire of baptismal regeneration The same account Chrysostom gives us this
being part of the form used in their publick Service Let us pray that the most gracious and merciful God would hear the prayers of the Catechumens and what it was they prayed for he presently add viz. that they might no longer remain in that state Upon these accounts initiation by Baptism but especially admission to the Lords Supper is amongst other titles in the Writers of those times called Desiderata because so earnestly desired and sought for by those that were not yet taken in The truth is till persons arrived at this state they were not accounted Christians or but in a large sense as Candidates that stood in order to it and therefore could not satisfie themselves either to live or dye in that condition wherein they wanted the great seals and pledges of their Christianity Thirdly to beget in mens minds the higher esteem and veneration for these religious mysteries nothing producing a greater contempt even in sacred things than too much openness and familiarity So that a little obscurity and concealment might seem necessary to vindicate them from contempt and secure the majesty and reverence that was due to them This made the Fathers Seniors of the Church says S. Basil in prescribing Rites and Laws leave many things in the dark behind the vail and curtain that they might 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 preserve the sacredness and dignity that was due to the mysteries of Religion For a thing says he cannot properly be said to be a mystery when 't is once expos'd to every vulgar and common ear But of this enough if not too much And as they were careful to keep the higher parts of Christianity within the cognizance of the faithful so they were not less careful to teach and instruct the Catechumens in all those principles they were capable of being taught This at their first coming over was done privately and at home by persons deputed on purpose to that office by the Bishop as Balsamon clearly intimates till they were sufficiently instructed in the first and more intelligible principles of the faith Then they were admitted into the Congregation and suffered to be present at some parts of the Divine Service especially the Sermons which were made for the building them up unto higher measures of knowledge which being ended they were commanded to depart the Church not being suffered to be present at the more solemn Rites especially the celebration of the Lords Supper and in this manner they were trained up till they were initiated by baptism and taken into the highest form of Christians How long persons remained in the state of the Catechumens is difficult to determine it not being always nor in all places alike but longer in some and shorter in others and probably according to the capacity of the persons The Apostolick Constitutions appoint three years for the Catechumen to be instructed but provide withal that if any one be diligent and virtuous and have a ripeness of understanding for the thing he may be admitted to Baptism sooner for say they not the space of time but the fitness and manners of men are to be regarded in this matter The next sort were the Penitents such as for some misdemeanours were under the censures and severity of the Church and were gradually to obtain absolution from it Of these there were several degrees five especially mentioned by S. Gregory of Neo-Caesarea who liv'd about the year 250. The first were the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 such as wept and lamented and were rather Candidates to be received into the order of Penitents than Penitents properly so called These usually stood in a squalid and mournful habit at the Church-Porch with tears and great importunity begging of the Faithful as they went in to pray for them The second were the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Hearers who were admitted to hear the holy Scriptures read and expounded to the people Their station was at the upper end of the Narthex or first part of the Church and were to depart the Congregation at the same time with the Catechumens The third Class of Penitents was that of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Prostrate because service being ended they fell down before the Bishop who together with the Congregation falling down and making confession in their behalf after rais'd them up and laid his hands upon them These stood within the body of the Church next the Pulpit or Reading-Pew and were to depart together with the Catechumens The fourth were the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Consistentes such as stayed with the rest of the Congregation and did not depart with the Catechumens but after they and the other Penitents were gone out stayed and joined in prayer and singing but not in receiving the Sacrament with the faithful These after some time were advanced into the fifth and last order of the Communicantes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 S. Gregory calls it and were admitted to the participation of the holy Sacrament This was the state of the Penitents in the primitive Church Persons having fully passed through the state of the Catechumenate became then immediate Candidates of Baptism presented their names to the Bishop and humbly prostrating themselves begged that they might be entred into the Church These were called Competentes because they did Competere gratiam Christi sue for the grace of Christ conferred in Baptism The last rank was that of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the Faithful who having been baptized and confirmed and having approved themselves by the long train and course of a strict pious life were then admitted to the participation of the Lords Supper which being the highest and most venerable mystery of the Christian Religion was not then rashly given to any but to such only as had run through all other degrees and by a course of piety evidenced themselves to be such real and faithful Christians as that the highest mysteries and most solemn parts of Religion might be committed to them This was the highest order and looked upon with great regard and for any of this rank to lapse and be overtaken with a fault cost them severer penances than were imposed upon the inferiour forms of Christians This in short was the state of the people But because 't is not possible any body or community of men should be regularly managed without some particular persons to superintend direct and govern the affairs of the whole Society therefore we are next to enquire what persons there were in the primitive Church that were peculiarly set apart to steer its affairs and to attend upon the publick Offices and Ministrations of it That God always had a peculiar people whom he selected for himself out of the rest of mankind is too evident to need any proof Such were the Patriarchs and the holy seed of old such the Jews chosen by him above all other Nations in the world This was his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉
his particular lot and portion comprehending the body of the people in general But afterwards this title was confin'd to narrower bounds and became appropriate to that Tribe which God had made choice of to stand before him to wait at his Altar and to minister in the services of his Worship And after the expiration of their Oeconomy was accordingly used to denote the ministry of the Gospel the persons peculiarly consecrated and devoted to the service of God in the Christian Church the Clergie being those qui divino cultui ministeria religionis impendunt as they are defin'd in a Law of the Emperour Constantine who are set apart for the ministeries of Religion in matters relating to the Divine Worship Now the whole 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as 't is often called in the Apostles Canons the roll of the Clergie of the ancient Church taking it within the compass of its first four hundred years consisted of two sorts of persons the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 who were peculiarly consecrated to the more proper and immediate acts of the Worship of God and the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 such as were set apart only for the more mean and common services of the Church Of the first sort were these three Bishops Presbyters and Deacons The first and principal Officer of the Church was the President or Bishop usually chosen out of the Presbyters I shall not here concern my self in the disputes whether Episcopacy as a superior order to Presbytery was of divine institution a controversie sufficiently ventilated in the late times it being enough to my purpose what is acknowledged both by Blondel and Salmasius the most learned defenders of Presbytery that Bishops were distinct from and superior to Presbyters in the second Century or the next Age to the Apostles The main work and office of a Bishop was to teach and instruct the people to administer the Sacraments to absolve Penitents to eject and excommunicate obstinate and incorrigible offenders to preside in the Assemblies of the Clergy to ordain inferiour Officers in the Church to call them to account and to suspend or deal with them according to the nature of the offence to urge the observance of Ecclesiastical Laws and to appoint and institute such indifferent Rites as were for the decent and orderly administration of his Church In short according to the notation of his name he was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Watchman and Sentinal and therefore oblig'd 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 diligently and carefully to inspect and observe to superintend and provide for those that were under his charge This Zonaras tells us was implied in the Bishops Throne being placed on high in the most eminent part of the Church to denote how much 't was his duty from thence to overlook and very diligently to observe the people that were under him These and many more were the unquestionable rights and duties of the Episcopal Office which because it was very difficult and troublesom for one man to discharge especially where the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Diocess as we now call it was any thing large therefore upon the multiplying of Country Churches it was thought fit to take in a subordinate sort of Bishops called Chorepiscopi Country or as amongst us they have been called suffragan Bishops whose business it was to superintend and inspect the Churches in the Country that lay more remote from the City where the Episcopal See was and which the Bishop could not always inspect and oversee in his own person These were the Vicarii Episcoporum as they are called in Isidores Version of the thirteenth Canon both of the Ancyran and Neocaesarean Council the Bishops Deputies chosen out of the fittest and gravest persons In the Canon of the last mentioned Council they are said to be chosen in imitation of the seventy not the seventy Elders which Moses took in to bear part of the Government as some have glossed the words of that Canon but of the seventy Disciples whom our Lord made choice of to send up and down the Countries to preach the Gospel as both Zonaras and Balsamon understand it and thereupon by reason of their great care and pains are commanded to be esteemed very honourable Their authority was much greater than that of Presbyters and yet much inferior to the Bishop Bishops really they were though their power confin'd within narrow limits they were not allowed to ordain either Presbyters or Deacons unless peculiarly licens'd to it by the Bishop of the Diocess though they might ordain sub-Deacons Readers and any inferiour Officers under them They were to be assistant to the Bishop might be present at Synods and Councils to many whereof we find their subscriptions and had power to give Letters of peace i. e. such Letters whereby the Bishop of one Diocess was wont to recommend any of his Clergy to the Bishop of another that so a fair understanding and correspondence might be maintained between them a priviledge expresly denied to any Presbyter whatsoever But lest this wandring employment of the Chorepiscopi should reflect any dishonour upon the Episcopal Office there were certain Presbyters appointed in their room called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Visiters often mentioned in the ancient Canons and Acts of Councils who being tied to no certain place were to go up and down the Country to observe and correct what was amiss And these doubtless were those 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 spoken of in the thirteenth Canon of the Neocaesarean Council those rural Presbyters who are there forbid to consecrate the Eucharist in the City Church in the presence of the Bishop or the Presbyters of the City As Christianity encreased and overspread all parts and especially the Cities of the Empire it was found necessary yet farther to enlarge the Episcopal Office and as there was commonly a Bishop in every great City so in the Metropolis as the Romans called it the Mother City of every Province wherein they had Courts of Civil Judicature there was an Archbishop or a Metropolitan who had Ecclesiastical jurisdiction over all the Churches within that Province He was superior to all the Bishops within those limits to him it belonged either to ordain or to ratifie the elections and ordinations of all the Bishops within his Province insomuch that without his confirmation they were looked upon as null and void Once at least every year he was to summon the Bishops under him to a Synod to enquire into and direct the Ecclesiastical affairs within that Province to inspect the lives and manners the opinions and principles of his Bishops to admonish reprove and suspend them that were disorderly and irregular if any controversies or contentions happened between any of them he was to have the hearing and determination of them and indeed no matter of moment was done within the whole Province without first consulting him in the case Besides this Metropolitan there was many times another in the same
observed the Apostolick Canon not to chuse a Novice but of an age competent to that Office that he was chosen to though it varied according to times and persons and the occasions of the Church For that of Bishops I find not any certain age positively set down Photius in his Nomo-Canon speaks of an Imperial constitution that requires a Bishop not to be under thirty five but the Apostolical Constitutions allow not a man to be made a Bishop under fifty years of age as having then passed all juvenile petulancies and disorders 'T is certain they were not generally some extraordinary instances alter not the case promoted to that Office till they were of a considerable age and thence frequently stiled majores natu in the Writings of the Church Presbyters were commonly made at thirty yea the Council of Neocaesarea decreed that no man though otherwise of never so unquestionable a conversation should be ordained Presbyter before that age the reason whereof they give because Christ himself was not baptized nor began to preach till the thirtieth year of his age The Council of Agde requires the same age but assigns another reason not before thirty years of age because then say they he comes to the age of a perfect man Deacons were made at twenty five and the like distance and proportion observed for the inferiour Officers under them I take no notice in this place of Monks Hermits c. partly because although they were under a kind of Ecclesiastical relation by reason of their more than ordinarily strict and severe profession of Religion yet were they not usually in holy Orders and partly because Monachism was of no very early standing in the Church begining probably about the times of the later persecutions and even then too Monks were quite another thing both in profession habit and way of life from what they are at this day as will abundantly appear to him that will take the pains to compare the account which S. Hierom Augustine Palladius Cassian and others give of those primitive Monks with the several Orders in the Church of Rome at this day I shall only add that out of the Monks persons were usually made choice of to be advanced into the Clergie as is evident not only from multitudes of instances in the Writers of the fourth and following Centuries but from an express Law of the Emperour Arcadius to that purpose the strictness of their lives and the purity of their manners more immediately qualifying them for those holy Offices insomuch that many times they were advanced unto the Episcopal Chair without going through the usual intermediate Orders of the Church several instances whereof Serapion Apollonius Agatho Aristo and some others Athanasius reckons up in his Epistle to Dracontius who being a Monk refused a Bishoprick to which he was chosen But because we meet in the ancient Writings of the Church with very frequent mention of persons of another Sex Deaconesses who were employed in many Offices of Religion it may not be amiss in this place to give some short account of them Their original was very early and of equal standing with the infancy of the Church such was Phebe in the Church of Cenchris mentioned by S. Paul such were those two Servant-maids spoken of by Pliny in his Letter to the Emperour whom he examined upon the Rack such was the famous Olympias in the Church of Constantinople not to mention any more particular instances They were either Widows and then not to be taken into the service of the Church under threescore years of age according to S. Paul's direction or else Virgins who having been educated in order to it and given testimony of a chast and sober conversation were set apart at forty what the proper place and ministry of these Deaconesses was in the ancient Church though Matthew Blastares seems to render a little doubtful yet certainly it principally consisted in such offices as these to attend upon the Women at times of Publick Worship especially in the administration of Baptism that when they were to be divested in order to their immersion they might overshadow them so as nothing of indecency and uncomeliness might appear sometimes they were employed in instructing the more rude and ignorant sort of women in the plain and easie principles of Christianity and in preparing them for Baptism otherwhiles in visiting and attending upon Women that were sick in conveying messages counsels consolations relief especially in times of persecution when it was dangerous for the Officers of the Church to the Martyrs and them that were in Prison and of these women no doubt it was that Libanius speaks of amongst the Christians who were so very ready to be employed in these offices of humanity But to return Persons being thus set apart for holy Offices the Christians of those days discovered no less piety in that mighty respect and reverence which they paid to them that the Ministers of Religion should be peculiarly honoured and regarded seems to have been accounted a piece of natural justice by the common sentiments of mankind the most barbarous and unpolished Nations that ever had a value for any thing of Religion have always had a proportionable regard to them to whom the care and administration of it did belong Julian the Emperour expresly pleads for it as the most reasonable thing in the world that Priests should be honoured yea in some respects above civil Magistrates as being the immediate attendants and domestick servants of God our intercessors with Heaven and the means of deriving down great blessings from God upon us But never was this clearlier demonstrated than in the practice of the primitive Christians who carried themselves towards their Bishops and Ministers with all that kindness and veneration which they were capable to express towards them S. Paul bears record to the Galatians that he was accounted so dear to them that if the plucking out their eyes would have done him any good they were ready to have done it for his sake and S. Clement testifies of the Corinthians that they walked in the Laws of God being subject to them that had the rule over them yielding also due honour to the seniors or elder persons that were amongst them That by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in this place he should mean Civil Magistrates as some have told us I can hardly be perswaded both because 't is the same word that 's used by the Author to the Hebrews obey 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 them that have the rule over you and submit your selves and indeed both Eusebius and S. Hierom of old observed such a mighty affinity in the phrase between this and the Epistle to the Hebrews as certainly to conclude S. Clemens to have been if not the Author at least the Translator of that Epistle and also because the sole occasion of S. Clements writing this Epistle was a mutiny which they had
e. under instruction in order to their Baptism or by reason of any hainous crime under the censures and suspension of the Church and not yet passed through the several stages of the Penitents might not communicate and were therefore commanded to depart the Church when the rest went to the celebration of the Sacrament for looking upon the Lords Supper as the highest and most solemn act of Religion they thought they could never take care enough in the dispensing of it accordingly who ever was found guilty of any scandalous fault was according to the nature of the offence debarred the Communion a shorter or a longer time and sometimes all their life not to be reconciled and taken into the communion of the Church till they had continued their repentance to their death-bed As for those persons that could not be present either through distance of place sickness or any other just cause the Eucharist was wont to be sent home to them some little pieces of the consecrated bread dipt in the sacramental Cup which were usually carried by the Deacon or some inferior Officer of the Church or in cases of necessity by any other person as in the case of Serapion of whom Dionysius of Alexandria relates that having been all his life a good man at last lapsed in a time of persecution and though he oft desired reconciliation yet none would communicate with him not long after he was seized upon by a mortal sickness depriv'd of the use of his speech and senses but coming to himself after four days he sends his Nephew a little Boy late at night for one of the Presbyters to come to him the Minister was at that time sick but considering the exigence of the case gives the Boy a little piece of the Eucharist bids him to moisten it with a little water and so give it him in his mouth which he did and immediately the old man chearfully departed this life For the better understanding of which we are to observe that those who had lapsed into Idolatry were to undergo a very long time of penance and were not many times admitted to the Communion till they were near their death and because it sometimes hapned that they were overtaken with sudden death before the Sacrament could be administred to them thence a custom sprung up to give it them after they were dead which they did doubtless upon this ground that they might give some kind of evidence that those persons died in the peace and communion of the Church though this usage was afterwards by many Councils abrogated and laid aside I take no notice in this place of their giving the Eucharist to new-baptized Infants the case being so commonly known and obvious In those early times nothing was more common than for Christians either to carry or to have sent to them some parts of the Eucharist which they kept in some decent place in their houses against all emergent occasions especially to fortifie and strengthen their faith in times of persecution and to encrease kindness and amity with one another whence one that was well versed in Church-Antiquities conjectures that when ever they entertained Friends or Strangers they used before every meal first to give them some parts of the holy Eucharist as being the greatest badge the strongest band of true love and friendship in the world Besides these parcels of the sacramental Elements there were wont at the celebration of the Communion to be pieces of bread which remained of the Offerings of the people which being solemnly blessed by the Bishop might be given to those who had no right to be at the Lords Table as to the Catechumens and such like and were to them instead of the Sacrament These pieces were properly called Eulogiae because set apart by solemn benediction and were sent up and down the Towns and Villages round about to testifie and represent their mutual union and fellowship with one another nay and sometimes from Churches in one Country to those that were in another which was also done by the Eucharist it self for so Irenaeus in a Letter to Pope Victor tells us that the Ministers of Churches though differing in some little circumstances did yet use to send the Eucharist to one another Which custom is also taken notice of by Zonaras but because the carrying the Sacramental Elements up and down the World was thought not so well to consist with the reverence and veneration that is due to this solemn Ordinance therefore it was abolished by the Laodicean Synod and these Eulogiae or pieces of bread appointed at Easter to be sent up and down in their room For the Time the next circumstance when they met together for this solemn Action it was in general at their publick Assemblies on the Lords day always or the first day of the week as we find it in the History of the Apostles Acts besides other days and especially Saturday on which day all the Churches in the World those of Rome only and Alexandria excepted used to celebrate this Sacrament as the Historian informs us What time of the day they took to do it is not altogether so certain our blessed Saviour and his Apostles celebrated it at night at the time of the Jewish Passover but whether the Apostles and their immediate Successors punctually observed this circumstance may be doubted 't is probable that the holy Eucharist which S. Paul speaks of in the Church of Corinth was solemnized in the morning the Apostles calling it a Supper as Chrysostom thinks not because 't was done in the evening but the more effectually to put them in mind of the time when our Lord did institute those holy Mysteries Tertullian assures us in his time 't was done in tempore victus about Supper-time as all understand him and very often in the morning before day when they held their religious Assemblies of which Pliny also takes notice in his Letter to the Emperour for in those times of Persecution when they were hunted out by the inquisitive malice of their enemies they were glad of the remotest corners the most unseasonable hours when they could meet to perform the joynt offices of Religion But this communicating at evening or at night either lasted only during the extreme heats of Persecution or at least wore off apace for Cyprian expresly pleads against it affirming that it ought to be in the morning and so indeed in a short time it prevailed over most parts of the World except in some places of Egypt near Alexandria of which Socrates tells us that after they had sufficiently feasted themselves in the evening they were wont to receive the Sacrament Under this circumstance of time we may take occasion to consider how oft in those days they usually met at this table And at first while the Spirit of Christianity was yet warm and vigorous and the hearts of men passionately inflamed with the
Thaddaeus one of the Seventy Disciples great summs of Gold and Silver for the pains he had taken and the great things he had done amongst them he refused them with this answer To what purpose should we receive good things from others who have freely forsaken and renounced our own As indeed in those times friends and relations houses and lands were chearfully parted with when they stood in competition with Christ they could content themselves with the most naked poverty so it might but consist with the profession of the Gospel When Quintianus the President under Decius the Emperour asked Agatha the Virgin-Martyr why being descended of such Rich and Illustrious Parents she would stoop to such low and mean Offices as she took upon her She presently answered him Our Glory and Nobility lies in this that we are the Servants of Christ To the same purpose was the answer of Quintinus the Martyr under the Dioâ—lesian Persecution when the President asked him how it came about that he being a Roman Citizen and the Son of a Senator would truckle under such a Superstition and worship him for a God whom the Jews had Crucified the Martyr told him That it was the highest Honour and Nobility to know and serve God that the Christian Religion which he call'd Superstition ought not to be traduc'd with so base a name seeing it immediately guided its followers to the highest degrees of happiness for herein in it is that the Omnipotent God is revealed the great Creator of Heaven and Earth and his Son Jesus Christ our Lord by whom all things were made and who is in all things equal to his Father The simplicity of Christians then kept them from aspiring after honour and greatness and if at any time advanced to it their great care was to keep themselves unspotted from the world as Nazianzen reports of his brother Caesarius chief Physician to the Emperour Constantius that though he was very dear to him as he was to the whole Court and advanced by him every day to greater honours and dignities yet this says he was the chief of all that he suffered not the Nobility of his soul to be corrupted by that Glory and those delights that were round about him but accounted this his chiefest honour that he was a Christian in comparison of which all things else were to him but as a sport and Pageantry he looked upon other things but as Comick Scenes soon up and as soon over but upon Piety as the most safe and permanent good and which we can properly call our own regarding that Piety especially which is most inward and unseen to the world The like he relates of his Sister Gorgonia as the perfection of her excellent temper that she did not more seem to be good than she did really strive to be so peculiarly conversant in those secret acts of piety which are visible only to him who sees what is hidden and secret to the Prince of this world she left nothing transferring all into those safe and coelestial treasuries that are above she left nothing to the earth but her body changing all things for the hopes of a better life bequeathing no other riches to her children but an excellent pattern and a desire to follow her example The truth is as to estate they were not concern'd for more than what would supply the necessities of nature or the wants of others not solicitous to get or possess such revenues as might make them the objects either of mens envy or their fear as may appear amongst others by this instance Domiâ—ian the Emperour being inform'd that there were yet remaining some of Christs Kindred according to the flesh the Nephews of Judas the Brother of our Lord of the Race and Posterity of David which the Emperour sought utterly to extirpate he sent for them enquired of them whether they were of the Line of David they answered they were he ask'd what possessions and estate they had they told him they had between them thirty nine acres of land to the value of about nine thousand pence out of the fruits whereof they both paid him Tribute and maintained themselves with their own hard labour whereto the hardness and callousness of their hands which they then shew'd him bore witness He then ask'd them concerning Christ and the state of his Kingdome to which they answered that his Empire was not of this world but Heavenly and Angelical and which should finally take place in the end of the world when he should come with glory to judge both the quick and the dead and to reward men according to their works which when he heard despising the men upon the account of their meanness he let them go without any severity against them Of Origen we read that he was so great a despiser of the world that when he might have liv'd upon the maintenance of others he would not but parted with his Library of Books to one that was to allow him only four oboli a day the day he spent in laborious tasks and exercises and the greatest part of the night in study he always remembred that precept of our Saviour Not to have two coats not to wear shooes not anxiously to take care for to morrow nor would he accept the kindness of others when they would freely have given him some part of their estate to live on Not that the Christians of those times thought it unlawful to possess estates or to use the blessings of Divine Providence for though in those times of persecution they were often forc'd to quit their estates and habitations yet did they preserve their Proprieties intire and industriously mind the necessary conveniencies of this life so far as was consistent with their care of a better There were indeed a sort of Christians call'd Apostolici who in a fond imitation of the Apostles left all they had and gave up themselves to a voluntary poverty holding it not lawful to possess any thing hence they were also call'd Apotactici or renouncers because they quitted and renounc'd whatsoever they had but they were ever accounted infamous Hereticks They were as Epiphanius tells us the descendants of Tatian part of the old Cathari and Encratitae together with whom they are put in a Law of the Emperour Theodosius and reckon'd amongst the vilest of the Manichaean Hereticks mentioned also by Julian the Apostate as a branch of the Galilaeans as he calls the Christians by him compar'd to the Cynic Philosophers amongst the Heathens for the neglecting of their Countrey the abandoning of their estates and goods and their loose and rambling course of life only herein different that they did not as those Galilaean Apotactistae run up and down under a pretence of poverty to beg alms The truth is by the account which both he and Epiphanius give of them they seem to have been the very Patriarchs and primitive founders of those Mendicant Orders
more particularly consider in these three instances their Sobriety in respect of Garb and Apparel their Temperance in regard of food and diet and their Continence or chastity For the first the care about our Garb and Dress it is one of those instances of Sobriety which are to be conducted by the rules of Religion and Reason and which very much discover a vertuous or a vicious temper There are three things as the Son of Syrach well observes that shew a man what he is his Attire excessive Laughter and his Gate There is not certainly a more open evidence of a vain mind than a vain garb and habit St. Basil discoursing what habit does best beseem a Christian tells us in general that it ought to be such as most lively expresses the meekness and humility of the mind that good men of old were so attired and that we are commanded having food and raiment to be therewith content not studying variety and which most commonly follows it softness and elegancy which are but instruments to minister to excess and luxury introduced into humane life through the idle and unnecessary Arts of loosness and effeminacy 'T is not enough says Tertullian that a Christian be chast and modest but he must appear to be so a vertue of which he should have so great a store and treasure that it should flow from his mind upon his habit and break from the retirements of his conscience into the superficies of his life as he there expresses it More particularly St. Basil tells us that the habit of a Christian ought to be suitable to the two great ends of cloathing instituted by God viz. Honesty and Necessity honesty to hide the less comly parts of the body and to cover that shame which sin has brought upon mankind in Paradise Innocency was mans only robe 't was sin brought in the fig-leav'd coat and what should more induce us to be modest in our apparel than to remember that our clothes are Monitors of our apostasie and that there 's little reason we should pride our selves in that which is only a cover for our shame Necessity and so clothes were designed to keep the body in convenient warmth and to defend it from those injuries and extremities of the air and wether which would otherwise soon rot down this house of clay Now to both these ends he tells us we ought to accommodate our garments not striving for variety having some for uses at home others for oftentation when we go abroad but that whatever attains these ends is enough But besides these there is a third Vse and end of clothes noted by Clemens Alexandrinus and that is for distinction not only of Sexes but of different ranks and degrees of men such as agree best to mens age persons shape nature or their several states and employments in these respects men may use different and distinguishing habits nay he grants that in some cases men may recede from the strict rule and discipline of this affair and that such women as cannot otherwise gain upon their husbands may if they require it go a little more trim and neat provided as he there limits it it be done only to please and gain upon their husbands and that they do not practise any Artifices of unlawful beauty Now that the ancient Christians govern'd themselves by these rules in this affair is plain in that they avoided both singularity on the one hand and excess on the other generally conforming themselves to the decent and orderly customes and fashions of the times and places where they liv'd Justin Martyr giving his friend an account of the Christians tells him that they differ'd not from other men either in their Country or Speech or the usages of the civil life they dwell in their own Cities use the same language with other men nor have they any singular and extraordinary way of life they are not in any thing affected or phantastick but inhabiting partly amongst Greeks partly in barbarous Cities as every ones lot is fallen they follow the customes of their Countrey and both in clothes and diet and all other affairs of outward life shew the excellent and admirable constitution of their discipline and conversation I am not ignorant of what some learned men would have us to believe that in those times when any turn'd from Paganism to Christianity they were wont to change their habit to leave off the Toga or Gown the common habit almost in all parts of the Roman Empire and to take up the Pallium or Cloak and this they think sufficiently countenanc'd by the instance of Tertullian who laying aside the Gown and putting on the Cloak was accused of lightness and inconstancy by the people of Carthage and bitterly persecuted with the common sarcasm à Toga ad Pallium as one that had want only skipp'd from the Gown to the Cloak i. e. from one profession to another insomuch that he was forc'd to write an Apology for himself which he did in his book de Pallio where with a great deal of satyrical and sarcastick wit he retorts upon them and vindicates himself from their charge and cavils But that there was any such change of habit at persons first coming over to Christianity I can see no reason to believe and for the case of Tertullian it makes nothing to the purpose unless it could be prov'd that he left off the gown at his first entrance upon the Christian Religion which will be hard to make out for I am clearly of the mind of the learned Salmasius that he altered his habit and assumed the cloak not when he first became Christian but when he was made Presbyter of the Church of Carthage whence it is called by him according to his dialect Sacerdos habitus for so it is in all ancient Manuscripts and in the first Edition of B. Rhenanus and not sacer habitus as later Editions have it the Priests habit because the Christian Priests usually wore it after their entrance upon Holy Orders For the better understanding of which we are to consider a little that amongst the Greeks the Pallium or Cloak was not commonly worn but was the proper habit of Philosophers who profess'd a more severe and accurate course of life Acordingly amongst the Christians those who professed themselves to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the more strict and exact observers of the Christian discipline whether they were Laity or Clergy assumed this habit to themselves and because the Clergy in those times generally took upon them this austere and philosophick way of life this garb was most peculiar to them and this probably they did the rather not only because this was the most plain and simple garment in it self but because they supposed the Apostles whom they strove to imitate wrote this habit as is plain they did as from other passages in the New Testament so from St. Pauls sending for the Cloak
than at others to the advantageous use of a thing respect being to be had not only to the thing it self but to the time occasion and manner of it that therefore our meals for the main should be light and easie not mixed with variety of dainties but such as may prepare for fasting and the exercises of Religion Upon this account S. Cyprian in an Epistle wherein he gives directions about Prayer advises them and to make the counsel more effectual tells them that he was warn'd of it by immediate revelation from God to eat and drink soberly and sparingly that outward snares might not enfeeble that heavenly vigour and sprightliness that was in their breasts lest their minds being over-charged with too plentiful meals might be less watchful unto prayer The same counsel S. Hierom gives to Laeta about the Education of her Daughter that her diet should be thin and mean and that she should never eat more than she might arise with some appetite so as that after meals she might be presently fit either to read or sing Psalms When at any time invited to publick solemnities as marriages and the like the prudence of the Church thought fit to lay restraints upon them and to forbid them light and ludicrous actions as leaping or dancing but that they shoud dine and sup gravely and modestly as becomes Christians The chief care of Christians then was to become partakers 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Clemens Alexandrinus styles it of that divine food that is from above and that only is capable to give real satisfaction little regarding what provisions they had so they had but any for that part that dwelt here below When Julian the Emperour to raise money for his Wars began to squeeze and oppress the Christians he sent amongst others to S. Basil who had formerly been his fellow-student at Athens for one thousand pounds the answer he sends him was that it could not be expected there where he had not so much provision before-hand as would serve for one day that there were no arts of cookery at his house nor knives stain'd with the blood of slaughtered provisions that his greatest dainties were a few pot-herbs a piece of bread and a little soure vapid wine no such exceedings as to stupifie his senses with fumes arising from a loaded stomach and to render them incapable to discharge their functions through intemperance and excess Chrysostom commends Olympias not more for the modesty of her Garb than the meanness and sobriety of her diet to which she had so us'd her self that she had got the perfect mastery over all undue appetites and inclinations and had not only bridled the horse but tamed and reduced him into an intire subjection and taught her stomach to receive only so much meat and drink as was enough to keep her alive and in health This indeed was the great end of their signal abstinence in those days that by subduing the flesh they might keep the stricter hand over the inordinate motions of corrupt nature When Celsus accused the Jews and in them obliquely the Christians for needlessly abstaining from swines flesh and some other sorts of food affirming this to be no such great matter when the Pythagoreans wholly abstain'd from eating any living creature who yet were never thought the better or the more dear to God for it Origen answers that what-ever reason the Jews did it for God having appointed the difference this concern'd not Christians that 't is not what enters in at the mouth that defiles the man nor does meat commend us to God nor do we think this abstinence any such great matter nor yet do we so indulge the belly as to affect or pursue such delights that there 's a vast difference between us and the Pythagoreans in this affair they indeed abstain upon the account of their absurd and fabulous doctrine of the souls transmigration or passing out of one body into another and so forbear to kill or eat any living creature lest haply they may destroy and devour their own friends or children but we in all our abstinence do it only to keep under the body and to bring it into subjection endeavouring to mortifie the deeds of the body to expel and extinguish our members that are upon the earth fornication uncleanness inordinate affection and every evil concupiscence and desire where he fully vindicates the Christians in their abstemiousness and temperance from doing it out of any vain and foolish affectation any nice and singular Opinion any base and sordid morose or unsociable temper they were careful to keep the mean and to avoid sordidness as well as Luxury nor did they profess themselves enemies to the provisions of humane life any further than as they were inconsistent with the ends of sobriety and religion As may appear from a memorable passage related by Eusebius out of the letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vien in France to those in Asia Alcibiades one of those who shortly after suffer'd Martyrdom had accustom'd himself to a very rigid and sordid kind of life rejecting all other sorts of food except only bread and water and this he did both before and after he was in prison which it seems had an ill influence upon others whereupon Attalus one of the most eminent of those famous Martyrs the day after his first being exposed in the Amphitheatre had it reveal'd to him for as yet says the Historian the Divine Grace had not withdrawn it self but they had the Holy Spirit as their immediate Councellour to instruct them which by the way may give countenance to those frequent visions and divine condescentions which Cyprian speaks of in his Epistles To this Attalus it was reveal'd that Alcidades did amiss in refusing to use the Creatures of God and in thereby giving a scandal and an offence to others upon which he laid aside his singularity and with all thankfulness to God promiscuously ate any kind of food From the whole of what has been said it 's very evident what little reason the Heathens had to accuse the Christians in their agapae or love-feasts especially of excess and prodigality for that they did Tertullian expresly affirms Our little suppers says he besides as being guilty of other wickedness they traduce as prodigal saying of us as Diogenes did of the people of Megara that they supp'd as if they meant to dye to morrow Nay what were infinitely horrid and barbarous they commonly charg'd them with Thyestean suppers and eating mans flesh To the first part of the charge concerning their prodigality Tertullian answers that they could easilier see a mote in anothers eye than a beam in their own if they look'd home they would find that 't was their own tribes and precincts wherein the very air was corrupted with the unsavoury fumes of their loaded tables and over-charged stomachs and yet all this was passed by and only the poor Christians
this wicked imputation it may not be amiss before we conclude to enquire a little into the rise and original of this absurd and malicious charge Origen fathers it upon the Jews as if they had falsly and spitefully invented it as they did other things to disgrace and prejudice Christianity and he tells us that in some measure it succeeded accordingly keeping many at a distance from the Christian Religion and that even in his time there were some who for this very reason would have no discourse or commerce with a Christian But though both Jew and Gentile had malice and spite enough against the Christians yet I can hardly think that it was a purely invented falshood but that it had some ground of pretence though ill applied and so we shall find it had for which we are to know that in the most early times of Christianity there were several sorts of Hereticks who though they had their particular names yet all call'd themselves Christians accounting that hereby they grac'd and honour'd their party as Epiphanius tells us the followers of Simon Magus Menander Marcion Marcus Basilides c. who all went under the general name of Gnosticks and were under the pretence of Religion guilty of the most prodigious villanies and particularly those we are speaking of Irenaeus reports of them that they gave up themselves to all filthiness and bestiality not only privately corrupting the women whom they had inveagled into their Sect as some of them returning after to the Church confessed with shame and sorrow but openly and with bare face marrying the women whom they had seduced from their husbands committing the most execrable wickednesses and laughing at the pious and Orthodox Christians whom the fear of God restrained from sin either in word or thought as a company of ignorant and silly fellows magnifying themselves styling themselves perfect and the Seeds of Election and much more in other places to the same purpose where he gives account of the prophane and hellish Rites of their Assemblies Of the Carpocratians another gang of those bruitish Hereticks Clemens Alexandrinus relates the same both as to their doctrines and practices reporting the matter almost in the very same circumstances wherein it is charg'd upon the Christians by the Heathen in Min. Foelix viz. that both men and women used to meet at supper which they had in imitation of the true Christian 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Love-feast where after they had loaded themselves with a plentiful meal to prevent all shame if they had any remain'd they put out the lights and then promiscuously mix'd in filthiness with one another or else each sorting as they pleas'd And of the Gnosticks Epiphanius tells us that they had their wives in common and if any stranger of their party came to them both men and women had this mark and sign to know one another by stretching out their hands by way of salutation they used to tickle each other in the ball of the hand by which they were satisfied that the stranger really was of their gang and party Amongst their brethren the Carpocratians they were wont to mark their Disciples and Proselytes unde the right ear with a brand a slit or a hole that they might the more readily discern them This agrees exactly with the charge of the Heathens that they knew one another at the first sight by privy marks and signs and having thus own'd and received each other they went to their luxurious feasts and to those horrid brutishnesses that followed after Now this being the case with these abominable wretches who yet had the face to call themselves Christians it is no wonder if Jews and Gentiles who were greedy of any occasion to bespatter and reproach Christians and rather than not find an occasion would make one charg'd it upon all Christians either not knowing it to be otherwise or if they did not willing to distinguish between true and false And that this was the true and only rise and ground of the charge besides some intimations of it in Justin Martyr we have it expresly asserted by Eusebius as that which gave being to that absurd and impious Opinion which spred so fast amongst the Heathens of the Christians being guilty of promiscuous mixtures to the great reproach and infamy of the Christian Name I do not deny but this malicious report might receive strength and encouragement from the servants of some Christians who being rack'd by the Heathens might confess what they put into their mouths and this charge amongst the rest This the same Historian relates out of the letters of the Churches in France Certain Gentiles who were servants to some Christians being apprehended and having seen the exquisite torments which the Christians were put to for fear of the like did at the instance of the Souldiers who urg'd them to it confess that the Christians had amongst them incestuous mixtures and suppers furnish'd with mans flesh laying such things to their charge as they held unlawful to speak or think of or could believe were ever done by men which being once divulg'd they every where fell upon the Christians with the greatest rage and fierceness So in the persecution under Maximinus one of the Commanders that then resided at Damascus laid hold of a few light inconsiderable women in the Market and threatning them with the Rack forc'd the wretches publickly to confess that they had formerly been Christians and that they knew all their Villanies that in their Religious Meetings they committed the most beastly actions and indeed what ever else he would have them say that might disgrace Christianity This Confession of theirs he caus'd to be entred into the publick Records and then transmitted it to the Emperour by whose Command it was immediately Published in all Cities and Places of the Empire So industriously did the malice of Men and Devils bend all the nerves of their power and subtilty though in vain either wholly to suppress or at least to dis-hearten and baâ—â—le out the Christians Which brings me to the consideration of another Vertue no less remarkable in the Christians of those times CHAP. VI. Of their readiness and constancy in professing their Religion Their courage and undauntedness in professing the Truth though reproach'd and persecuted Their open and resolute owning it to the face of their enemies and in defiance of the greatest dangers The story of Victorinus the Rhetorician converted by Simplician The free and impartial Answers of Maris to Julian of Basil to the Arrian Governour Polycarp's refusing to fly when Officers were sent to apprehend him His resolute carriage before the Proconsul The like of Cyprian No torments could make them deny Christ Women unconquerable The excellent instance of Blandina and others Divers voluntarily offering themselves Others offering to plead the cause of the Christans though with the immediate hazard of their lives This boldness and resolution noted as an argument
and I cannot sacrifice to your gods do therefore what you are commanded as for me in so just a cause there needs no consultation and when the sentence was pronounced against him he cried out I heartily thank Almighty God who is pleased to free me from the chains of this earthly carcass Had torments and the very extremities of cruelty been able to sink their Courage it had soon been trodden under foot but it was triumphant in the midst of torments and lift up its head higher the greater the loads that were layd upon it whereof there are instances enough in the Histories of the Church nay in this triumph even the weaker Sex bore no inconsiderable part Eusebius tells us among others that suffered in the French persecution under M. Aurelius of one Blandina a good woman but of whom the Church was afraid how she would hold out to make a resolute confession by reason of the weakness of her body and the tenderness of her education that when she came to 't she bore up with such invincible magnanimity that her tormentors though they took their turns from morning to night and plied her with all kinds of racks and tortures were yet forced to give over and confess themselves overcome and wondring that a body so broken and mangled should yet be able to draw its breath But this noble Athleta gain'd strength by suffering she eased and refreshed her self and mitigated the sense of present pain by repeating these words I am a Christian and No evil is done by us Nor did they only generously bear these things for the sake of their Religion when they were layd upon them but many times freely offered themselves confessing themselves to be Christians when they knew that their confession would cost their lives So did those noble Martyrs whom Eusebius saw at Thebais multitudes having been executed every day with all imaginable cruelties sentence was no sooner pass'd against one party of them but others presented themselves before the Tribunal and confessed that they were Christians receiving the fatal sentence with all possible expressions of chearfulness and rejoycing The same which he also reports of six young men that suffered in Palestine spontaneously addressing themselves to the Governour of the Province owning that they were Christians and ready to undergo the severest punishments In the Acts of S. Cyprian's passion we are told that the President having caus'd a mighty furnace to be filled with burning lime and fire with heaps of frankincense round about the brim of it gave the Christians this choice either to burn the frankincense in sacrifice to Jupiter or to be thrown into the furnace Whereupon three hundred men being arm'd with an unconquerable faith and confessing Christ to be the Son of God leaped into the midst of the fiery furnace with whose fumes and vapours they were immediately suffocated and swallowed up There wanted not some who in the hottest persecutions durst venture to undertake the cause of Christians and to plead it before the face of their bitterest enemies thus did Vettius Epagathus a man full of zeal and piety who seeing his fellow-Christians unjustly dragged before the Judgment-seat required leave of the President that he might plead his brethrens cause and openly shew that they were not guilty of the least wickedness and impiety but not daring to grant him so reasonable a request the Judge took the advantage of asking him whether he was a Christian which he publickly owning was adjudged to the same Martyrdom with the rest Of Origen we read that though then but eighteen years of age yet he was wont not only to wait upon the Martyrs in prison but to attend upon them at their tryals and the times of their execution kissing and embracing them and boldly preaching and professing the faith of Christ insomuch that had he not been many times miraculously preserved the Gentiles had pelted him to death with stones for they mortally hated him for his industrious and undaunted propagation of the Faith Nay when but a Boy and his Father Leontius was seized upon he wrote to his Father most earnestly pressing him to persevere unto Martyrdom and not to concern himself what might become of his wife and children nor for their sakes to decline that excellent cause he was ingaged in By this free and chearful undergoing the greatest miseries rather than deny or prejudice their Religion Christians evidently demonstrated the goodness of their Principles and shewed they were no such persons as their enemies commonly look'd upon them that a Christian as Ignatius observes is not the child of fancy and perswasion but of true gallantry and greatness of spirit having so much hatred of the World to graple and contend with Those who are Malefactors as Tertullian argues desire to be concealed and shun to appear being apprehended they tremble being accused they deny being racked do not easily nor always confess the truth however being condemn'd they are sad search into and censure themselves are unwilling to acknowledge their wickednesses to be their own and accordingly impute them either to their fate or Stars But what is there like this to be found in Christians Amongst them no man is asham'd none repents him of being a Christian unless it be that he was no sooner so if marked out he glories if accused he stands not to defend himself being interrogated he confesses of his own accord being condemn'd he gives thanks what evil then can there be in this which is so far from having any shadow of evil any fear shame tergiversation repentance deplorableness to attend it What evil can that be of which he that is guilty rejoyces of which to be accused is their vote and desire and for which to be punished is their happiness and felicity This likewise Arnobius lays down as a grand evidence of the divinity of the Christian faith that in so short a time it had conquered so much of the world subdued men of the greatest parts and learning made them willing to quit their belov'd opinions to forfeit their estates to part with their ease and pleasures and to submit to torments rather than violate the faith of Christ or start from the station they had entred upon By this excellent temper and carriage they admirably triumphed over the best men amongst the Gentiles none of whom durst engage so deep for the defence of their dearest sentiments as the Christians did for theirs witness Plato who set up the Academy and brought in an obscure and ambiguous way of delivering his opinions lest by speaking out he should fall under the sentence and the fate of Socrates Thus Origen puts Celsus in mind of Aristotle who understanding that the Athenians intended to call him to account for some of his as they thought them un-orthodox opinions immediately remov'd his School saying to his Friends Let 's be gone from Athens lest we give them an occasion of being guilty
measure of their transactions a lie they abhorr'd as bad in all as monstrous in a Christian as directly opposite to that truth to which they had consigned and delivered up themselves in baptism and therefore would not tell one though it were to save their lives When the Heathens charged them with folly and madness that they would so resolutely suffer when a parcel of fair words might make way for them to escape telling them 't was but doing or saying as they were bid and that they might secure their consciences by mental reservations Tertullian lets them know that they rejected the motion with the highest scorn as the plain artifice and invention of the devil When we are most severely examined says Justin Martyr we never deny our selves counting it impious in any thing to dissemble or deny the truth as we know the contrary is acceptable unto God and though we could as they told the Emperours when questioned evade or deny it yet we scorn to live upon any terms by which we must be forced to maintain our lives by lies and falshood This honest and ingenuous simplicity they practised to that exactness and accuracy that for a Christian to be put to his oath was accounted a disparagement to his fidelity and truth So Clemens Alexandrinus tells us he that approves himself and is tried says he in this i.e. the Christian way of piety and Religion is far from being forward either to lie or swear For an oath is a determinative assertion with a calling God to witness for the truth of it But how shall any one that is faithful so far render himself unfaithful or unworthy of belief as to need an oath and not rather make the course of his life a testimony to him as firm and positive as an oath and demonstrate the truth of his assertion by the constant and immutable tenor of his words and actions It 's enough therefore as he presently after adds for every good man either by way of affirmation or denyal to give this assurance 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I speak truly to satisfie any that apprehend not the certainty of what he says for towards those that are without he ought to have such a conversation as is most worthy of belief so as no oath should be required of him and towards himself and those of his party to preserve such an even and equitable temper of mind as is a piece of voluntary Justice This and much more he discourses to the same purpose For this and some other reasons but especially from some mis-taken places of Scripture where 't is said swear not at all some of the Antient Fathers held all taking of an oath unlawful but besides that those few that did were not herein constant to themselves the far greatest part were of another mind and understood the prohibition either of swearing by creatures which was the case of the Jews and which our Saviour and S. James principally aim at or of light rash and false swearing For otherwise that the Primitive Christians did not think it unlawful to take an oath in serious and necessary cases is most evident Athanasius speaking of his accusers whom he desired might be put to their oath tells us that the best way to attest the truth of what is spoken is to call God to witness and this says he is the form of swearing which we Christians are wont to use And indeed though we had no other argument it would be plain enough from hence that they served in the Wars and frequently bore arms even under the Heathen Emperours which 't is evident they could not do without first taking a military oath to be true to their General and to die rather than desert their station And this Vegetius an Heathen Authour though living in the time of the younger Valentinian expresly reports of them that when their names were entred upon the Muster-roll they were wont to take an oath the particular form whereof he there sets down viz. That they swore by God Christ and the Holy Spirit and the Majesty of the Emperour which next to God is to be lov'd and honour'd by mankind This agrees very well with that account which Tertullian had long before given of the Christians when being accus'd by their enemies of high Treason amongst other reasons because they refused to swear by their Emperours he answers that though they would not swear by the Emperours genius their genii or tutelar deities being nothing else but devils yet they did swear by the Emperours safety a thing more august and venerable than all the genii in the World In the Emperours they own God's Institution and Authority would therefore have that to be safe which he had appointed and accordingly accounted it the matter of a lawful oath but for the daemons or genii says he we use adjurare to adjure them so as to cast them out of men non dejerare not to swear by them and thereby confer the honour of Divinity upon them For the same reason they denied to swear by the fortune of the Emperour because amongst the Heathens she was accounted a deity and honour'd with religious worship Thus we see that they refused not to ensure and ratifie their faith by the formality of an oath to which that they might add the greater reverence and solemnity they were wont many times to take it at the receiving of the holy Sacrament as we find in the case of Novatus and his followers for taking their hands wherein they held the Sacramental Elements within his own he caused them to swear by the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ that they would not desert him But because this may be thought to have been only the artifice of an Heretick to bind his followers the faster to his party S. Chrysostom though himself no good friend to taking oaths sufficiently assures us 't was customary to come into the Church and to swear upon the Communion Table taking the Book of the Holy Gospels into their hands The same appears from the case proposed to Gregory Nazianzen by Theodore Bishop of Tyana and by the instance of Evagrius Nazianzen's Arch-deacon at Constantinople who had it reveal'd to him in a Vision that some persons lay in wait for him and that therefore he must presently be gone the person that revealed it assuring him he would knock off those fetters that were upon him if he would swear to him upon the Holy Gospels that he would immediately depart which was accordingly done And as their caution was great in taking of an oath so their care was no less in making of it good they knew that in this solemn transaction they did in a more peculiar manner call in God as a witness of what they said and a revenger in case of falshood and the violation of it this made them greatly afraid of perjury which they looked upon as a
they knew the seller did not understand the true price and value and that if he did he would not part with it at such a price To this purpose S. Augustine tells us he knew a man probably he means himself though out of modesty he conceals it who having a Book offered him to be sold by one that understood not the price of it at a very small under-rate took the Book but gave him the full price according to its just rate and value which was a great deal more than the seller asked for it And the truth is in such cases advantage cannot honestly be taken of mens weakness or mistake because no man if he understood the true worth and value of his commodity can be supposed willing to part with it at a too-under rate And if they were thus far from craftily over-reaching much more from secretly or openly invading of what was anothers right and property no cheating or couzenage no acts of dishonesty and deceit were allowed or practised amongst them or if any such were discovered they were immediately protested against by the whole Society of Christians Cornelius Bishop of Rome giving Cyprian an account of Novatus the Heretick and his companions tells him of one Nicostratus that not only cheated his Lady and Patroness whose estate and revenues he managed but carried away a great part of the treasures of the Church whereof he was Chief Deacon the portion and maintenance of poor Widows and Orphans a crime says he reserved for perpetual punishment i.e. for the judgement of God in the other world being too great for any in this whereupon he was forced to fly from Rome into Africk to avoid the shame and prosecution of his rapine and sacriledge though when he came there they did not only refuse to admit him into communion but openly exposed the wickedness of him and his confederates to the abhorrency of all men By which may appear the falsity of that charge of Sacriledge which the Gentiles brought against the Christians to which though certainly it primarily respected their declared enmity against the Idolatrous Temples and worship of the Heathens yet Tertullian answers You look upon us says he as Sacrilegious persons and yet never found any of us guilty of wrong or injury of any rapine and violence much less of sacriledge and impiety No they are your own party that swear by and worship your gods and yet rob their temples that are no Christians and yet are found to be sacrilegious And afterwards he adds this further vindication of them As for us says he we deny not any pledge that 's left with us we adulterate no mans marriage-bed we piously educate and train up Orphans and relieve the necessities of the indigent and render no man evil for evil If there be any that dissemble our Religion let them look to 't we disown them for being of our party why should we be worse thought of for others faults or why should a Christian answer for any thing but what concerns his own Religion which no man in so long a time has prov'd to be cruel or incestuous Nay when we are burnt and most severely dealt with 't is for the greatest Innocency Honesty Justice Modesty for our Truth and Faithfulness and our Piety to the Living God And that these were not a parcel of good words which the Christians spoke in their own behalf will appear if we consider the testimony which Pliny who was far from being partial to them gives of them for being commanded by the Emperour Trajan to give him an account of the Christians he tells him that after the strictest examination which he could make even of those that had renounc'd Christianity he found this to be the greatest fault that they were guilty of that they used harmlesly to meet to worship Christ and at those meetings to bind themselves by a Sacrament or an oath that they would not do any wickedness that thy might be firmlier obliged not to commit thefts robberies adulteries not to falsify their words or to deny any thing wherewith they were intrusted when 't was required of them Gregory Bishop of Neocaesarea in a Canonical Epistle which he wrote to rectifie several disorders and irregularities which had happened amongst the Christians of those parts by reason of the inroads and devastations which the Goths and other barbarous nations had made amongst them does amongst other things especially take notice how uncomely in it self how unsuitable to Christians it is to covet and to grasp what is another mans how inhumane to spoyle the oppressed and to enrich our selves by the blood and ruines of our miserable brethren And whereas some might be apt to plead they did not steal but only take up what they found He tells them this excuse would not serve the turn that whatever they had found of their Neighbours nay though it were their enemies they were bound to restore it much more to their brethren who were fellow-sufferers with them in the same condition Others thought it warrant enough to keep what they found though belonging to others having been such deep losers themselves but this he tells them is to justifie one wickedness with another and because the Goths had been enemies to them they would become Goths and Barbarians unto others Nor did they only keep themselves from doing injuries to others they were ready to do them all the right all the kindness that lay in their power especially to vindicate the poor and helpless from the power and violence of those that were too mighty for them Therefore when the Fathers of the Synod of Sardis took notice that some Bishops used to go to Court upon by-errands and private designs of their own they ordain'd that no Bishop should go to Court unless either immediately summoned by the Emperours letters or that their assistance was required to help the oppressed to right Widows and Orphans and to rescue them from the unjust grasps of potent and merciless oppressors and that in these cases they should be ready either by themselves or some deputed by them to present their petitions to plead their cause and to lend them all the assistance they were able to afford I should not in this place have taken any notice how far the ancient Christians were from murder and offering violence to any mans life but that it was a common charge brought against them by the Gentiles that they used to kill and devour an Infant at their Christian meetings especially when any was first to be initiated into their assemblies the story is thus dressed up by the acute Heathen in M. Foelix An Infant being covered all over with meal the better to deceive the unwary is set before him that is to be initiated and taken in he ignorant of what it really is is appointed to cut it up which he effectually does by many secret and mortal wounds whereupon they greedily lick
Proconsul that as badly as they were used yet they ceased not to pray for the overthrow and expulsion of the common enemies for seasonable showers and either for the removing or mitigating publick evils begging of God day and night with the greatest instance and importunity for the peace and safety of their persecutors endeavouring to pacifie and propitiate God who was angry with the iniquities of the age Nor were they thus kind and good natur'd thus submissive and patient for want of power and because they knew not how to help it Tertullian answers in this case that if they thought it lawful to return evil for evil they could in one night with a few firebrands plentifully revenge themselves that they were no small and inconsiderable party and that they needed not betake themselves to the little arts of skulking revenges being able to appear in the capacity of open enemies that though but of yesterdays standing yet they had filled all places all Offices of the Empire and what wars were not they able to manage who could so willingly give up themselves to be slain did not the law of Christianity oblige them to be killed rather than to kill nay that they need not take up arms and rebel for their party was so numerous that should they but agree together to leave the Roman Empire and to go into some remote corner of the world the loss of so many members would utterly ruine it and they would stand amaz'd and affrighted at that solitude and desolation that would ensue upon it and have more enemies than loyal Subjects left amongst them whereas now they had the fewer enemies for having so many Christians The Christians then opposed not their enemies with the points of their swords but with solid Arguments and mild intreaties Thus when Julian the Emperour urg'd his army which was almost wholly made up of Christians to wicked counsels and the practices of idolatry they withstood him only with prayers and tears accounting this says my Author to be the only remedy against persecution So far were they from resisting or rebelling that they could quietly dye at the Emperours command even when they had power lying at their foot I cannot in this place omit the memorable instance of the Thebaean Legion being so exceedingly apposite and pertinent to my purpose and so remarkable as no age can furnish out such another instance I shall set down the story intirely out of the Author himself the account of their martyrdome written by Eucherius Bishop of Lyons who assures us he received the relation from very credible hands and it is thus Maximianus Caesar whom Dioclesian had lately taken to be his Colleague in the Empire a bad man and a bitter persecutor of the Christians was sent into France to suppress a mutiny and rebellion risen there to strengthen his Army there was added to it a band of Christians called the Thebaean Legion consisting according to the manner of the Romans of Six thousand six hundred sixty six faithful expert and resolute Souldiers Coming to Octodurus a place in Savoy and being ready to offer sacrifice to the gods he causes his Army to come together and commands them under a great penalty to swear by the Altars of their gods that they would unanimously fight against their enemies and persecute the Christians as enemies to the gods which the Thebaean Legion no sooner understood but they presently withdrew to Agaunum a place eight miles off call'd at this day S. Mauritzs from Mauricius the Commander of the Legion a place equally pleasant and strong being encompassed about with craggy and inaccessible rocks to avoid if it might be the wicked and sacrilegious command and to refresh themselves tyred with so long a march but the Emperour taking notice of the Army as they came to swear quickly miss'd the Legion and being angry sent Officers to them to require them forthwith to do it who enquiring what it was that they were commanded to do were told by the messengers that all the Souldiers had offered sacrifices and had taken the forementioned oath and that Caesar commanded them to return presently and do the like To whom the heads of the Legion mildly answered That for this reason they left Octodurus because they had heard they should be forced to sacrifice that being Christians and that they might not be defiled with the Altars of Devils they thought themselves oblig'd to worship the living God and to keep that Religion which they had entertain'd in the East to the last hour of their life that as they were a Legion they were ready to any service of the war but to return to him to commit sacriledge as he commanded they could not yield With this Answer the messengers returned and told the Emperour that they were resolved not to obey his Commands who being transported with anger began thus to vent his passion Do my Souldiers think thus to sleight my Royal Orders and the holy Rites of my Religion Had they only despised the Imperial Majesty it would have call'd for publick vengeance but together with the contempt of me an affront is offered to Heaven and the Roman Religion is as much despised as I am Let the obstinate Souldiers know that I am not only able to vindicate my self but to revenge the quarrel of my gods Let my faithful Servants make haste and dispatch every tenth man according as the fatal lot shall fall upon him By this equal death let those whose lot it shall be to die first know how able Maximian is severely to revenge both himself and his gods With that the command is given the Executioners sent the Emperours pleasure made known and every tenth man is put to death who chearfully offer'd their necks to the Executioners and the only contention amongst them was who should first undergo that glorious death This done the Legion is commanded to return to the rest of the Army Whereupon Mauritius the General of the Legion calling it a little aside thus bespake them I congratulate most excellent fellow-souldiers your courage and valour that for the love of Religion the command of Caesar has made no impression upon you you have seen your fellow-souldiers with minds full of joy undergoing a glorious death how much afraid was I lest being arm'd and how easie is it for such to do so you should under a pretence of defending them have endeavour'd to hinder their happy funerals See I am encompassed round with the bodies of my fellow-souldiers whom the dismal Executioner has torn from my side I am besprinkled with the blood of the Saints my clothes died with the reliques of their sacred blood and shall I doubt to follow their death whose example I so much congratulate and admire Shall I concern my self to think what the Emperour commands who is equally subject to the same law of mortality with my self I remember we once took this Military Oath that with the utmost hazard of our
the time of penance might be shortned In what sence communion is denied by some antient Canons to penitents at the hour of death This discipline administred primarily by Bishops By his leave Presbyters and in necessity Deacons might absolve The publick penitentiary when and why instituted when and why laid aside Penitents taken into communion by Martyrs and Confessors This power abused to excess Cyprian's complaint of the excessive numbers of Libells of peace granted by the Martyrs to the lapsed without the knowledge of the Bishop The form of these Pacifick Libells exemplified out of Cyprian other sorts of Libells The Libellatici who Thurificati Several sorts of Libellatici The Libellatici properly so called Their manner of address to the Heathen Magistrate to procure their exemption from sacrificing That they did not privately deny Christ proved against Baronius The piety and purity of the Primitive Church matter of just admiration HAving travelled through the several stages of the subject I had undertaken I should here have ended my journey but that there one thing remains which was not properly reducible under any particular head being of a general relation to the whole and that is to consider what Discipline was used towards offenders in the antient Church only premising this that the Christian Church being founded and established by Christ as a Society and Corporation distinct from that of the Common-wealth is by the very nature of its constitution besides what positive ground and warrant there may be for it in Scripture invested with an inherent power besides what is borrowed from the Civil Magistrate of censuring and punishing its members that offend against the Laws of it and this in order to the maintaining its peace and purity For without such a fundamental power as this 't is impossible that as a Society it should be able to subsist the very nature of a community necessarily implying such a right inherent in it Now for the better understanding what this power was and how exercised in the first Ages of the Church we shall consider these four things What were the usual crimes that came under the discipline of the antient Church what penalties were inflicted upon delinquent persons in what manner offenders were dealt with and by whom this discipline was administred First What the usual crimes and offences were which came under the discipline of the antient Church in the general they were any offences against the Christian Law any vice or immorality that was either publick in it self or made known and made good to the Church For the holy and good Christians of those times were infinitely careful to keep the honour of their Religion unspotted to stifle every sin in its birth and by bringing offenders to publick shame and penalty to keep them from propagating the malignant influence of a bad example For this reason they watched over one another told them privately of their faults and failures and when that would not do brought them before the cognizance of the Church 'T is needless to reckon up particular crimes when none were spar'd Only because in those days by reason of the violent heats of persecution the great temptation which the weaker and more unsettled Christians were exposed to was to deny their profession and to offer sacrifice to the Heathen-gods therefore lapsing into Idolatry was the most common sin that came before them and of this they had very frequent instances it being that which for some Ages mainly exercised the Discipline of the Church This sin of Idolatry or denying Christ in those times was usually committed these three ways Sometimes by exposing the Scriptures to the rage and malice of their enemies which was accounted a virtual renouncing Christianity This was especially remarkable under the Diocletian persecution in the African Churches For Diocletian had put forth an Edict that Christians should deliver up their Scriptures and the Writings of the Church to be burnt This command was prosecuted with great rigour and fierceness and many Christians to avoid the storm delivered up their Bibles to the scorn and fury of their enemies Hence they were styled Traditores of whom there is frequent mention in Optatus and S. Augustin with whom the Orthodox refusing to joyn after the persecution was over the difference broke out into Schism and faction and gave birth to that unhappy Sect of the Donatists which so much exercised the Christian Church Otherwhiles Christians became guilty of Idolatry by actual sacrificing or worshipping Idols these were called Thurificati from their burning incense upon the altars of the Heathen Deities and were the grossest and vilest sort of Idolaters Others again fell into this sin by basely corrupting the Heathen Magistrate and purchasing a warrant of security from him to exempt them from the penalty of the Law and the necessity of sacrificing and denying Christ These were called Libellatici of whom we shall speak more afterwards Secondly What penalties and punishments were inflicted upon delinquent persons and they could be no other than such as were agreeable to the nature and constitution of the Church which as it transacts only in spiritual matters so it could inflict no other than spiritual censures and chastisements 'T is true indeed that in the first Age especially the Apostles had a power to inflict bodily punishments upon offenders which they sometimes made use of upon great occasions as S. Peter did towards Ananias and Saphira striking them dead upon the place for their notorious couzenage and gross hypocrisie And S. Paul punished Elymas with blindness for his perverse and malicious opposition of the Gospel and this doubtless he primarily intends by his delivering over persons unto Satan for no sooner were they excommunicated and cut off from the body of the faithful but Satan as the common Serjeant and Jaylor seized upon them and either by actual possessing or some other sign upon their bodies made it appear that they were delivered over into his power This could not but strike a mighty terrour into men and make them stand in awe of the censures of the Church and questionless the main design of the divine providence in affording this extraordinary gift was to supply the defect of civil and coercive power of which the Church was then wholly destitute and therefore needed some more than ordinary assistance especially at its first constitution some visible and sensible punishments to keep its sentence and determinations from being sleighted by bold and contumacious offenders How long this miraculous power lasted in the Church I know not or whether at all beyond the Apostles age The common and standing penalty they made use of was Excommunication or suspension from communion with the Church the cutting off and casting out an offending person as a rotten and infected member till by repentance and wholesome discipline he was cured and restored and then he was re-admitted into Church-society and to a participation of the ordinances and priviledges of Christianity This way of punishing
up the blood and ravenously tear off and snatch away the several parts of it and with this sacrifice their confederacy and combination is made and by the conscience of so great a villany they are mutually obliged to silence Such sacred rites as these being more horrid and barbarous than the highest sacriledges in the world To this monstrous and horrid charge the Christians returned these answers That they appeal'd to the common Faith of mankind whether they could really believe them to be guilty of these things so abhorrent to all the principles of Humane Nature and to the Christians known Principles and practices in all other things that they should measure the Christians by themselves and if they themselves could not be guilty of such things they should not suspect it by the Christians who were endued with the same Principles of humanity with other men that they were so far from being friends to murder or man-slaughter that they held it unlawful to be present at the Gladiatory sports where mens lives were so want only sacrificed to the pleasure and curiosity of the people that they accounted it murder for any woman by evil arts to procure abortion to stifle the embryo to kill a child in a manner before it be alive it being much at one to hinder life as to take it away to kill a man or destroy what would be one seeing he truly destroys the fruit that kills it in the seed that it was not likely they should delight in mans blood who never tasted any blood at all abstaining from things strangled and from blood And that the very Heathens themselves confessed this when amongst the several arts they used to discover whether men were Christians they used to offer them bladders full of blood knowing that they held it unlawful to taste any and therefore it was mightily improbable they should thirst after humane blood who abhorred even the blood of beasts That they heartily believed the Resurrection of the dead and therefore would not make themselves the Sepulchers of those bodies which were to rise again and feed upon them as they did upon other bodies which were to have no resurrection that the truth was if this charge was true of any it was true only of the Gentiles themselves amongst whom these things were daily allowed and practised That Saturn one of their chief deities did not only expose but eat his own children to him infants in Africk were offered in sacrifice by their own parents a custome that openly continued till the Proconsul-ship of Tiberius which though he abolished it yet it continued still in corners in Tertullians days To his Son Jupiter they offered humane sacrifices even in Rome it self and that even to the time of M. Foelix as he himself testifies which is no more than what Porphyry himself after he had reckoned up in how many parts of the world Humane sacrifices were in use confesses was done at Rome in the Feast of Jupiter Latialis even in his time Many other instances of such barbarous practices are there produced by those two Apologists which they urge with great advantage upon their adversaries whom they challenged to make any such thing good against them And no sooner did discipline begin to be regularly setled but their principles herein were every where confirmed by the Canons of the Church either private or publick the woman that industriously made her self miscarry was adjudged to be guilty of murder and condemn'd to the same punishment a ten years penance which was adjudg'd to be the case of any that brought forth upon the way and exposed her Infant By the law of the State made by the Emperour Valentinian whosoever whether man or woman kill'd an Infant was to be subject to the same capital punishment as if he had kill'd an adult person which may very well be understood even of Infants kill'd in the womb the punishment whereof was formerly for the most part no more than banishment He that was guilty of wilful murder was by S. Basil's rule to undergo a twenty years penance before he was admitted to the Sacrament though by several passages in Tertullian it appears that Homicides in his time were more severely treated by the Church for they were not only bound to a perpetual penance but were not absolv'd at death But this severity shortly after began to relax and such persons though obliged to acts of repentance all their life yet at death were absolved and admitted to Communion as is expresly provided by the decree of the Ancyran Council Thus clear did the Christians all along stand from any just suspicion of that gross piece of inhumanity which their enemies so confidently charged upon them As for the rise and occasion of this malicious charge it was doubtless of the same growth with that of their incestuous mixtures spoken of before both springing from the abominable practices of some filthy Hereticks who sheltred themselves under the name of Christians Epiphanius particularly reporting of the Gnosticks what the Heathens generally charged upon the Christians for he tells us of them that at their meetings they were wont to take an Infant begotten in their promiscuous mixtures and beating it in a mortar to season it with honey and pepper and some other spices and perfumes to make it palatable and then like swine or dogs to devour it and then to conclude all with prayer and this they accounted their perfect pass-over I am not ignorant that a learned man will by no means believe that any of the ancient Hereticks did ever arrive to so much barbarousness and immanity as to be guilty of such things and conceives them to have been feigned meerly out of hatred to those pestilent hereticks but there 's little reason to suspect the truth of it Epiphanius assuring us that he had the account that he gives from the mouths of the Gnosticks themselves and that many of the women who were deceiv'd into those abominable errours did not only discover these things to him but that he himself in his younger years while he was in Egypt had been assaulted by them and by all the arts of flattery and perswasion of wantonness and immdesty had been set upon to joyn himself to them And certainly 't is not imaginable that a person so venerable for learning and piety as Epiphanius was should impose upon us by feigning so gross and notorious a falshood Besides whoever reads Irenaeus in whose time these heresies were most riâ—e and predominant and considers the account that he gives of them which he mainly received from persons of their own party after they were returned back to the Church will see little reason either to think any wickedness too great for them to boggle at or to doubt of the truth of what he reports concerning them CHAP. II. Of their admirable Love and Charity The excellent temper of the