CHAP. II. CHRISTIANS IN HADRIAN'S NEW CITY. 423 tuted two totally different and implacably hostile races. The Roman government began to discriminate between them, as clearly appears from the permission to the Christians to reside in Hadrian's New City, on the site of Jerusalem, which was interdicted to the Jews. Mutual hatred was increased by mutual alienation; the Jew, who had lost the power of persecuting, lent himself as a willing instrument to the heathen persecutor against those whom he still considered as apostates from his religion. The less enlightened Christian added to the contempt of all the Roman world for the Jew a principle of deeper hostility. The language of Tertullian is that of triumph, rather than of commiseration for the degraded state of the Jew. Strong jealousy of the pomp and power assumed by the Patriarch of Tiberias may be traced in the vivid description of Origen." No sufferings could too profoundly debase, no pride could become those, who shared in the hereditary guilt of the crucifixion of Jesus. • Dispersi, palabundi, et cœli et soli sui extorres vagantur per orbem, sine nomine, sine Deo rege, quibus nec advenarum jure terram patriam saltem | vestigio salutare conceditur. Lib. cont. Judæos, 15. P Origen, Epist. ad Africanum. Hist. of Jews, ii. 465. 424 CHRISTIANITY AND PAGANISM. BOOK II. between Ju daism and CHAPTER III Christianity and Paganism. THE conflict of Christianity with Judaism was a civil Relationship War; that with Paganism, the invasion and conquest of a foreign territory. In the former Christianity. case it was the declared design of the innova tion to perfect the established constitution on its primary principles; to expand the yet undeveloped system, according to the original views of the Divine Legislator; in the latter it contemplated the total subversion of the existing order of things, a reconstruction of the whole moral and religious being of mankind. With the Jew, the abolition of the Temple service, and the abrogation of the Mosaic Law, were indispensable to the perfect establishment of Christianity. The first was left to be accomplished by the frantic turbulence of the people, and the remorseless vengeance of Rome. Yet, after all, the Temple service maintained its more profound and indelible influence only over the Jew of Palestine; its hold upon the vast numbers which were settled in all parts of the world was that of remote, occasional, traditionary reverence. With the foreign Jew, the service of the synagogue was his religion; and the synagogue, without any violent change, was transformed into a Christian church. The same Almighty God, to whom it was primarily dedicated, maintained his place and the sole difference was, that He was worshipped through the mediation of the crucified Jesus of Nazareth. With CHAP. III. THEIR DIRECT OPPOSITION. 425 the Pagan, the whole of his religious observances fell under the unsparing proscription. Every one of the countless temples and shrines, and sacred groves, and hallowed fountains, were to be desecrated by the abhorrent feelings of those who looked back with shame and contempt upon their old idolatries. Every image, from the living work of Phidias or Praxiteles, to the rude and shapeless Hermes or Terminus, was to become an unmeaning mass of wood or stone. In every city, town, or even village, there was a contest to be maintained, not merely against the general system of Polytheism, but against the local and tutelary deity of the place. Every public spectacle, every procession, every civil or military duty, was a religious ceremonial. Though later, when Christianity was in the ascendant, it might expel the deities of Paganism from some of the splendid temples, and convert them to its own use; though insensibly many of the usages of the Heathen worship crept into the more gorgeous and imposing ceremonial of triumphant Christianity; though even many Direct oppoof the vulgar superstitions incorporated them- sition of selves with the sacred Christian associations, to Paganism. all this reaction was long subsequent to the permanent establishment of the new religion. At first all was rigid and uncompromising hostility; doubts were entertained by the more scrupulous whether meat exposed to public sale in the market, but which might have formed part of a sacrifice, would not be dangerously polluting to the Christian. The Apostle, though anxious to correct this sensitive scrupulousness, touches on the point with the utmost caution and delicacy." Christianity The private life of the Jew was already, in part at a 1 Corinth. x. 25-31. 426 UNIVERSALITY OF PAGANISM. BOOK II. least, fettered by the minute and almost Brahminical observances with which the later Rabbins established their despotic authority over the mind. Still some of these usages harmonised with the spirit of Christianity; others were less inveterately rooted in the feelings of the foreign Jew. The trembling apprehension of anything approaching to idolatry, the concentration of the heart's whole devotion upon the One Almighty God, prepared the soul for a Christian bias. The great struggle to Jewish feeling was the abandonment of circumcision, as the sign of his covenant with God. But this once over, baptism, the substituted ceremony, was perhaps already familiar to his mind; or, at least, emblematic ablutions were strictly in unison with the genius and the practice of his former religion. Some of the stricter Pharisaic distinctions were local and limited to Palestine, as, for instance, the payment of tithe; since the Temple tribute was the only national tax imposed by his religion on the foreign Jew. Their sectarian symbols, which in Palestine were publicly displayed upon their dress, were of course less frequent in foreign countries; and though worn in secret, might be dropped and abandoned by the convert to Christianity, without Universality exciting observation. The whole life of the of Paganism. Heathen, whether of the philosopher who despised, or the vulgar who were indifferent to, the essential part of the religion, was pervaded by the spirit of Polytheism. It met him in every form, in every quarter, in every act and function of every day's business; not merely in the graver offices of the state, in the civil and military acts of public men; in the senate which commenced its deliberations with sacrifice; in the camp, the centre of which was a consecrated temple. The Pagan's domestic hearth was guarded by the Penates, CHAP. ill. POLYTHEISM. 427 or by the ancestral gods of his family or tribe; by land he travelled under the protection of one tutelar divinity, by sea of another; the birth, the bridal, the funeral, had each its presiding deity; the very commonest household utensils and implements were cast in mythological forms; he could scarcely drink without being reminded of making a libation to the gods; and the language itself was impregnated with constant allusions to the popular religion. However, as a religion, Polytheism might be undermined and shaken to the base, yet, as part of the existing order of things, its inert resistance would everywhere present a strong barrier against the invasion of a foreign faith. The priesthood of an effete religion, as long as the attack is conducted under the decent disguise of philosophical inquiry, or is only aimed at the moral or the speculative part of the faith; as long as the form, of which alone they are become the ministers, is permitted to subsist, go on calmly performing the usual ceremonial: neither their feelings nor their interests are actively alive to the veiled and insidious encroachments which are made upon the power and stability of their belief. In the Roman part of the Western world the religion was an integral part of the state. The greatest men of the last days of the Republic, the Ciceros and Cæsars, the Emperors themselves, aspired to fill the pontifical offices, and discharged their duties with grave solemnity, however their declared philosophical opinions were subversive of the whole system of Polytheism. Men might disbelieve, deny, even substitute foreign superstitions for the accustomed rites of their country, provided they did not commit any overt act of hostility, or publicly endeavour to bring the ceremonial into contempt. Such acts were not only impieties, they were |