in different places excite a more active hostility; in Rome it is evident that the people were only worked up to find inhuman delight in the sufferings of the Christians, by the misrepresentations of the government, by superstitious solicitude to find some victims to appease the angry Gods, and that strange consolation of human misery, the delight of wreaking vengeance on whomsoever it can possibly implicate as the cause of the calamity. During the whole then of this first period, to the death of Nero, both the primitive obscurity of Christianity, and the transient impor tance it assumed, as a dangerous enemy of the people of Rome, and subsequently as the guiltless victim of popular vengeance, would tend to its eventual progress. Its own innate activity, with all the force which it carried with it, both in its internal and external impulse, would propagate it extensively in the inferior and middle classes of society; while, though the great mass of the higher orders would still remain unacquainted with its real nature, and with its relation to its parent Judaism, it was quite enough before the public attention to awaken the curiosity of the more inquiring, and to excite the interest of those who were seriously concerned in the moral advancement of mankind. In many quarters, it is far from impossible that the strong revulsion of the public mind against Nero, after his death, may have extended some commiseration towards his innocent victims (1) that the Christians were acquitted by the popular feeling of any real connection with the fire at Rome, appears evident from Tacitus, who retreats into vague expressions of general scorn and animosity (2). At all events the persecution must have had the effect of raising the importance of Christianity, so as to force it upon the notice of many, who might otherwise have been ignorant of its existence: the new and peculiar fortitude with which the sufferers endured their unprecedented trials, would strongly recommend it to those who were dissatisfied with the moral power of their old religion; while on the other hand it was yet too feeble and obscure to provoke a systematic plan for its suppression. Second periodo the acces Trajan. During the second period of the first century, from A. D. 68 to 98, the date of the accession of Trajan, the larger portion was occupied by the reign of Domitian, a tyrant, in whom the successors of Au- sion of gustus might appear to revive, both in the monstrous vices of his personal character, and of his government. Of the Flavian dynasty, the father alone, Vespasian, from the comprehensive vigour of his mind, perhaps from his knowledge of the Jewish character and religion, obtained during his residence in the East, was likely to estimate the bearings and future prospects of Christianity. But the (1) This was the case even in Rome. Unde quanquam adversus sontes et novissima exempla meritos, miseratio oriebatur, tanquam non utilitate pablicà, sed in sævitiam unius absume (2) Odio humani generis convicti. losophers. total subjugation of Judæa, and the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem, having reduced the religious parents of the Christians to so low a state, their nation and consequently their religion, being, according to the ordinary course of events, likely to mingle up and become absorbed in the general population of the Roman empire, Christianity, it might reasonably be supposed, would scarcely survive its original stock, and might be safely left to burn out by the same gradual process of extinction. Besides this, the strong mind of Vespasian was fully occupied by the restoration of order in the capital and in the provinces, and in fixing on a firm basis the yet unsettled authority of the Flavian dynasty. A more formidable, because more immediate danger, threatened the exisling order of things. The awful genius of Roman liberty had entered Stoie phi- into an alliance with the higher philosophy of the time. Republican stoicism, brooding in the noblest minds of Rome, looked back with vain though passionate regret, to the free institutions of their ancestors, and demanded the old liberty of action. It was this dangerous movement, not the new and humble religion, which calmly acquiesced in all political changes, and contented itself with liberty of thought and opinion, which put to the test the prudence and moderation of the emperor Vespasian. It was the spirit of Cato, not of Christ, which he found it necessary to control. The enemy before whom he trembled was the patriot Trasea, not the Apostle St. John, who was silently winning over Ephesus to the new faith. The edict of expulsion from Rome fell not on the worshippers of foreign religions, but on the philosophers, a comprehensive term, but which was probably limited to those whose opinions were considered dangerous to the Imperial authority (1). Temple tax. It was only with the new fiscal regulations of the rapacious and parsimonious Vespasian, that the Christians were accidentally implicated. The Emperor continued to levy the capitation tax, which had been willingly and proudly paid by the Jews throughout the empire for the maintenance of their own temple at Jerusalem, for the restoration of the idolatrous fane of the Capitoline Jupiter, which had been destroyed in the civil contests. The Jew submitted with sullen reluctance to this insulting exaction; but even the hope of escaping it would not incline him to disguise or dissemble his faith. But the Judaizing Christian, and even the Christian of Jewish descent, who had entirely thrown off his religion, yet was marked by the indelible sign of his race, was placed in a singularly perplexing position (2). The rapacious publican, who farmed the tax, was not likely to draw any true distinction among those whose features, connexions, name, and notorious descent, still designated (1) Tacit. Hist. iv. 4-9. Dion Cassius, lxvi. 13. Suetonius, Vespas. 15. Tillemont, Hist. des Empereurs. Vespasian. Art. xv. (2) Dion Cassius, edit. Reimar, with his notes, lib. xvi. p. 1082. Suetonius in Dom. v. 12. Martial, vii. 14. Basnage, Hist, des Juifs. vol. vii. ch. xi. p. 304. them as liable to the tax his coarser mind would consider the profession of Christianity as a subterfuge to escape a vexatious impost. But to the Jewish Christian of St. Paul's opinions, the unresisted payment of the burthen, however insignificant, and to which he was not bound, either by the letter or the spirit of the edict, was an acknowledgment of his unconverted Judaism, of his being still under the law, as well as an indirect contribution to the maintenance of heathenism. It is difficult to suppose that those who were brought before the public tribunal, as claiming an exemption from the tax, and exposed to the most indecent examination of their Jewish descent, were any other than this class of Judaizing Christians. the condi tion and of the Jews after the war. In other respects, the connexion of the Christians with the Jews could not but affect their place in that indiscriminating public estimation, which still, in general, notwithstanding the Neronian persecution, confounded them together. The Jewish war appears to Change in have made a great alteration both in the condition of the race of Israel, and in the popular sentiment towards them. From aversion estimation as a sullen and unsocial, they were now looked upon with hatred and contempt, as a fierce, a desperate, and an enslaved race. Some of the higher orders, Agrippa and Josephus the historian, maintained a respectable, and even an eminent rank at Rome; but the provinces were overrun by swarms of Jewish slaves, or miserable fugitives, reduced by necessity to the meanest occupations, and lowering their minds to their sordid and beggarly condition. As then to some of the Romans the Christian assertion of religious freedom would seem closely allied with the Jewish attempt to obtain civil independence, they might appear, especially to those in authority, to have inherited the intractable and insubordinate spirit of their religious forefathers; so, on the other hand, in some places, the Christian might be dragged down, in the popular apprehension, to the level of the fallen and outcast Jew. Thus, while Christianity in fact was becoming more and more alienated from Judaism, and even assuming the most hostile position, the Roman rulers would be the last to discern the widening breach, or to discriminate between that religious confederacy which was destined to absorb within it all the subjects of the Roman empire, and that race which was to remain in its social isolation, neither blended into the general mass of mankind, nor admitting any other within its insuperable pale. If the singular story related by Hegesippus (1) concerning the family The deof our Lord deserves credit, even the descendants of his house were of the bre endangered by their yet unbroken connection with the Jewish race. Domitian is said to have issued an edict for the extermination of the whole house of David, in order to annihilate for ever the hope of scendants thren of brought tribunal. our Lord before the (1) Eusebius, iii. 20. the Messiah, which still brooded with dangerous excitement in the Jewish mind. The grandsons of St. Jude, "the brother of our Lord," were denounced by certain heretics as belonging to the proscribed family, and brought before the tribunal of the Emperor, or, more probably, that of the procurator of Judæa (1). They acknowledged their descent from the royal race, and their relationship to the Messiah; but in Christian language they asserted, that the kingdom which they expected was purely spiritual and angelic, and only to commence at the end of the world, after the return to judgment. Their poverty, rather than their renunciation of all temporal views, was their security. They were peasants, whose hands were hardened with toil, and whose whole property was a farm of about twentyfour English acres, and of the value of 9000 drachmes, or about 300 pounds sterling. This they cultivated by their own labour, and regularly paid the appointed tribute. They were released as too humble and too harmless to be dangerous to the Roman authority, and Domitian, according to the singularly inconsistent account, proceeded to annual his edict of persecution against the Christians. Like all the stories which rest on the sole authority of Hegesippus, this has a very fabulous air. At no period were the hopes of the Messiah, entertained by the Jews, so little likely to awaken the jealousy of the Emperor, as in the reign of Domitian. The Jewish mind was still stunned, as it were, by the recent blow the whole land was in a state of iron subjection. Nor was it till the latter part of the reign of Trajan, and that of Hadrian, that they rallied for their last desperate and conclusive struggle for independence. Nor, however indistinct the line of demarcation between the Jews and the Christians, is it easy to trace the connection between the stern precaution for the preservation of the peace of the Eastern world and the stability of the Empire against any enthusiastic aspirant after an universal sovereignty, with what is sometimes called the second great persecution of Christianity; for the exterminating edict was aimed at a single family, and at the extinction of a purely Jewish tenet. Though it may be admitted that, even yet, the immediate return of the Messiah to reign on earth was dominant among, most of the Jewish Christians of Palestine. Even if true, this edict was rather the hasty and violent expedient of an arbitrary sovereign, trembling for his personal security, and watchful to avert danger from his throne, than a profound and vigorous policy, which aimed at the suppression of a new religion, declaredly hostile, and threatening the existence of the established Polytheism. Christianity, however, appears to have forced itself upon the knowledge and the fears of Domitian in a more unexpected quarter, the bosom of his own family (2). Of his two cousins german, (1) Gibbon thus modifies the story to which he appears to give some credit. (2) Suetonius, in Domit. c. 15. Dion. Cassius, Ixvii. 14. Eusebius, iii. 18. Cleineus. the sons of Flavius Sabinus, the one fell an early victim to his jealous apprehensions. The other, Flavius Clemens, is described by the epigrammatic biographer of the Cæsars, as a man of the most contemptible indolence of character. His peaceful kinsman, instead Flavius of exciting the fears, enjoyed, for some time, the favour, of Domitian. He received in marriage Domitilla, the niece of the Emperor, his children were adopted as heirs to the throne, Clemens himself obtained the consulship. On a sudden these harmless kinsmen became dangerous conspirators; they were arraigned on the unprecedented charge of Atheism and Jewish manners; the husband, Clemens, was put to death; the wife, Domitilla, banished to the desert island, either of Pontia, or Pandataria. The crime of Atheism was afterwards the common popular charge against the Christians; the charge to which, in all ages, those are exposed who are superior to the vulgar notion of the Deity. But it was a charge never advanced against Judaism; coupled, therefore, with that of Jewish manners, it is unintelligible, unless it refers to Christianity. Nor is it improbable that the contemptible want of energy, ascribed by Suetonius to Flavius Clemens, might be that unambitious superiority to the world which characterised the early Christian. Clemens had seen his brother cut off by the sudden and capricious fears of the tyrant; and his repugnance to enter on the same dangerous public career, in pursuit of honours which he despised, if it had assumed the lofty language of philosophy, might have commanded the admiration of his cotemporaries; but connected with a new religion, of which the sublimer notions and principles were altogether incomprehensible, only exposed him to their more contemptuous scorn. Neither in his case was it the peril apprehended from the progress of the religion, but the dangerous position of the individuals professing the religion, so near to the throne, which was fatal to Clemens and Domitilla. It was the pretext, not the cause, of their punishment; and the first act of the reign of Nerva was the reversal of these sentences by the authority of the senate the exiles were recalled, and an act, prohibiting all accusations of Jewish manners (1), seems to have been intended as a peace-offering for the execution of Clemens, and for the especial protection of the Christians. But Christian history cannot pass over another incident assigned to the reign of Domitian, since it relates to the death of St. John the Apostle. Christian gratitude and reverence soon began to be discontented with the silence of the authentic writings as to the fate different of the twelve chosen companions of Christ. It began first with some modest respect for truth, but soon with bold defiance of probability to brighten their obscure course, till each might be traced by the blaze of miracle into remote regions of the world, where it is clear, (1) Dion Cassius, lxviii. 1. Legends sions of of the mis the Apostles into countries. |