Grammar of Assent
A Deliverer of the human race through the Jewish nation had been promised from time immemorial. The day came when He was to appear, and He was eagerly expected; moreover, One actually did make His appearance at that date in Palestine, and claimed to be He. He left the earth without apparently doing much for the object of His coming. But when He was gone, His disciples took upon themselves to go forth to preach to all parts of the earth with the object of preaching Him, and collecting converts in His Name. After a little while they are found wonderfully to have succeeded. Large bodies of men in various places are to be seen, professing to be His disciples, owning Him as their King, and continually swelling in number and penetrating into the populations of the Roman Empire; at length they convert the Empire itself. All this is historical fact. Now, we want to know the farther historical fact, viz. the cause of their conversion; in other words, what were the topics of that preaching which was so effective? If we believe what is told us by the preachers and their converts, the answer is plain. They “preached Christ;” they called on men to believe, hope, and place their affections, in that Deliverer who had come and gone; and the moral instrument by which they persuaded them to do so, was a description of the life, character, mission, and power of that Deliverer, a promise of His invisible Presence and Protection here, and of the Vision and Fruition of Him hereafter. From first to last to Christians, as to Abraham, He Himself is the centre and fulness of the dispensation. They, as Abraham, “see His day, and are glad.”
A temporal sovereign makes himself felt by means of his subordinate administrators, who bring his power and will to bear upon every individual of his subjects who personally know him not; the universal Deliverer, long expected, when He came, He too, instead of making and securing subjects by a visible graciousness or majesty, departs;—but is found, through His preachers, to have imprinted the Image(50) or Idea of Himself in the minds of His subjects individually; and that Image, apprehended and worshipped in individual minds, becomes a principle of association, and a real bond of those subjects one with another, who are thus united to the body by being united to that Image; and moreover that Image, which is their moral life, when they have been already converted, is also the original instrument of their conversion. It is the Image of Him who fulfils the one great need of human nature, the Healer of its wounds, the Physician of the soul, this Image it is which both creates faith, and then rewards it.
When we recognize this central Image as the vivifying idea both of the Christian body and of individuals in it, then, certainly, we are able to take into account at least two of Gibbon’s causes, as having, in connexion with that idea, some influence both in making converts and in strengthening them to persevere. It was the Thought of Christ, not a corporate body or a doctrine, which inspired that zeal which the historian so poorly comprehends; and it was the Thought of Christ which gave a life to the promise of that eternity, which without Him would be, in any soul, nothing short of an intolerable burden.
Now a mental vision such as this, perhaps will be called cloudy, fanciful, unintelligible; that is, in other words, miraculous. I think it is so. How, without the Hand of God, could a new idea, one and the same, enter at once into myriads of men, women, and children of all ranks, especially the lower, and have power to wean them from their indulgences and sins, and to nerve them against the most cruel tortures, and to last in vigour as a sustaining influence for seven or eight generations, till it founded an extended polity, broke the obstinacy of the strongest and wisest government which the world has ever seen, and forced its way from its first caves and catacombs to the fulness of imperial power?
In considering this subject, I shall confine myself to the proof, as far as my limits allow, of two points,—first, that this Thought or Image of Christ was the principle of conversion and of fellowship; and next, that among the lower classes, who had no power, influence, reputation, or education, lay its principal success.(51)
As to the vivifying idea, this is St. Paul’s account of it: “I make known to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you have received, and wherein you stand; by which also you are saved. For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,” &c., &c. “I am the least of the Apostles; but, whether I or they, so we preached, and so you believed.” “It has pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.” “We preach Christ crucified.” “I determined to know nothing among you, but Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.” “Your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, shall appear, then you also shall appear with Him in glory.” “I live, but now not I, but Christ liveth in me.”
St. Peter, who has been accounted the master of a separate school, says the same: “Jesus Christ, whom you have not seen, yet love; in whom you now believe, and shall rejoice.”
And St. John, who is sometimes accounted a third master in Christianity: “It hath not yet appeared what we shall be; but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like to Him, because we shall see Him as He is.”
That their disciples followed them in this sovereign devotion to an Invisible Lord, will appear as I proceed.
And next, as to the worldly position and character of His disciples, our Lord, in the well-known passage, returns thanks to His Heavenly Father “because,” He says, “Thou hast hid these things”—the mysteries of His kingdom—“from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to little ones.” And, in accordance with this announcement, St. Paul says that “not many wise men according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble,” became Christians. He, indeed, is one of those few; so were others his contemporaries, and, as time went on, the number of these exceptions increased, so that converts were found, not a few, in the high places of the Empire, and in the schools of philosophy and learning; but still the rule held, that the great mass of Christians were to be found in those classes which were of no account in the world, whether on the score of rank or of education.
We all know this was the case with our Lord and His Apostles. It seems almost irreverent to speak of their temporal employments, when we are so simply accustomed to consider them in their spiritual associations; but it is profitable to remind ourselves that our Lord Himself was a sort of smith, and made ploughs and cattle-yokes. Four Apostles were fishermen, one a petty tax collector, two husbandmen, and another is said to have been a market gardener.(52) When Peter and John were brought before the Council, they are spoken of as being, in a secular point of view, “illiterate men, and of the lower sort,” and thus they are spoken of in a later age by the Fathers.
That their converts were of the same rank as themselves, is reported, in their favour or to their discredit, by friends and enemies, for four centuries. “If a man be educated,” says Celsus in mockery, “let him keep clear of us Christians; we want no men of wisdom, no men of sense. We account all such as evil. No; but, if there be one who is inexperienced, or stupid, or untaught, or a fool, let him come with good heart.” “They are weavers,” he says elsewhere, “shoemakers, fullers, illiterate, clowns.” “Fools, low-born fellows,” says Trypho. “The greater part of you,” says Cæcilius, “are worn with want, cold, toil, and famine; men collected from the lowest dregs of the people; ignorant, credulous women;” “unpolished, boors, illiterate, ignorant even of the sordid arts of life; they do not understand even civil matters, how can they understand divine?” “They have left their tongs, mallets, and anvils, to preach about the things of heaven,” says Libanius. “They deceive women, servants, and slaves,” says Julian. The author of Philopatris speaks of them as “poor creatures, blocks, withered old fellows, men of downcast and pale visages.” As to their religion, it had the reputation popularly, according to various Fathers, of being an anile superstition, the discovery of old women, a joke, a madness, an infatuation, an absurdity, a fanaticism.
The Fathers themselves confirm these statements, so far as they relate to the insignificance and ignorance of their brethren. Athenagoras speaks of the virtue of their “ignorant men, mechanics, and old women.” “They are gathered,” says St. Jerome, “not from the Academy or Lyceum, but from the low populace.” “They are whitesmiths, servants, farm-labourers, woodmen, men of sordid trades, beggars,” says Theodoret. “We are engaged in the farm, in the market, at the baths, wine-shops, stables, and fairs; as seamen, as soldiers, as peasants, as dealers,” says Tertullian. How came such men to be converted? and, being converted, how came such men to overturn the world? Yet they went forth from the first, “conquering and to conquer.”
The first manifestation of their formidable numbers is made just about the time when St. Peter and St. Paul suffered martyrdom, and was the cause of a terrible persecution. We have the account of it in Tacitus. “Nero,” he says, “to put an end to the common talk [that Rome had been set on fire by his order], imputed it to others, visiting with a refinement of punishment those detestable criminals who went by the name of Christians. The author of that denomination was Christus, who had been executed in Tiberius’s time by the procurator, Pontius Pilate. The pestilent superstition, checked for a while, burst out again, not only throughout Judea, the first seat of the evil, but even throughout Rome, the centre both of confluence and outbreak of all that is atrocious and disgraceful from every quarter. First were arrested those who made no secret of their sect; and by this clue a vast multitude of others, convicted, not so much of firing the city, as of hatred to the human race. Mockery was added to death; clad in skins of beasts, they were torn to pieces by dogs; they were nailed up to crosses; they were made inflammable, so that, when day failed, they might serve as lights. Hence, guilty as they were, and deserving of exemplary punishment, they excited compassion, as being destroyed, not for the public welfare, but from the cruelty of one man.”
The two Apostles suffered, and a silence follows of a whole generation. At the end of thirty or forty years, Pliny, the friend of Trajan, as well as of Tacitus, is sent as that Emperor’s Proprætor into Bithynia, and is startled and perplexed by the number, influence, and pertinacity of the Christians whom he finds there, and in the neighbouring province of Pontus. He has the opportunity of being far more fair to them than his friend the historian. He writes to Trajan to know how he ought to deal with them, and I will quote some portions of his letter.
He says he does not know how to proceed with them, as their religion has not received toleration from the state. He never was present at any trial of them; he doubted whether the children among them, as well as grown people, ought to be accounted as culprits, whether recantation would set matters right, or whether they incurred punishment all the same; whether they were to be punished, merely because Christians, even though no definite crime was proved against them. His way had been to examine them, and put questions to them; if they confessed the charge, he gave them one or two chances, threatening them with punishment; then, if they persisted, he gave orders for their execution. “For,” he argues, “I felt no doubt that, whatever might be the character of their opinions, stubborn and inflexible obstinacy deserved punishment. Others there were of a like infatuation, whom, being citizens, I sent to Rome.”
Some satisfied him; they repeated after him an invocation to the gods, and offered wine and incense to the Emperor’s image, and in addition, cursed the name of Christ. “Accordingly,” he says, “I let them go; for I am told nothing can compel a real Christian to do any of these things.” There were others, too, who sacrificed; who had been Christians, some of them for as many as twenty years.