NOTES. intolerant and persecutors; witness the Persians, the Egyptians, even the Greeks and Romans. Cambyses, con1st. The Persians. queror of the Egyptians, condemned to death the magistrates of Memphis, because they had offered divine honours to their god Apis: he caused the god to be brought before him, struck him with his dagger, commanded the priests to be scourged, and ordered a general massacre of all the Egyptians who should be found celebrating the festival of Apis: he caused all the statues of the gods to be burned. Not content with this intolerance, he sent an army to reduce the Ammonians to slavery, and to set on fire the temple in which Jupiter delivered his oracles. See Herod., iii., 25 to 29, 37. Xerxes, during his invasion of Greece, acted on the same principles: he destroyed all the temples of Greece and Ionia, except that of Ephesus. See Paus., 1. vii., p. 533, and x., p. 887. Strabo, 1. xiv., p. 941. 2d. The Egyptians.-They thought them- Ardet adhuc Ombos et Tentyra, summus utrin- Inde furor vulgo, quod numina vicinorum 8d. The Greeks."Let us not here," litus for impiety; the Greeks armed one 4th. The Romans.-The laws of Rome Gibbon's just observation on this passage in Dion Cassius, ch. xvi., note 117; impugned indeed by M. Guizot, note in loc.)-M. Even the laws which the philosophers of Athens and of Rome wrote for their imaginary republics are intolerant. Plato does not leave to his citizens freedom of religious worship; and Cicero expressly prohibits them from having other gods than those of the state. Lettres de quelques Juifs à Mons. Voltaire, i., p 226.—G. According to M. Guizot's just remarks, religious intolerance will always ally itself with the passions of man, however different those passions may be. In the instances quoted above, with the Persians it was the pride of despotism: to conquer the gods of a country was the last mark of subjugation. With the Egyptians, it was the gross Fetichism of the superstitious populace, and the local jealousy of neighbouring towns. In Greece, persecution was in general connected with political party; in Rome, with the stern supremacy of the law and the interests of the state. Gibbon has been mistaken in attributing to the tolerant spirit of paganism that which arose out of the peculiar circumstances of the times. 1st. The decay of the old Polytheism through the progress of reason and intelligence, and the prevalence of philosophical opinions among the higher orders. 2d. The Roman character, in which the political always predominated over the religious part. The Romans were contented with having bowed the world to a uniformity of subjection to their power, and cared not for establishing the (to them) less important uniformity of religion.-M. P. 250. It is diametrically opposed to its spirit and to its letter; see, among other passages, Deut. v., 18, 19. (God) "loveth the stranger, in giving him food and raiment. Love ye, therefore, the stranger: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt." Comp. Lev. xxiii., 25. Juvenal is a satirist, whose strong expressions can hardly be received as historic evidence, and he wrote after the horrible cruelties of the Romans, which, during and after the war, might give some cause for the complete isolation of the Jew from the rest of the world. The Jew was a bigot, but his religion was not the only source of his bigotry. After how many centuries of mutual wrong and hatred, which had still farther estranged the Jew from mankind, did Maimonides write? -M. P. 250.- The Herodians were probably more of a political party than a religious sect, though Gibbon is most likely right as to their occasional conformity. See Hist. of the Jews, ii., 108.-M. P. 251. The edicts of Julius Cæsar and of some of the cities in Asia Minor (Krebs. Decret. pro Judæis), in favour of the nation in general or of the Asiatic Jews, speak a different language.-M. P. 251.- This was during the government of Pontius Pilate (Hist. of Jews, ii., 156). Probably, in part to avoid this collision, the Roman governor, in general, resided at Cæsarea.-M. P. 251. Among a rude and barbarous people, religious impressions are easily made, and are as soon effaced. The ignorance which multiplies imaginary wonders, would weaken or destroy the effect of real miracle. At the period of the Jewish history referred to in the passage from Numbers, their fears predominated over their faith; the fears of an unwarlike people just rescued from debasing slavery, and commanded to attack a fierce, a well-armed, a gigantic, and a far more numerous race, the inhabitants of Canaan. As to the frequent apostacy of the Jews, their religion was beyond their state of civilization. Nor is it uncommon for a people to cling with passionate attachment to that of which, at first, they could not appreciate the value. Patriotism and national pride will contend, even to death, for political rights which have been forced upon a reluctant people. The Christian may at least retort, with justice, that the great sign of his religion, the resurrection of Jesus, was most ardently believed and most resolutely asserted by the eye-witnesses of the fact.-M. P. 254.- This is incorrect: all the traditions concur in placing the abandonment of the city by the Christians, not only before it was in ruins, but before the siege had commenced. Euseb., loc. cit., and Le Clerc.-M. P. 255.-* The opinion of Le Clerc is generally admitted; but Neander has suggested some good reasons for supposing that this term only applied to poverty of condition. The obscure history of their tenets and divisions is clearly and rationally traced in his History of the Church, vol. i., part ii., p. 612, &c., Germ. edit.—M. P. 255.- Justin Martyr makes an important distinction, which Gibbon has neglected to notice. ✶✶✶ There were some who were not content with observing the Mosaic law themselves, but enforced the same observance, as necessary to salvation, upon the heathen converts, and refused all social intercourse with them if they did not conform to the law. Justin Martyr himself freely admits those who kept the law themselves to Christian communion, though he acknowledges that some, not the Church, thought otherwise; of the other party, he himself thought less favourably; duos kai TOUTOÙÇ OйK ÚTоdexòual. The former with some are considered the Nazarenes, the latter the Ebionites.-G. and M. P. 255. On the "war law" of the Jews, see Hist. of Jews, i., 137.-M. P. 255. Few writers have suspected Tacitus of partiality towards the Jews. The whole later history of the Jews illustrates as well their strong feelings of humanity to their brethren, as their hostility to the rest of mankind. The character and the position of Josephus with the Roman authorities must be kept in mind during the perusal of his History. Perhaps he has not exaggerated the ferocity and fanaticism of the Jews at that time; but insurrectionary warfare is not the best school for the humaner virtues, and much must be allowed for the grinding tyranny of the later Roman governors. See Hist. of Jews, ii., 254.— M. P. 256. Dr. Burnet apologized for the levity with which he had conducted some of his arguments by the excuse that he wrote in a learned language for scholars alone, not for the vulgar. Whatever may be thought of his success in tracing an Eastern allegory in the first chapters of Genesis, his other works prove him to have been a man of great genius and of sincere piety.-M. P. 256.- The Gnostics, and the historian who has stated these plausible objections with so much force as almost to make them his own, would have shown a more considerate and not less reasonable philosophy, if they had considered the religion of Moses with reference to the age in which it was promulgated; if they had done justice to its sublime as well as its more imperfect views of the divine nature; the humane and civilizing provisions of the Hebrew law, as well as those adapted for an infant and barbarous people. See Hist. of Jews, i., 36, 37, &c.-M. P. 256. The assertion of Hegesippus is not so positive: it is sufficient to read the whole passage in Eusebius, to see that the former part is modified by the latter. Hegesippus adds, that up to this period the church had remained pure and immaculate as a virgin. Those who laboured to corrupt the doctrines of the Gospel worked as yet in obscurity.-G. P. 256.- The Histoire du Gnosticisme of M. Matter is at once the fairest and most complete account of these sects.-M. P. 257. M. Hahn has restored the Marcionite Gospel with great ingenuity. His work is reprinted in Thilo. Codex. Apoc. Nov. Test., vol. i.-M. P. 257.- Bishop Pearson has attempt- ed very happily to explain this "singularity." The first Christians were acquainted with a number of sayings of Jesus Christ, which are not related in our Gospels, and, indeed, have never been written. Why might not St. Ignatius, who had lived with the Apostles or their disciples, repeat in other words that which St. Luke has related, particularly at a time when, being in prison, he could not have the Gospels at hand? Pearson, Vind. Ign., p. 2, 9; p. 396, in tom. ii. Patres Apost., ed. Coteler.-G. P. 258. The exaggerated and declamatory opinions of Tertullian ought not to be taken as the general sentiment of the early Christians. Gibbon has too often allowed himself to consider the peculiar notions of certain fathers of the church as inherent in Christianity. This is not accurate.-G. P. 258. All this scrupulous nicety is at variance with the decision of St. Paul about meat offered to idols, 1 Cor. x., 21 to 32.-M. P. 259. The soldier did not tear off his crown to throw it down with contempt; he did not even throw it away; he held it in his hand, while others wore it on their heads. Solus libero capite, ornamento in manu otioso.-G. P. 259. † Tertullian does not expressly name the two emperors, Severus and Caracalla: he speaks only of two emperors, and of a long peace which the church had enjoyed. It is generally agreed that Tertullian became a Montanist about the year 200; his work, de Coronâ Militis, appears to have been written, at the earliest, about the year 202, before the persecution of Severus: it may be maintained, then, that it is subsequent to the Montanism of the author. See Mosheim, Diss. de Apol. Tertull., p. 53. Biblioth. rais. Amsterd., tom. x., part ii., p. 292. Cave's Hist. Lit., p. 92, 93. -G. The state of Tertullian's opinions at the particular period is almost an idle question. "The fiery African" is not at any time to be considered a fair representative of Christianity -M. P. 261. The hypothesis of Warburton concerning this remarkable fact, which, as far as the Law of Moses, is unquestionable, made few disciples; and is difficult to suppose that it could be intended by the author himself for more than a display of intellectual strength. Modern writers have accounted in various ways for the silence of the Hebrew legislator on the immortality of the soul. According to Michaelis, " Moses wrote as an historian and as a lawgiver; he regulated the ecclesiastical discipline rather than the religious belief of his people; and the sanctions of the law being temporal, he had no occasion, and, as a civil legislator, could not, with propriety, threaten punishments in another world." See Michaelis, Laws of Moses, art. 272, vol. iv., p. 209, Eng. trans.; and Syntagma Commentationum, p. 80, quoted by Guizot. M. Guizot adds, the “ingenious conjecture of a philosophic theologian," which approximates to an opinion long entertained by the editor. That writer believes, that in the state of civilization at the time of the legislator, this doctrine, become popular among the Jews, would necessarily have given birth to a multitude of idolatrous superstitions which he wished to prevent. His primary object was to establish a firm theocracy, to make his people the conservators of the doctrine of the Divine Unity, the basis upon which Christianity was hereafter to rest. He carefully excluded everything which could obscure or weaken that doctrine. Other nations had strangely abused their notions on the immortality of the soul; Moses wished to prevent this abuse: hence he forbade the Jews from consulting necromancers (those who evoke the spirits of the dead). Deut. xviii., 11. Those who reflect on the state of the pagans and of the Jews, and on the facility with which idolatry crept in on every side, will not be astonished that Moses has not developed a doctrine of which the influence might be more pernicious than useful to his people. Orat. Fest. de Vite Immort. Spe., &c., auct. Ph. Alb. Stapfer, p. 12, 13, 20, Berne, 1787. Moses, as well from the intimations scattered in his writings, the passage relating to the translation of Enoch (Gen. v., 24), the prohibition of necromancy (Michaelis believes him to be the author of the Book of Job, though this opinion is in general rejected; other learned writers consider this book to be coeval with and known to Moses), as from his long residence in Egypt, and his acquaintance with Egyptian wisdom, could not be ignorant of the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. But this doctrine, if popularly known among the Jews, must have been purely Egyptian, and, as so, intimately connected with the whole religious system of that country. It was no doubt moulded up with the tenet of the transmigration of the soul, perhaps with notions analogous to the emanation system of India, in which the human soul was an efflux from, or, indeed, a part of the Deity. The Mosaic religion drew a wide and impassable interval between the Creator and created human beings in this it differed from the Egyptian and all the Eastern religions. As, then, the immortality of the soul was thus inseparably blended with those foreign religions which were altogether to be effaced from the minds of the people, and by no means necessary for the establishment of the theocracy, Moses maintained silence on this point, and a purer notion of it was left to be developed at a more favourable period in the history of man.-M. P. 262. This was, in fact, an integral part of the Jewish notion of the Messiah, from which the minds of the Apostles themselves were but gradually detached. See Bertholdt, Christologia Judæorum, concluding chapters.-M. P. 262.- Some modern theologians explain it without discovering either allegory or deception. They say that Jesus Christ, after having proclaimed the ruin of Jerusalem and of the Temple, speaks of his second coming, and the signs which were to precede it; but those who believed that the moment was near, deceived themselves as to the sense of two words, an error which still subsists in our versions of the Gospel according to St. Matthew, xxiv., 29, 34. In verse 29, we read, "Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened," &c. The Greek word evOews signifies all at once, suddenly, not immediately; so that it signifies only the sudden appearance of the signs which Jesus Christ announces, not the shortness of the interval which was to separate them from the "days of tribulation," of which he was speaking. The verse 34 is this: "Verily I say unto you, this generation shall not pass till all these things shall be fulfilled." Jesus, speaking to his disciples, uses these words, aurǹ yeved, which the translators have rendered by this generation, but which means the race, the filiation of my disciples; that is, he speaks of a class of men, not of a generation. The true sense, then, according to these learned men, is, In truth I tell you that this race of men, of which you are the commencement, shall not pass away till this shall take place; that is to say, the succession of Christians shall not cease till his coming. See Commentary of M. Paulus on the New Test., edit. 1802, tom. iii., p. 445, 446.—G. Others, as Rosenmuller and Kuinoel, in loc., confine this passage to a highly figurative description of the ruin of the Jewish city and polity.-M. P. 262. In fact, it is purely Jewish. See Mosheim, De Reb. Christ., ii, 8. Lightfoot's Works, 8vo edit., vol. iii., p. 37. Bertholdt, Christologia Judæorum, ch. 38. P. 262. Most of the more learned modern English Protestants, Dr. Hales, Mr. Faber, Dr. Russell, as well as the Continental writers, adopt the larger chronology. There is little doubt that the narrower sys NOTES. tem was framed by the Jews of Tiberias; it was clearly neither that of St. Paul, nor of Josephus, nor of the Samaritan text. It is greatly to be regretted that the chronology of the earlier Scriptures should ever have been made a religious question.--M. P. 262.- The Millennium is described, in what once stood as the forty-first Article of the English Church (see Collier, Eccles. Hist., for Articles of Edw. VI.), as "a fable of Jewish dotage." The whole of these gross and earthly images may be traced in the works which treat on the Jewish traditions, in Lightfoot, Schoetgen, and Eisen"Das entdeckte Judenthum," t. menger; ii., 809; and briefly in Bertholdt, i., c. 38, 39.-M. P. 263. The exclusion of the Apocalypse is not improbably assigned to its obvious unfitness to be read in churches. It is to be feared that a history of the interpretation of the Apocalypse would not give a very favourable view either of the wisdom or the charity of the successive ages of Christianity. Wetstein's interpretation, differently modified, is adopted by most Continental scholars.-M. P. 263.- Lactantius had a notion of a great Asiatic empire, which was previously to rise on the ruins of the Roman: quod Romanum nomen (horret animus dicere, sed dicam, quia futurum est) tolletur de terrâ, et imperium in Asiam revertetur.-M. P. 264. This translation is not exact: the first sentence is imperfect. Tertullian says, Ille dies nationibus insperatus, ille derisus, cum tanta sæculi vestustas et tot ejus nativitates uno igne haurientur. The text does not authorize the exaggerated expressions, so many magistrates, so many sage philosophers, so many poets, &c. ; but simply magistrates, philosophers, poets.-G. It is not clear that Gibbon's version or paraphrase is incorrect; Tertullian writes, tot tantosque reges item præsides, &c. M. P. 264. The object of Tertullian's vehemence in his Treatise was to keep the Christians away from the secular games celebrated by the Emperor Severus: it has not prevented him from showing himself in other places full of benevolence and charity towards unbelievers: the spirit of the Gospel has sometimes prevailed over the violence of human passions: Qui ergo putaveris nihil nos de salute Cæsaris curare (he says in his Apology) inspice Dei voces, literas nostras. Scitote ex illis præceptum esse nobis ad redundationem, benignitates etiam pro inimicis Deûm orare, et pro persecutoribus bona precari. Sed etiam nominatim atque manifestè orate inquit (Christus) pro regibus et pro principibus et potes tatibus ut omnia sint tranquilla vobis. It would be wiser for Christianity, re- P. 264.- Gibbon should have noticed the distinct and remarkable passage from Chrysostom, quoted by Middleton (Works, vol. i., p. 105), in which he affirms the long discontinuance of miracles as a notorious fact.-M. * P. 265. This passage of Irenæus contains no allusion to the gift of tongues; it is merely an apology for a rude and unpolished Greek style, which could not be expected from one who passed his life in a remote and barbarous province, and was continually obliged to speak the Celtic language.-M. P. 265.- Except in the life of Pachomius, an Egyptian monk of the fourth century (see Jortin, Ecc. Hist., i., p. 368, edit. 1805), and the later (not earlier) lives of Xavier, neither in his own letters (see Douglas's Criterion, p. 76, edit. 1807), there is no claim laid to the gift of tongues since the time of Irenæus.-M. P. 265. But by Protestants neither of the most enlightened ages nor most reasoning minds.-M. P. 265.- It is difficult to answer Middleton's objection to this statement of Irenæus: "It is very strange, that from the time of the Apostles there is not a single instance of this miracle to be found in the first three centuries, except a single case, slightly intimated in Eusebius, from the Works of Papias, which he seems to rank among other fabulous stories delivered by that weak man." Middleton, Works, vol. i., p. 59. Bishop Douglas (Criterion, p. 389) would consider Irenæus to speak of what had "been performed formerly," not in his own time.-M. P. 265.- A candid skeptic might discern some impropriety in the bishop being called upon to perform a miracle on demand. -M. P. 265.-Yet many Protestant divines will now without reluctance confine miracles to the time of the Apostles, or, at least, to the first century.-M. P. 266. All this appears to proceed on the principle that any distinct line can between be drawn in an unphilosophic age wonders and miracles, or between what piety, from their unexpected and extraordinary nature, the marvellous concurrence of secondary causes to some remarkable end, may consider providential interpositions, |