Christ 484, fifty-two years after the end of the Jewish captivity? As this well attested fact is not exposed to the slightest doubt or difficulty, I am somewhat curious to learn the names of those unknown authors, whose chronology Dr. Chelsum has allowed as the specious foundation of a probable hypothesis. The author of the Remarks does not seem indeed to have cultivated, with much care or success, the province of literary history; as a very moderate acquaintance with that useful branch of knowledge would have saved him from a positive mistake, much less excusable than the doubt which he entertains about the time of Herodotus. He styles Suidas" a Heathen writer, who lived about the end of the tenth century." I admit the period which he assigns to Suidas; and which is well ascertained by Dr. Bentley. (See his Reply to Boyle, p. 22, 23.) We are led to fix this epoch, by the chronology which this Heathen writer has deduced from Adam, to the death of the emperor John Zimisces, A. D. 975: and a crowd of passages might be produced, as the unanswerable evidence of his Christianity. But the most unanswerable of all is the very date, which is not disputed between us. The philosophers who flourished under Justinian (see Agathias, L ii. p. 65, 66.) appear to have been the last of the Heathen writers: and the ancient religion of the Greeks was annihilated almost four hundred years before the birth of Suidas.

Chelsum, p. 73.

After

After this animadversion, which is not intended either to insult the failings of my Adversary, or to provide a convenient excuse for my own errors, I shall proceed to select two important parts of Dr. Chelsum's Remarks, from which the candid reader may form some opinion of the whole. They relate to the military service of the first Christians, and to the historical character of Eusebius, and I shall review them with the less reluctance, as it may not be impossible to pick up something curious and useful even in the barren waste of controversy.

SERVICE OF

THE FIRST

CHRIS

TIANS.

I. In representing the errors of the primitive MILITARY Christians, which flowed from an excess of virtue, I had observed, that they exposed themselves to the reproaches of the Pagans, by their obstinate refusal to take an active part in the civil administration, or military defence of the empire; that the objections of Celsus appear to have been mutilated by his adversary Origen; and that the Apologists, to whom the public dangers were urged, returned obscure and ambiguous answers, as they were unwilling to disclose the true ground of their security, their opinion of the approaching end of the world. In another place I had related, from the acts of Ruinart, the action and punishment of the Centurion Marcellus, who was put to death for renouncing the service in a public and seditious manner.†

On this occasion Dr. Chelsum is extremely

* Gibbon, p. 580, 581. VOL. IV.

+ Idem, p. 680.

RR

alert.

The

alert. He denies my facts, controverts my opinions, and, with a politeness worthy of Mr. Davis himself, insinuates that I borrowed the story of Marcellus, not from Ruinart, but from Voltaire. My learned adversary thinks it highly improbable that Origen should dare to mutilate the objections of Celsus," whose work was, in all probability, extant at the time he made this reply. In such case, had he even been inclined to treat his adversary unfairly, he must yet surely have been withheld from the attempt, through the fear of detection." experience both of ancient and modern controversy has indeed convinced me that this reasoning, just and natural as it may seem, is totally inconclusive, and that the generality of disputants, especially in religious contests, are of a much more daring and intrepid spirit. For the truth of this remark, I shall content myself with producing a recent and very singular example, in which Dr. Chelsum himself is personally interested. He chargest me with passing over in "silence the important and unsuspected testimony of a heathen historian (Dion Cassius) to the persecution of Domitian; and he affirms, that I have produced that testimony so far only as it relates to Clemens and Domitilla; yet in the very same passage follows immediately, that on a like accusation MANY OTHERS were also condemned. Some of them were put to death, others suffered the confiscation of their goods." Al

* Chelsum, p. 118, 119. + Id. p. 188.

Gibbon, p. 645. though

though I should not be ashamed to undertake the apology of Nero or Domitian, if I thought them innocent of any particular crime with which zeal or malice had unjustly branded their memory; yet I should indeed blush, if, in favour of tyranny, or even in favour of virtue, I had suppressed the truth and evidence of historical facts. But the Reader will feel some surprise, when he has convinced himself that, in the three editions of my First Volume, after relating the death of Clemens, and the exile of Domitilla, I continue to allege the ENTIRE TESTIMONY of Dion, in the following words: " and sentences either of death, or of confiscation, were pronounced against a GREAT NUMBER OF PERSONS who were involved in the same accusation. The guilt imputed to their charge, was that of Atheism and Jewish manners; a singular association of ideas which cannot with any propriety be applied except to the Christians, as they were obscurely and imperfectly viewed by the magistrates and writers of that period." Dr. Chelsum has not been deterred by the fear of detection, from this scandalous mutilation of the popular work of a living adversary. But Celsus had been dead above fifty years before Origen published his Apology; and the copies of an ancient work, instead of being instantaneously multiplied by the operation of the press, were separately and slowly transcribed by the labour of the hand.

If any modern divine should still maintain that the fidelity of Origen was secured by motives more honourable than the fear of detection, he

may learn from Jerom the difference of the gymnastic and dogmatic styles. Truth is the object of the one, victory of the other; and the same arts which would disgrace the sincerity of the teacher, serve only to display the skill of the disputant. After justifying his own practice by that of the orators and philosophers, Jerom defends himself by the more respectable authority of Christian apologists. "How many thousand lines, says he, have been composed against Celsus and Porphyry, by Origen, Methodius, Eusebius, Apollinaris? Consider with what arguments, with what slippery problems, they elude the inventions of the Devil; and how, in their controversy with the Gentiles, they are sometimes obliged to speak, not what they really think, but what is most advantageous for the cause they defend." "Origenes, &c. multis versuum millibus scribunt adversus Celsum et Porphyrium. Considerate quibus argumentis et quam lubricis problematibus diaboli spiritu contexta subvertunt: et quia interdum coguntur loqui, non quod sentiunt, sed quod necesse est dicunt adversus ea quæ dicunt Gentiles." (Pro Libris advers. Jovinian. Apolog. tom. ii. p. 155.)

Yet Dr. Chelsum may still ask, and he has a right to ask, why in this particular instance I suspect the pious Origen of mutilating the objections of his adversary. From a very obvious, and, in my opinion, a very decisive circumstance. Celsus was a Greek philosopher, the friend of Lucian; and I thought that, although he might support error by sophistry, he would not write nonsense