ページの画像
PDF
ePub

Chaque instant de ma vie est chargé de souillures,
Elle n'est qu'un amas de crimes et d'ordures.

*

Oui, mon cher fils, parlez, traitez-moi de perfide,
D'infame, de perdu, de voleur, d'homicide;
Accablez-moi de noms encore plus détestés:
Je n'y contredis point, je les ai mérités,
Et j'en veux à genoux souffrir l'ignominie,
Comme une honte due aux crimes de ma vie.

It is not my intention to compare the character of Tartuffe with that of Eusebius; the former pointed his invectives against himself, the latter directed them against the times in which he had lived: but as the prudent Bishop of Cæsarea did not specify any place or person for the object of his censure, he cannot justly be accused, even by his friends, of violating the profitable plan of his didactic history.

The extreme caution of Eusebius who declines any mention of those who were tempted and who fell during the persecution, has countenanced a suspicion that he himself was one of those unhappy victims, and that his tenderness for the wounded fame of his brethren arose from a just apprehension of his own disgrace. In one of my notes,* I had observed, that he was charged with the guilt of some criminal compliances, in his own presence, and in the Council of Tyre. I am therefore accountable for the reality only, and not for the truth of the accusation: but as the two doctors, who on this occasion unite their forces, are angry

* Gibbon, p. 699. N. 178.

and

and clamorous in asserting the innocence of the Ecclesiastical Historian,* I shall advance one step farther, and shall maintain, that the charge against Eusebius, though not legally proved, is supported by a reasonable share of presumptive evidence.

I have often wondered why our orthodox divines should be so earnest and zealous in the defence of Eusebius; whose moral character cannot be preserved, unless by the sacrifice of a more illustrious, and, as I really believe, of a more innocent victim. Either the Bishop of Cæsarea, on a very important occasion, violated the laws of Christian charity and civil justice, or we must fix a charge of calumny, almost of forgery, on the head of the great Athanasius, the standard-bearer of the Homoousian cause, and the firmest pillar of the Catholic faith. In the Council of Tyre, he was accused of murdering, or at least of mutilating a bishop, whom he produced at Tyre alive and unhurt (Athanas. tom. i. p. 783. 786.); and of sacrilegiously breaking a consecrated chalice, in a village where neither church, nor altar, nor chalice, could possibly have existed. (Athanas. tom. i. p. 731, 732. 8021 Notwithstanding the clearest proofs of his innocence, Athanasius was oppressed by the Arian faction; and Eusebius of Cæsarea, the venerable father of Ecclesiastical history, conducted this iniquitous prosecution from a motive of personal enmity. (Athanas. tom. i. p. 728. 795. 797). Four years afterwards, a national council of the Bishops of

Chelsum and Randolph, p. 236, 237, 258.

Egypt.

Egypt, forty-nine of whom had been present at the Synod of Tyre, addressed an epistle or manifesto in favour of Athanasius to all the bishops of the Christian world. In this epistle they assert, that some of the confessors, who accompanied them to Tyre, had accused Eusebius of Cæsarea of an act relative to idolatrous sacrifice. ακ Ευσέβιος ὁ εν Καισέρεια της Παλαιστινης επι θυσια κατηγορείτο ύπο των Cvv пμ¡v óμoλoyпTwv. (Athanas. tom. i. p. 728). Besides this short and authentic memorial, which escaped the knowledge or the candour of our confederate doctors, a consonant but more circumstantial narrative of the accusation of Eusebius may be found in the writings of Epiphanius (Hæres. lxviii. p. 723, 724.), the learned Bishop of Salamis, who was born about the time of the Synod of Tyre. He relates that, in one of the sessions of the council, Potamon, Bishop of Heraclea in Egypt, addressed Eusebius in the following words: "How now, Eusebius, can this be borne, that you should be seated as a judge, while the innocent Athanasius is left standing as a criminal? Tell me, continued Potamon, were we not in prison together during the persecution? For my own part, I lost an eye for the sake of the truth; but I cannot discern that you have lost any one of your members. You bear not any marks of your sufferings for Jesus Christ; but here you are, full of life, and with all the parts of your body sound and entire. How could you contrive to escape from prison, unless you stained your conscience, either by actual guilt or by a criminal promise to our persecutors?"

Eusebius

Eusebius immediately broke up the meeting, and discovered, by his anger, that he was confounded or provoked by the reproaches of the Confessor Potamon.

I should despise myself, if I were capable of magnifying, for a present occasion, the authority of the witness whom I have produced. Potamon was most assuredly actuated by a strong prejudice against the personal enemy of his Primate; and if the transaction to which he alluded had been of a private and doubtful kind, I would not take any ungenerous advantage of the respect which my reverend adversaries must entertain for the character of a confessor. But I cannot distrust the veracity of Potamon, when he confined himself to the assertion of a fact, which lay within the compass of his personal knowledge: and collateral testimony (see Photius, p. 296, 297) attests, that Eusebius was long enough in prison to assist his Friend, the Martyr Pamphilus, in composing the first five books of his Apology for Origen. If we admit that Eusebius was imprisoned, he must have been discharged, and his discharge must have been either honourable, or criminal, or innocent. If his patience vanquished the cruelty of the tyrant's ministers, a short relation of his own confession and sufferings would have formed an useful and edifying chapter in his Didactic History of the persecution of Palestine; and the reader would have been satisfied of the veracity of an historian who valued truth above his life. If it had been in his power to justify, or even to ex

cuse,

cuse, the manner of his discharge from prison, it was his interest, it was his duty, to prevent the doubts and suspicions which must arise from his silence under these delicate circumstances. Notwithstanding these urgent reasons, Eusebius has observed a profound, and perhaps a prudent silence: though he frequently celebrates the merit and martyrdom of his friend Pamphilus (p. 371. 394. 419. 427. Edit. Cantab.), he never insinuates that he was his companion in prison; and while he copiously describes the eight years persecution in Palestine, he never represents himself in any other light than that of a spectator. Such a conduct in a writer, who relates with a visible satisfaction the honourable events of his own life, if it be not absolutely considered as an evidence of conscious guilt, must excite, and may justify, the suspicions of the most candid critic.

Yet the firmness of Dr. Randolph is not shaken by these rational suspicions; and he condescends, in a magisterial tone, to inform me, "That it is highly improbable, from the general wellknown decision of the Church in such cases, that had his apostacy been known, he would have risen to those high honours which he attained, or been admitted at all indeed to any other than lay-communion." This weighty objection did not surprise me, as I had already seen the substance of it in the Prolegomena of Valesius; but I safely disregarded a difficulty which had not appeared of any moment to the national council of Egypt; and I still think that an hundred bishops, with Athana

VOL. IV.

TT

sius

« 前へ次へ »