Jerusalem and Hebron, we find that these barren rocks (as they are called) might yield a much greater quantity, if the abstemious Turk and Arab would permit a further increase and improvement to be made of the vine, &c." BISHOP WATSON. The first volume of Gibbon's "Decline and Fall" was published in 1776. It contained the two famous chapters which sought to account for the rise and spread of Christianity through causes purely natural. These drew forth numerous replies, some of them distinguished by great erudition, and others by great ability. But probably the most popular and useful was, "An Apology for Christianity," by Dr Richard Watson, then Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, afterwards Bishop of Llandaff.* It appeared in the form of letters addressed to the historian, and one of these given entire will illustrate the brief and effective style of the series. -- The Virtues of the First Christians. SIR, I readily acknowledge the utility of your fourth cause "The Virtues of the First Christians," as greatly conducing to the spreading their religion; but then you seem to quite mar the compliment you pay them, by representing their virtues as proceeding either from their repentance for having been the most abandoned sinners, or from the laudable desire of supporting the reputation of the society in which they were engaged. That repentance is the first step to virtue, is true enough; but I see no reason for supposing, according to the calumnies of Celsus and Julian, "that the Christians allured into their party, men who washed away in the waters of baptism the * Born at Heversham, Westmoreland, 1737; died July 4, 1816. guilt for which the temples of the gods refused to grant them any expiation." The Apostles, sir, did not, like Romulus, open an asylum for debtors, thieves, and murderers; for they had not the same sturdy means of securing their adherents from the grasp of civil power: they did not persuade them to abandon the temples of the gods, because they could there obtain no expiation for their guilt, but because every degree of guilt was expiated in them with too great facility, and every vice practised, not only without remorse of private conscience, but with the powerful sanction of public approbation. "After the example," you say, "of their Divine Master, the missionaries of the gospel addressed themselves to men, and especially to women, oppressed by the consciousness, and very often by the effects of their vices."-This, sir, I really think, is not a fair representation of the matter; it may catch the applause of the unlearned, embolden many a stripling to cast off for ever the sweet blush of modesty, confirm many a dissolute veteran in the practice of his impure habits, and suggest great occasion of merriment and wanton mockery to the flagitious of every denomination and every age; but still it will want that foundation of truth which alone can recommend it to the serious and judicious. The Apostles, sir, were not like the Italian Fratricelli of the thirteenth, nor the French Turlupins of the fourteenth century; in all the dirt that has been raked up against Christianity, even by the worst of its enemies, not a speck of that kind have they been able to fix, either upon the Apostles, or their Divine Master. The gospel of Jesus Christ, sir, was not preached in single houses or obscure villages, not in subterranean caves and impure brothels, not in lazars and in prisons; but in the synagogues and in the temples, in the streets and in the market-places, of the great capitals of the Roman provinces; in Jerusalem, in Corinth, and in Antioch, in Athens, in Ephesus, and in Rome. Nor do I anywhere find that its missionaries were ordered particularly to address themselves to the shameless women you mention; I do, indeed, find the direct contrary; for they were ordered to turn away from, to have no fellowship or intercourse with such as were wont to creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts. And what if a few women, who had either been seduced by their passions, or had fallen victims to the licentious manners of their age, should be found amongst those who were most ready to receive a religion that forbade all impurity? I do not apprehend that this circumstance ought to bring an insinuation of discredit, either upon the sex, or upon those who wrought their reformation. That the majority of the first converts to Christianity were of an inferior condition of life, may readily be allowed; and you yourself have in another place given a good reason for it; those who are distinguished by riches, honours, or knowledge, being so very inconsiderable in number, when compared with the bulk of mankind: but though not many mighty, not many noble were called, yet some mighty and some noble, some of as great reputation as any of the age in which they lived, were attached to the Christian faith. Short, indeed, are the accounts which have been transmitted to us of the first propagation of Christianity; yet even in these we meet with the names of many who would have done credit to any cause: I will not pretend to enumerate them all; a few of them will be sufficient to make you recollect that there were at least some converts to Christianity, both from among the Jews and the Gentiles, whose lives were not stained with inexpiable crimes. Amongst these we reckon Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews; Joseph of Arimathea, a man of fortune and a counsellor ; a nobleman and a centurion of Capernaum; Jairus, Crispus, Sosthenes, rulers of synagogues; Apollos, an eloquent and learned man; Zenas, a Jewish lawyer; the treasurer of Candace queen of Ethiopia; Cornelius, a centurion of the Italian band; Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus at Athens; and Sergius Paulus, a man CHRISTIAN MORALITY, 51 of proconsular or prætorian authority, of whom it may be remarked, that if he resigned his high and lucrative office in consequence of his turning Christian, it is a strong presumption in its favour; if he retained it, we may conclude that the profession of Christianity was not so utterly incompatible with the discharge of the offices of civil life as you sometimes represent it. This catalogue of men of rank, fortune, and knowledge, who embraced Christianity, might, was it necessary, be much enlarged; and probably another conversation with St Paul would have enabled us to grace it with the names of Festus and king Agrippa himself: not that the writers of the books of the New Testament seem to have been at all solicitous in mentioning the great or the learned who were converted to the faith; had that been part of their design, they would, in the true style of impostors, have kept out of sight the publicans and sinners, the tanners and the tentmakers, with whom they conversed and dwelt, and introduced to our notice none but those who had been brought up with Herod or the chief men of Asia, whom they had the honour to number amongst their friends. That the primitive Christians took great care to have an unsullied reputation, by abstaining from the commission of whatever might tend to pollute it, is casily admitted; but we do not so easily grant that this care is a "circumstance which usually attends small assemblies of men, when they separate themselves from the body of a nation or the religion to which they belonged." It did not attend the Nicolaitanes, the Simonians, the Menandrians, and the Carpocratians, in the first ages of the Church, of which we are speaking: and it cannot be unknown to you, sir, that the scandalous vices of these very early sectaries brought a general and undistinguished censure upon the Christian name; and, so far from promoting the increase of the Church, excited in the minds of the Pagans an abhorrence of whatever respected it: it cannot be unknown to you, sir, that several sectaries, both at home and abroad, might be mentioned who have departed from the religion to which they belonged, and which, unhappily for themselves and the community, have taken as little care to preserve their reputation unspotted as those of the first and second centuries. If, then, the first Christians did take the care you mention (and I am wholly of your opinion in that point), their solicitude might as candidly perhaps, and as reasonably, be derived from a sense of their duty and an honest endeavour to discharge it, as from the mere desire of increasing the honour of their confraternity by the illustrious integrity of its members. You are eloquent in describing the austere morality of the primitive Christians, as adverse to the propensities of sense, and abhorrent from all the innocent pleasures and amusements of life; and you enlarge, with a studied minuteness, upon their censures of luxury, and their sentiments concerning marriage and chastity; but in this circumstantial enumeration of their errors or their faults (which I am under no necessity of denying or excusing), you seem to forget the very purpose for which you profess to have introduced the mention of them; for the picture you have drawn is so hideous, and the colouring so dismal, that instead of alluring to a closer inspection, it must have made every man of pleasure or of sense turn from it with horror or disgust; and so far from contributing to the rapid growth of Christianity by the austerity of their manners, it must be a wonder to any one how the first Christians ever made a single convert. It was first objected by Celsus, that Christianity was a mean religion, inculcating such a pusillanimity and patience under affronts, such a contempt of riches and worldly honours, as must weaken the nerves of civil government, and expose a society of Christians to the prey of the first invaders. This objection has been repeated by Bayle; and though fully answered by Bernard and others, it is still the favourite theme of every esprit fort of our own age. Even |