him he shews him his company Behold said he these are the treasures of the Church those eternal treasures which are never diminished but increase which are dispersed to every one and yet found in all This passage brings to my mind though it more properly belongs to the next instance of charity what Palladius relates of Macarius a Presbyter and Governour of the Hospital at Alexandria There was a Virgin in that City very rich but infinitely covetous and uncharitable She had been oft attempted and set upon by the perswasions of good men but in vain at last he caught her by this piece of pious policy He comes to her and tells her that a parcel of Jewels Emraulds and Jacinths of inestimable value were lodg'd at his house but which the owner was willing to part with for five hundred pieces of mony and advises her to buy them She catching at the offer as hoping to gain considerably by the bargain delivered him the mony and intreated him to buy them for her knowing him to be a person of great piety and integrity But hearing nothing from him a long time after till meeting him in the Church she asked him what were become of the Jewels He told her he had laid out the mony upon them for he had expended it upon the uses of the Hospital and desired her to come and see them and if the purchase did not please her she might refuse it She readily came along with him to the Hospital in the upper rooms whereof the women were lodged in the lower the men He asked her which she would see first the Jacinths or the Emraulds which she leaving to him he brought her first into the upper part where the lame blind and Cripple-women were disposed and see said he the Jacinths that I spoke of Then carrying her down into the lower rooms he shewed her the men in the like condition and told her These are the Emraulds that I promised and Jewels more precious than these I think are not to be found and now said he if you like not your bargain take your mony back again The woman blushed and was troubled to think she should be hal'd to that which she ought to have done freely for the love of God Afterwards she heartily thanked Macarius and betook her self to a more charitable and Christian course of life Next to this their charity appeared in visiting and assisting of the sick contributing to their necessities refreshing their tired bodies curing their wounds or sores with their own hands The sick says the antient Authour of the Epistle in Justin Martyr if it be not Justin himself are not to be neglected nor is it enough for any to say I have never learnt to serve and give attendance For he that shall make his delicacy or tenderness unaccustomed to any hardness to be an excuse in this case let him know it may soon be his own and then he 'l quickly discern the unreasonableness of his own judgment when the same shall happen to him that he himself has done to others But there were no such nice and squeamish stomachs in the good Christians of those times S. Hierom tells us of Fabiola a Roman Lady a woman of considerable birth and fortunes that she sold her estate and dedicated the mony to the uses of the poor she built an Hospital and was the first that did so wherein she maintained and cured the infirm and miserable or any sick that she met withal in the streets here was a whole randezvouz of Cripples hundreds of diseases and destempers here met together and her self at hand to attend them sometimes carrying the diseased in her arms or bearing them on her shoulders sometimes washing and dressing those filthy and noysome sores from which another woud have turned his eyes with contempt and horrour otherwiles preparing them food or giving them physick with her own hand The like we read of Placilla the Empress wife to the younger Theodosâ—us that she was wont to take all possible care of the lame or wounded to go home to their houses carry them all necessary conveniencies and to attend and assist them not by the ministery of her servants and followers but with her own hands She constantly visited the common Hospitals attended at sick beds for their cure and recovery tasted their broths prepared their bread reached them their provisions washed their cups with her own hands and underwent all other offices which the very meanest of the servants were to undergo Thus also the Historian reports of Deogratias the aged Bishop of Carthage under the Vandalic persecution that having sold all the plate belonging to the Church to ransom the Captive Christans and wanting places conveniently to bestow them he lodged them in two large Churches provided for the needy took care of the sick himself every hour visiting them both by day and night with Physicians attending him to superintend their cure and diet suitable to their several cases going from bed to bed to know what every one stood in need of Nay how often did they venture to relieve their brethren when labouring under such distempers as seemed immediately to breath death in their faces Thus in that sad and terrible plague at Alexandria which though it principally raged amongst the Gentiles yet seiz'd also upon the Christians Many of the bretheren says the Historian out of the excessive abundance of their kindness and charity without any regard to their own health and life boldly ventured into the thickest dangers daily visiting attending instructing and comforting their sick and infected brethren till themselves expired and died with them Nay many of them whom they thus attended recovered and lived while they who had looked to them died themselves as if by a strange and prodigious charity they had willingly taken their diseases upon them and died themselves to save them from death Thus 't was with the Christians while the Gentiles in the mean time put off all sense of humanity when any began to fall sick amongst them they presently cast them out shun'd their dearest friends and relations left them half-dead in the high-ways and took no care of them either alive or dead And that this work of charity might be the better managed amongst Christians they had in many places and particularly in this of Alexandria certain persons whose proper office it was to attend and administer to the sick They were called Parabolani because especially in pestilential and infectious distempers they did 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 cast themselves into an immediate hazard of their lives and were peculiarly deputed ad curanda debilium aegra corpora as the law of the younger Theodosius expresses it to attend and cure the bodies of the infirm and sick Their numbers it seems were very great insomuch that upon any tumultuary occasions they became formidable even to the Courts of Civil Judicature upon complaint whereof made to the Emperour Theodosius reduced
threefold apparition or manifestation commemorated upon that day which all hapned though not in the same year yet upon the same day of the year The first was the appearance of the Star which guided the wise men to Christ The second was the famous appearance at the baptism of Christ when all the persons in the holy Trinity did sensibly manifest themselves the Father in the voice from Heaven the Son in the River Jordan and the Holy Ghost in the visible shape of a Dove This was ever accounted a famous Festival and as S. Chrysostom tells us was properly called Epiphany because he came in a manner into the world incognito but at his baptism openly appeared to be the Son of God and was so declared before the world At this time it was that by his going into the River Jordan he did sanctifie water to the mystical washing away of sin as our Church expresses it in memory whereof Chrysostom tells us they used in this Solemnity at midnight to draw water which they looked upon as consecrated this day and carrying it home to lay it up where it would remain pure and uncorrupt for a whole year sometimes two or three years together the truth whereof must rest upon the credit of that good man The third manifestation commemorated at this time was that of Christs divinity which appeared in the first miracle that he wrought in turning water into Wine therefore 't was called Bethphania because it was done in the house at that famous Marriage in Cana of Galilee which our Saviour honoured with his own presence All these three appearances contributed to the Solemnity of this Festival But beside these there was another sort of Festivals in the primitive Church kept in commemoration of Martyrs for the understanding of which we are to know that in those sad and bloody times when the Christian Religion triumphed over persecution and gained upon the world by nothing more than the constant and resolute sufferings of its professors whom no threatnings or torments could baffle out of it the people generally had a vast reverence for those who suffered thus deep in the cause of Christianity and laid down their lives for the confirmation of it They looked upon Confessors and Martyrs as the great Champions of their Religion who resisted unto blood and dyed upon the spot to make good its ground and to maintain its honour and reputation and therefore thought it very reasonable to do all possible honour to their memories partly that others might be encouraged to the like patience and fortitude and partly that virtue even in this world might not lose its reward Hence they were wont once a year to meet at the Graves of Martyrs there solemnly to recite their sufferings and their triumphs to praise their virtues and to bless God for their pious examples for their holy lives and their happy deaths for their Palms and Crowns These anniversary Solemnities were called memoriae martyrum the memories of the Martyrs a title mentioned by Cyprian but certainly much older than his time and indeed when they were first taken up in the Church is I think not so exactly known the first that I remember to have met with is that of Polycarp whose martyrdom is placed by Eusebius anno 168. under the third Persecution concerning whose death and sufferings the Church of Smyrna of which he was Bishop giving an account to the Church of Philomelium and especially of the place where they had honourably entomb'd his bones they do profess that so far as the malice of their Enemies would permit them and they prayed God nothing might hinder it they would assemble in that place and celebrate the Birth-day of his Martyrdom with joy and gladness where we may especially observe that this Solemnity is stiled his Birth-day and indeed so the primitive Christians used to call the days of their death and passion quite contrary to the manner of the Gentiles who kept the Natalitials of their famous men looking upon these as the true days of their nativity wherein they were freed from this Valley of tears these regions of death and born again unto the joys and happiness of an endless life The same account Origen gives if that Book be his a very ancient Authour however we keep says he the memories of the Saints of our Ancestors and friends that dye in the faith both rejoycing in that rest which they have obtained and begging for our selves a pious consummation in the faith and we celebrate not the day of their nativity as being the inlet to sorrow and temptation but of their death as the period of their miseries and that which sets them beyond the reach of temptations And this we do both Clergie and People meeting together inviting the poor and needy and refreshing the Widows and the Orphans that so our Festival may be both in respect of them whom we commemorate the memorial of that happy rest which their departed souls do enjoy and in respect of us the odour of a sweet smell in the sight of God Under Constantine these days were commanded to be observed with great care and strictness enjoining all his Lieutenants and Governours of Provinces to see the memorials of the Martyrs duly honoured and so sacred were they accounted in those days that it was thought a piece of prophaneness to be absent from them therefore S. Basil thought he could not use a more solemn argument to perswade a certain Bishop to come over to him upon this occasion than to adjure him by the respect he bore to the memories of the Martyrs that if he would not do it for his yet he should for their sakes towards whom it was unfit he should shew the least disregard Hence it is that Libanius sometimes takes notice of the Christians under no other character than this Enemies to the gods 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that haunt and frequent Tombs and Sepulchers For the time of these assemblies it was commonly once a year viz. upon the day of their martyrdom for which end they took particular care to keep Registers of the days of the Martyrs passions So Cyprian expresly charges his Clergie to note down the days of their decease that there might be a commemoration of them amongst the memories of the Martyrs Theodoret tells us that in his time they did not thus assemble once or twice or five times in a year but kept frequent memorials oftentimes every day celebrating the memorials of Martyrs with hymns and praises unto God But I suppose he means it of days appointed to the memory of particular Martyrs which being then very numerous their memorials were distinctly fixed upon their proper days the Festival of S. Peter or S. Paul Thomas Sergius Marcellus c. as he there enumerates them For the places these Solemnities were kept at first at the Tombs where the Martyrs had been buried which usually were in the
necessary to be deferred so long and that it was their universal judgment and resolution that the mercy and grace of God was not to be denied to any though as soon as he was born concluding that it was the sentence of the Council that none ought to be forbidden baptism and the grace of God which as it was to be observed and reteined towards all men so much more towards Infants and new-born Children and that this sentence of theirs was no novel doctrine S. Augustine assures us where speaking concerning this Synodical determination he tells us that in this Cyprian did not make any new decree but kept the Faith of the Church most firm and sure I shall only taken notice of one place more out of Cyprian which methinks evidently makes for this purpose where describing the great wickedness and miserable condition of the lapsed such as to avoid persecution had done sacrifice to the Idols he urges this as one of the last and highest aggravations that by their apostasie their Infants and Children were exposed to ruine and had lost that which they had obtained at their first coming into the world which whether he means it of their right to Baptism or their having been actually baptized and losing the fruit and benefit of their Baptism is all one to my purpose and therefore he brings them in thus elegantly pleading against their Parents at the great day ' T was no fault of ours we did not of our selves forsake the Sacraments of our Lord and run over to join with prophane impieties the unfaithfulness of others has undone us we have found our Parents to be murderers they denied us God for our Father and the Church for our Mother for while we alas were little unable to take any care of our selves and ignorant of so great a wickedness we were ensnared by the treachery of others and by them betrayed into a partnership of their impieties This was the case of Infants but those who made up the main body of the baptized in those days were adult persons who flocking over daily in great numbers to the faith of Christ were received in at this door usually they were for some considerable time catechized and trained up in the principles of the Christian Faith till having given testimony of their proficiency in knowledge to the Bishop or Presbyter who were appointed to take their examination and to whom they were to give an account once a week of what they had learnt and of a sober and regular conversation they then became Candidates for Baptism and were accordingly taken in which brings me to the next circumstance considerable concerning The Time when Baptism was wont to be administred at first all times were alike and persons were baptized as opportunity and occasion served but the discipline of the Church being a little setled it began to be restrained to two solemn and stated times of the year viz. Easter and Whitsontide At Easter in memory of Christs death and resurrection correspondent unto which are the two parts of the Christian life represented and shadowed out in Baptism dying unto sin and rising again unto newness of life in order to which the parties to be baptized were to prepare themselves by a strict observation of Lent disposing and fitring themselves for Baptism by fasting and prayer In some places particularly the Churches of Thessaly Easter was the only time for Baptism as Socrates tells us which was the reason why many amongst them died unbaptized but this was an usage peculiar to them alone The ancient custom of the Church as Zonaras tells us was for persons to be baptized especially upon the Saturday before Easter-day the reason whereof was that this being the great or holy Sabbath and the mid-time between the day whereon Christ was buried and that whereon he rose again did fitliest correspond with the mystery of Baptism as it is the type and representation both of our Lords burial and resurrection At Whitsontide in memory of the Holy Ghosts being shed upon the Apostles the same being in some measure represented and conveyed in Baptism When I say that these were the two fixed times of Baptism I do not strictly mean it of the precise days of Easter and Whitsontide but also of the whole intermediate space of fifty days that is between them which was in a manner accounted Festival and Baptism administred during the whole time as I have formerly noted Besides these Nazianzen reckons the Feasts of Epiphany as an annual time of Baptism probably in memory either of the Birth or Baptism of our Saviour both which anciently went under that title this might be the custom in some places but I question whether it was universal besides that afterwards it was prohibited and laid aside But though persons in health and the space that was requisite for the instruction of the Catechumens might well enough comport with these annual returns yet if there was a necessity as in case of sickness and danger of death they might be baptized at any other time for finding themselves at any time surprized with a dangerous or a mortal sickness and not daring to pass into another world without this Badge of their initiation into Christ they presently signified their earnest desire to be baptized which was accordingly done as well as the circumstances of a sick Bed would permit These were called Clinici of whom there is frequent mention in the ancient Writers of the Church because 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 baptized as they lay along in their beds This was accounted a less solemn and perfect kind of Baptism partly because 't was done not by immersion but by sprinkling partly because persons were supposed at such a time to desire it chiefly out of a fear of death and many times when not throughly Masters of their understandings For which reason persons so baptized if they recovered are by the Fathers of the Neocaesarean Council rendred ordinarily incapable of being admitted to the degree of Presbyters in the Church Indeed 't was very usual in those times notwithstanding that the Fathers did solemnly and smartly declaim against it for persons to defer their being baptized till they were near their death out of a kind of Novation principle that if they fell into sin after Baptism there would be no place for repentance mistaking that place of the Apostle where 't is said that if they who have been once enlightened 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which the Ancients generally understand of Baptism fall away 't is impossible to renew them again unto repentance For some such reason we may suppose it was that Constantine the Great deferred his Baptism till he lay a dying the same which Socrates relates of his Son Constantius baptized a little before his death and the like he reports of the Emperour Theodosius who apprehending himself to be arrested with a mortal sickness presently caused himself to be baptized
of God appear in the world to establish the most excellent Religion that ever was communicated to Mankind but he met with the most fierce and vigorous opposition persecuted and devoted to death assoon as he was born followed all his life with fresh assaults of malice and cruelty his credit traduced and slandered his Doctrine despised and slighted and himself at last put to death with the most exquisite arts of torture disgrace And if they thus served the Master of the house how much more them of the houshold the disciple not being above his Master nor the servant above his Lord. Therefore when he gave commission to his Apostles to publish this Religion to the world he told them beforehand what hard and unkind reception they must look to meet with that he sent them forth as Sheep in the midst of Wolves that they should be delivered up to the Councils and scourged in the Synagogues and be brought before Kings and Governours and be hated of all men for his names sake nay so high should the quarrel arise upon the account of Religion that men should violate some of the nearest Laws of Nature betray their friends and kinsfolk the Brother delivering up the Brother to death and the Father the Child the Children rising up against their Parents and causing them to be put to death This he well foresaw and the event truly answered it would be the fate of its first appearing in the world and indeed considering the present state and circumstances of the world at that time it could not reasonably be expected that the Christian Religion should meet with a better entertainment for the genius and nature of its Doctrine was such as was almost impossible to escape the frowns and displeasure of men a Doctrine it was that call'd men off from lusts and pleasures and offered violence to their native inclinations that required the greatest strictness and severity of life obliged men to deny themselves to take up their Cross and to follow the steps of a poor crucified Saviour and that upon little other encouragement at present than the invisible rewards of another world It introduced new Rites and Ceremonies unknown to those of former Ages and such as did undermine the received and established principles of that Religion that for so many Generations had governed the world it revealed and brought to light such truths as were not only contrary to the principles of mens education but many of them above the reach of natural comprehension too deep for the line of humane reason to fathom or find out Upon these and such like accounts Christianity was sure to encounter with mighty prejudices and potent opposition and to it did for no sooner did it peep abroad in the world but it was every where spoken against Princes and Potentates and the greatest powers and policies of the world did for some Ages confederate and combine together to extirpate and banish it out of the world and certainly if Arms and Armies if strength and subtilty if malice and cruelty could have stifled it it had been smothered in its infancy and first delivery into the world But notwithstanding all these oppositions it still lifted up his head in triumph and outbrav'd the fiercest storms of persecution and as Tertullian told their Enemies by every exquisite act of cruelty they did but tempt others to come over to the party the oftner they were mowed down the faster they sprang up again the blood of Christians making the Churches soil more fat and fertile Hereupon the great enemy of mankind betook himself to other counsels and sought to undermine what he saw he could not carry by open assault and battery he studied to leaven the minds of men with false and unjust prejudices against Christianity and to burden it with whole loads of reproaches and defamations knowing no speedier way to hinder its reception than to blast its reputation For this purpose all the arts of spite and malice were mustred up and Christians confidently charged with all those crimes that could render them and their Religion vile and infamous Now the things that were charged upon the Christians were either such as respected their Religion or such as concern'd their outward state and condition or such as related to their moral carriage and behaviour with some things relating to the matter or manner of their Worship we shall consider them in order and how the Christians of those times vindicated themselves from these imputations The Christian Religion at its first coming abroad into the world was mainly charged with these two things Impiety and Novelty For the first 't was commonly cryed out against as a grand piece of Atheism and Impiety as an affront to their Religion and an undermining the very being and existence of their gods this is the sum of the charge as we find it in the ancient Apologists more particularly Caecilius the Heathen in Minucius Felix accuses the Christians for a desperate undone and unlawful faction who by way of contempt did snuff and spit at the mention of their gods deride their worship sooff at their Priests and despise their Temples as no better than Charnel-houses and heaps of bones and ashes of the dead for these and such like reasons the Christians were every where accounted a pack of Atheists and their Religion the Atheism and seldom it is that Julian the Emperor calls Christianity by any other name Thus Lucian bringing in Alexander the Impostor setting up for an Oracle-monger ranks the Christians with Atheists and Epicureans as those that were especially to be banished from his mysterious Rites In answer to this charge the Christians pleaded especially these three things First that the Gentiles were for the most part incompetent Judges of such cases as these as being almost wholly ignorant of the true state of the Christian Doctrine and therefore unfit to pronounce sentence against it Thus when Crescens the Philosopher had traduced the Christians as atheistical and irreligious Justin Martyr answers that he talked about things which he did not understand feigning things of his own head only to comply with the humour of his seduc'd disciples and followers that in reproaching the Doctrine of Christ when he did not understand it he discovered a most wicked and malignant temper and shewed himself far worse than the most simple and unlearned who are not wont rashly to bear witness and determine in things not sufficiently known to them Or if he did understand its greatness and excellency then he shewed himself much more base and dis-ingenuous in charging upon it what he knew to be false and concealing his inward sentiments and convictions for fear lest he should be suspected to be a Christian But Justin well knew that he was miserably unskilful in matters of Christianity having formerly had conferences and disputations with him about these things and therefore offer'd the Senate of Rome to whom he then presented his
we do before all things instil into them a dislike and contempt of all Idols and Images and lift up their minds from worshipping Creatures instead of God to him who is the great Creator of the world If any through weakness chanced at any time to lapse into this sin how pathetically did they bewail it So Celerinus in his Epistle to Lucian giving him an account of a woman that to avoid persecution had done sacrifice and thereby fallen from Christ he bewails her as dead tells him that it stuck so close to him that though in the time of Easter a time of festivity and rejoicing yet he wept night and day and kept company with sackcloth and ashes and resolved to do so till by the help of Christ and the prayers of good men she shouled by repentance be raised up again The better to prevent this sin wherein weaker Christians were sometimes ensnared in those times of cruelty and persecution the discipline of the ancient Church was very severe against it of which we can have no better evidence than to take a little view of the determinations relating to this case of that ancient Council of Illiberis held some years before the time of Constantine there we find that if any Christian after Baptism took upon him the Flamin-ship or Priesthood of the Gentiles an Office ordinarily devolved upon the better sort and which Christians sometimes either made suit for to gain more favour with the people or had it forc'd upon them by the Laws of the Country so that they must either undergo it or flye and forfeit their Estates such a one no not at the hour of death was to be received into the Communion of the Church The reason of which severity was because who ever underwent that Office must do sacrifice to the gods and entertain the people with several kinds of Sights Plays and Sports which could not be managed without murders and the exercise of all lust and filthiness whereby they did double and treble their sin as that Council speaks If a Christian in that Office did but allow the charges to maintain those Sports and Sights although he did not actually sacrifice which he might avoid by substituting a Gentile Priest in his room he was indeed to be taken into communion at last but was to undergo a very severe penance for it all his life Nay although he did neither of the former yet if he did but wear a Crown a thing usually done by the Heathen Priests he was to be excluded from communion for two years together If a Christian went up to the Capitol probably out of curiosity only to see the sacrifices of the Gentiles and did not see them yet he should be as guilty as if he had seen them his intention and will being the same as the learned Albaspine and I think truly understands the Canon and in such a case if the person was one of the faithful he was not to be received till after ten years repentance Every Master of a Family was commanded to suffer no little Idols or Images to be kept in his house to be worshipped by his Children or Servants but if this could not be done without danger of being betrayed and accused by his Servants a thing not unusual in those times that then at least he himself should abstain from them otherwise to be thrown out of the Church Being imbued with such principles and train'd up under such a discipline as this 't is no wonder if they would do or suffer any thing rather than comply with the least symptom of Idolatry they willingly underwent banishment and confiscation amongst several of which sort Caldonius tells Cyprian of one Bona who being violently drawn by her Husband to sacrifice they by force guiding her hand to do it cryed out and protested against it that 't was not she but they that did it and was thereupon sent into banishment They freely laid down their greatest honours and dignities rather than by any idolatrous act to offer violence to their consciences Whereof Constantius the Father of Constantine made this wise experiment he gave out that all the Officers and great men of the Court should either do sacrifice to the gods or immediately quit his service and the Offices and preferments which they held under him whereupon many turned about while others remained firm and unshaken upon this the prudent and excellent Prince discovered his Plot embraced commended and advanced to greater honours those who were faithful to their Religion and their conscience reproaching and turning off those who were so ready to quit and forfeit them Thus Jovianus a man of considerable note and quality and an Officer of great place in Julian's Army when the Emperour sent out his Edict that all the Souldiers should either sacrifice or lay down their Arms presently threw away his belt rather than obey that impious command though the Emperour at that time for reasons of State would not suffer him to depart And after the death of Julian when by the unanimous vote of the whole Army he was chosen Emperour he utterly refused it 'till the Army had renounced their Pagan idolatry and superstition And though 't is true that life is dearest to men of all things in this world yet how chearfully did they chuse rather to shed their blood than to defile their consciences with Idolatry of which Eusebius gives us many instances and indeed this was the common test in those times either sacrifice or die Phileas Bishop of Thmuis in a Letter to his people giving them an account of the martyrdoms that hapned at Alexandria tells them that many after having endured strange and unheard of torments were put to their choice whether they would sacrifice and be set at liberty or refuse and lose their heads whereupon all of them without any hesitation readily went to embrace death knowing well how the Scripture is that whoever sacrifices to strange gods shall be cut off and again thou shalt have no other gods but me And in the next Chapter Eusebius tells us of a whole City of Christians in Phrygia which together with all the men women and children was burnt to ashes for no other reason but because they universally confessed themselves to be Christians and refused to obey those that commanded them to worship Idols instances of which kind there are enough to be met with in the Histories of the Church And so fix'd and unmoveable were they in this that no promises or hopes of reward no fears or threatnings could either tempt or startle them memorable a passage or two that we meet withal to this purpose it was a custom amongst the Romans to show some respect and honour not only to the Emperours themselves but even to their Statues and Images by bowing the body or some other act of external veneration Now Julian the Emperour whose great design was to reduce
all men but especially his Army back to Paganism and Idolatry made use of this crafty project he placed the Pictures of Jupiter and other Heathen gods so close to his own Statues that they could not bow to the one but they must also to the other politickly reducing them to this strait that either they must refuse to pay civil honour to their Prince which had been a sufficient crime against them or seem at least to do honour to the gods with this device the less wary and cautelous were entrapped but others that were more pious and purdent chose rather to deny the Prince that civil homage and fall into the arms of martyrdom than by such an ambiguous adoration to seem to patronize Idolatry At another time he fell upon this stratagem upon a solemn day when the Emperours were wont to bestow Largesses upon the Souldiers he caused the Army to be called before him sitting then in great pomp and splendour and a large donative of Gold to be laid on the one side and a heap of Frankincense with fire by it on the other proclamation being made that they that would sacrifice the one should have the other By this means many of the Christian Souldiers were ensnared performed the Sacrifice received the Donative and went home jolly and secure But being at Dinner with their Companions and drinking to each other as the custom was with their eyes lift up and calling upon Christ and making the Sign of the Cross as oft as they took the Cup into their hands one at the Table told them he wondred how they could call upon Christ whom they had so lately abjur'd Amazed at this and asking how they had abjured him they were told that they had sacrificed which was all one as to deny Christ Whereupon starting up from the Table they ran up and down the Market-place in a furious and frantick manner crying out we are Christians we are Christians in heart and truth and let all the world take notice that there is but one God to whom we live and for whom we 'll dye we have not broken the faith which we swore to thee O blessed Saviour nor renounced our profession if our hands be guilty our hearts are innocent 't is not the Gold that has corrupted us but the Emperours craftiness that deceived us and with that running to the Emperour they threw down their Gold before him with this address we have not Sir received a donative but are condemned to dye instead of being honoured we are vilified and disgraced take this Largess and give it to your Souldiers as for us kill us and sacrifice us to Christ whom alone we owne as our highest Prince return us fire for fire and for the ashes of the sacrifice reduce us to ashes Cut off those hands which we so wickedly stretched out those feet that carried us to so great a mischief give others the Gold who may have no cause to repent on 't for our part Christ is enough for us whom we value instead of all things With this noble and generous resolution though the Emperour was highly enraged yet because he envied them the honour of martyrdom he would not put them to death but banished them and inflicted other penalties which might sufficiently evidence his rage against them Nay with so warm a zeal were they acted against Idolatry that many of them could not contain themselves from falling foul upon it where-ever they met it though with the immediate hazard of their lives So Romanus Deacon and Exorcist of the Church of Caesaria seeing great multitudes of people at Antioch flocking to the Temples and doing sacrifice to the gods came to them and began very severely to reprove and reproach them for which being apprehended after many strange and cruel usages he was put to death with all imaginable pain and torture Thus Apphianus a young man when the Cryers by proclamation summoned all the Inhabitants of Caesaria to sacrifice to the gods the Tribunes particularly reciting every mans name out of a Book to the great terrour of all that were Christians privately and unknown to us says Eusebius who lived at that time in the same house with him stole out and getting near Vrbanus the President who was then compassed about with a Guard of Souldiers just as he was about to offer Sacrifice caught hold of his right hand which he grasped so fast that he forced him to let fall the Sacrifice gravely admonishing him to desist from such errours and vanities Clearly shewing says the Historian that true Christians are so far from being drawn from the Worship of the true God that by threatnings and torments they are rather heightened into a greater and more ingenuous freedom and boldness in the profession of the Truth For this fact the young man was almost torn in pieces by the Souldiers whose rage and fierceness could scarce suffer him to be repriev'd for acuter tortures which were exerised towards him with all possible cruelty and when all could do no good upon him he was thrown half dead into the Sea The like we read of three famous Christians at Merum a City in Phrygia where when the Governour of the Province under Julian the Apostate had commanded the Heathen Temple to be opened they got by night into the Temple and broke to pieces all the Statues and Images of the gods Whereupon when a general persecution was like to arise against all the Christians of the City that the ignorant and innocent might not suffer the Authors of the fact came of their own accord to the Judge and confessed it who offered them pardon if they would sacrifice which they rejected with disdain and told him they were much readier to endure any torments and death it self than to be defiled with sacrificing and accordingly were first treated with all sorts of torments and then burnt upon an Iron Grate retaining their courage to the last and took their leave of the Governour with this sarcasm If thou hast a mind Amachius to eat rost meat turn us on the other side lest we be but half rosted and so prove ungrateful to thy taste So mightily did a restless passion for the divine honour possess the minds of those primitive Christians And though 't is true such transports of zeal are not ordinarily warrantable for which reason the Council of Illiberis justly prohibited those who were killed in the defacing and demolishing Idols to be reckoned in the number of Martyrs yet do they sufficiently shew what a spirit of eagerness and activity ruled in those times against the false Religions of the world By all this we may see how unjustly the Christians were traduced and accused for Idolaters three things were commonly charged upon them that they worshipped the Sun the Cross and an Asses head For the first their worshipping the Sun Tertullian answers that the mistake arose from a double cause partly that the Christians of
though he recovered afterwards To this custom of Clinic Baptism some not improbably think the Apostle has reference in that famous place where he speaks of those that are baptized for the dead 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which they expound with reference to the state of the dead and that 't is meant of such who in danger of death would be baptized that it might fare well with them after death This Epiphanius thinks the truest interpretation that it 's meant of Catechumens who being suddenly surprised with death would be baptized that so their sins being remitted in Baptism they might go hence under the hope of that eternal life which awaits good men after death and testifie their belief and expectation of their future happy resurrection Others think it may refer to the place of Baptism those who are baptized 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 over the Graves or Sepulchres of the dead it being an ancient and general custom to have their religious meetings and to perform their publick exercises at the Tombs of Martyrs there being numerous instances in the acts of the Martyrs of such as were baptized in the Coemeteria over the Monuments of the dead Which soever of these is most sutable yet certainly either of them is far more probable than that which many talk so much of as if the Apostle meant it of a custom common in those primitive times amongst the Cerinthians and other Hereticks where when any died without Baptism they used to place another under his Bed who was baptized for him in his stead whence Tertullian calls it a vicarious Baptism it being highly improbable that the great Apostle would fetch an argument to confirm so solemn and fundamental a principle of the Christian Faith as the doctrine of the Resurrection is from such an absurd and ridiculous rite used only by the worst of Hereticks But this only by the way For the Place where this solemn action was performed it was at first unlimited any place where there was water as Justin Martyr tells us in Ponds or Lakes at Springs or Rivers as Tertullian speaks but always as near as might be to the place of their publick Assemblies for it was seldom done without the presence of the Congregation and that for very good reason both as 't is a principal act of religious Worship and as 't is the initiating of persons into the Church which therefore ought to be as publick as it could that so the whole Congregation might be spectators and witnesses of that profession and engagement which the person baptized then took upon him and this they so zealously kept to that the Trullan Council allows not Baptism to be administred in a private Chappel but only in the publick Churches punishing the persons offending if Clergy with deposition if Laity with excommunication which yet as both Zonaras and Balsamon expound the Canon is to be understood unless it be done with the leave and approbation of the Bishop of the Diocess for this reason they had afterwards their Baptisteria or as we call them Fonts built at first near the Church then in the Church-Porch to represent Baptisms being the entrance into the mystical Church afterwards they were placed in the Church it self they were usually very large and capacious not only that they might comport with the general custom of those times of persons baptized being immersed or put under water but because the stated times of Baptism returning so seldom great multitudes were usually baptized at the same time In the middle of the Font there was a partition the one part for men the other for women that to avoid offence and scandal they might be baptized asunder Here it was that this great rite was commonly performed though in cases of necessity they dispensed with private Baptism as in the case of those that were sick or shut up in prison of which there were frequent instances in times of persecution Many there were in those days such especially as lived in the parts near to it whom nothing would serve unless they might be baptized in Jordan out of a reverence to that place where our Saviour himself had been baptized this Constantine tells us he had a long time resolved upon to be baptized in Jordan though God cut him short of his desire and Eusebius elsewhere relates that at Bethabara beyond Jordan where John baptized there was a place whither very many even in his time used to resort earnestly desiring to obtain their Baptism in that place This doubtless proceeded from a very devout and pious mind though otherwise one place can contribute nothing more than another nothing being truer than what Tertullian has observed in this case that it 's no matter whether we be haptized amongst those whom John baptized in Jordan or whom Peter baptized in Tyber The last circumstance I propounded concerns the manner of the celebration of this Sacrament and for this we may observe that in the Apostles Age Baptism was administred with great nakedness and simplicity probably without any more formality than a short prayer and repeating the words of institution and indeed it could not well be otherwise considering the vast numbers that many times were then baptized at once But after-ages added many rites differing very often according to time and place I shall not undertake to give an account of all but only of the most remarkable and such as did generally obtain in those times keeping as near as I can to the order which they observed in the administration which usually was thus Persons having past through the state of the Catechâ—mens and being now ripe for Baptism made it their request to the Bishop that they might be baptized whereupon at the solemn times they were brought to the entrance of the Baptistery or Font and standing with their faces towards the West which being directly opposite to the East the place of light did symbolically represent the Prince of darkness whom they were to renounce and defie were commanded to stretch out their hand as it were in defiance of him in this posture they were interrogated by the Bishop concerning their breaking of all their former leagues and commerce with sin and the powers of Hell the Bishop asking dost thou renounce the Devil and all his works powers and service to which the party answered I do renounce them dost thou renounce the world and all its pomps and pleasures Answer I do renounce them This renunciation was made twice once before the Congregation probably at their obtaining leave to be baptized and presently after at the Font or place of Baptism as Tertullian witnesses Next they made an open confession of their Faith the Bishop asking Dost thou believe in God the Father almighty c. in Jesus Christ his only Son who c. dost thou believe in the Holy Ghost the holy Catholick Church and in one Baptism of
repentance for the remission of sins and life everlasting to all which the person answered I do believe This form of interrogation seems to have been very ancient in the Church and the Apostle is justly thought to refer to it when he stiles Baptism the answer of a good conscience towards God which can reasonably refer to nothing so well as that common custom of answering in Baptism These answers and actions in the adult were done by the persons themselves in children by their sponsores as Tertullian calls them their Sureties and undertakers for that both Infants and adult persons had those that undertook for them at their Baptism is so notoriously known that it were impertinent to insist upon it After this there was a kind of Exorcism and an insufflation or breathing in the face of the person baptized which S. Austine calls a most ancient tradition of the Church by which they signified the expelling of the evil spirit and the breathing in the good Spirit of God not that they thought that every one before Baptism was possessed by the Devil but only that we are by nature children of wrath enemies to God and slaves to Satan Nor did they lay any stress upon the bare usage of those Symbolick Rites but wholly upon the Churches Prayers which at the same time were made that God would deliver those persons from the power of Satan and by his Spirit unite them to the Church This being done they were brought to the Font and were first stript of their garments intimating thereby their putting off the old man which is corrupt with his deceitful lusts and that all occasions of scandal and immodesty might be prevented in so sacred an action the men and women as I observed before were baptized in their distinct apartments the women having Deaconesses to attend them to undress and dress them to stand about and overshadow them that nothing of indecency might appear then followed the Vnction a Ceremony of early date by which says S. Cyril they signified that they were now cut off from the wild Olive and were ingraffed into Christ the true Olive-tree and made partakers of his fruits and benefits or else to shew that now they were become Champions for Christ and had entred upon a state of conflict wherein they must strive and contend with all the snares and allurements of the world as the Athletae of old were anointed against their solemn Games that they might be more expedite and that their Antagonists might take less hold upon them or rather probably to denote their being admitted to the great Priviledges of Christianity a chosen generation royal Priesthood an noly nation as the Apostle stiles Christians Offices of which anointing was an ancient Symbol both of being designed to them and invested in them and this account Tertullian favours where speaking of this Unction in Baptism he tells us 't is derived from the ancient i. e. Jewish Discipline where the Priests were wont to be anointed for the Priesthood for some such purpose they thought it fit that a Christian who carries unction in his very name should be anointed as a spiritual King and Priest and that no time was more proper for it than at his Baptism when the name of Christian was conferred upon him Together with this we may suppose it was that the sign of the Cross was made upon the forehead of the party baptized when this Ceremony first began to be used in Baptism I find not S. Basil reckons it and he puts it too in the first place amongst those ancient Customs of the Church that had been derived from the times of the Apostles that it was generally in use in the times of Tertullian and Cyprian we have sufficient evidence from their Writings and indeed cannot reasonably suppose they should omit it in this solemn action where it is so proper when they used it in the commonest actions of their lives Tertullian expresly assuring us that upon every motion at their going out and coming in at their going to bath or to bed or to meals or whatever their employment or occasions called them to they were wont frontem signaculo terere to make the sign of the Cross upon their forehead and this they did as he there tells us not that it was imposed upon them by any Law of Christ but brought in by a pious custom as that which did very much tend to strengthen and increase their faith By this they shewed that they were not ashamed of the Cross of Christ nor unwilling to ingage in the service of a crucified Master which yet was so great a scandal to the Heathen-World and therefore so often triumphed in this Symbol and Representation of it Thus S. Hierom though he lived in a time when Christianity had almost quite prevailed over all other Religions in the World yet counted this the great matter of his glory that I am says he a Christian that I was born of Christian Parents and do carry in my forehead the Banner of the Cross And indeed so great a respect did they bear to this Representation of our Saviours death that though they did not worship the Cross yet they took care that it should not be put to any mean and trivial uses be painted or made upon the ground or engraven upon Marble Pavements or any thing where it might be trampled upon as is expresly provided by a Law of Theodosius and Valentinian The action having proceeded thus far the party to be baptized was wholly immerged or put under water which was the almost constant and universal custom of those times whereby they did more notably and significantly express the three great ends and effects of Baptism for as in immersion there are in a manner three several acts the putting the person into water his abiding there for a little time and his rising up again so by these were represented Christs death burial and resurrection and in conformity thereunto our dying unto sin the destruction of its power and our resurrection to a new course of life by the persons being put into water was lively represented the putting off the body of the sins of the flesh and being washed from the filth and pollution of them by his abode under it which was a kind of burial in the water his entring into a state of death or mortification like as Christ remained for some time under the state or power of death therefore as many as are baptized into Christ are said to be baptized into his death and to be buried with him by Baptism into death that the old man being crucified with him the body of sin might be destroyed that henceforth he might not serve sin for that he that is dead is freed from sin as the Apostle clearly explains the meaning of this rite and then by his emersion or rising up out of the water was
hast taken from me Nay so little kindness had they for this world that they cared not how little they stayed in it and therefore readily offered themselves to Martyrdom at every turn Tertullian tells his adversaries that all those plagues which God sent upon the world what damage soever they might do their enemies could not hurt them because they had no other concernment in this world than as soon as they could to get out of it This he elsewhere tells us the very Gentiles assign'd as one reason why the Christians were train'd up in a defiance of all the sports and pleasures of this life that they might be more willing to dye and that the cords being cut by which they were tedder'd to this world they might be more nimble and expedite for their passage hence Their main designs were intent upon the happiness of another world and therefore they regarded not what they went thorough to come sooner to it Being inflamed sayes Justin Martyr with the desire of a pure and an eternal lâ—fe we breath after an intimate converse with God the great Parent and Creator of the world and make hast to seal our confession with our blood being certainly perswaded that they shall attain to this state who by their actions study to approve themselves to God that they follow after him and are heartily desirous of communion with him in that life where no malice or wickedness shall take place This was the mighty support they lean'd upon the great cordial with which they kept up their spirits in those sad times of suffering and persecution the firm belief and expectation which they had of enjoying God in a better life They knew that the more hast their enemies made to break open the cage of their bodies the sooner their souls would be at liberty to fly to the regions of blessedness and immortality And indeed so much were their thoughts fixed upon this so oft did they use to comfort one another by discoursing of that Kingdom which they expected hereafter that some of their enemies over-hearing and mistaking them accused them as treasonable affectors of the Empire when alas as Justin Martyr assures the Emperours they meant nothing less which they might know by this that being brought to tryal they freely confessed themselves to be Christians though they certainly knew they must dye for it whereas says he did we expect an humane Kingdome we would dissemble and deny it to avoid death and so expect a more convenient season to accomplish our designs but since our hopes are not placed in any thing in this world we regard not those that take away our lives well knowing they take nothing from us but what we must needs lay down our selves It was their care then continually to keep company with dying thoughts and to dwell within the prospect of eternity it being generally true of all what St. Hierom particularly reports of Marcella that she lived so as alwayes believing that she should immediately dye and never put on her garments but it put her in mind of her grave and of the sheet that should wrap her up in the house of silence But besides the influence which the expectation of their particular dissolutions had upon them there was one thing which I doubt not did mightily contribute to their being wean'd from the world and did strongly animate them to a quick and speedy diligence about the affairs of the other life and that was the Opinion they generally had of the day of judgment being near at hand An Opinion started early as appears by that caution which St. Paul gives the Thessalonians about it and it lasted for some Ages after as is evident from several passages in Tertullian who always improves it to this purpose that men should not unnecessarily encounter themselves with the affairs of this life but carry themselves as those that were immediately passing hence I conclude with that of Justin Martyr Christians says he dwell in their own countries but as inmates and forreigners they have all things common with other men as fellow-Citizens and yet suffer all things as strangers and forreigners every forreign Region is their Country and every Country is forreign to them They marry like other men and beget children but do not expose or neglect their Off-spring they feast in common but do not exceed like other men they are in the flesh but do not live after the flesh dwell upon earth but their conversation is in Heaven Therefore he compares Christians in this world to the soul in the body as for other reasons so especially for this that as the soul lives in the body but is not of the body so Christians dwell in the world but are not of the world an immortal spirit dwells in a mortal tabernacle and Christians while they sojourn in these corruptible mansions expect and look for an incorruptible state in Heaven CHAP. III. Of their sobriety in respect of their Garb and Apparel Much of the temper of the mind shewn in the outward garb The great ends of clothes for honesty necessity distinction The Primitive Christians accommodated themselves to these Carefull to avoid both singularity and excess Generally conformable to the sober fashions of the places where they liv'd Whether when they turn'd Christian they left off the Roman gown and took up the Pallium or Cloak à Toga ad Pallium the occasion of Tertullians writings his excellent Book on that subject the Pallium principally worn by those that entred upon a life of more than ordinary strictness Their great care to keep a medium between costliness and sordidness This accounted part of that pomp and vanity which they renounc'd in baptism The vanity of excessive garbs and finery complain'd of by the Fathers in some of those times Especially invective against methods of artificial beauty what pleaded in defence of it by some persons in those dayes considered and answered out of the Fathers That they were rich no sufficient argument to patronize the doing of it Better ways of imploying their estates Nor that they could do it without violating their chastity The inconveniencies of it with respect to others That they did it to please their Husbands Answered This needless every wise and good man content without it Such Arts savour'd too much of lewd wanton Prostitutes Painting and such Arts injurious to God and disparagement of his workmanship This largely prosecuted out of Tertullian and Cyprian A memorable story which Theodoret relates of his own Mother True beauty accounted to lye in a holy and vertuous mind and a pure and pious life Gay and phantastick persons fitly represented by the Aegyptian temples Nazianzen's description of his good Sister Gorgonia THe Primitive Christians being thus eminent for their contempt of the world 't is easy to imagine that they were very temperate and abstemious in the use of all the pleasures and conveniences of humane life which we shall
same reason it was that they disallowed all Clandestine marriages which were not openly made in the face of the Church accounting them no better than a state of Adultery or Fornication And as they were careful not to give offence to others so they were not willing themselves to come within the shadow of a temptation they stood at a distance from whatever was offensive either to their eys or ears their ears they stopt against all loose idle songs all filthy and obscene discourses their eys they shut against all uncomely objects all wanton and lascivious pictures as Clemens Alexandrinus expresly tells us not doing any thing that seemed but to carry an ill colour with it Nazianzen tells us of his Sister Gorgonia a vertuous woman whose example we have often quoted that for modesty and sobriety she went beyond all other women that she reconcil'd the two opposite states of humane life celibate and marriage the one more sublime and divine but more dangerous and troublesome the other more humble but withal more safe that she avoided the inconveniencies of each and chose what was most excellent out of hoth the sublimity of the one and the security of the other shewing that neither of these states in it self did wholly tie us up either to God or the World nor yet wholly separate us from them so that the one should be absolutely rejected or the other absolutely commended and embrac'd but that it is the mind that admirably presides both over Marriage and Virginity And withal further adds concerning her that so great was her bashfulness and modesty that when she lay under a most acute and dangerous distemper yet she refused to have any Physician come near her as blushing that any man should either see or touch her Fourthly They valued their innocency and their honour above their lives and therefore chose to undergo the greatest dangers to dye yea to kill themselves rather than any violence should be offered to their chastity As the fairest promises could not tempt them so neither could the fiercest torments affright them into any unchast compliance When Maximinus the Emperour governed in the Eastern parts amongst other effects of his wild and bruitish fury and extravagance he fill'd all places whre he came with Adulteries and ravishments abusing women and deflouring Virgins which succeeded well enough says the Historian with all others except only Christians who generously despising death made light of the rage and fury of the Tyrant the men underwent all sorts of punishments which cruelty could invent the women bore up with a courage no less manly and unconquerable and when any were drawn out to be abused they rather submitted their lives to death than their bodies to dishonour Of these he tells us of one especially at Alexandria a woman of great birth and fortunes but much more famous for her Vertues especially her modesty and chastity which she stoutly defended and preferred before her nobility o her riches her excellent parts or any accomplishments whatsoever The Emperour had oft attempted her by all Arts of sollicitation but all in vain till at last not being able to prevail his affection somewhat attempering his fierceness and cruelty he would not put her to death which she was most ready to have undergone but spoyl'd her of her estate and then sent her into banishment there being many hundreds of others at the same time who not able to bear the violation of their chastity wherewith the Governours and Commanders threatned them willingly subjected themselves to all kinds of racks and tortures and the worst capital punishments which their enemies could inflict upon them Nay when the case so happen'd that they were set upon and all their resoluteness could not provoke the cruel kindness of their enemies to dispatch them they would rather dispatch themselves than fall into the rude hands of lust and wantonness Thus did that famous Woman and her two Daughters mention'd by the same Author whose names as Chrysostome in an Oration on purpose in their commendation tells us were Domnina the mother Bernice and Prosdoce the daughters eminent as well for the outward beauty and features of their bodies as for the inward Vertues of their minds being sought for as a prey to lust under the Dioclesian persecution they fled for it but being found out by the Souldiers that were sent to search for them and knowing there was no other way to escape in their return they beg'd leave of the Souldiers that for some private occasions they might step a little out of the rode which being granted fitting themselves for what they had before-hand agreed on as well as the time would give them leave they unanimously threw themselves into the river and there perished in the waters The like he relates of a Noble Woman at Rome wife to the Prefect or Chief Governour of the City but a Christian that Maxentius the Emperour being passionately enflamed with the love of her sent Officers to fetch her who breaking into the house to the great terrour of her husband would violently have seiz'd on her of whom she beg'd only so much time as that she might a little dress and adorn her self under which pretence retiring into her chamber she caught up a sword and by a fatal stroke left the Messengers nothing but a dismal spectacle of amazement and horrour These instances both of them highly applauded by Chrysostome and Eusebious I quote not to justifie a mans violent laying hands upon himself as either lawful or laudable whether in some such cases persons might not be acted by more divine motions extraordinary and heroick impulses the case of Sampson c. as S. Augustine inclines to believe it is not very pertinent for me to enquire it being enough to my purpose to observe that they were great evidences how highly they priz'd Chastity and Integrity which they were willing to secure at so dear a rate And in those cases wherein life was not concern'd they gave the greatest testimony how much they abhorred all uncleanness None were ever more hearty enemies to Idolatry and yet Origen at Athens when put to this unhappy choice either to Sacrifice or defile himself chose rather to commit idolatry than fornication Though even that too was rather his Enemies act than his own they thrusting the frankincense into his hand and haling him up to the Altar Fifthly When ever any was found guilty of the least uncleanness it was look'd upon and bewail'd as a very heinous sin and a great dishonour to the Christian name What is it that I hear says Cyprian how detestable should it be to you what with the greatest grief and affliction of my mind I have understood that there are some amongst you who have defil'd their bodies the temples of God even after they were sanctified by confession and cleans'd by baptism with filthy and infamous embraces promiscuously using the beds and
the publick treasury and themselves for ever reduc'd into the condition of slaves These were some of the more usual ways of punishment amongst the Romans though exercis'd towards the Christians in their utmost rigour and severity I omit to speak of Christians being scourg'd and whip'd even to the tiring of their executioners especially with rods called plumbatae whereof there is frequent mention in the Theodosian Code which were scourges made of cords or thongs with leaden bullets at the end of them of their being ston'd to death their being beheaded their being thrust into stinking and nasty prisons where they were set in a kind of stocks with five holes their legs being stretch'd asunder to reach from one end to the other We shall now consider some few of those unusal torments and punishments which were inflicted only upon Christians or if upon any others only in extraordinary cases Such was their being tied to arms of trees bent by great force and strength by certain Engines and being suddainly let go did in a moment tear the Martyr in pieces in which way many were put to death in the persecution at Thebais Sometimes they were clad with coats of paper linnen or such like dawb'd in the inside with pitch and brimstone which being set on fire they were burnt alive Otherwhiles they were shut into the belly of a brazen Bull and a fire being kindled under it were consumed with a torment beyond imagination Sometimes they were put into a great Pot or Caldron full of boyling pitch oyl lead or wax mixed together or had these fatal liquors by holes made on purpose poured into their bowels Some of them were hung up by one or both hands with stones of great weight tied to their feet to augment their sufferings others were anointed all over their bodies with honey and at mid-day fastned to the top of a pole that they might be a prey to flies wasps and such little cattle as might by degrees sting and torment them to death Thus besides many others it was with Marcus Bishop of Arethusa a venerable old man who suffered under Julian the Apostate after infinite other tortures they dawb'd him over with honey and jellies and in a basket fastned to the top of a pole expos'd him to the hottest beams of the Sun and to the fury of such little Insects as would be sure to prey upon him Sometimes they were put into a rotten ship which being turn'd out to sea was set on fire thus they serv'd an Orthodox Presbyter under Valens the Arrian Emperour the same which Socrates reports of fourscore pious and devout men who by the same Emperours command were thrust into a ship which being brought into open Sea was presently fir'd that so by this means they might also want the honour of a burial And indeed the rage and cruelty of the Gentiles did not only reach the Christians while alive but extend to them after death denying them what has been otherwise granted amongst the most barbarous people the conveniency of burial exposing them to the ravage and fierceness of dogs and beasts of prey a thing which we are told the Primitive Christians reckon'd as not the least aggravation of their sufferings Nay where they had been quietly buried they were not suffered many times as Tertullian complains to enjoy the Asylum of the grave but were plucked out rent and torn in pieces But to what purpose is it any longer to insist upon these things sooner may a man tell the stars than reckon up all those methods of misery and suffering which the Christians endured Eusebius who himself was a sad spectatour of some of the later persecutions professes to give over the account as a thing beyond all possibility of expression the manner of their sufferings and the persons that suffered being hard nay impossible to be reckoned up The truth is as he there observes and Cyprian plainly tells Demetrian of it their enemies did little else but set their wits upon the tenters to find out the most exquisite methods of torture and punishment they were not content with those old ways of torment which their forefathers had brought in but by an ingenious cruelty daily invented new striving to excel one another in this piece of hellish art and accounting those the wittiest persons that could invent the bitterest and most barbarous engins of execution and in this they improved so much that Vlpian Master of Records to Alexander Severus the Emperour and the great Oracle of those Times for Law writing several Books de Officio Proconsulis many parcels whereof are yet extant in the body of the Civil Law in the seventh Book collected together the several bloody Edicts which the Emperours had put out against the Christians that he might shew by what ways and methods they ought to be punished and destroyed as Lactantius tells us But this Book as to what concern'd Christians is not now extant the zeal and piety of the first Christian Emperours having banished all Books of that nature out of the World as appears by a Law of the Emperour Theodosius where he commands the Writings of Porphyry and all others that had written against the Christian Religion to be burned The reason why we have no more Books of the Heathens concerning the Christians extant at this day Having given this brief specimen of some few of those grievous torments to which the Primitive Christians were exposed they that would have more must read the Martyrologies of the Church or such as have purposely witten on this subject we come next to consider what was their behaviour and carriage under them this we shall find to have been most sedate and calm most constant and resolute they neither fainted nor fretted neither railed at their enemies nor sunk under their hands but bore up under the heaviest torments under the bitterest reproaches with a meekness and patience that was invincible and such as every way became the mild and yet generous spirit of the Gospel So Justin Martyr tells the Jew We patiently bear says he all the mischiefs which are brought upon us either by men or devils even to the extremities of death and torments praying for those that thus treat us that they may find mercy not desiring to hurt or revenge our selves upon any that injures us according as our great Law-giver has commanded us Thus Eusebius reporting the hard usage which the Christians met with during the times of persecution tells us that they were betrayed and butchered by their own friends and brethren but they as couragious Champions of the true Religion accustomed to prefer an honourable death in defence of the truth before life it self little regarded the cruel usage they met with in it but rather as became true Souldiers of God armed with patience they laughed at all methods of execution fire and sword and the piercings of nails wild beasts and the bottom of
says he of our strange and wonderful courage and strength new additions are made to us for when the people see men torn in pieces with infinite variety of torments and yet maintain a patience unconquerable and able to tire out its tormentors they begin to think what the truth is that the consent of so many and the perseverance of dying persons cannot be in vain nor that patience it self were it not from God could hold out under such racks and tortures Thieves and men of a robust body are not able to bear such tearing in pieces they groan and cry out and are overcome with pain because not endued with a divine patience but our very children and women to say nothing of our men do with silence conquer their tormentors nor can the hottest fire force the least groan from them Let the Romans go now and boast of their Mutius and Regulus of the one for delivering himself up to his enemy to be put to death because he was ashamed to live a prisoner of the other for burning his hand at the command of the enemy to save his life Behold with us the â—â—â—ker Sex and the most tender age can suffer all parts of their body to be torn and burnt not out of necessity because they might not escape if they would but out of choice because they believe in God This is that true Vertue which Philosophers indeed vainly boast of but never really possessed This and more to the same purpose that eloquent Apologist there urges to the great honour of his Religion By the force of such arguments Justine Martyr confesses that he was brought over from being a Plaâ—onick Philosopher to be a Christian for when he saw the Christians whom he had so often heard accused and traduced undauntedly going to dye and embracing the most terrible executions that were prepared for them I thought with my self says he that it was not possible such persons should wallow in vice and luxury it being the interest of all wicked and voluptuous persons to shun death to dissemble with Princes and Magistrates and to do any thing to save their lives This certainly could not but be a huge satisfaction to all prudent and confiderate men that the Christians were guided by better Principles than ordinary and that they were fully assured that theirs was the true Religion and that they taught nothing but what they firmly believed to be true For to maintain such patience and constancy even unto death says Origen speaking of the Apostles propagating the doctrine of Christ is not the fashion of those who feign things of their own heads but is a manifest argument to all candid and ingenuous Readers that they knew what they writ to be true when they so chearfully endured so many and such grievous things only for the sake of the Son of God in whom they had believed No dangers could affright them no threatnings or torments could baffle them out of their profession Therefore when Celsus accused the Christians for a fearful sort of men and such as lov'd their Carcasses well Origen answers No such matter We can as chearfully lay down our bodies to suffer for Religion as the hardiest Philosopher of you all can put off his coat And indeed the Gospel did mightily prosper and triumph in the midst of these dreadful sufferings men rationally concluding that there must be something more than humane in that doctrine for which so many thus deeply ventur'd So Tertullian tells Scapula in the conclusion of his Book It 's to no purpose to think this Sect will fail which you will see to be the more built up the faster 't is pull'd down for who is there that beholding such eminent patience cannot but have some scruples started in his mind and be desirous to enquire into the cause of it and when he once knows the Truth he himself moved to close with it and embrace it Therefore Julian the Apostate out of a cursed policy refused many times openly to put Christians to death partly because he envied them the honour of being Martyrs partly because he saw that they were like new mown grass the oftner it was cut down the thicker it sprang up again I shall add no more concerning this subject but the testimony which the very enemies of Christians gave them in this case Julian the Emperour whom we so lately mention'd and who fought against Christians with their own weapons making use of those Scriptures which he had studied while he was amongst them when the Christians complained to him of those oppressions and injuries which the Governours of Provinces laid upon them made light of it and dismissed them with this virulent sarcasm Your Christ says he has given you a Law that when you suffer unjustly you should bear it resolutely and when oppressed and injured should not answer again And so certainly they did undergoing all kinds of miseries and death it self with so unconcerned a mind that elsewhere he censures them for this very reason to be acted by the Spirit of the Devil Hence Porphyry in a Book that he wrote against the Christians calls their Religion 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a piece of barbarous boldness Barbarous because so different from the way of worship amongst the Greeks with whom every thing was barbarous that agreed not with their principles and institutions Boldness because the Christians shewed such an undaunted courage in bearing miseries and torments chusing to die a thousand times rather than to deny Christ and sacrifice to the gods For this reason the Heathen in M. Foelix styles the Christians men of an undone furious and desperate party respecting their fearless and resolute carriage under sufferings for so he explains himself presently after Is it not a strange folly and an incredible boldness they despise torments that are present and yet fear those that are future and uncertain and while they fear to die after death in the mean time they are not afraid to die so sillily do they flatter themselves and cajole their fears by a deceitful hope of some unknown comforts that shall arise to them This Arrian in his Collection of Epictetus his Dissertations confesses to be true of those whom according to Julians style he calls the Galileans that they underwent torments and death with a mighty courage but which he makes to be the effect only of use and a customary bearing sufferings The Emperour M. Autoninus confesses also the matter of fact that the Christians did thus readily and resolutely die but ascribes it not to judgment and a rational consideration but to meer stubbornness and obstinacy And in an Epistle if that Epistle as now extant be his that he wrote to the Common Council of Asia in favour of the Christians whom his Officers there did grievously vex and oppress gives them this testimony that they could have no greater kindness done them than to be called in
question and that they had much rather be put to death for their Religion than to have their lives spared to them by which means they became conquerours chosing rather to part with their lives than to do what you impose upon them Let me advise you says he who are ready to despond with every earth-quake that happens to you to compare your selves with them they in all their dangers are securely confident in their God while you at such a time neglect the gods and have little or no regard either to other rites or to the worship of that immortal deity but banish the Christians that worship him and persecute them unto death So forcibly did the Majesty of Truth extort a confession from its greatest enemies The End of the Second Part. Primitive Christianity OR THE RELIGION OF THE Ancient Christians In the first Ages of the Gospel PART III. Of their Religion as respecting other men CHAP. I. Of their Justice and Honesty Christian Religion admirably provides for moral righteousness Do as you would be done by the great Law of Christ This rule highly priz'd by Severus the Emperour The first Christians accounted honesty and an upright carriage a main part of their Religion Their candor and simplicity in their words Abhorring lies and mental reservations though it might save their lives Their veracity such as no need to be put to thir oaths Some few of the Fathers against all swearing Allowed by the greatest part in weighty Cases That they took oaths proved from Athanasius and their taking the Sacramentum militare The form of the oath out of Vegetius The same expresly affirmed of the more antient Christians by Tertullian Why refusing to swear by the Emperours genius Oaths wont to be taken at the holy Sacrament upon the Communion Table or the holy Gospels Some against all oaths only to prevent a possibility of perjury Bearing false witness condemned and strictly punished by the antient Church A famous Instance of divine vengeance pursuing three false accusers Christians careful in the conduct of their actions Their integrity in matters of distributive Justice In commutative Justice avoiding all fraud and over-reaching S. Augustin's instance Nicostratus forced to fly to avoid the punishment of cheating and sacriledge The Christians unjustly accused of Sacriledge by the Heathens The occasion of it Pliny's testimony of the Honesty of Christians Theft and rapine severely condemned Christians for doing all the good they could Their care to right and relieve the oppressed The Gentiles charged Christians with murder and eating mans-flesh A brief representation of the several answers returned to it by the Christian Apologists The true rise of the charge found to spring from the barbarous and inhumane practices of the Gnosticks mentioned by Irenaeus and Epiphanius HAving given some account of the Religion of the antient Christians both as it respected their piety towards God and their sober and vertuous carriage towards themselves we come in the last place to consider it in reference to their carriage towards others which the Apostle describes under the title of righteousness under which he comprehends all that duty and respect wherein we stand obliged to others whereof we shall consider these following instances their justice and integrity in matters of commerce and traffick their mutual love and charity to one another their unity and peaceableness and their submission and subjection to civil Government I begin with the first their just and upright carriage in their outward dealings one great design of the Christian Law is to establish and ratifie that great principle which is one of the prime and fundamental Laws of nature to hurt no man and to render to every one his due to teach us to carry our selves as becomes us in our relations towards men Next to our duty towards God the Gospel obliges us to be righteous to men sincere and upright in all our dealings not going beyond nor defrauding one another in any matter to put away lying and to speak truth to each other as fellow-members of the same Christian brother-hood and society It settles that golden rule as the fundamental Law of all just and equitable commerce that all things whatsoever we would that men should do to us we should even do so to them this being the sum of the Law and the Prophets than which as no rule could have been more equitable in it self so none could possibly have been contrived more short and plain and more accommodate to the common cases of humane life Upon the account of these and such like excellent precepts Alexander Severus the Roman Emperour had so great an honour for our Saviour that he was resolved to build a Temple to him and to receive him into the number of their gods and though he was over-rul'd in this by some who having consulted the Oracle told him that if it were done all men would become Christians and the Temples of the gods would be left naked and empty yet in his most private Chappel he had the Image of Christ amongst those of many Noble Heroes and deified persons to whom he pay'd religious adoration every Morning and particularly for this precept that what we would not have done to our selves we should not do to others which his own Historian confesses he learnt either from the Jews or Christians but most certainly from the Christians in whose mouths it so often was and in whose Gospel it was so plainly written he so highly valued it that in all publick punishments he caused it to be proclaim'd by a common Crier nay was so hugely fond on 't that he caused it to be written upon the walls of his Palace and upon all his publick Buildings that if possible every room in his Court and every place in the City might be a silent Chancery and Court of Equity So vast a reverence had the very enemies of Christianity for the Gospel upon this account that it so admirably provides for the advance of civil righteousness and justice amongst men which however it has been sleighted by some even amongst Christians under the notion of moral Principles yet without it all other Religion is but vain it being a strange piece of folly for any to dream of being godly without being honest or to think of being a disciple of the first while a man is an enemy to the second Table Sure I am the Christians of old look'd upon honesty and an upright carriage as a considerable part of their Religion and that to speak truth to keep their words to perform oaths and promises to act sincerely in all their dealings was as sacred and as dear to them as their lives and beings Speech being the great instrument of mutual commerce and traffick shall be the first instance of their integrity They ever used the greatest candor and simplicity in expressing their mind to one another not pretending what was false nor concealing what was true yea yea and nay nay was the usual
up the blood and ravenously tear off and snatch away the several parts of it and with this sacrifice their confederacy and combination is made and by the conscience of so great a villany they are mutually obliged to silence Such sacred rites as these being more horrid and barbarous than the highest sacriledges in the world To this monstrous and horrid charge the Christians returned these answers That they appeal'd to the common Faith of mankind whether they could really believe them to be guilty of these things so abhorrent to all the principles of Humane Nature and to the Christians known Principles and practices in all other things that they should measure the Christians by themselves and if they themselves could not be guilty of such things they should not suspect it by the Christians who were endued with the same Principles of humanity with other men that they were so far from being friends to murder or man-slaughter that they held it unlawful to be present at the Gladiatory sports where mens lives were so want only sacrificed to the pleasure and curiosity of the people that they accounted it murder for any woman by evil arts to procure abortion to stifle the embryo to kill a child in a manner before it be alive it being much at one to hinder life as to take it away to kill a man or destroy what would be one seeing he truly destroys the fruit that kills it in the seed that it was not likely they should delight in mans blood who never tasted any blood at all abstaining from things strangled and from blood And that the very Heathens themselves confessed this when amongst the several arts they used to discover whether men were Christians they used to offer them bladders full of blood knowing that they held it unlawful to taste any and therefore it was mightily improbable they should thirst after humane blood who abhorred even the blood of beasts That they heartily believed the Resurrection of the dead and therefore would not make themselves the Sepulchers of those bodies which were to rise again and feed upon them as they did upon other bodies which were to have no resurrection that the truth was if this charge was true of any it was true only of the Gentiles themselves amongst whom these things were daily allowed and practised That Saturn one of their chief deities did not only expose but eat his own children to him infants in Africk were offered in sacrifice by their own parents a custome that openly continued till the Proconsul-ship of Tiberius which though he abolished it yet it continued still in corners in Tertullians days To his Son Jupiter they offered humane sacrifices even in Rome it self and that even to the time of M. Foelix as he himself testifies which is no more than what Porphyry himself after he had reckoned up in how many parts of the world Humane sacrifices were in use confesses was done at Rome in the Feast of Jupiter Latialis even in his time Many other instances of such barbarous practices are there produced by those two Apologists which they urge with great advantage upon their adversaries whom they challenged to make any such thing good against them And no sooner did discipline begin to be regularly setled but their principles herein were every where confirmed by the Canons of the Church either private or publick the woman that industriously made her self miscarry was adjudged to be guilty of murder and condemn'd to the same punishment a ten years penance which was adjudg'd to be the case of any that brought forth upon the way and exposed her Infant By the law of the State made by the Emperour Valentinian whosoever whether man or woman kill'd an Infant was to be subject to the same capital punishment as if he had kill'd an adult person which may very well be understood even of Infants kill'd in the womb the punishment whereof was formerly for the most part no more than banishment He that was guilty of wilful murder was by S. Basil's rule to undergo a twenty years penance before he was admitted to the Sacrament though by several passages in Tertullian it appears that Homicides in his time were more severely treated by the Church for they were not only bound to a perpetual penance but were not absolv'd at death But this severity shortly after began to relax and such persons though obliged to acts of repentance all their life yet at death were absolved and admitted to Communion as is expresly provided by the decree of the Ancyran Council Thus clear did the Christians all along stand from any just suspicion of that gross piece of inhumanity which their enemies so confidently charged upon them As for the rise and occasion of this malicious charge it was doubtless of the same growth with that of their incestuous mixtures spoken of before both springing from the abominable practices of some filthy Hereticks who sheltred themselves under the name of Christians Epiphanius particularly reporting of the Gnosticks what the Heathens generally charged upon the Christians for he tells us of them that at their meetings they were wont to take an Infant begotten in their promiscuous mixtures and beating it in a mortar to season it with honey and pepper and some other spices and perfumes to make it palatable and then like swine or dogs to devour it and then to conclude all with prayer and this they accounted their perfect pass-over I am not ignorant that a learned man will by no means believe that any of the ancient Hereticks did ever arrive to so much barbarousness and immanity as to be guilty of such things and conceives them to have been feigned meerly out of hatred to those pestilent hereticks but there 's little reason to suspect the truth of it Epiphanius assuring us that he had the account that he gives from the mouths of the Gnosticks themselves and that many of the women who were deceiv'd into those abominable errours did not only discover these things to him but that he himself in his younger years while he was in Egypt had been assaulted by them and by all the arts of flattery and perswasion of wantonness and immdesty had been set upon to joyn himself to them And certainly 't is not imaginable that a person so venerable for learning and piety as Epiphanius was should impose upon us by feigning so gross and notorious a falshood Besides whoever reads Irenaeus in whose time these heresies were most riâ—e and predominant and considers the account that he gives of them which he mainly received from persons of their own party after they were returned back to the Church will see little reason either to think any wickedness too great for them to boggle at or to doubt of the truth of what he reports concerning them CHAP. II. Of their admirable Love and Charity The excellent temper of the
and again I commend this person to thee to be looked to with all care and diligence and that in the presence of Christ and the Church The Bishop undertook the charge received the young man into his house instructed him and at last baptized him Which being done he thought he might remit a little of the strictness of his care but the young man making an ill use of his liberty fell into bad company by whose arts and snares he was seduced into ways of riot and wickedness till despairing of all hope of pardon from God he let loose the reins to all manner of exorbitancy and agreeing with his confederates they combin'd themselves into a society of highway-men and made him their Captain who quickly became as far beyond the rest in fierceness and cruelty as he was in power and authority S. John upon occasion returning some while after to the same place after he had dispatched his other business required from the Bishop thâ— pledge he had left with him who wondring and not knowing what he meant I mean said S. John the young man 't is the soul of my brother that I require The old man with a dejected look and tears in his eyes answered he 's dead and being demanded by what kind of death answered he 's dead to God for alas he 's become a villain and instead of the Church is fled with his companions to the mountains to be a thief and a robber The Apostle renting his cloaths and bewailing that he had so ill betrusted his brother's soul immediately call'd for a horse and a guide and made haste to the Mountains where being taken by those that stood Sentinel he beg'd to be brought before their Captain who stood ready arm'd some way off but assoon as he perceived 't was S. John that was coming towards him he began to be ashamed to run as fast as he could The Apostle not regarding his own age and weakness followed after with all his might and when his legs could not overtake him he sent these passionate exclamations after him Why O my Son dost thou fly from thy aged and unarmed father take pity of me and fear not there is yet hope of salvation for thee I will undertake with Christ for thee if need be I will freely undergo death for thee as our Lord did for us and lay down my own life to ransom thine only stay and believe me for I am sent by Christ With that he stay'd and with a dejected look throwing away his Arms he trembled and dissolved into tears he embraced the aged Apostle with all possible expressions of sorrow and lamentation as if again baptized with his own tears S. John assured him he had obtain'd his pardon of Christ and having fasted and prayed with him and for him and with all the arts of consolation refreshed his shattered and disconsolate mind brought him into and restored him to the Church This story though somewhat long I was the willinger to produce both because so remarkable in it self and so great a testimony of that mighty tenderness and compassion which they had for the souls of men for whose sake they thought they could never do never venture far enough S. Augustine tells us what infinite pains his Mother Monica took about the conversion of her husband Patricius how unweariedly she sought to endear her self to him by all the arts of a meek prudent and sober carriage how submissively she complied with his rigorous and untoward humours how diligently she watched the aptest times of insinuation never leaving till at last she gained him over to the faith Nor was her care and solicitude less for her Son Augustine who being hurried away with the lewdnesses of youth and intangled with the impieties of the Manichean Heresie was the hourly subject of her prayers and tears She plyed him with daily counsels and intreaties implored the help and assistances of good men and importuned heaven for the success of all not being able to gain any quiet to her mind till S. Ambrose with whom she had oft advised about it sent her away with this assurance that it was not possible that a child of so many tears should perish No sooner was his conversion wrought but her spirit was at ease and she now desired no more Himself tells us that discoursing with her alone some few days before her death concerning the state of the blessed and the joys of heaven she at last broke off with this farewel For my part Son I have now no further hopes or pleasures in this world there was but one thing for which I desired to live that I might see thee a Catholick Christian before I died This my good God has abundantly blessed me with having let me see thee despising the selicities of this life and entred into his family and service so that what do I make any longer here Nay so great a zeal had they for the good of souls in those days that many did not stick to engage themselves in temporal slavery for no other end but to deliver others from spiritual bondage Thus Serapion called Sindonites because he never wore more than one poor Linnen garment one of the Primitive Asceticks sold himself to a Gentile-player that served the Theatre with whom he liv'd underwent the meanest offices till he had converted him his wife and whole family to Christianity who upon their baptism restored him to his liberty whereupon he freely returned them back the mony which he had receiv'd as the price of his servitude which by mutual consent was given to the poor Coming afterwards to Lacedaemon and hearing that a principal person of the City a very good man otherwise was infected with the Manichean Heresie one of the first things he did was to insinuate himself into his Family selling himself to be his slave in which condition he remained for two years together till he had brought his Master and his whole Family off from that pernicious Heresie and restored them to the Church who did not only bless God for it but treated him not as a servant but with that kindness and reverence that is due to a Brother and a Father This was the good spirit and genius of those days they intirely studied and designed the happiness of men were willing and desirous freely to impart the treasuries of the Gospel and wished that in that respect all mankind were as rich and happy as themselves So far were they from that malicious imputation which Celsus fastned upon them that if all men would become Christians they would not admit it to which Origen flatly returns the lie and tells him the falseness of it might appear from this that Christians as much as in them lay were not backward to propagate their doctrine through the whole world and that some of them had peculiarly undertaken to go up and down not only in Cities but in Towns and Villages to bring over
long before others were called to do the same offices for them Their bodies they decently committed to the ground for they abhorred the custom so common amongst the Gentiles of burning the bodies of the dead which they did not as the Heathens objected because they thought that their bodies once burnt to ashes would be difficultly brought to a Resurrection a doctrine which they strenuously asserted and held fast as the main pillar of their comfort and confidence but because they looked upon it as inhumane and barbarous and contrary to the more ancient and better usage of mankind in this matter Tertullian calls this way of burial by inhumation a piece of piety and tells us they abstained from burning the Corps not as some did because they thought that some part of the soul remained in the body after death but because it savour'd of savageness and cruelty Therefore their enemies to do them the greater spite did not only put them to death but very often burn their dead bodies and sprinkle their ashes into the Sea partly to hinder them from a decent burial and partly as in that tumult at Alexandria under Julian that nothing might be left of them to be honour'd as the remains of Martyrs As Christianity got ground this more civil way of inhumation did not only take place but rooted out the contrary custome even amongst the Gentiles themselves For though the Emperour Theodosius the Great gives some intimation of it as remaining in his time yet not long after it wholly ceased as is expresly acknowledged by Macrobius who liv'd in the time of the younger Theodosius Nor did they ordinarily content themselves with a bare interrment but prepared the body for its funeral with costly Spices and rich odours and perfumes not sparing the best drugs and ointments which the Sabeans could afford as Tertullian plainly testifies They who while alive generally abstained from whatever was curious and costly when dead were embalm'd and entombed with great art and curiosity Whence Eunapius much such a friend to Christianity as Julian or Porphyry derides the Monks and Christians of Egypt for honouring the season'd and embalm'd bones and heads of Martyrs such says he as the Courts of Justice had condemned and put to death for their innumerable villanies This cost the Christians doubtless bestowed upon the bodies of their dead because they looked upon death as the entrance into a better life and laid up the body as the candidate and expectant of a joyful and happy resurrection Besides hereby they gave some encouragement to suffering when men saw how much care was taken to honour and secure the reliques of their mortality and that their bodies should not be persecuted after death This their enemies knew very well and therefore many times denied them the civility and humanity of burial to strike the greater dread into them Thus Maximus the President threatned Tharacus the Martyr that although he bore up his head so high upon the confidence that after his death his body should be wound up and embalm'd with ointments and odoriferous spices yet he would defeat his hopes by causing his body to be burnt and sprinkling his ashes before the wind Thus after they had put Polycarp to death they burnt his body out of spite to the Christians who had beg'd it of the Proconsul only to give it a solemn interrment whereupon gathering his bones which the mercy of the fire had spared they decently committed them to the earth and there used to meet to celebrate the memory of that pious and holy man During those times of persecution they were very careful to bury the bodies of the Martyrs some making it their particular business by stealth to interr those in the night who had suffered in the day this they did with great hazard and danger many of them as appears from the ancient Martyrologies suffering Martyrdom upon this very account Afterwards when the Church was setled there was a particular Order of men call'd Copiatae either 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from the pains they took or else 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because they committed the bodies of the dead to the grave the place of ease and rest appointed for this purpose about the time of Constantine or to be sure his Son Constantius in two of whose Laws they are expresly mentioned and in the latter said to be lately instituted Their office as Epiphanius tells was to wrap up and bury the bodies of the dead to prepare their graves and to interr them and because inhumation and giving burial to the dead was ever accounted in a more peculiar manner a work of piety and religion therefore these persons were reckoned if not strictly Clergy-men at least in a Clergy-relation being in both Laws of Constantius enumerated with and invested in the same immunities with the Clergy By the Authour in S. Hierom they are styled Fossarii grave-maker and by him plac'd in the first and lowest order of the Clerici and exhorted to be like good old Tobit in Faith Holiness Knowledge and Vertue In the great Church of Constantinople they were called Decani or Deans but quite distinct from the Palatin Deans spoken of in the Theodosian Code and freequently elsewhere who were a military order and chiefly belonged to the Emperours Palace they were one of the Collegia or Corporations of the City Their number was very great Constantine is said to have appointed no less than M. C. of them But by a Law of Honorius and Theodosius they were reduc'd to DCCCCL till afterwards Anastasius brought them back to their former number which was also ratified and confirmed by Justinian their particular duties and offices both as relating to the dead and all other things are largely described in two Novell Constitutions of his to that purpose Nor did they only take care that the body might be prepared for its funeral but to provide it of a decent and convenient Sepulchre wherein it might be honourably and securely laid up a thing which had been always practised by the more sober and civiliz'd part of mankind Their burying-places called Polyandria Cryptae Arenaria but most commonly Coemeteria or Dormitories because according to the notion which the Scripture gives us of the death of the Righteous Christians are not so properly said to dye as to sleep in the Lord and their bodies to rest in the grave in expectation of a joyful resurrection were generally in the fields or gardens it being prohibited by the Roman Laws and especially an ancient Law of the XII Tables to bury within the City walls This held for some Centuries after Christianity appeared in the world and longer it was before they buried within Churches within the out-parts whereof to be interred was a priviledge at first granted only to Princes and persons of the greatest rank and quality Chrysostome assures us that Constantius the Emperour reckoned he did his
lives we would defend the Common-Wealth this we then engaged to the Emperours though no Heavenly Kingdom was promised to us and if we could promise this out of devotion to a Military service what then is to be done when Christ promises so much to them that engage with him Let us willingly expose our lives to this most precious death let us shew a masculine courage and an unviolated faith Methinks I see those blessed souls standing before Christs tribunal whom the Emperours Officer just now banished out of their bodies that 's the true glory which will recompence the shortness of this life with a blessed eternity Let us by the Messengers unanimously return this Answer to the Emperour We acknowledge Caesar that we are your Souldiers and took up Arms for defence of the Empire nor did we ever basely betray our trust or forsake our station or deser'd that the brand either of fear or cowardise should be set upon us nor should we stick now to obey your Commands did not the Laws of Christianity wherein we have been instructed forbid us to worship devils and to approach the polluted altars of the gods We understand you are resolved either to defile us with sacrilegious worship or to terrifie us with a decimation Spare any further search concerning us know we are all Christians our bodies we yield subject to your Power but our souls we reserve intire for Christ the Author and the Saviour of them This was no sooner spoken and universally agreed to by the Legion but it was carried to the Emperour who exasperated with such a generous resolution commanded a second decimation which was immediately executed and the rest as before commanded to return to Octodurus hereupon Exuperius the Ensign catching up his colours thus address'd himself to them You see me most excellent fellow-souldiers holding these Ensigns of secular warfare but these are not the arms that I call you to these are not the wars to which I excite your courage and valour 't is another kind of fighting that we are to chuse they are not these swords that must make our way into the Heavenly Kingdom we stand in need of an undaunted mind an invincible defence a maintaining the Faith which we have given to God to the very last Let the dismal Executioner go and carry this message to his bloody Master and tell him thus We are O Emperour your Souldiers but withall which we freely confess the Servants of God to you we owe military service to him innocency from you we have received wages for our labours from him we had our very lives and beings we cannot herein obey the Emperour so as to deny God the author of our lives yea and of yours too whether you will or no. Nor is it Sir any despair which is always stoutest in greatest straits that makes us thus resolute against you we have you see armes and yet make no resistance chusing rather to dye than to overcome and desirous rather to perish innocent than to live rebellious and revengeful If you have a mind to appoint us to any greater and severer torments we are ready for them Christians we are and therefore cannot persecute those that are so You must needs acknowledge the unconquerable courage of this Legion we throw down our arms your officer will find our right hands naked but our breast arm'd with a true Catholick Faith kill us and trample on us we undauntedly yield our necks to the Executioners sword these things are the more pleasant to us while setting light by your sacrilegious attempts we hasten apace to the Heavenly Crown Maximianus being told this and despairing now to break their constancy commands his whole Army to fall upon them and cut them off which they did accordingly without any difference of age or person mangling their bodies and then taking the spoyles the Emperour having so appointed that whoever kill'd any of the Legion should have the spoyles of him whom he killed And thus they died with their swords in their hands when they might have preserved their lives especially in a place so advantagious by force of arms or to be sure have sold them at the dearest rate This story I have been willing to set down the more at large because so remarkable in all its circumstances and containing the most unparallel'd instance of Christian Piety and submission next to that of our blessed Saviour that I think was ever known to the world This is the account of those Noble Martyrs only to prevent mistakes we are to take notice that there was another Mauritius Commander of a Legion in the East mentioned in the Greek Menologies who together with seventy of his Souldiers were condemned by and suffered under his self same Emperour Maximianus for refusing to do sacrifice their Martyrdom being recorded by Simeon Metaphrastes but the account quite different both as to persons and things from that which is here related By what has been said we may see the injustice of that charge which the Heathens sometimes laid upon the Christians that they were disturbers of the Peace and enemies to Civil Government an indictment so purely false and without any shadow of a real pretence to cover it that the ingenious Heathen in Minutius Foelix though raking up all the calumnies he could find and putting the deepest dy upon every charge which wit and eloquence could put upon it yet had not the face so much as once to mention it But however as groundless as it was they were frequently charg'd with it Sometimes they were accused of dis-loyalty and treason either because they would not swear by the Emperous Genius or not sacrifice for his safety or not worship the Emperours as Divi or gods or not celebrate their festivals in the same way with others For the first their refusing to swear by the Emperours Genius we have heard before what Tertullian answers to it That it was in effect to give divine honour to devils To the second their not sacrificing for the Emperours safety the answers That none sacrificed to so good purpose as they for that they offered up prayers to the True Living and Eternal God for the safety of the Emperours that God whom the Emperours themselves did above all others desire should be propitious and favourable to them as from whom they knew they deriv'd their government For the third their refusing to own the Emperours for gods he tells them they could not do it partly because they would not lye in saying so partly because they durst not by doing it mock and deride the Emperour nay that he himself would not be willing to be styled God if he remembred that he was a Man it being mans interest to yield to God that the title of Emperour was great enough and that he could not be call'd God without being denied to be Emperour that he was therefore great because less than Heaven and that if he would needs
Proconsul that as badly as they were used yet they ceased not to pray for the overthrow and expulsion of the common enemies for seasonable showers and either for the removing or mitigating publick evils begging of God day and night with the greatest instance and importunity for the peace and safety of their persecutors endeavouring to pacifie and propitiate God who was angry with the iniquities of the age Nor were they thus kind and good natur'd thus submissive and patient for want of power and because they knew not how to help it Tertullian answers in this case that if they thought it lawful to return evil for evil they could in one night with a few firebrands plentifully revenge themselves that they were no small and inconsiderable party and that they needed not betake themselves to the little arts of skulking revenges being able to appear in the capacity of open enemies that though but of yesterdays standing yet they had filled all places all Offices of the Empire and what wars were not they able to manage who could so willingly give up themselves to be slain did not the law of Christianity oblige them to be killed rather than to kill nay that they need not take up arms and rebel for their party was so numerous that should they but agree together to leave the Roman Empire and to go into some remote corner of the world the loss of so many members would utterly ruine it and they would stand amaz'd and affrighted at that solitude and desolation that would ensue upon it and have more enemies than loyal Subjects left amongst them whereas now they had the fewer enemies for having so many Christians The Christians then opposed not their enemies with the points of their swords but with solid Arguments and mild intreaties Thus when Julian the Emperour urg'd his army which was almost wholly made up of Christians to wicked counsels and the practices of idolatry they withstood him only with prayers and tears accounting this says my Author to be the only remedy against persecution So far were they from resisting or rebelling that they could quietly dye at the Emperours command even when they had power lying at their foot I cannot in this place omit the memorable instance of the Thebaean Legion being so exceedingly apposite and pertinent to my purpose and so remarkable as no age can furnish out such another instance I shall set down the story intirely out of the Author himself the account of their martyrdome written by Eucherius Bishop of Lyons who assures us he received the relation from very credible hands and it is thus Maximianus Caesar whom Dioclesian had lately taken to be his Colleague in the Empire a bad man and a bitter persecutor of the Christians was sent into France to suppress a mutiny and rebellion risen there to strengthen his Army there was added to it a band of Christians called the Thebaean Legion consisting according to the manner of the Romans of Six thousand six hundred sixty six faithful expert and resolute Souldiers Coming to Octodurus a place in Savoy and being ready to offer sacrifice to the gods he causes his Army to come together and commands them under a great penalty to swear by the Altars of their gods that they would unanimously fight against their enemies and persecute the Christians as enemies to the gods which the Thebaean Legion no sooner understood but they presently withdrew to Agaunum a place eight miles off call'd at this day S. Mauritzs from Mauricius the Commander of the Legion a place equally pleasant and strong being encompassed about with craggy and inaccessible rocks to avoid if it might be the wicked and sacrilegious command and to refresh themselves tyred with so long a march but the Emperour taking notice of the Army as they came to swear quickly miss'd the Legion and being angry sent Officers to them to require them forthwith to do it who enquiring what it was that they were commanded to do were told by the messengers that all the Souldiers had offered sacrifices and had taken the forementioned oath and that Caesar commanded them to return presently and do the like To whom the heads of the Legion mildly answered That for this reason they left Octodurus because they had heard they should be forced to sacrifice that being Christians and that they might not be defiled with the Altars of Devils they thought themselves oblig'd to worship the living God and to keep that Religion which they had entertain'd in the East to the last hour of their life that as they were a Legion they were ready to any service of the war but to return to him to commit sacriledge as he commanded they could not yield With this Answer the messengers returned and told the Emperour that they were resolved not to obey his Commands who being transported with anger began thus to vent his passion Do my Souldiers think thus to sleight my Royal Orders and the holy Rites of my Religion Had they only despised the Imperial Majesty it would have call'd for publick vengeance but together with the contempt of me an affront is offered to Heaven and the Roman Religion is as much despised as I am Let the obstinate Souldiers know that I am not only able to vindicate my self but to revenge the quarrel of my gods Let my faithful Servants make haste and dispatch every tenth man according as the fatal lot shall fall upon him By this equal death let those whose lot it shall be to die first know how able Maximian is severely to revenge both himself and his gods With that the command is given the Executioners sent the Emperours pleasure made known and every tenth man is put to death who chearfully offer'd their necks to the Executioners and the only contention amongst them was who should first undergo that glorious death This done the Legion is commanded to return to the rest of the Army Whereupon Mauritius the General of the Legion calling it a little aside thus bespake them I congratulate most excellent fellow-souldiers your courage and valour that for the love of Religion the command of Caesar has made no impression upon you you have seen your fellow-souldiers with minds full of joy undergoing a glorious death how much afraid was I lest being arm'd and how easie is it for such to do so you should under a pretence of defending them have endeavour'd to hinder their happy funerals See I am encompassed round with the bodies of my fellow-souldiers whom the dismal Executioner has torn from my side I am besprinkled with the blood of the Saints my clothes died with the reliques of their sacred blood and shall I doubt to follow their death whose example I so much congratulate and admire Shall I concern my self to think what the Emperour commands who is equally subject to the same law of mortality with my self I remember we once took this Military Oath that with the utmost hazard of our