The austere and fanatical lives of Christians must also have favourably disposed a great number of Stoics in behalf of the sect, who were accustomed to make a merit of despising objects desirable to other men, depriving themselves of the comforts of life, and braving affliction and death. We accordingly find a great number of enthusiasts tinctured with these inaxims in the Christian religion. This fanatical way of thinking was very necessary to the first Christians, in the midst of the crosses and persecutions which they suffered at first on the part of the Jews, and thereafter on the part of the emperors and grandees, incited by the heathen priests. The latter, according to the custom of the priesthood in all countries, made a very cruel war on a sect who attacked their gods, and menaced their temples with a general desertion. The universe was weary of the impostures and exactions of these priests, their costly sacrifices, and lying oracles. Their knaveries had been frequently unveiled, and the new sect tendered to mankind a worship less expensive, and which, without being addressed so much to the eyes as the worship of idols, was better adapted than the other to set the imagination at work, and excite enthusiasm.

Christianity was moreover flattering and consolatory to the wretched; it placed all men on the same level; humbled the rich, and was announced as destined for the poor through preference. Among the Romans, slaves were in some measure excluded from religion; and it might have been said, that the gods did not concern themselves with the homage of these degraded beings. The poor, besides, had not wherewith to satisfy the rapacity of Pagan priests, who, like ours,

did nothing without money. Thus slaves and persons in misery must have been strongly attached to a system, according to which all men are equal in the eyes of the Divinity, and that the wretched have better right to the favours of a suffering and contemned God, than persons temporally happy.

The priests of Paganism therefore became uneasy at the rapid progress of the sect. The government was alarmed at the clandestine assemblies which the Christians held. They were believed to be the enemies of the emperors, because they continually refused to offer sacrifices to the gods of the country for their prosperity. Even the people, ever zealous, believed them enemies of their gods, because they would not join in their worship. They treated the Christians as Atheists and impious persons, because they did not conceive what could be the invisible objects of their adoration; and because they took offence at the mysteries, which they saw them celebrating in the greatest secrecy. The Christians, thus loaded with the public hatred, very soon became its victims; they were

We may see from the apologies of St. Justin, Tatian, Athenagoras, Tertullian, and Arnobius, that the most abominable crimes were imputed to the first Christians, such as eating little children, being irreligious and sacrilegious, committing incontinences and incest in their nocturnal assemblies. It was pretended that they fastened a dog to a candlestick, and when by means of this the light was extinguished, the sexes coupled promiscuously. These opinions, spread abroad among the people, irritated them against the Christians, whom they regarded as the cause of the wrath of the gods, and of the public calamities. We accordingly see that, even under the mildest emperors, the popular fury kindled persecutions.

persecuted and persecution, as it always happens, rendered them more opiniative. Enthusiasm more and more enflamed their souls; they made it a glory to resist the efforts of tyrants; they even went so far as to brave their punishments, and concluded with believing, that the greatest happiness was to perish under their severities. In this they flattered themselves with resembling the Son of God, and were persuaded, that by dying for his cause, they were certain of reigning with him in heaven.

In consequence of these fanatical ideas, so flattering to vanity, martyrdom became an object of ambition to many Christians. Independent of the heavenly rewards, which they believed assured to those who suffered with constancy, and perished for religion, they saw them esteemed, revered, and carefully attended to, during their lives, while honours, almost divine, were decreed them after death. On the contrary, those of the Christian community, who had the weakness to shrink from tortures, and renounce their religion, were scoffed at, despised, and regarded as infamous. So many motives combined, contributed to warm the imaginations of the faithful, already sufficiently agitated by notions of the approaching end of the world, the coming of Jesus, his happy reign, and impressed with the fanatical notions which glut the writings of the Christians. They submitted cheerfully to punishments, and gloried in their chains: they courted martyrdom as a favour, and often, through a blind zeal, provoked the rage of their persecutors. magistrates by their proscriptions and tortures, caused the enthusiasm of the Christians to kindle more and more. Their courage was besides supported by the

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heads of their sect, who constantly displayed the hea vens opening to the heroes who consented to suffer and perish for their cause, which they took care to make the poor fanatics regard as the cause of God himself. A martyr, at all times, is merely the victim of the enthusiastic or knavish priest who has been able to seduce him.*

Men are always disgusted with those who use violence; they conjecture that they are wrong, and that those against whom they commit violence have reason on their side. Persecution will ever make partisans to the cause persecuted: and those to which we allude, tended the more to confirm Christians in their religion. The spectators of their sufferings were interested for them. They were curious to know the principles of a sect which drew on itself such cruel treatment, and infused into its adherents a courage believed to be supernatural. They imagined that such a religion could be the work of a God only; its partisans appeared extraordinary men, and their enthusiasm became contagious. Violence served only to spread it the more, and, according to the language of a Christian doctor, "the blood of the martyrs became the seed of the church."

* Martyr in Greek signifies witness. But, with the exception of the apostles, (whose actions have been transmitted to us only by the forgers of legends), what kind of tes timony could men, who had never seen Jesus, bear him, and who could know him only from the stories told them by preachers, who had what they themselves knew of him only by a very suspicious tradition? A martyr is in general only a fool, duped by another fool, who was the dupe of a knave, whose object was to establish a sect, and who himself frequently was punished for his projects!!

The clergy would fain make the propagation of Christianity pass for an evident miracle of divine omnipotence; while it was owing solely to natural causes, inherent in the human mind, the property of which it is to adhere strenuously to its own way of thinking; harden itself against violence; applaud itself for its pertinacity; admire courage in others; feel an interest for those who display it; and suffer itself to be gained by their enthusiasm. A little reflection will show that the obstinacy of the martyrs, far from being a sign of the divine protection, or of the goodness of their cause, can be regarded only as the effect of blindness, occasioned by the reiterated lessons of their fanatical or deceitful priests.* What conduct more extravagant

*The learned H. Dodwell has written two copious dissertations on the martyrs: the one to prove that they were not so numerous as is commonly imagined; and the other to demonstrate that their constancy can be ascribed only to very natural causes. Dodwell's Dissertationes Cypri

anicæ, in 8vo, Oxoniæ, 1684. It cannot be denied, that the frenzy of martyrdom was an epidemical disease among the first Christians, to which their spiritual physicians were obliged to apply remedies, as these wretched beings were guilty of suicide.

Many of the primitive Christians, instead of flying as the gospel directs, not only ran voluntarily to execution, but provoked their judges to do them that favor. Under Trajan, all the Christians in a city of Asia came in a body to the proconsul, and and offered themselves to the slaughter, which made him cry, "O! ye unhappy people, if ye have a mind to die, have ye not halters and precipices enough to end your lives, but ye must come here for executioners." Tertul. ad Scap. c. 5. p. 11. Fleury's Manners, of the Christians, &c. This was a general practice under the Antonini. Marcus Antoninus severely reflected on the obstinacy of the Chris

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