Aurelian; or, Rome in the Third Century, William Ware [top ebook reader txt] 📗

he might save us from our sins, and from those penal consequences in this world and in worlds to come, which are bound to them by the stern decrees of fate. Yes, Aurelian, Jesus came only that he might deliver mankind from the thraldom of every kind of wickedness, and raise them to a higher condition of virtue and happiness. He was a great moral and religious teacher and reformer, endowed with the wisdom and power of the supreme God. He himself toiled only in Judea; but he came a benefactor of Rome too—of Rome as well as of Judea. He came to purge it of its pollutions; to check in their growth those customs and vices which seem destined, reaching their natural height and size, to overlay and bury in final ruin the city and the empire; he came to make us citizens of Heaven through the virtues which his doctrine should build up in the soul, and so citizens of Rome more worthy of that name than any who ever[Pg 423] went before. He came to heal, to mend, to reform the state; not to set up a kingdom in hostility to this, but in unison with it; an inward, invisible kingdom in every man's heart, which should be as the soul of the other.

'It was to reform the morals of the state, to save it from itself, that you, Aurelian, in the first years of your reign, applied those energies that have raised the empire to more than its ancient glory. You aimed to infuse a love of justice and of peace, to abate the extravagances of the times, to stem the tide of corruption that seemed about to bear down upon its foul streams the empire itself, tossing upon its surface a wide sea of ruin. It was a great work—too great for man. It needed a divine strength and a more than human wisdom. These were not yours; and it is no wonder that the work did not go on to its completion. Jesus is a reformer; of Rome and of the world also. The world is his theatre of action; but with him there is leagued the arm and the power of the Supreme God; and the work which he attempts shall succeed. It cannot but succeed. It is not so much he, Jesus of Nazareth, who has come forth upon this great errand of mercy and love to mankind, as God himself in and through him. It is the Great God of the Universe, who, by Jesus Christ as his agent and messenger, comes to you, and would reform and redeem your empire, and out of that which is transitory, and by its inherent vice threatened with decay and death, make a city and an empire which, through the energy of its virtues, shall truly be eternal. Can you not, O Emperor, supposing the claims of this religion to a divine origin to be just, view it with respect? Nay, could you not greet its approach to your capital[Pg 424] with pleasure and gratitude, seeing its aim is nothing else than this, to purify, purge, and reform the state, to heal its wounds, cleanse its putrifying members, and infuse the element of a new and healthier life? Methinks a true patriot and lover of Rome must rejoice when any power approaches and offers to apply those remedies that may, with remotest probability only, bid fair to cure the diseases of which her body is sick, nigh unto death.

'Such, Aurelian, was and is the aim of Jesus, in the religion which he brought. And of us, who are his ministers, his messengers—who go forth bearing these glad tidings of deliverance from sin and corruption, and of union with God—our work is the same with his. We but repeat the lessons which he gave. Are we, in so doing, enemies of Rome? Are we not rather her truest friends? By making men good, just, kind, and honest, are we not at the same time making them the best citizens? Are there in Rome better citizens than the Christians?

'You will now perhaps, Aurelian, desire to be told by what instruments Christianity hopes to work such changes. It is simply, O Emperor, by the power of truth! The religion which we preach uses not force. Were the arm of Aurelian at this moment the arm of Probus, he could do no more than he now does with one, which, as the world deems, is in the comparison powerless as an infant's. In all that pertains to the soul, and its growth and purification, there must be utmost freedom. The soul must suffer no constraint. There must be no force laid upon it, but the force of reason and the appeal of divine truth. All that we ask or want in Rome is the liberty of speech—the free allowance to[Pg 425] offer to men the truth in Christ, and persuade them to consider it. With that we will engage to reform and save the whole world. We want not to meddle with affairs of state, nor with the citizen's relations to the state; we have naught to do with the city, or its laws, or government, beyond what was just now stated. We desire but the privilege to worship God according to our consciences, and labor for the moral welfare of all who will hear our words.

'And if you would know what the truth is we impart, and by which we would save the souls of men, and reform the empire and the world, be it known to you that we preach Jesus Christ and him crucified, whom God raised up and sent into the world to save it by his doctrine and life, and whom—being by the Jews hung upon a cross—God raised again from the dead. We preach him as the Son of God with power, by whom God has been revealed to mankind in his true nature and perfections, and through whom, he and he only is to be worshipped. In the place of Jupiter, we bring you a revelation of the God and Father of Christ Jesus our Lord—creator of the universe, who will call all men into judgment at last, rewarding or punishing according to what they have done. Through Jesus, we preach also a resurrection from the dead. We show, by arguments which cannot be refuted, that this Jesus, when he had been crucified and slain, and had lain three days in the tomb, was called again to life, and taken up to Heaven, as an example of what should afterwards happen to all his followers. Through him has immortality been plainly brought to light and proved, and this transporting truth we declare wherever we go. Through Jesus,[Pg 426] we preach also repentance; we declare to men their wickedness; we show them what and how great it is; and exhort them to repentance, as what can alone save them from the wrath to come.

'This, O Emperor, is the great work which we, as apostles of Jesus, have to do, to convince the world how vile it is; how surely their wickedness, unrepented of, will work their misery and their ruin, and so lead them away from it, and up the safe and pleasant heights of Christian virtue. We find Rome sunk in sensuality and sin; nor only that, but ignorant of its own guilt, dead to the wickedness into which it has fallen, and denying any obligations to a different or better life. Such do we find, indeed, not Rome only, but the world itself, dead in trespasses and sin. We would rouse it from this sleep of death. We desire first of all, to waken in the souls of men a perception of the guilt of sin! a feeling of the wide departure of their lives from the just demands of the being who made them. The prospect of immortality were nothing without this. Longer life were but a greater evil were we not made alive to sin and righteousness. Life on earth, Aurelian, is not the best thing, but virtuous life: so life without end is not the best thing, but life without fault or sin. But to the necessity of such a life men are now insensible and dead. They love the prospect of an immortal existence, but not of that purity without which immortality were no blessing. But it is this moral regeneration—this waking up of men dead in sin, to the life of righteousness, which is the great aim of Christianity. Repentance! was the first word of its founder when he began preaching in Judea; it is the first word of his followers wherever they go,[Pg 427] and should be the last. This, O Aurelian, in few words, is the gospel of Jesus—"Repent and live forever!"

'In the service of this gospel, and therefore of you and the world, we are content to labor while we live, to suffer injury and reproach, and if need be, and they to whom we go will not understand us, lay down our lives. Almost three hundred years has it appealed to mankind; and though not with the success that should have followed upon the labor of those who have toiled for the salvation of men, yet has it not been rejected everywhere, nor has the labor been in vain. The fruit that has come of the seed sown is great and abundant. In every corner of the earth are there now those who name the name of Christ. And in every place are there many more, than meet the eye, who read our gospels, believe in them, and rejoice in the virtue and the hope which have taken root in their souls. Here in Rome, O Aurelian, are there multitudes of believers, whom the ear hears not, nor the eye sees, hidden away in the security of this sea of roofs, whom the messengers of your power never could discover. Destroy us, you may; sweep from the face of Rome every individual whom the most diligent search can find, from the gray-haired man of fourscore to the infant that can just lisp the name of Jesus, and you have not destroyed the Christians; the Christian church still stands—not unharmed, but founded as before upon a rock, against which the powers of earth and hell can never prevail; and soon as this storm shall have overblown, those other, and now secret, multitudes, of whom I speak, will come forth, and the wilderness of the church shall blossom again as[Pg 428] a garden in the time of spring. God is working with us, and who therefore can prevail against us!

'Bring not then, Aurelian, upon your own soul; bring not upon Rome, the guilt that would attend this unnecessary slaughter. It can but defer for an hour or a day the establishment of that kingdom of righteousness, which must be established, because it is God's, and he is laying its foundations and building its walls. Have pity too, great Emperor, upon this large multitude of those who embrace this faith, and who will not let it go for all the terrors of your courts and judges and engines; they will all suffer the death of Macer ere they will prove false to their Master. Let not the horrors of that scene be renewed, nor the greater ones of an indiscriminate massacre. I implore your compassions, not for myself, but for these many thousands, who, by my ministry, have been persuaded to receive this faith. For them my heart bleeds; them I would save from the death which impends. Yet it is a glorious and a happy death, to die for truth and Christ! It is better to die so, knowing that by such death the very church itself is profited, than to die in one's own bed, and only to one's self. So do these thousands think; and whatever compassion I may implore for them, they would each and all, were such their fate, go with cheerful step, as those who went to some marriage supper, to the axe, to the stake, or the cross. Christianity cannot die but with the race itself. Its life is bound up in the life of man, and man must be destroyed ere that can perish. Behold then, Aurelian, the labor that is thine!'

Soon as he had ceased, Porphyrius started from his seat and said,[Pg 429]

'It is then, O Romans, just as it has ever been affirmed. The Galileans are atheists! They believe not in the gods of Rome, nor in any in whom mankind can ever have belief. I doubt not but they think themselves believers in a God. They think themselves to have found one better than others have; but upon any definition, that I or you could give or understand, of atheism,