Evidence of Christianity | Page 9

ornament and magnificence. It
abounded in festival shows and solemnities, to which the common
people are greatly addicted, and which were of a nature to engage them
much more than anything of that sort among us. These things would
retain great numbers on its side by the fascination of spectacle and
pomp, as well as interest many in its preservation by the advantage
which they drew from it. "It was moreover interwoven," as Mr. Gibbon
rightly represents it, "with every circumstance of business or pleasure,
of public or private life, with all the offices and amusements of
society." On the due celebration also of its rites, the people were taught
to believe, and did believe, that the prosperity of their country in a great
measure depended.
I am willing to accept the account of the matter which is given by Mr.
Gibbon: "The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman
world were all considered by the people as equally true, by the
philosopher as equally false, and by the magistrate as equally useful:"
and I would ask from which of these three classes of men were the
Christian missionaries to look for protection or impunity? Could they
expect it from the people, "whose acknowledged confidence in the
public religion" they subverted from its foundation? From the
philosopher, who, "considering all religious as equally false," would of
course rank theirs among the number, with the addition of regarding

them as busy and troublesome zealots? Or from the magistrate, who,
satisfied with the "utility" of the subsisting religion, would not be likely
to countenance a spirit of proselytism and innovation:--a system which
declared war against every other, and which, if it prevailed, must end in
a total rupture of public opinion; an upstart religion, in a word, which
was not content with its own authority, but must disgrace all the settled
religions of the world? It was not to be imagined that he would endure
with patience, that the religion of the emperor and of the state should be
calumniated and borne down by a company of superstitious and
despicable Jews.
Lastly; the nature of the case affords a strong proof, that the original
teachers of Christianity, in consequence of their new profession,
entered upon a new and singular course of life. We may be allowed to
presume, that the institution which they preached to others, they
conformed to in their own persons; because this is no more than what
every teacher of a new religion both does, and must do, in order to
obtain either proselytes or hearers. The change which this would
produce was very considerable. It is a change which we do not easily
estimate, because, ourselves and all about us being habituated to the
institutions from our infancy, it is what we neither experience nor
observe. After men became Christians, much of their time was spent in
prayer and devotion, in religious meetings, in celebrating the Eucharist,
in conferences, in exhortations, in preaching, in an affectionate
intercourse with one another, and correspondence with other societies.
Perhaps their mode of life, in its form and habit, was not very unlike
the Unitas Fratrum, or the modern methodists. Think then what it was
to become such at Corinth, at Ephesus, at Antioch, or even at Jerusalem.
How new! How alien from all their former habits and ideas, and from
those of everybody about them! What a revolution there must have
been of opinions and prejudices to bring the matter to this!
We know what the precepts of the religion are; how pure, how
benevolent, how disinterested a conduct they enjoin; and that this
purity and benevolence are extended to the very thoughts and affections.
We are not, perhaps, at liberty to take for granted that the lives of the
preachers of Christianity were as perfect as their lessons; but we are

entitled to contend, that the observable part of their behaviour must
have agreed in a great measure with the duties which they taught. There
was, therefore, (which is all that we assert,) a course of life pursued by
them, different from that which they before led. And this is of great
importance. Men are brought to anything almost sooner than to change
their habit of life, especially when the change is either inconvenient, or
made against the force of natural inclination, or with the loss of
accustomed indulgences. It is the most difficult of all things to convert
men from vicious habits to virtuous ones, as every one may judge from
what he feels in himself, as well as from what he sees in others.* It is
almost like making men over again.
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* Hartley's Essays on Man, p. 190. _________
Left then to myself, and without any more information than a
knowledge of the existence of the