Theological Essays and Other Papers, vol 1 | Page 6

countrymen
as Jupiter for mine. But, if you have not, really I am sorry for your case;
and a very odd case it is: but I don't see how it could be improved by
talking nonsense. You cannot beneficially, you cannot rationally,
worship a tutelary Roman deity, unless in the character of a Roman;
and a Roman you may become, legally and politically. Being such, you
will participate in all advantages, if any there are, or our national
religion; and, without needing a process of conversion, either in
substance or in form. Ipso facto, and without any separate choice of
your own, on becoming a Roman citizen, you become a party to the
Roman worship.' For an idolatrous religion to proselytize, would,
therefore, be not only useless but unintelligible.
Now, having explained that point, which is a great step towards the

final object of my paper, viz., the investigation of the reason why
Christianity is, which no pagan religion ever has been, an organ of
political movement, I will go on to review rapidly those four
constituents of a religion, as they are realized in Christianity, for the
purpose of contrasting them with the false shadows, or even blank
negations, of these constituents in pagan idolatries.
First, then, as to the CULTUS, or form of the national worship:--In our
Christian ritual I recognise these separate acts; viz. A, an act of Praise;
B, an act of Thanksgiving; C, an act of Confession; D, an act of Prayer.
In A, we commemorate with adoration the general perfections of the
Deity. There, all of us have an equal interest. In B, we commemorate
with thankfulness those special qualities of the Deity, or those special
manifestations of them, by which we, the individual worshippers, have
recently benefited. In C, by upright confession, we deprecate. In D, we
pray, or ask for the things which we need. Now, in the cultus of the
ancient pagans, B and C (the second act and the third) were wanting
altogether. No thanksgiving ever ascended, on his own account, from
the lips of an individual; and the state thanksgiving for a triumph of the
national armies, was but a mode of ostentatiously publishing the news.
As to C, it is scarcely necessary to say that this was wanting, when I
mention that penitential feelings were unknown amongst the ancients,
and had no name; for _pœnitentia_[Footnote: In Greek, there is a word
for repentance, but not until it had been rebaptized into a Christian use.
Metanoia, however, is not that word: it is grossly to defeat the profound
meaning of the New Testament, if John the Baptist is translated as
though summoning the world to _repentance_; it was not that to which
he summoned them.] means regret, not _penitence_; and _me pœnitet
hujus facti_, means, 'I rue this act in its consequences,' not 'I repent of
this act for its moral nature.' A and D, the first act and the last, appear
to be present; but are so most imperfectly. When 'God is praised aright,'
praised by means of such deeds or such attributes as express a divine
nature, we recognise one great function of a national worship,--not
otherwise. This, however, we must overlook and pardon, as being a
fault essential to the religion: the poor creatures did the best they could
to praise their god, lying under the curse of gods so thoroughly
depraved. But in D, the case is different. Strictly speaking, the ancients
never prayed; and it may be doubted whether D approaches so near to

what we mean by prayer, as even by a mockery. You read of preces, of
αÏαι, &c. and you are desirous to believe that pagan supplications
were not always corrupt. It is too shocking to suppose, in thinking of
nations idolatrous yet noble, that never any pure act of approach to the
heavens took place on the part of man; that always the intercourse was
corrupt; always doubly corrupt; that eternally the god was bought, and
the votary was sold. Oh, weariness of man's spirit before that unresting
mercenariness in high places, which neither, when his race clamored
for justice, nor when it languished for pity, would listen without hire!
How gladly would man turn away from his false rapacious divinities to
the godlike human heart, that so often would yield pardon before it was
asked, and for the thousandth time that would give without a bribe! In
strict propriety, as my reader knows, the classical Latin word for a
prayer is _votum_; it was a case of contract; of mercantile contract; of
that contract which the Roman law expressed by the formula--Do ut des.
Vainly you came before the altars with empty hands. "But my hands are
pure." Pure, indeed! would reply the scoffing god, let me see what they
contain.