Ten Great Religions Part 31

-- 4. The Decay of the Roman Religion.

"The more distinguished a Roman became," says Mommsen, "the less was he a free man. The omnipotence of law, the despotism of the rule, drove him into a narrow circle of thought and action, and his credit and influence depended on the sad austerity of his life. The whole duty of man, with the humblest and greatest of the Romans, was to keep his house in order, and be the obedient servant of the state." While each individual could be nothing more than a member of the community, a single link in the iron chain of Roman power; he, on the other hand, shared the glory and might of all-conquering Rome. Never was such _esprit de corps_ developed, never such intense patriotism, never such absolute subservience and sacrifice of the individual to the community. But as man is manifold and cannot be forever confined to a single form of life, a reaction against this narrow patriotism was to be expected in the interest of personal freedom, and it came very naturally from Greek influences. The Roman could not contemplate the exuberant development of Greek thought, art, literature, society, without bitterly feeling how confined was his own range, how meagre and empty his own life. Hence, very early, Roman society began to be h.e.l.lenized, but especially after the unification of Italy. To quote Mommsen once more: "The Greek civilization was grandly human and cosmopolitan; and Rome not only was stimulated by this influence, but was penetrated by it to its very centre." Even in politics there was a new school, whose fixed idea was the consolidation and propagandism of republicanism; but this Philh.e.l.lenism showed itself especially in the realm of thought and faith. As the old faith died, more ceremonies were added; for as life goes out, forms come in. As the winter of unbelief lowers the stream of piety, the ice of ritualism acc.u.mulates along its banks. In addition to the three colleges of Pontiffs, Haruspices, and Quindecemviri, another of Epulones, whose business was to attend to the religious feasts, was inst.i.tuted in A.U. 558 (B.C. 196). Contributions and t.i.thes of all sorts were demanded from the people. Hercules, especially, as is more than once intimated in the plays of Plautus, became very rich by his t.i.thes.[294] Religion became more and more a charm, on the exact performance of which the favor of the G.o.ds depended; so that ceremonies were sometimes performed thirty times before the essential accuracy was attained.

The G.o.ds were now changed, in the hands of Greek statuaries, into ornaments for a rich man's home. Greek myths were imported and connected with the story of Roman deities, as Ennius made Saturn the son of Coelus, in imitation of the genealogy of Kronos. That form of rationalism called Euhemerism, which explains every G.o.d into a mythical king or hero, became popular. So, too, was the doctrine of Epicharmos, who considered the divinities as powers of nature symbolized. According to the usual course of events, superst.i.tion and unbelief went hand in hand. As the old faith died out, new forms of worship, like those of Cybele and Bacchus, came in.

Stern conservatives like Cato opposed all these innovations and scepticisms, but ineffectually.

Gibbon says that "the admirable work of Cicero,'De Natura Deorum,' is the best clew we have to guide us through this dark abyss" (the moral and religious teachings of the philosophers).[295] After, in the first two books, the arguments for the existence and providence of the G.o.ds have been set forth and denied, by Velleius the Epicurean, Cotta the academician, and Balbus the Stoic; in the third book, Cotta, the head of the priesthood, the Pontifex Maximus, proceeds to refute the stoical opinion that there are G.o.ds who govern the universe and provide for the welfare of mankind. To be sure, he says, as Pontifex, he of course believes in the G.o.ds, but he feels free as a philosopher to deny their existence. "I believe in the G.o.ds," says he, "on the authority and tradition of our ancestors; but if we reason, I shall reason against their existence." "Of course," he says, "I believe in divination, as I have always been taught to do. But who knows whence it comes? As to the voice of the Fauns, I never heard it; and I do not know what a Faun is. You say that the regular course of nature proves the existence of some ordering power. But what more regular than a tertian or quartan fever? The world subsists by the power of nature." Cotta goes on to criticise the Roman pantheon, ridiculing the idea of such G.o.ds as "Love, Deceit, Fear, Labor, Envy, Old Age, Death, Darkness, Misery, Lamentation, Favor, Fraud, Obstinacy," etc. He shows that there are many G.o.ds of the same name; several Jupiters, Vulcans, Apollos, and Venuses. He then denies providence, by showing that the wicked succeed and the good are unfortunate. Finally, all was left in doubt, and the dialogue ends with a tone of triumphant uncertainty. This was Cicero's contribution to theology; and Cicero was far more religious than most men of his period.

Many writers, and more recently Merivale,[296] have referred to the remarkable debate which took place in the Roman Senate, on the occasion of Catiline's conspiracy. Caesar, at that time chief pontiff, the highest religious authority in the state, gave his opinion against putting the conspirators to death; for death, says he, "is the end of all suffering.

After death there is neither pain nor pleasure (_ultra neque curae, neque gaudii loc.u.m_)." Cato, the Stoic, remarked that Caesar had spoken well concerning life and death. "I take it," says he, "that he regards as false what we are told about the sufferings of the wicked hereafter," but does not object to that statement. These speeches are reported by Sall.u.s.t, and are confirmed by Cicero's fourth Catiline Oration. The remarkable fact is, not that such things were said, but that they were heard with total indifference. No one seemed to think it was of any consequence one way or the other. Suppose that when the question of the execution of Charles I.

was before Parliament, it had been opposed by the Archbishop of Canterbury (had he been there) on the ground that after death all pain and pleasure ceased. The absurdity of the supposition shows the different position of the human mind at the two epochs.

In fact, an impa.s.sable gulf yawned between the old Roman religion and modern Roman thought. It was out of the question for an educated Roman, who read Plato and Zeno, who listened to Cicero and Hortensius, to believe in Ja.n.u.s and the Penates. "All very well for the people," said they. "The people must be kept in order by these superst.i.tions."[297] But the secret could not be kept. Sincere men, like Lucretius, who saw all the evil of these superst.i.tions, and who had no strong religious sense, _would_ speak out, and proclaim _all_ religion to be priestcraft and an unmitigated evil. The poem of Lucretius, "De Rerum Natura," declares faith in the G.o.ds to have been the curse of the human race, and immortality to be a silly delusion. He denies the G.o.ds, providence, the human soul, and any moral purpose in the universe. But as religion is an instinct, which will break out in some form, and when expelled from the soul returns in disguise, Lucretius, denying all the G.o.ds, pours out a lovely hymn to Venus, G.o.ddess of beauty and love.

The last philosophic protest, in behalf of a pure and authoritative faith, came from the Stoics. The names of Seneca, Epictetus, and Aurelius Antoninus gave dignity, if they could not bring safety, to the declining religion of Rome.

Seneca, indeed, was inferior to the other two in personal character, and was more of a rhetorician than a philosopher. But n.o.ble thoughts occur in his writings. "A sacred spirit sits in every heart," he says, "and treats us as we treat it." He opposed idolatry, he condemned animal sacrifices.

The moral element is very marked in his brilliant pages. Philosophy, he says, is an effort to be wise and good.[298] Physical studies he condemns as useless.[299] Goodness is that which harmonizes with the natural movements of the soul.[300] G.o.d and matter are the two principles of all being; G.o.d is the active principle, matter the pa.s.sive. G.o.d is spirit, and all souls are part of this spirit.[301] Reason is the bond which unites G.o.d and other souls, and so G.o.d dwells in all souls.[302]

One of the best sayings of Epictetus is that "the wise man does not merely know by tradition and hearsay that Jupiter is the father of G.o.ds and men; but is inwardly convinced of it in his soul, and therefore cannot help acting and feeling according to this conviction."[303]

Epictetus declared that the philosopher could have no will but that of the deity; he never blames fate or fortune, for he knows that no real evil can befall the just man. The life of Epictetus was as true as his thoughts were n.o.ble, but he had fallen on an evil age, which needed for its reform, not a new philosophy, but a new inspiration of divine life. This steady current downward darkened the pure soul of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, of whom Niebuhr says,[304] "If there is any sublime human virtue, it is his."

He adds: "He was certainly the n.o.blest character of his time; and I know no other man who combined such unaffected kindness, mildness, and humility with such conscientiousness and severity towards himself." "If there is anywhere an expression of virtue, it is in the heavenly features of M.

Aurelius. His 'Meditations' are a golden book, though there are things in it which cannot be read without deep grief, for there we find this purest of men without happiness." Though absolute monarch of the Empire, and rich in the universal love of his people, he was not powerful enough to resist the steady tendency to decay in society. Nor did he know that the power that was to renew the life of the world was already present in Christianity. He himself was in soul almost a Christian, though he did not know it, and though the Christian element of faith and hope was wanting.

But he expressed a thought worthy of the Gospel, when he said: "The man of disciplined mind reverently bids Nature, who bestows all things and resumes them again to herself, 'Give what thou wilt, and take what thou wilt.'"[305]

Although we have seen that Seneca speaks of a sacred, spirit which dwells in us, other pa.s.sages in his works (quoted by Zeller) show that he was, like other Stoics, a pantheist, and meant the soul of the world. He says (Nat. Qu., II. 45, and Prolog. 13): "Will you call G.o.d the world? You may do so without mistake. For he is all that you see around you." "What is G.o.d? The mind of the universe. What is G.o.d? All that you see, and all that you do not see."[306]

It was not philosophy which destroyed religion in Rome. Philosophy, no doubt, weakened faith in the national G.o.ds, and made the national worship seem absurd. But it was the general tendency downward; it was the loss of the old Roman simplicity and purity; it was the curse of Caesarism, which, destroying all other human life, destroyed also the life of religion. What it came to at last, in well-endowed minds, may be seen in this extract from the elder Pliny:--

"All religion is the offspring of necessity, weakness, and fear. _What_ G.o.d is, if in truth he be anything distinct from the world, it is beyond the compa.s.s of man's understanding to know. But it is a foolish delusion, which has sprung from human weakness and human pride, to imagine that such an infinite spirit would concern himself with the petty affairs of men. It is difficult to say, whether it might not be better for men to be wholly without religion, than to have one of this kind, which is a reproach to its object. The vanity of man, and his insatiable longing after existence, have led him also to dream of a life after death. A being full of contradictions, he is the most wretched of creatures; since the other creatures have no wants transcending the bounds of their nature. Man is full of desires and wants that reach to infinity, and can never be satisfied. His nature is a lie, uniting the greatest poverty with the greatest pride. Among these so great evils, the best thing G.o.d has bestowed on man is the power to take his own life."[307]

The system of the Stoics was exactly adapted to the Roman character; but, naturally, it exaggerated its faults instead of correcting them. It supplanted all other systems in the esteem of leading minds; but the narrowness of the Roman intellect reacted on the philosophy, and made that much more narrow than it was in the Greek thought. It became simple ethics, omitting both the physical and metaphysical side.

Turning to literature, we find in Horace a gay epicureanism, which always says: "Enjoy this life, for it will be soon over, and after death there is nothing left for us." Virgil tells us that those are happy who know the causes of things, and so escape the terrors of Acheron. The serious Tacitus, a man always in earnest, a penetrating mind, is by Bunsen called "the last Roman prophet, but a prophet of death and judgment. He saw that Rome hastened to ruin, and that Caesarism was an unmixed evil, but an evil not to be remedied."[308] He declares that the G.o.ds had to mingle in Roman affairs as protectors; they now appeared only for vengeance.[309] Tacitus in one pa.s.sage speaks of human freedom as superior to fate,[310] but in another expresses his uncertainty on the whole question.[311] Equally uncertain was he concerning the future life, though inclined to believe that the soul is not extinguished with the body.[312]

But the tone of the sepulchral monuments of that period is not so hopeful.

Here are some which are quoted by Dollinger,[313] from Muratori and Fabretti: "Reader, enjoy thy life; for, after death, there is neither laughter nor play, nor any kind of enjoyment." "Friend, I advise thee to mix a goblet of wine and drink, crowning thy head with flowers. Earth and fire consume all that remains at death." "Pilgrim, stop and listen. In Hades is no boat and no Charon; no Eacus and no Cerberus. Once dead, we are all alike." Another says: "Hold all a mockery, reader; nothing is our own."

So ended the Roman religion; in superst.i.tion among the ignorant, in unbelief among the wise. It was time that something should come to renew hope. This was the gift which the Gospel brought to the Romans,--hope for time, hope beyond time. This was the prayer for the Romans of the Apostle Paul: "Now the G.o.d of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost."[314] A remarkable fact, that a Jewish writer should exhort Romans to hope and courage!

-- 5. Relation of the Roman Religion to Christianity.

The idea of Rome is law, that of Christianity is love. In Roman worship law took the form of iron rules; in Roman theology it appeared as a stern fate; in both as a slavery. Christianity came as freedom, in a worship free from forms, in a view of G.o.d which left freedom to man. Christianity came to the Roman world, not as a new theory, but as a new life. As, during the early spring, the power of the returning sun penetrates the soil, silently touching the springs of life; so Christianity during two hundred years moved silently in the heart of Roman society, creating a new faith, hope, and love. And as, at last, in the spring the gra.s.s shoots, the buds open, the leaves appear, the flowers bloom; so, at last, Christianity, long working in silence and shadow, suddenly became apparent, and showed that it had been transforming the whole tone and temper of Roman civilization.

But wherever there is action there is also reaction, and no power or force can wholly escape this law. So Roman thought, acted on by Christianity, reacted and modified in many respects the Gospel. Not always in a bad way, sometimes it helped its developments. For the Providence which made the Gospel for the Romans made the Romans for the Gospel.

The great legacy bequeathed to mankind by ancient Rome was law. Other nations, it is true, had codes of law, like the Inst.i.tutes of Manu in India, or the jurisprudence of Solon and the enactments of Lycurgus. But Roman law from the beginning was sanctified by the conviction that it was founded on justice, and not merely on expediency or prudence. In submitting to the laws, even when they were cruel and oppressive, the Roman was obeying, not force, but conscience. The view which Plato gave as an ideal in Crito was realized in Roman society from the first. Consider the cruel enactments which made the debtors the slaves of the creditor, and the fact that when the plebeians were ground to the earth by that oppression, they did not attempt to resist the law, but in their despair fled from their homes, beyond the jurisdiction of Rome, to establish a new city where these enactments could not reach them. Only when the laws are thus enforced by the public conscience as something sacred, does society become possible; and this sense of the divinity which hedges a code of laws has been transmitted from ancient Rome into the civilization of Europe.

Cicero, in his admirable treatise on the laws, which unfortunately we have in an imperfect condition, devotes the whole of the first book to establishing eternal justice as the basis of all jurisprudence. No better text-book could have been found for the defence of what was called "the higher law," in the great American antislavery struggle, than this work of Cicero. "Let us establish," he says, "the principles of justice on that supreme law which has existed from all ages before any legislative enactments were written, or any political governments formed." "Among all questions, there is none more important to understand than this, _that man is born for justice_; and that law and equity have not been established by opinion, but by nature." "It is an absurd extravagance in some philosophers to a.s.sert that all things are necessarily just which are established by the laws and inst.i.tutions of nations." "Justice does not consist in submission to written laws." "If the will of the people, the decrees of the senate, the decisions of magistrates, were sufficient to establish rights, then it might become right to rob, to commit adultery, to forge wills, if this was sanctioned by the votes or decrees of the majority." "The sum of all is, that what is right should be sought for its own sake, because it is right, and not because it is enacted."

Law appears from the very beginnings of the Roman state. The oldest traditions make Romulus, Numa, and Servius to be legislators. From that time, after the expulsion of the Tarquins, Rome was governed by laws. Even the despotism of the Caesars did not interfere with the general administration of the laws in civil affairs; for the one-man power, though it may corrupt and degrade a state, does not immediately and directly affect many persons in their private lives. Law continued to rule in common affairs, and this legacy of a society organized by law was the gift of Rome to modern Europe. How great a blessing it has been may be seen by comparing the worst Christian government with the best of the despotic governments of Asia. Mohammedan society is ruled by a hierarchy of tyranny, each little tyrant being in turn the victim of the one above him.

The feudal system, introduced by the Teutonic races, attempted to organize Europe on the basis of military despotism; but Roman law was too strong for feudal law, and happily for mankind overcame it and at last expelled it.

Christianity, in its ready hospitality for all the truth and good which it encounters, accepted Roman jurisprudence and gave to it a new lease of life.[315] Christian emperors and Christian lawyers codified the long line of decrees and enactments reaching back to the Twelve Tables, and established them as the laws of the Christian world. But the spirit of Roman law acted on Christianity in a more subtle manner. It reproduced the organic character of the Roman state in the Western Latin Church, and it reproduced the soul of Roman law in the Western Latin theology.

It has not always been sufficiently considered how much the Latin Church was a reproduction, on a higher plane, of the old Roman Commonwealth. The resemblance between the Roman Catholic ceremonies and those of Pagan Rome has been often noticed. The Roman Catholic Church has borrowed from Paganism saints' days, incense, l.u.s.trations, consecrations of sacred places, votive-offerings, relics; winking, nodding, sweating, and bleeding images; holy water, vestments, etc. But the Church of Rome itself, in its central idea of authority, is a reproduction of the Roman state religion, which was a part of the Roman state. The Eastern churches were sacerdotal and religious; the Church of Rome added to these elements that of an organized political authority. It was the resurrection of Rome,--Roman ideas rising into a higher life. The Roman Catholic Church, at first an aristocratic republic, like the Roman state, afterwards became, like the Roman state, a disguised despotism. The Papal Church is therefore a legacy of ancient Rome.[316]

And just as the Roman state was first a help and then a hindrance to the progress of humanity, so it has been with the Roman Catholic Church.

Ancient Rome gradually bound together into a vast political unity the divided tribes and states of Europe, and so infused into them the civilization which she had developed or received. And so the Papal Church united Europe again, and once more permeated it with the elements of law, of order, of Christian faith. All intelligent Protestants admit the good done in this way by the mediaeval church.

For example, Milman[317] says, speaking of Gregory the Great and his work, that it was necessary that there should be some central power like the Papacy to resist the dissolution of society at the downfall of the Roman Empire. "The life and death of Christianity" depended, he says, "on the rise of such a power." "It is impossible to conceive what had been the confusion, the lawlessness, the chaotic state of the Middle Ages, without the mediaeval Papacy."

The whole history of Rome had infused into the minds of Western nations a conviction of the importance of centralization in order to union. From Rome, as a centre, had proceeded government, law, civilization.

Christianity therefore seemed to need a like centre, in order to retain its unity. Hence the supremacy early yielded to the Bishop of Rome. His primacy was accepted, because it was useful. The Papal Church would never have existed, if Rome and its organizing ideas had not existed before Christianity was born.

In like manner the ideas developed in the Roman mind determined the course of Western theology, as differing from that of the East. It is well known that Eastern theological speculation was occupied with the nature of G.o.d and the person of Christ, but that Western theology discussed sin and salvation. Mr. Maine, in his work on "Ancient Law," considers this difference to have been occasioned by habits of thought produced by Roman jurisprudence. I quote his language at some length:--

"What has to be determined is whether jurisprudence has ever served as the medium through which theological principles have been viewed; whether, by supplying a peculiar language, a peculiar mode of reasoning, and a peculiar solution of many of the problems of life, it has ever opened new channels in which theological speculation could flow out and expand itself."

"On all questions," continues Mr. Maine, quoting Dean Milman, "which concerned the person of Christ and the nature of the Trinity, the Western world accepted pa.s.sively the dogmatic system of the East." "But as soon as the Latin-speaking empire began to live an intellectual life of its own, its deference to the East was at once exchanged for the agitation of a number of questions entirely foreign to Eastern speculation." "The nature of sin and its transmission by inheritance, the debt owed by man and its vicarious satisfaction, and like theological problems, relating not to the divinity but to human nature, immediately began to be agitated." "I affirm," says Mr. Maine, "without hesitation, that the difference between the two theological systems is accounted for by the fact that, in pa.s.sing from the East to the West, theological speculation had pa.s.sed from a climate of Greek metaphysics to a climate of Roman law. For some centuries before these controversies rose into overwhelming importance, all the intellectual activity of the Western Romans had been expended on jurisprudence exclusively. They had been occupied in applying a peculiar set of principles to all combinations in which the circ.u.mstances of life are capable of being arranged. No foreign pursuit or taste called off their attention from this engrossing occupation, and for carrying it on they possessed a vocabulary as accurate as it was copious, a strict method of reasoning, a stock of general propositions on conduct more or less verified by experience, and a rigid moral philosophy. It was impossible that they should not select from the questions indicated by the Christian records those which had some affinity with the order of speculations to which they were accustomed, and that their manner of dealing with them should not borrow something from their forensic habits. Almost every one who has knowledge enough of Roman law to appreciate the Roman penal system, the Roman theory of the obligations established by contract or delict, the Roman view of debts, etc., the Roman notion of the continuance of individual existence by universal succession, may be trusted to say whence arose the frame of mind to which the problems of Western theology proved so congenial, whence came the phraseology in which these problems were stated, and whence the description of reasoning employed in their solution." "As soon as they (the Western Church) ceased to sit at the feet of the Greeks and began to ponder out a theology of their own, the theology proved to be permeated with forensic ideas and couched in a forensic phraseology. It is certain that this substratum of law in Western theology lies exceedingly deep."[318]

The theory of the atonement, developed by the scholastic writers, ill.u.s.trates this view. In the East, for a thousand years, the atoning work of Christ had been viewed mainly as redemption, as a ransom paid to obtain the freedom of mankind, enslaved by the Devil in consequence of their sins. It was not a legal theory, or one based on notions of jurisprudence, but it was founded on warlike notions. Men were captives taken in war, and, like all captives in those times, destined to slavery.

Their captor was Satan, and the ransom must be paid to him, as he held them prisoners by the law of battle. Now as Christ had committed no sin, the Devil had no just power over him; in putting Christ to death he had lost his rights over his other captives, and Christ could justly claim their freedom as a compensation for this injury. Christ, therefore, strictly and literally, according to the ancient view, "gave his life a ransom for many."

But the mind of Anselm, educated by notions derived from Roman jurisprudence, subst.i.tuted for this original theory of the atonement one based upon legal ideas. All, in this theory, turns on the law of debt and penalty. Sin he defines as "not paying to G.o.d what we owe him."[319] But we owe G.o.d constant and entire obedience, and every sin deserves either penalty or satisfaction. We are unable to make it good, for at every moment we owe G.o.d all that we can do. Christ, as G.o.d-man, can satisfy G.o.d for our omissions; his death, as offered freely, when he did not deserve death on account of any sin of his own, is sufficient satisfaction. It will easily be seen how entirely this argument has subst.i.tuted a legal basis for the atonement in place of the old warlike foundation.

This, therefore, has been the legacy of ancient Rome to Christianity: firstly, the organization of the Latin Church; secondly, the scholastic theology, founded on notions of jurisprudence introduced into man's relations to G.o.d. In turn, Christianity has bestowed on Western Europe what the old Romans never knew,--a religion of love and inspiration. In place of the hard and cold Roman life, modern Europe has sentiment and heart united with thought and force. With Roman strength it has joined a Christian tenderness, romance, and personal freedom. Humanity now is greater than the social organization; the state, according to our view, is made for man, not man for the state. We are outgrowing the hard and dry theology which we have inherited from Roman law through the scholastic teachers; but we shall not outgrow our inheritance from Rome of unity in the Church, definite thought in our theology, and society organized by law.

Chapter IX.

The Teutonic and Scandinavian Religion.

-- 1. The Land and the Race.