The History of Christianity by John S. C. Abbott (free children's ebooks pdf .TXT) 📖
- Author: John S. C. Abbott
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“When men resort to persecution, it is evident that they want confidence in their own faith. Satan, because there is no truth in him, pays away with hatchet and sword. The Saviour is so gentle, that he only says, ‘Whosoever will, let him be my disciple.’ He forces none. He knocks at the door of the soul, and says, ‘Open to me, my sister.’ If the door is opened, he goes in. It is the character of true piety not to force, but to convince.”
The emperor was influenced by political considerations only. He regarded the pagan party simply as his antagonists, who sought his overthrow that they might grasp the reins of power. In co-operation with his court, he ordered the demolition of their temples, and directed all the energies of fire and sword to the demolition of the idolaters. Thus the flames of persecution, which once consumed the Christians, now blazed almost as fiercely in wrapping the pagans in their fiery folds.
Such was the condition of the world towards the close of the fourth century. Christianity had undermined all the temples of idolatry, and was enthroned as the established religion of the Roman empire. Ambitious men rallied about it as a great political power. Wicked men nominally embraced it as an essential step to worldly advancement. Christianity had thus, perhaps, more to fear from favoritism than from persecution. Unprincipled men, grasping at wealth and power, embraced Christianity merely as an instrument for the promotion of their own temporal aggrandizement. They hated its spiritual teachings, and endeavored to make it a religion of dead doctrines and of pompous ceremonies, rather than a rule to govern heart and life. They crucified Christianity while crowning it.
Lured by hopes of court favor and preferment, many who were still in heart pagans had hypocritically professed Christianity. Corruption thus crept into the Church. To conciliate the ignorant idolatrous populace, and to lure them into the Christian churches, the pomp and pageantry of pagan rites were introduced to supplant the unostentatious and simple ordinances of the gospel. Hence the origin of those theatric shows which are still the prominent features in the worship of the Church at Rome.
The death-bed of Constantius was that of an awakened and despairing sinner. He had been a wicked man. He had known his duty; for he had enjoyed the teachings of a Christian father. He had also heard the faithful preaching of the gospel.
Death brings all to the same level: the emperor and his humblest slave are upon an equality in that dread hour. As one reads the record of the remorse of the dying Constantius, he may say,—
“By many a death-bed I have been,
By many a sinner’s parting scene,
But never aught like this.”
As the moment drew near when his spirit, leaving the body, was to be transported to God’s bar, he trembled, and cried aloud for mercy. He gathered the most devout of the clergy around his bedside, and entreated them to pray for him.
Professing heart-felt repentance, the dying monarch implored that the rite of baptism and that of the Lord’s Supper might be administered to him. He received both of these ordinances, and still found but little peace. There are doubtless death-bed repentances; but they are very rare. It is only by living the life of the righteous that one can expect to know by blessed experience what it is “sweetly to fall asleep in Jesus.” Trembling, hoping, despairing, the imperial sinner passed away into the vast unknown.
How deep is the shade of melancholy which lingers around these sad recitals! Where now are those monarchs who once ruled the world? Where now are the soldiers of those thronging armies, which, fourteen centuries ago, swept the nations with billows of flame and blood?
And where shall we all be when a few more of these fleeting years shall have passed away? Is it wise to live for this world alone, when life is such a vapor, and when we are so soon to be ushered into the dread scenes of eternity? There is a voice, solemn as the grave, coming up to us from all these past ages, saying, “Prepare to meet thy God.”
“The sun is but a spark of fire,
A transient meteor in the sky:
The soul, immortal as its Sire,
Shall never die.”
The three sons of Constantine the Great were now dead. Neither of them left a male heir. Constantius had two cousins, of whom, during his whole life, he had always stood in great dread, lest they should aspire to the crown. He had caused them both to be arrested and imprisoned. Though thus held as captives, they were bound, as it were, with golden chains. A magnificent palace was assigned them, where they were provided with every luxury. They were, however, closely guarded, not being allowed to leave the spacious grounds of the palace. They were permitted to see such company only as the emperor would admit to their presence.
At length, Constantius had appointed Gallus, the elder of these brothers, viceroy of the Eastern empire. Gallus took up his residence at Antioch, and immediately released his brother Julian, and received him at his court. Constantius, in a fit of jealousy and rage, caused Gallus to be assassinated. He also re-arrested Julian, and confined him for seven months in a castle at Milan, where the imprisoned prince daily expected to meet the doom of his brother. Through the intercession of Eusebia, the wife of Constantius, the life of Julian was spared. He was sent into honorable exile to the city of Athens.
Julian had from childhood developed unusual scholarly and philosophic tastes. In the groves of the Academy at Athens he had devoted himself assiduously to the cultivation of Greek literature. When Constantius set out on his military expedition to the Euphrates, he named Julian as his heir to the throne, and also directed him to take charge of an army to beat back the barbarians who were ravaging the Valley of the Danube and the Rhine. As Julian, the man of books, the bashful, retiring scholar, received this appointment, he exclaimed, “O Plato, Plato! what a task for a philosopher!”
Julian, enamoured of the classic literature of Greece and Rome, had become an actual worshipper at the idolatrous shrines of the pagans. He loved poetic dreamings, and revelled in the wild mythology of his ancestors. He was just one of those men whom we now politely call conservative men, or, more irreverently, old fogies. He clung to ancient superstitions and rotten abuses, and was quite opposed to the innovations and reforms which Christianity would introduce.
But suddenly he developed traits of character which surprised every one. He entered the camp, shared the coarse food and the hardships of the meanest soldiers, and developed military ability of the highest order. At Strasburg on the Rhine, in command of but thirteen thousand men, he assailed, and after a terrific battle put to flight, thirty-five thousand of the fiercest barbarians of the North. In the heat of this hard-fought battle, six hundred Roman cuirassiers, overpowered by the enemy, in a panic fled. Julian punished them by dressing them in women’s robes, and marching them along his lines amidst the derision of the whole army.
He crossed the Danube with his heroic troops, and advanced boldly into the almost unknown regions of the north, cutting down the German tribes mercilessly before him. He liberated, and restored to their homes, twenty thousand Roman captives who had been carried off as slaves into these wilds.
Julian, on his return from this successful expedition, repaired to Paris for his winter quarters. Three centuries before this time, Julius Cæsar had found this now-renowned city a mere collection of fishermen’s huts on a small island in the Seine. It was called Lutetia, which signified The Place of Mire. Since then the wretched little village had gradually increased. The small, marshy island had become entirely covered with houses. Two wooden bridges connected it with the shore. Julian was much pleased with the place, and built him a palace there.
Constantius was at this time in the Valley of the Euphrates, contending, as we have mentioned, against Sapor. He became jealous of the renown which Julian was acquiring. To weaken him, and thus to prevent his gaining any more victories, he ordered a large portion of his army to be withdrawn from Gaul, and sent to the Euphrates. Julian easily induced his soldiers to refuse to go. Clashing their weapons, they rallied around their commander, and, with loud huzzas, declared him to be their emperor.
Constantius, foaming with rage, put his army in motion to march to Gaul for the destruction of his rival. He had but reached Tarsus in Cilicia, the birthplace of the apostle Paul, when he died.
Such was the history of Julian before his assumption of the imperial diadem. He was at the head of his army, just entering the defiles of the Alps, hurrying to meet Constantius in battle, when he heard the welcome tidings of his death. Julian was then thirty-two years of age. With great eagerness he pressed on to Constantinople, where he was crowned emperor on the 11th of December, 361.
This extraordinary man now resolved to restore paganism, and to abolish and utterly annihilate Christianity. Publicly, and with imposing ceremonies, he made a renunciation of the Christian religion, and committed himself to the care of the pagan gods. As the conversion of the Emperor Constantine was one of the most signal events in the history of the Church, so was the apostasy of the Emperor Julian one of the memorable events in the history of mankind. A bolder act of infidelity and atheism has perhaps never been recorded in the annals of our race.
Even the infidel Gibbon, in allusion to it, and to the inveterate zeal with which Julian persecuted the Christians, quotes the soul-stirring words of Milton in reference to the apostate angel Satan, as from hell’s dark domains he winged his flight for the seduction and ruin of our race:—
“So eagerly the Fiend
O’er bog or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare,
With head, hands, wings, or feet, pursues his way,
And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies.”
Thus Julian pressed on inexorably till death, endeavoring to crush the religion of Jesus, and to reinstate the gorgeous but senseless mummeries of paganism. Intellectually, Julian was a remarkable man both in native vigor of mind and in rich mental culture. Those portions of his works which have descended to us prove that he possessed talent, wit, and rhetorical ease and fluency. It seems as though God allowed such men to assail Christianity, that it might be seen that the religion of Jesus could triumph over the highest intelligence combined with unlimited despotic power.
It is recorded that Julian possessed among other mental marvels such flexibility of thought and abstract power of attention, that he could employ his hand to write, his ear to listen, and his voice to dictate, at one and the same time. During the long winter evenings, he devoted himself with tireless malignity to writing a book against Christianity. This treatise left but little which modern unbelief could add.
To prove that paganism could make as good men as Christianity could make, Julian adopted the most austere morals, rigidly abstaining from those vices which characterized the times. He despised the pomp of royalty, discarded all luxuries, slept on the ground, and partook only of the most frugal fare. Indeed, he went so
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