Barrow - BX1805 .B3 1852

SILENCE OF PAGANS AND EMPERORS. 141 avowing the pope's supremacy, among the many who did it? It is but lately that such as we have been thrust in among heretics. 14. Whereas no point avowed by Christians could be so apt to raise offence and jealousy in Pagans against our religion as this, which sets up a power of so vast extent and huge influence ; whereas no novelty could be more surprising or startling than the erection of an universal empire over the consciences and religious practices ofmen; whereas, also, this doctrine could not but be very conspicuous and glaring in ordinary practice, it is prodigious [marvellous] that all Pagans should not loudly exclaim against it. It is strange that pagan historians (such as Marcellinus, who often speaks of popes, and blames them for their luxurious way of living and pompous garb ;3 as Zosimus, who bore a great spite at Christi- anity; as all the writers of the imperial history before Constantine) shouldnot report it as a very strange pretence, newly started up. It is wonderful that the eager adversaries of our religion (such as Celsus, Porphyry, Hierocles, Julian himself) should. not particularly level their discourse against it, as a most scandalous position and dangerous pretence, threatening the government of the empire. It is admirable [astonishing] that the emperors themselves, in- flamed with emulation and suspicion of such an authority, which has been so terrible even to Christian princes, should not in their edicts expressly decry and impugn it; that, indeed, every one of them should not with extremest violence implacably strive to extirpate it. In consequence of these things it may also seem strange, that none of the advocates of our faith (Justin, Origen, Tertullian, Arnobius, Cyril, Augustine) should be put to defend it, or so much as forced to mention it, in their elaborate apologies for the doctrines andpractices which were reprehended byany sort of adversaries thereto. We may add, that divers of them, in their apologies' and repre- sentations concerning Christianity, would have appeared not to deal fairly, or to have been very inconsiderate, when they profess for their common belief assertions repugnant to that doctrine; as when Ter tullian says, " We reverence the emperor as a man second to God, and less only than God;" when Optatus affirms, that " above the procedantque vehiculis insidentes, circumspecte vestiti, epulas curantes pro- fusas, adeo ut eorum convivia regales superent mensas.Marcell, lib. xxvii. p. 338. " They travel sitting in chariots, curiously apparelled, cooking profuse dainties, inso- much that their meals exceed the feasts of kings." 2 Sentiuntenim Deum esse solum, in cujus solios potestate aunt, a quo sont secundi, post quem primi, ante omnes et super omnes deos. Quidni? cum superomnes homnnes, qui utique vivunt, et mortuis antistant. Tertull. Apolog., cap. xxx. "For they think it is Godalone in whose power they are, next to whom they [magistrates]are the chief. before all, and above all gods. And whynot? when they are above all men alive, and excel the dead." 8 Colimus imperatorem ut hominem a Deo secundum, et solo Deo minorem.Tertull. ad Scap. ii.

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