must end almost as soon as it was begun it is impossible, on our Critic's own principles, that it should have any continuance: for, as the choice of nocturnal assemblies was only to reconcile Paganism to Christianity, when they found their neighbours receive these advances so ungraciously, they would soon remove the occasion of offence; in which they would be quickened by their knowledge of the rights of the Sovereign, to whom, in things indifferent, they had been told, all obedience was due.

Thus the matter being turned on all sides, we find that No persecution whatever could follow from that cause, which our learned Civilian has assigned for the whole TEN.

But it being certain, that persecuted they were; and as certain, that our Civilian will admit of no other cause than what he him elf has given, namely, their nocturnal assemblies: Let us for once suppose him to be in the right; and then consider the consequences which will arise from it. When we have done this, we shall have done his System full justice; and the reader, with sufficient knowledge of the case, may take or reject it as he finds himself inclined.

HYPOTHESES are often very plausible, and much oftener very flattering things. You shall have of these, so fair and promising, that an honest reader shall be tempted to wish them, and, from wishing, to think them, true. But this, before us, is by no means in the number of those specious visions.

I seriously believe it would be doing our Chancellor great injustice, to suppose he had any other view in this notable discovery than to do honour to the Christian name: much less should we suspect that he had any formed design of traducing it. Yet it is very certain, that neither COLLINS nor TINDAL could have formed a project more injurious to the reputation of primitive Christianity, than to prove, what is the aim of this learned Critic, that THE FIRST CHRISTIANS WERE

PERSECUTED FOR HOLDING THEIR ASSEMBLIES IN THE

NIGHT

TIME. For it inevitably follows, that these early professors of the Faith were either wild FANATICS or abandoned LIBERTINES: and consequently, that the Pagan Magistrate did but his duty in inforcing, what the Church has been so long accustomed to call, a cruel and unjust persecution.

Before the conception of this new fancy, it was universally supposed, that the primitive Christians assembled in the night-time to avoid the interruptions of the civil power. This our Critic assures us is a mistake. It is NOT TRUE (says he); but the converse of the proposition is true IN THE UTMOST Latitude, viz. that they met with molestation from the civil power BECAUSE their assemblies were nocturnal.

While the common opinion prevailed, these nocturnal Assemblies,

recorded in ancient church-history, gave as little scandal to the Pagans of our times, as indeed they did to the Pagans of their own. But when this opinion is given up for the sake of its CONVERSE, we shall be utterly at a loss to account, to our irreligious Inquisitors, for so extraordinary a CHOICE in the immediate followers of Christ.

It hath been shewn above, that these voluntary Assemblies could be occasioned only by one or other of these causes-either that the Christian religion hath Mysteries, like the Pagan, which required nocturnal celebrations-or that the first preachers of Christianity affected to imitate the practices of Paganism-or that they were Fanatics, and delighted in the horrors of a midnight season-or lastly, that, like the debauched Bacchanals, they had some very licentious Rites to be performed only in the dark.

ances.

Our Critic's religious principles will not allow him to admit of any of these causes but the second. And I have shewn that, from the second, no persecution could arise, or, at least, could continue. This, on a supposition that the Christians affected to imitate pagan observBut it is a supposition which contradicts fact, and violates the nature of things. The history of the infant-church informs us, that the first Propagators of the Faith were most averse to every thing which bore a shew of conformity to Paganism. They could not but be so, for their Religion rose out of Judaism, which breathes nothing but opposition to Idolatry.

In course of time, indeed, when pious zeal, by growing overheated, became less pure; when love of pomp and shew (which is natural to men busied in the external offices of Religion), and the affectation of importance (which is as natural to those who preside in them), had spread their leprosy through the Church, the Ministers of the Gospel would be fatally tempted to rival the magnificence, and to ape the mysterious air of Paganism. And the obliquities, which led them into these follies, they would strive to palliate or disguise by a pretended impatience for the speedier extension of the Faith. I have shewn, from Casaubon, how this corrupt conduct infected all the language of Theology.* But this was some ages after the times in question.

Our Critic may perhaps tell us, it was accident or whim which drew together the first Christians into dark corners; and as the evening and the morning made the first day of the old Creation, so it was to make the first day of the new and thus Night, by her proper Usher, Chance, became once again reinstated in her ancient honours.

But this will stand him in small stead. He has not only to account for the first threatenings of Persecution, but for the ACT; and, what is still more, for the continuance of it. Now, what the Christians fell into with so little reason, they would certainly forsake on the • "Divine Legation," vol. i. pp. 230, 390.

appearance of so great, as the displeasure of the Magistrate, and the crime and danger of disobeying lawful Authority. It is possible, indeed, that, in the heat of Persecution, some over zealous men might mistake their noncompliance with such commands as a necessary mark of their open profession of the Faith. But this was not generally the case; Their common practice was to give to Cæsar the things which were Cæsar's; and to God, the things which were God's: Of this, we have sufficient evidence in the famous letter of Pliny the younger, before quoted. Trajan had forbidden the assemblies called Hetaria, which succeeded those of public worship, and were used by the Christians of Bithynia, to confirm and bind them to one another in the practice of virtue, by the external badge or ceremony of breaking bread; and we are assured by this vigilant Magistrate, that the Christians, under his jurisdiction, obeyed the imperial Edict.*

From all this Letter it appears, that the only causes, which, on our Critic's principles, could possibly bring on and continue persecution (if persecution arose from nocturnal or clandestine assemblies), must be either FANATICISM OR DEBAUCHED PRACTICES: in the first case, their obstinacy would make them persist; in the other, their libertinage. To these agreeable conclusions, have our learned Civilian's principles reduced us for a solution of our difficulties: and such is the flattering picture he has exhibited of primitive Christianity. Could its most inveterate enemies desire more! or, if its friends should give credit to these fancies, would its enemies be content with less? Such are the disgraces which this converse proposition is ready to bring upon Christianity; disgraces of so complicated a stain, as not simply to dishonour our holy Faith, but even to justify the powers of Paganism in all the violences they offered to it. For the Magistrate had a right to suppress the clandestine meetings of Fanaticism and Debauchery.

But our Enemies will have no need to fly to consequences for the discharge of the pagan Magistrates; our Christian Chancellor himself proceeds directly to their acquittal. He frankly tells us, that their duty, as Magistrates, required them to animadvert on nocturnal assemblies, where they bound themselves to one another, and employed the word SACRAMENTUM for a kind of tessera of union; the very appearance of guilt which had occasioned the decree against the infamous rites of Bacchus.

You will say, this is horrid, to make the Magistrate prosecute the primitive Christians by the same provision which obliged him to exterminate those monsters of society! But who can help it? Our Chancellor had but this one precedent for the prosecution of nocturnal

• "Quod essent soliti stato die ante lucem convenire, carmenque Christo, quasi Deo, dicere," &c.-"quibus peractis morem sibi discedendi fuisse, rursusque coëundi ad capiendum cibum, promiscuum tamen et innoxium: quod ipsum facere desiisse post edictum meum, quo secundum mandata tua hetærias esse vetueram."-Lib. x. ep. 97.

assemblies; and if it be not the most honourable support of his hypothesis, it is not his fault.

But there was no proof (you will say) against the Christian, as there was against those Bacchanalian assemblies. What of that? Our Chancellor opines, that mere suspicion, in so delicate an affair, was sufficient to acquit the Magistrate of blame: nay, to make his conduct, in his care and jealousy for the State, very commendable. You shall have his own words. A jealous Governor, therefore, and a stranger to the true principles of Christianity, was naturally open to such impressions; and COULD NOT BUT exert that caution and attention which the practice of their Country so warmly recommended.* Could Cicero himself have been more warm, not to say more eloquent, in defending the Decree which dispersed the profligate crew of Bacchanals?

And now a very capital point of Ecclesiastical history is cleared up and settled. "The Ten Persecutions were begun and carried on, not, as had been hitherto supposed, upon the score of Religion, or mere opinion, but against bad Subjects, or, at least against those who were reasonably suspected of being such." And this is given to us by the learned Critic as the true defence of free and generous Antiquity, IN ITS PUBLIC CAPACITY: just as in free Britain (where, indeed, we now find small difference, as to freedom, between its public and its private capacity, except to the advantage of the latter), when Papists complain of the penal laws, we reply, They are not enforced against erroneous Religionists, but against refractory Subjects, for refusing the Magistrate the common security for obedience.-There is indeed a difference; our answer to the Papists is a serious truth; and our Critic's apology for the pagan Persecutors, an idle and ridiculous fiction.

But as if he had not yet done enough for his beloved Antiquity, in thus blanching its TEN PERSECUTIONS; he goes on to clear it from the opprobrium of persecution in general; by charging the original of this diabolic practice on the Christian Church; where, indeed, the Freethinkers had very confidently placed it, till the author of The Divine Legation restored it to its right owner, the Pagan Magistrate. -PERSECUTION FOR DIFFERENCE OF BELIEF ALONE, says our learned Civilian, OWES ITS NATIVITY TO MORE MODERN AGES; and Spain was its country; where Priscillian, by some, is held to be the first sufferer for MERE OPINION.

Thus the whole blame of PERSECUTION for Religion is thrown from the Gentile Persecutors, upon the suffering Church: And Christianity, either for its follies or its crimes (as either insulting civil Society by its obstinacy, or polluting it by its vices), stands covered with confusion. So happy an advocate has our learned Civilian

• P. 579.

approved himself for the Cause to which, by a double tye, he had devoted and engaged his ministry.—

The length of these animadversions hindered them from finding a place in the body of this volume, amongst other things of the like sort. Except for this, he had no claim to be distinguished from his fellows. I had a large choice before me: for who has not signalized himself against the DIVINE LEGATION? Bigots, Hutchinsonians, Methodists, Answerers, Freethinkers, and Fanatics, have in their turns been all up in arms against it. "Quid dicam?" (to use the words of an honest man in the same circumstances.) "Commune fere hoc eorum fatum est, quorum opera supremum Numen uti vult in Ecclesia, ut MATURE insidiis, accusationibus et criminationibus appetantur.” The scene was opened by a false Zealot, and at present seems likely to be closed by a true Behmenist.* A natural and easy progress, from knavery to madness, where the imposture fails: as the progress is from madness to knavery, where it succeeds. It was now time to settle my accounts with them. To this end I applied to a learned person, who, in consideration of our friendship, hath been prevailed upon to undergo the drudgery of turning over this dirty heap, and marking what he imagined would in the least deserve, or could justify any notice for I would not have the reader conceive so miserably of me as to think I was ever disposed to look into them myself. He will find, as he goes along, both in the text and the notes, what was thought least unworthy of an answer. Nor let it give him too much scandal that, in a work which I have now put into as good a condition for him as I was able, I have revived the memory of the numerous and gross absurdities of these writers, part of whom are dead, and the rest forgotten: For he will consider, that it may prove an useful barrier to the return of the like follies, in after-times, against more successful Inquirers into Truth. The seeds of Folly, as well as Wit, are connate with the mind: and when, at any time, the teeming intellect gives promise of an unexpected harvest, the trash starts up with it, and is ever forward to wind itself about rising Truth, and hinder its progress to maturity. Were it not for this, I should refer the candid reader to what I take to be the best defence and support of the ARGUMENT OF THE DIVINE LEGATION, the succinct view of the whole and all its parts, which he will find at the conclusion of the last of these volumes.† For, as Lord Verulam says excellently well: THE HARMONY OF A SCIENCE, SUPPORTING EACH PART THE OTHER, IS, AND OUGHT TO BE, the true TATION AND SUPPRESSION OF ALL THE

OBJECTIONS.

AND BRIEF CONFUSMALLER SORTS

OF

Rev. Mr. William Law.

† Vol. iii. of this edition.