Mr
INDEX EXPURGATORIUS. 561
20. Mr. Addison boldly asserts that there never was a single martyr amongst the primitive heretics; and even draws inferences from this undoubted fact, in favour of the truth of pure, orthodox Christianity. (Vol. III. p. 301.) To connect different degrees of persuasion. with different modes of opinion, appeared to me highly unphilosophical ; however, I consulted my ingenious friend Dr. Middleton who (I recollected) had placed the Christian martyrs in a very new and curious light. (See Free Inquiry, &c. in his works, Vol. L p. 162—173.) He immediately informed me from the authority of all history, and par. ticularly that of Eusebius, (Hist. Ecclesiast. v. 16) that the heretics had their martyrs, as well as the orthodox: upon verifying the quotation, I even found that the sectaries boasted of the great number of their martyrs, and ‘that their antagonists did not pretend to deny the fact. | |
21. Dr. Lardner (Jewish and Heathen Testimonies, Vol. IL p. 18. 28.63.) and the celebrated Mosheim, (Ecclesiastical History, translated by Maclaine, Vol. I. p. 76) have bath imagined, that as all Domitian’s laws had been repealed by the senate, Pliny-the younger was at loss what rule of conduct to observe in respect to the Christians. (V. Epist. X. 97.) It may be allowed from the authority of Suetonius (in Domit. c. 23) and Lactantius (de Mortib. Persec. c. 2) that the senate in the first fury of a just revenge, attempted to abolish every memorial of the tyrant; but it should have heen recollected, from a still better authority, (Plin. Epist. x. 66,) that his prudent successor soon settled the general administration of the empire, by restoring the constitutions and © rescripts of Domitian to their former validity: ‘ Epistolis etiam Domitiani standum est.” It is evident from thence, that Domitian enacted no laws relative to the Christians; and that till Pliny thought it ne-. cessary, to consult the emperor upon a case which grew daily more important, the governors of the provinces had no rule of conduct but their own discretion. This observation might lead to some important consequences in regard to the history of the first age of Christianity. : | a
VOL. IH. . 4c 22, M.
562 | INDEX EXPURGATORIUS,
. 22. M. de Voltaire has given us, among many other ingénious trifles, a. dialogue between: Marcus Aurelius and a Recolet friar.: The latter accuses the former of having persecuted the Christians to wham he had such obligations.. The emperor assures him, that he never persecuted any one. (V. Oeuvres de Voltaire, tom. iv. p. 384.) ‘The poet forgot the characters of his speakers. .1. It is very natural that the friar, a friend to miracles and legends, should adopt the story of the Thundering Legion; but he would likewise have adopted the catastrophe of the fable, which exalts to the highest degree the gratitude of Marcus towards his benefactors. (Tertull. Apolog. c. 5. Lardner’s Jewish and Heathen Testimonies. Vol. HI. p. 296, &c.) 2. The emperor was too sincere to deny that many martyrs suffered during his reign, and that he himself added to the severity of the laws already in force against the - Christians. (V. Lardner, vol. ii. p. 179-221; and Mosheim’s Eeclesiastical History, vol. i. p. 78.)
nl
93. M. de Voltaire rejeets with a | magisterial baughtiness the famous Chinese: inscription, which relates the origin of Christianity in that country, and asserts with as decisive a confidence that Christianity was absolutely unknown in China in-the time of Charlemagne. If he will take the trouble of reading a very curious dissertation in the Estratte della Letteratura Europea, per l’anno, 1761, p. 1, 2, 4, and which is perfectly agreeable to the principles of .M: de Guignes, (V. Mém. de Acad, tom. 30.) he may see the two following positions established upon the most convincing proofs. 1. It is certain from the Chinese historians, the Nestorian writers, and the Arabian and European travellers, that a very considerable Christian church subsisted in China from the 7th to the 14th century, which at first flourished very much under the peculiar protection.of.the emperors. @. That the inscription carries every mark of authenticity, and is perfectly agreeable to the history.of those times and even to the character.and doctrines of the Nestorian seet. I am not insensible that before this question was 90 accurately examined, some learned 2 men have had doubts concerning | the
INDEX: EXPURGATORIUS. 503
the inscription ; but where they doubted, Voltaire decided. Though his objections are very contemptible, yet I am still more offended at the haughtiness of his unbelief, than at his unbelief itself.
@4, M. de Fontenelle, in that elegant.piece of history and .philosophy which he has extracted from the learned rubbish of Vandale, - discovers many ingenious reasons which account for Porphyry’s pro. ducing or even inventing oracles that were favourable to the Christians. (Oeuvres de Fontenelle, tom. ii. p. 239, &c.) Perhaps if he had attended to. the well grounded suspicions of his own author, he might have concluded with still more reason, that Porphyry never did produce them; and that the work in question is spurious. Is not this a little too like the story of the golden tooth ? |
25. M. de Fontenelle (tom. ii. p. 383) is-mistaken when he thinks the Romans prohibited the Carthaginians by treaty, from offering any more human sacrifices. The original treaties between those powerful republics are still extant m-Polybius and Livy. I need only refer to them. Gelon, tyrant of Syracuse, is indeed.reported (though not upon the very best authority) to have imposed that humane condition after the battle of Himera. (V. Diodor. Sicul. 1. xi. 21; et Wesseling ad loc:) M.de Fontenelle is pleased to accuse the Romans of contradicting their own practice; since they sacrificed a man every year to Ju. piter Latiates. But I shall not believe upon the words only of Por. phyry, Laotantius, and Prudentius, that. buman sacrifices were ever à regular part of the Roman worship. | |
26: I think M. de. Fontenelle has very injudiciously called Homer and Hesiod the $rst Grecian philosophers. Reason and inspiration are widely different. The first poets were the-prophets and theologians. of their time; not the philosophers. Several great sects of philosophy, who, from either snekmation or policy, chose to connect their system
4c2 with
‘564 INDEX EXPURGATORIUS.
with the established theology, were obliged to cansult the most ap. : proved interpreters of it; which scheme of conciliation has often betrayed them into absurdities. Thus in mote modern ages the great Descartes has attempted to explain transubstantiation ; and the greater Newton to expound the Revelations. Fontenelle might have spared his satirical exclamation, ‘ Voila les raisonnemens de cette antiquité si vantée.”’ (Oeuvres de Fontenelle, tom. ii. p. 251.)
27: Lord Shaftesbury has observed that after despotism was fully established at Rome, not a statue, picture, or medal, not a tolerable piece of architecture afterwards appeared. Mr. Addison adopted this remark: with great complacency, and Mr. Warton received it too easily. (Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope, p. 176.)' However, if we take the period of the reigns of Vespasian and Commodus, which is certainly a very fair one, we must' confine this observation to painting alorie. For the ‘state of architecture, I need only appeal to the Coliseum and Trajan’s column; the statues of ‘Antinous and Marcus Aure, lias will give us an idea of the ‘taste of sculpture. Every-connoisseur knows that the highest perfection of the Roman medals is to be sought for in the times of Trajan and Hadrian. .
28. The Epistles of Phalaris have been pronounced spurious after a much fuller hearing than they deserved. (See the Controversy between Boyle and Bentley.) Let me however discover another mark of their being so. Phalaris enlarges very much (see Epistle Ixx. &c.) “upon the glory, the honours, and thé rewards that awaited the murderers of tyrants. This was, I acknowledge, a general law of nations amongst the Grecian republics; but I think it highly improbable that it could have been so ancierit as the age of Phalaris, who (if. he was not, as Pliny reports, the first tyrant in the world) may be proved to have flourished about 600 years before Christ. (Bentley. against Boyle, p. 29—91.) Such a custom supposes many revolutions of freedom and servitude in the several Grecian republics ; who were willing to intimidate
INDEX EXPURGATORIUS. 565
date future tyrants, by arming and encouraging every private citizen to destroy them. Such was the conduct of the Athenians when they recovered their liberty in.512: and the honours which were paid to the memory of Harmodius and Aristogiton became a model for the rest of Greece. |
29. I am surprised that during that long and sharp controversy.concerning the Epistles of Phalaris, neither party should have paid the least attention to the time of the foundation of Agrigentum ; since the tyrant could have no existence before his city. This last was built, according to-the authentic accounts of Thucydides, (lib. vi. sub init.) 153 years later than Syracuse, founded, according to the Chronicle of Eusebius, in the second year of the XIVth Olympiad, (Ant. Ch. 735,) or, according to the more accurate computation, which Sir John . Marsham has formed upon the Arundel marbles, A. C. 769. (Canon. Chron. p. 490: 495.) These two epochas will give us 582, or 616: either of: them is sufficient to refute the earlier date, which Eusebius himself: has given us for the age of Phalaris ; and to reduce that cantroversy within narrower bounds.
30. The author of the Adventurer, No. 127, (Mr. Joseph Warton, concealed under the signature of Z.) concludes his ingenious parallel of the ancients and moderns by the following remark: “ That age will ‘ never again return; when a Pericles, after walking with Plato in a portico built by.Phidias, and painted by Apelles, might repair to hear a pleading of Demosthenes, or a tragedy of Sophocles.” It will never return, because it never existed. Pericles (who died in the fourth year of the LXXXIXth Olympiad, Ant. Ch. 429. Dio. Sic. L xii. 46.) was confessedly the patron of Phidias, and the contemporary of Sophocles ; but he could enjoy no very great pleasure in the conversation of Plato, who was born the same year that he himself died. (Diogenes Laertius in Platone, v. Stanley’s History of Philosophy, p. 154.) . The error is still more extraordinary with regard. to Apelles and Demosthenes, since both the painter and the orator survived Alexander the Great,
whose
566 INDEX EXPURGATORIUS,
whose death is above a century posterior to that of Pericles, (in 393.) And indeed though Athens was the seat of every liberal art, from the days of Themistocles to those of Demetrius Phalareus, yet no particular era will afford Mr. Warton the complete synchronism he seems to wish for; as tragedy was deprived of her famous triumvirate, before the arts of philosophy and eloquence had attained the perfection which they soon after received from the hands of Plato, Aristotle, and Demosthenes. -
81, Dr. Mosheim supposes that the Koran, coliected-by the succes. sors of Mahomet, and which is now extant, was different from the lav, which the Prophet gave the Arabians during his life-time, because in the former he appeals to:and extols the latter. This fact, or rather conjecture, is founded only on a reason evidently groundless. The 114 chapters which compose that extraordinary book were brought dowa by the angel Gabriel upon as many different occasions ; and it is no ways absurd that in his ‘later revelations, Mahomet should appeal to those he had already received, Mr. Sale, whom Dr. Mosheim in the same place (Ecclesiastical History, v..i. p..314) celebrates with reason as the ablest expositor of the Koran, would have informed him of that particularity. (See Preliminary Discourse to the English translation
the Koran, p. 63, 64.)
32. Dr. Mosheim represents the Norman pirates as absolutely devoid of any religion whatsoever. (Ecclesiastical History, vol. i. p. 432.) It is however certain that these pirates, who were the bravest and tlie noblest adventurers of the Scandinavian nations, worshipped the gods of their fathers, believed in the immortality of the soul, and received with religious faith the system of doctrine laid down in their Edda, which book M. Mallet (see Introduction à l’Histoire du Danemarc) has since introduced to the general acquaintance of the public, but which was even then accessible to the curiosity of a German scholar. Dr. Mosheim’s Proposition | is at once groundless and dangerous
33, Mr.
INDEX EXPURGATORIUS. 567
. 83 Mr. Christopher Smart, a new and very indifferent translator of Horace, (see Monthly Review, August, 1767,) conjectures, that the first lines of the Art of Poetry not only condemn an affected and vitiated taste in writing, but are particularly levelled against the Metamorphases of Ovid, which are so often infected by it. The conjecture is ingenious and supported by some appearances; but it is totally repugnant to Ovid's own chronology of his works. Horace died A. U. C. Cap. 745; Ovid was -banished A. U. C. 761. At that very time-he was writing the Metamorphoses, and as he was leaving Rome he attempted to commit them to the flames as a rude and imperfect work : paternal love prevailed: Ovid finished the poem at Tomi and sent it to a friend at Rome. with a short elegy which may be considered as a preface to it. (Trist..1.i. Eleg. 7.) It is therefore impossible that Horace eould satirize a work which still remained unfinished and in the author’s hands sixteen years after Horace’s death. Even in the Augustan age there was more than one poet who had oceasion for the critic’s advice, and the satirist’s correction.
maman
84 M.-de Buffon speaks of complete vessels being found in the heart of mountains at a great distance from the sea. A fact, indeed, of a very extraordinary nature, which shews us a lively glimpse. of a ‘former world, and of arts ‘cultivated by. men who inhabited some country now everwhelmed by the sea, in ages when the modern -Alps were. buried under the waters; it ought therefore to be supported by some better authority than Gordon’s Geographical Grammar, or an obscure commentater of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. It is often to be lamented that natural philosophers are too little acquainted with history or the laws , of historical evidence. Their ignorance of them sometimes deprives them of the knowledge of facts highly essential to their systems, and at other times deceives them by fables in the dress of truth. Facts either moral or natural are related by men. The value of the evidence must be determined by the character.of the witness, and yet all M. de Bufffon’s witnesses appear levelled by an undiscriminated equality. (Buffon, Histoire Naturelle, tom, i. ip. 592.) | 7
