History of Joseph Smith, the Prophet and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Joseph F. Smith

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СКАЧАТЬ instantly be washed away in the waters of regeneration; and the abuse of religion dangerously undermined the foundations of moral virtue.¹¹¹

      Such, then, was the first Christian emperor. He uplifted "Christianity" from the condition of a persecuted religion, and made it the state religion of Rome; and also provided means for its wider acceptance. If for this it shall be claimed, as it is, that much in his evil life should be overlooked, it would still be pertinent to ask whether his acts in connection with Christianity did not debase rather than exalt it; and if his provisions for its wider acceptation did not tend rather to the corruption of what remained true in the Christianity then extant, than to the establishment of true religion.

      Christianity made a Persecuting Religion.

      The edict of Milan, by which was intended no more than the establishment of religious liberty in the empire, and which was issued in 313 A. D., by Constantine and his colleague, Licinius, was well enough. Freedom to teach and practice the truth is all the Christian church could ask or expect. Had he stopped here, his action in this particular would have met with universal applause. But he went beyond this. He not only protected the Christians by his laws, but prohibited by express edicts the free exercise of religion to the pagans. His proscriptions were mild at first, going no further than to prohibit soothsaying and divination in private houses or anywhere in secret. Later, however, if we may believe the words of Eusebius, he placed the pagan religion under the ban of the laws. Eusebius says:

      The emperor proceeded to act with great vigor, gave the government of the provinces chiefly to Christians, and when any Gentiles were made governors they were prohibited to sacrifice. Which law comprehended not only presidents of provinces but also higher officers, and even the praetorian praefects. If they were Christians, they were required to act according to their principles. If they were otherwise disposed, still the practice of idolatrous rites were forbidden. * * * * And soon after that were two laws published, at one and the same time, one prohibiting the detestable rites of idolatry hitherto practiced in cities and country places; and that for the future none should erect statues to the gods, nor perform the vain arts of divination, nor offer up any sacrifices. The other law was for enlarging Christian oratories and churches, or for rebuilding them more grand and splendid.¹¹²

      When contrasting the course of the first Christian emperor with the pagan emperors, Eusebius says, "They commanded the temples to be magnificently adorned; he demolished them to the foundation, especially such as were most respected by superstitious people."¹¹³ Later he expressly says that throughout the whole Roman empire, the doors of idolatry were shut to the commonalty and to the soldiery, and that "every kind of sacrifice was prohibited." Again he says, that there were several laws published for these purposes, forbidding sacrifices, divinations, raising statues, and the secret mysteries or rites of initiation. And he says further, that "in Egypt a sort of priesthood, consecrated to the honor of the Nile, was entirely suppressed."¹¹⁴ I am not unmindful that some respectable authorities question if Constantine really departed from the policy of toleration announced in his edict of Milan; and that even Gibbon is inclined to believe in his toleration of paganism. The statement here made by Eusebius, the contemporary and biographer of Constantine, however, together with reference to the edicts of suppression quoted by his son Constans in the succeeding reign, and which is quoted by Lardner,¹¹⁵ establishes beyond question the policy of intolerance of Constantine toward paganism. Especially when what Eusebius has said is supplemented by the fact that the emperor destroyed a number of heathen temples, and peremptorily ordered the closing of the others. Among the heathen temples destroyed was one at Aegae, in Cilicia, erected to Aesculapius, celebrated for the number of sick that had been healed there, and held in high esteem by men of the better class among the pagans and philosophers. It is said that by its destruction and the public exhibition of certain images of the gods, many tricks of the priests were exposed and became objects of sport to the populace.¹¹⁶ But while this may have been the conduct of some insincere pagans, those who remained heathens, as LeClerc has well said, "were no doubt extremely shocked at the manner in which the statues of their gods were treated; and could not consider the Christians as men of moderation. For, in short, those statues were as dear to them, as anything, the most sacred, could be to the Christians."¹¹⁷ Eusebius taunted the philosophers about the destruction of the temple, without any interference on the part of the god to whom it had been erected, apparently all unmindful of the fact that just such taunts had been hurled at the Christian martyrs in the days that the "kingdom of God suffered violence, and the violent took it by force." "Had not Eusebius," remarked Lardner, "often heard with his own ears, and read in the history of ancient martyrs, the insults and triumphs of the heathens over the Christians, that they professed themselves the worshipers of the great and only true God, and yet everybody, that pleased, was able to molest and destroy them, as he saw good?"¹¹⁸

      The zeal of Christian writers has done all in its power to excuse or palliate the conduct of Constantine in his acts for the suppression of the pagan religion and worship; but after all is said by his apologists that can be said; after every allowance is conceded for the times in which he lived, and the previous conduct of the pagans through two centuries of violence towards the Christians, the fact remains that the first Christian emperor did by his edicts put the ancient religion of the empire under the ban of the law, and by acts of violence destroyed some of its temples and closed the rest by imperial decree, that the pagan gods might not be worshiped; and this, doubtless, with the approval—and it would not be difficult to believe, under all the circumstances, at the suggestion—of Christian bishops who thronged his court. On the foundation of intolerance thus laid by him, others hastened to build. In the succeeding reign, among the first laws enacted was this one against pagan sacrifices:

      Let superstition cease; let the madness of sacrificing he abolished. For whoever shall presume contrary to the constitution of our father, a prince of blessed memory, and contrary to this command of our clemency, to offer sacrifices, let a proper and convenient punishment be inflicted, and execution presently done upon him.¹¹⁹

      This edict was supplemented a few years later¹²⁰ by the following edict:

      It is our pleasure that in all places and in all cities, the temples be immediately shut, and carefully guarded that none may have the power of offending, It is likewise our pleasure, that all our subjects should abstain from sacrifices. If any one should be guilty of such an act, let him feel the sword of vengeance; and after his execution, let his property be confiscated to the public use. We denounce the same penalties against the governors of the provinces, if they neglect to punish the criminals.¹²¹

      It is not necessary to pursue the subject much further. It will be sufficient to say that during the fourth century, by following the policy of suppression inaugurated by this first Christian emperor, Christianity was changed from a persecuted to a persecuting religion. Without restraint from the ecclesiastical authorities, the Christian emperors issued edicts against the pagan religion, proscribed its followers, destroyed its temples, and confiscated its property to the uses of the rival religion. Even Neander, speaking of this revolution, and constrained as he is to say all that he can for the honor of the Christian Church, is compelled to admit that "the relation of things had become reversed. As in former times the observance of the pagan ceremonies, the religion of the state, had appeared in the light of a civil duty, and the profession of Christianity in that of a crime against the state; so now it was the case, not indeed that the outward profession of Christianity was commanded as a universal civil duty, for against this the spirit of Christianity too earnestly remonstrated; but that the exercise of the pagan religion was made politically dangerous."¹²² In the pages of this eminent Christian historian one may read that before the close of the century which witnessed the elevation of Christianity to the dignity of the state religion of the empire, wild troops of Christian monks were undertaking campaigns, especially in the country, for the destruction of the heathen temples in which sacrifices were alleged to have been performed; of bishops who not only superintended the destruction of heathen temples at the head of bands of soldiers and gladiators, but paraded through the streets of the cities the symbols СКАЧАТЬ