Ten Great Religions by James Freeman Clarke

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Gibbon says that "the admirable work of Cicero,'De Natura Deorum,' is the
best clew we have to guide us through this dark abyss" (the moral and
religious teachings of the philosophers).[295] After, in the first two
books, the arguments for the existence and providence of the gods have
been set forth and denied, by Velleius the Epicurean, Cotta the
academician, and Balbus the Stoic; in the third book, Cotta, the head of
the priesthood, the Pontifex Maximus, proceeds to refute the stoical
opinion that there are gods who govern the universe and provide for the
welfare of mankind. To be sure, he says, as Pontifex, he of course
believes in the gods, but he feels free as a philosopher to deny their
existence. "I believe in the gods," says he, "on the authority and
tradition of our ancestors; but if we reason, I shall reason against their
existence." "Of course," he says, "I believe in divination, as I have
always been taught to do. But who knows whence it comes? As to the voice
of the Fauns, I never heard it; and I do not know what a Faun is. You say
that the regular course of nature proves the existence of some ordering
power. But what more regular than a tertian or quartan fever? The world
subsists by the power of nature." Cotta goes on to criticise the Roman
pantheon, ridiculing the idea of such gods as "Love, Deceit, Fear, Labor,
Envy, Old Age, Death, Darkness, Misery, Lamentation, Favor, Fraud,
Obstinacy," etc. He shows that there are many gods of the same name;
several Jupiters, Vulcans, Apollos, and Venuses. He then denies
providence, by showing that the wicked succeed and the good are
unfortunate. Finally, all was left in doubt, and the dialogue ends with a
tone of triumphant uncertainty. This was Cicero's contribution to
theology; and Cicero was far more religious than most men of his period.

Many writers, and more recently Merivale,[296] have referred to the
remarkable debate which took place in the Roman Senate, on the occasion of
Catiline's conspiracy. Caesar, at that time chief pontiff, the highest
religious authority in the state, gave his opinion against putting the
conspirators to death; for death, says he, "is the end of all suffering.
After death there is neither pain nor pleasure (_ultra neque curae, neque
gaudii locum_)." Cato, the Stoic, remarked that Caesar had spoken well
concerning life and death. "I take it," says he, "that he regards as false
what we are told about the sufferings of the wicked hereafter," but does
not object to that statement. These speeches are reported by Sallust, and
are confirmed by Cicero's fourth Catiline Oration. The remarkable fact is,
not that such things were said, but that they were heard with total
indifference. No one seemed to think it was of any consequence one way or
the other. Suppose that when the question of the execution of Charles I.
was before Parliament, it had been opposed by the Archbishop of Canterbury
(had he been there) on the ground that after death all pain and pleasure
ceased. The absurdity of the supposition shows the different position of
the human mind at the two epochs.

In fact, an impassable gulf yawned between the old Roman religion and
modern Roman thought. It was out of the question for an educated Roman,
who read Plato and Zeno, who listened to Cicero and Hortensius, to believe
in Janus and the Penates. "All very well for the people," said they. "The
people must be kept in order by these superstitions."[297] But the secret
could not be kept. Sincere men, like Lucretius, who saw all the evil of
these superstitions, and who had no strong religious sense, _would_ speak
out, and proclaim _all_ religion to be priestcraft and an unmitigated
evil. The poem of Lucretius, "De Rerum Natura," declares faith in the gods
to have been the curse of the human race, and immortality to be a silly
delusion. He denies the gods, providence, the human soul, and any moral
purpose in the universe. But as religion is an instinct, which will break
out in some form, and when expelled from the soul returns in disguise,
Lucretius, denying all the gods, pours out a lovely hymn to Venus, goddess
of beauty and love.

The last philosophic protest, in behalf of a pure and authoritative faith,
came from the Stoics. The names of Seneca, Epictetus, and Aurelius
Antoninus gave dignity, if they could not bring safety, to the declining
religion of Rome.

Seneca, indeed, was inferior to the other two in personal character, and
was more of a rhetorician than a philosopher. But noble thoughts occur in
his writings. "A sacred spirit sits in every heart," he says, "and treats
us as we treat it." He opposed idolatry, he condemned animal sacrifices.
The moral element is very marked in his brilliant pages. Philosophy, he
says, is an effort to be wise and good.[298] Physical studies he condemns
as useless.[299] Goodness is that which harmonizes with the natural
movements of the soul.[300] God and matter are the two principles of all
being; God is the active principle, matter the passive. God is spirit, and
all souls are part of this spirit.[301] Reason is the bond which unites
God and other souls, and so God dwells in all souls.[302]

One of the best sayings of Epictetus is that "the wise man does not merely
know by tradition and hearsay that Jupiter is the father of gods and men;
but is inwardly convinced of it in his soul, and therefore cannot help
acting and feeling according to this conviction."[303]

Epictetus declared that the philosopher could have no will but that of the
deity; he never blames fate or fortune, for he knows that no real evil can
befall the just man. The life of Epictetus was as true as his thoughts
were noble, but he had fallen on an evil age, which needed for its reform,
not a new philosophy, but a new inspiration of divine life. This steady
current downward darkened the pure soul of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, of
whom Niebuhr says,[304] "If there is any sublime human virtue, it is his."
He adds: "He was certainly the noblest character of his time; and I know
no other man who combined such unaffected kindness, mildness, and humility
with such conscientiousness and severity towards himself." "If there is
anywhere an expression of virtue, it is in the heavenly features of M.
Aurelius. His 'Meditations' are a golden book, though there are things in
it which cannot be read without deep grief, for there we find this purest
of men without happiness." Though absolute monarch of the Empire, and rich
in the universal love of his people, he was not powerful enough to resist
the steady tendency to decay in society. Nor did he know that the power
that was to renew the life of the world was already present in
Christianity. He himself was in soul almost a Christian, though he did not
know it, and though the Christian element of faith and hope was wanting.
But he expressed a thought worthy of the Gospel, when he said: "The man of
disciplined mind reverently bids Nature, who bestows all things and
resumes them again to herself, 'Give what thou wilt, and take what thou
wilt.'"[305]

Although we have seen that Seneca speaks of a sacred, spirit which dwells
in us, other passages in his works (quoted by Zeller) show that he was,
like other Stoics, a pantheist, and meant the soul of the world. He says
(Nat. Qu., II. 45, and Prolog. 13): "Will you call God the world? You may
do so without mistake. For he is all that you see around you." "What is
God? The mind of the universe. What is God? All that you see, and all that
you do not see."[306]

It was not philosophy which destroyed religion in Rome. Philosophy, no
doubt, weakened faith in the national gods, and made the national worship
seem absurd. But it was the general tendency downward; it was the loss of
the old Roman simplicity and purity; it was the curse of Caesarism, which,
destroying all other human life, destroyed also the life of religion. What
it came to at last, in well-endowed minds, may be seen in this extract
from the elder Pliny:--

"All religion is the offspring of necessity, weakness, and fear. _What_
God is, if in truth he be anything distinct from the world, it is
beyond the compass of man's understanding to know. But it is a foolish
delusion, which has sprung from human weakness and human pride, to
imagine that such an infinite spirit would concern himself with the
petty affairs of men. It is difficult to say, whether it might not be
better for men to be wholly without religion, than to have one of this
kind, which is a reproach to its object. The vanity of man, and his
insatiable longing after existence, have led him also to dream of a
life after death. A being full of contradictions, he is the most
wretched of creatures; since the other creatures have no wants
transcending the bounds of their nature. Man is full of desires and
wants that reach to infinity, and can never be satisfied. His nature is
a lie, uniting the greatest poverty with the greatest pride. Among
these so great evils, the best thing God has bestowed on man is the
power to take his own life."[307]

The system of the Stoics was exactly adapted to the Roman character; but,
naturally, it exaggerated its faults instead of correcting them. It
supplanted all other systems in the esteem of leading minds; but the
narrowness of the Roman intellect reacted on the philosophy, and made that
much more narrow than it was in the Greek thought. It became simple
ethics, omitting both the physical and metaphysical side.

Turning to literature, we find in Horace a gay epicureanism, which always
says: "Enjoy this life, for it will be soon over, and after death there is
nothing left for us." Virgil tells us that those are happy who know the
causes of things, and so escape the terrors of Acheron. The serious
Tacitus, a man always in earnest, a penetrating mind, is by Bunsen called
"the last Roman prophet, but a prophet of death and judgment. He saw that
Rome hastened to ruin, and that Caesarism was an unmixed evil, but an evil
not to be remedied."[308] He declares that the gods had to mingle in Roman
affairs as protectors; they now appeared only for vengeance.[309] Tacitus
in one passage speaks of human freedom as superior to fate,[310] but in
another expresses his uncertainty on the whole question.[311] Equally
uncertain was he concerning the future life, though inclined to believe
that the soul is not extinguished with the body.[312]

But the tone of the sepulchral monuments of that period is not so hopeful.
Here are some which are quoted by Doellinger,[313] from Muratori and
Fabretti: "Reader, enjoy thy life; for, after death, there is neither
laughter nor play, nor any kind of enjoyment." "Friend, I advise thee to
mix a goblet of wine and drink, crowning thy head with flowers. Earth and
fire consume all that remains at death." "Pilgrim, stop and listen. In
Hades is no boat and no Charon; no Eacus and no Cerberus. Once dead, we
are all alike." Another says: "Hold all a mockery, reader; nothing is our
own."

* * * * *

So ended the Roman religion; in superstition among the ignorant, in
unbelief among the wise. It was time that something should come to renew
hope. This was the gift which the Gospel brought to the Romans,--hope for
time, hope beyond time. This was the prayer for the Romans of the Apostle
Paul: "Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing,
that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost."[314] A
remarkable fact, that a Jewish writer should exhort Romans to hope and
courage!

Sec. 5. Relation of the Roman Religion to Christianity.

The idea of Rome is law, that of Christianity is love. In Roman worship
law took the form of iron rules; in Roman theology it appeared as a stern
fate; in both as a slavery. Christianity came as freedom, in a worship
free from forms, in a view of God which left freedom to man. Christianity
came to the Roman world, not as a new theory, but as a new life. As,
during the early spring, the power of the returning sun penetrates the
soil, silently touching the springs of life; so Christianity during two
hundred years moved silently in the heart of Roman society, creating a new
faith, hope, and love. And as, at last, in the spring the grass shoots,
the buds open, the leaves appear, the flowers bloom; so, at last,
Christianity, long working in silence and shadow, suddenly became
apparent, and showed that it had been transforming the whole tone and
temper of Roman civilization.

But wherever there is action there is also reaction, and no power or force
can wholly escape this law. So Roman thought, acted on by Christianity,
reacted and modified in many respects the Gospel. Not always in a bad way,
sometimes it helped its developments. For the Providence which made the
Gospel for the Romans made the Romans for the Gospel.

The great legacy bequeathed to mankind by ancient Rome was law. Other
nations, it is true, had codes of law, like the Institutes of Manu in
India, or the jurisprudence of Solon and the enactments of Lycurgus. But
Roman law from the beginning was sanctified by the conviction that it was
founded on justice, and not merely on expediency or prudence. In
submitting to the laws, even when they were cruel and oppressive, the
Roman was obeying, not force, but conscience. The view which Plato gave as
an ideal in Crito was realized in Roman society from the first. Consider
the cruel enactments which made the debtors the slaves of the creditor,
and the fact that when the plebeians were ground to the earth by that
oppression, they did not attempt to resist the law, but in their despair
fled from their homes, beyond the jurisdiction of Rome, to establish a new
city where these enactments could not reach them. Only when the laws are
thus enforced by the public conscience as something sacred, does society
become possible; and this sense of the divinity which hedges a code of
laws has been transmitted from ancient Rome into the civilization of
Europe.

Cicero, in his admirable treatise on the laws, which unfortunately we have
in an imperfect condition, devotes the whole of the first book to
establishing eternal justice as the basis of all jurisprudence. No better
text-book could have been found for the defence of what was called "the
higher law," in the great American antislavery struggle, than this work of
Cicero. "Let us establish," he says, "the principles of justice on that
supreme law which has existed from all ages before any legislative
enactments were written, or any political governments formed." "Among all
questions, there is none more important to understand than this, _that man
is born for justice_; and that law and equity have not been established by
opinion, but by nature." "It is an absurd extravagance in some
philosophers to assert that all things are necessarily just which are
established by the laws and institutions of nations." "Justice does not
consist in submission to written laws." "If the will of the people, the
decrees of the senate, the decisions of magistrates, were sufficient to
establish rights, then it might become right to rob, to commit adultery,
to forge wills, if this was sanctioned by the votes or decrees of the
majority." "The sum of all is, that what is right should be sought for its
own sake, because it is right, and not because it is enacted."

Law appears from the very beginnings of the Roman state. The oldest
traditions make Romulus, Numa, and Servius to be legislators. From that
time, after the expulsion of the Tarquins, Rome was governed by laws. Even
the despotism of the Caesars did not interfere with the general
administration of the laws in civil affairs; for the one-man power, though
it may corrupt and degrade a state, does not immediately and directly
affect many persons in their private lives. Law continued to rule in
common affairs, and this legacy of a society organized by law was the gift
of Rome to modern Europe. How great a blessing it has been may be seen by
comparing the worst Christian government with the best of the despotic
governments of Asia. Mohammedan society is ruled by a hierarchy of
tyranny, each little tyrant being in turn the victim of the one above him.

The feudal system, introduced by the Teutonic races, attempted to organize
Europe on the basis of military despotism; but Roman law was too strong
for feudal law, and happily for mankind overcame it and at last expelled
it.

Christianity, in its ready hospitality for all the truth and good which it
encounters, accepted Roman jurisprudence and gave to it a new lease of
life.[315] Christian emperors and Christian lawyers codified the long line
of decrees and enactments reaching back to the Twelve Tables, and
established them as the laws of the Christian world. But the spirit of
Roman law acted on Christianity in a more subtle manner. It reproduced the
organic character of the Roman state in the Western Latin Church, and it
reproduced the soul of Roman law in the Western Latin theology.

It has not always been sufficiently considered how much the Latin Church
was a reproduction, on a higher plane, of the old Roman Commonwealth. The
resemblance between the Roman Catholic ceremonies and those of Pagan Rome
has been often noticed. The Roman Catholic Church has borrowed from
Paganism saints' days, incense, lustrations, consecrations of sacred
places, votive-offerings, relics; winking, nodding, sweating, and bleeding
images; holy water, vestments, etc. But the Church of Rome itself, in its
central idea of authority, is a reproduction of the Roman state religion,
which was a part of the Roman state. The Eastern churches were sacerdotal
and religious; the Church of Rome added to these elements that of an
organized political authority. It was the resurrection of Rome,--Roman
ideas rising into a higher life. The Roman Catholic Church, at first an
aristocratic republic, like the Roman state, afterwards became, like the
Roman state, a disguised despotism. The Papal Church is therefore a legacy
of ancient Rome.[316]

And just as the Roman state was first a help and then a hindrance to the
progress of humanity, so it has been with the Roman Catholic Church.
Ancient Rome gradually bound together into a vast political unity the
divided tribes and states of Europe, and so infused into them the
civilization which she had developed or received. And so the Papal Church
united Europe again, and once more permeated it with the elements of law,
of order, of Christian faith. All intelligent Protestants admit the good
done in this way by the mediaeval church.

For example, Milman[317] says, speaking of Gregory the Great and his work,
that it was necessary that there should be some central power like the
Papacy to resist the dissolution of society at the downfall of the Roman
Empire. "The life and death of Christianity" depended, he says, "on the
rise of such a power." "It is impossible to conceive what had been the
confusion, the lawlessness, the chaotic state of the Middle Ages, without
the mediaeval Papacy."

The whole history of Rome had infused into the minds of Western nations a
conviction of the importance of centralization in order to union. From
Rome, as a centre, had proceeded government, law, civilization.
Christianity therefore seemed to need a like centre, in order to retain
its unity. Hence the supremacy early yielded to the Bishop of Rome. His
primacy was accepted, because it was useful. The Papal Church would never
have existed, if Rome and its organizing ideas had not existed before
Christianity was born.

In like manner the ideas developed in the Roman mind determined the course
of Western theology, as differing from that of the East. It is well known
that Eastern theological speculation was occupied with the nature of God
and the person of Christ, but that Western theology discussed sin and
salvation. Mr. Maine, in his work on "Ancient Law," considers this
difference to have been occasioned by habits of thought produced by Roman
jurisprudence. I quote his language at some length:--

"What has to be determined is whether jurisprudence has ever served as the
medium through which theological principles have been viewed; whether, by
supplying a peculiar language, a peculiar mode of reasoning, and a
peculiar solution of many of the problems of life, it has ever opened new
channels in which theological speculation could flow out and expand
itself."

"On all questions," continues Mr. Maine, quoting Dean Milman, "which
concerned the person of Christ and the nature of the Trinity, the Western
world accepted passively the dogmatic system of the East." "But as soon as
the Latin-speaking empire began to live an intellectual life of its own,
its deference to the East was at once exchanged for the agitation of a
number of questions entirely foreign to Eastern speculation." "The nature
of sin and its transmission by inheritance, the debt owed by man and its
vicarious satisfaction, and like theological problems, relating not to the
divinity but to human nature, immediately began to be agitated." "I
affirm," says Mr. Maine, "without hesitation, that the difference between
the two theological systems is accounted for by the fact that, in passing
from the East to the West, theological speculation had passed from a
climate of Greek metaphysics to a climate of Roman law. For some centuries
before these controversies rose into overwhelming importance, all the
intellectual activity of the Western Romans had been expended on
jurisprudence exclusively. They had been occupied in applying a peculiar
set of principles to all combinations in which the circumstances of life
are capable of being arranged. No foreign pursuit or taste called off
their attention from this engrossing occupation, and for carrying it on
they possessed a vocabulary as accurate as it was copious, a strict method
of reasoning, a stock of general propositions on conduct more or less
verified by experience, and a rigid moral philosophy. It was impossible
that they should not select from the questions indicated by the Christian
records those which had some affinity with the order of speculations to
which they were accustomed, and that their manner of dealing with them
should not borrow something from their forensic habits. Almost every one
who has knowledge enough of Roman law to appreciate the Roman penal
system, the Roman theory of the obligations established by contract or
delict, the Roman view of debts, etc., the Roman notion of the continuance
of individual existence by universal succession, may be trusted to say
whence arose the frame of mind to which the problems of Western theology
proved so congenial, whence came the phraseology in which these problems
were stated, and whence the description of reasoning employed in their
solution." "As soon as they (the Western Church) ceased to sit at the feet
of the Greeks and began to ponder out a theology of their own, the
theology proved to be permeated with forensic ideas and couched in a
forensic phraseology. It is certain that this substratum of law in Western
theology lies exceedingly deep."[318]

The theory of the atonement, developed by the scholastic writers,
illustrates this view. In the East, for a thousand years, the atoning work
of Christ had been viewed mainly as redemption, as a ransom paid to
obtain the freedom of mankind, enslaved by the Devil in consequence of
their sins. It was not a legal theory, or one based on notions of
jurisprudence, but it was founded on warlike notions. Men were captives
taken in war, and, like all captives in those times, destined to slavery.
Their captor was Satan, and the ransom must be paid to him, as he held
them prisoners by the law of battle. Now as Christ had committed no sin,
the Devil had no just power over him; in putting Christ to death he had
lost his rights over his other captives, and Christ could justly claim
their freedom as a compensation for this injury. Christ, therefore,
strictly and literally, according to the ancient view, "gave his life a
ransom for many."

But the mind of Anselm, educated by notions derived from Roman
jurisprudence, substituted for this original theory of the atonement one
based upon legal ideas. All, in this theory, turns on the law of debt and
penalty. Sin he defines as "not paying to God what we owe him."[319] But
we owe God constant and entire obedience, and every sin deserves either
penalty or satisfaction. We are unable to make it good, for at every
moment we owe God all that we can do. Christ, as God-man, can satisfy God
for our omissions; his death, as offered freely, when he did not deserve
death on account of any sin of his own, is sufficient satisfaction. It
will easily be seen how entirely this argument has substituted a legal
basis for the atonement in place of the old warlike foundation.

This, therefore, has been the legacy of ancient Rome to Christianity:
firstly, the organization of the Latin Church; secondly, the scholastic
theology, founded on notions of jurisprudence introduced into man's
relations to God. In turn, Christianity has bestowed on Western Europe
what the old Romans never knew,--a religion of love and inspiration. In
place of the hard and cold Roman life, modern Europe has sentiment and
heart united with thought and force. With Roman strength it has joined a
Christian tenderness, romance, and personal freedom. Humanity now is
greater than the social organization; the state, according to our view, is
made for man, not man for the state. We are outgrowing the hard and dry
theology which we have inherited from Roman law through the scholastic
teachers; but we shall not outgrow our inheritance from Rome of unity in
the Church, definite thought in our theology, and society organized by
law.