The History of Christianity - John S. C. Abbott (bookstand for reading .txt) 📗

Caligula was one of the vilest of the vile. He ingratiated himself in the favor of the tyrant by pandering to all his wickedness, and by the most sycophantic adulation. At length, the death-hour of Tiberius tolled. Remorse, with scorpion-lashes, hovered over his dying-bed. He resorted to every expedient to repel reflection, and to close his eyes against the approach of the king of terrors. In pursuit of health, he had left Capreæ, and was at Misenum, near Naples. Caligula had, with many other courtiers, accompanied him.

The wretched emperor, reclining upon his couch, was taken with a fainting-fit. His physician, feeling his pulse, said, “His life is ebbing fast.” All thought him dying. The courtiers abandoned the powerless monarch, who had no longer any favors to grant, and gathered tumultuously with their congratulations around Caligula, declaring him to be emperor. In the midst of their hilarity, Tiberius, to the consternation of all, revived; but he was weak and helpless, and could be easily put out of the way. A few of the courtiers entered his chamber, and pressed a pillow upon his face; and, after a brief and feeble struggle, the smothered king lay still in death. Caligula, who was, if possible, still more infamous than Tiberius, was now decorated with the imperial purple.

It is stated by Justin and other early writers, that Pontius Pilate, after the crucifixion of Christ, wrote to the Emperor Tiberius, giving an account of his death, his resurrection, and of the miracles which he had performed; and that Tiberius proposed to the Roman senate that Jesus should be recognized as one of the gods, and that his statue should be placed in a niche in one of the temples of paganism. The senate, for some unexplained reason, did not accede to this request.

Caligula, elated by his accession to sovereign power, surrendered himself to the uncontrolled dominion of lusts and passions, which had already been rendered furious and untamable by long years of indulgence. It is difficult to account for the cruel and senseless atrocities perpetrated by this monster upon any other supposition than that he was a madman, or that fiends had taken possession of his person.

He erected a temple of gold; placed in it a statue of himself, which he ordered to be dressed every day in clothes similar to those which he should that day wear; and, declaring himself to be a god, constrained his subjects to worship his statue with divine honors. The degraded populace, without religion, without any moral principle, hesitated not to bow in adoration before this image of the most contemptible of men. The most rare delicacies which money could purchase were offered in sacrifice at his shrine. His wife, and even his horse, were ordained as priests to officiate in his temple. The insane luxury which he displayed surpassed all that had hitherto been known. His baths were composed of the most costly liquids. His table service was of solid gold. Even in his sauces he had jewels dissolved, that they might be more costly. He built a stable of marble for his favorite horse, and fed him with gilded oats from a manger of ivory.

The cruelty of this idiotic monster was equal to his folly. Senators, untried, uncondemned, were wantonly murdered at his bidding. His victims were thrown into the dens of half-famished lions and tigers to be devoured alive. It was one of the entertainments of his meals to place persons upon the rack, that he might be amused by their shrieks, and entertained by their convulsions.

The guilty, cowardly wretch was ever trembling in every nerve in apprehension of assassination. Suspecting one of the most beautiful women of his court of being engaged in a conspiracy against him, he placed her upon the rack to enforce confession, and dislocated every joint in her body. Her shrieks and mutilation roused the courtiers to the energies of despair. Cherea, a Roman senator, approached the emperor, and, plunging a dagger into his heart, exclaimed, “Tyrant, think of this!”

Caligula fell dead. He was but twenty-nine years of age, and had reigned but four years. To such men, how awful the declaration of Christianity!—“All that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth,—they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.”

Anarchy succeeded. As some drunken Roman soldiers were rioting through the palace, they found a half-crazed old man named Claudius, an uncle of Caligula, hidden behind a pile of lumber in the garret. They seized him, and partly in jest, and partly in earnest, proclaimed him emperor. The army took up the joke, and ratified the choice. In solid phalanx, with banners, shoutings, and bugle-peals, they presented him to the trembling senate, and compelled his enthronement.

In Claudius, the worst of conceivable bad elements were combined: he united the stupidity of the idiot with the ferocity of the demon. He commenced his reign about the forty-sixth year of the Christian era. Britain, then inhabited by barbaric tribes, invited invasion. Claudius sent an army to march through Gaul, and, crossing the channel, to plant the banners of the empire on those distant shores. Many and bloody were the battles; but the Roman legions were triumphant.

Claudius was so elated with the conquest, that he in person repaired to Britain to receive the homage of the savage inhabitants of the conquered isle. Still the conquest was very imperfect. But a few of the tribes had been vanquished. Large portions of the island still remained under the sway of their bold and indomitable chieftains. Thirty battles were subsequently fought, and several years of incessant conflict passed, before Britain was fairly reduced to the condition of a Roman province.

Messalina, the wife of Claudius, has attained the unenviable notoriety of having been the worst, the most shameless woman earth has ever known. The renown of her profligacy has survived the lapse of eighteen centuries. The story of her life can now never be told: modern civilization would not endure the recital. The ladies of her court were compelled, under penalty of torture and death, publicly to practise the same enormities in which she rioted. Her brutal husband was utterly regardless of the infamy of her life. At length, becoming weary of her, he connived with another for her assassination.

Claudius, having murdered Messalina, married Agrippina. She had already given birth to the monster Nero. For a short time, she ruled her imbecile husband with a rod of iron. Three wives had preceded her. One day, Claudius, in his cups, imprudently declared that it was his fate to be tormented with bad wives, and to be their executioner. Agrippina weighed the words. Claudius loved mushrooms. Agrippina prepared for him a delicious dish, sprinkled poison upon it, and with her own loving hands presented it to her spouse. She had the pleasure of seeing him fall and die in convulsions at her feet.

Such was life in the palaces of Rome at the time of the apostles. Such was the world that Jesus came to redeem. The question is sometimes asked, whether humanity is advancing or retrograding in moral character. No one familiar with the history of past ages will ask that question. Manifold as are the evils in many of the courts of Europe at the present time, most of them are as far in advance of ancient Rome, in all that constitutes integrity and virtue, as is the most refined Christian family in advance of the most godless and degraded.

Nero, a lad of seventeen, whom Claudius had adopted as his heir, succeeded to the throne. It is said, that, at the commencement of his reign, he gave indications of a humane spirit; but this period was so short as scarcely to deserve notice. The character and career of Nero were such, that, from that day to this, the ears of mankind have tingled with the recital of the outrages he inflicted upon humanity. The sceptre of the world was placed in the hands of this boy in the year of our Lord 54. The knowledge of the doctrines of Jesus had already reached Rome. Paul was there, though in chains, boldly preaching the religion of Jesus of Nazareth.

“There is one God, and one only,” said Jesus; “and all idols are vanity and a lie.”

“All mankind are brethren,” said Jesus; “and God commands that every man should love his brother as himself.”

“The divine benediction,” said Jesus, “rests upon the lowly in spirit, the pure in heart; upon the peacemakers; upon those who visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and who practise every thing that is true and lovely and of good report. Repent of sin, seek pardon through faith in a Saviour who has died to atone for your sins, commence a life of devotion to the glory of God and to the welfare of your brother-man, and death shall introduce you to realms of honor, glory, and immortality.”

“God is no respecter of persons,” said Jesus. “The monarch and the slave stand alike at his tribunal. The wicked, and those who fear not God, shall be cast into hell. The smoke of their torment ascendeth for ever and ever.”

These offers of salvation to all who would repent and commence the Christlike life, these good news and glad tidings, were joyfully accepted by hundreds and by thousands of the poor and the oppressed and the world-weary; but the denunciations of divine wrath upon those who, by their enormities, were converting this world into a realm of woe, fell appallingly upon the ears of proud and unrelenting oppressors.

The teachings of Jesus were thus hateful to Nero. He hated that religion which condemned him. He hated those who preached it. He deliberately determined to blot out that religion from the world; to silence in death every tongue that proclaimed it. It was apparently an easy task to do this. Nero was monarch of the world. A resistless army moved unquestioning at his bidding. All power was apparently in his hands. He was a man, for the times, highly educated. He was endowed with intellectual shrewdness as well as physical energy, and could bring public opinion to bear against the Christians, while he assailed them with the axe of the headsman and the flames of martyrdom.

The Christians were few and feeble. To turn against them popular indignation, atrocious libels were fabricated. The Christians were in the habit of taking their infants to church to be baptized. Pagan slanderers affirmed that they were taken there to be offered in bloody sacrifice. The Christians often met to celebrate the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper: they ate of that bread which represented the body of Jesus broken for us; they drank of that wine emblematic of the blood of Jesus, shed for our sins. The pagans declared that the Christians were cannibals; that they secretly met in midnight feasts, and, having murdered a man, ate his flesh, and drank his blood.

Thus a terrible prejudice was created against the Christians. Many were deceived by these cruel slanders who would possibly have joined the disciples had they known the truth. Thus shrewdly Nero prepared the public mind for the outrages he was about to inflict upon those whom he had doomed to destruction. Even Tacitus, the renowned Roman historian, a man of much candor, was manifestly under the influence of these gross libels. In the following terms, he describes the first persecution of the Christians at Rome by Nero:—

“Christ, the founder of that name, was put to death as a criminal by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judæa, in the reign of Tiberius. But the pernicious superstition, repressed for a time, broke out again, not only through Judæa, where the mischief originated, but through the city of Rome also, whither all things