Sidor som bilder
PDF
ePub

arose: We will die with him." He was carried to a neighbouring field to be beheaded. Before he received the fatal stroke, he directed that twenty-five pieces of gold should be bestowed on his executioner. His body was given to his sorrowing friends, who conveyed it to the Christian burial-place, with a long procession by torch-light. The magistrate who condemned him died a few days after; and though he had long been in ill health, Christians regarded it as a signal punishment from God for the death of their holy bishop. This martyrdom occurred in the year two hundred and fifty-eight. Cyprian left several works, which are still in existence.

OPINIONS AND CUSTOMS OF THE EARLY FATHERS.

From this brief sketch of a few of the early Fathers of the church, it may be inferred that some of the wisest and best men of the time were in their ranks. But, like all other men, they bore the impress of the age in which they lived. They were credulous to an extreme degree; but it was not peculiar to them; for all the world was credulous. They believed that angels, who had fallen from their high estate by disobedience, were permitted to roam about the earth, producing diseases by entering the bodies of men, and endangering their souls by tempting them to idolatry; that it was their greatest delight to induce men to worship their own images, instead of the true God; that they resided in the temples, entered the statues, pronounced oracles, and performed miracles. Tertullian exults in the torments they endured, when Christians exorcised them in the name of Jesus. Some instances are recorded where the demon, being expelled from human bodies, and commanded to acknowledge his name, confessed that he was Jupiter, or Apollo, or some other god of antiquity, who had impiously induced men to adore him. Justin Martyr says that all the saints and the prophets had fallen under the power of Evil Spirits, like Python, at the time of Christ's coming; and that was the reason why, when he

was ready to give up the ghost, he commended his own spirit to God.

Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch, cotemporary with Irenæus, declares that it was Evil Spirits who inspired the poets and prophets of Greece and Rome. He says: "The truth of this is manifestly shown; because those who are possessed by Devils, even at this day, are sometimes exorcised by us in the name of God; and the seducing Spirits confess themselves to be the same Demons who before inspired the Gentile poets."

Tertullian challenges the magistrates "to call before their tribunals any person possessed with a Devil, and if the Evil Spirit, when exorcised by any Christian whatsoever, did not own himself to be a Devil, as explicitly as in other places he would call himself a God, (not daring to tell a lie to a Christian,) that they should then take the life of that Christian." He asks: "What can be more manifest than this operation? What more convincing than this proof?" He further says, that Evil Spirits, in order to sustain the popular belief in their divinity, and to obtain nourishment from the steam of sacrifices, often miraculously cured the diseases which they themselves had occasioned.

Cyprian says: "There are Evil Spirits, who lurk in the statues, inspire the soothsayers, direct the flight of birds, move the entrails of victims, excite terror in the minds of men, disturb their sleep, convulse their bodies, and destroy their health, in order to force men to worship them; that being fattened by the steam of sacrifices, they may appear to cure the diseases which they themselves had caused; though the only cure is in their ceasing to do harm. When adjured by us, in the name of the true God, they presently yield, confess, and are forced to quit the bodies they possessed. By our command, and the secret operation of the Divine Power, you may see them lashed with scourges, scorched with fire, tortured by an increase of pains, howling, groaning, begging, confessing whence they came and whither they go, even in the hearing of their own worshippers. They either vanish immediately, or go out gradu

ally, according to the faith of the patient, or the grace of him who works the cure." He says elsewhere that sometimes, when the Devil promised to go out of the diseased, he practised deception, "till compelled to depart by the salutary water of baptism."

Minucius Felix, a converted Roman lawyer, who wrote an Apology for Christianity, early in the third century, says: "The greatest part of you know what confessions the Demons make concerning themselves, as often as they are expelled by us out of the bodies of men, by the torture of our words, and the fire of our speech. Saturn himself, and Serapis, and Jupiter, and the others whom you worship, constrained by the pain they feel, confess who they are. Nor do they tell a lie, though the truth be to their own shame, especially when some of your people are present. Believe them, therefore, to be Devils, from their own testimony and true confession, when adjured by us, in the name of the true and only God."

In a book ascribed to Justin Martyr, it is said: "Demons still speak, by those who are called ventriloquists."

The Jewish Scriptures in Hebrew were at that time almost unknown to Christians, who used only the Greek translation, called the Septuagint. In that version it was written: "The Angels of God saw that the daughters of men were fair, and made them wives of all that they chose; and they bare children to them." From this text, Philo and other Jews who used the Greek translation of their Scriptures, derived the doctrine that Angels fell in love with mortal women, who gave birth to giants. The same idea was inculcated in the Book of Enoch, to which Jude refers in his Epistle. From these sources it was borrowed by the Christian Fathers, who seem also to have admitted what Greek and Roman poets wrote concerning the love-affairs of their Deities, and then combined them with the Hebrew tradition. Justin Martyr, in his Apology, says: "When God created the world, he committed the care of it to Angels, who, transgressing their duty, fell in love with women, and produced children, whom we call Demons. VOL. II.-27

These subdued mankind to their power; partly by magical writings, partly by terrors and punishments, and partly by the institution of sacrifices, fumes, and libations, of which they soon began to stand in need, after they had enslaved themselves to their lusts and passions." Again he says: "The truth shall come out. Evil Demons of old debauched women, corrupted boys, and spread terrors among men, who did not examine things by reason. Seized with fear, and not knowing they were Evil Spirits, they called them Gods, and gave each one the name he had taken to himself. When Socrates endeavoured to expose their practices, and by true reason draw men away from their worship, the Demons, by the help of wicked men, caused him to be put to death, as an atheist, and an impious person."

Clement of Alexandria declares that the love of the Angels for women transported them so far beyond all prudence, that they revealed to them many secrets, which they ought to have kept concealed. The knowledge of alchemy and magic was supposed to have been obtained in this way. Some maintained that all ideas of a Supreme Being, and the immortality of the soul, except those revealed to Hebrews and Christians, came from conversation with these fallen Angels. Tertullian traced rouge, powder for the eye-lashes, bracelets, necklaces, and other ornaments of women's dress, to the researches of their celestial lovers into the hidden mysteries of nature, to find whatever might adorn the objects of their passion. He supposed Paul's injunction to women to wear veils had reference to the fatal effects their beauty once had on the Spirits above. He therefore strongly urges upon young women the duty of covering their heads. In the course of an elaborate argument upon this subject he says: "We read that Angels fell from God and heaven, because they lusted af ter women. Therefore, faces so dangerous that heaven itself may be scandalized by them, ought to be shaded. When in the presence of God, before whom they have been guilty of the extermination of Angels, they ought

to blush before the other Angels, and refrain from an exposure of the head, not to be made even to the eyes of men."

These and many other similar declarations prove that the Christian Fathers believed in the actual existence and power of the polytheistic Deities, as fully as any of their worshippers had ever done; the only difference was that one regarded their influence as malignant, and the other as beneficent. The Bishop of Nyssa, in his Life of Gregory Thaumaturgus, relates the following story: Once, when Gregory was on a journey, he was obliged to take shelter for the night in one of the temples famous for oracles and divination, where the Demons were accustomed to appear visibly to the priests. Gregory, by invoking the name of Jesus, and making the sign of the cross, expelled them, and purified the place; so that when the priest came in the morning, to perform the customary rites, he could obtain none of the usual signs of their presence. At last, they informed him that they had been driven out the night before, by a stranger, and had not power to return. The priest offered expiatory sacrifices, but it was all in vain. Upon this, he pursued Gregory in great wrath, and overtaking him on the road, made use of violent threats. Gregory told him he possessed a power superior to Demons, and that he could drive them out whenever he pleased. The priest begged him to give proof of this power, by causing them to appear again in the temple. He consented; and wrote on a scrap of papyrus: "Gregory to Satan: enter!" As soon as the priest laid these words on the altar, the Demons made their appearance; and this miracle converted him to Christianity.

It was a common opinion with the Fathers that every magician had an attendant Evil Spirit, who came when summoned, obeyed his commands, and taught him ceremonies, and forms of words, by which he was enabled to do supernatural things. In this way, they were accustomed to account for miracles performed by Gentiles and heretics. They also state that Jews could cast out devils,

« FöregåendeFortsätt »