If the Tiber has
overflowed its banks, or the Nile has not overflowed, if heaven has
refused its rain, if famine or the plague has spread its ravages, the
cry is immediate, 'The Christians to the lions.'" In the first three
centuries the cry of "No Christianity" became at times as brutal, as
violent, and as unreasoning as the cry of "No Popery" has often been in
modern days. It was infinitely less disgraceful to Marcus to lend his
ear to the one than it has been to some eminent modern statesmen to be
carried away by the insensate fury of the other.
To what extent is Marcus Aurelius to be condemned for the martyrdoms
which took place in his reign? Not, I think, heavily or
indiscriminately, or with vehement sweeping censure. Common justice
surely demands that we should not confuse the present with the past, or
pass judgment on the conduct of the Emperor as though he were living in
the nineteenth century, or as though he had been acting in full
cognisance of the Gospels and the stones of the Saints. Wise and good
men before him had, in their haughty ignorance, spoken of Christianity
with execration and contempt.
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