§ 3. OF MY DISCOURSE WITH ARTEMIDORUS CONCERNING THE FAITH
About this time died Artemidorus. Of late the old man had become infirm and bedridden, and I visited him often, and spoke much with him touching the faith of Christ; and he received me the more willingly because he had a great love for Epictetus (who was now absent with his master in Rome), and he was wont to say that I was now become a second Epictetus, setting my superstition aside. He retained all his force of mind and keenness of understanding; and still as in old times, he would fain have judged the Faith of Christ by the weakness of the weakest of the brethren, and not by the strength which made them strong. For example, because certain of our church (living from day to day in expectation of the coming of the Lord) were wont to catch up, perhaps too greedily, every light rumor of war or famine or earthquake, as signs of the Last Day, on this account he would call the Christians
misanthropi
, enemies of Cæsar, and haters of the empire. Again, because others among us gave much time to fasting and prayer, and in that condition discerned (or in some cases perchance seemed to discern) visions of the Lord; or because a few, more superstitious than the rest, abstained from eating flesh; for this cause he mocked at all the saints as dreamers of dreams and given to foolish austerity and unprofitable abstinence.
None the less, he willingly heard me speak of the Lord Jesus, and sometimes himself questioned me concerning him. One such conversation I remember, a few weeks before his death, when, upon my entering his chamber, I found him in a deep study: and, as soon as he saw me, scarcely giving me time to salute him, “You Christians,” he said, “believe in a good God, who is all-powerful; whence then comes evil into the world?” “I will explain that,” replied I, “when you can explain whence arose the atoms which, as you say, made the Universe.” He said, “Nay, my friend, I have no theories to maintain on this subject; but evil is opposed to your supposition of a good and powerful God.” “Not more,” I replied, “than atoms, existing from the beginning, are opposed to your supposition of no effect without a cause.” Then he was silent, and said no more on that point. But producing my letters which I had written to him from Antioch (and it was at that time that he gave into my hands those papers the substance of which I have set down above) he urged against me more especially that which I had myself said, that the religion of Jesus was narrow, giving precedence to Jews, and compelling all men to be Jews in the observing of the Law; and he added that, however Paulus might affirm the contrary, this and nothing else was clearly the intent of Christus himself. But it was not difficult for me to show that, howsoever Jesus had purposed that the Gospel should be preached to the Greeks through the Jews, yet his doctrine and kingdom had, from the first, been intended to include all mankind, without observance of the Law. I also repeated to him as many of the sayings of the Lord as I had been able to collect and to commit to memory; and hence I proved to him that he at whom Artemidorus had been wont to scoff, was neither juggler, nor magician, nor impostor, but a great Conqueror of the minds of men, and one whose doctrine and practice went down to the roots of life, and to the foundations of all things. And this indeed, when he had heard the account of his life and doctrine, Artemidorus did not deny, admitting himself to have misjudged in former times, and professing now to revere Christus as he would revere Socrates, or Epicurus, or Pythagoras; “but still,” said he, “the acknowledgment of one great and good man more in the world, proves not that the world is divinely governed.” Then I urged him again with a new argument, saying that it was very credulous to suppose that this wonderful Universe had come together by chance and without a Mind, whether the Mind had wrought through atoms or otherwise, and that if there were such a Mind, then those things that were done and said in accordance with that Mind would prevail (being in harmony with the universe) but those things that were not in accordance with it would come to nought; wherefore, since the words and deeds of Jesus of Nazareth had been already so very powerful (and that too without aid of force or cunning or any customary aids of great conquerors) it seemed certain that they were indeed in harmony with that Mind of the Universe to which Jesus had taught us to give the name of Father. To all this he listened patiently and attentively; and that he pondered these matters in his heart may be judged from the following rough notes which I found among his papers in his handwriting, dated about the time of our discourse together, that is to say a month or thereabouts before his death.
§ 4. OF THE DOUBTINGS OF ARTEMIDORUS
“THE PROBLEM OF THE CHRISTIANS.
“This Christus lived in Syria less than forty years, and, after doing nothing worthy of mention, was put to death upon the cross by Pontius Pilatus, governor of Judea. He made no conquests, no laws, and few disciples; and, of these few, one betrayed him. He wrought, it may be, some cures of a kind to startle the multitude (doubtless in accordance with nature, by working on the imaginations of men); but in any case none marvellous enough to persuade men that he was a prophet; for it is not denied that his own countrymen delivered him to execution. After his death, his disciples constantly affirmed that he had appeared to them, and in one case this was confessed by an enemy; but (saving this belief in his resurrection, and some kind of expectation that he would always be present with them as an ally) he bequeathed to his followers nothing except a policy that was no policy, but rather a dream, somewhat after this fashion:—
“THE DREAM OF CHRISTUS.
“The world is to be a commonwealth wherein the Supreme God is to be King, and all mankind the citizens. But God being the Father of men, mankind are to be to him as children, and to one another as brethren. Of this commonwealth the laws are to be as follows:—
“1.
The Law of Love.
Love (and not Force nor Cunning) is the strongest power in the world; and as little children take captive the hearts of their parents by force of love, so are the Christians to take captive the world by becoming as little children, loving all men and thereby constraining all men to love them in return.
“2.
The Law of Giving and Receiving.
As by giving to Nature the husbandman receives a manifold return, so by giving to the Unseen Nature and Spiritual Harmony which Christus believed to exist, men shall receive an abundant harvest in return. Thus, by giving love, a man is to receive a return of love; or giving pity, a return of pity; or service, a return of service.
“3.
The Law of Sacrificing.
All sacrifices of beasts are to be done away, the only true sacrifice being the sacrifice of the will, whereof the sacrifices of beasts are but as emblems. In the life and death of Christus (being a perfect sacrifice of the will) these Christians suppose the perfect sacrifice to have been offered up. Hence they regard Christus as the High Priest of mankind offering himself up for all men; supposing that by force of sympathy with him, which they call ‘faith,’ they are able to be united with him and so to take unto themselves his sacrifice.
“4.
The Law of Forgiving.
It is supposed that, by force of sympathy, every disciple of Christus has a power of raising up men beneath him in goodness, whom they call sinners. This ‘sympathy’ they call bearing the sins of others, and the result of it is forgiveness; and Christus is said by them to have brought this power into the world and to have bequeathed it to his disciples. It differs, they say, from our ‘forgiveness,’ in that it means not the mere remission of punishment, but the putting away of sin itself.
“5.
The Law of Faith and Trust.
No man, said Christus, could be forgiven sins by him, except he had ‘faith;’ and in the same way his followers maintain that without ‘faith,’ it is impossible to obtain the forgiveness of sins, but by faith the worst of sinners can be forgiven.”
“ANSWER TO THE PROBLEM.
“This being the commonwealth and these the Laws of Christus, the problem is, whence comes it that so many thousands of men are drawn towards him, and thereby led out of evil and vile courses into lives of virtue? For other religions (and Onesimus justly urges this argument) hold out similar hopes of Elysian fields, and terrors of Hades, and purifications from sin; and some also, like the religion of Pythagoras, pretend to join men into brotherhoods; and almost all afford portents sufficient to satisfy the natural credulity of men; yet do they not succeed in persuading their votaries to lead virtuous lives.
“The answer is, in my judgment, two-fold; first that the laws of Christus are in accordance with the Harmony of things—by which however I am far from meaning that there are gods, or any such things as sin, forgiveness and the like, for all these things are probably mere imaginations—but I mean that human nature is so framed as to be turned from the imagination of sin by the imagination of forgiveness and these other imaginations which Christus has devised; secondly, Christus himself appears to have been of a nature to imprint himself upon others to a degree much above the common; and his power over the minds of his disciples (as has been sometimes seen in the case of others, both teachers and law-givers and private men) instead of being diminished after death, was greatly increased.
“A third cause may be alleged by some, namely, that his disciples believed and cause others to believe, that he rose from the dead. But is this a cause, and not rather an effect? For we must surely ask, what caused his first disciples to believe that he had risen from the dead? Perhaps they did not believe it, but pretended to believe it, and deceived others. But this I do not think to be true in the case of Paulus; who was changed from an enemy to a friend by an apparition of Christus at the time when he was persecuting his followers. For this reason, and for others, I incline to believe that the first disciples did not deceive others, but were themselves deceived by apparitions, naturally arising from affection and imagination. Yet can I not deny that, on this supposition, the influence of Christus, being supposed to be so powerful over the minds of men as to force even an enemy to become a friend by the apparition of him whom he had persecuted, far exceeds anything that I have witnessed, or heard, or read; and it raises Christus to something almost above the nature of man.
“The sum of all is, that this commonwealth of Christus appears to me but a dream, though, I deny not, a noble dream. And even were it to prosper beyond expectation in the future, as it has already prospered in the past, yet could I not entertain it, having no belief in a god or gods. Yet thus much I admit, that, if I were able to believe in gods of any kind, I know not where among gods or men I could find anything more worthy of worship than this Christus, reasonably worshipped, without violence to nature; for if Plato was right in saying that ‘there is nothing more like god than the man who is as just as man may be,’ then certainly Artemidorus may say that ‘if there were a god, there would be nothing more like god than Christus.’”
§ 5. OF THE LAST WORDS AND DEATH OF ARTEMIDORUS
Thus wrote Artemidorus three or four weeks before his death; and from certain words that fell from his lips afterwards, I have hope that he came yet nearer to the Truth than this. However in his case I perceived (not indeed for the first time, but more clearly then than ever before) that it is not argument nor force of philosophy that brings into the Church of Christ them that are without, but it is rather the Spirit of Christ in the Church. For this Spirit, the Spirit of loving-kindness, and justice, and purity, and patience, not only binds us that are in the Church close together, but also causes them that are without to desire to enter in, while they wonder and admire at the concord of the brethren. In this way the common people of Colossæ—rich as well as poor, though more often the poor—coming by twos and by threes to our assembly were daily converted; but Artemidorus, being (as I have said) bedridden, could neither know how great a change had been wrought by Christ in the lives of the brethren, nor what a spirit of power reigned over us in the meetings of the congregation, with which perchance he himself might have been imbued had he been present among us. Therefore when I urged him a few days before his death, to believe and to be baptized, though he was neither amazed nor indignant, as of old, yet he shook his head, saying that he was now too old and too sick to leap, at so short notice, into a new philosophy. “Nor,” said he, “could the gods themselves, if there be gods, take it in good part that I, who have been, all my life through, a perfect Mezentius, not merely offering no libations to them but even denying their existence, should now present to them as it were the dregs of the cup of this life.” In this mood he continued even till his death. Some of the brethren rebuked me afterwards because I had not warned him of the fiery wrath that awaits them that harden their hearts against the Lord. But I was not unmoved by the old man’s answer to Archippus, who had made some mention to him of the terrors of hell. To which Artemidorus replied that if Christus were indeed a lover of truth, then he would of a surety make some allowance for one who, all his life long, had sought such truth as he could find, however imperfectly, and who now, in his old age, was loth for shame to say, “I will believe Christus to be god because, if there be no gods, I thereby lose nothing; and if he be god, I thereby gain much.” These words the old man spoke to Archippus in my presence, when he was now in extreme weakness, so that he could scarce move his hand to bid me farewell; and on the morrow he died, without making any sign at all of faith; only he whispered to his secretary, a few minutes before his death, to tell me this as his last message, that, whereas he had charged me always to bear in mind the proverb that “incredulity is security,” now he perceived that there was room for trust as well as distrust in the life of man.
THE END OF THE SIXTH BOOK
THE SEVENTH BOOK
§ 1. HOW I CAME TO ROME TO SEE THE BLESSED APOSTLE
About six months after the death of Philemon, which took place in the same week as the Great Fire in Rome, word came to us that our brethren in the city were being called in question for their faith, having been falsely accused of many monstrous crimes and especially of having set the city on fire. Soon afterwards, in the month of January, we received most grievous tidings concerning them, how some had been cast into prison, and others slain with all manner of insults and tortures. The infection of this suspicion soon spread to Asia, first indeed to Ephesus, where it was soon allayed, but afterwards even to Colossæ, so that tumults were raised against us; the more because of the earthquake which, in the summer of that same year, utterly destroyed Laodicea; and in Hierapolis also and Colossæ many houses were cast down and many slain; which calamities the common people imputed to us, the Christians, as if the gods had sent this plague on them because sacrifices had been withheld by our impiety. All that year I remained at Colossæ striving to confirm the brethren in the faith and to encourage the weak; for though the magistrates were not against us but rather for us (knowing that we obeyed the laws) yet could they not altogether resist the vehemence of the common people, especially now that the fury of the multitude had some pretext in the example of the Emperor. Wherefore even against the will of the governors of the city, ten or twelve of the brethren, having violent hands laid on them by the rabble, bore witness to the Lord with their blood. But, towards the end of the year, the cooler weather setting in, and the memory of the earthquake a little abating, the multitude began to cease from the first heat of their fury; when, behold, we received of the brethren of Rome a truly piteous report, how the Emperor was more incensed against us than ever, causing such as were citizens to be beheaded; but as to the rest, crucifying some, burying others alive, casting others to the wild beasts, or burning them, besmeared with pitch, like torches. While we were all mourning for their tribulation, there fell on us two blows of heavy tidings, first that the blessed Apostle Petrus had been taken and crucified, and then that Paulus also had been put in bonds and was under accusation, and like to be put to death. Then I could no longer restrain myself; so finding that all things in Colossæ now tended towards peace, I left Apphia with Archippus (who had come to lodge with us for a season, his house in Hierapolis being quite cast down by the earthquake while ours was standing and not greatly damaged), and