Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 2.djvu/117

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 99 gion''. Their serious and sequestered life, averse lo CHAP, the gay luxury of the age, inured them to chastity, tern- ' perance, economy, and all the sober and domestic vir- tues. As the greater number were of some trade or profession, it was incumbent on them, by the strictest integrity and the fairest dealing, to remove the suspi- cions which the profane are too apt to conceive against the appearances of sanctity. The contempt of the world exercised them in the habits of humility, meek- ness, and patience. The more they were persecuted, the more closely they adhered to each other. Their mu- tual charity and unsuspecting confidence has been re- marked by infidels, and was too often abused by per- fidious friends ^ It is a very honourable circumstance for the morals Morality of of the primitive christians, that even their faults, or ra- ' ^ ^^ ^"* ther errors, were derived from an excess of virtue. The bishops and doctors of the church, whose evidence at- tests, and whose authority might influence the profes- sions, the principles, and even the practice of their contemporaries, had studied the scriptures with less skill than devotion; and they often received, in the most literal sense, those rigid precepts of Christ and the apostles, to which the prudence of succeeding com- mentators has applied a looser and more figurative mode of interpretation. Ambitious to exalt the per- fection of the gospel above the wisdom of philosophy, the zealous fathers have carried the duties of self- mortification, of purity, and of patience, to a height which it is scarcely possible to attain, and much less to preserve, in our present state of weakness and cor- ruption. A doctrine so extraordinary and so sublime must inevitably command the veneration of the peo- ple ; but it was ill calculated to obtain the suffrage of those worldly philosophers, who, in the conduct of this 1 Tertullian, Apolog. c. 44. He adds, however, with some degree of hesitation, " Aut si aliud, jam non christianus." f The philosopher Peiegrinus (of whose life and death Lucian has left us so entertaining an account) imposed, for a long time, on the credulous sim- plicity of the christians of Asia. H 2