Page:The Amazing Emperor Heliogabalus.djvu/140

 circumcision was performed, the age of puberty, which corresponded with his assumption of the priesthood in 217 or early 218. Lampridius, on the other hand, dates the commencement of these observances as part of the fanaticism of the later period in Rome ; when the Emperor formulated his scheme for one universal church, which was to include the distinctive rites of all religions, an inference which is not by any means necessary, Antonine's religion was undoubtedly exclusive and fanatical, though even here it was not peculiar, as the Christian history gives us far more pitiable records of these vices. Antonine's religion was never cruel, it never persecuted, whereas from the moment that Christianity attained the ascendancy she has considered persecution her especial role. There may be joy in heaven over the sinner that repents ; in Christendom the joy is at his downfall. We can fancy the difference with which the monk would have treated this Emperor's memory had he been successful, had he even had the foresight to affiliate his church with the kindred worship of Jerusalem, to call his Deity Jehovah in the later adaptation of the term, and had then died as other martyrs had done, a victim to the conviction that in him resided the fulness of the godhead bodily, and further, in the prosecution of a scheme for monotheistic worship, such as no Emperor had ever yet formulated. It is a thousand pities for his reputation that he did not see ahead. In that case, though he would not have formed a fourth part of the ineffable Trinity, his life would at least have become blameless, not