William Ware

“ Could your faith rejoice in or permit the horrors I have this day witnessed and but now described? Yet of theirs they are the legitimate fruit, the necessary product.'
'Out of the best,' replied Portia, 'I believe, Nicomachus, may often come the worst. There is naught so perfect and so wise, but human passions will mar and pervert it. I should not wonder if, in ages to come, this peace-loving faith of the Christians, should it survive so long, should itself come to preside over scenes as full of misery and guilt as those you have to-day seen in the streets of Rome.'
'It may be,' I rejoined. ”

“ Is he sound and sane?'
'Perfectly so,' replied Probus, 'unless we may say that souls earnestly devoted and zealous, are mad. There is not a more righteous soul in Rome. His conscience is bare, and shrinking like a fresh wound. His breast is warm and fond as a woman's—his penitence for the wild errors of his pagan youth, a consuming fire, which, while it redoubles his ardor in doing what he may in the cause of truth, rages in secret, and, if the sword or the cross claim him not, will bring him to the grave. He is utterly incapable of fear. ”

“ Wealth, more than miser ever craved, office and place lower but little than Aurelian's own, shall be thine—'
'Varus! if there is within thee the least touch of humanity, cease! Thy words have sunk into these dead walls as far as into me; yet have they entered far enough to have wounded the soul through and through. Not, Varus, though to all thou hast said and promised thou shouldst add Rome itself and the empire, and still to that the subject kingdoms of the East and West, with their treasures, and the world itself, would I prove false to myself, my faith, and my God. ”

“ But I should not agree with thee in what is mercy. It were no mercy to Rome, as I judge, to spare these Christians, whatever the grace might be to them. Punishment is often mercy. In destroying these wretches I am merciful both to Rome and to the world, and shall look to have their thanks.'
'There comes, Aurelian.' said Livia, rising, 'thy evil genius—thy ill-possessing demon—who has so changed the kindly current of thy blood. I would that he, who so loves the gods, were with them. ”

“ I swear to you, a man can scarce collect or keep his thoughts here. What's this about the Christians too? I marvel, Piso, to see you here alive! They say you are to be all cut up root and branch. Take my advice, and fly with me back to Palmyra! Not another half year would I pass among these barbarians for all the patronage of the Emperor, his minions, and the senate at their heels. What say you?'
'No, Demetrius, I cannot go; but I should not blame you for going. Rome is no place, I agree with you, for the life contemplative, or for the pure and innocent labors of art. ”

“ I love you and Rome I cannot tell how much—as much as a child ever loved a mother, or children one another. And therefore it is that no power on earth—nor above it, nor under it—no power, save that of God, shall hinder me from declaring to you the doctrine which I think you need, nay, without which your souls will perish and dwell for ever and ever, not with God, but in fires eternal of the lowest hell. For what can your gods do for you? what are they doing? They lift you not up to themselves—they push you down rather to those fires. ”

“ Are there in Rome better citizens than the Christians?
'You will now perhaps, Aurelian, desire to be told by what instruments Christianity hopes to work such changes. It is simply, O Emperor, by the power of truth! The religion which we preach uses not force. Were the arm of Aurelian at this moment the arm of Probus, he could do no more than he now does with one, which, as the world deems, is in the comparison powerless as an infant's. In all that pertains to the soul, and its growth and purification, there must be utmost freedom. The soul must suffer no constraint. ”

“ They are a people wholly destitute of humanity. They are the lineal descendants of robbers, murderers, and warriors—which last are but murderers under another name—and they show their parentage in every line of their hard-featured visages, and still more in all the qualities of the soul. They are stern,—unyielding, unforgiving—cruel. A Roman heart dissected would be found all stone. Any present purpose of passion, or ambition, or party zeal, will extinguish in the Roman all that separates him from the brute. Bear witness to the truth of this, ye massacres of Marius and Sylla! ”

“ What was it to die to-day rather than to-morrow—for that was all—or this year rather than the next, if one's death could be made subservient to the great cause of Christ and his gospel? What was it to die by the sword of a Roman executioner, or even to be torn by wild beasts, if by suffering so the soul became allied to reformers and benefactors of all ages? And besides, what evil after all was it in the power of their enemies to inflict? They could do no more than torment and destroy the body. They could not touch nor harm the soul. ”

“ At length Livia said,
'I am come now, Julia, to escape from what has become of late little other than a prison. The Fabrician dungeons are not more gloomy than the gardens of Sallust are now. No more gaiety; no feasting by day and carousal by night; the gardens never illuminated; no dancing nor music. It is a new life for me: and then the only creatures to be seen, that hideous Fronto and the smiling Varus; men very well in their place, but no inmates of palaces.'
'Well' said Julia; 'there is the greater reason why we should see more of each other and of Zenobia. ”

“ It was a great work—too great for man. It needed a divine strength and a more than human wisdom. These were not yours; and it is no wonder that the work did not go on to its completion. Jesus is a reformer; of Rome and of the world also. The world is his theatre of action; but with him there is leagued the arm and the power of the Supreme God; and the work which he attempts shall succeed. It cannot but succeed. It is not so much he, Jesus of Nazareth, who has come forth upon this great errand of mercy and love to mankind, as God himself in and through him. ”

“ They are captivated by the brilliancy of her wit, set off by her unequalled beauty, and, for a woman, by her rare attainments, and hover around her as some superior being. Then for the mass of our rich and noble, her ostentatious state and imperial presence are all that they can appreciate, all they ask for, and more than enough to enslave them, not only to her reasonable will, but to all her most tyrannical and whimsical caprices. She understands already perfectly the people she is among; and through her quick sagacity, has already risen to a power greater than woman ever before held in Rome. ”

“ The fruit that has come of the seed sown is great and abundant. In every corner of the earth are there now those who name the name of Christ. And in every place are there many more, than meet the eye, who read our gospels, believe in them, and rejoice in the virtue and the hope which have taken root in their souls. Here in Rome, O Aurelian, are there multitudes of believers, whom the ear hears not, nor the eye sees, hidden away in the security of this sea of roofs, whom the messengers of your power never could discover. ”

“ They are preaching, not on their holydays to a mob of beggarly knaves, men and women dragged up by their hot and zealous caterers from the lanes and kennels of the city, within the walls of their filthy synagogues, but they preach every day, to the very princes and nobles of the state—at the capitol to the Senate—here in thy palaces to all the greatest and best of Rome and, by the gods! as I believe, make more converts to their impieties than all the army of their atheistical priesthood. Upon Probus, Piso, and Julia, hang the Christians of Rome. ”

“ How does passion bring its film over the clearest mind! How does the eye that will not see, shut out the light though it be brighter than that of day! It had been wiser in Aurelian, as well as more merciful, first to have tried the truth of what has thus been thrust upon his credulity ere he made it a ground of action. True himself, he suspects not others; but suspicion were sometimes a higher virtue than frank confidence. Had Aurelian but looked into the streets of Rome, he could not but have seen the grossness of the lie that has been palmed upon his too willing ear. ”

“ Not that Aurelian abates the least of his worship, but that the gloom which overshadows him imparts itself to her, and that knowing what has befallen Aurelia, she cannot but feel it to be a possible thing for the blow to fall elsewhere and nearer. Yet is there the same outward show as ever. The palace is still thronged, with not Rome only, but by strangers from all quarters of the empire, anxious to pay their homage at once to the Empress of Rome, to the most beautiful woman in the world—such is the language—and to a daughter of the far-famed Zenobia. ”

“ And would it not be a good thing if the flood of vice, which pours all through the streets of Rome, were stayed? Would it not be a happy thing, if the misery which dwells beneath these vaulted roofs and these humbler ones equally, the misery which drunkenness and lust, the lust of money, and the love of place, and every evil passion generates, were all wiped away, and we all lived together observant of the rights of one another, helping one another; not oppressing; loving, not hating; showing in our conduct as men, the virtues of little children? ”

“ My idea is, as you perceive, Piso, but one. Religion is the state, and for reasons of state must be preserved in the very form in which it has so long upheld the empire.'
'An idea more degrading than yours, to our species,' I replied, 'can hardly be conceived. I cannot but look upon man as something more than a part of the state. He is, first of all, a man, and is to be cared for as such. To legislate for the state, to the ruin of the man, is to pamper the body, and kill the soul. It is to invert the true process. The individual is more than the abstraction which we term the state. ”

“ Judea was once happy in her ancient faith; and happier than all in that great hope inspired by our prophets in endless line, of the advent, in the opening ages, of one who should redeem our land from the oppressor, and give to her the empire of the world. Messiah, for whom we waited, and while we waited were content to bear the insults and aggressions of the whole earth—knowing the day of vengeance was not far off—was to be to Judea more than Aurelian to Rome. He was to be our prophet, our priest, and our king, all in one; not man only, but the favored and beloved of God, his Son ”

“ Religion may come to be a thing apart by itself, a great act, a tremendous and awful rite, a magnificent and imposing ceremony, instead of what it is in itself, simply a principle of right action toward man and toward God. This is at present just the character and position of the Roman religion. It is a thing that is to be seen at the temples, but nowhere else; it is a worship through sacrifices and prayers, and that is all. The worshipper at the temple may be a tyrant at home, a profligate in the city, a bad man everywhere, and yet none the less a true worshipper. ”

“ It is happy for me, and for Julia, that our religion has fixed within us so firm a belief in a superintending Providence—who orders not only the greatest but the least events of life, who is as much concerned for the happiness and the moral welfare of the humblest individual, as he is for the orderly movement of a world—that we sit down under the shadows that overhang us, perfectly convinced that some end of good to the church or the world is to be achieved through these convulsions, greater than could have been achieved in any other way. ”

“ Is it not then the height of wickedness to set out to make people believe and act one way in religion? The history of the world has shown that, in spite of men's wickedness, there is nothing on earth they value as they do their religion. They will die rather than change or renounce it. Men are the same now. To require that any portion of the people shall renounce their religion is to require them to part with that which they value most—more than life itself—and is it not in effect pronouncing against them a sentence of destruction? ”