Panegyrist

“ It is scarcely necessary to remark the great authority for considering the fabric of the church as symbolical which these passages convey. Many of our readers will remember how S. Hermas carries out into considerable detail the same idea. But the Panegyrist in Eusebius distinctly refers to 'the most {lxxi} inward recesses [of that spiritual temple] which are unseen of the many, and are essentially holy and holy of holies'; [Footnote 38] that is, of course, to a Sanctuary; which he goes on to describe as having 'sacred inclosures,' and as being accessible to the priest alone ”

“ What embarrasses me is the fact that, if I praise you, I shall be thought simply to curry favour, and in fact, the department of panegyric has come to incur a grave suspicion due to its misuse, and is now held to be base flattery rather than trustworthy testimony to heroic deeds. Is it not obvious that I must put my faith in the merit of him whom I undertake to praise, and with full confidence devote my energies to this panegyric? ”

“ Let us not be afraid of seeming to rise into a mere enthusiastic panegyric of a man. It is a rare man we have to deal with, one of God's heroic ones, a true conqueror; one whose life and motives it is hard to understand without feeling warmly and enthusiastically about them. One of the very highest characters, rightly understood, of all the Bible. Panegyric such as we can give, what is it after he has been stamped by his Master's eulogy, “A prophet? Yea, I say unto you, and more than a prophet. Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist.” ”

“ Pancratius signed himself with the sign of the saving cross, and calmly replied, "I am the servant of Christ. Him I acknowledge by my mouth, hold firm in my heart, incessantly adore. This youth which you behold in me has the—wisdom of grey hairs, if it worship but one God. But your gods, with those who adore them, are destined to eternal destruction."
"Strike him on the mouth for his blasphemy, and beat him with rods," exclaimed the angry judge.
"I thank thee," replied meekly the noble youth, "that thus I suffer some of the same punishment as was inflicted on my Lord." ”

“ But, when he is exalted and placed in a conspicuous point of view, as an eminent example of piety! he then necessarily attracts our notice in an especial manner, and we are naturally led to wonder, that a more happy subject of panegyric had not been chosen. If he was an holy psalmist; if he is styled the Man after God's own heart; he also lived the life here exhibited: and his capability of uniting such contrarities, does but augment his guilt!
Yet, even in his psalms, he frequently breathes nothing but blood, and the most rancorous resentment against his enemies. ”

“ But you must not expect much benefit from excessive penitence. When he was amongst us, our Father Anthony used to say, ‘Excessive fasting produces weakness, and weakness begets idleness. There are some monks who ruin their body by fasts improperly prolonged. Of them it may be said that they plunge a dagger into their own breast, and deliver themselves up unresistingly into the power of the devil.’ So said the holy man, Anthony. I am but a foolish old man, but, by the grace of God, I have remembered what our father told us.”
Paphnutius thanked Palemon and promised to think over his advice. ”

“ But he wanted to have the secret of antique proportions, and he was convinced that this secret could be communicated only by a Pagan divinity, just as certain theological mysteries, such as the use of the rosary, had been revealed to the saints by Christ or the Virgin. The Pagan gods were devils, and to hold communication with devils was mortal sin and sure damnation. But lots of people communicated with devils for much more paltry motives, for greed of gold or love of woman, and were yet saved by the intercession of some heavenly patron, or found it worth while not to be saved at all. ”

“ Sectarians sing, "There's no repentance in the grave, nor pardon offered to the dead." The preachers of the sects limit the mercy of God to this probation. They teach that at death the soul goes either to heaven or to hell, and its state and condition is fixed forever. If this awful doctrine were true, Satan would gain the victory over Christ, claiming as his a vast and overwhelming proportion of the human family, leaving to our great Redeemer but a small and trifling troop out of the immense and countless hosts of the armies of humanity. ”

“ This cruel persecution was the last direct effort of paganism to destroy Christianity by the sword. The fortunes which befell the leaders in the persecution increased superstitious regard for the God of the martyrs, who was thought to be like the gods of the pagans, only more powerful. ”

“ The orthodox clergy tell the most vile and debauched villain and bloody assassin, after he has inhumanly butchered and murdered his innocent and virtuous wife, can, by an act of repentance and forgiveness, swing from the end of the hangman's rope directly into a heaven of pure and unalloyed bliss, and, with his fingers all dripping with human blood, join the white-robed saints in shouting, "Glory hallelujah to the Lord God and the Lamb for ever and ever!" ”

“ The whore of Babylon has been the common whore of all the priests, and each has accused the other of keeping the strumpet; so well do they agree in their explanations.
There now remain only a few books, which they call books of the lesser prophets; and as I have already shown that the greater are impostors, it would be cowardice to disturb the repose of the little ones. Let them sleep, then, in the arms of their nurses, the priests, and both be forgotten together.
I have now gone through the Bible, as a man would go through a wood with an axe on his shoulder, and fell trees. Here they lie ”

“ The Pagans believed that, in their hell, the wicked were tortured in their bodies and in their souls, although their bodies were in the grave; so the Church of Rome believed, and still believes that, in the hell of the Christians, the wicked are tortured in their bodies and in their souls, although their bodies are in the grave. ”

“ It was not and is not a doctrine of Christ. It sprang from the gloom-clothed brains of cloistered monks and heretic-burning priests, bearing not a vestige of the sacred authority vested in the apostles and their immediate associates. It is redolent of the Auto de fe, and stamped with the bloody seal of apostate papal Rome. It breathes of vengeance instead of justice, and banishes sweet mercy {390} from the economy of heaven. It makes God more cruel than the most inhuman mortal. It is a libel on the Almighty and a fruitful cause of atheism, irreverence and doubt.—Penrose. ”

“ It is to these that the pansus, or blind exorcists, pray and offer sacrifice in order to gain the upper hand of evil spirits. Each of these five great gods has a host of lieutenants, nearly one hundred thousand in all, and it is to these that the pansu looks for active help. ”

“ His appearance was indicated by certain inflations and convulsions of the parts which he possessed, and when the relics were again placed in the lower parts, he directly returned to the upper. At length, when they brought the body of Christ, and gave it to the patient, the demon answered, “Ye fools, you are doing nothing, for what you give her is not the food of the body, but of the soul; and my power is confined to the body, not to the soul.” But when those persons whom he had upbraided with their more serious actions, had confessed, and returned from penance, he reproached them no more. ”

“ For how can reason be more disregarded, than in such an argument as this? The Pagans were unjust, cruel, and impious, in offering human blood to their false gods; therefore the true God cannot receive any human sacrifice, or allow any persons to die, as a punishment for sin. ”

“ The dungeons of the Inquisition were temples, and the clank of every chain upon the limbs of heresy was music in the ear of God. If the Pentateuch was inspired, every heretic should be destroyed; and every man who advocates a fact inconsistent with the sacred book, should be consumed by sword and flame. ”

“ So that the Inscription may, by being inserted there, sink once more into Darkness and Oblivion, instead of informing the Age, and assisting our present Ministry in the Regulation of their Measures.”
Another observed, that nothing was more unreasonable than my Hope, that any Remarks or Elucidations would be drawn up by that Fraternity, since their own Employments do not allow them any Leisure for such attempts. Every one knows that Panegyric is in its own Nature no easy Task, and that to defend is much more difficult than to attack ”

“ The devils are still living and real personalities, and he trembles before their power; but he no longer worships and propitiates—that is left for his heathen relatives to do. Though he does not worship nor propitiate them, he believes in the power of casting them out through the example of Jesus Christ. A native clergyman once described to me in good faith and all seriousness how he had successfully cast the devil out of a young girl. He was born a Christian, and was the son of a native clergyman. ”

“ It was by the direct onslaught of the early church upon the citadel of paganism—her forcing the devil, by the intolerable brightness of her presence, to show himself in his true colors—and by thus enlisting on her side all the more honest elements of human nature, that she gained the victory, and the devil was fairly outlawed. ”

“ The last struggle of Pagan Rome to destroy the church by persecution, before the triumph of Constantine, and the public establishment of the Christian religion, might be well represented by the attempt of the dragon to destroy the child; and the safety of the church, and its complete deliverance from Pagan persecution, by the symbol of a child caught up to heaven, and placed near the throne of God. The persecution under Maximin was the last struggle of Paganism to retain the supremacy, and to crush Christianity in the empire. ”

“ The maligners of Paine say that he had no right to attack this doctrine because he was unacquainted with the dead languages; and for this reason, it was a piece of pure impudence in him to investigate the Scriptures.
Is it necessary to understand Hebrew in order to know that cruelty is not a virtue, and that murder is inconsistent with infinite goodness, and that eternal punishment can be inflicted upon man only by an eternal fiend? Is it really essential to conjugate the Greek verbs before you can make up your mind as to the probability of dead people getting out of their graves? ”

“ It has no especial characteristic to make it worth visiting. Another flight of steps leads to the spot where S. Pancrazio was martyred. His body rests with that of St. Victor beneath the altar. A parish church in London is dedicated to St. Pancras, in whose name kings of France used to confirm their treaties.
"In the persecution under Diocletian, this young saint, who was only fourteen years of age, offered himself voluntarily as a martyr, defending boldly before the emperor the cause of the Christians. ”

“ The pagans had persecuted the Christians with cruelty which demons could not have surpassed; and now God allowed a bad man, a Christian in name only, to torture the pagans with the same weapons which they had so pitilessly wielded. It is a fact, which every Christian will read with pleasure, that the true disciples of Jesus remonstrated against this retaliation. Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, earnestly expostulating, wrote,—
“When men resort to persecution, it is evident that they want confidence in their own faith. Satan, because there is no truth in him, pays away with hatchet and sword. ”

“ But by night the gloomy one suffers me not to tell the truth,—he comes certainly, he comes to take me, Pater! fumigate me, baptize me against the devil!"
"Step-penitent and thief, am I not father-confessor and Pater enough for thee, who will soon baptize thee? Just say all, hound, I absolve thee, and then strike thee dead for penitence. Say on, thou coronation-mint of the Devil, art thou not the Baldhead, and the Father of Death, and the monk at the same time, whose figure full of gas went up toward heaven in Mola, and hadst ventriloquism and wax-moulding and considerable knavery at hand?" ”

“ Thus far our history of persecution has been confined principally to the pagan world. We come now to a period, when persecution under the guise of christianity, committed more enormities than ever disgraced the annals of paganism. ”

“ In every quarter of the world, however, there is a striking uniformity seen, in all the features of paganism. The ruling principle of her religion is terror, and her deity is lewd and cruel. Whatever of purity the earlier forms of paganism may have possessed, it is evident from history that it was of brief duration. ”

“ To describe his sufferings there, is not to our purpose, inasmuch as all prisoners fared alike, many of them perishing from starvation and disease. Many offenders against the Inquisition were there at the same time,—some accused of Judaism, others, of Paganism—in which sorcery and witchcraft were included—and others of immorality. In a field so wide and so fruitful, the "scrutators" of the faith could not fail to gather abundantly. ”

“ A small, thin man with a black beard, clothed in the garb of a condemned victim of the Inquisition—a sulphur-colored cloak painted with flames and devils—is led up to the pile. The priests even now, at the last moment, argue with him and attempt to make him acknowledge his error. With a look of melancholy but unconquerable determination he refuses to listen to them or to receive any consolation from them. A jeer rises from the multitude. He is taken and chained to the stake. ”