PUBLISHED MONTHLY AT THREE DOLLARS PER ANNUM-JNO. R. THOMPSON, EDITOR.

VOL. XX.

RICHMOND, JANUARY, 1854.

NO. 1.

De Civitate Dei. This treatise, whilst it is

CHRISTIANITY AND THE FALL OF professedly a refutation of this calumny, is

THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

really a rambling dissertation on all manner of questions-theological, mythological and philosophical-in the peculiar style and taste Among the many thrusts that are made at of the age, with much that is valuable, and Christianity in Gibbon's great work, there much that is mere chaff. The elements of a is one that we do not remember to have seen refutation are scattered through it, and may noticed as it deserves, charging it, as far as exist there in a form that was adapted to the he dared, with the decline of the Roman mental habits of the fourth century, but they Empire. In the general observations that he are not sufficiently concentrated to meet the makes on the Roman Empire in the West, forms of thought that prevail in our day. at the close of Chapter XXXVIII, there occur It is obvious that the proper refutation of the following characteristic sentences, which the charge would be to show that the causes gleam all over with his own malignant of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire mockery. "As the happiness of a future were distinct from Christianity, either chrolife is the great object of religion, we may nologically or logically, and that their nature hear without surprise or scandal, that the in- was such that Christianity tended to countroduction, or at least the abuse, of Christi- teract rather than to aggravate them. This anity had some influence on the decline and is, of course, a very wide field of investigation, fall of the Roman Empire. The clergy suc- and one that we cannot expect fully to occucessfully preached the doctrines of patience py in our assigned space. All, therefore, and pusillanimity; the active virtues of so- that we will aim at is to indicate the general ciety were discouraged; and the last re- track of the argument, giving the results of mains of military spirit were buried in the investigation, rather than the investigations cloister; a large portion of public and private themselves, in order that those who have wealth was consecrated to the specious de- leisure and ability for studies of this kind mands of charity and devotion; and the sol- may follow out these suggestions at their dier's pay was lavished on the useless mul- leisure. titudes of both sexes who could only plead In enquiring after the causes of the decline the merits of abstinence and chastity." He and fall of the Roman Empire, we must look afterwards qualifies this sneering attack by far higher up in its history than the age of the reluctant admission that its influence on decrepitude that preceded its destruction, for the Barbarians was salutary, and tended to the diseases of such a stupendous organism prevent the total ruin of society when the mighty empire fell to pieces.

are usually chronic, and require generations for their development. Hence we must go There was nothing original in this insinua- backward at least as far as the date when ted charge. While the great Empire was Christianity came in contact with Roman slowly dying, there were not a few of the civilization, and there determine the actual remaining adherents of Paganism who charg- amount of inherent vitality that it possessed, ed this gradual decay on the anger of the before we shall have before us the elements gods, who were offended at the introduction necessary for the decision of this question. of Christianity, and the consequent neglect When the chosen twelve went forth from of their ancient altars. So loudly was this Jerusalem to "preach the gospel to every charge made, that Augustine found it neces- creature," the Roman Empire had reached sary to write a refutation of it in his treatise the acme of its magnificent greatness.

VOL. XX---1

It

had arisen from the great sea, the fourth suit of the right, like the iron man of the form in the prophet's visions, dark, iron- Fäcry Queen, turning aside neither at the teethed, terrible, stamping under foot the call of the Siren, or the menace of the Fury, helpless, tearing down the strong, absorbing but with an unfaltering purpose pressing with a greed the most insatiable, and a ra- right onward, though his path should carry pidity the most startling, provinces, king-him to the shades of Orcus and the tribunal doms and empires, until the bannered Eagle of Rhadamanthus, from which he believed he that bore those potent initials S. P. Q. R. would surely pass to the sunny plains of gazed on the sun as it flashed from the wa- Elysium. It was this sublime martyr faith ters of the Euphrates, and only lost sight of in what he deemed to be duty to the gods it when it sunk behind the misty shores of and duty to men, that made the ancient RoBritain. Those enduring roads, which cen- man at once the model and monarch of his tering at the Forum, stretched their rocky race, and rendered Roman arms and Roarms over mountain and valley, through the man policy invincible. The history of early depths of primeval forests and onward to the Rome, even in the fabulous pages of Livy, remotest boundary of the Empire, were apt is brilliant with unquestioned proofs of this symbols of that crushing authority which fact. radiated in stern and unbending might from But when we come to examine the AugusImperial city. Rome was the focus of the tan era, we find a mournful change. As in world, and all the costliest things of earth Greece religion had degenerated into a mere were poured into this august metropolis. love for the fine arts, as christianity did later And, at this period, as if to facilitate the in Italy, so in Rome the only residuum left spread of any new opinion, the temple of of the ancient religion was a species of paJanus, the second time in its history, was triotism. All genuine faith in religion was closed, and the world in a state of quiet and extinct, so that Cicero, in spite of his disquicommercial activity that made intercourse sitions in favor of the existence of the gods, between different nations easy. And such and the immortality of the soul, more than was the splendor of literature and art that hints at his doubts of both, and openly exmarked this era, that it became the standard presses his wonder that the augurs could look of all subsequent advancement; and the each other in the face without laughing. very name of the Augustan age has been The rhetorical treatise addressed to Herensince the most significant designation of the nius and ascribed to Cicero, evinces incimost brilliant period of a nation's literary dentally and unconsciously a corruption of history.

society in every department of it, that is even. But whilst all this is true, it is also true more startling and appalling, than the direct that beneath this glittering exterior the in- evidences of depravity set forth in the causquiring eye may detect some of the elements tic pages of Horace, Persius and Juvenal. of decay that finally caused this colossus of Religion had degenerated, according to the the nations to totter and fall before the fierce nature of the mind with which it dealt, either storms from the Northern forests, and fall into superstition or infidelity, and the sole with a crash that startled the world. We renovators of society, were to be found in the notice a few of these elements. sty of Epicurus or the kennel of Diogenes. We believe that among the first and most There was no motive impelling the mass of potent of these defects was, a want of any society to virtue drawn from this life, for its strong and sincere faith in the principles of only reward was privation and ridicule; and virtue and religion. The ancient Roman none drawn from the life to come, for that was a man of faith, and a man of virtue ac- was deemed a fable. Hence passion and cording to his faith, and hence was a man of appetite in every form were let loose, in all power. Believing that unseen eyes were their hideous shapes of brutality and ferocity, upon him, and unseen arms around him, he without a check, but that of bitter rivalry and resolved from a higher than human motives, hostile collision. The proofs of these allegaand he acted from a mightier than human tions present themselves in sickening and strength. He went right forward in the pur- disgusting detail, in almost every work re

maining of that splendid but rotten age. Nor wives and mothers with Christian matrons, was the tendency of this condition of society yet she possessed many such wives as Luunseen by philosophic observers. The pages cretia, and many such mothers as Cornelia. of Livy, Sallust, Pliny the Elder, Plutarch But at the period under discussion corruption and Tacitus evince a painful sense of the the most loathsome and festering had reachmalady, without any knowledge of the rem- ed the households of Rome, and poisoned soedy. That remedy must be a religion sim-ciety at its very fountain. It is a significant ple enough to be grasped by the faith of the fact, that of all the touching and beautiful poor and ignorant; lofty enough to command pictures given us, in the undying literature the faith of the intellectual and learned; of this period, there occur so few delineasublime enough in its teachings to breathe a tions of the domestic affections; so few renew life into the dying age; pure enough in cognitions of anything like a home; so few its requisitions to cleanse the filthiness of of those artless touches of deep and thrilling this huge Augean stable; and strong enough emotion that cause the eye to glisten, and in its hopes and influences to exorcise the the heart to swell over pages of a Burns, a unclean spirits, whose name was Legion; Wilson, or an Irving. On the contrary, in and such a religion alone was found in Christianity.

the pages of Juvenal and Horace, and especially of Tacitus, we have some pictures of Another serious and fatal defect in this Roman homes, sketched in colors so ghastly civilization, was the social position of wo- and horrible, that the pencil seems dipped. man, and the domestic relations of society. in the lurid flames of the pit. LicentiousThe family is the fountain of civilization, ness, jealousy, discord and hate; plots of and woman is the tutelary spirit of the fam- husband against wife, and wife against husily. It is in the household that the purest band; mothers sacrificing their own chiland holiest affections take their earliest rise, | dren, to their shameless and horrible lusts; and around the household that they will divorces succeeding divorces with disgusting cling and twine with their longest and fond- frequency; and in default of these the dagest attachment. It is in the sweet influences ger or the poisoned bowl, made the ready of family scenes, and family affections, that pander to brutal appetites; murder, perjury, those pure and vestal principles of noble suicide, robbery and incest; these are the acts, are lit in the secret shrines of the hu- elements composing these horrible pictures. man heart, that are the last to be quenched In the later days of the empire, marriage was in the career of vice, and that often, casting deemed a degrading yoke, and children a their high and starry brightness on the trou- curse; the wife was a mere slave, and learnbled sea of ambition, debauchery and de- ing, and culivation of mind deemed only spair, gently lure the wayward and weary proper for the courtezan. Hence there was voyager back to the calm and peaceful track needed, that effeminacy should not lead to that leads to the happy isles of the blest. utter extinction, some agency that would "The child is the father of the man ;" and purify the domestic relations; cause husband the mother is the moulding architect that and wife, and parent and child, to regard forms the child. Let the homestead be a each other with suitable affection; and lift place of pure and holy breathings, embo- the wife, the mother, the sister and the somed in an atmosphere of virtue and truth; daughter to their proper position, as the and the young heart will drink in their sunny golden links that sweetly and softly bind into influences like the opening flower, and de- one the jarring elements of society. Such velop them in the rich foliage and clustering an agency was Christianity, the only religion fruit of purpling maturity and green old age. on earth that raises woman to her proper poHence a nation's households embosom a na-sition, and thus creates a home. Another serious defect was the gradual When we look at Rome in the high and decrease of a hardy, robust, industrious midpalmy days of her prosperity, we find that dle class in Roman society, having an interalthough her households were never to be est in maintaining her institutions in peace, compared with a Christian home, or her and defending them in war. The import

tion's destiny.

tirely the agricultural districts, and destroy their hardy, rural, industrial population on which the state had once so much depended.

ance of such a class in every government, hungry retainers in the city. As the barbais too manifest to require a moment's re-rians began to make their pillaging incurmark. No good government can exist with- sions, the frontier districts became insecure, out it. It is true we do not find in any an- and were therefore gradually abandoned. cient government, a body of men correspond-But by the absurd municipal regulations of ing to the vast middle class of modern so- Rome, the amount of tax levied on these prociety, the mighty tiers etat, who are now the vinces remained precisely what it was when real rulers of the world. But in ancient they were populous and flourishing. Hence Rome we find perhaps a nearer approach to as the population decreased, and the rewards this class, than we do in any other commu- of labor diminished, while the tax required nity, except ihe Hebrew commonwealth un- from each province remained the same, it der the judges and early kings. The hardy soon required all the labor of the husbandyeomanry of Latium, whose nerves and mus-man to meet the enormous and increasing cles were strung by agricultural toil, manly burden of taxation that fell to his share. exercise and virtuous habits, were thus fitted This insane policy tended to depopulate ento put on the massive armor of the legionary, and go forth to the conquest of the world. But when in the third and fourth century of the Christian era, the fierce barbaric hordes Another cause of the disappearance of this came down like the vulture on his prey, we middle class of society, was the enormous look in vain for this class. They are extinct. increase of the slave population. By reason The rich fields thst once stretched along the of the numerous captives taken in war, and Alps and Apennines, are deserted and bar- the natural increase of the slaves, they at ren, and the place that their hardy cultiva- last numbered from 50 to 60,000,000 of souls, tors once occupied in the armies filled by the and single families in Rome possessed from rude Dacian, the fierce Hun, and the bar-20 to 30,000. Labor thus became cheap and baric Goth. Hence when these hired de- degrading, and the laboring class of freemen fenders chose to grasp the rich prize they gradually disappeared. An enormous drain had hitherto protected, there was no force was made on the resources of the republic, adequate to resist them. What then pro- for the maintenance of the slave population, duced this strange and fatal destruction of so and in consequence of their cruel treatment, important a class of men, and thus the de-a hardy and powerful race was created burstruction of the empire? We find all the causes at work during the Augustan age.

densome to the commonwealth, yet bitterly hostile to its interests. The natural result of this process was seen in the invasion of Rome by Alaric, when 40,000 slaves joined him in a body, and became his most desperate and ferocious soldiers.

The first was the gratuitous distribution by the government to the people, first, of grain, then, of bread, and finally, of every necessary of life. These staples of subsistence were drawn from the rich and conquered provinces There was therefore needed an agency of Egypt, Lybia and Sicily, which by reason that would remove these monstrous inequalof their superior advantages of soil and cli-ities of society, and give to honest labor its mate, were able to undersell the Italian agri- proper dignity, and that agency was found culturists, and thus drive them from the mar-alone in the religion that declared, "he that ket. Discouraging native agriculture, and will not work shall not eat." paying a premium to idleness, by this gratui- The last serious defect that we notice, is tous distribution, we find that at this very the want of any proper feelings of common period, Cicero testifies that not more than humanity. The very etymology of the word 2000 citizens, out of the vast population of humanity, suggests the social and political Rome, possessed the means of independent importance of the feelings included in the subsistence. Hence the race of agricultu- term. A nation that lacks these feelings, rists gradually withdrew from this unequal not only falls short of the proper standard of and bootless contest, and forsaking their civilization, but ultimately procures its own. fields, became lost in the needy crowd of destruction by one of the inevitable laws of