3. Chapter IX
Chapter IX T he power and efficacy of the gospel in overturning Gentilism — All the Bellarmine marks of the true church apply equally to Gentilism —
An examination of the prejudices which they inflict upon men's minds — The final effort of Satan on behalf of his worship.
I. Whoever has considered with some care the dominion of ancient Gentilism over the human race — what roots it drove through a long series of centuries throughout the whole world, what fruits it bore, and its total ἀφανισμόν [abolition] — will perhaps not find the sentiment of his mind far removed from those questions with which Velleius the Epicurean in Cicero attacks the Platonic account of the origin of all things: "What contrivance was there? What tools? What levers? What workmen were employed for so great an undertaking?" (All of which things, Maffeo and Ribadeneira report,
God the Father showed to Ignatius, the father of the Jesuits.) The mind, I say, cannot but be struck with the thought: what and what kind was that force, or hidden power, which God employed for removing so great a mass
— one that had grown from time immemorial, "like a tree through hidden
ages" — for so great a work to be accomplished, and the ancient and universal foundations of corrupt superstition to be overthrown, plainly required the finger of God.
II. That this may be the more evident, I shall show briefly what pretexts the human race had for retaining its universal and most ancient superstition, and upon what prejudices and reasonings it relied in opposing itself to divine truth. For prejudices give strength and force to error, and mediating through vain reasonings, pretexts arise by which men of δοξαστικοί
[opinionated] disposition fortify the access of the mind against the light of truth. Men who already please God in his worship are called the church. For that assembly or community of men which strives to please God in celebrating the worship he himself instituted is the true church, and always has been. That that assembly or community can be distinguished from all others who would wrongly arrogate that name to themselves by certain marks — this is the opinion of many learned men. That the chief of these are fifteen in number, and that they possess an incredible force for winning credence for that assembly to which they properly belong — this the most learned Bellarmine shows at length. Those who, from the evidence of those marks, think they have found the true church will sooner be driven from life than from communion with it. But in truth all those Bellarmine marks — very many of them at least, and those far the most excellent — are better fitted by nature to adorn Gentilism with the title of true religion, than to designate that divine truth and its profession which we have learned from the Son of God himself teaching, or its professors. If moreover that portion of those called Christians which, as they boast, is far the greatest, is persuaded that it ought still to trust those marks to such a degree as, rejecting the most certain τεκμηρίοις [with evidences] of divine truth, to
trust those alone in matters of religion and commit to them the direction of souls toward truth — by how much more ought pagan men to have clung tenaciously to that profession of divine worship which was fortified by those marks, since all the other evidences of heavenly truth were entirely unknown to them.
III. The first mark of the true church for Bellarmine is the very name catholic; that is, what is called catholic is the true church. This mark, since it is of almost no weight, the learned man has without doubt sent forward as light-armed infantry to be sacrificed. We know where and when the disciples of Jesus were first called Christians, but the origin of this name catholic is most uncertain, as uncertain as the sources of the Nile. It does not occur in holy Scripture. Irenaeus reciting the Creed makes no mention of it, Bk. I, ch. 2; nor does Tertullian, On the Prescription of Heretics
Against Heretics. And, ̓ Ονόματος προσωνυμία, οὔτε ἀγαθὸν, οὔτε κακὸν κρίνεται, ἄνευ τῶν ὑποπιπτουσῶν τῷ ὀνόματι πράξεων [The appellation of a name is judged neither good nor bad, apart from the actions that fall under the name] — so rightly Justin, Apology II. The Roman church indeed is called catholic by itself; it was not so called by holy men of old. For Ignatius, it was the church ἥτις προκάθηται ἐν τόπῳ χωρίου Ῥωμαίων
[which holds the chief place in the region of the Romans] — if at least that epistle is Ignatius's. For Clement, it was ἐκκλησία παροικοῦσα Ῥώμην [the church sojourning in Rome]. And the Pope is called Bishop ἐν τῇ Ῥώμῃ [in Rome] in the first council, can. 6. Where both he himself and the Roman church were once held, the Council of Chalcedon teaches well enough. For very many Christians, scattered throughout the whole world for many ages, it is Pontifical, papistic, apostate, idolatrous, Roman. Concerning the name,
therefore, since it is the invention of men of uncertain standing, let us dismiss the dispute and look at the thing itself.
IV. From the time when someone devised that name — the catholic church — it began to please marvellously all the worshippers of true religion (since there were those who would most absurdly confine the church of Christ within the limits of this or that particular portion or faction of Christians) — and not entirely without some justification; since by that term they wished to express nothing other than what our Saviour himself had foretold — that the gospel was to be preached ἐν ὅλῃ τῇ οἰκουμένῃ [in the whole inhabited world], Matt. 24:14, or ἐν ὅλῳ τῷ κόσμῳ [in the whole world], ch. 26:13, or εἰς ὅλον τὸν κόσμον [to the whole world], Mark
14:9, and not to the Jews alone. But the fame of this term, now immediately celebrated, grew daily in renown and praise. When, moreover, the Roman
Pope had by evil arts ascended to that height of worldly power that it was easy for him to attract flatterers with hope of plunder, he attempted, from their flattery — availing himself also of the carelessness and humility of others — to draw this for himself and his faction. He, meanwhile, with no niggardly hand, measuring out to them in return those things which no sober person would ever have believed to have actually been within his power. So it was done of old, as Horace, Bk. II, Epistle II, 99-101:
"I go: by his judgment Alcaeus. He: by whose?
Whose But Callimachus? If he seems to ask for more, He becomes Mimnermus and grows with his chosen surname."
V. By the same right, the Muhammedans are Mussulmans; and Simon once was μεγάλη Θεοῦ δύναμις [the great power of God]; and Diana, a great divinity. Everywhere throughout the world, still, those who are the more numerous adorn themselves with honourable titles. The smaller or the
oppressed party gets the appellation of faction. Let us see, therefore, even if the pagans themselves did not arrogate to themselves alone those names which at that time were reckoned as marks of the best standing among men, while the worshippers of the true God were marked everywhere with reproachful names. Above all, they constantly gloried in, and most bitterly contended, that they alone had maintained faith and religion, and that all the rest were superstitious, ignorant of the ancient gods, and — if I may so speak — heretics and schismatics. That until the advent of our Lord, the worship of the true God flourished among the Jews alone is well known.
What opinion, however, was held of them, Cornelius Tacitus, a most weighty authority, testifies, History, Bk. V, ch. 4: "Moses," he says, "in order to secure his hold upon the people for the future, introduced new rites contrary to those of the rest of mankind. Among them, everything is profane which among us is sacred; and that is permitted among them which among us is unlawful" — that is, they are heretics and schismatics, because the Lawgiver taught them to observe rites repugnant to the universal custom of the human race. Plutarch says almost the same things. And there is scarcely a historian who has not handed down to memory that they worshipped the head of an ass in their temple. "The image of the animal," says Tacitus (that is, in his own account, of an ass), "by whose indication they had overcome their wandering and their thirst, they consecrated within their sanctuary,"
History, Bk. V, ch. 3, 4. And the historian Democritus in Suidas: Χρυσοῦν ὄνου κεφαλὴν προσεκύνουν [They worshipped a golden head of an ass].
Josephus shows that Posidonius and Apollonius Molon had handed down the same thing, the latter of whom indulged in the same madness in his second book Against Apion. I pass over the other portentous lies, which would, however, bear comparison not unsuitably with what the papists —
the Catholics, forsooth — have invented concerning the Albigenses, Waldenses, and other faithful servants of Christ. With one voice, all of them called that nation addicted to superstition, hostile to religion, and repugnant to the universal human consensus on the worship of God.
VI. At last, Christians arose; they also, for a time, were called Jews. Nor did the Gentiles long distinguish between the two peoples. "He expelled the Jews, who were constantly causing disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, from Rome," says Suetonius in his Claudius. And Arrian,
Epictetus, Bk. II, ch. 9: Οὐχ ὁρᾷς, πῶς ἕκαστος λέγεται Ἰουδαῖος; καὶ ὅταν τινὰ ἐπαμφοτερίζοντα εἴδομεν, εἰώθαμεν λέγειν, οὐκ ἔστιν Ἰουδαῖος ἀλλ' ὑποκρίνεται, ὅταν δὲ ἀναλάβῃ τὸ πάθος τὸ τοῦ βεβαμμένου καὶ ᾑρημένου, τότε καὶ ἔστι τῷ ὄντι, καὶ καλεῖται Ἰουδαῖος — "Do you not see how each is called a Jew? And if we have seen someone wavering, we are accustomed to say he is not a Jew but is playing the part. But when he has taken on the disposition of one baptised and professing that sect, then he truly is and is called a Jew." This passage is adduced in vain by some to prove that the Jews were accustomed to use the rite of baptism, since the philosopher is most plainly speaking of Christians. Also at Rev. 3:9, the Holy Spirit himself, by "Jews" understands none other than Christians. Concerning these, moreover, the same Tacitus sets out the judgment of the world,
Annals, Bk. XV, ch. 44: "Nero inflicted the most exquisite punishments on those who, detested for their crimes, the common people called Christians.
The author of that name, Christ, had been executed by the procurator Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius. The deadly superstition, repressed for the moment, broke out again." And Arnobius teaches that everything opposed to human custom in morals and sacred practice was charged against Christians. Moreover, with respect to the name of their religion and
the worship of the gods, they were so entirely secure that they determined the very name Christian to contain sufficient grounds for inflicting the ultimate punishment, or heretic-slaughter. Hence, Tertullian and others found it necessary to compose a defence of the very name. Verpi, Apella
[the circumcised/Jew], Jews, Christians, heretics — these were names of crimes among those Catholics. With equal step, therefore, both idolatrous peoples begin their march. If, therefore, any force or efficacy should attach to honourable names for indicating truth and confirming the mind in the opinion they adorn — as the Cardinal judges — those who practised
Gentilism made the most use of it.
VII. The second place with Bellarmine is occupied by antiquity — not indeed that absolute antiquity which traces its origin to God alone, on which if this controversy were to rest, it would be wholly done with these
Bellarmine marks; but that doubtful and merely probable antiquity which must be elicited from histories and other monuments of past events, and adjudicated from them. The whole of Gentilism also once rested on the same argument — or rather prejudice. When Jesus Christ himself first came forth to set out heavenly truth from the bosom of the Father, the Pharisees attacked him above all with that question: Τίς ἡ διδαχὴ ἡ καινὴ αὕτη —
"What is this new doctrine?" Mark 1:27.
VIII. Similarly, the philosopher attacked the apostle Paul preaching the same truth at Athens: Δυνάμεθα, they say, γνῶναι τίς ἡ καινὴ αὕτη ἡ ἀπὸ σοῦ λαλουμένη διδαχή [Can we know what this new teaching is that you are speaking?] — Acts 17:19. And in the whole contest that lay between the gospel and pagan superstition, there was scarcely anything that more violently roused the rage of unbelievers' minds against truth than that the Christian religion was new, destitute of antiquity, and that it endeavoured to
abolish the ancient rites and the ancestral worship of God. But how great a prejudice that persuasion instilled into their minds can easily be conjectured from the papists themselves, hardened in the pleasure — or rather the advantage — of their errors. But very many have shown that the antiquity which the Romanists put forward is doubtful in all respects and plainly false in most. It was moreover evident — setting aside those monuments of things (which they thought they rightly contemned as belonging to Jews, heretics, and schismatics) — that since the beginning of mankind, no memory of things or religions existed which antedated the origin of their worship; so that none of them doubted that the religion they professed was eternal. Symmachus uses that argument in his epistle to Theodosius: "If," he says, "long age conciliates authority to religions, faith must be kept with so many centuries, and we must follow our forefathers who happily followed theirs. Let us imagine Rome now standing before you and arguing with you in her own words: O best of princes, fathers of the fatherland, respect my years into which the pious rite has led me, so that I may use the ceremonies of my ancestors." And Caecilius in Minucius Felix: "How much more venerable and better to receive the discipline of your forefathers as the leaders of truth, to cherish the transmitted religions, to fear the gods whom your parents imbued you with before all others, than to know them more intimately, to adore them; and not to form opinions about divine powers, but to yield to your predecessors." Hence the apt remark of Augustine:
"This is the devil's custom — that falsehood is recommended through the succession of antiquity." Indeed, even the Indian Americans, as the Jesuit
Xavier testifies, Bk. IV, Letter I, were accustomed to glory in the antiquity of their religion against the novelty of the gospel. My present purpose is not to show that Bellarmine fights against evangelical truth with pagan
weapons, but to show how great an undertaking it was to overcome and abolish Gentilism, when its professors were fortified by those arguments which that most learned man judged to have such great force for retaining men's minds in the opinions which they had once adopted.
IX. Edmund Campion doubtless thought he had done something excellent when, to the arguments by which he attempted to persuade the ignorant of the pontifical religion, he added as a colophon: "Witnesses are the academies, witnesses are the tablets of the laws, witnesses are the native customs of men, witnesses are the election and inauguration of the Caesars, witnesses are the rites and anointing of kings, witnesses are the orders of knights and their very mantles, witnesses are the windows, witnesses are the coins, witnesses are the civic gateways and civic dwellings, witnesses are the fruit and life of our forefathers, witnesses are all things both great and small — that no religion in the world has ever been rooted so deeply as ours." But however light these things are, they clearly show that that religion has spread itself far and wide over no inconsiderable span of time and has occupied the minds of very many and corrupted morals. But with how much greater pomp and appearance of argumentation, all these things could have been said of Gentilism when it was at war with evangelical truth
— there is no one who does not know. For the superstition of the pagans had invaded not merely Europe or certain of its more celebrated parts, as pontifical superstition did, but had occupied the whole world from the most ancient ages — beyond all the testimony of history and the memory of men
— in such a way that there was absolutely nothing throughout the whole world that did not bear witness to its dominion. Well known are the things which Clement, Justin, Origen, Tertullian, Augustine, Ambrose, and others opposed to this pretext of antiquity. If, therefore, that doubtful antiquity
which can be investigated from the monuments of things and events among men is to be a presumption of truth, then surely none of mortals in any age or in any cause could have produced it with greater evidence and multitude of testimonies than the patrons of Gentilism. Without doubt, most people were no more persuaded that they were men or alive, than that from the beginning of things the religious worship of their nations had prevailed — and indeed eternally, if things themselves are eternal. Nothing, therefore, they cried out more loudly than that what is everywhere, what is always, and what is with all people. Hence, when Rochardus, king of the Frisians, was about to be baptised and had put one foot into the water, he asked
"where the greater part of his predecessors were constituted — in hell or in paradise?" When told that most were in hell, he immediately pulled back, saying, "it is better to follow the many than the few."
X. Then the cardinal places in the third position long duration, never interrupted — if he means past times, this mark in reality differs not at all from the one that preceded it, except that here the distinction is that the long duration drawn out from ancient times is said to have been never interrupted. But if he speaks of future times, that mark is nothing other than the conjecture of a learned man, although I for my own part would truly believe that the Roman church will endure until he comes who will destroy it with the breath of his mouth. But the pagans too dedicated by their vows a perennial duration to their worship, and confirmed it by predictions. The poet, meaning to show that he had made for himself an eternal name, says:
"Still shall I grow in the praise of posterity, ever fresh, As long as the pontiff shall climb the Capitol
With the silent virgin."
— Horace, Odes III, 30, 7.
If he would choose to play the historian, he is by no means to be compared with the pagans. The beginnings of idolatrous superstition are to this day wholly unknown. From its rise, moreover, to the preaching of the gospel in the world, at least two thousand years are agreed to have elapsed; nor was its profession ever interrupted. The matter is well known and requires no proofs. But this prejudice — arising from antiquity and long duration — had struck such deep roots in their minds regarding the religious worship which they observed, that it is not to be wondered at if they could scarcely be torn from an opinion fortified by it in any way.
XI. In the fourth place, the cardinal enumerates the multitude and variety of believers — and in assigning this mark to his church, all sectarians everywhere would doubtless pay a great price, since it falls directly against that mark of the true church which Christ himself pronounced, if at least the flock of Christ is the true church. But since the Pope wishes it to be a mark, let it be one. He who contended that the multitude is not a mark of the true church — if this dispute is to be referred to the Word of God for decision — and who argued that the Roman faction ought to be called neither absolutely nor comparatively great and many, would in my judgment have an easy case before him. But that is not our present business. Most of the papists are wise, learned, and most exercised in practical affairs. They know perfectly what things are fitted and suitable for alluring the minds of mortals to adopt some opinion in religion, or for persuading them to cling to it stubbornly and tenaciously. How great the force of multitude is in this cause is therefore well seen by them. Indeed, it is almost long since all hope in their cause appears to reside in nothing other than that they are many, and therefore, dismissing all other arguments, they determined long since everywhere throughout the world to settle the business of religion by the
sword. In the meantime, we know that this mark is most properly suited Gentilism. They were the many, all, the whole world. The sons of the mathematicians affirm that the highest mountains are no impediment to saying that the world is perfectly round. Far less can the very tiny flock of worshippers of the true God appear able to prevent the world from being said to have been lying in the evil of Gentilism. For almost whatever there was anywhere of the human race had conspired with singular harmony into polytheism — and, good God! what men, what commanders, kings, generals, philosophers, wise men, good, just, temperate, courageous, most devoted to their country, most tenacious of equity and goodness, beyond what can be imagined! — Were those people to suffer themselves to be torn away and separated from the religion of these — that is, of all men absolutely, and especially the best? What more repugnant to all reason could be said or imagined than that, fascinated by the persuasion of a few men, they should bid farewell to the persuasion of the whole world through so many ages? See, reader, this corner of the world in which, by God's gracious arrangement, we spend our days; how many are there who would not count it the height of madness to depart from the most widely received opinion of the majority — especially since that departure was accompanied by certain of those evils which rushed in crowds upon the first evangelisers? And yet we all profess that we ought to be obedient not to the multitude, not to antiquity, but to the single word of Christ. And the pontifical catholicism will never, however it burst itself, equal the amplitude of Gentilism.
XII. There follows with Bellarmine the succession of bishops in the Roman church; the same principle also applies among the Muhammedans with the caliphate. Old Rome likewise had its own chief pontiffs, whose
title, name, place, office, and spirit this Bellarmine bishop invaded, seized, and holds — Rev. 13:11-13. The succession of those pontiffs from the first consuls to the Emperor Tiberius — under whose reign the Christian name began to be known — was reviewed in the Fasti. And they believed that the supreme authority of those pontiffs was divinely constituted. So the orator, speaking to the pontiffs on behalf of his house, ch. 1, 12: "Although," he says, "many things have been divinely discovered and instituted by our ancestors, O pontiffs, yet nothing is more excellent than that they willed you to preside both over the religions of the immortal gods and over the supreme affairs of state." In which opinion all Romanists still persist. He immediately adds those things which even now fill both pages in the disputes of the papists about the church: "For what," he says, "is so arrogant as to try to teach the college of pontiffs about religion, about divine matters, about sacred ceremonies? Or so foolish as to relate to you what anyone has found in your own books? Or so forward as to wish to know those things which your ancestors wished you alone to be consulted on and to know?"
Nor was any of those pontiffs a woman, a sorcerer, a murderer, an incestuous person, or a sacrilegist — as far as we know from the monuments of those times. To adopt an opinion in matters of religion different from those pontiffs seemed to be the height of madness.
XIII. Indeed, those supreme pontiffs were of such authority that it was scarcely more permissible to dissent from their opinion in religion with impunity than it is in our time from the pope himself. For the historian describes their authority in such a way that you can scarcely know whether he is speaking of old or new Rome. Ποντίφικες, he says, by the institution of Numa, τὴν μεγίστην παρὰ Ῥωμαίοις ἐξουσίαν ἔχουσι … εἰσί καὶ τῶν μεγίστων πραγμάτων κύριοι· καὶ γὰρ δικάζουσιν οὗτοι τὰς ἱερὰς δίκας
ἁπάσας, ἰδιώταις τε καὶ ἀρχοῦσι καὶ λειτουργοῖς θείων (which is still the established distribution of the Roman church into its various classes of members), καὶ νομοθετοῦσιν ὅσα τῶν ἱερῶν ἄγραφα ὄντα καὶ ἀνέθιστα, κρίνοντες ἃ ἂν ἐπιτήδεια τυγχάνειν αὐτοῖς φανείη νόμων τε καὶ ἐθισμῶν.
Τὰς δὲ ἀρχὰς ἁπάσας ὅσαις θυσία τε καὶ θεραπεία θεῶν ἀνάκειται, καὶ τοὺς ἱερεῖς ἅπαντας ἐξετάζουσι. Ὑπηρέτας τε αὐτῶν καὶ λειτουργοὺς, οἷς χρῶνται πρὸς τὰ ἱερὰ, οὗτοι φυλάττουσι μηδὲν ἐξαμαρτάνειν παρὰ τοὺς ἱεροὺς νόμους. Τοῖς τε ἰδιώταις, ὑπόσοι μὴ ἴσασι τοὺς περὶ τὰ θεῖα, ἢ δαιμόνια, σεβασμούς, ἐξηγηταὶ γίνονται καὶ προφῆται· καὶ εἴ τινας αἴσθωνται μὴ πειθομένους ταῖς ἐπιταγαῖς αὐτῶν, ζημιοῦσι πρὸς ἕκαστον χρῆμα ὁρῶντες. Εἰσί τε ἀνυπεύθυνοι πάσης δίκης τε καὶ ζημίας, οὔτε βουλῇ λόγον ἀποδιδόντες οὔτε δήμῳ. Ἐκλιπόντος δέ τινος αὐτῶν τὸν βίον, ἕτερος εἰς τὸν ἐκείνου καθίστατο τόπον, οὐχ' ὑπὸ τοῦ δήμου αἱρεθεὶς, ἀλλ' ὑπ' αὐτῶν ἐκείνων [The pontiffs hold the greatest authority among the Romans and are lords of the most important affairs; for they judge all sacred causes, both for private persons and magistrates and ministers of divine things, and they legislate for all sacred matters that are unwritten and not established by custom, judging what seems suitable to be their laws and practices. And they examine all magistracies to which sacrifice and the service of the gods are committed, and all the priests. And they keep their servants and ministers, whom they use for sacred rites, from committing any transgression against the sacred laws. And to private persons who do not know the reverences due to divine or daemonic beings, they become interpreters and prophets; and if they perceive any who are not obedient to their commands, they fine them, looking to each case. And they are exempt from all liability of judgment and punishment, rendering account neither to the senate nor to the people. And when any of them departs from life,
another is established in his place, chosen not by the people but by themselves], Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, Bk. II.
Whether Dionysius could have given a more accurate description of pontifical authority, if he were now living at Rome as he once did, may rightly be doubted. "The pontiffs," he says, "are endowed with the highest authority and hold dominion in the greatest affairs. For they judge all sacred disputes among private persons, magistrates, and ministers of the sacred rites." (In the exercise of this part of their authority, the Roman pontiff has disturbed every Christian kingdom without exception, and some he has utterly ruined and overthrown.) "But they also enact laws concerning sacred things not yet written down or received into use, if they seem worthy of being supplied with laws and customs" (that is, they alone were judges of unwritten traditions; so that whatever ones they wished, and whenever they wished, they confirmed by laws and canons as things to be observed — which is the most strongly fortified citadel of present pontifical power).
"They also examine all the magistrates to whom sacrifice and the worship of the gods has been committed, and all the priests, and keep the ministers of the sacred rites in their duty lest they transgress the sacred laws." (That is, they alone are lords of the whole clergy, the source and origin of all ecclesiastical order and power.) "They also set out and interpret the worship of the gods or genii for private persons." (For those private persons, it is sufficient if with implicit faith they reverently cultivate and embrace the things which they themselves prescribe in the worship of the saints.) "And if they perceive any contemning their prescriptions, they fine them according to the magnitude of the offence" (but we do not read that those punishments were capital, except in the case of the Vestal Virgins. But there is scarcely any region throughout all Europe which the pontiffs of Rome of
the second rank have not stained with deadly slaughters, blood, fire, and deaths of various kinds on account of contempt for their prescriptions).
"They themselves are exempt from all prosecution and punishment, nor are they bound to render account either to the senate or to the people" (that is, the pontiff judges all, and is judged by no one. And ἀνυπεύθυνος [exempt from accountability] sounds sweet to pontifical ears. But whether they will or not, they will at last render account to the Judge of all). "And if any of them departs from life, another is usually subrogated in the place of the departed — not chosen by the votes of the people, but by whomever the college judges most suitable." Just as is still done at Rome. Let the reader recognise from this, of whom the Roman pontiff is the successor and vicar.
XIV. He proposes in the next place agreement in doctrine with the ancient church. Since, however, he excludes from that ancient church the apostles and their writings, he means nothing other than that the true church is that which teaches about sacred matters as the predecessors of those of whom it consists taught. But this was the most strongly fortified citadel of all
Gentilism. Nothing was reckoned more foolish, nothing more worthy of blame, than to reject πατροπαραδότους [ancestrally transmitted] rites. That was superstition — ignorant of the ancient gods. Socrates was condemned to death for no other reason than that he held those not to be gods whom the city, from antiquity, had believed to be gods. Against Christians, in particular, the rage was so great on the grounds that they were deserters of their ancestral and national religion. How much trouble the idolaters caused the professors of the gospel by this argument, Origen, Justin, Tertullian,
Arnobius, Lactantius, Augustine, Clement of Alexandria, and all to a man who undertook the patronage of truth against their sophisms, are witnesses.
And so they were not free from this prejudice against the gospel either.
XV. The seventh Bellarmine mark is the union of members among themselves and with the head, the bishop of Rome. The insolent boasting shames me; that union which prevails among the Romanists is the greatest reproach to the Christian name, and were it not that the consideration of self-interest is the most powerful motive among the majority, it would long since have been almost nothing at all. Remove force, the most savage tyranny, burning alive, ignorance, avarice, worldly pride, and love of the present world — that union will immediately appear too diluted to subsist.
What kind it is, the wars, brigandage, butcheries, slaughters, devastations of cities, depopulations of fields which are daily perpetrated and accomplished among the members of that church — though the Roman pontiff remonstrates in vain — testify. Unless they were stupid, blind, or the most shameless of mortals and most ignorant of evangelical truth, they would long since have been ashamed of this most insane boasting. I would prefer a church divided into a thousand pieces to one united in the papist manner.
The dissensions, divisions, schisms — political, ecclesiastical, of spirits, opinions, writings — which prevail in that human conspiracy which wishes to be called the church, the world knows. In this one thing only, for various political, worldly, and Satanic reasons, do those astute men, bewitched by worldly affairs, seem to agree — to strenuously oppose evangelical truth and the liberty of Christians obtained through Christ himself. Yet I would not assert that among the papists no unity at all exists; since the Spirit predicted of the pope that he "would cause all, small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to have the mark in their right hand," Rev. 13:16.
Among the pagans, very many things were otherwise. That strong man armed kept his whole house — the whole world — in peace and union.
There was a certain diversity in worship not unlike what is seen among
religious orders, each of which finds more pleasure in this or that patron saint. As regards the sum of the matter, the ancient idolaters cultivated peace most closely united among themselves under their head Satan and his vicar, the supreme Roman pontiff — especially after the world had given way to that city. That different religions should be brought in, that other gods than those he himself worshipped should be adored and preached — this Maecenas persuaded Augustus not to allow, as Dio reports, as we showed elsewhere at length. It was also forbidden by the Law of the Twelve
Tables to introduce foreign gods. That it was impious and unlawful for Romans to adopt sacred customs foreign to the city, this they argue against the teaching of Paul, Acts 16:21. Egypt virtually alone pressed heretical claims. There was no dissension in suppressing truth. "Pagans," says
Augustine in his Sermon on Fasting, "worshipping many different gods — indeed quarrelling and burning with mutual hostile hatred — yet maintain among them some kind of unity, since they go together equally to their temples and are themselves in agreement even when the very gods are angry." And they were accustomed, elated by this appearance of harmony, to reproach Christians with their divisions — as the same Augustine testifies, On the Sheep, ch. 15; and Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, Bk.
VII.
XVI. Let us proceed with the Cardinal. He mentions in the eighth and ninth places the sanctity of doctrine, together with its efficacy, and the sanctity of its authors. Beyond all doubt the doctrine that is most holy is most true. For the gospel itself is truth according to godliness, as the apostle testifies, Tit. 1:1. And it is most efficacious; since "the word of God is living and efficacious," Heb. 4:12; "indeed the power of God to salvation to those who believe," Rom. 1:16. Through it "as many as are born of God"
are regenerated, 1 Pet. 1:23. And its author is holy; since he was none other than the most holy Son of God, Heb. 1:1, 2; John 1:18. But what sanctity is, what is true and false — we cannot know unless taught by that word.
Moreover, the sanctity that can be seen can be feigned; that which cannot be feigned cannot be seen. But the sanctity of the Roman church is testified by very many — nearly all — of the men of all orders within it; the clergy above all; it is testified by the lives, morals, and deaths of the popes — detestable even to pagans; by the pride, arrogance, avarice, ignorance, sloth, cruelty, and rapine of the bishops; by the cunning, frauds, impurity, hypocrisy, and unspeakable sins of those called the religious; by the idolatry of all; and especially by the frauds, impostures, lies, treacheries, murders, lusts, perjuries, and ingenuity in extenuating the sins of men of every order, of the Jesuits. And the sanctity of that church has advanced so far that on account of it, among the American Indians — where especially they ought to have cultivated it to the honour of Christ and the gospel — the very name
Christian has been rendered plainly odious and abominable; so that whatever is finally determined concerning them, they stubbornly and obstinately refuse to have anything in common with Christians or their religion. Lodovicus Granatensis laments that matters have at last been brought to such a pass "that among the barbarous nations the Christian name is so execrable that when monks are sent to them, it is necessary, lest those monks be detested with the same hatred, to say that they are not Christians but fathers who have come to care for their welfare; for such cruelty have the Spaniards exercised toward them that the most holy name of Christian has been reckoned not the name of piety and religion but of cruelty and inhumanity." The most holy Lord Jesus will, in the appointed time, exact the penalty for this contamination of his most holy institutions
and contempt of the gospel. The fathers of the Society also acted holily when in preaching the gospel among the Chinese, they studiously concealed the fact that Jesus Christ was crucified, and thus persuaded them to put their faith in another Jesus, I know not what — a thing which was finally forbidden at Rome. It is wonderful that Bellarmine dared to touch this point, since he well knew it to be very easy to compile from approved histories, by the writers of his own church, enormous volumes full of the most execrable crimes, lusts, and impieties of the chief fathers of that church — volumes compiled from daily examples. But this is not our task.
If the most learned man speaks of sanctity as it strikes the eyes of men, all confess that it ought to be measured by some rule either divinely given or received by whatever means. But such was the doctrine of certain philosophers among the pagans, that many Christians are still not ashamed to call it most holy. Its efficacy for changing men's morals is proved by very many examples; and how great was the sanctity of life according to the precepts of philosophy among the pagans is well known. Except for faith alone, and the knowledge of the true God in Christ — which alone is eternal life — there appears to have been almost nothing among the things that strike the eyes that was lacking among some of them.
XVII. Then he reviews the miracles which he contends happen in his church, and not elsewhere. Nowhere do certain pontifical writers carry themselves more magnificently than when they come to miracles. Let the reader consult here the great Valerianus in his enumeration of the miracles of the Capuchin brothers — if the Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine does not satisfy him — and along with his miraculous history, the observations of the most learned Johann Comenius. If anyone delights in prestidigitations, trifles, fictions, lies, vain, useless, portentous, diabolical,
ridiculous, and blasphemous things, let him resort to the legends, writers of saints' lives, archives of monks, papal canonisations of saints, and the compilers of ecclesiastical annals after the fourth century — and they will supply him with these things in abundance, of whatever kind can be gathered or invented. I thought it worthwhile to repeat here one only out of a thousand, by which the rest may be judged; and it is handed down in the Book of Conformities. When Francis, says the author, was on one occasion preaching, and a donkey was making a commotion in the crowd, Francis said to it: "Brother Ass, be quiet until I finish the sermon." Immediately, the donkey, obedient to his word, composed itself with a fitting gesture at Francis's feet. It is a wonder if there is a donkey left in the whole world that would not immediately wish to submit itself to the power of that church in which this whole efficacy of working miracles has its place.
XVIII. In the meantime: as all know that true miracles — wrought by the immediate power of God to confirm heavenly truth, such as those of our
Lord Jesus Christ and the apostles — have great force and efficacy for rousing men's minds to listen to truth itself and to believe it; so it is most certain that diabolical portents and wonders whose causes cannot be investigated, and fictions sold and believed as true miracles, are most powerful for ensnaring the common people in credulous superstition and for persuading them to embrace with stubborn reverence the dogmas which appear to be confirmed by them. Now miracles of this kind were most frequent among the pagans. There is scarcely one among the better Greek or Latin historians who has not handed down very many of them in writing.
Well known are what Porphyry wrote of Pythagoras and Philostratus of Apollonius — to such a degree that the impious Hierocles contended that the magician of Tyana was to be set beside Christ himself in the brilliance
of his miracles — whose criminal audacity Eusebius refutes in a single book. But this is nothing to the papists, for whom it is customary to swear that this or that friar has performed more miracles than Christ and all the apostles together. Innumerable things of this kind are reviewed here and there by Diodorus, Livy, Polybius, Plutarch, Cicero, Pliny, Suetonius,
Tacitus, Caesar, Pausanias, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Valerius Maximus collected some of them, Bk. I, ch. 6. I am unwilling to dwell on individual instances or to compare them with the miracles of the papists. It will suffice to have alluded to the most celebrated history of the deliverance of the temple at Delphi from the sacrilege of the Gauls. Pausanias relates it among others in his Phocica. All know that Satan placed his throne among men, chiefly at Delphi, for several centuries. Nowhere did he more shamelessly sell himself as the god of this world. The Gauls, breaking into Greece under their leader Brennus, attempted to plunder the temple of Apollo built there, enriched with the votive offerings of almost all nations and peoples. When Brennus, having overcome Thermopylae, made straight for Delphi, the townspeople, struck with fear, fled to the oracle; the god immediately commanded them to be of good courage and to fear nothing:
Φυλάξειν δὲ αὐτὸς ἐπηγγείλετο τὰ ἑαυτοῦ — "He himself promised to defend his own things]; immediately, everything full of portents." Τοῖς βαρβάροις ἀντεσήμαινε τὰ ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ ταχύ τε καὶ ὧν ἴσμεν φανερώτατα
— "Signs sudden and of all that we have ever heard of the most evident, were divinely sent against the barbarians." Ἥ τε γὰρ γῆ πᾶσα ὅσην ἐπεῖχεν τῶν Γαλατῶν στρατεία βιαίως καὶ ἐπὶ πλεῖστον ἐσείετο τῆς ἡμέρας —
"First the earth, as much of it as the Gallic line occupied, shook with a great motion for almost the whole day." Then, Βρονταί τε καὶ κεραυνοὶ συνεχεῖς ἐγίνοντο, καὶ οἱ μὲν ἐξέπληττόν τε τοὺς Κελτοὺς καὶ δέχεσθαι τοῖς ὠσὶ τὰ
παραγγελλόμενα ἐκώλυον [Thunders and lightnings came without ceasing, and they both terrified the Celts and prevented them from receiving in their ears the commands given] — "Peals of thunder and lightning not only terrified the Gauls but rendered their senses so blunted and astonished that they could not hear the signals given by the leaders." Τὰ τῶν ἡρώων τηνικαῦτα σφίσιν ἐφάνη φάσματα, ὁ Ὑπέροχος καὶ Λαίδοκός τε, καὶ
Πύῤῥος — "Moreover, the spectres of the heroes were seen rising against them — Hyperochus, Laodocus, and Pyrrhus," and others. Τοιούτοις μὲν οἱ βάρβαροι παρὰ πᾶσαν τὴν ἡμέραν παθήμασί τε καὶ ἐκπλήξεσι συνείχοντο.
Τὰ δὲ τῇ νυκτὶ πολλῷ σφᾶς ἔμελλεν ἀλγεινότερα ἐπιλήψασθαι — "And by such terrors and disasters were the Gauls struck and routed throughout the whole day. But at night, more deadly disasters struck and overwhelmed them." How this came about, what follows shows: Ῥίγος τε γάρ, he says, ἰσχυρὸν καὶ νιφετὸς ἦν ὁμοῦ τῷ ῥίγει. Πέτραι τε ἀπολισθάνουσαι τοῦ
Παρνασσοῦ μεγάλαι, καὶ κρημνοὶ καταῤῥηγνύμενοι σκοπὸν τοὺς βαρβάρους εἶχον καὶ αὐτοῖς οὐ καθ' ἕνα ἢ δύο, ἀλλὰ κατὰ τριάκοντα καὶ ἔτι πλείοσιν, ὡς ἕκαστοι ἐν τῷ αὐτῷ φρουροῦντες, ἢ καὶ ἀναπαυόμενοι τύχοιεν, ἀθρόοις ἡ ἀπόλεια ἐγίνετο ὑπὸ τῆς ἐμβολῆς τῶν κρημνῶν —
"That night the most bitter frost with snow greatly afflicted them. Great rocks moreover and crags of the mountain spontaneously breaking away from Parnassus fell upon the barbarians as upon a target set for them. Nor were they overwhelmed singly or in pairs, but thirty and more at a time, as they chanced to be standing guard together or resting in the same place, were crushed by the impact of the falling crags." In this manner, terrified, broken, scattered, they were all utterly destroyed to a man. Thus, it pleased
God to avenge the wicked impiety of the human race and its defection from the knowledge and worship of himself. For since it did not seem good to
them to retain God in their knowledge, God delivered them into the power of the prince of darkness and permitted him, for the sake of greater hardening, in the defence of the citadel of δεισιδαιμονίας [superstition], to perform so many and so great portentous miracles. In the same manner, he foretold and acted that he would deal with the followers of Antichrist. For "because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved,
God sent to them the efficacy of error, that they should believe the lie, and delivered them to be deluded by him, whose coming is according to that effective force of Satan, with all power, and signs, and lying wonders" — as the apostle teaches us, 2 Thess. 2:9, 11. This, however, is the difference between the degrees of that twofold efficacy: that the papal antichrist has never yet anywhere performed as many or as great miracles and portents as Satan produced in the patronage of ethnic idolatry. For although myriads of portents and prodigies of this kind are not worth a straw against a single testimony of holy Scripture, yet if such things as occurred at Delphi had ever anywhere happened in the defence of pontifical sacred rites — of whatever kind and quality they were — it can easily be conjectured how eagerly the pope-worshippers would have seized upon them for their own use and with what insolent boasting they would have exalted themselves everywhere. By this prejudice also, therefore — the prejudice of miracles, that is — they were not easily willing to be torn from the darkness of their errors. For what? Should they forsake powerful, propitious, present gods — who had given such illustrious evidences of their care and concern for them and their worship, whose divine majesty, power, supreme force, and benefits had been made manifest by so many marvellous portents — at the preaching of a new religion previously unheard of in the world, upon which undertaking a few obscure, superstitious, worthless men had engaged
themselves? This seemed sufficiently foreign to all wisdom, constancy, faith, and virtue. To receive an unknown God, a crucified liberator, a Jewish religion — leaving the gods of their fathers, after they had used them in war and peace through an innumerable series of years — should this be counted just? It would be better to die than to admit upon oneself this supreme wickedness and dishonour. But that the gospel surmounted these mountains of prejudice — this is well known.
XIX. The prophetic light is Bellarmine's twelfth mark — not indeed that which was in the divine writers of the Old and New Testaments, nor that of Jesus Christ and his apostles, upon which all Christian faith rests; but a certain gift of predicting future things which he says some persons in the Roman church have possessed — this is what the Cardinal intends. That pseudo-prophets have existed in every age, both within and without the people of God, all know; and there is nothing in which Satan has more bewitched the minds of men and made them more subject to himself than by the prediction of future things. Among the Gentiles, there lived Sibyls, and they were pagan; whose oracles were most celebrated, and all served to confirm the most foul idolatry, as appears from all the prophecies drawn from their books, which are found in Livy, Cicero, and others. The Delphic oracle and others, the whole world venerated. How far Satan can go, how far God may be willing to permit him to predict future things — we are not now disputing. This is certain: that among the Gentiles it was most firmly believed that the prophetic light resided with themselves alone; that their gods were the only foreknowers and foretellers of future things; and that they communicated that gift of foreknowing the future to many. Occupied, therefore, by this prejudice also, they made stubborn war upon truth.
XX. In his thirteenth mark — which is the confession of adversaries — the Cardinal extricates himself unhappily; had he not previously resolved to fill up the number of fifteen marks, he would beyond all doubt not have picked up this most absurd one from the gutter. But would that there had been none among the ancient fathers, scholastics, or others, who by their confession so assented to Gentilism as to affirm that those who lived according to it could, if only they lived μετὰ λόγου [according to reason], be saved in that superstition — nor will the Cardinal ever extort a clearer testimony from the mouths of any adversaries for his church.
XXI. The unhappy end of those who opposed the church constitutes the fourteenth mark. This the idolaters also claimed for themselves. We mentioned the πανωλεθρίαν [utter destruction] of the sacrilegious Gauls.
"The gold of Tolosa" passed into a proverb. All historians record the unhappy ends of those who undertook any enterprise while neglecting or despising the religion. But from this one can judge how great the confidence which the pagans placed in this mark: since from the first moment the gospel began to be known, the metropolis of all superstition had grown in worldly felicity through various successes and prosperous events to such a height as it had not to ascend higher. And, therefore, all unfavourable events of things, all unhappy issues of wars, and all evils by which the human race was in any way afflicted, they constantly affirmed were to be imputed to Christians and their religion. Hence Tertullian: "For the defence of their hatred they also put forward that vanity — their belief that Christians are the cause of every public disaster and every popular inconvenience. If the Tiber has risen to the walls, if the Nile has not risen to the fields, if the sky has stood still, if the earth has moved, if there is famine, if there is plague — immediately it is cried: 'Christians to the
lions'" Cyprian, To Demetrian, Augustine, City of God, Bk. III, ch. 30, and Bk. V, ch. 22, have similar things. And in the latter part of question 126 To the Orthodox: Πῶς δὲ ὁ Ἑλληνισμὸς οὐ δείκνυται ὁσιώτερος, ὅτι ἕως μὲν ἐκεῖνος κατεῖχε τὰς πόλεις, πᾶσαι αἱ πόλεις καὶ οἱ ἀγροὶ εὐπραγίαν καὶ εὐθηνίαν ἐκέκτηντο, καὶ ταῦτα συχνότερον πολεμούμεναι, ἀφ' οὗ δὲ αὐτὰς τὸ Χριστιανικὸν κατέλαβε κήρυγμα, καὶ οἴκων, καὶ οἰκούντων καὶ τῆς λοιπῆς εὐθηνίας κατέστησαν ἔρημοι· καὶ μόλις τὰ λείψανα τῶν πάλαι ὑπὸ τῶν Ἑλλήνων γεγενημένων κτισμάτων κατέχουσαι τό ποτε πόλεις, γεγενῆσθαι δεικνύουσι τῆς παλαιᾶς εὐθηνίας καὶ τῆς νέας ἐρημίας ἐκατέρας τὰς θρησκείας αἰτίας ἀμφοτέρων προφέρουσαι [How is
Hellenism not shown to be more holy, in that while it held the cities, all the cities and the fields enjoyed prosperity and abundance — and this even though they were more frequently attacked by war — but since the Christian preaching took hold of them, they have become desolate of houses and inhabitants and the rest of their abundance, and scarcely holding the remnants of the buildings once erected by the Greeks, the places that were once cities show that they were such, pointing to each of the religions as the cause of both the ancient abundance and the new desolation]. It is therefore most certain that Bellarmine is fighting here with nothing but pagan weapons. Let the apologetic writings of the ancient Christians —
Justin, Tertullian, Arnobius, Augustine, Orosius — be consulted; they show clearly what the pagans determined about this mark, and what truly ought to be determined.
XXII. Temporal happiness divinely granted is the final Bellarmine mark of the true church. Had he approached the church's ruin soberly, he would scarcely have employed this mark. It is pagan, Muhammedan, and above all, contrary to the Word of God. By it the idolatrous crowd of Jews in
Egypt contended against the prophet Jeremiah, Jer. 44:15-18: "Then all the men who knew that their wives had burned offerings to other gods, and all the women who stood by, a great assembly, even all the people who dwelt in the land of Egypt, in Pathros, answered Jeremiah, saying, As for the word that you have spoken to us in the name of Jehovah, we will not listen to you. But we will certainly perform every word that has gone out of our own mouth, to burn offerings to the queen of heaven and to pour out drink offerings to her, as we have done — we and our fathers, our kings and our princes — in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem; for then we had plenty of food, and prospered, and saw no evil. But since we stopped burning offerings to the queen of heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have lacked everything, and have been consumed by the sword and by famine." Let the cardinal go now and teach us what distinguishes his mark from this mark of the Jews. Both parties argue most bitterly, and both affirm — the one that temporal happiness was divinely granted to them from the time they devoted themselves to heavenly worship, the other that the greatest misery befell them from neglecting it. But what are these things
— bread, food, cheerfulness — if compared with what the pagan orator offers in the assertion of this mark? "However much," he says, "conscript fathers, we may love ourselves, we have surpassed all nations and peoples not in numbers as the Spaniards, not in bodily strength as the Gauls, not in cunning as the Carthaginians, not in arts as the Greeks, not even in that native and natural feeling which belongs to this nation and this land as the Italians and Latins themselves — but in piety and religion, and in this one wisdom: that we have perceived all things to be governed and guided by the divine power of the immortal gods," Cicero, Speech on the Responses of the Haruspices, IX. If the cardinal were to hear this grave consular man
discoursing seriously about the deeds, victories, and prodigious successes of the Romans, and abusing all of these in confirmation of the most vain superstition — what, pray, would he have to reply? He would not deny that this constitutes a mark of the true church and therefore of true religion and worship; whether he would yield or not is uncertain; how he would protect himself and the truth, it is very difficult to conjecture. So Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, Bk. II, affirms that he set out the Roman sacred rites in order that Ἵνα τοῖς ἀγνοοῦσι τὴν Ῥωμαίων εὐσέβειαν, ἣν οἱ ἄνδρες ἐπετήδευον, μὴ παράδοξον φανῇ τὸ πάντας αὐτοῖς τὸ κάλλιστον λαβεῖν τοὺς πολέμους τέλος, ἁπάντων γὰρ αὐτῶν τὰς ἀρχὰς καὶ τὰς ὑποθέσεις εὐσεβεστάτας φανήσονται ποιησάμενοι, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο μάλιστα τοὺς θεοὺς ἐσχηκότες ἐν τοῖς κινδύνοις εὐμενεῖς — that is, "So that those to whom the piety of the Romans was hitherto unknown should no longer wonder that the issues of all their wars were always favourable to them; for they will be found to have inaugurated all those things with the greatest piety and for the most just reasons; and therefore to have had the gods especially propitious in dangers."
XXIII. And all these things are said to this end — that that divine force and efficacy of the gospel, or of the word of the cross of Christ, by which it set up distinguished trophies against all idolatrous worship in a brief space of time, may shine forth the more clearly. Relying on it alone and the presence and power of Christ in it, a very few men attacked the many — the whole world; the poor attacked the lords of things; the foolish attacked the most wise; the unlearned attacked the most learned — who were fortified by prejudices, arguments, most ancient traditions, miracles, and those arguments which even Christians in name alone still reckon irrefutable.
They did not desist until, through a thousand dangers, deaths, torments, and innumerable perils, they had subdued the whole world to God and Christ.
XXIV. Now, when the light of the gospel first began to shine out, Satan appears to have perceived from many indications the ruin of his universal and most ancient dominion. Lest, however, he should seem to falter or to fail himself in extremis, he left no stone unturned in order to fortify himself and his forces against heavenly truth and suppress it. For besides the fact that by monstrous cruelty he compelled his slaves to rage against the professors of the gospel — so as if possible to suffocate truth in the blood of those who cultivated it — he also attempted in various ways to restore that superstition by which alone he was everything, and to add new forces and new lustre to it. For since there were two parts of Gentilism — namely, the vain opinions about God and divine matters, and the idolatrous worship
— very many things in each part, most widely received among all men, were things from which human reason itself, when it brought them to examination, was compelled to recoil. Lest therefore anyone should from these first seize an occasion for doubting about the whole of that most vain superstition by which they were ensnared, and thereby of investigating the truth — as soon as the fame of the gospel began to spread through the world
— he stirred up great and learned men who, while saving its αὐτοκρατορία [autocracy], might devise and defend opinions about God and divine matters that were more spiritual and less repugnant to right reason, and might establish manners of performing worship that were at least less absurd and ridiculous than those commonly in use. In the first part of this undertaking, Amelius, Eumenius, Plotinus, Proclus, Hierocles, Celsus, and others laboured diligently at it. For these men, though most tenacious of idolatry, yet diligently set out opinions about God more sober than the
common herd of philosophers had previously transmitted, and exploded the vain, false, and harmful opinions about the divine power. But it is most certain that they used for this purpose the benefit of that truth which they hated, which had now sent its rays into the minds of men. Those who chiefly laboured to adorn the nefarious worship and its most wicked mysteries with paint were Apollonius, Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Julian; and in these consisted the last effort of falling Hellenism. But the Word and Spirit of God prevailed; until, with the wickedness and impiety of men growing strong, almost the whole world again shamefully defected from the true and pure worship of God.