Dionysius Halicarnassensis remarks, that there were
six hundred different kinds of religions or sacred rites exercised at
Rome. (Jortin's Remarks on Eccl. Hist. Vol. i. p. 371.) The superior
classes of the community treated them all as fables. Can we wonder,
then, that Christianity was included in the number, without inquiry into
its separate merits, or the particular grounds of its pretensions? It
might be either true or false for anything they knew about it. The
religion had nothing in its character which immediately engaged their
notice. It mixed with no politics. It produced no fine writers. It
contained no curious speculations. When it did reach their knowledge, I
doubt not but that it appeared to them a very strange system,--so
unphilosophical,--dealing so little in argument and discussion, in such
arguments however and discussions as they were accustomed to entertain.
What is said of Jesus Christ, of his nature, office, and ministry, would
be in the highest degree alien from the conceptions of their theology.
The Redeemer and the destined Judge of the human race a poor young man,
executed at Jerusalem with two thieves upon a cross! Still more would
the language in which the Christian doctrine was delivered be dissonant
and barbarous to their ears.
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