The Progress of the Christian Religion, and the Sentiments, Manners, Numbers, and Condition, of the Primitive Christians

A candid but rational inquiry into the progress and establishment of Christianity may be considered as a very essential part of the history of the Roman empire. While that great body was invaded by open violence, or undermined by slow decay, a pure and humble religion gently insinuated itself into the minds of men, grew up in silence and obscurity, derived new vigour from opposition, and finally erected the triumphant banner of the cross on the ruins of the Capitol. Nor was the influence of Christianity confined to the period or to the limits of the Roman empire. After a revolution of thirteen or fourteen centuries, that religion is still professed by the nations of Europe, the most distinguished portion of human kind in arts and learning as well as in arms. By the industry and zeal of the Europeans, it has been widely diffused to the most distant shores of Asia and Africa; and by the means of their colonies has been firmly established from Canada to Chili, in a world unknown to the ancients.

But this inquiry, however useful or entertaining, is attended with two peculiar difficulties. The scanty and suspicious materials of ecclesiastical history seldom enable us to dispel the dark cloud that hangs over the first age of the church. The great law of impartiality too often obliges us to reveal the imperfections of the uninspired teachers and believers of the gospel; and, to a careless observer, their faults may seem to cast a shade on the faith which they professed. But the scandal of the pious Christian, and the fallacious triumph of the Infidel, should cease as soon as they recollect not only by whom , but likewise to whom , the Divine Revelation was given. The theologian may indulge the pleasing task of describing Religion as she descended from Heaven, arrayed in her native purity. A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian. He must discover the inevitable mixture of error and corruption, which she contracted in a long residence upon earth, among a weak and degenerate race of beings.

Our curiosity is naturally prompted to inquire by what means the Christian faith obtained so remarkable a victory over the established religions of the earth. To this inquiry, an obvious but satisfactory answer may be returned; that it was owing to the convincing evidence of the doctrine itself, and to the ruling providence of its great Author. But as truth and reason seldom find so favourable a reception in the world, and as the wisdom of Providence frequently condescends to use the passions of the human heart, and the general circumstances of mankind, as instruments to execute its purpose; we may still be permitted, though with becoming submission, to ask, not indeed what were the first, but what were the secondary causes of the rapid growth of the Christian church. It will, perhaps, appear, that it was most effectually favoured and assisted by the five following causes: I. The inflexible, and, if we may use the expression, the intolerant zeal of the Christians, derived, it is true, from the Jewish religion, but purified from the narrow and unsocial spirit, which, instead of inviting, had deterred the Gentiles from embracing the law of Moses. II. The doctrine of a future life, improved by every additional circumstance which could give weight and efficacy to that important truth. III. The miraculous powers ascribed to the primitive church. IV. The pure and austere morals of the Christians. V. The union and discipline of the Christian republic, which gradually formed an independent and increasing state in the heart of the Roman empire.



I. We have already described the religious harmony of the ancient world, and the facility with which the most different and even hostile nations embraced, or at least respected, each other's superstitions. A single people refused to join in the common intercourse of mankind. The Jews, who, under the Assyrian and Persian monarchies, had languished for many ages the most despised portion of their slaves, emerged from obscurity under the successors of Alexander; and as they multiplied to a surprising degree in the East, and afterwards in the West, they soon excited the curiosity and wonder of other nations. The sullen obstinacy with which they maintained their peculiar rites and unsocial manners, seemed to mark them out a distinct species of men, who boldy professed, or who faintly disguised, their implacable hatred to the rest of human-kind. Neither the violence of Antiochus, nor the arts of Herod, nor the example of the circumjacent nations, could ever persuade the Jews to associate with the institutions of Moses the elegant mythology of the Greeks. * According to the maxims of universal toleration, the Romans protected a superstition which they despised. The polite Augustus condescended to give orders, that sacrifices should be offered for his prosperity in the temple of Jerusalem; while the meanest of the posterity of Abraham, who should have paid the same homage to the Jupiter of the Capitol, would have been an object of abhorrence to himself and to his brethren. But the moderation of the conquerors was insufficient to appease the jealous prejudices of their subjects, who were alarmed and scandalized at the ensigns of paganism, which necessarily introduced themselves into a Roman province. The mad attempt of Caligula to place his own statue, in the temple of Jerusalem, was defeated by the unanimous resolution of a people who dreaded death much less than such an idolatrous profanation. Their attachment to the law of Moses was equal to their detestation of foreign religions. The current of zeal and devotion, as it was contracted into a narrow channel, ran with the strength, and sometimes with the fury, of a torrent.

This inflexible perseverance, which appeared so odious or so ridiculous to the ancient world, assumes a more awful character, since Providence has deigned to reveal to us the mysterious history of the chosen people. But the devout and even scrupulous attachment to the Mosaic religion, so conspicuous among the Jews who lived under the second temple, becomes still more surprising, if it is compared with the stubborn incredulity of their forefathers. When the law was given in thunder from Mount Sinai; when the tides of the ocean, and the course of the planets were suspended for the convenience of the Israelites; and when temporal rewards and punishments were the immediate consequences of their piety or disobedience, they perpetually relapsed into rebellion against the visible majesty of their Divine King, placed the idols of the nations in the sanctuary of Jehovah, and imitated every fantastic ceremony that was practised in the tents of the Arabs, or in the cities of Phoenicia. As the protection of Heaven was deservedly withdrawn from the ungrateful race, their faith acquired a proportionable degree of vigour and purity. The contemporaries of Moses and Joshua had beheld with careless indifference the most amazing miracles. Under the pressure of every calamity, the belief of those miracles has preserved the Jews of a later period from the universal contagion of idolatry; and in contradiction to every known principle of the human mind, that singular people seems to have yielded a stronger and more ready assent to the traditions of their remote ancestors, than to the evidence of their own senses. *

The Jewish religion was admirably fitted for defence, but it was never designed for conquest; and it seems probable that the number of proselytes was never much superior to that of apostates. The divine promises were originally made, and the distinguishing rite of circumcision was enjoined to a single family. When the posterity of Abraham had multiplied like the sands of the sea, the Deity, from whose mouth they received a system of laws and ceremonies, declared himself the proper and as it were the national God of Israel; and with the most jealous care separated his favourite people from the rest of mankind. The conquest of the land of Canaan was accompanied with so many wonderful and with so many bloody circumstances, that the victorious Jews were left in a state of irreconcilable hostility with all their neighbours. They had been commanded to extirpate some of the most idolatrous tribes, and the execution of the Divine will had seldom been retarded by the weakness of humanity. With the other nations they were forbidden to contract any marriages or alliances, and the prohibition of receiving them into the congregation, which in some cases was perpetual, almost always extended to the third, to the seventh, or even to the tenth generation. The obligation of preaching to the Gentiles the faith of Moses, had never been inculcated as a precept of the law, nor were the Jews inclined to impose it on themselves as a voluntary duty. In the admission of new citizens, that unsocial people was actuated by the selfish vanity of the Greeks, rather than by the generous policy of Rome. The descendants of Abraham were flattered by the opinion, that they alone were the heirs of the covenant, and they were apprehensive of diminishing the value of their inheritance, by sharing it too easily with the strangers of the earth. A larger acquaintance with mankind, extended their knowledge without correcting their prejudices; and whenever the God of Israel acquired any new votaries, he was much more indebted to the inconstant humour of polytheism than to the active zeal of his own missionaries. The religion of Moses seems to be instituted for a particular country as well as for a single nation; and if a strict obedience had been paid to the order, that every male, three times in the year, should present himself before the Lord Jehovah, it would have been impossible that the Jews could ever have spread themselves beyond the narrow limits of the promised land. That obstacle was indeed removed by the destruction of the temple of Jerusalem; but the most considerable part of the Jewish religion was involved in its destruction; and the pagans, who had long wondered at the strange report of an empty sanctuary, were at a loss to discover what could be the object, or what could be the instruments, of a worship which was destitute of temples and of altars, of priests and of sacrifices. Yet even in their fallen state, the Jews, still asserting their lofty and exclusive privileges, shunned, instead of courting, the society of strangers. They still insisted with inflexible rigour on those parts of the law which it was in their power to practise. Their peculiar distinctions of days, of meats, and a variety of trivial though burdensome observances, were so many objects of disgust and aversion for the other nations, to whose habits and prejudices they were diametrically opposite. The painful and even dangerous rite of circumcision was alone capable of repelling a willing proselyte from the door of the synagogue.

Under these circumstances, Christianity offered itself to the world, armed with the strength of the Mosaic law, and delivered from the weight of its fetters. An exclusive zeal for the truth of religion, and the unity of God, was as carefully inculcated in the new as in the ancient system: and whatever was now revealed to mankind concerning the nature and designs of the Supreme Being, was fitted to increase their reverence for that mysterious doctrine. The divine authority of Moses and the prophets was admitted, and even established, as the firmest basis of Christianity. From the beginning of the world, an uninterrupted series of predictions had announced and prepared the long expected coming of the Messiah, who, in compliance with the gross apprehensions of the Jews, had been more frequently represented under the character of a King and Conqueror, than under that of a Prophet, a Martyr, and the Son of God. By his expiatory sacrifice, the imperfect sacrifices of the temple were at once consummated and abolished. The ceremonial law, which consisted only of types and figures, was succeeded by a pure and spiritual worship, equally adapted to all climates as well as to every condition of mankind; and to the initiation of blood, was substituted a more harmless initiation of water. The promise of divine favour, instead of being partially confined to the posterity of Abraham, was universally proposed to the freeman and the slave, to the Greek and to the barbarian, to the Jew and to the Gentile. Every privilege that could raise the proselyte from earth to Heaven, that could exalt his devotion, secure his happiness, or even gratify that secret pride, which, under the semblance of devotion, insinuates itself into the human heart, was still reserved for the members of the Christian church; but at the same time all mankind was permitted, and even solicited, to accept the glorious distinction, which was not only proffered as a favour, but imposed as an obligation. It became the most sacred duty of a new convert to diffuse among his friends and relations the inestimable blessing which he had received, and to warn them against a refusal that would be severely punished as a criminal disobedience to the will of a benevolent but all-powerful deity.

The enfranchisement of the church from the bonds of the synagogue, was a work however of some time and of some difficulty. The Jewish converts, who acknowledged Jesus in the character of the Messiah foretold by their ancient oracles, respected him as a prophetic teacher of virtue and religion; but they obstinately adhered to the ceremonies of their ancestors, and were desirous of imposing them on the Gentiles, who continually augmented the number of believers. These Judaising Christians seem to have argued with some degree of plausibility from the divine origin of the Mosaic law, and from the immutable perfections of its great Author. They affirmed, that if the Being, who is the same through all eternity, had designed to abolish those sacred rites which had served to distinguish his chosen people, the repeal of them would have been no less clear and solemn than their first promulgation: that , instead of those frequent declarations, which either suppose or assert the perpetuity of the Mosaic religion, it would have been represented as a provisionary scheme intended to last only till the coming of the Messiah, who should instruct mankind in a more perfect mode of faith and of worship: that the Messiah himself, and his disciples who conversed with him on earth, instead of authorizing by their example the most minute observances of the Mosaic law, would have published to the world the abolition of those useless and obsolete ceremonies, without suffering Christianity to remain during so many years obscurely confounded among the sects of the Jewish church. Arguments like these appear to have been used in the defence of the expiring cause of the Mosaic law; but the industry of our learned divines has abundantly explained the ambiguous language of the Old Testament, and the ambiguous conduct of the apostolic teachers. It was proper gradually to unfold the system of the Gospel, and to pronounce, with the utmost caution and tenderness, a sentence of condemnation so repugnant to the inclination and prejudices of the believing Jews.

The history of the church of Jerusalem affords a lively proof of the necessity of those precautions, and of the deep impression which the Jewish religion had made on the minds of its sectaries. The first fifteen bishops of Jerusalem were all circumcised Jews; and the congregation over which they presided, united the law of Moses with the doctrine of Christ. It was natural that the primitive tradition of a church which was founded only forty days after the death of Christ, and was governed almost as many years under the immediate inspection of his apostles, should be received as the standard of orthodoxy. The distant churches very frequently appealed to the authority of their venerable Parent, and relieved her distresses by a liberal contribution of alms. But when numerous and opulent societies were established in the great cities of the empire, in Antioch, Alexandria, Ephesus, Corinth, and Rome, the reverence which Jerusalem had inspired to all the Christian colonies insensibly diminished. The Jewish converts, or, as they were afterwards called, the Nazarenes, who had laid the foundations of the church, soon found themselves overwhelmed by the increasing multitudes, that from all the various religions of polytheism inlisted under the banner of Christ: and the Gentiles, who, with the approbation of their peculiar apostle, had rejected the intolerable weight of Mosaic ceremonies, at length refused to their more scrupulous brethren the same toleration which at first they had humbly solicited for their own practice. The ruin of the temple, of the city, and of the public religion of the Jews, was severely felt by the Nazarenes; as in their manners, though not in their faith, they maintained so intimate a connexion with their impious countrymen, whose misfortunes were attributed by the Pagans to the contempt, and more justly ascribed by the Christians to the wrath, of the Supreme Deity. The Nazarenes retired from the ruins of Jerusalem to the little town of Pella beyond the Jordan, where that ancient church languished above sixty years in solitude and obscurity. * They still enjoyed the comfort of making frequent and devout visits to the Holy City , and the hope of being one day restored to those seats which both nature and religion taught them to love as well as to revere. But at length, under the reign of Hadrian, the desperate fanaticism of the Jews filled up the measure of their calamities; and the Romans, exasperated by their repeated rebellions, exercised the rights of victory with unusual rigour. The emperor founded, under the name of Ælia Capitolina, a new city on Mount Sion, to which he gave the privileges of a colony; and denouncing the severest penalties against any of the Jewish people who should dare to approach its precincts, he fixed a vigilant garrison of a Roman cohort to enforce the execution of his orders. The Nazarenes had only one way left to escape the common proscription, and the force of truth was on this occasion assisted by the influence of temporal advantages. They elected Marcus for their bishop, a prelate of the race of the Gentiles, and most probably a native either of Italy or of some of the Latin provinces. At his persuasion, the most considerable part of the congregation renounced the Mosaic law, in the practice of which they had persevered above a century. By this sacrifice of their habits and prejudices, they purchased a free admission into the colony of Hadrian, and more firmly cemented their union with the Catholic church.

When the name and honours of the church of Jerusalem had been restored to Mount Sion, the crimes of heresy and schism were imputed to the obscure remnant of the Nazarenes, which refused to accompany their Latin bishop. They still preserved their former habitation of Pella, spread themselves into the villages adjacent to Damascus, and formed an inconsiderable church in the city of Bœrea, or, as it is now called, of Aleppo, in Syria. The name of Nazarenes was deemed too honourable for those Christian Jews, and they soon received from the supposed poverty of their understanding, as well as of their condition, the contemptuous epithet of Ebionites. In a few years after the return of the church of Jerusalem, it became a matter of doubt and controversy, whether a man who sincerely acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah, but who still continued to observe the law of Moses, could possibly hope for salvation. The humane temper of Justin Martyr inclined him to answer this question in the affirmative; and though he expressed himself with the most guarded diffidence, he ventured to determine in favour of such an imperfect Christian, if he were content to practise the Mosaic ceremonies, without pretending to assert their general use or necessity. But when Justin was pressed to declare the sentiment of the church, he confessed that there were very many among the orthodox Christians, who not only excluded their Judaising brethren from the hope of salvation, but who declined any intercourse with them in the common offices of friendship, hospitality, and social life. The more rigorous opinion prevailed, as it was natural to expect, over the milder; and an eternal bar of separation was fixed between the disciples of Moses and those of Christ.

The unfortunate Ebionites, rejected from one religion as apostates, and from the other as heretics, found themselves compelled to assume a more decided character; and although some traces of that obsolete sect may be discovered as late as the fourth century, they insensibly melted away either into the church or the synagogue. *

While the orthodox church preserved a just medium between excessive veneration and improper contempt for the law of Moses, the various heretics deviated into equal but opposite extremes of error and extravagance. From the acknowledged truth of the Jewish religion, the Ebionites had concluded that it could never be abolished. From its supposed imperfections the Gnostics as hastily inferred that it never was instituted by the wisdom of the Deity. There are some objections against the authority of Moses and the prophets, which too readily present themselves to the sceptical mind; though they can only be derived from our ignorance of remote antiquity, and from our incapacity to form an adequate judgment of the divine œconomy. These objections were eagerly embraced and as petulantly urged by the vain science of the Gnostics. As those heretics were, for the most part, averse to the pleasures of sense, they morosely arraigned the polygamy of the patriarchs, the galantries of David, and the seraglio of Solomon. The conquest of the land of Canaan, and the extirpation of the unsuspecting natives, they were at a loss how to reconcile with the common notions of humanity and justice. But when they recollected the sanguinary list of murders, of executions, and of massacres, which stain almost every page of the Jewish annals, they acknowledged that the barbarians of Palestine had exercised as much compassion towards their idolatrous enemies, as they had ever shewn to their friends or countrymen. Passing from the sectaries of the law to the law itself, they asserted that it was impossible that a religion which consisted only of bloody sacrifices and trifling ceremonies, and whose rewards as well as punishments were all of a carnal and temporal nature, could inspire the love of virtue, or restrain the impetuosity of passion. The Mosaic account of the creation and fall of man was treated with profane derision by the Gnostics, who would not listen with patience to the repose of the Deity after six days labour, to the rib of Adam, the garden of Eden, the trees of life and of knowledge, the speaking serpent, the forbidden fruit, and the condemnation pronounced against human kind for the venial offence of their first progenitors. The God of Israel was impiously represented by the Gnostics, as a being liable to passion and to error, capricious in his favour, implacable in his resentment, meanly jealous of his superstitious worship, and confining his partial providence to a single people, and to this transitory life. In such a character they could discover none of the features of the wise and omnipotent father of the universe. * They allowed that the religion of the Jews was somewhat less criminal than the idolatry of the Gentiles; but it was their fundamental doctrine, that the Christ whom they adored as the first and brightest emanation of the Deity, appeared upon earth to rescue mankind from their various errors, and to reveal a new system of truth and perfection. The most learned of the fathers, by a very singular condescension, have imprudently admitted the sophistry of the Gnostics. Acknowledging that the literal sense is repugnant to every principle of faith as well as reason, they deem themselves secure and invulnerable behind the ample veil of allegory, which they carefully spread over every tender part of the Mosaic dispensation.

It has been remarked with more ingenuity than truth, that the virgin purity of the church was never violated by schism or heresy before the reign of Trajan or Hadrian, about one hundred years after the death of Christ. We may observe with much more propriety, that, during that period, the disciples of the Messiah were indulged in a freer latitude both of faith and practice, than has ever been allowed in succeeding ages. As the terms of communion were insensibly narrowed, and the spiritual authority of the prevailing party was exercised with increasing severity, many of its most respectable adherents, who were called upon to renounce, were provoked to assert their private opinions, to pursue the consequences of their mistaken principles, and openly to erect the standard of rebellion against the unity of the church. The Gnostics were distinguished as the most polite, the most learned, and the most wealthy of the Christian name, and that general appellation which expressed a superiority of knowledge, was either assumed by their own pride, or ironically bestowed by the envy of their adversaries. They were almost without exception of the race of the Gentiles, and their principal founders seem to have been natives of Syria or Egypt, where the warmth of the climate disposes both the mind and the body to indolent and contemplative devotion. The Gnostics blended with the faith of Christ many sublime but obscure tenets, which they derived from oriental philosophy, and even from the religion of Zoroaster, concerning the eternity of matter, the existence of two principles, and the mysterious hierarchy of the invisible world. As soon as they launched out into that vast abyss, they delivered themselves to the guidance of a disordered imagination; and as the paths of error are various and infinite, the Gnostics were imperceptibly divided into more than fifty particular sects, of whom the most celebrated appear to have been the Basilidians, the Valentinians, the Marcionites, and, in a still later period, the Manichæans. Each of these sects could boast of its bishops and congregations, of its doctors and martyrs, and, instead of the four gospels adopted by the church, the heretics produced a multitude of histories, in which the actions and discourses of Christ and of his apostles were adapted to their respective tenets. The success of the Gnostics was rapid and extensive. They covered Asia and Egypt, established themselves in Rome, and sometimes penetrated into the provinces of the West. For the most part they arose in the second century, flourished during the third, and were suppressed in the fourth or fifth, by the prevalence of more fashionable controversies, and by the superior ascendant of the reigning power. Though they constantly disturbed the peace, and frequently disgraced the name, of religion, they contributed to assist rather than to retard the progress of Christianity. The Gentile converts, whose strongest objections and prejudices were directed against the law of Moses, could find admission into many Christian societies, which required not from their untutored mind any belief of an antecedent revelation. Their faith was insensibly fortified and enlarged, and the church was ultimately benefited by the conquests of its most inveterate enemies. *

But whatever difference of opinion might subsist between the Orthodox, the Ebionites, and the Gnostics, concerning the divinity or the obligation of the Mosaic law, they were all equally animated by the same exclusive zeal, and by the same abhorrence for idolatry which had distinguished the Jews from the other nations of the ancient world. The philosopher, who considered the system of polytheism as a composition of human fraud and error, could disguise a smile of contempt under the mask of devotion, without apprehending that either the mockery, or the compliance, would expose him to the resentment of any invisible, or, as he conceived them, imaginary powers. But the established religions of Paganism were seen by the primitive Christians in a much more odious and formidable light. It was the universal sentiment both of the church and of heretics, that the daemons were the authors, the patrons, and the objects of idolatry. Those rebellious spirits who had been degraded from the rank of angels, and cast down into the infernal pit, were still permitted to roam upon earth, to torment the bodies, and to seduce the minds, of sinful men. The daemons soon discovered and abused the natural propensity of the human heart towards devotion, and, artfully withdrawing the adoration of mankind from their Creator, they usurped the place and honours of the Supreme Deity. By the success of their malicious contrivances, they at once gratified their own vanity and revenge, and obtained the only comfort of which they were yet susceptible, the hope of involving the human species in the participation of their guilt and misery. It was confessed, or at least it was imagined, that they had distributed among themselves the most important characters of polytheism, one daemon assuming the name and attributes of Jupiter, another of Æsculapius, a third of Venus, and a fourth perhaps of Apollo; * and that, by the advantage of their long experience and aërial nature, they were enabled to execute, with sufficient skill and dignity, the parts which they had undertaken. They lurked in the temples, instituted festivals and sacrifices, invented fables, pronounced oracles, and were frequently allowed to perform miracles. The Christians, who, by the interposition of evil spirits, could so readily explain every præternatural appearance, were disposed and even desirous to admit the most extravagant fictions of the Pagan mythology. But the belief of the Christian was accompanied with horror. The most trifling mark of respect to the national worship he considered as a direct homage yielded to the daemon, and as an act of rebellion against the majesty of God.

In consequence of this opinion, it was the first but arduous duty of a Christian to preserve himself pure and undefiled by the practice of idolatry. The religion of the nations was not merely a speculative doctrine professed in the schools or preached in the temples. The innumerable deities and rites of polytheism were closely inter-woven with every circumstance of business or pleasure, of public or of private life; and it seemed impossible to escape the observance of them, without, at the same time, renouncing the commerce of mankind, and all the offices and amusements of society. The important transactions of peace and war were prepared or concluded by solemn sacrifices, in which the magistrate, the senator, and the soldier, were obliged to preside or to participate. * The public spectacles were an essential part of the cheerful devotion of the Pagans, and the gods were supposed to accept, as the most grateful offering, the games that the prince and people celebrated in honour of their peculiar festivals. The Christian, who with pious horror avoided the abomination of the circus or the theatre, found himself encompassed with infernal snares in every convivial entertainment, as often as his friends, invoking the hospitable deifies, poured out libations to each other's happiness. When the bride, struggling with well-affected reluctance, was forced in hymenæal pomp over the threshold of her new habitation, or when the sad procession of the dead slowly moved towards the funeral pile; the Christian, on these interesting occasions, was compelled to desert the persons who were the dearest to him, rather than contract the guilt inherent to those impious ceremonies. Every art and every trade that was in the least concerned in the framing or adorning of idols was polluted by the stain of idolatry; a severe sentence, since it devoted to eternal misery the far greater part of the community, which is employed in the exercise of liberal or mechanic professions. If we cast our eyes over the numerous remains of antiquity, we shall perceive, that besides the immediate representations of the Gods, and the holy instruments of their worship, the elegant forms and agreeable fictions consecrated by the imagination of the Greeks, were introduced as the richest ornaments of the houses, the dress, and the furniture, of the Pagans. * Even the arts of music and painting, of eloquence and poetry, flowed from the same impure origin. In the style of the fathers, Apollo and the Muses were the organs of the infernal spirit, Homer and Virgil were the most eminent of his servants, and the beautiful mythology which pervades and animates the compositions of their genius, is destined to celebrate the glory of the daemons. Even the common language of Greece and Rome abounded with familiar but impious expressions, which the imprudent Christian might too carelessly utter, or too patiently hear.

The dangerous temptations which on every side lurked in ambush to surprise the unguarded believer, assailed him with redoubled violence on the days of solemn festivals. So artfully were they framed and disposed throughout the year, that superstition always wore the appearance of pleasure, and often of virtue. Some of the most sacred festivals in the Roman ritual were destined to salute the new calends of January with vows of public and private felicity, to indulge the pious remembrance of the dead and living, to ascertain the inviolable bounds of property, to hail, on the return of spring, the genial powers of fecundity, to perpetuate the two memorable æras of Rome, the foundation of the city, and that of the republic, and to restore, during the humane license of the Saturnalia, the primitive equality of mankind. Some idea may be conceived of the abhorrence of the Christians for such impious ceremonies, by the scrupulous delicacy which they displayed on a much less alarming occasion. On days of general festivity, it was the custom of the ancients to adorn their doors with lamps and with branches of laurel, and to crown their heads with a garland of flowers. This innocent and elegant practice might perhaps have been tolerated as a mere civil institution. But it most unluckily happened that the doors were under the protection of the household gods, that the laurel was sacred to the lover of Daphne, and that garlands of flowers, though frequently worn as a symbol either of joy or mourning, had been dedicated in their first origin to the service of superstition. The trembling Christians, who were persuaded in this instance to comply with the fashion of their country, and the commands of the magistrate, laboured under the most gloomy apprehensions, from the reproaches of their own conscience, the censures of the church, and the denunciations of divine vengeance.

Such was the anxious diligence which was required to guard the chastity of the gospel from the infectious breath of idolatry. The superstitious observances of public or private rites were carelessly practised, from education and habit, by the followers of the established religion. But as often as they occurred, they afforded the Christians an opportunity of declaring and confirming their zealous opposition. By these frequent protestations their attachment to the faith was continually fortified, and in proportion to the increase of zeal, they combated with the more ardour and success in the holy war, which they had undertaken against the empire of the daemons. II. The writings of Cicero represent in the most lively colours the ignorance, the errors, and the uncertainty of the ancient philosophers with regard to the immortality of the soul. When they are desirous of arming their disciples against the fear of death, they inculcate, as an obvious, though melancholy position, that the fatal stroke of our dissolution releases us from the calamities of life; and that those can no longer suffer who no longer exist. Yet there were a few sages of Greece and Rome who had conceived a more exalted, and, in some respects, a juster idea of human nature; though it must be confessed, that, in the sublime inquiry, their reason had been often guided by their imagination, and that their imagination had been prompted by their vanity. When they viewed with complacency the extent of their own mental powers, when they exercised the various faculties of memory, of fancy, and of judgment, in the most profound speculations, or the most important labours, and when they reflected on the desire of fame, which transported them into future ages, far beyond the bounds of death and of the grave; they were unwilling to confound themselves with the beasts of the field, or to suppose, that a being, for whose dignity they entertained the most sincere admiration, could be limited to a spot of earth, and to a few years of duration. With this favourable prepossession they summoned to their aid the science, or rather the language, of Metaphysics. They soon discovered, that as none of the properties of matter will apply to the operations of the mind, the human soul must consequently be a substance distinct from the body, pure, simple, and spiritual, incapable of dissolution, and susceptible of a much higher degree of virtue and happiness after the release from its corporeal prison. From these specious and noble principles, the philosophers who trod in the footsteps of Plato, deduced a very unjustifiable conclusion, since they asserted, not only the future immortality, but the past eternity of the human soul, which they were too apt to consider as a portion of the infinite and self-existing spirit, which pervades and sustains the universe. A doctrine thus removed beyond the senses and the experience of mankind, might serve to amuse the leisure of a philosophic mind; or, in the silence of solitude, it might sometimes impart a ray of comfort to desponding virtue; but the faint impression which had been received in the schools, was soon obliterated by the commerce and business of active life. We are sufficiently acquainted with the eminent persons who flourished in the age of Cicero, and of the first Caesars, with their actions, their characters, and their motives, to be assured that their conduct in this life was never regulated by any serious conviction of the rewards or punishments of a future state. At the bar and in the senate of Rome the ablest orators were not apprehensive of giving offence to their hearers, by exposing that doctrine as an idle and extravagant opinion, which was rejected with contempt by every man of a liberal education and understanding.

Since therefore the most sublime efforts of philosophy can extend no farther than feebly to point out the desire, the hope, or, at most, the probability, of a future state, there is nothing, except a divine revelation, that can ascertain the existence, and describe the condition of the invisible country which is destined to receive the souls of men after their separation from the body. But we may perceive several defects inherent to the popular religions of Greece and Rome, which rendered them very unequal to so arduous a task. 1. The general system of their mythology was unsupported by any solid proofs; and the wisest among the Pagans had already disclaimed its usurped authority. 2. The description of the infernal regions had been abandoned to the fancy of painters and of poets, who peopled them with so many phantoms and monsters, who dispensed their rewards and punishments with so little equity, that a solemn truth, the most congenial to the human heart, was oppressed and disgraced by the absurd mixture of the wildest fictions. * 3. The doctrine of a future state was scarcely considered among the devout polytheists of Greece and Rome as a fundamental article of faith. The providence of the gods, as it related to public communities rather than to private individuals, was principally displayed on the visible theatre of the present world. The petitions which were offered on the altars of Jupiter or Apollo, expressed the anxiety of their worshippers for temporal happiness, and their ignorance or indifference concerning a future life. The important truth of the immortality of the soul was inculcated with more diligence as well as success in India, in Assyria, in Egypt, and in Gaul; and since we cannot attribute such a difference to the superior knowledge of the barbarians, we must ascribe it to the influence of an established priesthood, which employed the motives of virtue as the instrument of ambition.

We might naturally expect, that a principle so essential to religion, would have been revealed in the clearest terms to the chosen people of Palestine, and that it might safely have been intrusted to the hereditary priesthood of Aaron. It is incumbent on us to adore the mysterious dispensations of Providence, when we discover, that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul is omitted in the law of Moses; it is darkly insinuated by the prophets, and during the long period which elapsed between the Egyptian and the Babylonian servitudes, the hopes as well as fears of the Jews appear to have been confined within the narrow compass of the present life. After Cyrus had permitted the exiled nation to return into the promised land, and after Ezra had restored the ancient records of their religion, two celebrated sects, the Sadducees and the Pharisees, insensibly arose at Jerusalem. The former selected from the more opulent and distinguished ranks of society, were strictly attached to the literal sense of the Mosaic law, and they piously rejected the immortality of the soul, as an opinion that received no countenance from the divine book, which they revered as the only rule of their faith. To the authority of scripture the Pharisees added that of tradition, and they accepted, under the name of traditions, several speculative tenets from the philosophy or religion of the eastern nations. The doctrines of fate or predestination, of angels and spirits, and of a future state of rewards and punishments, were in the number of these new articles of belief; and as the Pharisees, by the austerity of their manners, had drawn into their party the body of the Jewish people, the immortality of the soul became the prevailing sentiment of the synagogue, under the reign of the Asmonæan princes and pontiffs. The temper of the Jews was incapable of contenting itself with such a cold and languid assent as might satisfy the mind of a Polytheist; and as soon as they admitted the idea of a future state, they embraced it with the zeal which has always formed the characteristic of the nation. Their zeal, however, added nothing to its evidence, or even probability: and it was still necessary, that the doctrine of life and immortality, which had been dictated by nature, approved by reason, and received by superstition, should obtain the sanction of divine truth from the authority and example of Christ.

When the promise of eternal happiness was proposed to mankind, on condition of adopting the faith, and of observing the precepts of the gospel, it is no wonder that so advantageous an offer should have been accepted by great numbers of every religion, of every rank, and of every province in the Roman empire. The ancient Christians were animated by a contempt for their present existence, and by a just confidence of immortality, of which the doubtful and imperfect faith of modern ages cannot give us any adequate notion. In the primitive church, the influence of truth was very powerfully strengthened by an opinion, which, however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, has not been found agreeable to experience. It was universally believed, that the end of the world, and the kingdom of Heaven, were at hand. The near approach of this wonderful event had been predicted by the apostles; the tradition of it was preserved by their earliest disciples, and those who understood in their literal sense the discourses of Christ himself, were obliged to expect the second and glorious coming of the Son of Man in the clouds, before that generation was totally extinguished, which had beheld his humble condition upon earth, and which might still be witness of the calamities of the Jews under Vespasian or Hadrian. The revolution of seventeen centuries has instructed us not to press too closely the mysterious language of prophecy and revelation; but as long as, for wise purposes, this error was permitted to subsist in the church, it was productive of the most salutary effects on the faith and practice of Christians, who lived in the awful expectation of that moment when the globe itself, and all the various race of mankind, should tremble at the appearance of their divine judge. *

The ancient and popular doctrine of the Millennium was intimately connected with the second coming of Christ. As the works of the creation had been finished in six days, their duration in their present state, according to a tradition which was attributed to the prophet Elijah, was fixed to six thousand years. By the same analogy it was inferred, that this long period of labour and contention, which was now almost elapsed, would be succeeded by a joyful Sabbath of a thousand years; and that Christ, with the triumphant band of the saints and the elect who had escaped death, or who had been miraculously revived, would reign upon earth till the time appointed for the last and general resurrection. So pleasing was this hope to the mind of believers, that the New Jerusalem , the seat of this blissful kingdom, was quickly adorned with all the gayest colours of the imagination. A felicity consisting only of pure and spiritual pleasure, would have appeared too reined for its inhabitants, who were still supposed to possess their human nature and senses. A garden of Eden, with the amusements of the pastoral life, was no longer suited to the advanced state of society which prevailed under the Roman empire. A city was therefore erected of gold and precious stones, and a supernatural plenty of corn and wine was bestowed on the adjacent territory; in the free enjoyment of whose spontaneous productions, the happy and benevolent people was never to be restrained by any jealous laws of exclusive property. The assurance of such a Millennium, was carefully inculcated by a succession of fathers from Justin Martyr and Irenæus, who conversed with the immediate disciples of the apostles, down to Lactantius, who was preceptor to the son of Constantine. Though it might not be universally received, it appears to have been the reigning sentiment of the orthodox believers; and it seems so well adapted to the desires and apprehensions of mankind, that it must have contributed in a very considerable degree to the progress of the Christian faith. But when the edifice of the church was almost completed, the temporary support was laid aside. The doctrine of Christ's reign upon earth, was at first treated as a profound allegory, was considered by degrees as a doubtful and useless opinion, and was at length rejected as the absurd invention of heresy and fanaticism. A mysterious prophecy, which still forms a part of the sacred canon, but which was thought to favour the exploded sentiment, has very narrowly escaped the proscription of the church. *

Whilst the happiness and glory of a temporal reign were promised to the disciples of Christ, the most dreadful calamities were denounced against an unbelieving world. The edification of the new Jerusalem was to advance by equal steps with the destruction of the mystic Babylon; and as long as the emperors who reigned before Constantine persisted in the profession of idolatry, the epithet of Babylon was applied to the city and to the empire of Rome. A regular series was prepared of all the moral and physical evils which can afflict a flourishing nation; intestine discord, and the invasion of the fiercest barbarians from the unknown regions of the North; pestilence and famine, comets and eclipses, earthquakes and inundations. All these were only so many preparatory and alarming signs of the great catastrophe of Rome, when the country of the Scipios and Cæsars should be consumed by a flame from Heaven, and the city of the seven hills, with her palaces, her temples, and her triumphal arches, should be buried in a vast lake of ire and brimstone. It might, however, afford some consolation to Roman vanity, that the period of their empire would be that of the world itself; which, as it had once perished by the element of water, was destined to experience a second and a speedy destruction from the element of ire. In the opinion of a general conflagration, the faith of the Christian very happily coincided with the tradition of the East, the philosophy of the Stoics, and the analogy of Nature; and even the country, which, from religious motives, had been chosen for the origin and principal scene of the conflagration, was the best adapted for that purpose by natural and physical causes; by its deep caverns, beds of sulphur, and numerous volcanoes, of which those of Ætna, of Vesuvius, and of Lipari, exhibit a very imperfect representation. The calmest and most intrepid sceptic could not refuse to acknowledge, that the destruction of the present system of the world by fire, was in itself extremely probable. The Christian, who founded his belief much less on the fallacious arguments of reason than on the authority of tradition and the interpretation of scripture, expected it with terror and confidence as a certain and approaching event; and as his mind was perpetually filled with the solemn idea, he considered every disaster that happened to the empire as an infallible symptom of an expiring world. *

The condemnation of the wisest and most virtuous of the Pagans, on account of their ignorance or disbelief of the divine truth, seems to offend the reason and the humanity of the present age. But the primitive church, whose faith was of a much firmer consistence, delivered over, without hesitation, to eternal torture, the far greater part of the human species. A charitable hope might perhaps be indulged in favour of Socrates, or some other sages of antiquity, who had consulted the light of reason before that of the gospel had arisen. But it was unanimously affirmed, that those who, since the birth or the death of Christ, had obstinately persisted in the worship of the dæmons, neither deserved nor could expect a pardon from the irritated justice of the Deity. These rigid sentiments, which had been unknown to the ancient world, appear to have infused a spirit of bitterness into a system of love and harmony. The ties of blood and friendship were frequently torn asunder by the difference of religious faith; and the Christians, who, in this world, found themselves oppressed by the power of the Pagans, were sometimes seduced by resentment and spiritual pride to delight in the prospect of their future triumph. 'You are fond of spectacles,' exclaims the stern Tertullian, 'expect the greatest of all spectacles, the last and eternal judgment of the universe. How shall I admire, how laugh, how rejoice, how exult, when I behold so many proud monarchs, and fancied gods, groaning in the lowest abyss of darkness; so many magistrates who persecuted the name of the Lord, liquefying in fiercer fires than they ever kindled against the Christians; so many sage philosophers blushing in red hot lames with their deluded scholars; so many celebrated poets trembling before the tribunal, not of Minos, but of Christ; so many tragedians, more tuneful in the expression of their own sufferings; so many dancers -' But the humanity of the reader will permit me to draw a veil over the rest of this infernal description, which the zealous African pursues in a long variety of affected and unfeeling witticisms.

Doubtless there were many among the primitive Christians of a temper more suitable to the meekness and charity of their profession. There were many who felt a sincere compassion for the danger of their friends and countrymen, and who exerted the most benevolent zeal to save them from the impending destruction. The careless Polytheist, assailed by new and unexpected terrors, against which neither his priests nor his philosophers could afford him any certain protection, was very frequently terrified and subdued by the menace of eternal tortures. His fears might assist the progress of his faith and reason; and if he could once persuade himself to suspect that the Christian religion might possibly be true, it became an easy task to convince him that it was the safest and most prudent party that he could possibly embrace.



III. The supernatural gifts, which even in this life were ascribed to the Christians above the rest of mankind, must have conduced to their own comfort, and very frequently to the conviction of infidels. Besides the occasional prodigies, which might sometimes be effected by the immediate interposition of the Deity when he suspended the laws of Nature for the service of religion, the Christian church, from the time of the apostles and their first disciples, has claimed an uninterrupted succession of miraculous powers, the gift of tongues, of vision and of prophecy, the power of expelling dæmons, of healing the sick, and of raising the dead. The knowledge of foreign languages was frequently communicated to the contemporaries of Irenæus, though Irenæus himself was left to struggle with the difficulties of a barbarous dialect whilst he preached the gospel to the natives of Gaul. The divine inspiration, whether it was conveyed in the form of a waking or of a sleeping vision, is described as a favour very liberally bestowed on all ranks of the faithful, on women as on elders, on boys as well as upon bishops. When their devout minds were sufficiently prepared by a course of prayer, of fasting, and of vigils, to receive the extraordinary impulse, they were transported out of their senses, and delivered in extasy what was inspired, being mere organs of the holy spirit, just as a pipe or lute is of him who blows into it. We may add, that the design of these visions was, for the most part, either to disclose the future history, or to guide the present administration of the church. The expulsion of the dæmons from the bodies of those unhappy persons whom they had been permitted to torment, was considered as a signal though ordinary triumph of religion, and is repeatedly alleged by the ancient apologists, as the most convincing evidence of the truth of Christianity. The awful ceremony was usually performed in a public manner, and in the presence of a great number of spectators; the patient was relieved by the power or skill of the exorcist, and the vanquished dæmon was heard to confess, that he was one of the fabled gods of antiquity, who had impiously usurped the adoration of mankind. But the miraculous cure of diseases of the most inveterate or even preternatural kind, can no longer occasion any surprise, when we recollect, that in the days of Irenæus, about the end of the second century, the resurrection of the dead was very far from being esteemed an uncommon event; that the miracle was frequently performed on necessary occasions, by great fasting and the joint supplication of the church of the place, and that the persons thus restored to their prayers, had lived afterwards among them many years. At such a period, when faith could boast of so many wonderful victories over death, it seems difficult to account for the scepticism of those philosophers, who still rejected and derided the doctrine of the resurrection. A noble Grecian had rested on this important ground the whole controversy, and promised Theophilus, bishop of Antioch, that if he could be gratified with the sight of a single person who had been actually raised from the dead, he would immediately embrace the Christian religion. It is somewhat remarkable, that the prelate of the first eastern church, however anxious for the conversion of his friend, thought proper to decline this fair and reasonable challenge.

The miracles of the primitive church, after obtaining the sanction of ages, have been lately attacked in a very free and ingenious inquiry; which, though it has met with the most favourable reception from the Public, appears to have excited a general scandal among the divines of our own as well as of the other Protestant churches of Europe. Our different sentiments on this subject will be much less influenced by any particular arguments, than by our habits of study and reflection; and above all, by the degree of the evidence which we have accustomed ourselves to require for the proof of a miraculous event. The duty of an historian does not call upon him to interpose his private judgment in this nice and important controversy; but he ought not to dissemble the difficulty of adopting such a theory as may reconcile the interest of religion with that of reason, of making a proper application of that theory, and of defining with precision the limits of that happy period exempt from error and from deceit, to which we might be disposed to extend the gift of supernatural powers. From the first of the fathers to the last of the popes, a succession of bishops, of saints, of martyrs, and of miracles, is continued without interruption, and the progress of superstition was so gradual and almost imperceptible, that we know not in what particular link we should break the chain of tradition. Every age bears testimony to the wonderful events by which it was distinguished, and its testimony appears no less weighty and respectable than that of the preceding generation, till we are insensibly led on to accuse our own inconsistency, if in the eighth or in the twelfth century we deny to the venerable Bede, or to the holy Bernard, the same degree of confidence which, in the second century, we had so liberally granted to Justin or to Irenams. * If the truth of any of those miracles is appreciated by their apparent use and propriety, every age had unbelievers to convince, heretics to confute, and idolatrous nations to convert; and sufficient motives might always be produced to justify the interposition of Heaven. And yet since every friend to revelation is persuaded of the reality, and every reasonable man is convinced of the cessation, of miraculous powers, it is evident that there must have been some period in which they were either suddenly or gradually withdrawn from the Christian church. Whatever sera is chosen for that purpose, the death of the apostles, the conversion of the Roman empire, or the extinction of the Arian heresy, * the insensibility of the Christians who lived at that time will equally afford a just matter of surprise. They still supported their pretensions after they had lost their power. Credulity performed the office of faith; fanaticism was permitted to assume the language of inspiration, and the effects of accident or contrivance were ascribed to supernatural causes. The recent experience of genuine miracles should have instructed the Christian world in the ways of providence, and habituated their eye (if we may use a very inadequate expression) to the style of the divine artist. Should the most skilful painter of modern Italy presume to decorate his feeble imitations with the name of Raphael or of Correggio, the insolent fraud would be soon discovered and indignantly rejected.

Whatever opinion may be entertained of the miracles of the primitive church since the time of the apostles, this unresisting softness of temper, so conspicuous among the believers of the second and third centuries, proved of some accidental benefit to the cause of truth and religion. In modem times, a latent and even involuntary scepticism adheres to the most pious dispositions. Their admission of supernatural truths is much less an active consent, than a cold and passive acquiescence. Accustomed long since to observe and to respect the invariable order of Nature, our reason, or at least our imagination, is not sufficiently prepared to sustain the visible action of the Deity. But, in the first ages of Christianity, the situation of mankind was extremely different. The most curious, or the most credulous, among the Pagans, were often persuaded to enter into a society, which asserted an actual claim of miraculous powers. The primitive Christians perpetually trod on mystic ground, and their minds were exercised by the habits of believing the most extraordinary events. They felt, or they fancied, that on every side they were incessantly assaulted by dæmons, comforted by visions, instructed by prophecy, and surprisingly delivered from danger, sickness, and from death itself, by the supplications of the church. The real or imaginary prodigies, of which they so frequently conceived themselves to be the objects, the instruments, or the spectators, very happily disposed them to adopt with the same ease, but with far greater justice, the authentic wonders of the evangelic history; and thus miracles that exceeded not the measure of their own experience, inspired them with the most lively assurance of mysteries which were acknowledged to surpass the limits of their understanding. It is this deep impression of supernatural truths, which has been so much celebrated under the name of faith; a state of mind described as the surest pledge of the divine favour and of future felicity, and recommended as the first or perhaps the only merit of a Christian. According to the more rigid doctors, the moral virtues, which may be equally practised by infidels, are destitute of any value or efficacy in the work of our justification.



IV. But the primitive Christian demonstrated his faith by his virtues; and it was very justly supposed that the divine persuasion which enlightened or subdued the understanding, must, at the same time, purify the heart and direct the actions of the believer. The first apologists of Christianity who justify the innocence of their brethren, and the writers of a later period who celebrate the sanctity of their ancestors, display, in the most lively colours, the reformation of manners which was introduced into the world by the preaching of the gospel. As it is my intention to remark only such human causes as were permitted to second the influence of revelation, I shall slightly mention two motives which might naturally render the lives of the primitive Christians much purer and more austere than those of their Pagan contemporaries, or their degenerate successors; repentance for their past sins, and the laudable desire of supporting the reputation of the society in which they were engaged.

It is a very ancient reproach, suggested by the ignorance or the malice of infidelity, that the Christians allured into their party the most atrocious criminals, who, as soon as they were touched by a sense of remorse, were easily persuaded to wash away, in the water of baptism, the guilt of their past conduct, for which the temples of the gods refused to grant them any expiation. But this reproach, when it is cleared from misrepresentation, contributes as much to the honour as it did to the increase of the church. The friends of Christianity may acknowledge without a blush, that many of the most eminent saints had been before their baptism the most abandoned sinners. Those persons, who in the world had followed, though in an imperfect manner, the dictates of benevolence and propriety, derived such a calm satisfaction from the opinion of their own rectitude, as rendered them much less susceptible of the sudden emotions of shame, of grief, and of terror, which have given birth to so many wonderful conversions. After the example of their Divine Master, the missionaries of the gospel disdained not the society of men, and especially of women, oppressed by the consciousness, and very often by the effects, of their vices. As they emerged from sin and superstition to the glorious hope of immortality, they resolved to devote themselves to a life, not only of virtue, but of penitence. The desire of perfection became the ruling passion of their soul; and it is well known, that while reason embraces a cold mediocrity, our passions hurry us, with rapid violence, over the space which lies between the most opposite extremes.

When the new converts had been enrolled in the number of the faithful, and were admitted to the sacraments of the church, they found themselves restrained from relapsing into their past disorders by another consideration of a less spiritual, but of a very innocent and respectable nature. Any particular society that has departed from the great body of the nation, or the religion to which it belonged, immediately becomes the object of universal as well as invidious observation. In proportion to the smallness of its numbers, the character of the society may be affected by the virtue and vices of the persons who compose it; and every member is engaged to watch with the most vigilant attention over his own behaviour, and over that of his brethren, since, as he must expect to incur a part of the common disgrace, he may hope to enjoy a share of the common reputation. When the Christians of Bithynia were brought before the tribunal of the younger Pliny, they assured the proconsul, that, far from being engaged in any unlawful conspiracy, they were bound by a solemn obligation to abstain from the commission of those crimes which disturb the private or public peace of society, from theft, robbery, adultery, perjury, and fraud. Near a century afterwards, Tertullian, with an honest pride, could boast, that very few Christians had suffered by the hand of the executioner, except on account of their religion. Their serious and sequestered life, averse to the gay luxury of the age, inured them to chastity, temperance, œconomy, and all the sober and domestic virtues. As the greater number were of some trade or profession, it was incumbent on them, by the strictest integrity and the fairest dealing, to remove the suspicions which the profane are too apt to conceive against the appearances of sanctity. The contempt of the world exercised them in the habits of humility, meekness, and patience. The more they were persecuted, the more closely they adhered to each other. Their mutual charity and unsuspecting confidence has been remarked by infidels, and was too often abused by perfidious friends. *

It is a very honourable circumstance for the morals of the primitive Christians, that even their faults, or rather errors, were derived from an excess of virtue. The bishops and doctors of the church, whose evidence attests, and whose authority might influence, the professions, the principles, and even the practice, of their contemporaries, had studied the scriptures with less skill than devotion, and they often received, in the most literal sense, those rigid precepts of Christ and the apostles, to which the prudence of succeeding commentators has applied a looser and more figurative mode of interpretation. Ambitious to exalt the perfection of the gospel above the wisdom of philosophy, the zealous fathers have carried the duties of self-mortification, of purity, and of patience, to a height which it is scarcely possible to attain, and much less to preserve, in our present state of weakness and corruption. A doctrine so extraordinary and so sublime must inevitably command the veneration of the people; but it was ill calculated to obtain the suffrage of those worldly philosophers, who, in the conduct of this transitory life, consult only the feelings of nature and the interest of society.

There are two very natural propensities which we may distinguish in the most virtuous and liberal dispositions, the love of pleasure and the love of action. If the former is reined by art and learning, improved by the charms of social intercourse, and corrected by a just regard to œconomy, to health, and to reputation, it is productive of the greatest part of the happiness of private life. The love of action is a principle of a much stronger and more doubtful nature. It often leads to anger, to ambition, and to revenge; but when it is guided by the sense of propriety and benevolence, it becomes the parent of every virtue; and if those virtues are accompanied with equal abilities, a family, a state, or an empire, may be indebted for their safety and prosperity to the undaunted courage of a single man. To the love of pleasure we may therefore ascribe most of the agreeable, to the love of action we may attribute most of the useful and respectable, qualifications. The character in which both the one and the other should be united and harmonized, would seem to constitute the most perfect idea of human nature. The insensible and inactive disposition, which should be supposed alike destitute of both, would be rejected, by the common consent of mankind, as utterly incapable of procuring any happiness to the individual, or any public benefit to the world. But it was not in this world that the primitive Christians were desirous of making themselves either agreeable or useful.

The acquisition of knowledge, the exercise of our reason or fancy, and the cheerful low of unguarded conversation, may employ the leisure of a liberal mind. Such amusements, however, were rejected with abhorrence, or admitted with the utmost caution, by the severity of the fathers, who despised all knowledge that was not useful to salvation, and who considered all levity of discourse as a criminal abuse of the gift of speech. In our present state of existence, the body is so inseparably connected with the soul, that it seems to be our interest to taste, with innocence and moderation, the enjoyments of which that faithful companion is susceptible. Very different was the reasoning of our devout predecessors; vainly aspiring to imitate the perfection of angels, they disdained, or they affected to disdain, every earthly and corporeal delight. Some of our senses indeed are necessary for our preservation, others for our subsistence, and others again for our information, and thus far it was impossible to reject the use of them. The first sensation of pleasure was marked as the first moment of their abuse. The unfeeling candidate for Heaven was instructed, not only to resist the grosser allurements of the taste or smell, but even to shut his ears against the profane harmony of sounds, and to view with indifference the most finished productions of human art. Gay apparel, magnificent houses, and elegant furniture, were supposed to unite the double guilt of pride and of sensuality: a simple and mortified appearance was more suitable to the Christian who was certain of his sins and doubtful of his salvation. In their censures of luxury, the fathers are extremely minute and circumstantial; and among the various articles which excite their pious indignation, we may enumerate false hair, garments of any colour except white, instruments of music, vases of gold or silver, downy pillows (as Jacob reposed his head on a stone), white bread, foreign wines, public salutations, the use of warm baths, and the practice of shaving the beard, which, according to the expression of Tertullian, is a lie against our own faces, and an impious attempt to improve the works of the Creator. When Christianity was introduced among the rich and the polite, the observation of these singular laws was let, as it would be at present, to the few who were ambitious of superior sanctity. But it is always easy, as well as agreeable, for the inferior ranks of mankind to claim a merit from the contempt of that pomp and pleasure, which fortune has placed beyond their reach. The virtue of the primitive Christians, like that of the first Romans, was very frequently guarded by poverty and ignorance.

The chaste severity of the fathers, in whatever related to the commerce of the two sexes, flowed from the same principle; their abhorrence of every enjoyment, which might gratify the sensual, and degrade the spiritual, nature of man. It was their favourite opinion, that if Adam had preserved his obedience to the Creator, he would have lived for ever in a state of virgin purity, and that some harmless mode of vegetation might have peopled paradise with a race of innocent and immortal beings. The use of marriage was permitted only to his fallen posterity, as a necessary expedient to continue the human species, and as a restraint, however imperfect, on the natural licentiousness of desire. The hesitation of the orthodox casuists on this interesting subject, betrays the perplexity of men, unwilling to approve an institution, which they were compelled to tolerate. The enumeration of the very whimsical laws, which they most circumstantially imposed on the marriage-bed, would force a smile from the young, and a blush from the fair. It was their unanimous sentiment, that a first marriage was adequate to all the purposes of nature and of society. The sensual connexion was refined into a resemblance of the mystic union of Christ with his church, and was pronounced to be indissoluble either by divorce or by death. The practice of second nuptials was branded with the name of a legal adultery; and the persons who were guilty of so scandalous an offence against Christian purity, were soon exduded from the honours, and even from the alms, of the church. Since desire was imputed as a crime, and marriage was tolerated as a defect, it was consistent with the same principles to consider a state of celibacy as the nearest approach to the Divine perfection. It was with the utmost difficulty that ancient Rome could support the institution of six vestals; * but the primitive church was filled with a great number of persons of either sex, who had devoted themselves to the profession of perpetual chastity. A few of these, among whom we may reckon the learned Origen, judged it the most prudent to disarm the tempter. Some were insensible and some were invincible against the assaults of the flesh. Disdaining an ignominious flight, the virgins of the warm climate of Africa encountered the enemy in the closest engagement; they permitted priests and deacons to share their bed, and gloried amidst the flames in their unsullied purity. But. insulted Nature sometimes vindicated her rights, and this new species of martyrdom served only to introduce a new scandal into the church. * Among the Christian ascetics, however (a name which they soon acquired from their painful exercise), many, as they were less presumptuous, were probably more successful. The loss of sensual pleasure was supplied and compensated by spiritual pride. Even the multitude of Pagans were inclined to estimate the merit of the sacrifice by its apparent difficulty; and it was in the praise of these chaste spouses of Christ that the fathers have poured forth the troubled stream of their eloquence. Such are the early traces of monastic principles and institutions, which, in a subsequent age, have counterbalanced all the temporal advantages of Christianity.

The Christians were not less averse to the business than to the pleasures of this world. The defence of our persons and property they knew not how to reconcile with the patient doctrine which enjoined an unlimited forgiveness of past injuries, and commanded them to invite the repetition of fresh insults. Their simplicity was offended by the use of oaths, by the pomp of magistracy, and by the active contention of public life, nor could their humane ignorance be convinced, that it was lawful on any occasion to shed the blood of our fellow creatures, either by the sword of justice, or by that of war; even though their criminal or hostile attempts should threaten the peace and safety of the whole community. * It was acknowledged, that, under a less perfect law, the powers of the Jewish constitution had been exercised, with the approbation of Heaven, by inspired prophets and by anointed kings. The Christians felt and confessed, that such institutions might be necessary for the present system of the world, and they cheerfully submitted to the authority of their Pagan governors. But while they inculcated the maxims of passive obedience, they refused to take any active part in the civil administration or the military defence of the empire. Some indulgence might perhaps be allowed to those persons who, before their conversion, were already engaged in such violent and sanguinary occupations; but it was impossible that the Christians, without renouncing a more sacred duty, could assume the character of soldiers, of magistrates, or of princes. This indolent, or even criminal disregard to the public welfare, exposed them to the contempt and reproaches of the Pagans, who very frequently asked, what must be the fate of the empire, attacked on every side by the barbarians, if all mankind should adopt the pusillanimous sentiments of the new sect? To this insulting question the Christian apologists returned obscure and ambiguous answers, as they were unwilling to reveal the secret cause of their security; the expectation that, before the conversion of mankind was accomplished, war, government, the Roman empire, and the world itself, would be no more. It may be observed, that, in this instance likewise, the situation of the first Christians coincided very happily with their religious scruples, and that their aversion to an active life contributed rather to excuse them from the service, than to exclude them from the honours, of the state and army.



V. But the human character, however it may be exalted or depressed by a temporary enthusiasm, will return by degrees to its proper and natural level, and will resume those passions that seem the most adapted to its present condition. The primitive Christians were dead to the business and pleasures of the world; but their love of action, which could never be entirely extinguished, soon revived, and found a new occupation in the government of the church. A separate society, which attacked the established religion of the empire, was obliged to adopt some form of internal policy, and to appoint a sufficient number of ministers, intrusted not only with the spiritual functions, but even with the temporal direction of the Christian commonwealth. The safety of that society, its honour, its aggrandisement, were productive, even in the most pious minds, of a spirit of patriotism, such as the first of the Romans had felt for the republic, and sometimes, of a similar indifference, in the use of whatever means might probably conduce to so desirable an end. The ambition of raising themselves or their friends to the honours and offices of the church, was disguised by the laudable intention of devoting to the public benefit, the power and consideration, which, for that purpose only, it became their duty to solicit. In the exercise of their functions, they were frequently called upon to detect the errors of heresy, or the arts of faction, to oppose the designs of perfidious brethren, to stigmatize their characters with deserved infamy, and to expel them from the bosom of a society, whose peace and happiness they had attempted to disturb. The ecclesiastical governors of the Christians were taught to unite the wisdom of the serpent with the innocence of the dove; but as the former was reined, so the latter was insensibly corrupted, by the habits of government. In the church as well as in the world, the persons who were placed in any public station rendered themselves considerable by their eloquence and firmness, by their knowledge of mankind, and by their dexterity in business, and while they concealed from others, and perhaps from themselves, the secret motives of their conduct, they too frequently relapsed into all the turbulent passions of active life, which were tinctured with an additional degree of bitterness and obstinacy from the infusion of spiritual zeal.

The government of the church has often been the subject as well as the prize of religious contention. The hostile disputants of Rome, of Paris, of Oxford, and of Geneva, have alike struggled to reduce the primitive and apostolic model, * to the respective standards of their own policy. The few who have pursued this inquiry with more candour and impartiality, are of opinion, that the apostles declined the office of legislation, and rather chose to endure some partial scandals and divisions, than to exclude the Christians of a future age from the liberty of varying their forms of ecdesiastical government according to the changes of times and circumstances. The scheme of policy, which, under their approbation, was adopted for the use of the first century, may be discovered from the practice of Jerusalem, of Ephesus, or of Corinth. The societies which were instituted in the cities of the Roman empire, were united only by the ties of faith and charity. Independence and equality formed the basis of their internal constitution. The want of discipline and human learning was supplied by the occasional assistance of the prophets , who were called to that function without distinction of age, of sex, or of natural abilities, and who, as often as they felt the divine impulse, poured forth the effusions of the spirit in the assembly of the faithful. But these extraordinary gifts were frequently abused or misapplied by the prophetic teachers. They displayed them at an improper season, presumptuously disturbed the service of the assembly, and by their pride or mistaken zeal they introduced, particularly into the apostolic church of Corinth, a long and melancholy train of disorders. As the institution of prophets became useless, and even pernicious, their powers were withdrawn, and their office abolished. The public functions of religion were solely intrusted to the established ministers of the church, the bishops and the presbyters ; two appellations which, in their first origin, appear to have distinguished the same office and the same order of persons. The name of Presbyter was expressive of their age, or rather of their gravity and wisdom. The title of Bishop denoted their inspection over the faith and manners of the Christians who were committed to their pastoral care. In proportion to the respective numbers of the faithful, a larger or smaller number of these episcopal presbyters guided each infant congregation with equal authority, and with united counsels.

But the most perfect equality of freedom requires the directing hand of a superior magistrate; and the order of public deliberations soon introduces the office of a president, invested at least with the authority of collecting the sentiments, and of executing the resolutions, of the assembly. A regard for the public tranquillity, which would so frequently have been interrupted by annual or by occasional elections, induced the primitive Christians to constitute an honourable and perpetual magistracy, and to choose one of the wisest and most holy among their presbyters to execute, during his life, the duties of their ecclesiastical governor. It was under these circumstances that the lofty title of Bishop began to raise itself above the humble appellation of presbyter; and while the latter remained the most natural distinction for the members of every Christian senate, the former was appropriated to the dignity of its new president. The advantages of this episcopal form of government, which appears to have been introduced before the end of the first century, were so obvious, and so important for the future greatness, as well as the present peace, of Christianity, that it was adopted without delay by all the societies which were already scattered over the empire, had acquired in a very early period the sanction of antiquity, and is still revered by the most powerful churches, both of the East and of the West, as a primitive and even as a divine establishment. * It is needless to observe, that the pious and humble presbyters, who were first dignified with the episcopal ritle, could not possess, and would probably have rejected, the power and pomp which now encircles the tiara of the Roman pontiff, or the mitre of a German prelate. But we may define, in a few words, the narrow limits of their original jurisdiction, which was chiefly of a spiritual, though in some instances of a temporal, nature. It consisted in the administration of the sacraments and discipline of the church, the superintendency of religious ceremonies, which imperceptibly increased in number and variety, the consecration of ecclesiastical ministers, to whom the bishop assigned their respective functions, the management of the public fund, and the determination of all such differences as the faithful were unwilling to expose before the tribunal of an idolatrous judge. These powers, during a short period, were exercised according to the advice of the presbyteral college, and with the consent and approbation of the assembly of Christians. The primitive bishops were considered only as the first of their equals, and the honourable servants of a free people. Whenever the episcopal chair became vacant by death, a new president was chosen among the presbyters by the suffrage of the whole congregation, every member of which supposed himself invested with a sacred and sacerdotal character.

Such was the mild and equal constitution by which the Christians were governed more than an hundred years after the death of the apostles. Every society formed within itself a separate and independent republic: and although the most distant of these little states maintained a mutual as well as friendly intercourse of letters and deputations, the Christian world was not yet connected by any supreme authority or legislative assembly. As the numbers of the faithful were gradually multiplied, they discovered the advantages that might result from a closer union of their interest and designs. Towards the end of the second century, the churches of Greece and Asia adopted the useful institutions of provincial synods, and they may justly be supposed to have borrowed the model of a representative council from the celebrated examples of their own country, the Amphictyons, the Achaean league, or the assemblies of the Ionian cities. It was soon established as a custom and as a law, that the bishops of the independent churches should meet in the capital of the province at the stated periods of spring and autumn. Their deliberations were assisted by the advice of a few distinguished presbyters, and moderated by the presence of a listening multitude. Their decrees, which were styled Canons, regulated every important controversy of faith and discipline; and it was natural to believe that a liberal effusion of the holy spirit would be poured on the united assembly of the delegates of the Christian people. The institution of synods was so well suited to private ambition and to public interest, that in the space of a few years it was received throughout the whole empire. A regular correspondence was established between the provincial councils, which mutually communicated and approved their respective proceedings; and the catholic church soon assumed the form, and acquired the strength, of a great foederative republic.

As the legislative authority of the particular churches was insensibly superseded by the use of councils, the bishops obtained by their alliance a much larger share of executive and arbitrary power; and as soon as they were connected by a sense of their common interest, they were enabled to attack, with united vigour, the original rights of their clergy and people. The prelates of the third century imperceptibly changed the language of exhortation into that of command, scattered the seeds of future usurpations, and supplied, by scripture allegories and declamatory rhetoric, their deficiency of force and of reason. They exalted the unity and power of the church, as it was represented in the EPISCOPAL OFFICE, of which every bishop enjoyed an equal and undivided portion. Princes and magistrates, it was often repeated, might boast an earthly claim to a transitory dominion: it was the episcopal authority alone which was derived from the deity, and extended itself over this and over another world. The bishops were the vicegerents of Christ, the successors of the apostles, and the mystic substitutes of the high priest of the Mosaic law. Their exclusive privilege of conferring the sacerdotal character, invaded the freedom both of clerical and of popular elections; and if, in the administration of the church, they still consulted the judgment of the presbyters, or the inclination of the people, they most carefully inculcated the merit of such a voluntary condescension. The bishops acknowledged the supreme authority which resided in the assembly of their brethren; but in the government of his peculiar diocese, each of them exacted from his flock the same implicit obedience as if that favourite metaphor had been literally just, and as if the shepherd had been of a more exalted nature than that of his sheep. This obedience, however, was not imposed without some efforts on one side, and some resistance on the other. The democratical part of the constitution was, in many places, very warmly supported by the zealous or interested opposition of the inferior clergy. But their patriotism received the ignominious epithets of faction and schism; and the episcopal cause was indebted for its rapid progress, to the labours of many active prelates, who, like Cyprian of Carthage, could reconcile the arts of the most ambitious statesman with the Christian virtues which seem adapted to the character of a saint and martyr. *

The same causes which at first had destroyed the equality of the presbyters, introduced among the bishops a pre-eminence of rank, and from thence a superiority of jurisdiction. As often as in the spring and autumn they met in provincial synod, the difference of personal merit and reputation was very sensibly felt among the members of the assembly, and the multitude was governed by the wisdom and eloquence of the few. But the order of public proceedings required a more regular and less invidious distinction; the office of perpetual presidents in the councils of each province, was conferred on the bishops of the principal city, and these aspiring prelates, who soon acquired the lofty titles of Metropolitans and Primates, secretly prepared themselves to usurp over their episcopal brethren the same authority which the bishops had so lately assumed above the college of presbyters. Nor was it long before an emulation of pre-eminence and power prevailed among the metropolitans themselves, each of them affecting to display, in the most pompous terms, the temporal honours and advantages of the city over which he presided; the numbers and opulence of the Christians, who were subject to their pastoral care; the saints and martyrs who had arisen among them, and the purity with which they preserved the tradition of the faith, as it had been transmitted through a series of orthodox bishops from the apostle of the apostolic disciple, to whom the foundation of their church was ascribed. From every cause either of a civil or of an ecclesiastical nature, it was easy to foresee that Rome must enjoy the respect, and would soon claim the obedience, of the provinces. The society of the faithful bore a just proportion to the capital of the empire; and the Roman church was the greatest, the most numerous, and, in regard to the West, the most ancient of all the Christian establishments, many of which had received their religion from the pious labours of her missionaries. Instead of one apostolic founder, the utmost boast of Antioch, of Ephesus, or of Corinth, the banks of the Tyber were supposed to have been honoured with the preaching and martyrdom of the two most eminent among the apostles; and the bishops of Rome very prudently claimed the inheritance of whatsoever prerogatives were attributed either to the person or to the office of St Peter. * The bishops of Italy and of the provinces were disposed to allow them a primacy of order and association (such was their very accurate expression) in the Christian aristocracy. But the power of a monarch was rejected with abhorrence, and the aspiring genius of Rome experienced from the nations of Asia and Africa, a more vigorous resistance to her spiritual, than she had formerly done to her temporal, dominion. The patriotic Cyprian, who ruled with the most absolute sway the church of Carthage and the provincial synods, opposed with resolution and success the ambition of the Roman pontiff, artfully connected his own cause with that of the eastern bishops, and, like Hannibal, sought out new allies in the heart of Asia. If this Punic war was carried on without any effusion of blood, it was owing much less to the moderation than to the weakness of the contending prelates. Invectives and excommunications were their only weapons; and these, during the progress of the whole controversy, they hurled against each other with equal fury and devotion. The hard necessity of censuring either a pope, or a saint and martyr, distresses the modern catholics, whenever they are obliged to relate the particulars of a dispute, in which the champions of religion indulged such passions as seem much more adapted to the senate or to the camp.

The progress of the ecclesiastical authority gave birth to the memorable distinction of the laity and of the clergy, which had been unknown to the Greeks and Romans. The former of these appellations comprehend the body of the Christian people; the latter, according to the signification of the word, was appropriated to the chosen portion that had been set apart for the service of religion; a celebrated order of men which has furnished the most important, though not always the most edifying, subjects for modern history. Their mutual hostilities sometimes disturbed the peace of the infant church, but their zeal and activity were united in the common cause, and the love of power, which (under the most artful disguises) could insinuate itself into the breasts of bishops and martyrs, animated them to increase the number of their subjects, and to enlarge the limits of the Christian empire. They were destitute of any temporal force, and they were for a long time discouraged and oppressed, rather than assisted, by the civil magistrate; but they had acquired, and they employed within their own society, the two most efficacious instruments of government, rewards and punishments; the former derived from the pious liberality, the latter from the devout apprehensions, of the faithful.

I. The community of goods, which had so agreeably amused the imagination of Plato, and which subsisted in some degree among the austere sect of the Essenians, was adopted for a short time in the primitive church. The fervour of the first proselytes prompted them to sell those worldly possessions, which they despised, to lay the price of them at the feet of the apostles, and to content themselves With receiving an equal share out of the general distribution. The progress of the Christian religion relaxed, and gradually abolished this generous institution, which, in hands less pure than those of the apostles, would too soon have been corrupted and abused by the returning selfishness of human nature; and the converts who embraced the new religion were permitted to retain the possession of their patrimony, to receive legacies and inheritances, and to increase their separate property by all the lawful means of trade and industry. Instead of an absolute sacrifice, a moderate proportion was accepted by the ministers of the gospel; and in their weekly or monthly assemblies, every believer, according to the exigency of the occasion, and the measure of his wealth and piety, presented his voluntary offering for the use of the common fund. Nothing, however inconsiderable, was refused; but it was diligently inculcated, that, in the article of Tythes, the Mosaic law was still of divine obligation; and that since the Jews, under a less perfect discipline, had been commanded to pay a tenth part of all that they possessed, it would become the disciples of Christ to distinguish themselves by a superior degree of liberality, and to acquire some merit by resigning a superfluous treasure, which must so soon be annihilated with the world itself. It is almost unnecessary to observe, that the revenue of each particular church, which was of so uncertain and fluctuating a nature, must have varied with the poverty or the opulence of the faithful, as they were dispersed in obscure villages, or collected in the great cities of the empire. In the time of the emperor Decius, it was the opinion of the magistrates, that the Christians of Rome were possessed of very considerable wealth; that vessels of gold and silver were used in their religious worship, and that many among their proselytes had sold their lands and houses to increase the public riches of the sect, at the expence, indeed, of their unfortunate children, who found themselves beggars, because their parents had been saints. We should listen with distrust to the suspicions of strangers and enemies: on this occasion, however, they receive a very specious and probable colour from the two following circumstances, the only ones that have reached our knowledge, which define any precise sums, or convey any distinct idea. Almost at the same period, the bishop of Carthage, from a society less opulent than that of Rome, collected an hundred thousand sesterces (above eight hundred and fifty pounds sterling) on a sudden call of charity to redeem the brethren of Numidia, who had been carried away captives by the barbarians of the desert. About an hundred years before the reign of Decius, the Roman church had received, in a single donation, the sum of two hundred thousand sesterces from a stranger of Pontus, who proposed to ix his residence in the capital. These oblations, for the most part, were made in money; nor was the society of Christians either desirous or capable of acquiring, to any considerable degree, the incumbrance of landed property. It had been provided by several laws, which were enacted with the same design as our statutes of mortmain, that no real estates should be given or bequeathed to any corporate body, without either a special privilege or a particular dispensation from the emperor or from the senate; who were seldom disposed to grant them in favour of a sect, at first the object of their contempt, and at last of their fears and jealousy. A transaction however is related under the reign of Alexander Severus, which discovers that the restraint was sometimes eluded or suspended, and that the Christians were permitted to claim and to possess lands within the limits of Rome itself. The progress of Christianity, and the civil confusion of the empire, contributed to relax the severity of the laws, and before the close of the third century many considerable estates were bestowed on the opulent churches of Rome, Milan, Carthage, Antioch, Alexandria, and the other great cities of Italy and the provinces.

The bishop was the natural steward of the church; the public stock was intrusted to his care without account or controul; the presbyters were confined to their spiritual functions, and the more dependent order of deacons was solely employed in the management and distribution of the ecclesiastical revenue. If we may give credit to the vehement declamations of Cyprian, there were too many among his African brethren, who, in the execution of their charge, violated every precept, not only of evangelic perfection, but even of moral virtue. By some of these unfaithful stewards the riches of the church were lavished in sensual pleasures, by others they were perverted to the purposes of private gain, of fraudulent purchases, and of rapacious usury. But as long as the contributions of the Christian people were free and unconstrained, the abuse of their confidence could not be very frequent, and the general uses to which their liberality was applied, reflected honour on the religious society. A decent portion was reserved for the maintenance of the bishop and his clergy; a sufficient sum was allotted for the expences of the public worship, of which the feasts of love, the agapæ, as they were called, constituted a very pleasing part. The whole remainder was the sacred patrimony of the poor. According to the discretion of the bishop, it was distributed to support widows and orphans, the lame, the sick, and the aged of the community; to comfort strangers and pilgrims, and to alleviate the misfortunes of prisoners and captives, more especially when their sufferings had been occasioned by their firm attachment to the cause of religion. A generous intercourse of charity united the most distant provinces, and the smaller congregations were cheerfully assisted by the alms of their more opulent brethren. Such an institution, which paid less regard to the merit than to the distress of the object, very materially conduced to the progress of Christianity. The Pagans, who were actuated by a sense of humanity, while they derided the doctrines, acknowledged the benevolence of the new sect. The prospect of immediate relief and of future protection allured into its hospitable bosom many of those unhappy persons whom the neglect of the world would have abandoned to the miseries of want, of sickness, and of old age. There is some reason likewise to believe, that great numbers of infants, who, according to the inhuman practice of the times, had been exposed by their parents, were frequently rescued from death, baptised, educated, and maintained by the piety of the Christians, and at the expence of the public treasure. *

II. It is the undoubted right of every society to exclude from its communion and benefits, such among its members as reject or violate those regulations which have been established by general consent. In the exercise of this power, the censures of the Christian church were chiefly directed against scandalous sinners, and particularly those who were guilty of murder, of fraud, or of incontinence; against the authors, or the followers of any heretical opinions which had been condemned by the judgment of the episcopal order; and against those unhappy persons, who, whether from choice or from compulsion, had polluted themselves after their baptism by any act of idolatrous worship. The consequences of excommunication were of a temporal as well as a spiritual nature. The Christian against whom it was pronounced, was deprived of any part in the oblations of the faithful. The ties both of religious and of private friendship were dissolved: he found himself a profane object of abhorrence to the persons whom he the most esteemed, or by whom he had been the most tenderly beloved; and as far as an expulsion from a respectable society could imprint on his character a mark of disgrace, he was shunned or suspected by the generality of mankind. The situation of these unfortunate exiles was in itself very painful and melancholy; but, as it usually happens, their apprehensions far exceeded their sufferings. The benefits of the Christian communion were those of eternal life, nor could they erase from their minds the awful opinion, that to those ecclesiastical governors by whom they were condemned, the Deity had committed the keys of Hell and of Paradise. The heretics, indeed, who might be supported by the consciousness of their intentions, and by the flattering hope that they alone had discovered the true path of salvation, endeavoured to regain, in their separate assemblies, those comforts, temporal as well as spiritual, which they no longer derived from the great society of Christians. But almost all those who had reluctantly yielded to the power of vice or idolatry, were sensible of their fallen condition, and anxiously desirous of being restored to the benefits of the Christian communion.

With regard to the treatment of these penitents two opposite opinions, the one of justice, the other of mercy, divided the primitive church. The more rigid and inflexible casuists refused them for ever, and without exception, the meanest place in the holy community, which they had disgraced or deserted, and leaving them to the remorse of a guilty conscience, indulged them only with a faint ray of hope, that the contrition of their life and death might possibly be accepted by the Supreme Being. A milder sentiment was embraced in practice as well as in theory, by the purest and most respectable of the Christian churches. The gates of reconciliation and of Heaven were seldom shut against the returning penitent; but a severe and solemn form of discipline was instituted, which, while it served to expiate his crime, might powerfully deter the spectators from the imitation of his example. Humbled by a public confession, emaciated by fasting, and clothed in sackcloth, the penitent lay prostrate at the door of the assembly, imploring with tears the pardon of his offences, and soliciting the prayers of the faithful. If the fault was of a very heinous nature, whole years of penance were esteemed an inadequate satisfaction to the Divine Justice; and it was always by slow and painful gradations that the sinner, the heretic, or the apostate, was re-admitted into the bosom of the church. A sentence of perpetual excommunication was, however, reserved for some crimes of an extraordinary magnitude, and particularly for the inexcusable relapses of those penitents who had already experienced and abused the clemency of their ecclesiastical superiors. According to the circumstances or the number of the guilty, the exercise of the Christian discipline was varied by the discretion of the bishops. The councils of Ancyra and Illiberis were held about the same time, the one in Galatia, the other in Spain; but their respective canons, which are still extant, seem to breathe a very different spirit. The Galatian, who after his baptism had repeatedly sacrificed to idols, might obtain his pardon by a penance of seven years, and if he had seduced others to imitate his example, only three years more were added to the term of his exile. But the unhappy Spaniard, who had committed the same offence, was deprived of the hope of reconciliation, even in the article of death; and his idolatry was placed at the head of a list of seventeen other crimes, against which a sentence no less terrible was pronounced. Among these we may distinguish the inexpiable guilt of calumniating a bishop, a presbyter, or even a deacon.

The well-tempered mixture of liberality and rigour, the judicious dispensation of rewards and punishments, according to the maxims of policy as well as justice, constituted the human strength of the church. The bishops, whose paternal care extended itself to the government of both worlds, were sensible of the importance of these prerogatives, and covering their ambition with the fair pretence of the love of order, they were jealous of any rival in the exercise of a discipline so necessary to prevent the desertion of those troops which had inlisted themselves under the banner of the cross, and whose numbers every day became more considerable. From the imperious declamations of Cyprian, we should naturally conclude, that the doctrines of excommunication and penance formed the most essential part of religion; and that it was much less dangerous for the disciples of Christ to neglect the observance of the moral duties, than to despise the censures and authority of their bishops. Sometimes we might imagine that we were listening to the voice of Moses, when he commanded the earth to open, and to swallow up, in consuming lames, the rebellious race which refused obedience to the priesthood of Aaron; and we should sometimes suppose that we heard a Roman consul asserting the majesty of the republic, and declaring his inflexible resolution to enforce the rigour of the laws. 'If such irregularities are suffered with impunity (it is thus that the bishop of Carthage chides the lenity of his colleague), if such irregularities are suffered, there is an end of EPISCOPAL VIGOUR; an end of the sublime and divine power of governing the church, an end of Christianity itself.' Cyprian had renounced those temporal honours, which it is probable he would never have obtained; but the acquisition of such absolute command over the consciences and understanding of a congregation, however obscure or despised by the world, is more truly grateful to the pride of the human heart, than the possession of the most despotic power, imposed by arms and conquest on a reluctant people.

In the course of this important, though perhaps tedious, inquiry, I have attempted to display the secondary causes which so efficaciously assisted the truth of the Christian religion. If among these causes we have discovered any artificial ornaments, any accidental circumstances, or any mixture of error and passion, it cannot appear surprising that mankind should be the most sensibly affected by such motives as were suited to their imperfect nature. It was by the aid of these causes, exclusive zeal, the immediate expectation of another world, the claim of miracles, the practice of rigid virtue, and the constitution of the primitive church, that Christianity spread itself with so much success in the Roman empire. To the first of these the Christians were indebted for their invincible valour, which disdained to capitulate with the enemy whom they were resolved to vanquish. The three succeeding causes supplied their valour with the most formidable arms. The last of these causes united their courage, directed their arms, and gave their efforts that irresistible weight, which even a small band of well-trained and intrepid volunteers has so often possessed over an undisciplined multitude, ignorant of the subject, and careless of the event of the war. In the various religions of Polytheism, some wandering fanatics of Egypt and Syria, who addressed themselves to the credulous superstition of the populace, were perhaps the only order of priests * that derived their whole support and credit from their sacerdotal profession, and were very deeply affected by a personal concern for the safety or prosperity of their tutelar deities. The ministers of polytheism, both in Rome and in the provinces, were, for the most part, men of a noble birth, and of an affluent fortune, who received, as an honourable distinction, the care of a celebrated temple, or of a public sacrifice, exhibited, very frequently at their own expence, the sacred games, * and with cold indifference performed the ancient rites, according to the laws and fashion of their country. As they were engaged in the ordinary occupations of life, their zeal and devotion were seldom animated by a sense of interest, or by the habits of an ecclesiastical character. Confined to their respective temples and cities, they remained without any connexion of discipline or government; and whilst they acknowledged the supreme jurisdiction of the senate, of the college of pontiffs, and of the emperor, those civil magistrates contented themselves with the easy task of maintaining, in peace and dignity, the general worship of mankind. We have already seen how various, how loose, and how uncertain were the religious sentiments of Polytheists. They were abandoned, almost without controul, to the natural workings of a superstitious fancy. The accidental circumstances of their life and situation determined the object as well as the degree of their devotion; and as long as their adoration was successively prostituted to a thousand deities, it was scarcely possible that their hearts could be susceptible of a very sincere or lively passion for any of them.

When Christianity appeared in the world, even these faint and imperfect impressions had lost much of their original power. Human reason, which by its unassisted strength is incapable of perceiving the mysteries of faith, had already obtained an easy triumph over the folly of Paganism; and when Tertullian or Lactantius employ their labours in exposing its falsehood and extravagance, they are obliged to transcribe the eloquence of Cicero or the wit of Lucian. The contagion of these sceptical writings had been diffused far beyond the number of their readers. The fashion of incredulity was communicated from the philosopher to the man of pleasure or business, from the noble to the plebeian, and from the master to the menial slave who waited at his table, and who eagerly listened to the freedom of his conversation. On public occasions the philosophic part of mankind affected to treat with respect and decency the religious institutions of their country; but their secret contempt penetrated through the thin and awkward disguise, and even the people, when they discovered that their deities were rejected and derided by those whose rank or understanding they were accustomed to reverence, were filled with doubts and apprehensions concerning the truth of those doctrines, to which they had yielded the most implicit belief. The decline of ancient prejudice exposed a very numerous portion of human kind to the danger of a painful and comfortless situation. A state of scepticism and suspense may amuse a few inquisitive minds. But the practice of superstition is so congenial to the multitude, that if they are forcibly awakened, they still regret the loss of their pleasing vision. Their love of the marvellous and supernatural, their curiosity with regard to future events, and their strong propensity to extend their hopes and fears beyond the limits of the visible world, were the principal causes which favoured the establishment of Polytheism. So urgent on the vulgar is the necessity of believing, that the fall of any system of mythology will most probably be succeeded by the introduction of some other mode of superstition. Some deities of a more recent and fashionable cast might soon have occupied the deserted temples of Jupiter and Apollo, if, in the decisive moment, the wisdom of Providence had not interposed a genuine revelation, fitted to inspire the most rational esteem and conviction, whilst, at the same time, it was adorned with all that could attract the curiosity, the wonder, and the veneration of the people. In their actual disposition, as many were almost disengaged from their artificial prejudices, but equally susceptible and desirous of a devout attachment; an object much less deserving would have been sufficient to ill the vacant place in their hearts, and to gratify the uncertain eagerness of their passions. Those who are inclined to pursue this reflection, instead of viewing with astonishment the rapid progress of Christianity, will perhaps be surprised that its success was not still more rapid and still more universal.

It has been observed, with truth as well as propriety, that the conquests of Rome prepared and facilitated those of Christianity. In the second chapter of this work we have attempted to explain in what manner the most civilized provinces of Europe, Asia, and Africa, were united under the dominion of one sovereign, and gradually connected by the most intimate ties of laws, of manners, and of language. The Jews of palestine, who had fondly expected a temporal deliverer, gave so cold a reception to the miracles of the divine prophet, that it was found unnecessary to publish, or at least to preserve, any Hebrew gospel. * The authentic histories of the actions of Christ were composed in the Greek language, at a considerable distance from Jerusalem, and after the Gentile converts were grown extremely numerous. As soon as those histories were translated into the Latin tongue, they were perfectly intelligible to all the subjects of Rome, excepting only to the peasants of Syria and Egypt, for whose benefit particular versions were afterwards made. The public highways, which had been constructed for the use of the legions, opened an easy passage for the Christian missionaries from Damascus to Corinth, and from Italy to the extremity of Spain or Britain; nor did those spiritual conquerors encounter any of the obstacles which usually retard or prevent the introduction of a foreign religion into a distant country. There is the strongest reason to believe, that before the reigns of Diocletian and Constantine, the faith of Christ had been preached in every province, and in all the great cities of the empire; but the foundation of the several congregations, the numbers of the faithful who composed them, and their proportion to the unbelieving multitude, are now buried in obscurity, or disguised by fiction and declamation. Such imperfect circumstances, however, as have reached our knowledge concerning the increase of the Christian name in Asia and Greece, in Egypt, in Italy, and in the West, we shall now proceed to relate, without neglecting the real or imaginary acquisitions which lay beyond the frontiers of the Roman empire.

The rich provinces that extend from the Euphrates to the Ionian sea, were the principal theatre on which the apostle of the Gentiles displayed his zeal and piety. The seeds of the gospel, which he had scattered in a fertile soil, were diligently cultivated by his disciples; and it should seem that, during the two first centuries, the most considerable body of Christians was contained within those limits. Among the societies which were instituted in Syria, none were more ancient or more illustrious than those of Damascus, of Berea or Aleppo, and of Antioch. The prophetic introduction of the Apocalypse has described and immortalized the seven churches of Asia; Ephesus, Smyma, Pergamus, Thyatira, Sardes, Laodicea, and Philadelphia; and their colonies were soon diffused over that populous country. In a very early period, the islands of Cyprus and Crete, the provinces of Thrace and Macedonia, gave a favourable reception to the new religion; and Christian republics were soon founded in the cities of Corinth, of Sparta, and of Athens. The antiquity of the Greek and Asiatic churches allowed a sufficient space of time for their increase and multiplication, and even the swarms of Gnostics and other heretics serve to display the flourishing condition of the orthodox church, since the appellation of heretics has always been applied to the less numerous party. To these domestic testimonies we may add the confession, the complaints, and the apprehensions of the Gentiles themselves. From the writings of Lucian, a philosopher who had studied mankind, and who describes their manners in the most lively colours, we may learn, that, under the reign of Commodus, his native country of Pontus was filled with Epicureans and Christians . Within fourscore years after the death of Christ, the humane Pliny laments the magnitude of the evil which he vainly attempted to eradicate. In his very curious epistle to the emperor Trajan, he affirms, that the temples were almost deserted, that the sacred victims scarcely found any purchasers, and that the superstition had not only infected the cities, but had even spread itself into the villages and the open country of Pontus and Bithynia.

Without descending into a minute scrutiny of the expressions, or of the motives of those writers who either celebrate or lament the progress of Christianity in the East, it may in general be observed, that none of them have let us any grounds from whence a just estimate might be formed of the real numbers of the faithful in those provinces. One circumstance, however, has been fortunately preserved, which seems to cast a more distinct light on this obscure but interesting subject. Under the reign of Theodosius, after Christianity had enjoyed, during more than sixty years, the sunshine of Imperial favour, the ancient and illustrious church of Antioch consisted of one hundred thousand persons, three thousand of whom were supported out of the public oblations. The splendour and dignity of the queen of the East, the acknowledged populousness of Cæsarea, Seleucia, and Alexandria, and the destruction of two hundred and fifty thousand souls in the earthquake which afflicted Antioch under the elder Justin, are so many convincing proofs that the whole number of its inhabitants was not less than half a million, and that the Christians, however multiplied by zeal and power, did not exceed a fifth part of that great city. How different a proportion must we adopt when we compare the persecuted with the triumphant church, the West with the East, remote villages with populous towns, and countries recently converted to the faith, with the place where the believers first received the appellation of Christians! It must not, however, be dissembled, that, in another passage, Chrysostom, to whom we are indebted for this useful information, computes the multitude of the faithful as even superior to that of the Jews and Pagans. But the solution of this apparent difficulty is easy and obvious. The eloquent preacher draws a parallel between the civil and the ecclesiastical constitution of Antioch; between the list of Christians who had acquired Heaven by baptism, and the list of citizens who had a right to share the public liberality. Slaves, strangers, and infants were comprised in the former; they were excluded from the latter.

The extensive commerce of Alexandria, and its proximity to Palestine, gave an easy entrance to the new religion. It was at first embraced by great numbers of the Therapeutæ, or Essenians of the lake Mareotis, a Jewish sect which had abated much of its reverence for the Mosaic ceremonies. The austere life of the Essenians, their fasts and excommunications, the community of goods, the love of celibacy, their zeal for martyrdom, and the warmth though not the purity of their faith, already offered a very lively image of the primitive discipline. It was in the school of Alexandria that the Christian theology appears to have assumed a regular and scientifical form; and when Hadrian visited Egypt, he found a church composed of Jews and of Greeks, sufficiently important to attract the notice of that inquisitive prince. But the progress of Christianity was for a long time confined within the limits of a single city, which was itself a foreign colony, and till the close of the second century the predecessors of Demetrius were the only prelates of the Egyptian church. Three bishops were consecrated by the hands of Demetrius, and the number was increased to twenty by his successor Heraclas. The body of the natives, a people distinguished by a sullen inflexibility of temper, entertained the new doctrine with coldness and reluctance: and even in the time of Origen, it was rare to meet with an Egyptian who had surmounted his early prejudices in favour of the sacred animals of his country. As soon, indeed, as Christianity ascended the throne, the zeal of those barbarians obeyed the prevailing impulsion; the cities of Egypt were filled with bishops, and the deserts of Thebais swarmed with hermits.

A perpetual stream of strangers and provincials flowed into the capacious bosom of Rome. Whatever was strange or odious, whoever was guilty or suspected, might hope, in the obscurity of that immense capital, to elude the vigilance of the law. In such a various conflux of nations, every teacher, either of truth or of falsehood, every founder, whether of a virtuous or a criminal association, might easily multiply his disciples or accomplices. The Christians of Rome, at the time of the accidental persecution of Nero, are represented by Tacitus as already amounting to a very great multitude, and the language of that great historian is almost similar to the style employed by Livy, when he relates the introduction and the suppression of the rites of Bacchus. After the Bacchanals had awakened the severity of the senate, it was likewise apprehended that a very great multitude, as it were another people , had been initiated into those abhorred mysteries. A more careful inquiry soon demonstrated, that the offenders did not exceed seven thousand; a number indeed sufficiently alarming, when considered as the object of public justice. * It is with the same candid allowance that we should interpret the vague expressions of Tacitus, and in a former instance of Pliny, when they exaggerate the crowds of deluded fanatics who had forsaken the established worship of the gods. The church of Rome was undoubtedly the first and most populous of the empire; and we are possessed of an authentic record which attests the state of religion in that city about the middle of the third century, and after a peace of thirty-eight years. The clergy, at that time, consisted of a bishop, forty-six presbyters, seven deacons, as many sub-deacons, forty-two acolythes, and fifty readers, exorcists, and porters. The number of widows, of the infirm, and of the poor, who were maintained by the oblations of the faithful, amounted to fifteen hundred. From reason, as well as from the analogy of Antioch, we may venture to estimate the Christians of Rome at about fifty thousand. The populousness of that great capital cannot perhaps be exactly ascertained; but the most modest calculation will not surely reduce it lower than a million of inhabitants, of whom the Christians might constitute at the most a twentieth part.

The western provincials appeared to have derived the knowledge of Christianity from the same source which had diffused among them the language, the sentiments, and the manners of Rome. In this more important circumstance, Africa, as well as Gaul, was gradually fashioned to the imitation of the capital. Yet notwithstanding the many favourable occasions which might invite the Roman missionaries to visit their Latin provinces, it was late before they passed either the sea or the Alps; nor can we discover in those great countries any assured traces either of faith or of persecution that ascend higher than the reign of the Antonines. The slow progress of the gospel in the cold climate of Gaul, was extremely different from the eagerness with which it seems to have been received on the burning sands of Africa. The African Christians soon formed one of the principal members of the primitive church. The practice introduced into that province, of appointing bishops to the most inconsiderable towns, and very frequently to the most obscure villages, contributed to multiply the splendour and importance of their religious societies, which during the course of the third century were animated by the zeal of Tertullian, directed by the abilities of Cyprian, and adorned by the eloquence of Lactantius. But if, on the contrary, we turn our eyes towards Gaul, we must content ourselves with discovering, in the time of Marcus Antoninus, the feeble and united congregations of Lyons and Vienna; and even as late as the reign of Decius, we are assured, that in a few cities only, Aries, Narbonne, Thoulouse, Limoges, Clermont, Tours, and Paris, some scattered churches were supported by the devotion of a small number of Christians. Silence is indeed very consistent with devotion, but as it is seldom compatible with zeal, we may perceive and lament the languid state of Christianity in those provinces which had exchanged the Celtic for the Latin tongue; since they did not, during the three first centuries, give birth to a single ecclesiastical writer. From Gaul, which claimed a just pre-eminence of learning and authority over all the countries on this side of the Alps, the light of the gospel was more faintly reflected on the remote provinces of Spain and Britain; and if we may credit the vehement assertions of Tertullian, they had already received the first rays of the faith, when he addressed his apology to the magistrates of the emperor Severus. But the obscure and imperfect origin of the western churches of Europe has been so negligently recorded, that if we would relate the time and manner of their foundation, we must supply the silence of antiquity by those legends which avarice or superstition long afterwards dictated to the monks in the lazy gloom of their convents. * Of these holy romances, that of the apostle St James can alone, by its singular extravagance, deserve to be mentioned. From a peaceful fisherman of the lake of Gennesareth, he was transformed into a valorous knight, who charged at the head of the Spanish chivalry in their battles against the Moors. The gravest historians have celebrated his exploits; the miraculous shrine of Compostella displayed his power; and the sword of a military order, assisted by the terrors of the Inquisition, was sufficient to remove every objection of profane criticism.

The progress of Christianity was not confined to the Roman empire; and according to the primitive fathers, who interpret facts by prophecy, the new religion, within a century after the death of its divine author, had already visited every part of the globe. 'There exists not,' says Justin Martyr, 'a people, whether Greek or Barbarian, of any other race of men, by whatsoever appellation or manners they may be distinguished, however ignorant of arts or agriculture, whether they dwell under tents, or wander about in covered waggons, among whom prayers are not offered up in the name of a crucified Jesus to the Father and Creator of all things.' But this splendid exaggeration, which even at present it would be extremely difficult to reconcile with the real state of mankind, can be considered only as the rash sally of a devout but careless writer, the measure of whose belief was regulated by that of his wishes. But neither the belief, nor the wishes of the fathers, can alter the truth of history. It will still remain an undoubted fact, that the barbarians of Scythia and Germany, who afterwards subverted the Roman monarchy, were involved in the darkness of paganism; and that even the conversion of Iberia, of Armenia, or of Æthiopia, was not attempted with any degree of success till the sceptre was in the hands of an orthodox emperor. Before that time, the various accidents of war and commerce might indeed diffuse an imperfect knowledge of the gospel among the tribes of Caledonia, * and among the borderers of the Rhine, the Danube, and the Euphrates. Beyond the last-mentioned river, Edessa was distinguished by a firm and early adherence to the faith. From Edessa, the principles of Christianity were easily introduced into the Greek and Syrian cities which obeyed the successors of Artaxerxes; but they do not appear to have made any deep impression on the minds of the Persians, whose religious system, by the labours of a well-disciplined order of priests, had been constructed with much more art and solidity than the uncertain mythology of Greece and Rome.

From this impartial though imperfect survey of the progress of Christianity, it may perhaps seem probable, that the number of its proselytes has been excessively magnified by fear on the one side, and by devotion on the other. According to the irreproachable testimony of Origen, the proportion of the faithful was very inconsiderable when compared with the multitude of an unbelieving world; but, as we are let without any distinct information, it is impossible to determine, and it is difficult even to conjecture, the real numbers of the primitive Christians. The most favourable calculation, however, that can be deduced from the examples of Antioch and of Rome, will not permit us to imagine that more than a twentieth part of the subjects of the Empire had enlisted themselves under the banner of the cross before the important conversion of Constantine. But their habits of faith, of zeal, and of union, seemed to multiply their numbers; and the same causes which contributed to their future increase, served to render their actual strength more apparent and more formidable.

Such is the constitution of civil society, that whilst a few persons are distinguished by riches, by honours, and by knowledge, the body of the people is condemned to obscurity, ignorance, and poverty. The Christian religion, which addressed itself to the whole human race, must consequently collect a far greater number of proselytes from the lower than from the superior ranks of life. This innocent and natural circumstance has been improved into a very odious imputation, which seems to be less strenuously denied by the apologists, than it is urged by the adversaries, of the faith; that the new sect of Christians was almost entirely composed of the dregs of the populace, of peasants and mechanics, of boys and women, of beggars and slaves, the last of whom might sometimes introduce the missionaries into the rich and noble families to which they belonged. These obscure teachers (such was the charge of malice and infidelity) are as mute in public as they are loquacious and dogmatical in private. Whilst they cautiously avoid the dangerous encounter of philosophers, they mingle with the rude and illiterate crowd, and insinuate themselves into those minds, whom their age, their sex, or their education, has the best disposed to receive the impression of superstitious terrors.

This unfavourable picture, though not devoid of a faint resemblance, betrays, by its dark colouring and distorted features, the pencil of an enemy. As the humble faith of Christ diffused itself through the world, it was embraced by several persons who derived some consequence from the advantages of nature or fortune. Aristides, who presented an eloquent apology to the emperor Hadrian, was an Athenian philosopher. Justin Martyr had sought divine knowledge in the schools of Zeno, of Aristotle, of Pythagoras, and of Plato, before he fortunately was accosted by the old man, or rather the angel, who turned his attention to the study of the Jewish prophets. Clemens of Alexandria had acquired much various reading in the Greek, and Tertullian in the Latin, language. Julius Africanus and Origen possessed a very considerable share of the learning of their times; and although the style of Cyprian is very different from that of Lactantius, we might almost discover that both those writers had been public teachers of rhetoric. Even the study of philosophy was at length introduced among the Christians, but it was not always productive of the most salutary effects; knowledge was as often the parent of heresy as of devotion, and the description which was designed for the followers of Artemon, may, with equal propriety, be applied to the various sects that resisted the successors of the apostles. 'They presume to alter the holy scriptures, to abandon the ancient rule of faith, and to form their opinions according to the subtile precepts of logic. The science of the church is neglected for the study of geometry, and they lose sight of Heaven while they are employed in measuring the earth. Euclid is perpetually in their hands. Aristotle and Theophrastus are the objects of their admiration; and they express an uncommon reverence for the works of Galen. Their errors are derived from the abuse of the arts and sciences of the infidels, and they corrupt the simplicity of the gospel by the reinements of human reason.' *

Nor can it be affamaed with truth, that the advantages of birth and fortune were always separated from the profession of Christianity. Several Roman citizens were brought before the tribunal of Pliny, and he soon discovered, that a great number of persons of every order of men in Bithynia had deserted the religion of their ancestors. His unsuspected testimony may, in this instance, obtain more credit than the bold challenge of Tertullian, when he addresses himself to the fears as well as to the humanity of the proconsul of Africa, by assuring him, that if he persists in his cruel intentions, he must decimate Carthage, and that he will find among the guilty many persons of his own rank, senators and matrons of noblest extraction, and the friends or relations of his most intimate friends. It appears, however, that about forty years afterwards the emperor Valerian was persuaded of the truth of this assertion, since in one of his rescripts he evidently supposes, that senators, Roman knights, and ladies of quality, were engaged in the Christian sect. The church still continued to encrease its outward splendour as it lost its internal purity; and, in the reign of Diocletian, the palace, the courts of justice, and even the army, concealed a multitude of Christians, who endeavoured to reconcile the interests of the present, with those of a future, life.

And yet these exceptions are either too few in number, or too recent in time, entirely to remove the imputation of ignorance and obscurity which has been so arrogantly cast on the first proselytes of Christianity. Instead of employing in our defence the fictions of later ages, it will be more prudent to convert the occasion of scandal into a subject of edification. Our serious thoughts will suggest to us, that the apostles themselves were chosen by providence among the fishermen of Galilee, and that the lower we depress the temporal condition of the first Christians, the more reason we shall find to admire their merit and success. It is incumbent on us diligently to remember, that the kingdom of Heaven was promised to the poor in spirit, and that minds afflicted by calamity and the contempt of mankind, cheerfully listen to the divine promise of future happiness; while, on the contrary, the fortunate are satisfied with the possession of this world; and the wise abuse in doubt and dispute their vain superiority of reason and knowledge.

We stand in need of such reflections to comfort us for the loss of some illustrious characters, which in our eyes might have seemed the most worthy of the heavenly present. The names of Seneca, of the elder and the younger Pliny, of Tacitus, of Plutarch, of Galen, of the slave Epictetus, and of the emperor Marcus Antoninus, adorn the age in which they flourished,' and exalt the dignity of human nature. They filled with glory their respective stations, either in active or contemplative life; their excellent understandings were improved by study; Philosophy had purified their minds from the prejudices of the popular superstition; and their days were spent in the pursuit of truth and the practice of virtue. Yet all these sages (it is no less an object of surprise than of concern) overlooked or rejected the perfection of the Christian system. Their language or their silence equally discover their contempt for the growing sect, which in their time had diffused itself over the Roman empire. Those among them who condescend to mention the Christians, consider them only as obstinate and perverse enthusiasts, who exacted an implicit submission to their mysterious doctrines, without being able to produce a single argument that could engage the attention of men of sense and learning.

It is at least doubtful whether any of these philosophers perused the apologies which the primitive Christians repeatedly published in behalf of themselves and of their religion; but it is much to be lamented that such a cause was not defended by abler advocates. They expose with superfluous wit and eloquence, the extravagance of Polytheism. They interest our compassion by displaying the innocence and sufferings of their injured brethren. But when they would demonstrate the divine origin of Christianity, they insist much more strongly on the predictions which announced, than on the miracles which accompanied, the appearance of the Messiah. Their favourite argument might serve to edify a Christian or to convert a Jew, since both the one and the other acknowledge the authority of those prophecies, and both are obliged, with devout reverence, to search for their sense and their accomplishment. But this mode of persuasion loses much of its weight and influence, when it is addressed to those who neither understand nor respect the Mosaic dispensation and the prophetic style. In the unskilful hands of Justin and of the succeeding apologists, the sublime meaning of the Hebrew oracles evaporates in distant types, affected conceits, and cold allegories; and even their authenticity was rendered suspicious to an unenlightened Gentile, by the mixture of pious forgeries, which, under the names of Orpheus, Hermes, and the Sibyls, * were obtruded on him as of equal value with the genuine inspirations of Heaven. The adoption of fraud and sophistry in the defence of revelation, too often reminds us of the injudicious conduct of those poets who load their invulnerable heroes with a useless weight of cumbersome and brittle armour.

But how shall we excuse the supine inattention of the Pagan and philosophic world, to those evidences which were presented by the hand of Omnipotence, not to their reason, but to their senses? During the age of Christ, of his apostles, and of their first disciples, the doctrine which they preached was confirmed by innumerable prodigies. The lame walked, the blind saw, the sick were healed, the dead were raised, daemons were expelled, and the laws of Nature were frequently suspended for the benefit of the church. But the sages of Greece and Rome turned aside from the awful spectacle, and pursuing the ordinary occupations of life and study, appeared unconscious of any alterations in the moral or physical government of the world. Under the reign of Tiberius, the whole earth, or at least a celebrated province of the Roman empire, was involved in a præternatural darkness of three hours. Even this miraculous event, which ought to have excited the wonder, the curiosity, and the devotion of mankind, passed without notice in an age of science and history. It happened during the lifetime of Seneca and the elder Pliny, who must have experienced the immediate effects, or received the earliest intelligence, of the prodigy. Each of these philosophers, in a laborious work, has recorded all the great phenomena of Nature, earthquakes, meteors, comets, and eclipses, which his indefatigable curiosity could collect. Both the one and the other have omitted to mention the greatest phenomenon to which the mortal eye has been witness since the creation of the globe. A distinct chapter of Pliny is designed for eclipses of an extraordinary nature and unusual duration; but he contents himself with describing the singular defect of light which followed the murder of Cæsar, when, during the greatest part of a year, the orb of the sun appeared pale and without splendour. This season of obscurity, which cannot surely be compared with the præternatural darkness of the Passion, had been already celebrated by most of the poets and historians of that memorable age.



*  A Jewish sect, which indulged themselves in a sort of occasional conformity, derived from Herod, by whose example and authority they had been seduced, the name of Herodians. But their numbers were so inconsiderable, and their duration so short, that Josephus has not thought them worthy of his notice.

 Philo and Josephus gave a very circumstantial, but a very rhetorical, account of this transaction, which exceedingly perplexed the governor of Syria. At the first mention of this idolatrous proposal, King Agrippa fainted away; and did not recover his senses till the third day.

*   'How long will this people provoke me? and how long will it be ere they believe me, for all the signs which I have shewn among them?' (Numbers xiv. II.) It would be easy, but it would be unbecoming, to justify the complaint of the Deity from the whole tenor of the Mosaic history.

*   During this occasional absence, the bishop and church of Pella still retained the title of Jerusalem. In the same manner, the Roman pontiffs resided seventy years at Avignon; and the patriarchs of Alexandria have long since transferred their episcopal seat to Cairo.

*   Of all the systems of Christianity, that of Abyssinia is the only one which still adheres to the Mosaic rites. The eunuch of the queen Candace might suggest some suspicions; but as we are assured that the Æthiopians were not converted till the fourth century; it is more reasonable to believe, that they respected the Sabbath, and distinguished the forbidden meats, in imitation of the Jews, who, in a very early period, were seated on both sides of the Red Sea. Circumcision had been practised by the most ancient Æthiopians, from motives of health and cleanliness.

*   The milder Gnostics considered Jehovah, the Creator, as a Being of a mixed nature between God and the Daemon. Others confounded him with the evil principle. Consult the second century of the general history of Mosheim, which gives a very distinct, though concise, account of their strange opinions on this subject.

*   Augustin is a memorable instance of this gradual progress from reason to faith. He was, during several years, engaged in the Manichæan sect.

*   Tertullian alleges the confession of the Daemons themselves as often as they were tormented by the Christian exorcists.

*   The Roman senate was always held in a temple or consecrated place. Before they entered on business, every senator dropt some wine and frankincense on the altar.

 The ancient practice of concluding the entertainment with libations, may be found in every classic. Socrates and Seneca, in their last moments, made a noble application of this custom.

*   Even the reverses of the Greek and Roman coins were frequently of an idolatrous nature. Here indeed the scruples of the Christian were suspended by a stronger passion.

 If a Pagan friend (on the occasion perhaps of sneezing) used the familiar expression of 'Jupiter bless you,' the Christian was obliged to protest against the divinity of Jupiter.

*   The xith book of the Odyssey gives a very dreary and incoherent account of the infernal shades. Pindar and Virgil have embellished the picture; but even those poets, though more correct than their great model, are guilty of very strange inconsistencies.

*   This expectation was countenanced by the twenty-fourth chapter of St Matthew, and by the first epistle of St Paul to the Thessalonians. Erasmus removes the difficulty by the help of allegory and metaphor; and the learned Grotius ventures to insinuate, that, for wise purposes, the pious deception was permitted to take place.

*   In the council of Laodicea (about the year 360) the Apocalypse was tacitly excluded from the sacred canon, by the same churches of Asia to which it is addressed; and we may learn from the complaint of Sulpicius Severus, that their sentence had been ratified by the greater number of Christians of his time. From what causes then is the Apocalypse at present so generally received by the Greek, the Roman, and the Protestant churches? The following ones may be assigned. 1. The Greeks were subdued by the authority of an impostor, who, in the sixth century, assumed the character of Dionysius the Areopagite. 2. A just apprehension, that the grammarians might become more important than the theologians, engaged the council of Trent to fix the seal of their infallibility on all the books of Scripture, contained in the Latin Vulgate, in the number of which the Apocalypse was fortunately included. 3. The advantage of turning those mysterious prophecies against the See of Rome, inspired the Protestants with uncommon veneration for so useful an ally. See the ingenious and elegant discourses of the present bishop of Litchfield on that unpromising subject.

*   On this subject every reader of taste will be entertained with the third part of Burnet's Sacred Theory. He blends philosophy, scripture, and tradition, into one magnificent system; in the description of which, he displays a strength of fancy not inferior to that of Milton himself.

*   It may seem somewhat remarkable, that Bernard of Clairvaux, who records so many miracles of his friend St Malachi, never takes any notice of his own, which, in their turn, however, are carefully related by his companions and disciples. In the long series of ecclesiastical history, does there exist a single instance of a saint asserting that he himself possessed the gift of miracles?

*   The conversion of Constantine is the æra which is most usually fixed by Protestants. The more rational divines are unwilling to admit the miracles of the ivth, whilst the more credulous are unwilling to reject those of the vth century.

*   The philosopher Peregrinus (of whose life and death Lucian has left us so entertaining an account) imposed, for a long time, on the credulous simplicity of the Christians of Asia.

*   See a very curious Dissertation on the Vestals, in the Memoires de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom.iv, pp.161-227. Notwithstanding the honours and rewards which were bestowed on those virgins, it was difficult to procure a sufficient number; nor could the dread of the most horrible death always restrain their incontinence.

 Before the fame of Origen had excited envy and persecution, this extraordinary action was rather admired than censured. As it was his general practice to allegorize scripture; it seems unfortunate that, in this instance only, he should have adopted the literal sense.

*   Something like this rash attempt was long afterwards imputed to the founder of the order of Fontevrault. Bayle has amused himself and his readers on that very delicate subject.

 Dupin gives a particular account of the dialogue of the ten virgins, as it was composed by Methodius, bishop of Tyre. The praises of virginity are excessive.

*   The same patient principles have been revived since the Reformation by the Socinians, the modern Anabaptists, and the Quakers. Barclay, the apologist of the Quakers, has protected his brethren, by the authority of the primitive Christians.

*   The Aristocratical party, in France, as well as in England, has strenuously maintained the divine origin of bishops. But the Calvinistical presbyters were impatient of a superior; and the Roman Pontiff refused to acknowledge an equal.

*   After we have passed the difficulties of the first century, we find the episcopal government universally established, till it was interrupted by the republican genius of the Swiss and German reformers.

*   If Novatus, Felicissimus, &c. whom the bishop of Carthage expelled from his church, and from Africa, were not the most detestable monsters of wickedness, the zeal of Cyprian must occasionally have prevailed over his veracity.

*   It is in French only, that the famous allusion to St Peter's name is exact. Tu es Pierre et sur cette pierre .—The same is imperfect in Greek, Latin, Italian, &c. and totally unintelligible in our Teutonic languages.

*   Such, at least, has been the laudable conduct of more modem missionaries, under the same circumstances. Above three thousand new-bom infants are annually exposed in the streets of Pekin.

*   The arts, the manners, and the vices of the priests of the Syrian goddess, are very humourously described by Apuleius, in the eighth book of his Metamorphoses.

*   The office of Asiarch was of this nature, and it is frequently mentioned in Aristides, the Inscriptions, &c. It was annual and elective. None but the vainest citizens could desire the honour; none but the most wealthy could support the expence.

*   The modem critics are not disposed to believe what the fathers almost unanimously assert, that St Matthew composed a Hebrew gospel, of which only the Greek translation is extant. It seems, however, dangerous to reject their testimony.

*   Nothing could exceed the horror and consternation of the senate on the discovery of the Bacchanalians, whose depravity is described, and perhaps exaggerated, by Livy.

*   In the fifteenth century, there were few who had either inclination or courage to question whether Joseph of Arimathea founded the monastery of Glastenbury, and whether Dionysius the Areopagite preferred the residence of Paris to that of Athens.

 The stupendous metamorphosis was performed in the ninth century.

*   According to Tertullian, the Christian faith had penetrated into parts of Britain inaccessible to the Roman arms. About a century afterwards, Ossian, the son of Fingal, is said to have disputed, in his extreme old age, with one of the foreign missionaries, and the dispute is still extant, in verse, and in the Erse language.

 The Goths, who ravaged Asia in the reign of Gallienus, carried away great numbers of captives; some of whom were Christians, and became missionaries.

*   Eusebius, v.28. It may be hoped, that none, except the heretics, gave occasion to the complaint of Celsus that the Christians were perpetually correcting and altering their Gospels.

*   The Philosophers, who derided the more ancient predictions of the Sibyls, would easily have detected the Jewish and Christian forgeries, which have been so triumphantly quoted by the fathers from Justin Martyr to Lactantius. When the Sibylline verses had performed their appointed task, they, like the system of the millennium, were quietly laid aside. The Christian Sibyl had unluckily fixed the ruin of Rome for the year 195.

 The fathers, as they are drawn out in battle array by Dom Calmet (Dissertations sur la Bible, tom. iii. pp. 295-308.), seem to cover the whole earth with darkness, in which they are followed by most of the modems.

 Origen ad Matth. c. 27. and a few modern critics, Beza, Le Clerc, Lardner, &c. are desirous of confining it to the land of Judea.


图书在版编目(CIP)数据

空袭中的沉思:英汉双语/(英)伍尔芙著;张子慧译.—北京:中译出版社,2011.12

(企鹅口袋书系列·伟大的思想)

ISBN 978-7-5001-3318-6



Ⅰ.①空… Ⅱ.①伍…②张… Ⅲ.①英语—汉语—对照读物②散文集—英国—现代 Ⅳ.①H319.4:I

中国版本图书馆CIP数据核字(2011)第247454号


www.Penguin.com

'Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid', 'Street Haunting', 'Craftsmanship'

'The Art of Biography' and

'Why?' are all taken from The Death of the Moth and Other Essays, first published in 1942

'Oxford Street Tide' first published in Good Housekeeping Magazine in 1932

'How It Strikes a Contemporary', 'The Patron and the Crocus' and 'Modern Fiction' are all taken from The Common Reader, Vol. 1, first published in 1925

'How Should One Read a Book?' is taken from The Second Common Reader, first published 1932

This selection first published in Penguin Books 2009

All rights reserved

Set by Rowland Phototypesetting Ltd, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk


出版发行 /中译出版社

地  址 /北京市西城区车公庄大街甲4号物华大厦6层

电  话 /(010)68359827;68359303(发行部);68359725(编辑部)

邮  编 /100044

传  真 /(010)68357870

电子邮箱 /book@ctph.com.cn

网  址 /http://www.ctph.com.cn

出版策划 /张高里

责任编辑 /梁 斐

封面设计 /奇文堂·潘峰

排  版 /竹叶图文

印  刷 /保定市中画美凯印刷有限公司

规  格 /760×940毫米 1/32

印  张 /6.5

版  次 /2012年3月第一版

印  次 /2012年3月第一次


ISBN 978-7-5001-3318-6 定价: 14.00元

   

   

“企鹅”及相关标识是企鹅图书有限公司已经注册或尚未注册的商标。

未经允许,不得擅用。

中译出版社与企鹅图书有限公司联合出版

观 念

—— 《伟大的思想》代序

梁文道



每隔一段时间,媒体就喜欢评选一次“影响世界的X个人”或者“改变历史的X项发明”。然而,在我看来,几乎所有人类史上最重大的变革,首先都是一种观念的变革。

我们今天之所以会关注气候的暖化与生物多样性的保存,是因为我们看待地球的方式变了,我们比以前更加意识到人在自然中的位置,也更加了解自然其实是一个动态的系统。放弃了人类可以主宰地球的世界观,这就意味着我们接受了一个观念的变化。同样地,我们不再相信男人一出生就该主宰女人,甚至也不再认为男女之别是不可动摇的本质区分;这也是观念的变化。如果说环保运动和女权运动有任何影响的话,那些影响一定就是从大脑开始的。也不要只看好事,20世纪最惨绝人寰的浩劫最初也只不过是一些小小的观念,危险的观念。比如说一位德国人,他相信人类的进化必以“次等种族”的灭绝为代价……

这套丛书不叫“伟大的巨著”,是因为它们体积都不大,而且还有不少是抽取自某些名著的章节。可它们却全是伟大的观念,例如达尔文论天择,潘恩论常识,它们共同构成了人类的观念地图。从头看它们一遍,就是检视文明所走过的道路,从深处理解我们今天变成这个样子的原因。

也许你会发现其中有些陌生的名字,或者看起来没有那么“伟大”的篇章(譬如普鲁斯特追忆他的阅读时光),但你千万不要小看它们。因为真正重要、真正能够产生启蒙效果的观念往往具有跨界移动的能力,它会跨越时空,离开它原属的领域,在另一个世界产生意外的效果。就像马可·波罗在监狱里述说的异国图景,当时有谁料得到那些荒诞的故事会诱发出哥伦布的旅程呢?我也无法猜测,这套小书的读者里头会不会有下一个哥伦布,他将带着令人惊奇的观念航向自己的大海。

《伟大的思想》中文版序

企鹅《伟大的思想》丛书2004年开始出版。在英国,已付印80种,尚有20种计划出版。美国出版的丛书规模略小,德国的同类丛书规模更小一些。丛书销量已远远超过200万册,在全球很多人中间,尤其是学生当中,普及了哲学和政治学。中文版《伟大的思想》丛书的推出,迈出了新的一步,令人欢欣鼓舞。

推出这套丛书的目的是让读者再次与一些伟大的非小说类经典著作面对面地交流。太长时间以来,确定版本依据这样一个假设——读者在教室里学习这些著作,因此需要导读、详尽的注释、参考书目等。此类版本无疑非常有用,但我想,如果能够重建托马斯·潘恩《常识》或约翰·罗斯金《艺术与人生》初版时的环境,重新营造更具亲和力的氛围,那也是一件有意思的事。当时,读者除了原作者及其自身的理性思考外没有其他参照。

这样做有一定的缺点:每个作者的话难免有难解或不可解之处,一些重要的背景知识会缺失。例如,读者对亨利·梭罗创作时的情况毫无头绪,也不了解该书的接受情况及影响。不过,这样做的优点也很明显。最突出的优点是,作者的初衷又一次变得重要起来——托马斯·潘恩的愤怒、查尔斯·达尔文的灵光、塞内加的隐逸。这些作家在那么多国家影响了那么多人的生活,其影响不可估量,有的长达几个世纪,读他们书的乐趣罕有匹敌。没有亚当·斯密或阿图尔·叔本华,难以想象我们今天的世界。这些小书的创作年代已很久远,但其中的话已彻底改变了我们的政治学、经济学、智力生活、社会规划和宗教信仰。

《伟大的思想》丛书一直求新求变。地区不同,收录的作家也不同。在中国或美国,一些作家更受欢迎。英国《伟大的思想》收录的一些作家在其他地方则默默无闻。称其为“伟大的思想”,我们亦慎之又慎。思想之伟大,在于其影响之深远,而不意味着这些思想是“好”的,实际上一些书可列入“坏”思想之列。丛书中很多作家受到同一丛书其他作家的很大影响,例如,马塞尔·普鲁斯特承认受约翰·罗斯金影响很大,米歇尔·德·蒙田也承认深受塞内加影响,但其他作家彼此憎恨,如果发现他们被收入同一丛书,一定会气愤难平。不过,读者可自行决定这些思想是否合理。我们衷心希望,您能在阅读这些杰作中得到乐趣。



《伟大的思想》出版者

西蒙·温德尔

Introduction to the Chinese Editions of Great Ideas

Penguin's Great Ideas series began publication in 2004. In the UK we now have 80 copies in print with plans to publish a further 20. A somewhat smaller list is published in the USA and a related, even smaller series in Germany. The books have sold now well over two million copies and have popularized philosophy and politics for many people around the world-particularly students. The launch of a Chinese Great Ideas series is an extremely exciting new development.

The intention behind the series was to allow readers to be once more face to face with some of the great non-fiction classics. For too long the editions of these books were created on the assumption that you were studying them in the classroom and that the student needed an introduction, extensive notes, a bibliography and so on. While this sort of edition is of course extremely useful, I thought it would be interesting to recreate a more intimate feeling-to recreate the atmosphere in which, for example, Thomas Paine's Common Sense or John Ruskin's On Art and Life was first published-where the reader has no other guide than the original author and his or her own common sense.

This method has its severe disadvantages-there will inevitably be statements made by each author which are either hard or impossible to understand, some important context might be missing. For example the reader has no clue as to the conditions under which Henry Thoreau was writing his book and the reader cannot be aware of the book's reception or influence. The advantages however are very clear-most importantly the original intentions of the author become once more important. The sense of anger in Thomas Paine, of intellectual excitement in Charles Darwin, of resignation in Seneca-few things can be more thrilling than to read writers who have had such immeasurable influence on so many lives, sometimes for centuries, in many different countries. Our world would not make sense without Adam Smith or Arthur Schopenhauer-our politics, economics, intellectual lives, social planning, religious beliefs have all been fundamentally changed by the words in these little books, first written down long ago.

The Great Ideas series continues to change and evolve. In different parts of the world different writers would be included. In China or in the United States there are some writers who are liked much more than others. In the UK there are writers in the Great Ideas series who are ignored elsewhere. We have also been very careful to call the series Great Ideas-these ideas are great because they have been so enormously influential, but this does not mean that they are Good Ideas-indeed some of the books would probably qualify as Bad Ideas. Many of the writers in the series have been massively influenced by others in the series-for example Marcel Proust owned so much to John Ruskin, Michel de Montaigne to Seneca. But others hated each other and would be distressed to find themselves together in the same series! But readers can decide the validity of these ideas for themselves. We very much hope that you enjoy these remarkable books.

Simon Winder

Publisher

Great Ideas

分册总目录

观 念——《伟大的思想》代序

《伟大的思想》中文版序

Introduction to the Chinese Editions of Great Ideas

空袭中的沉思

Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid

返回总目录

企鹅口袋书系列·伟大的思想



空袭中的沉思

(英汉双语)

[英]弗吉尼亚·伍尔芙 著

张子慧 译



















中国出版集团

中译出版社

目 录

空袭中的沉思

城市漫步

牛津街浪潮

工 艺

传记艺术

对当代文学的印象

为什么

读者和报春花

现代小说

应该如何阅读

返回分册总目录

空袭中的沉思

昨天和前天连续两个晚上,德国人的飞机从这幢房子的上空掠过。此时此刻他们卷土重来。这种经历十分奇特:身处黑暗之中,飞机呼啸而过,嗡嗡作响。这声音不仅可能随时致命,还打断了关于和平冷静而连贯的思考。然而也正是这声音比祷告和圣歌更能强迫人思考和平。如果我们不能把和平变为现实,我们——不单单是这张床的这一个人,还有即将出生的千千万万的人——都将处于同样的黑暗之中,都将聆听同样的死亡悲鸣。枪声在山上砰砰响起,探照灯时不时穿透云层,一枚炸弹落在不近不远的地方。此时此刻我们正在思考为创造唯一有效的空袭避难所我们所能做的事情。

年轻的英国男人和年轻的德国男人正在头顶上空作战。保卫者是男人,进攻者也是男人。英国女人既没有武器退敌,也没有武器自卫。今晚她们只能手无寸铁地躺着。如果知道空中的战斗是为了保卫被德国人破坏的自由而进行,她们一定会尽自己所能为英国而战。然而手无寸铁的女人如何为自由而战呢?她们可以制造武器,纺织服装,或者烹饪食物。但是还有另外一个方法,无需武器却能为自由而战:我们可以进行思想斗争。我们可以思考如何帮助那些正在空中击敌的英国年轻人。

但是为了达到此目的,我们必须快速决策并付诸实施。空中的嗡鸣声唤醒了思考。今早《泰晤士报》刊登了一个女人的声音,“女人没有丝毫政治话语权。”内阁里没有女人,甚至任何重要职位都没有女人。制订有效计划的所有决策者都是男人。这种做法不仅抑制了思维的活跃,还助长了不负责任的风气。为什么不堵上耳朵埋头在枕头里,放弃决策这个徒劳的行为?因为不光办公室和会议室有思考的空间,别的地方也有。我们能因为看起来无用就放弃个人思考或遐想,从而丧失可能对年轻的英国男人有价值的武器吗?仅仅因为我们的能力让我们面对辱骂甚至蔑视,我们就不会对自己的无能感到愧疚吗?“我永远不会放弃精神斗争”,布莱克这样写道。精神斗争意味着反主流思想,不随波逐流。

主流思想借助广播和滔滔不绝的政治家进行快速而猛烈的传播。每天他们都说我们是自由的民族,我们为了保卫自由而战。这种思想回荡在年轻飞行员的脑海中,成为他们在云层间穿梭盘旋的动力。在下方,我们头上是屋顶,手边却是防毒面具。我们务必要揭开谎言的伪装,发现真相。真相是我们并不自由。今晚我们不论男女都是囚徒——男人全副武装,手边是枪;我们女人身处黑暗,手边是防毒面具。如果我们真的是自由的,我们应该在户外,跳舞,嬉戏,或是坐在窗边一起聊天。是什么让我们不能这样做?“希特勒!”喇叭里传来一声大叫。希特勒是谁?他是做什么的?他们的回答是侵略、暴政和对权力赤裸裸的疯狂追逐。消灭了希特勒,你们就会得到自由。

飞机嗡嗡飞过,听上去好像有人在头顶上锯木头。飞机盘旋不停地飞过,房子正上方的木头也锯个不停。脑子里的声音也不停。埃斯特女士在今早的泰晤士新闻里说道:“男人潜意识中的希特勒主义压制了有能力的女人。”毫无疑问我们被压制了。今晚我们都是囚徒——英国男人被囚禁在飞机中,英国女人被囚禁在床上。但是如果他们停下来转而去思考,他们可能被杀死;我们也是一样。所以让我们替他们思考,让我们把在意识和潜意识里压制我们的希特勒主义彻底剔除。希特勒主义渴望侵略,渴望占领,渴望奴役。即使在黑暗中,这一切依然清晰可见。我们能看到耀眼的橱窗里茫然注视的女人,涂脂抹粉的女人,穿戴整齐的女人,涂着深红色唇膏搽着深红色指甲油的女人。她们是奴役思想的奴隶。如果我们可以将自己从奴役中解脱出来,我们应该也可以将男人从专制中解脱出来。奴隶成就了希特勒们。

一枚炸弹掉了下来。所有的窗户都吱吱作响。高射炮猛烈开火。山上还隐藏着一些火炮,上面覆盖了一张缠绕着模仿秋天落叶色调的绿色和棕色布条的网。现在这些火炮也都开火了。九点广播的时候我们将听到“晚间击落四十四架敌机,其中高射炮击落十架。”广播说解除武装是和平条件之一。意思是将来再也没有武器、陆军、海军和空军,再不会训练年轻人使用武器战斗。头脑中响起一个声音,好像阁楼上的嗡嗡声,这声音来自一句引用:“与真正的敌人战斗,射击素不相识的陌生人,赢得不朽的荣誉和光辉,回家时胸前挂满了奖牌和勋章,这就是我最大的愿望……学习,训练,一切,我的一生都将致力于实现这个愿望。”

这些话来自一位英国年轻人,他参加了上次战斗。面对这些,主流思想家还会认为仅仅在会议桌上签署“解除武装”的文件就完成了所有他们该做的事情吗?奥赛罗可以失去他的财产,但他还是奥赛罗。在空中战斗的年轻飞行员的动力不仅是广播里的声音,还有他们内心的声音——人类古老的本能,教育和传统助长并推崇的本能。他们会因为这些本能而备受责备吗?我们能听任政治家的调遣而收起母性吗?在和平条件下假设有这么一个命令:只有少数被特别挑选过的女人可以生育。我们会甘心服从吗?我们可能会说,“母性是女人的光辉之处。学习,训练,一切,我的一生都致力于实现这一点。”但是,如果为了全人类的利益,为了世界和平,有必要限制生育和收起母性,女人将会欣然接受。男人会帮助她们。他们会因女人的不生育而表彰她们。他们会给予女人其他释放创造能力的机会。那也属于我们争取自由斗争的一部分。我们必须帮助年轻的英国男人从内心根除对奖牌和勋章的狂热。我们必须为这些试图战胜内心好战本能,潜意识里有希特勒主义的年轻人创造更多光荣的活动。我们必须补偿失去武器的男人。

空中的嗡嗡声越来越响,所有的探照灯都直立起来,它们对准这屋顶上的一点,炸弹随时都会落在这幢房子上。一,二,三,四,五,六……时间一秒一秒流逝。炸弹尚未降落。但是在悬而未决的时间里所有的思考都停止了,所有的感觉都消失了,充斥着沉闷无聊。指甲嵌入硬木板中,好像嵌入了一切。恐惧和憎恶的情绪变得枯燥无味。一旦恐惧消除,思绪就跳脱出来,凭本能慢慢恢复,试图开始创新。房间一片漆黑,创新只能靠回忆。想到那些八月曾有的回忆——在白莱特听瓦格纳;在罗马的平原上行走;还有在伦敦。朋友的声音纷至沓来。诗歌的只言片语进入脑海。每一个想法,即使在回忆中,都远远比恐惧和憎恶带来的沉闷无聊来得积极乐观,充满活力,抚慰人心和富有创意。因此,如果我们将要对失去光辉荣耀和武器的年轻人进行补偿,我们必须赋予他们获得创新感受的方法,我们必须营造幸福,我们必须将他们从机械中解放出来,我们必须将他们从囚牢引领到一个自由天地。但是如果德国和意大利的年轻人还是奴隶,单单解放英国年轻人有什么用呢?

探照灯在公寓上方照来照去,现在停在了飞机身上。从这扇窗望出去,可以看到一只银色的小虫在光线里翻转扭曲。枪声砰砰响了一阵。然后终于停火。攻击者可能在山后被击落了。之前有一天一个德国飞行员在附近安全着陆。他用流利的英语对逮捕他的人说:“不打仗了,我真高兴!”然后一个英国男人递给他一支烟,一个英国女人给他沏了一杯茶。从此可以看出,如果将男人从机械中解脱出来,和平的种子不会都落在石地上,它可以生根发芽。

终于完全停火了。所有的探照灯关闭,夏日夜晚回归了自然的漆黑,耳边再次响起村庄往常和平安详的声音。一个苹果扑通落地。猫头鹰一边咕咕叫着,一边扇着翅膀在林间飞来飞去。我突然想起那些话,我差点忘记一位年长英国作家的话:“美国有很多猎人……”让我们把这些支离破碎的信息传达给那些在美国的猎人,传达给那些还没有被机枪火力惊醒的男人和女人,相信他们一定会宽厚、仁慈地重新思考这些信息,也许将这些信息转化为有用的东西。不过现在,世界处于黑夜的那一半,要睡了。

城市漫步

游历伦敦

可能没有人会对一支铅笔热情澎湃。但是总有些时候就是特别想拥有一支铅笔;有些时候我们为了获得什么而找借口在下午茶之后晚饭之前穿过半个伦敦。正如猎狐者打猎是为了捕获狐狸幼崽,人们打高尔夫球是为了享受城市建筑以外的自然空地,因此当到街上走走的想法涌上心头,而想要以铅笔作为托辞时,我们可能会说:“真的,我得买支铅笔。”仿佛凭此借口我们可以尽情享受冬日城市的生活乐趣——在伦敦的街道上漫步。

时间应该是晚上,季节应该是冬天,因为在冬天,空气中弥漫着快乐的香槟气息,街道变得热闹繁华,这一切都令人心生感激。在夏天,喜欢树荫、安静和牧草场的甜味会被嘲笑,在冬天则不会这样。晚间的黑暗和灯光也让我们自由自在摆脱束缚。我们不再是自己。四点至六点之间的傍晚,天气美好,我们步出家门,不再是朋友们熟知的自己,变成了无名流浪汉共产大军的一员,他们向来认为独居是件好事。在自己的房间里我们被物品包围着,这些物品不仅传达了我们的奇怪秉性,还加深了个人经历的记忆。比如说,在壁炉上挂着的那个碗,是一个大风天从曼图亚买来的。我们当时正要离开商店,一位带着邪气的老妇人猛地一下拉住我们的裙子,说她可能某天突然就饿死,她大叫:“拿着它!”然后把一个蓝白相间的瓷碗塞到我们手中,仿佛连她自己都无法面对如此莫名其妙的慷慨大方。正因为如此,尽管怀疑被狠狠地骗了,我们还是内疚地把它带回了客栈。回去的时候是午夜时分,客栈老板正和他妻子激烈地争吵,我们都向院子探出身去看,结果却被在柱子上往复缠绕的藤蔓和在天空中熠熠生辉的星辰转移了注意力。那个时刻被定格了,像一枚硬币被打上烙印一样,然后不为人察觉地从一百万硬币之中缓缓滑落。在那里,忧郁的英国人在小铁桌边喝上几杯咖啡,精神振作之后,就透露了内心的秘密——标准旅行者所为。所有这一切——意大利,大风天缠绕在柱子上的藤蔓,英国人和他内心的秘密——都因壁炉上挂着的瓷碗而从记忆浮现出来。目光落到地面,看到的是地毯上一块棕色的污渍。这得怪乔治洛埃。“那人坏透了!”康明斯一边说一边把水壶放下,他本来要往茶壶里添水,结果溢出来一点洒在地毯上形成了棕色的污渍。

但是一旦把门关上,所有这些都消失了。我们的灵魂形成一个硬壳困住自己,让自己看起来与他人不同。现在这个硬壳碎了,形状粗糙的重重皱褶都碎了,剩下的是沉默寡言的敏锐,那一只无与伦比的眼睛。冬天的街道多美啊!在时明时暗中,可以隐约看出笔直的大道两侧对称门窗的轮廓;路灯下晃动着浮岛一样的光圈,表情愉快的男男女女快步走过。和他们身上散发出的贫困窘迫相比,脸上的表情看起来那样不真实,呈现出一种胜利的气息,好像他们给生活设了个圈套,然后得逞了,生活居然跌跌撞撞错过了他们。然而无论如何,我们都只是在做表面文章。眼睛不是矿工,不是潜水者,更不是地下珍宝的搜寻者。它只是带领我们顺流而下;眼睛看着的时候大脑可能中断思考,停下来休息。

冬天的伦敦街道真美,浮岛一般的光影下狭长黝黑的树丛。夜色笼罩下,树影森森,密草茵茵,一切都好像进入自然而然的睡眠状态。如果走过铁栅栏,可以听到树叶和树枝轻声颤动的噼啪声,猫头鹰咕咕叫着,远处山谷中火车辘辘驶过,更能感觉到四周的安静。但别忘了这是伦敦。光秃秃的树冠上高高挂着的映出偏红的黄色光线的长椭圆形——那是窗户;如低悬的星星一样不间断亮着的光点——那是路灯;掌管国家和国家和平的空荡地面不过是伦敦的一个广场,周围环绕着办公室和住宅。那里现在正灯火通明,看得到地图、文件和办公人员坐在桌子上用沾湿的手指翻阅没完没了的书信;或是火光摇摆,路灯光线直射进私人会客厅,看得到舒适的椅子、纸张、瓷器、嵌入式的桌子和女子画像。画像里她正精确计算要放几勺茶。她盯着门就好像她听到楼下门铃响起,有人问她在不在家。

但是我们必须在这里停下来。我们正陷入比视觉认可的发掘深度还深刻的危险之中;我们纠结于一些细枝末节而影响了一路顺流而下。随时,休眠的人们将会开始骚动,然后用一千把小提琴和小号把我们吵醒;人类会惊醒,维护所有的怪异、痛苦和卑劣。让我们多待一会儿,只满足于表面——公共汽车闪闪发亮,肉店里黄色的猪肋排和紫色的牛排肉色鲜亮,花店的玻璃橱窗里一束束蓝色和红色的鲜花争相怒放。

眼睛有奇特的属性:只为美而停留,就好像蝴蝶追求色彩,沉浸于温暖之中一样。在像这样一个自然用尽全力表现自己的冬日夜晚,在这样一个如同宝石构成的世界里,眼睛带回了如折断的小块祖母绿和红珊瑚一般最好的战利品。(从非专业的平均水平看来)眼睛无法从更多模糊的角度和关系中将这些战利品组合起来。因此在细细地品味了这些纯粹简单独立美好的视觉大餐之后,我们有点腻了。我们在鞋店门外徘徊,想了一些与真正原因毫无关联的小借口,不去看明媚的街景,而是退回到微暗的房间。在那里的高台上,我们顺从地抬起左脚,可能会问:“侏儒是什么样的?”

两位常人身高的女士护送她走进来。她们在她身旁看起来像是和蔼可亲的巨人。她们对着售货小姐微笑,看起来并不想突出她的缺陷,但让别人明白她处于她们的保护之中。残疾人脸上常出现的别扭但又歉疚的表情也出现在她脸上。她需要她们的体贴,但是她讨厌那样。护送她的女士把售货小姐叫过去,溺爱地笑着让售货小姐为“这位小姐”拿双鞋试试。那女孩推开她面前的小台子,侏儒小姐猛地在地上踩了一脚好像要吸引所有人的注意。她伸出脚好像在命令我们所有人——看啊!快看啊!可以看到那只脚形状、大小都与正常发育的女人无异。她的脚拱起,像个贵族。她看着自己放在地面上的脚,这一刻整个人的气质都变了。她看上去温和而满足,充满自信。她要了一只又一只,试了一双又一双。她站起身,在镜子前面踮起脚尖,看她自己穿着黄色鞋子,鹿皮鞋和蜥蜴皮鞋。她掀起裙子,炫耀她短小的双腿。她在想,无论如何,脚是一个人全身最重要的部位;她自言自语,女人会单单因为漂亮的脚得到爱情。只盯着脚看,她可能想的是身体其他的部分和这双美丽的脚比起来不值一提。她衣衫褴褛,但她准备在鞋上奢侈一下。这是唯一一次她不怕被人看反而积极地想要吸引注意,她用尽所有手段拖延时间,慢慢地选择搭配。她这样走一步那样走一步,看起来就像在说,都来看我的脚。好脾气的售货小姐一定说了恭维话,因为她的脸突然洋溢起喜悦。可是,尽管护送她的女士和蔼可亲,也有自己的事情要处理;她必须要做出决定,她得决定要哪双鞋。终于,她选定了一双鞋,晃着手指上的包装袋,她走到监护者中间。喜悦退去,理性回归,原有的别扭歉疚的表情又回到脸上。她重新回到街上,又变成了一个不过尔尔的侏儒。

但是她的心情变了;我们跟着她来到街上,她营造出了一种好像真的能让人变得驼背、畸形和残疾的气氛。两个留胡子的男人,兄弟俩,显然是全盲的,全身依靠用手撑住他们中间的小男孩的头,走过大道。他们在盲人道上走得坚强不屈却有点畏首畏尾,这给他们的行动增添了几分恐怖和宿命突然降临到他们身上的必然色彩。他们前进,笔直走着,这个小护卫队好像以独有的静穆,直接和灾难的气势在行人中间开了一条路。实际上,侏儒已经开始跳街上众人都熟悉的踉踉跄跄的奇怪舞蹈;胖女士穿着紧紧裹住自己的海豹皮外套;弱智的男孩吮吸着拐杖上的银色小球;老人蹲坐在门阶上,好像突然看到了什么人间奇观,他坐下来看——大家都和着侏儒蹒跚的节奏开始跳舞。

有人可能会问,这些跛足眼盲的残疾人生活在怎样的缝隙中?可能在霍尔本和苏活一带窄小老房子的高层。那里的人们来自五湖四海,名字千奇百怪,营生多种多样,令人好奇。人们居住在那里。看起来好像身穿海豹皮外套的女士可能觉得生活尚可忍受,与手风琴打褶人或是包纽扣的人打发时间;如此精彩的生活并不总是悲剧性的。我们沉思,他们并不嫉恨我们的幸福。突然,拐过转角,我们遇到一个有胡子的犹太人,他邋遢,极度饥饿,悲苦凄惨;或是路过素不相识的老妇人,她跛足,躺在公共场所台阶上,身上裹着一件斗篷,就像是谁匆匆忙忙盖在死去的马或驴身上一样。一看到这样的情景,后背上就一阵战栗,汗毛直立;突然之间眼中燃起熊熊火焰;我想问一个从未被回答的问题,这些无家可归者通常不会选择待在剧院的周围,去听街头艺人的手摇风琴,也不会等到夜幕降临,去感受用餐者和舞者的光鲜亮丽和美丽身姿。他们靠近商店的橱窗。这些商店的服务对象是躺在门阶上的老妇人、盲人、跛足的侏儒,向他们提供装饰有天鹅图案并在颈部贴金的沙发;嵌有多种颜色水果的餐桌;铺满绿色大理石以便更好地承受野猪头重量的橱柜;因年代久远变得异常柔软,从淡红褪色成浅绿的地毯。

边走边看,一切都随意自然却奇迹般地散发出美丽的光芒,仿佛今晚牛津街上买卖的毫无例外全是宝贝。尽管没有购买的想法,眼睛却还是快活大方;它不停地创造;不停地装扮;不停地强化。站在街上,可以建起梦想中房子的所有房间并随心所欲地用沙发、桌子和地毯去装饰。这块地毯适合门厅,那只光洁雪白的碗应该放在窗台边雕刻的桌子上,可以从那面圆圆的大镜子里看到我们的狂欢。但是,即使建造装饰了房子,也乐于没有责任去占有它;一眨眼就可以拆掉房子,再用别的椅子和玻璃建造装饰新房子。或纵情欣赏古董珠宝,徜徉在无数的指环和悬挂的项链中。比如,我们选那些珍珠,然后想象如果我们戴上,生活会有怎样的变化。转眼间就到凌晨两三点了;伦敦上流住宅区无人的街道上依旧灯火通明。这种时候只有汽车在外面,人感到空虚、激动和隐隐的快乐。戴着珍珠,穿着丝绸,步出房间,走上阳台,俯视沉睡中上流住宅区的花园。有些人的卧室还亮着灯,可能是刚从法院回家的大人物,可能是上流社会的服务生,可能是与政治家牵手的贵妇。一只猫蹑手蹑脚爬上花园的围墙。有人在绿窗帘后面的房间暗处做爱,发出细微的诱人的声音。年老的首相一边优雅地散步,一边为某位头发卷曲佩戴祖母绿的贵夫人解释历史上此处发生过的重大事件,仿佛英国的城郡都在平台之下沐浴阳光。我们像是攀上了最大轮船的最高桅杆的顶端;然而同时我们对此一无所知;如此这般。爱不能证明,也不能完成伟大的成就;所以我们与时间赛跑,轻轻地梳理羽毛。此刻我们站在阳台上,看着月光下的猫慢慢爬上玛丽公主家花园的围墙。

还能有什么更荒谬吗?实际上,现在是六点整;冬天的晚上;我们走路去斯特兰德街买铅笔。那么我们怎么会同时在六月份戴着珍珠待在阳台上呢?还能有什么更荒谬吗?但是这是自然的恶作剧,不是我们的。当她开始最伟大的杰作,创造人类时,她就已经想到这件事了。她反而摇摇头,回顾每一个人。我们的愿望和本能不知不觉变得完全不同,因此我们满是痕迹、斑驳不堪、混杂凌乱;所有的颜色都褪去了。到底是一月份站在人行道上的自己是真的,还是六月份在阳台上探身的自己是真的呢?我是在这里还是在那里?抑或这两个都不是真正的我,我既不在这里也不在那里,但是有些事富于变化并且漫无目的,只有当我们顺应心愿让它自由无阻地发展时,我们才是真正的自己?环境追求统一;方便起见,一个人就是一个整体。一位好公民,当他晚上打开家门,他一定是银行家,高尔夫爱好者,妻子的丈夫和孩子的父亲;而不是在沙漠中漂泊的流浪者,不是仰望星空的神秘主义者,不是流连在旧金山贫民窟的酒色之徒,不是领导革命的战士,更不是离群索居心存怀疑哀号悲鸣的贱民。当他打开家门,他会分开手指轻抚头发,然后和其他人一样把雨伞放在台上。

现在时间刚刚好,我们来到二手书店。这里是保守陈腐之物的避风港;我们看过了街道上的绚烂与悲惨,来到这里让内心保持平衡。书店老板娘坐在烧得很旺的炭火炉边,把脚放在炉围上,被门挡住,这情景让人平静又愉快。她从不读书,要看也是报纸;除了卖书,她最高兴谈论的就是帽子;她说她喜欢实用兼备美观的帽子。哦不,他们不在店里住,住在布里克斯顿;她得能看到一点绿色才行。夏天,她把自己花园长出的花放在大口瓶里,放在积满灰尘的东西上面,以便活跃书店气氛。到处都是书,使我们充满了危险的感觉。二手书是流浪者,无家可归;它们来路不同,却聚集在一起,带着一种图书馆缺乏的温顺的魅力。除此之外,在这个杂乱无章的环境里,我们也许可以有幸接触到一些素不相识的陌生人,有可能成为生命中最好的朋友。当我们被简陋和遗弃引导从上层书架上取出某本灰白的书,总是希望能够在此遇到一位一百年前横跨马背在中部地区和威尔士地区开拓木材市场的男人;他是一位不知名的旅行家,呆在客栈里,大口喝酒,描绘美丽的女孩和庄严的风俗习惯,费力顽强地将其全部记录下来,所有一切完全出自单纯的热爱(这本书由他自费出版);极其朴实,繁杂,注重事实的内容和弥漫着蜀葵和干草的香气的自画像一起为他在思想炉边的温暖角落永远保留了一个位置。现在可能有人会花上十八便士买这本书。尽管书的标价是三磅六十便士,但是书店老板娘考虑到封面的粗糙,以及从沙福克郡一位绅士的图书馆的拍卖会上买来这本书就一直呆在那的情况,便会以十八便士的价格卖掉它。

然后,环顾书店,我们会和一些仅存记录的默默无闻的人和消失的人建立突如其来的友谊。比如,这本诗集,印刷精美,包装完好,附有作者画像。他是位诗人,因溺水而英年早逝,他的诗,如此温和谨慎,充满说教,发出脆弱的笛声,好像后街上穿着灯芯绒夹克的意大利手摇风琴手演奏出的声音。还有一些旅行者,就像不服输的老姑娘,还在求证他们经受过的苦难和维多利亚女王还是个小女孩时他们热爱的希腊的日落。去康瓦尔郡小煤矿参观被认为非常值得记录。人们顺着莱茵河一路向上,用印度墨为彼此画像,坐在甲板上绳圈的旁边阅读;他们测量金字塔;多年来远离人类文明;在令人讨厌的沼泽里和黑人交涉。他们整理行装,出发上路,大漠探寻,传染感冒,在印度终其一生,甚至涉足中国然后返回埃德蒙顿过着单调的教区生活,在布满灰尘的地面上翻滚,英国是这样令人不安的海面,在家门口就能波浪惊天。旅行和探险的海水好像拍打着努力奋斗的小岛,终生事业也在地板上的印刷品中找到立足之地。这些深褐色的书籍背面刻着开头字母,可能是传播福音的神职人员;可能是用锤子和凿子在尤里披蒂斯和哀斯奇勒斯的古代文献上雕刻出声的学者。思考、注释、传播以惊人的速度在我们周围及所有一切之间进行,像准时持久的海浪,拍打着古代文艺作品的海岸。无数著作告诉我们亚瑟有多么爱劳拉,他们分开的时候满怀忧郁,他们重逢之后幸福地生活在一起,就像维多利亚女王管理这些岛屿时那样。

世界上的书无穷无尽,只能大略浏览,颔首致意,浅谈几句,或是略微思考之后就换个话题,就好像在街上,总会偶然听到一些只言片语。他们在讨论一个叫凯特的女人,“昨晚我和她开门见山地说了……如果你觉得我连一张一便士的邮票也不如,我说……”但是谁是凯特,一便士的邮票对他们的友谊意味着什么严重问题,我们永远也不知道;就这样凯特陷入他们滔滔不绝的温暖。在街角,生活翻开了新一页,可以看到两个男人站在路灯下商量事情。他们把最近新闻里来自纽马克特的电报一五一十地读出来。这时他们是不是在想有了钱就可以脱去褴褛衣衫,换上轻衣锦裘,挂上怀表,给原本无扣的衬衫别上钻石别针,不复以往的破旧?但是此刻行走的人群快速移动,以致我们无法提出这样的问题。在从工作到家的一小段路上,他们沉浸在令人陶醉的梦里,现在他们离开了办公室,迎面而来的是新鲜的空气。他们穿上了平时必须远离的鲜亮外衣,充分利用余下的时间,然后他们变成了伟大的板球选手、著名演员和在危机时刻拯救国家的战士。在梦中,他们有时打着夸张的手势,有时大声地骂骂咧咧,穿过斯特兰德街,跨过滑铁卢大桥。在桥下乘火车前往巴恩斯和索比顿,火车辘辘作响。那里大厅中钟表的模样和地下室里晚餐的香气在梦里不断出现。

我们现在到达了斯特兰德街,我们在路边停下,手指长的小棒条跨越生命的效率和内涵设下障碍。“真的,我必须——真的,我必须”——就是这样。思维丝毫不考虑需要,就向暴君般的习惯表示屈服。一个人必须,总是必须做点儿这做点儿那;一个人就是不被允许享受生活。前一段时间我们不就是为这个原因捏造理由,编出了要买东西的借口吗?我们要买什么来着?啊,想起来了,要买一支铅笔。那就让我们走去买铅笔吧。然而我们正要遵从指示,另一个自己跳出来讨论应该服从暴君的权威。于是又一场习以为常的争论开始了。躲在义务指挥棒的后面,我们慢慢走开,看到了开阔的泰晤士河——如此的宽广、阴郁和沉静。有人在夏天的夜晚斜倚着堤岸,对世界没有一丝留恋。我们借他的眼睛去看泰晤士河。我们先把买铅笔的事情放到一边;先去找这个人——马上发现一个再明显不过的事实,这个人就是我们自己。如果我们能站在六个月前曾驻足的地方,我们难道不能像当时那样冷静、淡定和满意吗?我们不妨再作尝试。不过河水比印象中更为汹涌阴沉。激流奔向大海。河水掀翻了一只拖船和两只驳船,船里的稻草紧紧地贴在防雨布的顶盖上。离我们很近的地方,有一对好奇地倚着栏杆的情侣,并没有恋人们的自我意识,仿佛他们正要开始的恋爱重要得可以理所当然地平息对人类放纵堕落行为的任何质问。现在我们看到的景象和听到的声音和过去没有任何关联;我们也感受不到六个月前站在我们现在位置的那个人的沉着心境。他想到的是死亡的幸福;我们想到的是生活的不安定。他没有未来;然而未来正在侵袭我们内心的安宁。只有我们回顾过去,摘除其中的不确定因素,我们才能享受美好的平和。如果是这样,我们就必须返回去,我们必须再次去斯特兰德街,即使在这个时候,我们也必须找到能卖给我们铅笔的商店。

进入一个陌生的房间总是新奇有趣的;因为房屋主人的生活和性格已经把他们的气息注入到房间里,我们一走进去,就能呼吸到全新的感情律动。毫无疑问,在文具店里,人们刚刚在吵嘴。怒火点着了空气。双方都停了下来。老妇人——他们可能是丈夫和妻子——退到里屋去;老头儿额头圆圆的,瞪大了眼睛端详一些伊丽莎白时期手稿上的插画,留下来招呼我们。“铅笔,铅笔,”他重复着,“有,有。”他说话心不在焉,但是藏不住情绪的两颊又流露出热情。他打开一个又一个盒子,然后又合上。他说因为有这么多不同的种类,找起东西特别困难。他开始讲一个故事,故事是关于一位合法进入他妻子管辖范围的绅士。他们相识多年;他说,他半个世纪都与教堂打交道,好像希望他妻子在后堂能够听到似的。他打翻了一盒橡皮圈。终于,他因为自己这样笨手笨脚有点生气了,把双开式弹簧门推开,粗鲁地喊起来:“你到底把铅笔放哪儿了?”好像他妻子有意把铅笔藏起来似的。老妇人走进来,谁也不看,她的手直直放在右边的盒子上。那里有铅笔。他怎么能离得了她呢?难道她对他来说不是必不可少的吗?为了把铅笔一个挨一个不偏不斜地放在一起,必须得特别挑选铅笔;这个太软,那个太硬。两个人安静地对视。他们站的时间越长,就越冷静。气氛缓和了,愤怒消解了。现在,双方都不说话,言归于好。老头儿不喜欢本·琼森的内封面,把盒子放回了适当的位置,向我们大大鞠躬道晚安,然后他们就回去了。她可能拿出了针线活儿;他也许在看报纸;金丝雀把种子平均分给两个人。争吵结束了。

鬼魂出来游荡了,争吵结束了,铅笔买了,街道重新变得空荡荡的。生活退回到顶层,路灯亮起来。人行道干燥坚硬;马路闪着银光。穿过一片荒芜走回家,把侏儒、盲人、上流社交区别墅的晚会和文具店争吵的故事讲给自己听。虽然只是了解了这些人生活的点滴,却足以让人感觉想法不再单一,有那么几分钟可以进入别人的身体,想别人的事情。可以变成洗衣妇、酒店老板,或是街角的歌手。朋友们,有什么比脱离人格的直线轨道,沿着通向野蔷薇和茂密树丛的足迹,进入野兽栖居的森林深处更为快乐神奇呢?

毋庸置疑:逃离是最大的欢乐;冬天在街道上漫步是最伟大的探险。我们依然再次踏上门阶,感受着长久以来所拥有的东西及偏见包围着我们,抚慰着我们;还有自己,停留在众多城市角落,如飞蛾扑火一般,躲避隐藏。又看到了常见的门;椅子、瓷碗和地毯上的棕色污渍还保持着我们走时的模样。这——让我们温柔地查看,让我们满怀敬畏地抚摸——正是我们从城市的宝藏里掠夺的唯一战利品,那支铅笔。

牛津街浪潮

码头上的货物包装粗糙,体积庞大,种类多样,等运到牛津街就变得精美细致了许多。大桶潮湿的烟叶被银色的纸片卷成无数排列整齐的香烟。大捆的羊毛被纺成薄背心或柔软的长袜。厚厚的羊毛油光锃亮,柔软的羊皮散发出奶脂香。买卖双方都同样经历了城市的变迁。穿着黑色外套远行,或穿着缎面长裙小步走,人们比身上穿的动物制品更适应新环境。裁缝不拉也不拽,熟练地打开抽屉,将绸缎在柜台上展平,用码尺量好之后用剪刀裁开。

不用多说,牛津街并不是伦敦最有名的大道。众所周知,卫道士对在牛津街购物的人表示蔑视,而他们居然还获得纨绔子弟的支持。庞德街和汉诺威广场随处都透露出更为庄重的时尚气息。牛津街有太多的讨价还价,太多的促销,太多上周还是两磅六便士现在就减价到一磅十一便士的便宜货。这里的买卖十分喧嚣吵闹。日落时漫步——看到夕阳映射下的大理石拱门,以及人工光、成堆的绸缎和闪烁的公交车——牛津街好像一条长丝带,虽然起伏不定、俗艳耀眼,但是充满了吸引;又好像一张河床,铺满了被清泉冲刷过的卵石。一切都闪闪发亮。春天街上会出现许多手推车,上面盛满了精美包装的郁金香、紫罗兰和水仙。脆弱的小船在交通洪流中茫然打转。角落里,衣衫褴褛的魔术师正把彩色纸片放进大玻璃杯,然后把它们变成绚丽多彩的花丛——水下花园。另一角,乌龟在草丛里睡觉。它们行动最为缓慢,想法却最为深沉。乌龟总是一步两步地慢慢移动,路过的行人都小心翼翼地避开它们。有人认为,正如昆虫对星辰的想法一样,人们对乌龟的想法也是人性中恒久不变的一点。不仅如此,在别处大概很难看到一位女士停下来把一只乌龟放到包裹上。

考虑到这一切——拍卖、手推车、便宜货、亮晶晶的小装饰——从来没人说牛津街的特色是精美。这里是感官的温床和暖房。这里的人行道好像总是发生重大的惨剧,女演员离婚,百万富翁自杀之类的事件在此经常出现。居民区里的人行道则更为朴实无华。这里的新闻比伦敦其他地方更快更新。这里的人潮拥挤得好像要会吃掉海报上的墨水。这里比别处的消耗量更大,需要提供更多最新版本的新闻。牛津街用不断变化的景象、声音和动作为被混乱印象绑架的大脑松绑。包裹撞来撞去,小公交车擦过路边,管乐队大吹大唱,音乐随着队伍远去慢慢变小。公交车、火车、汽车和手推车川流不息,就像拼图中的碎片;一只白色的手臂举起,拼图变厚、凝固、停止;白色的手臂放下,一切又开始、奔驰、扭曲、乱七八糟、毫无秩序。不管我们观望多久,拼图总也拼不起来。

富商在转弯过去的河岸修建了富丽堂皇的宫殿,如同古代萨莫塞公爵在诺森伯兰,道赛特伯爵在索尔斯伯里,以及斯特兰德街上的宫殿一样。大企业的不同建筑见证了建造者的勇敢大胆和进取心,正如卡文迪什和珀西的大厦见证了在远郡同样存在的这些品质一样。我们的商人中一定会涌现出未来的卡文迪什和珀西。诚然,牛津街的伟人非常慷慨大方,和任何在家门口向穷人分发财物或面包的公爵或伯爵没有区别。只不过他们换了一种方式。他们的施舍援助体现在令人心跳的刺激、光彩夺目的展示、扣人心弦的娱乐、晚上灯火通明的窗户或是白天迎风飘扬的旗帜。他们不计回报,和我们分享最新的消息。在那里,会客厅里演奏的音乐是免费的。花不到一磅就可以享受高大宽敞通风良好的房间;里面地板舒适,电梯豪华,墙壁干净,地毯整洁,银器闪亮。就连珀西和卡文迪什也没有这些。当然所有的装修都是为了能从我们口袋里拿到一磅十一便士;但是不管是诗人的题词还是农场主的选票,珀西和卡文迪什既没有这么大方,也不可能提供找零服务。牛津街的新老贵族都大兴土木,极力丰富生活娱乐设施。

但是不能否认的是牛津街的宫殿并不牢固——大概只能算得上是场地而非居住地。如果路过这里,看到木条安在铁制横梁上,就会意识到如此装饰华丽的外墙其实不堪一击。哪怕用雨伞尖用力一戳,都可能会对墙壁造成不可修复的破坏。伊丽莎白女王在位时为安置农场主和磨坊主修建了很多农舍。这些农舍虽然陈旧,但是墙壁以橡木为梁,紧密黏合在一起的砖块货真价实,经受得住外力冲击。除此之外农舍还安装了电力配套设施。这些农舍将会目睹所谓的宫殿化为乌有。也许有一天,当工人冒险爬上灰尘弥漫的屋顶,轻轻地敲打那些脆弱得好像是黄色硬纸板和糖霜的墙壁和外表,牛津街就会消失不见。

卫道士又开始对此表示不屑一顾。他们认为,如此脆弱不堪和易损的石头和砖块正是我们这个时代浮躁、虚荣、草率和不负责任的真实写照。不过大概他们也会被嘲笑,就好比我们希望用铜去铸造百合,或是让雏菊长出不会腐坏的珐琅花瓣。现代伦敦的魅力就在于伦敦的建筑不是为了持久;而是为了传播。玻璃一样透明的石膏五彩缤纷,汹涌而来的快乐与众不同。过去的建造者和赞助商以营造出永垂不朽的形象为骄傲,并认为那才是高贵典雅,我们则给出不同的定义。我们的骄傲在于可以随心所欲使用砖块石头,只在建筑中停留片刻。我们的后代可能在云端或地上生活,我们不是为了他们而建筑,我们是为自己,更确切地说是自己的需要。我们按照自己的意愿拆除重建,在破坏中产生创造和生产的冲动。我们鼓励新发现,提倡新创造。

牛津街的宫殿忽视了希腊、伊丽莎白时期和18世纪贵族建筑的长处;直到他们设计出能完美展示梳妆盒、巴黎洋装、廉价袜子和罐装浴盐的建筑,直到他们设计出宫殿、宅第、汽车,直到他们设计出装有留声机、无线电和电影的别墅,供克罗顿和索比顿的店员居住,他们才彻底意识到这一切都将会消逝。因此他们出乎意料地把石块展开,再以希腊、埃及、意大利和美式的狂野将它们压到一起,大胆尝试富丽奢华的风格,努力说服大众这种建筑其实美得无与伦比。这里总有新奇好玩的东西,价格低廉,轻松易得,好像一口看不到尽头的深井每天都冒出气泡。在牛津街,没有比考虑年龄、稳定和持久再奇怪的事情了。

因此,如果卫道士决定下午沿着这条奇特的大道走走,他应该做好准备听到一些古怪不协调的声音。在这里能听到有人在火车和公交车上狂欢高叫。卖乌龟的人说,天知道,我手臂疼;我几乎卖不出乌龟;但要振作!可能马上就有顾客来了;我今晚有没有地方睡觉可全指望它了;如果警察允许,我就推着乌龟沿牛津街走上一整天。做大买卖的商人说,说实话,我没想过要向大众普及高级美感;我绞尽脑汁才明白怎么能浪费最少,效果最好地展示我的商品;把绿龙雕在科林斯柱的顶端可能会有所帮助。中产阶级女士说,我认为,我总是闲逛,这看看那看看,随便花钱,讨价还价然后换来一篮又一篮的零料;我知道我两眼放光的样子并不得体,贪婪抢购的行为让人讨厌,但我丈夫不过是银行的小职员;我一年只有十五英镑的置装费;所以我到这里来,到处闲逛,看看我能不能打扮得像邻居那样。我是一个小偷,即使客人不注意的时候,从柜台上抢走手袋也需要很大的勇气;毕竟那里面可能只有眼镜和用过的公交车票。现在就去!

牛津街总是回荡着成千上万诸如此类的声音。一切都紧绷着,一切都是真实的,一切都来自被谋生压力所迫的人无法自抑的倾诉。他们要活着,要找个睡觉的地方,但却不得不无休止地在街上流浪。有人会设想,即使卫道士也要承认,这条俗气、吵闹、粗野的街道提醒我们生活就是战斗;所有的建筑都终会消失,所有的东西都是虚无。从此我们也许可以得出结论——除非聪明的店主心领神会,为孤独的思想者开设悬挂绿丝绒并且有萤火虫和骷髅飞蛾飞来飞去的房间以便进行思考和反省,否则在牛津街任何追求结论的努力都将只是徒劳。

工 艺

这个系列的主题是“无法用语言准确表达”,而这篇演讲题为“工艺”,因此,我们认为演讲者想要讨论文字运用技巧——作者的工艺。但是“工艺”这个词应用在文字上,多少有些矛盾和不和谐。平时,每当我们困惑不解时就求助英文词典,但是这次它却加深了我们的困惑。词典上说“craft”这个单词有两个含义:第一个含义是利用材料制作实物——比如,锅、椅子、桌子。第二个含义是诱骗、狡猾和欺诈。现在我们对文字知之甚少,知道的只是——虽然文字不能制造任何实物,但是它却可以分辨真伪。所以,讨论文字关联的技巧就要把两个相互矛盾的概念结合起来,这样大概就可以形成能被博物馆收藏在玻璃罩后面的珍奇宝贝一样的东西。因此,我们有必要更改演讲题目,也许可以换成另一个——文字漫谈。去掉演讲,就好像被砍掉脑袋的母鸡,一直绕圈跑,直到最终死掉——人们把这种人称为母鸡杀手,把这种行为称为无起始演讲的过程或循环。然后让我们回到原点,文字无用。幸好这点众所周知,无须证明。举个例子,当我们去乘地铁,在月台等车,前方悬挂着一块亮灯的招牌,上面写着“经过罗素广场”。我们看到这些文字,自己不断重复,试着表达出脑海中真实的印象:下一列车将经过罗素广场。我们以“经过罗素广场,经过罗素广场”这样的速度一遍又一边地重复。然后一说出来,这些文字就混在一起开始变化。我们发现自己重复说着“一切都消失,消失……树叶枯萎凋落,雾气弥漫。有人出现……”突然清醒过来的时候,发现已经到了国王十字车站。

再举个例子。我们对面的车厢上写着“不要探身窗外”。开始,通过阅读可以了解实际的用途,也就是表面的意思;然而不久,我们坐下来,再读这些文字,发现它们开始混合变化。我们开始说“窗,是的,就是窗——在失掉了的仙域里引动窗扉 [1] ”。不知不觉,我们就已经探身窗外;去寻找在异邦的谷田里因想家而落泪的露丝 [2] 。这样做不是被罚二十磅就是脖子被折断。

如果非要证明,以上的两个例子已经证明了文字天生无用。如果我们坚持并强迫它们违背本性变得实用,将会付出代价。代价就是我们会被文字误导和愚弄,就好像脑袋被重重地打了一下。文字总是用这种方式愚弄我们,因为它们试图证明它们的本性如此,不愿变得实用,只愿意表达一个简单的意思而非许许多多的不同含义——它们总是这样做。好在我们终于开始直面这个问题。我们开始创造另一种语言——一种可以完整优美地表达实用信息的语言,即符号语言。某位无名氏在米其林饮食指南中留下了对酒店的评价——不管这位无名氏是男是女,还是无人知晓的神秘力量——我们所有人都要感激他对符号语言的强大灵活的运用。如果他想告诉我们这家酒店一般,另一家不错,还有一家最好,他要怎么做呢?不需要文字;文字会立刻让人联想到灌木丛、撞球台、男男女女、缓缓升起的月亮和夏天海面上成片的水花——都是些美好的事物,但与主题无关。他选择用符号表达:一道墙,两道墙,三道墙。这就是他表达的,也是他需要表达的。贝德克尔借用了符号语言,并进一步使之成为一种高雅艺术。当他想表达一幅画很好,他给一颗星;如果非常好,两颗;如果对他来说是无与伦比的杰作,就会有三颗星在页面上闪闪发亮。符号语言就是这样。星星和匕首之类的符号简化了整个艺术批评和文学批评——当有人想进行简化的时候。但是这意味着作家需要在写作中同时使用两种语言;一种在现实中使用,一种在作品中使用。当自传家需要表述一个实用必要的事实,比如说,奥利弗·史密斯念大学,并在1892年获得第三名,他会在图五上画一个空心的圆圈。当小说家需要告诉我们约翰按响了门铃,不一会儿女仆打开了门,说“琼斯夫人不在家”,考虑到我们自身,他会更愿意运用符号而不是词语传达这个令人讨厌的信息——也就是说,在图三上写一个大写字母H。因此我们可以期待有那么一天我们的自传和小说都变得简洁有力。同时,用文字标注“不要探身窗外”的铁路公司会被处于不高于五磅的罚款,理由是没有选择正确的表达方式。

到那时,文字就会变得毫无用处。我们可以研究文字其他积极的特质,也就是表达真理的能力。通过查阅多部字典,我们发现至少有三种对真理的解释:上帝的绝对真理、学术真理和普遍真理(通常真实可信)。但是分别考虑三种真理要花费很长时间。那么就让我们把想法简单化,因为时间是检验真理的唯一标准,而语言最能经受时间变幻,所以语言是最真实的。建筑物会倒塌,甚至地球也终会毁灭。一切不过是沧海桑田,过眼云烟。但是如果运用恰当,文字好像可以永存。那么接下来,我们要问的是,应该如何恰当运用文字?我们说过,文字不表达实用信息,因为实用信息是只能表达一件事的信息。然而文字的本性就是表达多件事。以“经过罗素广场”这个被认为无用的简单句子为例,它除了表面含义,还包括了很多隐藏义。“经过”这个词暗示了事物的转瞬即逝,也就是时间的流逝和人事的变迁。“罗素”这个词暗示了树叶的沙沙声和光滑地面上的短裙,还有贝德福公爵宅第和英格兰一半的历史。最后,“广场”这个词让涂满石灰、轮廓分明的广场形象映入眼帘。因此,最简单的一句话也能唤醒想象、记忆、视觉和听觉——阅读的时候这一切都结合在一起。

然而,尽管它们结合在一起——哪怕这结合也是无意识的,一旦我们察觉到这些暗示,并加以强调,它们就变得不真实,我们也变得不真实了——我们变成了专家、文字游戏者、短句发现者,而不是读者。阅读的时候,我们要让隐藏义继续隐藏着、暗示着,不去挑明,任由它们游离,彼此沟通,好像河床上的芦苇。但是那句话里的词——经过罗素广场——毫无疑问都是非常基本的词。这些词不通过打字机而直接来自脑海。它们奇怪诡谲,充满力量,可以暗示出作家自身的一切,他的性格,他的外貌,他的妻子,他的家庭,他的房子——甚至壁炉前地毯上的猫。文字为什么要这样做,怎么做的,如何防止它们这样做?没有人知道。它们不以作者的意志为转移,总是和作者的意志相反。当然没有作家希望读者看穿自己的古怪秉性、个人隐私和怪癖。但是真的有作者,这里不是指打字员,可以做到完全客观吗?通常不可避免地,我们都会通过作品了解作者本人。文字具有如此强大的暗示作用,它们常常会把一本糟糕的书变成一个可爱的人,或是把一本好书变成一个我们很难原谅的人。即使是历史悠久的文字也具有这种能力;全新文字的暗示非常强烈,让我们感受不到作家的本意——而只是看到这些文字,听到这些文字。这是我们对在世作家的评价显得异常善变的原因之一。从某种程度上说,只有作家离世,他的文字才可以不受作家本身的影响,变得纯粹。

可以说,这种暗示的力量是文字最为神秘的属性之一。无论谁,哪怕只写过一句话,都会意识到或半意识到这一点。文字,或者说英语,自然而然地充满了回响、记忆和联想。多少世纪以来,它们出入于人们的唇齿之间,在住宅、街道和天地中穿梭。这也是今天书写文字的主要困难之一——它们包含了太多含义和记忆,缔结了许多著名婚姻。比如说,“殷红”这个词——谁会在用这个词的时候忘记随之而来的“一碧无垠的大海 [3] ”?当然,很久之前,当英文还是一门新的语言时,作家可以创造新词。现在创造新词也十分容易——每当我们看到新事物或者产生新的感受,新词就涌到唇边——可是我们不能这样做,因为文字有它的历史。不能在一门有历史的语言里使用完全新鲜的词,这一点显而易见却又有些神秘,因为词不是独立存在的个体,而是文字的一部分。如果不是句子的一部分,就不是一个真正的词。文字彼此相关,当然了,只有伟大的作家才会把“殷红”和“一碧无垠的大海”联系在一起。新词和老词的结合会对句子造成致命的打击。为了适当运用新词,必须要创造一门新的文字;毫无疑问,我们将成功,但那不是我们的当务之急。当务之急是我们能运用现在的英语做些什么。我们怎么把老词用新的顺序组合起来让它们重获新生,光彩再现,吐露真言,这才是问题所在。

如果谁能回答这个问题,他就有资格获得世上任何一顶荣誉的桂冠。试想,如果写作可教可学意味着什么?为什么每本书每份报纸都说实话,创造美?然而,教授文字的过程中会出现一些障碍和困难。因为即使此刻有百余位教授在进行关于过去文学的授课,千余位批评家在评论现在的文学,成千上万的年轻男女在进行学分比例最高的英语文学考试,事情并没有发生改变——四百年前没有授课、批评、教学,我们比那时写得更优美,读得更明白吗?我们现在所处的乔治时期的文学比维多利亚时期的文学好得多吗?事实如此,我们应该责备谁呢?不是教授,也不是评论家,更不是作家,而是文字。该责备的是文字。在所有事物中,文字最为不羁、自由、不受束缚、无法教授。当然,你可以捕捉文字,进行分类,并按照字典里的字母表排列顺序。然而文字不在字典里,在脑海中。如果你想证明这个,只要想想我们需要文字表达情绪的时候总是找不到合适的表达就清楚了。虽然有字典,字母表中有大概五百万个词任凭我们使用,但是我们能灵活运用吗?答案是不能,因为文字不在字典里,而在脑海中。再看一遍字典。毋庸置疑,没有比《安东尼和克里奥佩特拉》更辉煌的戏剧;没有比《夜莺颂》更优美的诗歌;除了《傲慢与偏见》或是《大卫·科波菲尔》几部小说之外都是业余爱好者的粗糙拙劣的作品。秘诀就在于找到正确的词语,并将其恰当排列。但我们就是做不到,因为文字不在字典里,而在脑海中。怎么让它们进入脑海呢?就像千人千面,文字也多种多样,不一而终,有的大相径庭差别迥异,有的一见如故和谐融洽。文字的确不像我们总是被仪式和会议束缚。贵族文字可以和平民结合。只要英语愿意,它可以嫁给法语、德语、梵文和黑人语。实际上,为了保护“她”的名誉,不要去探究亲爱的英语“母亲”的过去。因为“她”实在经历了太多次结合。

这种文字的漂移无可救药,根本无法制定相关规则。我们所能规定的就是一些微不足道的语法和拼写原则。当我们在幽深漆黑偶有光亮的洞穴边缘向内窥探它们的住处——脑海——我们能说的就是它们喜欢人们在运用前先去思考和感受,但不是思考和感受它们,而是别的。它们高度敏感,极易感到不自在。它们不喜欢被别人讨论纯洁与否。如果有人想创造一个纯洁的英语社会,它们就会创造出一个不纯洁的英语社会来表示抗议——也就是现代英语中不自然的语言暴力,这是对文字清教徒的反抗。它们还高度民主,相信每个词都有自己的优势,没学问的词和有学问的词一样好,粗俗的词和高雅的词一样好,在那个社会里没有阶级或地位之分。它们不喜欢被用钢笔划出来,个别考察。它们结合起来形成句子、段落,或是整篇文章。它们讨厌变得实用功利,讨厌在公共场合发表演讲。简而言之,它们讨厌任何把它们和单一含义结合起来或运用它们表达单一含义的行为,因为它们的天性善变。

也许这才是它们最令人惊奇的地方——它们渴望变化。为了表达捕捉到的不同真实而变得多种多样,一会儿这样,一会儿那样。因此同一句话在这个人看来是这个意思,在那个人看来是那个意思;这代人觉得难以理解,另一代人觉得像鲑鱼一样平凡简单。正因为这种复杂特殊性,文字才得以生存。我们这一代人中没有伟大的诗人、小说家,或是批评家,原因之一可能就是我们限制了文字的自由。我们只固定使用一个实用含义,这个含义可能会让我们赶上火车,也可能会让我们通过考试。然而当文字被禁锢,它们就收起了翅膀,默默死去。最后,也是最重要的,像我们一样,文字需要隐私,从而自由自在地活着。当然它们喜欢我们在运用前思考和感受;但是它们更喜欢我们稍事休息,哪怕只是片刻的无意识。我们的无意识成就了它们的隐私;我们的黑暗就是它们的光明……我们的思考停下来,世界垂下黑暗的面纱,此时把文字温柔地召集起来,促成它和完美意象之间的闪婚,成为永不褪去的美好。但是,不——不是所有一切都要在今晚发生。小家伙们闹脾气了,它们开始惹麻烦,不听话,装聋作哑。它们到底在低声说些什么呢?“时间到了!安静!”


[1] [2] 引自济慈《夜莺颂》,查良铮译。——译者注

[3] 引自莎士比亚《麦克白》,第二幕,第二场。——译者注