itself on the ecclesiastical community. “We recognize one
commonwealth, the world,” says Tertullian; “we know,”
says Origen, “that we have a fatherland founded by the word
of God.” We might further derive from the general spirit of
Christian unworldliness that repudiation of the secular modes
of conflict, even in a righteous cause, which substituted a passive
patience and endurance for the old pagan virtue of courage,
in which the active element was prominent. Here, however,
we clearly trace the influence of Christ’s express prohibition of
violent resistance to violence, and his inculcation, by example
and precept, of a love that was to conquer even natural resentment.
An extreme result of this influence is shown in Tertullian’s
view, that no Christian could properly hold the office of a secular
magistrate in which he would have to doom to death, chains,
imprisonment; but even more sober writers, such as Ambrose,
extend Christian passivity so far as to preclude self-defence
even against a murderous assault. The common sense of
Christendom gradually shook off these extravagances; but the
reluctance to shed blood lingered long, and was hardly extinguished
even by the growing horror of heresy. We have a curious
relic of this in the later times of ecclesiastical persecution, when
the heretic was doomed to the stake that he might be punished
in some manner “short of bloodshed.”[1]
3. It is, however, in the impulse given to practical beneficence in all its forms, by the exaltation of love as the root of all virtues, that the most important influence of Christianity on the particulars of civilized morality is to be found; although the exact amount of this influence is here Benevolence. somewhat difficult to ascertain, since it merely carries further a development traceable in the history of pagan morality. This development appears when we compare the different post-Socratic systems of ethics. In Plato’s exposition of the different virtues there is no mention whatever of benevolence, although his writings show a keen sense of the importance of friendship as an element of philosophic life, especially of the intense personal affection naturally arising between master and disciple. Aristotle goes somewhat further in recognizing the moral value of friendship (φιλία); and though he considers that in its highest form it can be realized only by the fellowship of the wise and good, he yet extends the notion so as to include the domestic affections, and takes notice of the importance of mutual kindness in binding together all human societies. Still in his formal statement of the different virtues, positive beneficence is discernible only under the notion of “liberality,” in which form its excellence is hardly distinguished from that of graceful profusion in self-regarding expenditure (Nic. Eth. iv. 1). Cicero, on the other hand, in his paraphrase of a Stoic treatise on external duties (De officiis), ranks the rendering of positive services to other men as a chief department of social duty; and the Stoics generally recognized the universal fellowship and natural mutual claims of human beings as such. Indeed, this recognition in later Stoicism is sometimes expressed with so much warmth of feeling as to be hardly distinguishable from Christian philanthropy. Nor was this regard for humanity merely a doctrine of the school. Partly through the influence of Stoic and other Greek philosophy, partly from the natural expansion of human sympathies, the legislation of the Empire, during the first three centuries, shows a steady development in the direction of natural justice and humanity; and some similar progress may be traced in the general tone of moral opinion. Still the utmost point that this development reached fell considerably short of the standard of Christian charity. Without dwelling on the immense impetus given to the practice of social duty generally by the religion that made beneficence a form of divine service, and identified “piety” with “pity,” we have to put down as definite changes introduced by Christianity—(1) the severe condemnation and final suppression of the practice of exposing infants; (2) effective abhorrence of the barbarism of gladiatorial combats; (3) immediate moral mitigation of slavery, and a strong encouragement of emancipation; (4) great extension of the eleemosynary provision made for the sick and the poor. As regards almsgiving, however—the importance of which has caused it to usurp, in modern languages, the general name of “charity”—it ought to be observed that Christianity merely universalized a duty which has always been inculcated by Judaism, within the limits of the chosen people.
4. The same may be said of the stricter regulation which Christianity enforced on the relations of the sexes; except so far as the prohibition of divorce is concerned, and the stress laid on “purity of heart” as contrasted with merely outward chastity.
5. Even the peculiarly Christian virtue of humility, which presents so striking a contrast to the Greek “highmindedness,” was to some extent anticipated in the Rabbinic teaching. Its far greater prominence under the new dispensation may be partly referred to the express teaching and example of Christ; partly, in so far as the virtue is manifested in the renunciation of external rank and dignity, or the glory of merely secular gifts and acquirements, it is one aspect of the unworldliness which we have already noticed; while the deeper humility that represses the claim of personal merit even in the saint belongs to the strict self-examination, the continual sense of imperfection, the utter reliance on strength not his own, which characterize the inner moral life of the Christian. Humility in this latter sense, “before God,” is an essential condition of all truly Christian goodness.
We have, however, yet to notice the enlargement of the sphere of ethics due to its close connexion with theology; for while this added religious force and sanction to ordinary moral obligations, it equally tended to impart a moral aspect to religious belief and worship. “Duty to God”—as distinct from duty to man—had not been altogether unrecognized by pagan moralists; but the rather dubious relations of even the more orthodox philosophy to the established polytheism had generally prevented them from laying much stress upon it. Again,—just as the Stoics held wisdom to be indispensable to real rectitude of conduct, while at the same time they included under the notion of wisdom a grasp of physical as well as ethical truth,—so the similar emphasis laid on inwardness in Christian ethics caused orthodoxy or correctness of religious belief to be regarded as essential to goodness, and heresy as the most fatal of vices, corrupting as it did the very springs of Christian life. To the philosophers (with the single exception of Plato), however, convinced as they were that the multitude must necessarily miss true well-being through their folly and ignorance, it could never occur to guard against these evils by any other method than that of providing philosophic instruction for the few; whereas the Christian clergy, whose function it was to offer truth and eternal life to all mankind, naturally regarded theological misbelief as insidious preventible contagion. Indeed, their sense of its deadliness was so keen that, when they were at length able to control the secular administration, they rapidly overcame their aversion to bloodshed, and initiated that long series of religious persecutions to which we find no parallel in the pre-Christian civilization of Europe. It was not that Christian writers did not feel the difficulty of attributing criminality to sincere ignorance or error. But the difficulty is not really peculiar to theology; and the theologians usually got over it (as some philosophers had surmounted a similar perplexity in the region of ethics proper) by supposing some latent or antecedent voluntary sin, of which the apparently involuntary heresy was the fearful fruit.
Lastly, we must observe that, in proportion as the legal conception of morality as a code of which the violation deserves supernatural punishment predominated over the philosophic view of ethics as the method for attaining natural felicity, the question of man’s freedom of will to obey the law necessarily became prominent. At the same time it cannot be broadly said that Christianity took a decisive side in the metaphysical controversy on free-will and necessity; since, just as in Greek philosophy the need of maintaining freedom as the ground of responsibility clashes with the conviction that no one deliberately chooses his own harm, so in Christian ethics it clashes with the
- ↑ Citra sanguinis effusionem.
