This "extravagance du christianisme"[1] is, of course, utterly at variance with the general character of the efforts by which either a Greek or a Roman directed his steps in the ways of goodness. Neither Aristotle nor Horace, neither Plato nor Seneca, would have admitted many of the most lauded virtues of modern ethical systems to be virtues at all. Least of all would they have hailed as a virtue that passionate excess of enthusiasm which makes Virtue independent of Reason, and greets intellectual impossibilities as the trials and tests of the "virtue" of Belief.[2] Speaking in a general sense, and with a tacit recognition of certain exceptions to be noticed in their proper place, it may be premised that Pagan goodness of character found its inspiration, not in any kind of emotional enthusiasm, but in methods of thought and action selected and controlled
- [Footnote: thought it a just opinion "that whatever renders religion more
rational renders it more credible," and devoted his genius to the task of making religion more rational, but has done little more than furnish a school text-book for theological students. Further, what Christian, in his heart of hearts, and at those moments which he would regard as his best, does not respond more readily to the sublime sentiment of Tertullian than to the ratiocinations of the Analogy or the Evidences?]
- ↑ M. Constant Martha's Études morales sur l'Antiquité, from which we have taken this just and striking phrase of Bossuet, gives an interesting account of the passionate and anguished manner in which the calm precepts of the famous "Golden Verses of Pythagoras" were applied by Christianity:—"Le philosophe, si sévère qu'il fût, se traitait toujours en ami; . . . le chrétien au contraire, . . . passe souvent par des inquiétudes inconnues à la sereine antiquité." (L'Examen de Conscience chez les Anciens.)
- ↑ "Belief is a virtue, Doubt is a sin."—Quoted by J. A. Froude, Short Studies, vol. i. p. 243.
