An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine by John Henry Newman

Author:John Henry Newman
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Religion, Classics, Catholicism, Theology
Publisher: mobileread
Published: 2012-07-09T02:22:13+00:00

17.

Here we have a vivid picture of Plutarch’s idea of the essence of Superstition; it was the imagination of the existence of an unseen ever-present Master; the bondage of a rule of life, of a continual responsibility; obligation to attend to little things, the impossibility of escaping from duty, the inability to choose or change one’s religion, an interference with the enjoyment of life, a melancholy view of the world, sense of sin, horror at guilt, apprehension of punishment, dread, self-abasement, depression, anxiety and endeavour to be at peace with heaven, and error and absurdity in the methods chosen for the purpose. Such too had been the idea of the Epicurean Velleius, when he shrunk with horror from the “sempiternus dominus” and “curiosus Deus” of the Stoics.[21] Such, surely, was the meaning of Tacitus, Suetonius, and Pliny. And hence of course the frequent reproach cast on Christians as credulous, weak-minded, and poor-spirited. The heathen objectors in Minucius and Lactantius speak of their “old-woman’s tales.”[22] Celsus accuses them of “assenting at random and without reason,” saying, “Do not inquire, but believe.” “They lay it down,” he says elsewhere, “Let no educated man approach, no man of wisdom, no man of sense; but if a man be unlearned, weak in intellect, an infant, let him come with confidence. Confessing that these are worthy of their God, they evidently desire, as they are able, to convert none but fools, and vulgar, and stupid, and slavish, women and boys.” They “take in the simple, and lead him where they will.” They address themselves to “youths, house-servants, and the weak in intellect.” They “hurry away from the educated, as not fit subjects of their imposition, and inveigle the rustic.”[23] “Thou,” says the heathen magistrate to the Martyr Fructuosus, “who as a teacher dost disseminate a new fable, that fickle girls may desert the groves and abandon Jupiter, condemn, if thou art wise, the anile creed.”[24]

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