A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume 1 of 2: Third edition, Revised and Expanded, in two volumesRobertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Religion
A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume 1 of 2: Third edition, Revised and Expanded, in two volumes
Robertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Free thought -- History
east (Gieseler, p. 387), but became part of Christian theology,
especially under Protestantism. On the other hand, the Council of
Trent erected several Pelagian doctrines into articles of faith;
and the Protestant churches have in part since followed. See Sir
W. Hamilton's Discussions on Philosophy and Literature, 1852,
pp. 493-94, note; and Milman, Hist. of Latin Christianity, i,
142, 149.
The Latin Church thus finally maintained in religion the tradition
of sworn adherence to sectarian formulas which has been already noted
in the Roman philosophic sects, and in so doing reduced to a minimum
the exercise of the reason, alike in ethics and in philosophy. Its
dogmatic code was shaped under the influence of (1) Irenæus and
Tertullian, who set scripture above reason and, when pressed by
heretics, tradition above even scripture, [922] and (2) Augustine,
who had the same tendencies, and whose incessant energy secured him
a large influence. That influence was used not only to dogmatize
every possible item of the faith, but to enforce in religion another
Roman tradition, formerly confined to politics--that of systematic
coercion of heretics. Before and around Augustine there had indeed been
abundant mutual persecution of the bitterest kind between the parties
of the Church as well as against pagans; the Donatists, in particular,
with their organization of armed fanatics, the Circumcelliones, had
inflicted and suffered at intervals all the worst horrors of civil
war in Africa during a hundred years; Arians and Athanasians came
again and again to mutual bloodshed; and the slaying of the pagan
girl-philosopher, Hypatia, [923] by the Christian monks of Alexandria
is one of the vilest episodes in the whole history of religion. On
the whole, it is past question that the amount of homicide wrought by
all the pagan persecution of the earlier Christians was not a tithe of
that wrought by their successors in their own quarrels. But the spirit
which had so operated, and which had been repudiated even by the bitter
Tertullian, was raised by Augustine to the status of a Christian dogma,
[924] which, of course, had sufficient support in the sacred books,
Judaic and Jesuist, and which henceforth inspired such an amount of
murderous persecution in Christendom as the ancient world had never
seen. When, the temple revenues having been already confiscated, the
pagan worships were finally overthrown and the temples appropriated
by the edict of Honorius in the year 408, Augustine, "though not
entirely consistent, disapproved of the forcible demolition of
the temples." [925] But he had nothing to say against the forcible
suppression of their worship, and of the festivals. Ambrose went
as far; [926] and such men as Firmicus Maternus would have had the
emperors go much further. [927]
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