History of European Morals From Augustus to Charlemagne (Vol. 1 of 2)Lecky, William Edward Hartpole
Philosophy
History of European Morals From Augustus to Charlemagne (Vol. 1 of 2)
Lecky, William Edward Hartpole
Ethics; Europe -- Moral conditions
sacrifices” said a great writer of the first school, “are offered for
children who die at an early age, and none of the ceremonies practised at
the funerals of adults are performed at their tombs, for it is believed
that infants have no hold upon earth or upon terrestrial affections....
The law forbids us to honour them because it is irreligious to lament for
those pure souls who have passed into a better life and a happier
dwelling-place.”(297) “Whosoever shall tell us,” said a distinguished
exponent of the patristic theology, “that infants shall be quickened in
Christ who die without partaking in His Sacrament, does both contradict
the Apostle’s teaching and condemn the whole Church.... And he that is not
quickened in Christ must remain in that condemnation of which the Apostle
speaks, ‘by one man’s offence condemnation came upon all men to
condemnation.’ To which condemnation infants are born liable as all the
Church believes.”(298) The one school endeavoured to plant its foundations
in the moral nature of mankind, by proclaiming that man can become
acceptable to the Deity by his own virtue, and by this alone, that all
sacrifices, rites, and forms are indifferent, and that the true worship of
God is the recognition and imitation of His goodness. According to the
other school, the most heroic efforts of human virtue are insufficient to
avert a sentence of eternal condemnation, unless united with an implicit
belief in the teachings of the Church, and a due observance of the rites
it enjoins. By the philosophers the ascription of anger and vengeance to
the Deity, and the apprehension of future torture at His hands, were
unanimously repudiated;(299) by the priests the opposite opinion was
deemed equally censurable.(300)
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