Abram Herbert Lewis
Paganism Surviving in Christianity
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Table of contents
PREFACE.
CHAPTER I. REMAINS OF PAGANISM IN CHRISTIANITY.
CHAPTER II. PAGAN METHODS OF INTERPRETING THE SCRIPTURES.
CHAPTER III. ASIATIC PAGAN WATER-WORSHIP.
CHAPTER IV. WATER-WORSHIP IN NORTHERN EUROPE AND IN MEXICO.
CHAPTER V. GREEK WATER-WORSHIP.
CHAPTER VI. PAGAN WATER-WORSHIP TRANSFERRED TO CHRISTIANITY.
CHAPTER VII. PAGAN SUN-WORSHIP.
CHAPTER VIII. SUNDAY OBSERVANCE UNKNOWN TO CHRISTIANITY BEFORE THE MIDDLE OF THE SECOND CENTURY.
CHAPTER IX. STATE RELIGION A PAGAN INSTITUTION.
CHAPTER X. THE CONTROL OF CHRISTIANITY BY THE STATE UNDER CONSTANTINE AND HIS SUCCESSORS.
CHAPTER XI. CONSTANTINE’S LEGISLATION CONCERNING THE PAGAN SUNDAY.
CHAPTER XII. OTHER FORMS OF PAGAN RESIDUUM IN CHRISTIANITY.
CHAPTER XIII. SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED.
CHAPTER XIV. FIVE CONCLUSIONS.
FOOTNOTES:
PREFACE.
He
who judges the first century by the nineteenth will fall into
countless errors. He who thinks that the Christianity of the fourth
century was identical with that of the New-Testament period, will
go
widely astray. He who does not look carefully into the history of
religions before the time of Christ, and into the pagan influences
which surrounded infant Christianity, cannot understand its
subsequent history. He who cannot rise above denominational
limitations and credal restrictions cannot become a successful
student of early Church history, nor of present tendencies, nor of
future developments. History is a series of results, not a medley
of
happenings. It is the story of the struggle between right and
wrong;
the record of God’s dealing with men. The “historic argument”
is invaluable, because history preserves God’s verdicts concerning
human choices and actions. Events and epochs, transitions and
culminations, are the organized causes and effects which create the
never-ceasing movement, and the organic unity called history. Hence
we learn that ideas and principles, like apples, have their time
for
development and ripening; that the stains of sin, the weakness of
error, and the influence of truth commingle and perdure through the
centuries; that good and evil, sin and righteousness, persist, or
are
eliminated, in proportion as men heed God’s voice, and listen to
His verdicts.The
scientific study of history reveals the norm by which ideas,
creeds,
movements, and methods are to be tested. Such a standard, when
contrasted with the speculations of philosophy, is granite,
compared
with sand. God’s universal law, enunciated by Christ, is: “By
their fruits ye shall know them.”The
efforts of partisans to manipulate early history in the interest of
special views and narrow conceptions, have been a fruitful source
of
error. Equally dangerous has been the assumption that the
Christianity of the third, fourth, and fifth centuries was
identical
with that of the New Testament, or was a fair representative of it.
The constant development of new facts shows that at the point where
the average student takes up the history of Western Christianity,
it
was already fundamentally corrupted by pagan theories and
practices.
Its unfolding, from that time to the present, must be studied in
the
light of this fact. The rise, development, present status, and
future
history of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, cannot be justly
considered, apart from this fact. The fundamental principles, and
the
underlying philosophy of these divisions of Christendom originated
in
the paganizing of early Christianity. This fact makes the re-study
of
the beginnings of Christianity of supreme importance. The pagan
systems which ante-dated Christ, exercised a controlling influence
on
the development of the first five centuries of Western
Christianity,
and hence, of all subsequent times. This field has been too nearly
“an unknown land,” to the average student, and therefore correct
answers have been wanting to many questions which arise, when we
leave Semitic soil, and consider Christianity in its relation to
Greek and Roman thought. “Early Christianity” cannot be
understood except in the light of these powerful, pre-Christian
currents of influence; and present history cannot be separated from
them.This
book presents a suggestive rather than an exhaustive treatment of
these influences, and of their effect on historic Christianity. The
author has aimed to make a volume which busy men may read, rather
than one whose bulk would relegate it to the comparative silence of
library shelves. The following pages treat four practical points in
Christianity, without attempting to enter the field of speculative
theology, leaving that to a future time, or to the pen of
another—viz.: The influence of pagan thought upon the Bible, and
its interpretation; upon the organized Church, through the pagan
water-worship cult; upon the practices and spiritual life of the
Church by substituting pagan holidayism for Christian Sabbathism,
through the sun-worship cult; and upon the spiritual life and
subsequent character of the Church, by the union of Church and
State,
and the subjugation of Christianity to the civil power, according
to
the pagan model. Facts do not cease to be facts, though denied and
ignored. They do not withdraw from the field of history, though men
grow restive under their condemnation. I have dealt mainly with
facts, giving but brief space to “conclusions.” I have written
for those who are thoughtful and earnest; who are anxious to know
what the past has been, that they may the better understand the
duties of the present and the unfolding issues of the future. Such
will not read the following pages with languid interest nor
careless
eyes.The
issues involved are larger than denominational lines, or the
boundaries of creeds. They are of special interest to Protestants,
since they involve not only the reasons for the revolt against
Roman
Catholicism, but the future relations of these divisions of
Christendom, to each other, and to the Bible. The supreme source of
authority in religion is directly at issue in the questions here
treated. That is a definite and living question which cannot be
waived aside. At this threshold, the author extends the welcome
which
each searcher after facts and fundamental truths gives to fellow
investigators.
CHAPTER I. REMAINS OF PAGANISM IN CHRISTIANITY.
Preliminary
Survey—An Imaginary Past—Issue between Protestantism and
Romanism—General Testimony Relative to Pagan Elements in
Christianity, from Dyer, Lord, Tiele, Baronius, Polydore Virgil,
Fauchet, Mussard, De Choul, Wiseman, Middleton, Max Müller,
Priestley, Thebaud, Hardwick, Maitland, Seymore, Renan, Killen,
Farrar, Merivale, Westropp and Wake, and Lechler.A
preliminary survey is the more necessary lest the general reader
fail
to grant the facts of history a competent hearing and a just
consideration. Unconsciously men think of the earliest Christianity
as being like that which they profess. They measure the early
centuries by their own. Their Church, its doctrines, forms, creeds
and customs, stands as the representative of all Christianity. It
seems like a “rude awakening” to ask men to believe that there is
a “pagan residuum” in their faith, or in the customs of their
fathers. The average Christian must pass through a broadening
process, before he can justly consider such a question. Unhappily,
there are too many who are unwilling to undergo such an enlargement
of their religious and historical horizon as will make them
competent
to consider those facts which every earnest student of history must
face. But the Christian who believes in the immortality of truth,
and
in the certainty of its triumph, will welcome all facts, even
though
they may modify the creed he has hitherto accepted.A
writer in the
Edinburgh Review and Critical Journal,
commenting on the revised volumes of Bishop Lightfoot on
Ignatius and
Polycarp, speaking
of the tendency to judge the early centuries by our own, thus
vitiating our conclusions, says:
“
The
danger of such inquiries lies in the difficulty of resisting the
temptation to frame pictures of an imaginary past; and the passion
for transferring to the past the peculiarities of later times may
be
best corrected by keeping in view the total unlikeness of the
first,
second, or third centuries to anything which now exists in any part
of the world.”Protestants
in the United States are poorly prepared to consider so great a
question as that which this book passes under review, because they
have not carefully considered the facts touching their relations to
Roman Catholicism. The Anglo-Romish controversy, in England, in the
earlier part of the present century made the question of paganism
in
Christianity prominent for a time. But the discussion was so
strongly
partisan and controversial that it could not produce the best
results. Truth was much obscured by the determined effort of
Protestant writers to show that the pagan residuum was all in the
Catholic Church; whereas the facts show that there could have been
no
Roman Catholic Church had not paganism first prepared the way for
its
development by corrupting the earliest Christianity. The facts
show,
with equal vividness, that Protestantism has retained much of
paganism, by inheritance. Protestantism, theoretically, means the
entire elimination of the pagan residuum; practically, that work is
but fairly begun. It must be pushed, or the inevitable backward
drift, the historical “undertow” will re-Romanize the Protestant
movement. The expectations and purposes of Roman Catholicism all
point towards such a result.
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