The climax of civilisation / by Correa Moylan Walsh.

  • Correa Moylan Walsh
Date:
1917
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The climax of civilisation / by Correa Moylan Walsh. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    suffering had originated in the long peace,” similarly per- ceived that the horrors to which they were exposed rendered the Romans still more depraved.°® The Romans in Gaul, in Spain, and elsewhere, he admitted to be more vicious than the barbarians who were conquering them.°® They had begun to be so when pagans, and did not cease to be so when they became Christians. And the Christians added one more vice, the most dangerous of all; for they raised weakness to a cult. “Saintly men,’ says Salvianus, himself approving, “ make themselves feeble, because if they were strong they could with difficulty be saintly. If the Apostle Paul thought he had to seek infirmity of body, who would wisely avoid it? If he feared strength of flesh, who would rationally presume to be strong? For this reason men dedicated to Christ both are and wish to be weak.” 2 Naturally, with this failing, and with its treatment of all men and women as brothers and sisters, and its consequent confusion of the sexes,® its want of patriotism,* and, also springing from its disregard of the morrow on earth, its advocacy of celibacy,® Christianity could do nothing to stem 97 They were the “vitia et longae pacis et opulentae securitatis,” op. cét. VII. For Juvenal see above, p. 94, n. 15. 98 VI., and again in VII. sh ie *Tbi praecipue vitia, ubicumque Romani,” VI. 1 21. 3 Clement of Alexandria, for instance, would have them wear the same costume, though his words also permit and enjoin several differences, Paedagogus, II. 10 (or 11), cf. III. 11. He here fell into agreement with Zeno, who had made the same recommendation (Diogenes Laértius, VII. 33), though he shrank from following Zeno in recommending free ex- posure of all parts of the body (1b.), still recognising that there is some difference between men and women. 4“ We have no country on earth, that we may despise earthly posses- sions,” id. ib. III. 8. In Greece already some of the philosophers had risen [?] to this state of detachment: cf. Seneca’s account of Stilpo, De Con- stantia Sapientis, c. 5. The sentiment that one’s country is wherever one lives well, appears, put into the mouth of the god of merchants, in Aris- tophanes’ Pluto, 1151. The Christians could worship God and prepare for heaven in one country as well as in another. In putting off the world, they put off the countries into which it was divided. 5 Tertullian, who would permit but one sole marriage, ridiculed the idea of the Christians desiring to perpetuate the state — Christians, to whom on earth there is no morrow, Exhort. ad Castit. c. 12, cf. Ad Uxorem, I. 5. Yet some of the Christians tolerated marriage, for their country’s sake: so Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, II. 23; or rather, for continuing God's image on earth, Methodius, Banquet of the Ten Virgins, II. 1; but only secondarily, as the world was already populous, and virginity comes first, Cyprian, On the Dress of Virgins, c. 23.