OF CHRISTIANITY UPON OTHER RELIGIOUS SYSTEMS. 19 



of the Gospel there. The ancient Eoman law* forbidding the 

 introduction of extraneous religions was all but a dead letter in 

 the first century of our era. Yet, as we know, Christianity was, 

 almost or quite alone, exposed to terrible persecutions, beginning 

 with that under Nero in a.d. 64 (for that in which the Jews 

 under Claudius were expelled from the city affected Christians 

 only accidentally, so to speak), and continuing at intervals until 

 Constantine's Edict of Toleration in a.d. 313. 



Though Christianity was not declared a Religio Licita until 

 A.D. 261, yet its very persecutions show how great must have 

 been its influence upon the community. Nero's persecution of 

 a sect deemed " hostile to the human race " proved that its 

 teachings were already felt to be exerting an influence opposite 

 to that produced by other faiths, and hateful to those who were 

 devoted to gladiatorial shows, sensual pleasures, and other evil 

 things then popular. Another proof of its influence is afforded 

 by the fact that certain of the Emperors admitted Christ into 

 the number of the deities whom they worshipped. Lampridius 

 says that Alexander Severus and Hadrian did this. Tertullian 

 states the same, with less probability, of Tiberius. Severus, we 

 are told, set up statues of Christ, Abraham, Orpheus, and Apol- 

 lonius of Tyana, along with the Lares and Penates, in his 

 private shrine. 



The opposition offered to the progress of Christianity by 

 learned men such as Celsus and Porphyry is yet one more 

 indication of the extent of Christian influence. The same may 

 be said of Lucian's scoffs at Peregrinus (St. Paul ?) and of the 

 attempt to create in Apollonius of Tyana a heathen rival to 

 Christ. Apart from Tertullian's boast of the immense number 

 of converts who in his time began to be found, even in the camp 

 and the palace, and the evidence to the same effect borne by 

 the failure of persecution to stamp out the new faith, and 

 leaving aside the spread of Christianity from Syria to Britain 

 and beyond the limits of the Empire to Armenia and the Goths, 

 two facts must here be mentioned. One is the attempt made 

 by Aurelian, in imitation of and in opposition to Christian 

 Monotheism, to cause the Palmyrene Sun-god to be recognised 

 as the Supreme God of the Empire (December 25th being 

 entitled "ISTatalis Invicti"), and Diocletian's effort to make 

 Mithra the Protector of the Koman world ; or, again, Julian's 

 exhortations to the heathen to imitate the Christians, whom he 



* " Separatim nemo habessit deos, neve novos ; sed ne advenas nisi 

 publice adscitos privatim colunto." 



