Roman Stoicism being lectures on the history of the Stoic...

453. It was by no mere accident that Marcus Aurelius became the persecutor of the Christians. He was at heart no successor of the Zeno who held as essential the doctrine of a supreme deity, and absolutely rejected the use of temples and images. In the interval, official Stoicism had learnt first to tolerate superstition with a smile, next to become its advocate; now it was to become a persecutor in its name. Pontius Pilatus is said to have recognised the innocence of the founder of Christianity, and might have protected him had his instructions from Rome allowed him to stretch his authority so far; Gallio[128] was uninterested in the preaching of Paul; but Aurelius was acquainted with the Christian profession and its adherents[129], and opposed it as an obstinate resistance to authority[130]. The popular antipathy to the new religion, and the official distaste for all disturbing novelties, found in him a willing supporter[131]. Thus began a new struggle between the power of the sword and that of inward conviction. Because reason could not support the worship of the pagan deities, violence must do so[132]. It became a triumph of the civil authority and the popular will to extort a word of weakness by two years of persistent torture[133]. No endowed professor or enlightened magistrate raised his voice in protest; and in this feeble acquiescence Stoicism perished.

454. For the consciences of the young revolted. Trained at home and in school to believe in providence, in duty, and in patient endurance of evil, they instinctively recognised the Socratic force and example not in the magistrate seated in his curule chair, nor in the rustic priest occupied in his obsolete ritual, but in the teacher on the cross and the martyr on the rack[134]. In ever increasing numbers men, who had from their Stoic education imbibed the principles of the unity of the Deity and the freedom of the will, came over to the new society which professed the one without reservation, and displayed the other without flinching. With them they brought in large measure their philosophic habits of thought, and (in far more particulars than is generally recognised) the definite tenets which the Porch had always inculcated. Stoicism began a new history, which is not yet ended, within the Christian church; and we must now attempt to give some account of this aftergrowth of the philosophy.