The Portland daily press., 1880-05-15
Renan.
THE CHURCH AND THE EPISCOPACY.
The Judaism OF Peter and the Hellenism
Of Paul.

The first of NJ. Remains HILBERT lectures de-
livered in st. Georges Hall in London, de-
scribed the difficulties which the Roman EN-
pre encountered in the first century in dealing
with religion. 1t became more and more evil
dent that judaism under its Christian form"
must prevail over dying Paganism. The jew
lsh colony at Rome dated from about B. C..
CO.
The first nucleus of Rsme's j ewish popula-
ton had, in fact, been freedmen, mostly
sprung from prisoners of war brought by Pom
pey from Jerusalem. They had clung to their
religion in spite of their cruel bondage, and
their synogogues at Rome had never broken
off their relations with Jerusalem. The origi-
nal colony had been reinforced by many emil
grants, who disembarked by hundreds at Ripa
and were started in life by their brethren as
pedlars, or became adopts in the trade of beg
ging. No Roman who respected himself ever
set foot in the quarter, which was sink of the
most despised classes and the most disgusting
industries.
An active social and religious life was MAIN
tanned; there were schools of learned men,
we'll ordered synagogues, Bible studies, and
houses of prayer.
In the Jewish inscription, universal benevo-
lence, the bliss of resting with the just, help
ing the poor, purity of morals, the sweetness
of dom este life, the cheerful acquiescence in
death as a sleep, are the sentiments dwelt on
with the same touching JUNCTION, humility and
sure hope as charactize the Christian epitaphs
There were born Jews who were men of the
world, rich and powerful, such as Tiberius
Alexander, and the branch of tho Herod fam
lily which settled and practiced their national
religion at Rome.
A world of ideas was Matching in this long
shore population, but was lost in the roar of
the great city, and the proud patricians who
promenaded the Aventine did not dream,
when they deigned to look across the
Tiber, what future was preparing in those
| bowels at the foot of the Janiculum.
The second lecture has for its subject "The
| Legend of the Roman Church-Peter and
| Paul" 1t was as natural that Rome should
| hear of the gospel before the evangelizatlon of
| the immediate provinces as that towering
peak should be gilded by the dawn much
| sooner than the valleys. Rome was the focus
| all eastern religions. About the year 90 A.
| D., Christian Jews from Syria entered the
imperial city and communicated to their fell
| lows the new faith that had made them happy.
| Nobody then thought that the founder of a
new Empire, second Romulus, was then
| lodging at the port on the straw. Others fol-
| lowed soon, and letters from Syria brought by
| the newcomers told of a movement which was
necessarily spre aiding. A small group flocked
| together, everybody smelling of garlic, poor
| aud dirty proetarians-these ancestors of the
| Roman prelacy--unknown, unmannered men,
| clad in malodorous stable slopS, with tainted
breath, like that of ill-fed people. We know
the names of pious Jewish couple who were
| mixed up with these movements-Aquila, orig
inally of Pontus, tent-maker. like Paul, and
| Priscilla, his wife. They were the two most
| ancient members ON the record of the Church
| of Rome, which, however, had all but forgotten
| them, and had shut them out from the Chris
| tan Pantheon. Legend, ever unjust, ever
| swayed by policy. had assigned the honor of
the foundation of the Church of Rome to a
| name better befitting her proud pretensions.
| But we ought to see, not in st. Peters, but in
the old Ghetto at the Porta Portese, the BIRTH
| place OF Western Christendom. Some small
! chapel ought to have been reared to the two
| good Jews from Pontus who first syllabled up
| on the quays of Rome the name OF Jesus. One
| main point to be noted was that the Church of
Rome was not, like the churches of Asia Mi
| nor, Macedonia, and Greece, planted by Paul.
| 1t was a Jewish Christian foundation directly
| sprung from the Church of Jerusalem, Here
| Paul would never be on his own ground; he
| would see in this great church many weakness
es, which he would treat indulgently, but
| which could not fail to wound his exalted
| idealism. Attached to the circumcision and
| to the externalism, Ebionite in its taste for
abstinences and in its doctrine, more Jewish
than Christian as to the person and death of
Jesus, as we'll as by the strong attachment to
| Milenarianism, the Church of Rome presented
from its earliest days the essential characters.
tics which mark it throughout it's long and
marvellous history. A daughter of Jerusalem
in the direct line, the Church of Rome would
always bear an ascetic and saoerdotal stamp
opposed to the Protestant tendency of Paul
Peter was always destined to be her real chief
and in the next place, inspired by the political
and hierarchical genius OF old Rome, she was
to become a veritable New Jerusalem, the city
of the pontificate, of hierarchical and rubrica
religion, of material sacIaments justifying oi
themselves, the city of ascetics after the type
of the apostolic bishop of Jerusalem, James
Obliam, with his horny knees and the high.
priesty plate of gold upon his forehead. She
would be the church of authority. For hel
the only proof of apostolic mission would be
letter signed by the apostles All the goot
and ali the evil which the Church of Jerusa
lem did to nascent Christianity, the Church O
Rome would do to the universal church. Ii
vain did Paul write to her his fine epistle t.
expound to her the mystery of the cross of Je
sus and of salvation by faith alone. She un
derstood next to nothing of it. But Luther
fourteen centuries and half afterward was t.
understand it, and to open new era in the
secular series of the alternate triumphs of Pc
| ter and Paul