Monumental Christianity, Or the Art and Symbolism of the Primitive Church
John P. Lundy
Number of quotes: 22
Book ID: 155 Page: 4
Section: 2E6
If the mathematician can not do without his signs and formulae, or the merchant without his figures and secret marks, so the religion of all antiquity could not do without symbols. And it is difficult to know how any religion can be preserved in its purity and integrity without symbols, or exact and uniform expressions of truth, from which there shall be no variation...But how is it possible to have a religion and worship for a people at large, without some kind of external form and expression, or how it is possible to preserve and transmit such religion and worship without symbols and records, it is impossible to say.Pastor John notes: John’s notes: wow
Quote ID: 3293
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 155 Page: 26
Section: 2E6
Guigniaut, after speaking of the various symbols used by the pagan religionist and philosophers in their mysteries, says that their names and significations passed into the newly-born Christianity.
Quote ID: 3294
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 155 Page: 27
Section: 2E6
This learned editor of Crcuzer goes on to say that there is a great diversity of opinion as to origin of the name of symbols as applied to the creeds and the sacraments of Christianity. But their origin, without doubt, must be traced to paganism.
Quote ID: 3295
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 155 Page: 27
Section: 2E6
Again, other learned men claim that the term symbol passed from the ancient mysteries into the new liturgy of Christianity, under a higher acceptation, to express certain acts and words of a profound meaning and pithy conciseness, by which the initiated could recognize one another. For my part, I am inclined to think that all the symbols of Christianity were ordained primarily to teach pure doctrine, and that they were necessarily used to distinguish Christianity from paganism, and as signs and watchwords to discriminate between friend and foe, true and false, hypocrites and genuine Christians.
Quote ID: 3296
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 155 Page: 49
Section: 5D
And in the Octavius of Minutius Felix, Caecil us says: “Must I not show my resentment against a lamentable crew of people prohibited by law, and desperately careless of what becomes of them in this world? Must I suffer such fellows to wage open war, and to march on without: control against the gods I worship?
Quote ID: 3297
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 155 Page: 50
Section: 4B
It is the received opinion that the early Christians were persecuted by the Roman authorities out of mere hatred to their Religion, and that the secret assemblies were held to avoid persecution as much as possible. This opinion demands a rigid scrutiny. Political justice was one of the few Romans virtues still lingering at the rise of Christianity.PJ: Clubs
Quote ID: 3298
Time Periods: 123
Book ID: 155 Page: 50/51
Section: 2B1,3B
Whatever modern critics and historians may say of Tertullian’s statement that the Emperor Tiberous desired to have Jesus Christ admitted among the gods of the Roman empire, but was refused by the Senate,{2} certain it is that Tertullian charges the Romans to consult their archives, where no doubt the record might be found of Pilate’s official dispatch concerning Christ and His crucifixion, to which even Tacitus seems so pointedly to refer in that passage so often cited, but which will here bear repetition; “Auctor nominis cjus Christus, Tiberio imperante, per procuratorem Pontium Pilatum, supplicio affectus erat.” “Christ, the author of the Christian name, was put to death as a criminal by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea, in the reign of Tiberius.” (Ann. Book XV . c. 44.) Then, too, there is the story of Alexander Severus, that he had a statue or portrait of Christ among his household gods, told by AElius Lampridius, with the additional statement that he wished to erect a temple in honour of Christ, and that the Emperor Hadrian had the same intention, directing buildings to be raised in every city, without images in them: but was prevented from executing his design by the oracles and the priests, who said that if this should be done, all would become Christians, and the heathen temples would be deserted.
Quote ID: 3299
Time Periods: 123
Book ID: 155 Page: 51
Section: 3B
This toleration of Christians at Rome continued until the time of Nero, who first persecuted them, and that, too, a year after St. Paul had been set at liberty.
Quote ID: 3300
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 155 Page: 51
Section: 3B
This first persecution of Christianity by Nero is not easily accounted for. Various conjectures have been advanced, such as the proselyting disposition of the new sect-their exclusiveness in not attending the Pagan festivals and games-confounding Christians with seditious Jews-the conduct of the Christians during the great fire which reduced Rome to ashes, so offensive to the Romans because of its joyous demonstrations in prospect of Christ’s second coming, at what they supposed to be the end of the world--the suspicions of the Roman mob that the Jews had set fire to the city, and who when officially examined implicated the Christians, whom they detested as renegades from the faith of their fathers-and finally, that Poppea, Nero’s beautiful and accomplished Jewish mistress, and a Jewish actor named Alitiurus, a favorite with Nero, used their influence to save their own people from suspicion, and fasten the guilt upon the hated Galileans.{3}
Quote ID: 3301
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 155 Page: 52
Section: 3B,4B
Two distinguished writers on Civil Law, in modern times, have advanced the more plausible theory that the general cause of the Roman persecutions of Christianity was the infraction of the law against secret assemblies.PJ: Clubs.
Quote ID: 3302
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 155 Page: 53
Section: 3B
The other writer is Dr. David Irving, who does not state the matter quite so broadly, when he says: “It is commonly regarded as a very curious and remarkable fact, that although the Romans were disposed to tolerate every other religious sect, yet they frequently persecuted Christians with unrelenting cruelty. This exception, so fatal to a peaceable and harmless sect, must have originated in circumstances which materially distinguished them from the votaries of every other religion. The causes and the pretexts of persecution may have varied at various periods; but there seems to have been one general cause which will readily be apprehended by those who are intimately acquainted with the Roman jurisprudence. From the most remote period of their history, the Romans had conceived extreme horror against all nocturnal meetings of a secret and mysterious nature. A law prohibiting nightly vigils in a temple has ever been ascribed, though with little probability, to the founder of their state. The laws of the twelve tables declared it a capital offense to attend nocturnal assemblies in the city.
Quote ID: 3303
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 155 Page: 54
Section: 2A3,4B
Besides this, there was another Roman law of the twelve tables which forbade the burial or the burning of a corpse in the city, perhaps on the score of health or uncleanness.{2} The ancient Roman practice was to bury the dead; the custom of burning was established in the time of Scylla.
Quote ID: 3304
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 155 Page: 55
Section: 3B
About the beginning of the reign of Trajan, A.D. 98, a special law was published against Hetaria, or fraternities, what we now call secret clubs, or brotherhoods, which were established up and down the Roman empire. Their pretext was social feasting, and the better dispatch of business, friendship, and good fellowship. But they were suspected by the government to be hotbeds of sedition, plots, and conspiracies.PJ: Clubs.
Quote ID: 3305
Time Periods: 12
Book ID: 155 Page: 88/89
Section: 2B1
And so we have what seems to shadow forth the Christian Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; and, as the Latin Church represents the mystery, the Virgin Mary is included, as the necessary female principle in every idolatrous and pantheistic system of religion.Those of us who have all our lives been accustomed to regard the Hindus as polytheists, and their religion as polytheism, will surely be surprised to hear what Major Moor says of the matter, viz.: “Strictly speaking, the religion of the Hindus is monotheism . They worship God in unity, and express their conception if the Divine Being and his attributes in the most awful and sublime terms. God, thus adored, is called BRAHM; the One Eternal Mind; the self-existing, incomprehensible Spirit.”
Pastor John’s notes: Hindu
Quote ID: 3306
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 155 Page: 89
Section: 2B1
Colebrooke says, that “The real doctrine of the whole Indian scripture is the unity of the Deity, in whom the universe is comprehended; and the seeming polytheism which it exhibits, offers the elements, and the stars, and planets, as gods. The three principle manifestations of the divinity, with other personified attributes and energies, and most of the other gods of the Hindu mythology, are indeed mentioned, or at least indicated, in the Vedas.”
Quote ID: 3307
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 155 Page: 97
Section: 2B1
The other figures, given above, are the Pagan expressions of the same fundamental idea. An Egyptian priest stands before an image of Isis or the great mother, nature, represented by a cow, and is making an offering of some tre-foil plant. Over the cow is the sacred Uraeus, or a symbol of the Egyptian Triad, consisting of the winged globe and the serpent; and representing the three powers of creation, preservation, and reproduction.
Quote ID: 3308
Time Periods: 123
Book ID: 155 Page: 127
Section: 2E6
The Greek monogram, therefore, was the prevailing symbol of Christ as the First and the Last, during the first three centuries of the Christian era.
Quote ID: 3309
Time Periods: 123
Book ID: 155 Page: 129
Section: 2E6
Constantine, indeed, adopted the sacred monogram which was already in use; he did not invent it.
Quote ID: 3310
Time Periods: 47
Book ID: 155 Page: 214/215
Section: 2D2
Dr. Von Dollinger tells us that, “Originally Juno was the female deity of nature in its wildest extent, the deification of womanhood, woman in the sphere of the divine, and therefore also her name of Juno was the appellative designation of a female genius or guardian spirit. Every wife had her own Juno, and the female slaves of Rome swore by the Juno of their mistresses; and as the genius of a man could be propitiated,so could also the Juno of a woman. The whole of a woman’s life, in all its moments, from the cradle to the grave, was thus under the conduct and protection of this goddess, but especially her two chief destinations, marriage and maternity. Accordingly, the Roman women sacrificed to Juno Natalis on their birth-day, and observed in like manner the Matronalia in the temple of Juno Lucina, in commemoration of the institution of marriage by Romulus, and the fidelity of the ravished Sabine women.
Quote ID: 3311
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 155 Page: 216
Section: 2D2
As queen of heaven and the chaste or immaculate protectress of women, Juno was substituted by the Church of the middle ages for the historic and lowly Jewish maiden, the mother of Christ, as she is represented in the New Testament and in early Christian art. It was a shrewd device thus to gain the ascendancy in all social and political life be securing the fervour, affection and constancy of the women, who even yet are the most enthusiastic devotees of the worship of the Virgin Mary as Juno Lucina, in all countries where the Latin Church is established.
Quote ID: 3312
Time Periods: 4567
Book ID: 155 Page: 216
Section: 2D2
And again, in the Paradise, the poet says:“In such composed and seemly fellowship.
Such faithful and such fair equality,
In so sweet household, Mary at my birth
Bestow’d me, call’d on with loud cries”{3}
In Dante’s day then, it was customary to invoke the Virgin Mary in child-birth, just as Juno Lucina was invoked by the Pagan ancestors of the Italian people; so that Mary merely took the place of Juno. I doubt not that the custom still prevails.
Quote ID: 3313
Time Periods: 07
Book ID: 155 Page: 218
Section: 2D2
The Apocryphal History of the Nativity of Mary and the Infant Saviour, thus represents the Virgin when a vestal at the Temple of Jerusalem; “her face was shining as snow, and its brightness could hardly be borne; angels brought food to her; she was the most humble, pure, charitable, and perfect of all; was never angry, never uttered a slander; her words were full of grace, and the truth of God was ever on her lips; her only nourishment was angelic food; her conversation was with the angels; the sick were healed by a touch of her hand; and the poor were fed by her bounty.”
Quote ID: 3314
Time Periods: 7
End of quotes