The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah Vol 1 - Predestination

Materialism could bring against the religion of the
Unseen.
And that religion—was it not, in the words of
Cicero, a * barbarous superstition,' and were not
its adherents, as Pliny had it,^ ^ a race
distinguished for its contempt of the gods' ? To
begin with their theology. The Roman philosopher
would sympathise with disbelief of all spiritual
realities, as, on the other hand, he could understand
the popular modes of worship and superstition. But
what was to be said for a worship of something
quite unseen, an adoration, as it seemed to him, of
the clouds and of the sky, without any visible
symbol, conjoined with an utter rejection of every
other form of religion—^Asiatic, Egyptian, Greek,
Boman—and the refusal even to pay the customary
Divine honour to the Csasars, as the incarnation of
Boman power ? Next, as to their rites. Foremost
among them was the initiatory rite of circumcision,
a constant subject for coarse jests. What could be
the meaning of it; or of what seemed like some
ancestral veneration for the pig, or dread of it,