Stoicism - College of Stoic Philosophers

STOICISM ON THE THRONE. 223he was without superstition. Imitate all this, thatthou mayest have as good a conscience, when thylast hour comes, as he had."iTruly the man who could cultivate such graces wasnot far from the kingdom of heaven, and was in sympathymuch nearer to the Christian ideal than to thepride of Stoic apathy. But they cannot be regardedas the natural outcome of the system of philosophywhich he professed. There is no logical connectionbetween the practical maxims and the central dogmas.The currents of Platonic thought seem largely blendedwith the special doctrines of the Porch, for moralityhad now become many-sided and eclectic, but, aboveall, the various elements were fused and coloured bythe warmth of his own delicate and noble nature whichtransfigured the coldness and the poverty of the Stoiccreed.Later ages have not ceased to marvel how anemperor so humane, who approached so nearly to theChristian graces as did Antoninus, could have sanctionedany persecution of the Christian Church. Thefact itself cannot be reasonably questioned, in spiteof the well-meant efforts to discredit it.Tertullian,it is true, a few years later speaks of him as a mercifulprotector, as not, indeed, annulling the existing lawsagainst the Christians, but as weakening their forceby measures which repressed the persecuting zeal ofthe informers. ^Pious fancy, too, has fondly dwelt upon the story'"Thoughts," vi. 30.2 Tertullian, "Apologia," 5.