Between Heathenism and Christianity - College of Stoic Philosophers

Seneca: His Character and Environment
writings of Virgil to mark him a Christian, or rather
as a writer who was in a sense divinely inspired,
than there is in Seneca to stamp him as a man who
had accepted the new faith. The rise and persist
ence of such a literature is not an anomaly in the
history of thought. It is not out of harmony with
the spirit of an age when the church was supreme in
everything; when all questions were viewed from the
theological standpoint, and when every means were
employed to gain support for the existing ecclesias
tical organization.
It was honestly believed that the
practice or profession of a high morality, except
under the sanction and guidance of the church, was
impossible. It was taken as a matter of course, that
a good man, one who eloquently preached righteous
ness, who seemed to be conscious of a struggle with
in himself between the flesh 1 and the spirit, must
have been enlightened from on high. Given the in
ternal evidence of Seneca s own writings, it was not
difficult to supply the complementary
external testi
mony.
This all=embracing and all-absorbing power of
the
church lasted about a thousand years and ended with
the Reformation, though it had begun
to decline
some two centuries earlier. For this condition of
things the Roman empire had prepared the way. It
was the prototype to which, in part unconsciously
and in part consciously, ecclesiastical authority was
Seneca is generally regarded
coro, flesh, as distinct from, and opposed to. spirit.
as the first Roman writer who