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It is this difficulty, this primary dependence on others, which develops into the child's first religion, that perpetuates the infantile character of human creeds; and, what is worse, generates the hideous bigotry which justifies that sad reflection of Lucretius: 'Tantum Religio potuit suadere malorum! TO turn again to narrative, and to far less serious thoughts.
Ego ac tu simplicissime inter nos hodie loquimur; ceteri libentius cum fortuna nostra, quam nobiscum. Nam suadere principi quod oporteat multi laboris: adsentatio erga principem quemeunque sine adfectu peragitur." It will be seen from this literal version of his text, that, notwithstanding his epigrammatic brevity, Tacitus writes with a precision of thought that leaves nothing to be supplied.
The sins of the modern world in dealing with heretics and witches have perhaps been more gigantic than those of primitive men, but one can hardy rise from the record of these ancient observances without being haunted by the judgement of the Roman poet: Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum,
When the poor soul found his end near, he begged Margaret might be sent for. She came at once, and almost with his last breath he sought once more that forgiveness she had long ago accorded. She remained by him till the last; and he died, blessing and blessed, in the arms of the two true lovers he had parted for life. Tantum religio scit suadere boni.
In every age, and in every religion there has been justification for his bitter words, "tantum religio potuit suadere malorum" "Such wrongs Religion in her train doth bring" yet, one outcome of "a belief in spiritual beings" as Tylor defines religion has been that man has built an altar of righteousness in his heart.
There was no appeal from its decisions, and if a taint of heresy, or of what it was pleased to call heresy, was detected in any book, the doom of its author was sealed, and the ingenuity of the age was well-nigh exhausted in devising methods for administering the largest amount of torture before death ended his woes. Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum.
Pico della Mirandola, who spent his life in reconciling Plato with the Cabala, finds nothing more to say than this: 'The sufferings of the Jews, in which the glory of the Divine justice delighted, were so extreme as to fill us Christians with commiseration. With these words we may compare the following passage from Senarega: 'The matter at first sight seemed praiseworthy, as regarding the honor done to our religion; yet it involved some amount of cruelty, if we look upon them, not as beasts, but as men, the handiwork of God. A critic of this century can only exclaim with stupefaction: Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum!
They looked for a satirical comedy, in which orthodoxy should be held up for scathing ridicule, or at least for a direful tragedy, the moral of which, like that of the great poem of Lucretius, should be "Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum."
That terrible Latin poet Lucretius, whose apparent serenity and Epicurean ataraxia conceal so much despair, said that piety consists in the power to contemplate all things with a serene soul pacata posse mente omnia tueri. And it was the same Lucretius who wrote that religion can persuade us into so great evils tantum religio potuit suadere malorum.
For this is but to dash the first table against the second; and so to consider men as Christians, as we forget that they are men. Lucretius the poet, when he beheld the act of Agamemnon, that could endure the sacrificing of his own daughter, exclaimed: Tantum Religio potuit suadere malorum. What would he have said, if he had known of the massacre in France, or the powder treason of England?
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