CHAPTER X. THE FIRST AGE OF THE MARTYR CHURCH.

“Magnum hæreditatis mysterium! Templum Dei factus est uterus nescientis virum. Non est pollutus ex ea carnem assumens. Omnes gentes venient dicentes, Gloria tibi, Domine.”

_Antiphon on Vespers of Circumcision._

The world which Augustus and Tiberius ruled was not conscious of the fact that there was an order of truth, and of morality based upon that truth, the maintenance of which was to be purchased, and cheaply purchased, with the loss of life, or of all that made life valuable. This world was indeed familiar with the thought and with the practice of sacrificing life for one object—an object which collected all the natural affections and interests of a man together, and presented them to him in the most attractive form, his country. Greek and Roman history, and indeed the history of all nations up to that time, had been full of instances in which privations and sufferings were endured, and, if necessary, life itself given up for wife and children, for the dear affections of house and home, for friends, for freedom, for fatherland. Man, civilised and uncivilised, was alike capable of this, and capable of it in profusion. Rome had many a Regulus and Sparta many a Leonidas in the humblest ranks of their citizens: Gaul had thousands as noble as Vercingetorex, and Spain not one but many Numantias. Human nature had never been wanting in the courage to die for the visible goods of human life. But to labour, to combat, to endure pain, sorrow, privations, to suffer in every form for the invisible goods of a future life, to recognise, that is, an inviolable order of religion and morality, so far superior to all that a man can grasp and hold in his possession, to wife, children, goods, friends, freedom, and fatherland, and to life adorned and crowned with these, that any or all of these, and life itself, are to be sacrificed for its preservation; this may be said to be a thought of which the whole heathen world ruled by Augustus and Tiberius was unconscious.(132) For other reasons also it was familiar enough with the sacrifice of life, since the continual practice of war and the permanent institution of slavery had made human life the cheapest of all things in its eyes. And further, to die rather than to live dishonoured was still the rule of the nobler among the millions who yielded to the sway of Augustus. But to die for the maintenance of moral truth, that is, for faith,—this was known indeed to the Jews, who had already their “cloud of witnesses” to it; but it was unknown to heathendom, which has in all its ranks and times but one man(133) to offer whose death approaches to such a sacrifice, and therefore shines with incomparable lustre among all deeds of purely human heroism. But the death of Socrates found in this no imitators, he created here no line of followers; and he stands alone in this greatness, an exception to an otherwise invariable rule.

However, in our two preceding chapters we have been describing something much more than the exhibition of this order of truth; that is, we have set forth the union of it with a Person, who both exhibits it in Himself, and is the source of it to others. And the difference between these two things is very great. Many at different times have said, “I teach the truth.” One only has said, “I am the Truth:” and to say it is the most emphatic indirect assumption of Godhead which can be conceived. And with it that One also joined a similar expression, containing the same assumption of Godhead, and which equally was never approached by any other teacher, “I am the Life.” The union of the Truth at once and of the Life with His Person, which is thus become the root of both to human nature, was the subject of the last two chapters. Now, as we have said, that there was an order of truth sacred and inviolable above all things, was borne witness to by the Hebrew martyrs, and therefore was not new to the chosen race of Israel, though it was new to heathendom, at the time at which our Lord appeared. But the union of the Truth and of the Life with the Person of One appearing visibly in the world as man, was as new to the Hebrews as to the heathen, was an absolute novelty to human nature. And so the Christian Faith also, as a system of belief and action, that is, as embracing the mind and the will of man, as giving both Truth and Life, is entirely new in this respect; that in this double action it is in its origin and in its whole course and maintenance bound up with a Person. Thus all which it teaches is not naked truth, unlocalised as it were, and impersonal, but is the development of relations in which the disciples of Christ stand to Him; for instance, as King, as God, as Head, as Bridegroom, as Father. As these, He is at once The Truth and the Life. Thus it is that the Christian Faith flows out of the Person of Christ the God-man; and, as its Truth is centered in that Person, so also its continuous Life depends on Him.

And further, as the connection of doctrine, or truth, and of life, that is, action, with a Person is the point from which all this movement springs, in which respect we have said it was absolutely new, so the term to which it reaches is the creation of something in both these things correlative to that Person, the creation of a Kingdom, a Temple, a Body, a Mother, a Race, in which respect also the term is as new as that from which it springs. That He is the Truth and the Life is shown in this creation, which has a distinctive character, as He has, an unique existence, and an organic unity with Him.

The subject on which we are now employed is to describe as an historic fact how the duty of maintaining, propagating, and dying for the truth and conduct thus identified with the Person of Christ, was carried out through many generations and under difficulties which seemed to preclude the possibility of its success; and to show the means by which this great creation, starting from the day of Pentecost, made a home and established itself in the Roman empire, by which, after a conflict of nearly three hundred years, it was finally recognised.

The worship of the one true God had been fixed in the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as the faith which made them a nation, that is, as the dogma on which their national existence was so based, that through maintaining it they were to continue a people. The Jewish polity lived in and by this belief, and, as a nation, was its prophet. Certainly, this was the noblest form which nationalism has ever assumed. Yet it was nationalism still; and the proselyte who would enter into the full worship of the God of Abraham and all its privileges had to become a Jew. But now, instead of this bond another was substituted, signifying that the King of the Jews who had appeared was come as the saviour of _man_, not of this or of that nation. The bond is therefore placed at the point which constituted the salvation of the whole race, that is in the Person of the God-man, and by this the corporation was put beyond the bounds of a nationality, and made coextensive with the world. The Christian creed was formed round the Person, the actions, and the sufferings of Christ. Now here, precisely in what constituted the character, the greatness, and the glory of the Christian faith, was seated the principle and the beginning of the persecution which it encountered from the Roman empire. In that empire every species of idolatry(134) had a right of homestead as the national or tribe religion of any one of its constituent parts; and the worship of even one God, exclusive as that Jewish worship was of the whole heathen pantheon, was allowed by the laws of Rome to the Jews, because he was considered their national god. But the Christians had no such justification in Roman eyes for their exclusive worship. They were not a nation nor a province of the empire; they had not, therefore, that title for their worship which constituted the charter of toleration to all besides, including the Jew, who worshipped the same God. For the Christians worshipped Him, not as their ancestral God, but as the Father of that Son who had taken human flesh, and become the Saviour of men. Their worship of the one true God was not only exclusive, but in and through the fact of the Incarnation claimed the homage of all men to it. It knew of no bond of brotherhood but in Him who had deigned to call men His brethren. Thus its special character and preëminent glory were the cause of its persecution, and from the moment that it came before the notice of the Roman governor not as a Jewish sect but as a distinct belief, it was considered as not a lawful religion. Thus too it was that the selfsame point which kindled Jewish hatred entailed Roman persecution. The Christian faith was a mortal offence to the Jew because it extended what had been his special privileges to all the Gentiles. He abhorred the substitution of the Person of the God-man for the race of Abraham after the flesh; as the Roman at once despised and hated a worship which not only adhered to one God, but dethroned from his political supremacy the capitoline Jupiter, and whose title rested not on tradition and national inheritance, but on a fact touching the whole race of man, and therefore claiming the allegiance of the whole race—the assumption of human nature by a divine Person. Thus the doctrine in which lay the whole creative force, the truth and the life of Christianity, was that which from the first caused the dislike of the Jew and the persecution of the Gentile—the kingship of Christ, involving the headship of a universal religion, and a power which was not that of Cæsar.

We have, then, now to treat of a period of 280 years, homogeneous in its character from the beginning to the end, which is, that it is the carrying out by a people ever increasing in number and strength of that good confession made before Pontius Pilate—that witness at its proper time of which S. Paul(135) in its first stage said that he was the herald and apostle. The course and life of Christians during these ten generations is to be the prolongation of this testimony, the embodiment of this confession. It is as soldiers, imitators, followers of one Chief, that all appear on the scene in their respective order.(136) It is by a direct virtue drawn from the cross of that Chief that they move onward to their own passion. They endure and they conquer simply as under His command, and because He endured and conquered before them. Their oath of military fidelity is the bond of their discipline; they prevail because they are His, and because they are one in Him:

“And they stand in glittering ring Round their warrior God and King— Who before and for them bled— With their robes of ruby red, And their swords of cherub flame.”

The whole process and cause of Christians during this long period, the ground of their accusation, the conduct and principles of the judges, and their judgment, are summed up as in a parable in that scene which passed before Pilate, while the subsequent day of Pentecost is in the same manner an image of the final result won in these three hundred years. For as the crucifixion of the Truth in the Person of Christ is followed by the descent of the Holy Ghost forming the Church, so the persecution and crucifixion of the truth in ten generations of His people is followed by the empire’s public recognition of His eternal kingdom—of that Body of Christ seen visibly in a council of its prelates assembling freely from all lands.

Take first the seventy years which form the Apostolic age. What do we find as the result when S. John, the last apostle, is taken away? In a large number of cities throughout the Roman empire a community has been planted after the pattern of that which we have described as arising at Jerusalem, and by the same means, the power of oral teaching. Every such community has at its head its bishop, or angel, who sums up and represents in his own person the people over which he presides. This is exactly the picture presented to us at the close of this period by S. John in the Apocalypse, when he is directed by our Lord personally appearing to him to write seven letters to as many bishops of cities on the seaboard of the province of Asia. Each, with his people, is addressed as a unit. One, “I know thy works, and thy labour, and thy endurance, and how thou canst not bear those which are evil;” a second, “Fear not what thou art about to suffer; behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison;” a third, “I have against thee some few things, that thou hast there some who hold the doctrine of Balaam.”(137) Each has around him his council of priests, his ministering deacons, his faithful people. The last apostle is still living; but in all these communities many exist, both of teachers and taught, who have learned Christian doctrine, either from the mouth of an apostle or the comrade of an apostle—a Mark, a Luke, a Silvanus, a Clemens. Thus they live mainly upon oral teaching: the voice which went forth from the day of Pentecost is sounding freshly in their ears. Doctrine is in the stage of simple tradition and authority. The writings of the New Testament are completed, but being addressed to various parts of the Church, are best known to those for whom they were written. They are not yet collected and made the common patrimony of the whole Church. S. John leaves the earth without performing any such function; without setting the seal of his apostolical authority upon the New Testament as a whole; nay, the authorship of some of his own writings, as we now receive them, will be partially contested after his death before their final reception. Of the absolute number of these Christian communities, and of the multitude they severally embrace, we have no account; we can form no estimate, save to infer that the whole number of the faithful, at the end of this period, was very small in comparison with the mass out of which they had been drawn. Still it was a germ with a living force of expansion, planted in every considerable spot of the empire; and wherever it was planted, a Christian people, in the full sense of the word, existed, having a complete spiritual life of its own, possessing the sacraments which insured the beginning and the continuance of that life, an order of worship based on the great central fact which made them a people, and a ministry charged with the power to teach and to convey on to their successors the doctrines delivered to them.

But in the mean time how had the empire treated it? In these seventy years it has traversed the seven last years of the Emperor Tiberius, and the whole principates of Caligula, Claudius, and Nero; the revolutionary crisis in which Galba, Otho, and Vitellius reigned for an instant, and then the settled time of Vespasian, Titus, Domitian, and Nerva. Now, during this period its treatment by the empire has been a singular reproduction of what passed in the hall of Pilate. For the Jewish religion was one allowed by Roman law. The profession of it entailed no penalty. Now the first heralds of the Gospel, as Jews, preached their message boldly and publicly, and in doing so it does not seem that Roman law would have interfered with them.(138) At this stage it looked upon Christians as a sect of Jews. As no authority of the empire had interfered with the public ministry of our Lord, so it would seem to have left the ministry of His disciples in the first instance free. It is from another quarter that opposition arises. The Jew in his jealous anger at the promulgation of a Messiah and a spiritual kingdom which is not after Jewish taste, both because it is a kingdom not of this world, and because it raises the Gentile to coinheritance with the race of Abraham, drags the Christian missionary before the tribunal of the Roman magistrate and imputes to him “sedition.” Then many a Gallio, many a Felix, many a Festus have as it were unwillingly to enter into and decide these questions of the Jewish law. It would seem that converts to the Christian faith in these its earliest days might long have escaped the notice of the magistrate, as belonging to a Jewish sect, but for this enmity of the Jews themselves. But as the teachers of the new faith everywhere addressed themselves first to their countrymen, so everywhere they found these countrymen alive to their progress and bitterly set against it.(139) This state of things is pretty well expressed by that answer of the Roman Jews to S. Paul when he excuses himself before them for having been compelled to appeal to the Emperor Nero: “as concerning this sect, we know that it is spoken against everywhere.”(140) This, however, was Jewish, not Roman, contradiction. So far as everywhere Jewish hatred and jealousy could malign and counterwork the progress of the Christian Faith, and bring suffering on its teachers, it had been done. But nevertheless with this exception it would seem that for thirty-five years after the day of Pentecost that Faith had been freely and publicly taught throughout the empire. It was through the malignity of his own countrymen, stirring up a dangerous conspiracy against him, that S. Paul felt himself compelled to appeal to the emperor, and the result of his appeal was that he was set free. But in the year 64 another state of things had arisen. The ruin of a large part of Rome by fire had brought a great odium upon Nero. Now his wife Poppæa is said to have been a Jewish proselyte, he himself to have been surrounded by Jewish influences, and nothing is more probable than that Jewish hatred, which had tracked the Christians everywhere, pursued them especially here, and suggested them to him both as authors of the conflagration, and as convenient scapegoats whereon to divert the odium against himself which had arisen from it. Thus he took the opportunity of exposing to shame and torment, as victims of the popular dislike, and in popular opinion guilty of “hatred of the human race,” or of being hated by them, “a vast multitude”(141) of Christians, who, says the heathen historian, were put to the most exquisite suffering, being wrapt in the skins of wild beasts, and torn to pieces by dogs, or crucified, or clothed in garments of pitch and set on fire to illuminate the night. Thus it is, as decorations of Nero’s games, in his gardens of the Vatican, where the obelisk from Heliopolis, once the ornament of his circus, now bears witness to the victory of Christ, that Christians first come before us in the pages of Roman historians, just at the middle of the period we are now describing, thirty-five years after the Ascension.

It may be considered part of this first persecution that the two great Apostles—Peter, who had founded the Roman Church, and Paul, who after its first foundation had helped to build it up—were condemned in the last year of Nero, and by his deputies(142) during his absence, to suffer as Christians, the one the death of a Roman citizen by the sword, and the other that of a slave by crucifixion. Thus the two great brethren by enduring together the martyr’s death, the highest mark of Christian charity, sealed their joint foundation of Christian Rome, that like as the Rome which had gained the conquest of the world by the strong hand of violence, had been planted in the blood of one brother shed by another, so the Rome which was to be the centre of Christ’s kingdom, and in the words of S. Ignatius “preside over charity,” should have for her founders brethren in supernatural love, pouring forth their blood together for the seat of that Christian unity which binds the earth in one.

But this persecution by Nero is not transitory in its consequences. The emperor had judged that Christians as such professed a religion not allowed by the Roman laws, and were guilty therein of a capital crime. This crime, if technically expressed, would amount to sacrilege and treason;(143) for they could not acknowledge the Roman gods as gods, nor the emperor as Pontifex Maximus; nor could they swear by his genius, which was the oath expressing fidelity to the Roman constitution in its civil and religious aspect. This was that “hatred of the human race,” that is, in other words, of the Roman empire, of which in the eyes of Tacitus and Pliny, of Nero now and of Trajan afterwards, they were guilty as Christians. But the singular thing is this, that the Jew, who was the first to drag them before the Roman tribunal, who was their omnipresent, ever-ready antagonist and traducer, though he worshipped one only God, though he abhorred the whole Roman polytheism, though he swore not by the genius of the emperor, was exempt from punishment: his religion was recognised by Roman law and the senate its interpreter, because it was the national and time-honoured religion of a constituent part of the empire. On the same ground the vilest Egyptian, Asiatic, African idol was allowed the worship of those who claimed it as their ancestral god. The Christian Faith was the sole exception to this universal tolerance, because it was not the religion of a subject nation, because it was new, because, in fine, it rested on principles which, if carried out, would sweep away the whole fabric of polytheism on which the Roman State rested. And the act of Nero had its great importance in that it formally distinguished the Christian from the Jewish religion, and took away from it by a legal decision of the State’s highest authority the claim to be considered “licit.”

Nero then bestows the crown of martyrdom on S. Peter and S. Paul, and on what Tacitus calls, even within Rome alone, a vast multitude. But he does more than this. On the first appearance of Christians before the supreme authority he so applies an existing law to their case as to establish their liability under it to capital punishment, and this liability rests upon them henceforth down to the time of Constantine. It is by no means always carried out; it is often suspended, sometimes for many years together, according to the character of the ruling prince, or the maxims of his government, or the state itself of the empire. But it is henceforth the legal position of Christians. It is a danger which besets their condition, and may be called into action at any moment, in any city of the empire, from any motive of private enmity, cupidity, or passion. It is the legal Roman equivalent and interpretation of their Master’s words, “You shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake.”(144)

How often, and in how many instances, it was carried out in this period of seventy years we have no means of telling; but another emperor is named as a persecutor. Domitian not only put to death as Christian his cousin, the Consul Flavius Clemens, but, as it would seem, a great many others at Rome, in the latter years of his principate.(145) Domitian and Nero are mentioned as persecutors by Melito when addressing Marcus Aurelius, and by Tertullian,(146) in the time of Severus, though it was the object of both to make the emperors appear to have been not unfavourable to Christians. But, independent of any general act which would constitute an emperor a persecutor,(147) this liability to punishment,(148) in virtue of which the confessor or martyr was brought before the local magistrates, was that under which individual Christians, in most peaceful times, and in the reign of emperors generally just and moderate, endured their sufferings. The Emperor Tiberius is said by Tertullian to have brought before the senate a proposition to allow the Christian Faith as a lawful religion. Had this been done, the whole course of Christian history in these three centuries would have been changed. As it was, every one, in becoming a Christian, accepted the chance that he might thereby be called upon to forfeit the possession of wife, children, goods, every civil right, and life itself.

The end of the reign of the first Antonine, in the year 161, furnishes us with a second fitting epoch at which we may estimate the growth and position in the empire of the Christian Faith.

During the sixty years which elapse from the death of S. John to the accession of Marcus, the Roman empire is ruled by three sovereigns, who have each left a fair name and a considerable renown behind them, and who, compared with most of those who preceded or who followed them, may almost be termed great. Trajan by his military successes raised to the highest point the credit of the Roman arms, by his moderation in civil government effaced the remembrance of Domitian’s cruelties, and gave the Romans perhaps as much liberty as they could bear. His successor Hadrian, joining great energy, administrative ability, and moderation of his own to the fear and respect for the Roman name, which the powerful arm of Trajan had spread around, was able at once to exercise his army with unwearied discipline, and to maintain the empire at its full tide of power in honourable peace, while Antoninus crowned the forty years of equable and generally just government—bestowed on the Roman world by Trajan and Hadrian—with a further happy period of more than half that length, wherein the glory of the empire may be said to have culminated. Imperial Rome never saw again such a day of power, or such a prospect of security, as when Antoninus celebrated the secular games at the completion of nine hundred years; and for ages afterwards his name carried respect, and men looked back on his reign as on an ideal period of happiness for those whom he ruled.

One of the most competent observers of our time has marked the last ten years of the reign of Pius as the period at which the independent development of Græco-Roman heathenism terminated, when it had exhausted all the forms of its own inward life, since the Neoplatonic philosophy which is the only striking product of intelligence that arises afterwards, is manifestly due to the antagonism with Christianity, and is no pure offspring of the heathen spirit.(149) From this time forth Christian influences become unmistakable in their action upon heathen thought and society. This, then, affords another reason why we should endeavour to trace the progress and extension which the Church had reached at this point.

Now a contemporary of Antoninus declares that in his time, that is, about the year 150, there was no race of men, either barbarians or Greeks, none even of Scythian nomads roaming in waggons, or of pastoral tribes dwelling in tents, among whom prayers and thanksgivings were not offered to the Father and Creator of the universe in the name of the crucified Jesus.(150) Thus, in a hundred and twenty years the Church had outstripped the limits of the empire. The germ which in the time of S. John was rooted in the chief cities, had spread out thence and increased, taking more and more possession of the soil in all directions. Still we must consider the Christian Church in each place of its occupation as a small minority of the people: nor is there any reason to doubt the statement made by Celsus, that at the period when he wrote, the middle of the second century, the Christian Faith counted few of the educated, distinguished, and rich among its adherents;(151) for Origen, in replying to him, alleges no specific example to the contrary. Yet, here too we must consider the justice of Origen’s remark,(152) that these classes are everywhere few in proportion to the poor and ignorant, and that Christianity being the day-star arising on every soul took of all classes alike. So much, then, as to the Church’s material extension: now as to its internal growth.

As this period opens, comrades of the Apostles still abound in the churches. We know of several instances wherein such persons hold eminent rank. At Rome, S. Clement is the third successor of S. Peter; and S. Irenæus,(153) recording him as such eighty years afterwards, specially notes that he had seen and lived with Apostles, and had their preaching still sounding in his ears, and their tradition before his eyes; at Antioch, S. Ignatius, second after the same S. Peter; in the See of Jerusalem, S. Simeon, the brother of James, still survives; at Smyrna, S. John’s disciple Polykarp is bishop. Many more such S. Irenæus declares that there were. This would prepare us for the strength with which the principle of authority and tradition was held, and show how completely the sense of a spiritual government, of cohesion, and continuity of moral life, and of a common doctrine and teaching, the foundation of these, prevailed. But we are not left to inferences, we have the clearest statements on this point about fifteen years after S. John’s death. It has been remarked above how in the Apocalypse our Lord himself, addressing the seven churches, gathers them up in their bishops, and speaks of them each collectively as of one person. In the year 116, as is supposed, Ignatius still after forty-eight years bishop of one of the three great mother churches, all of them Sees of Peter, and types and models of church government, whence missions went forth, and the layers of apostolic teaching were propagated, in his seven extant epistles conveys the same idea as that presented by those divine words which S. John had heard in vision, and was commanded to record, but with much greater detail. As he is being led to martyrdom, in the long transit between Antioch and Rome, he pours forth the earnestness of one under sentence of death, glowing at the prospect of shedding his blood for Christ, and being for ever united with Him. These letters remain as a sample of numberless conversations held with the deputations which came to meet him on his way, mingling their tears at his approaching passion with their exultation in his triumph. They are of one tissue throughout. Ignatius dwells with incessant repetition upon union with God and with Christ through obedience to the hierarchy of bishops, priests, and deacons, by maintenance of one faith, in one body of the Church, which is wherever Christ is.(154) Let us take one instance from his letter to the Ephesians. After saying that he had “received their whole multitude in the person of Onesimus, their bishop,” he continues: “It is, then, fitting that you should by all means glorify Jesus Christ who has glorified you; that by a uniform obedience you may be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment, and may all speak alike concerning everything, and that being subject to the bishop and the presbytery, you may be altogether sanctified. I am not giving you commands, as if I were any one; for, though I am in bonds for His name, I am not yet perfected in Jesus Christ. For now I begin to learn, and I speak to you as my fellow-disciples, for I had need to be encouraged by you in faith, exhortation, endurance, long-suffering. But since charity suffers me not to be silent to you, I have taken on me to exhort you to run together all with the mind of God. For Jesus Christ, your inseparable life, is the mind of the Father, as also the bishops, placed in their several limits, are the mind of Jesus Christ. Therefore you should run together with the bishop’s mind, as indeed you do. So then in your concord and harmonious charity Jesus Christ is sung. And each several one of you makes up the chorus; so that all being harmonious in concord, you take up the melody in unity, and sing with one voice through Jesus Christ to the Father, that He may hear you, and perceive by your good works that you are members of His Son. It is good for you then to be in blameless unity, that you may always have fellowship with God.” And then he adds: “For if I in a short time have had such familiarity with your bishop, and that not human, but spiritual, how much more should I think you happy, who are so fused with him as the Church with Jesus Christ, and as Jesus Christ with the Father, that all things may be accordant in unity.”(155)

This is an incidental passage out of a very short letter, in which the speaker is addressing practical exhortations to the people of a great church, founded by S. Paul about sixty years before, dwelt in by S. John up to about fifteen years of the time at which he was speaking. We should not in such a writing expect S. Ignatius to speak with the scientific correctness of a theologian, nor is he completely exhibiting his subject in a treatise; yet here, as it were at the first moment after the Apostles have left the earth, we have a picture of the Church as a world-wide institution, held together by a divine unity, which has its seat in the Person of Christ as the mind of the Father. It is a composite unity which is contemplated in the image of a harp with its strings pouring forth one song—the song of Christ—to the Father. It is a unity wide as the earth; for the bishops, placed in their several limits, constitute the mind of Christ, who is Himself the Father’s mind. It is the unity of the diocese, for it is summed up in the bishop: but it is the unity likewise of the whole Church, for the bishops are linked together in One whose mind they collectively represent, and that One is He from whose Person their authority radiates; in whom, as he says in this same letter, “the old kingdom was being destroyed, God appearing in the form of a man, unto the newness of eternal life.”(156) Again, it is not merely an outward unity of government, but an inward unity of the truth held in common, and also held as given by authority: not truth, as a result of the curiosity of the human intellect, rather truth, as a participation in the mind of Christ. Thus the Catholic unity of government is at the same time a unity of belief, which two unities are not, in fact, separable, for their principle is one in the Person of Christ, in respect of whom submission to the Ruler is one and the same thing with belief in the truth revealed by Him, who is King no less than Word, Word no less than King.

We have, then, here the principle of authority and tradition as seated in the hierarchy, and at the same time the whole order and unity of the Church as girdling the world by its chain of the Episcopate, and as possessing the truth and exhibiting it in its quality of an institution. It is before us and at work in its succession of men, in its sacraments which they administer,(157) in its truth which is imparted by the one and delivered by the other. It is no vague congeries of opinions held by individuals with the diversity of individuals, but a body strongly organised, and possessing an imperishable life, the life of its Author. And we have all this mentioned as fulfilled at the distance of one life from our Lord’s ascension, while indeed his kinsman and elder in age, S. Simeon, is still bishop of Jerusalem, and mentioned by one of whom a beautiful though insufficiently grounded legend says that he was that child whom our Lord had called and placed before His disciples as the model of those who should enter into His kingdom. He was at least so near in time to Christ that this could be said of him. He is the bishop of Antioch; he is on his way to be thrown to the beasts in the Colosseum at Rome;(158) he is welcomed on his way by church after church, and he sees and describes the bishops, in their several boundaries through the earth, as each maintaining the mind of Christ in the unity of his Body.

Such is the Church merely stated as a fact towards the beginning of the second century.

And the trial which in these sixty years the Church was going through was well calculated to test her constitution. It is against the spread of false doctrine that S. Ignatius in these epistles so constantly appeals, to the unity of the faithful among each other.(159) He warns them to use only Christian nourishment, and to abstain from strange food, which is heresy.(160) The Church was then continually receiving into her bosom converts at all ages of life, some from the Jews, many more from the Gentiles; among these, therefore, minds brought up in Jewish prejudices, and others which had run havoc in eastern superstitions and systems of philosophy. In the course of these sixty years she probably multiplied many times over in number; and the multiplication was rather by the accession of adults than by the education of children born of Christian parents. The Church was composed of a small minority of the general population scattered at wide intervals over an immense empire; and, so far from being assisted by the civil power, was under constant persecution from it. Whatever force her spiritual government possessed could be exercised only by the voluntary submission of her members. Let us weigh the fact that, under these circumstances, a number of heresies arose. Some were of Jewish, some of Gentile parentage. But we are not here concerned either with their cause or with their matter: we dwell at present only on the fact of their existence. In number they were many; in character most diverse; they arose and flourished in different places. Hardly anywhere was the Church free from them. Let us ask only one question here: by what power were they resisted? The human mind had then the fullest liberty of action in Christians. It was by a free choice—a choice accompanied with danger, and persisted in through suffering—that men became Christians. The liberty which men exercised in becoming Christians they could use further against Christian doctrine, by innovating; by mixing it up with other doctrines, with which, perhaps, their minds had been familiar before their conversion; by developing it after their own fashion. The desire of fame, the self-will of genius, the mere luxury of thought, would offer a continual temptation to such a course. Many, from one motive or another, fell into it. The question which we repeat is, what power prevented the one Church from breaking up under this process of free thought into fragments? These heresies began even while the Apostles were teaching. S. Peter, S. Paul, and S. John speak strongly against them. They swarm in the two generations succeeding the death of S. John. How is it that, at the accession of Marcus Aurelius, Christians having passed the limits of the empire, and being found so far as the wandering tribes of the north, there is still one Church, surrounded, indeed, by a multitude of sects, differing from her and from each other, but herself distinguished and unmistakable among them all? We think the epistles of S. Ignatius furnish us with a reply to this question. As we have seen above, he views the Church in each place as a community closely bound together under a spiritual government which is summed up in the bishop, while the bishops in their several dioceses are as closely linked to each other, and all form one society, wherein is Jesus Christ. And these two truths are not separated from each other, but the unity of the part is deduced from the unity of the whole, and is subordinate to it. See, first, with what force he states the unity of the diocese.(161) “Avoid divisions, as the beginning of evils. Follow all of you the bishop as Jesus Christ the Father, and the presbytery as the Apostles, and reverence the deacons as God’s command. Let no one without the bishop do aught of what appertains to the Church. Let that be deemed a sure Eucharist which is under the bishop, or under him who has the bishop’s authority for it. Wherever the bishop appears, there let the multitude (of the faithful) be.” But this strict unity of the diocese is derived from that of the whole Church; for he adds as the reason of the foregoing, “just as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.”(162) This is the first time when the word “catholic” is known to be used, and it is applied to the Church as its distinctive character, to convey the two attributes of unity and universality, in connection with the Person of Christ, exactly as it has been used, an unique term for an unique object, from that day to this. S. Ignatius further views the Church in each place as having one faith; and not only so, but the same faith in every place; one faith at Antioch, one at Rome, one at every city between them, beyond them, around them. Here, then, is a double unity, inward and outward. As the double unity of body and spirit makes the man, so the double unity of government and of faith makes the Church. As neither mind nor body alone make the man, so neither faith nor government alone make the Church, but the coherence of both. The Incarnation is the joining a human soul and body with the Person of the Divine Word; after which pattern the Church, which is His special creation, is the joining of one faith and one government in a moral unity. It is by this force, by the same hierarchy everywhere guarding the same faith, by the principle of authority and tradition planted in this one living organisation throughout the earth, that the attacks of heresy are everywhere resisted. What S. Paul(163) lays down in dogma, history exhibits in fact. A hundred years after his words are written, the Church has stretched her limits beyond the empire, has multiplied incessantly, has been attacked by a crowd of heresies striving to adulterate her doctrine, and has cast them out of her by this double unity of her faith and her government, and so is one Body and one Spirit. Her victory lies not in being without heresies, but in standing among them as a contrast and a condemnation.

The solidity of internal organisation, and the definiteness of the One Faith which animated it, kept pace with the material increase of numbers. At the expiration of this period it is probable that among all the contemporaries and immediate disciples of the Apostles one only of high rank remained, that Polykarp, joint-hearer with Ignatius of S. John, and to whom in his passage the martyr addressed a letter as well as to his Church; whose own letter written at the time of the martyr’s combat, and commemorating the wonderful patience therein shown forth, is yet extant. But in the mean time in every Church the transmission of authoritative teaching passed to those who had grown up themselves in the bishop’s council—his presbytery, which Ignatius loved to represent as being to each bishop what the Council of Apostles was to their Lord. And as the death of Apostles themselves had caused no break in this living chain, so the gradual departure of their immediate disciples was made up by the careful handing-on of the same deposit, lodged securely in its receptacle, the succession of men, which carried on the teaching office of the Church.(164)

In the mean time, what was the attitude of the empire to the Christian Faith under Trajan, Hadrian, and Antoninus Pius? Domitian’s reign had ended in active persecution, to which Nerva had put a stop on his accession.(165) But though Domitian’s edicts had been reversed, like those of Nero, one of the most ancient laws of the Roman empire forbad the worship of any god not approved by the Senate.(166) This, as we have said above, was the sword perpetually suspended over the heads of Christians, without any fresh action on the part of the emperors. By virtue of this, even when it was forbidden to accuse them, yet if they were brought before justice it was forbidden to absolve them.(167) And even senators,(168) if accused, were not exempt from this severity. We find Trajan acting upon this law in the year 111, when Pliny, being governor of Bithynia, brings expressly the case of the Christians before him. And the terms in which he does this show at once the temper of the Roman magistrate in such cases and the state of the law.

“I have never been present,” he says, “at the trials of Christians, and therefore do not know either the nature of their crime, or the degree of the punishment, or how far examination should go. And I have been in great hesitation whether age made any difference, or the tender should not be distinguished from the strong; whether they should be pardoned upon repentance, or, when once a man had been a Christian, ceasing to be so should not profit him; or whether the mere profession without any crime, or whether the crimes involved in the profession should be punished. In the mean time, with regard to those brought before me as Christians, my practice has been this: I asked them if they were Christians. If they admitted it, I put the question a second and a third time, threatening them with death. If they persevered, I ordered them to be led away to execution.(169) For whatever it was which they were confessing, I had no doubt that stubbornness and inflexible obstinacy deserved punishment. There were others of a like infatuation, but as being Roman citizens I directed them to be sent to the city. Presently the crime spreading, from being under prosecution, as is usual, several incidents happened. An anonymous delation was sent in to me, containing the names of many who say that they are not Christians, nor ever were. As at my instance they invoked the gods, and made supplication with frankincense and wine to your image, which I had ordered for that purpose to be brought, together with the statues of the gods, and as moreover they reviled Christ, none of which things, it is said, real Christians can be induced to do, I thought they might be let go. Others, being accused by a witness, admitted that they were Christians, and presently said that they had been, some three years before, some many years, and some even twenty, but were no longer. All venerated your image and the statues of the gods, and reviled Christ. But they alleged that the utmost of their fault or error was this: They were accustomed to meet before dawn on a stated day, and addressed themselves in a certain form to Christ as to a god, binding themselves by oath not to any crime, but not to commit theft, robbery, adultery, the breaking of their word, or the refusal to restore a deposit. After this they were wont to separate, and then reassemble to take a common and harmless meal. This, however, they had ceased to do from the publication of my edict forbidding, according to your command, private assemblies. I therefore thought it the more necessary to examine into the truth by putting to the torture two female slaves, who were said to be deaconesses among them. I found, however, nothing but a perverse and immoderate superstition, and so, adjourning the inquiry, I took refuge in consulting you. For the matter seemed to me worthy of consultation, specially on account of the number of those involved in danger. For many of every age, every rank, both sexes, have been already, and will be endangered, since the contagion of this superstition has spread not only through cities but through villages and country. And it seems capable of being arrested and corrected. At all events there is proof that the almost deserted temples have begun to be frequented, and the long intermitted rites renewed, and victims for sacrifice are found ready, whereof hitherto there were very few purchasers. Hence it is easy to form an opinion what a number of persons may be reclaimed if pardon be allowed.”(170)

To which the emperor replies: “You have pursued the right course, my dear Secundus, in examining the causes of those delated to you as Christians. For no universal rule can be laid down in a certain formula. They are not to be searched after; but if brought before you and convicted, they must be punished. Yet with this condition, that whoever denies himself to be a Christian, and makes it plain in fact, that is, by supplicating our gods, though he has been in past time suspected, shall obtain pardon for his repentance. But anonymous delations must not be admitted for any accusation. This is at once the very worst precedent, and unworthy of our time.”

A great difficulty in tracing the progress of the Christian Faith in these three centuries is that we possess nothing like a consecutive secular or religious history of them. We only catch glimpses of what passes at intervals. Incidents are recorded which, like a flash of lightning, suddenly reveal the landscape and the actors. Such an incident is this letter of Pliny to Trajan, and his reply. We have here the governor of a province before whom Christians are brought as criminals. We find that if they acknowledge their faith and persist in professing it, he sentences them to death. But embarrassed by their numbers, and perplexed also by the fact, that, save the profession of their faith, there appeared nothing criminal in their conduct, he refers the matter to the emperor. The emperor, no Nero or Domitian, but one renowned for his justice and moderation, praises what the governor has done; pronounces that Christians as such are guilty of a capital crime, and that Pliny was right in so interpreting the existing law; that, however, it is not desirable to seek them out; that even when brought before justice they are to be released if they deny their faith, but that if they persist in it, they are to be punished with death.

Here, then, is the law—an original law of Rome before the Christian Faith began—under which the martyrs suffered at different times, throughout every province and city, without anything which could be called a general persecution on the part of the emperor directed to the destruction of the whole religion. This perpetual liability to punishment might be called into action anywhere in the empire for various causes. The first in time, and one of the most constant, was the enmity of the Jews; then the dislike of the heathens to Christians and their ways, which was further sharpened by local calamities or distress irritating the mind of the population, or by the jealousy of the heathen priests and worshippers at the desertion of their temples. Then, again, there was the ascription to Christian godlessness, as it was called, that is their refusal to acknowledge the Roman gods, of famines, pestilences, and whatever troubled the popular mind. To these we must add a copious harvest of private grudges, and a host of calumnies, which seem now almost grotesque, but then found wide belief. But it was the existence of such a law as this, acted on by Pliny before he referred to the emperor, and confirmed by Trajan, that gave force and effect to all these causes of persecution. And it would appear that when Christians were brought before the magistrates, as guilty of the Christian Faith, it was not in the magistrates’ power to decline hearing the case, any more than any other accusation of sacrilege or treason, for it had been determined that Christians were not a mere Jewish sect, and therefore could not in security worship one God, as the Jews did. It was a ruled point that their worship was unauthorised.

The practice of Trajan himself was in accordance with his answer to Pliny.

The very ancient and genuine acts of the martyrdom of S. Ignatius state that having struggled with difficulty through the persecution of Domitian, he had carefully governed his church of Antioch, grieving only that he had not yet reached the rank of a perfect disciple by the sacrifice of his life, for he considered that the confession which is made by martyrdom brings into closer union with the Lord. Trajan then having come to the East, full of exultation at the victories which he had gained, and considering that the subjugation of the Christians was all that was wanting to the perfect obedience of his empire, began to threaten them with the alternative of sacrifice or death. Then Ignatius fearing for his church caused himself to be brought before the emperor, and being in the presence was thus addressed by him. “Who are you, evil spirit, who are zealous to transgress our commands, besides persuading others to come to an evil end?” Ignatius replied, “No one calls the bearer of God an evil spirit, for the demons fly away from the servants of God. But if you mean that I am a trouble to these, and so call me evil to them, I admit it, for having Christ my Heavenly King, I continually dissolve their plots.” Trajan said, “Who is a bearer of God?” Ignatius replied, “He who has Christ in his breast.” Trajan said, “We then appear to you not to have gods in our minds, whom we use to help us against our enemies.” Ignatius answered, “You in your error call gods the demons of the nations, for there is one God who made the heaven, the earth, and the sea, and all that is in them; and one Christ Jesus, the only-begotten Son of God, of whose friendship may I partake.” Trajan said, “You mean him who was crucified under Pontius Pilate?” Ignatius answered, “Him who crucifies my sin, with its inventor, and condemns all the error and the malice of the demons under the feet of those who carry him in their heart.” Trajan said, “You then carry the Crucified in your heart?” Ignatius replied, “Yes; for it is written, I will dwell in them, and walk in them.” Trajan gave sentence: “It is our command that Ignatius, who says that he carries the crucified one about in him, be taken in chains by soldiers to the great Rome to become the food of wild beasts, for the pleasure of the people.” The holy martyr, when he heard this sentence, cried out with joy, “I thank Thee, O Lord, who hast thought me worthy to be honoured with perfect charity towards Thee, and to be bound in iron chains together with Thy Apostle Paul.”(171)

So, with great eagerness and joy, through desire of his passion, having commended his church to God, he set out on that long journey, “fighting, as he says, with wild beasts all the way from Syria to Rome, over land and sea, by day and by night,” a captive under sentence of death, in the hands of soldiers, but receiving at each city a deputation from the bishop and people, who came forth to honour him as their champion. And he has but one anxiety, expressed again and again in that fervent letter to the Roman Christians, that they should not by their prayers intercept his martyrdom. “I entreat you not to be untimely kind to me. Suffer me to be the food of the beasts, since by them I may enjoy God. I am God’s grain: let me be ground by their teeth, that I may be found the pure bread of Christ:”(172) and then, presently, “I do not command you, as Peter and Paul;” thus giving an incidental but most powerful witness of the special relation which those Apostles bore to the Roman Church.

And it may be remarked that while he has words of honour, praise, and affection for the other five churches which he addresses, yet in speaking of Rome his heart overflows with emotion. Upon this church he pours out epithet upon epithet, as “the beloved and enlightened in the will of Him who has willed all things which are according to the charity of Jesus Christ our God,” whose people are “united to every command of His in flesh and spirit, filled undividedly with the grace of God, and thoroughly cleansed from every spot of foreign doctrine.” She is not only the Church “which presides in the fortress of Roman power,” but likewise, “worthy of God, and of all honour and blessing and praise, worthy to receive that which she wishes, chaste, bearing the name of Christ and the name of the Father, and presiding over charity.” What is the meaning of this last phrase? As she presides in the fortress of Roman power, so she presides over charity. May we thus interpret the mind of the martyr? God in His Triune Being is Charity; the Holy Spirit, the ineffable embrace of the Father and His Image, their Love, or Delight, or Joy, or Blessedness, or whatever human name we may dare to give to what is most divine, is charity: by charity God became man; charity is the individual Christian’s state; charity makes men one in the Body of the God-man; charity is the condition of angels and men in the great kingdom to come, the God-formed kingdom. Thus charity is the distinctive mark of the Christian religion, that from which it springs, that which it is, that which it points to, and in which it will be consummated. When, then, S. Ignatius said of the Roman Church, using the same word in one sentence,(173) that as she presided over the country of the Romans, so she presided over charity, does he not with equal delicacy and emphasis indicate her primacy? she presides over that in which the Unity of the Church consists, in which its truth, its grace, and its holiness coinhere.

The desire of the martyr was accomplished: he reached Rome on the last day of the great games, and was thrown in the Colosseum before the beasts, which, according to his repeated prayers, so entirely devoured him that only the greater bones remained. These, says the contemporary account, “a priceless treasure,” were carried back to Antioch. Somewhat less than three hundred years afterwards S. Chrysostom, preaching on his day in his city, thus speaks of him: “It was a divine benefaction to bring him back again to us, and to distribute the martyr to the cities:—Rome received his dripping blood, but you are honoured with his relics.—From that time he enriches your city, and like a perpetual treasure, drawn upon every day and never failing, gives his bounty to all. So this happy Ignatius, blessing all that come to him, sends them home full of confidence, bold resolution, and fortitude. Not, then, to-day only but every day go to him, reaping spiritual fruits from him. For, indeed, he who comes hither with faith may reap great goods. Not the bodies only, but the very coffins of the saints are full of spiritual grace. For if in the case of Eliseus this happened, and the dead man who touched his bier broke through the bonds of death, how much more now, when grace is more abundant, and the energy of the Spirit fuller?—So, I beseech you, if any one be in despondency, in sickness, in the depth of sin, in any circumstance of life, to come here with faith, and he will put off all these.”(174)

Before S. Ignatius reached that completion of his faith to which he aspired, he was cheered with the account that his sacrifice had produced its effect, and peace had been restored to his church, with the completeness of its body.(175)

Now in all this—in Pliny’s conduct as governor, in his reference to Trajan, in the emperor’s reply, in his treatment of S. Ignatius, and in the restoration of peace afterwards—there is, we conceive, a very exact sample of what the position of Christians was in Trajan’s time. His answer ruled the question of Roman law for the following two hundred years. It declared the profession of Christianity to be illicit and a capital offence; but to call this law into action, or to leave it suspended as a threat over the heads of Christians, was a matter of expedience. When the latter took place, the churches were said to be at peace; when the former, a persecution was said to rage; but at any time and place an individual might suffer; while on the other hand a persecution directed to root out the whole Christian name was not yet thought of.

And this state of things seems to continue through Hadrian’s principate. In his first year, Alexander, fifth successor of S. Peter at Rome, having been imprisoned under Trajan, suffers martyrdom; It would seem as if the same hand had struck down about the same time the heads of the two great churches of Rome and Antioch, the first and the third in rank, and perhaps ordered the execution of the bishop of Antioch at Rome, with that of the Roman bishop, in order to give greater force to the example.(176) Many other martyrs at Rome and in the north of Italy are found at this time. It is not at all necessary to suppose the personal action of Hadrian in these.

After this he was engaged during fifteen years in those splendid progresses, in which he examined personally every part of his vast empire, from its northern frontier between Carlisle and Newcastle to the Euphrates. While he was so engaged, the governors of the various provinces would apply the existing law in the cases brought before them. He would have had to interfere, and that with the whole weight of the imperial arm, if he wished to check the course of the law. We have, however, recorded the most interesting fact that when he was at Athens in the year 126, Christians for the first time approached a Roman emperor with a public defence of their doctrines, and a persecution is said to have been stopped by the apologies which Quadratus and Aristides presented to him. Perhaps the rescript to Minucius Fundanus, proconsul of the province of Asia, which Justin has preserved, was a result of this. It runs thus: “I have received the letter written to me by your predecessor, the noble Serenius Granianus. And indeed it seems to me that that affair should not be passed by without a diligent examination, in order that Christians may not be disturbed, nor an occasion of false accusation be opened to informers. If, then, the provincials can present themselves openly with their petitions against Christians, so as to answer before the tribunal, let them do that, and not betake themselves to mere requests and outcries. It would be much more just that you should take cognisance of the matter, if any one be willing to accuse. If, then, any one denounce them, and prove that they are doing anything illegal, sentence them according to the gravity of the crime. But, by Hercules, if it be a mere false accusation, punish the informer according to its importance.”

Here would seem to be a considerable modification of Trajan’s rescript. The profession of Christianity is not taken by itself as a capital offence. Proof must be given that something illegal has been committed. So far it approaches to an act of toleration. It plainly discourages anonymous and malicious attacks. But on the other hand it was not difficult to show that Christians did commit something illegal. Any real accuser bringing them before the tribunal could prove by their own testimony that they declared the gods worshipped by the Romans to be demons, while they refused to swear by the emperor’s genius. Thus, favourable as this decree was to them, it fell far short of declaring their religion to be allowable.

And the same emperor who could thus write, whose curiosity made him acquainted with all the religious sects of his empire, whose temper, as an exceedingly accomplished man, having the widest experience of men and things, and ruling an empire of the most diverse races with the most various religions, led him to an eclectic indifference, and so far toleration of all, yet showed by his personal conduct at a later period of his life how he would treat the profession of the Christian Faith if it thwarted a ruling desire. When, after fifteen years of incessant travel, study, and observation, he returned to Rome, and had enclosed at Tivoli a space of eight miles in circumference, adorned with copies of the most beautiful temples in his wide dominion, he offered sacrifices and consulted the gods as to the duration of his work; but he received for answer that the gods who inhabited their images were tormented by the prayers which the widow Symphorosa and her seven sons offered daily to their God.(177) If she and her children would sacrifice, they promised to grant all his demands. Upon this Hadrian ordered Symphorosa and her seven sons to be brought before him, and endeavoured by kind words to bring them to sacrifice. She replied, “It was for not consenting to what you ask that my husband Gætulius and his brother Amantius, both tribunes in your army, suffered various tortures, and, like generous champions, overcame your demons by a glorious death. If their death was shameful before men, it was honourable in the sight of the angels, and now they are crowned with immortal light. They live in heaven, and follow everywhere the King who reigns there, covered with glory by the trophies they have gained in dying for Him.” Hadrian, stung by this reply, could not contain himself, but said: “Either sacrifice this instant to the immortal gods, or I will myself sacrifice you with your children to these gods whom you despise.” “And how should I be so happy,” said Symphorosa, “as to be worthy with my children to be sacrificed to my God?” “I tell you,” said Hadrian, “I will have you sacrificed to my gods.” “Your gods,” replied she, “cannot receive me in sacrifice. I am not a victim for them; but if you order me to be burnt for the name of Christ my God, know that the fire which consumes me will only increase their punishment.” “Choose, I tell you,” said the emperor; “sacrifice or die.” “You think, doubtless, to frighten me,” rejoined Symphorosa; “but I desire to be at rest with my husband, whom you put to death for the name of Christ.” Then the emperor ordered her to be taken before the temple of Hercules, to be struck in the face, and hung up by her hair. But finding that these torments only served to strengthen her in the faith, he had her thrown into the Anio. Her brother Eugenius, being one of the chief men at Tibur, drew her body from the water, and buried her in the suburbs of the town.

The next day Hadrian ordered the seven sons of Symphorosa to be brought before him. And, seeing that neither his threats nor his promises, nor the exhibition of the most fearful punishments, could shake their constancy, nor induce them to sacrifice to idols, he caused seven poles to be planted round the temple of Hercules, on which they were raised by pulleys. Then Crescentius, the eldest, had his throat cut; Julian, the second, was run through the breast; Nemesius was struck in the heart; Primitivus in the stomach; Justin in the back; Stactæus in the side; while the youngest, Eugenius, was cleft to the middle.

The day following the death of these brethren Hadrian came to the temple and ordered their bodies to be removed, and to be cast into a deep hole. The priests and sacrificers of the temple called this spot the place of the Seven Executed. Their blood stopped the persecution, which was only rekindled eighteen months afterwards.(178)

As the rescript to Minucius Fundanus did not prevent the emperor from thus acting, neither was it an obstacle to such an incident as this occurring in any part of the empire.

That it was so likewise in the principate of his successor, of all down to this period the most tranquil and the least persecuting, we have strong and clear evidence in the earliest of the extant apologies, that of Justin Martyr, presented to the emperor Antoninus Pius about the year 150. He who would breathe the atmosphere in which the early Christians lived will find it in this work of a distinguished convert from heathen philosophy, which is the more interesting as being composed at a moment when the empire seems to have reached its highest point, and the ruler of it was its most moderate spirit. We may cite a few passages bearing on the condition of Christians.

“To the Emperor Titus Ælius Adrianus Antoninus Pius Augustus Cæsar, and to his son Verissimus the Philosopher, and to Lucius the Philosopher, son of Cæsar by birth, and of Pius by adoption, the lover of learning, and to the sacred Senate, and to all the Roman people, in behalf of those out of every race of men who are unjustly hated and persecuted, I, that am one of such myself, Justin, son of Priscus, and grandson of Baccheius, natives of Flavia Neapolis, of Palestine, in Syria, offer this address and supplication.

“Reason dictates that those who are really pious and philosophers should love and honour truth alone, declining to follow the opinions of the ancients if they be corrupt. For right reason not only forbids us to assent to those who are unjust either in practice or in principle, but commands the lover of truth to choose that which is just in word and deed in every way, even before his own life, and with death threatening him. Now you hear yourselves called on all sides Pious, Philosophers, Guardians of Justice, and Lovers of Learning; but, whether you be such in truth, the event will show. For we have come before you, not to flatter you in this address, nor to gain your favour, but to demand of you to pass judgment according to strict and well-weighed reason, not influenced by prejudice, nor by the desire of pleasing superstitious men, nor by inconsiderate passion, nor by the long prevalence of an evil report, in giving a sentence which would turn against yourselves. For, as to us, we are fully persuaded that we can suffer no injury from anyone, unless we be found guilty of some wickedness, or proved to be bad men; and, as to you, kill us you may, but hurt us you cannot.(179)

“We ask, then, that the actions of those who are accused before you may be examined, that he who is convicted may be punished as an evildoer, but not as a Christian. And, if anyone appears to be innocent, that he may be dismissed as a Christian who has done no evil. For we do not require you to punish our accusers: they are sufficiently recompensed by their own malice, and their ignorance of what is good. Moreover, bear in mind that it is for your sakes that we thus speak, since it is in our power to deny when we are questioned. But we choose not to live by falsehood.(180)

“And you, when you hear that we are expecting a kingdom, rashly conceive that we mean a human one, whereas we speak of that with God, as is evident even from those who are under examination by you confessing that they are Christians, whilst they know that death is the penalty of the confession. For if we expected a human kingdom, we should deny in order to obtain our expectations; but, since our hopes are not of the present, we do not regard those who kill us, knowing that death is an inevitable debt to all.(181)

“We adore God only, but in all other matters joyfully serve you, confessing that you are kings and rulers, and praying that you may be found to possess, together with your royal power, a sound and discerning mind. If, however, notwithstanding that we thus pray and openly lay everything before you, you treat us with contempt, we shall receive no injury; believing, or rather, being convinced, that every one, if his deeds shall so deserve, shall receive the punishment of eternal fire, and that an account will be required of him in proportion to the powers which he has received from God, as Christ has declared in those words, ‘To whomsoever God has given much, of him shall be much required.’(182)

“Though death be the penalty to those who teach or even who confess the name of Christ, we everywhere accept it, and teach it. And if you as enemies meet these words, you can do no more, as we have already said, than kill us, which brings no hurt to us, but to you, and to all who hate unjustly, and do not repent, the chastisement of eternal fire.”(183)

And his concluding words are: “If now what we have said appears to be reasonable and true, honour it accordingly; but if folly, despise it as foolish; yet pass not sentence of death against those as enemies, who have done no evil. For we tell you beforehand that you will not escape the future judgment of God, if you continue in injustice, and we shall cry, Let the will of God be done.”(184)

Such then is the testimony of a Christian as to the way in which the confessors of his religion were treated; and it is corroborated by that of the heathen philosopher Celsus, who writes his books against Christianity about this time, and imputes the secrecy practised by Christians in their teaching and their actions to their attempts to escape the punishment of death hanging over their heads.(185) And again having put into the mouth of Christians the remark, that if they blaspheme or strike a statue of Jupiter or Apollo, these gods cannot defend themselves, he subjoins: “Do you not, then, see that your own demon is not merely blasphemed but expelled from every land and sea, while you, his consecrated image,(186) are chained, and led away to prison, and crucified; and the demon, or as you call him, the Son of God, gives you no protection.” And in another place, comparing Christians with Jews, to whom God had made so many promises: “See,” he says, “what good has He done to them and to you? To them, instead of being lords of all the earth, not a clod of soil or a hearth remains;(187) while of you, if any one still wanders about in hiding, yet justice pursues him with the doom of death.”

However, we know that at this time at least the bold words of Justin drew down no punishment from Antoninus, and a rescript of this emperor, dated about two years after the presentation of this first apology, has been preserved, which is more favourable to Christians than that of Hadrian. It is addressed to that province of Asia which contained so many flourishing Christian churches, and which accordingly was so bitter against them. They had written to complain of the Christians, and to accuse them as the cause of the earthquakes which had happened. The emperor replies: “It was my belief that the gods would take care that such men as you describe should not escape. For much rather would they, if they could, punish such as will not worship them. Now these men you are annoying, and accusing their opinion as atheistical, and charging them with sundry other things which we cannot prove. Yet it would be serviceable to them to seem to meet their death for such an accusation; and they surpass you in giving up their lives rather than comply with what you call upon them to do. But as to the earthquakes which have happened or are happening now, it is not reasonable that you should mention them, you who lose heart when they take place, comparing your conduct with theirs, who have more confidence than you towards God. And you indeed in such a time seem to have no knowledge of the gods, and neglect the temples, and know nothing of worshipping God; whence it is that you are jealous of those who do worship him, and that you persecute them to death. Respecting such men various other rulers of provinces wrote to my divine father, and his reply was, not to trouble such men, except they appear to be contriving something against the Roman empire. Many too have referred to me about such, and my reply was in agreement to my father’s decision. Now if anyone has an accusation to bring against such a one as such, let the accused be released from the charge, even though he appear to be such, and let the accuser be punished.”(188)

Here we reach the highest point of toleration which Christians received in the first 130 years. Instead of Trajan’s somewhat reluctant order to punish Christians as Christians, when once convicted, instead of Hadrian’s decision that something contrary to Roman law must be proved against them, Antoninus, while quoting the latter, goes far beyond it, and lays down that as Christians they were blameless, and were only to be punished in case some hostility to the Roman empire could be proved in their conduct. Moreover, their accuser was to be punished. And this rescript being repeated to several places, amounted to an assurance that Christians should be left in tranquillity during the principate of Pius.

Putting ourselves into the position of a Roman emperor at this middle of the second century, let us endeavour to form a notion of what Christianity would appear to him. In the first place, he who had all the threads of Roman organisation gathered in his hand, would certainly recognise it as a sect spread throughout the empire, the Jewish origin of which was known to him, and the author as one crucified by order of a Roman governor under Tiberius.(189) Yet he would hardly distinguish accurately the Church from the different heresies which everywhere sprang up around it, holding more or less of its doctrines and mixing them up with corruptions and abuses.(190) And it would scarcely appear to him as a power in the State, either from its numbers or the influence of the people belonging to it; yet on the other hand it would appear as something not inconsiderable in either of these respects. Moreover, we may suppose it would come before him as a _belief_, and not as an _institution_. It had as yet no public churches.(191) A heathen would say of Christians at this time that they had no temples, altars, or statues;(192) no ceremonial worship, for he could not, as a heathen, get admittance to Christian rites, which moreover were carried on in private houses, and carefully concealed. The emperor would be well aware that Christians had rulers of their own;(193) it was as such that Trajan had fixed upon the bishop third in rank among Christian communities for punishment the most severe and degrading, to be thrown as food for wild beasts, for the pleasure of the people. But nevertheless, the internal constitution of the Church would lie hidden from him: the link which bound together the bishops of the various local communities, and so formed the Catholicism of the Church, would be quite invisible to all outside. Jealous as Trajan was of secret societies, so that he could hardly tolerate a guild of firemen in a provincial town, he had no suspicion of a society which had become even in his time conterminous with his empire, and was bound together not only by the profession of one faith, but by the living links of one government. Nor, fifty years later, could Antoninus have had any such knowledge. The persecution which we have seen arose from simpler causes; the faith of Christians in one God who had made heaven and earth, and in one Son of God who had become Man and redeemed them, and with this, and indeed as part of this, their summary rejection, their utter intolerance of all the heathen gods; this it was that had drawn down the Roman sword upon them in answer to the popular cry,(194) Away with the godless! And again, their standing aloof from heathen life, their refusal to take part in heathen festivals, their withdrawal as far as possible from all public concerns: this was part of the hatred of the human race imputed to them, which made them objects of suspicion first, and then, when any special excitement arose, of persecution. These peculiarities also, and the secrecy with which their worship was necessarily conducted because it was not allowed, had led to calumnies concerning them, imputing the grossest immorality as well as cruelty.

The apologies of Quadratus, Aristides, and Justin, were probably the first connected revelation of the Christian doctrines which the emperor could have; but these would be very far from conveying to him the character of the Church as an institution. They were intended to obviate the persecutions arising from the causes above described, to show the purity of Christian morality, the reasonableness of Christian belief, the fidelity of Christian sentiment to the imperial rule as established by a divine providence. They were not in the least intended to lay before him the Christian Church as a whole. Thus Justin, replying to the accusation that they were expecting a kingdom, says, “You rashly conceive that we mean a human one, whereas we speak of that with God.” We may then, it seems, conclude with certainty that Antoninus was only partially aware of what Christianity was. That discipline of the secret, which was itself the result of persecution—of the Christian Faith having to make itself a place in a world utterly opposed to it,—became at once its protection, and the cause of further persecution; of persecution, in so far as it put Christians under general suspicion, but of protection, inasmuch as it covered with a veil that complete moral revolution to which the Christian Faith was tending from the first, and towards which it was continually advancing. Could Trajan have foreseen what was apparent under Constantine, his treatment of Christians would have had no forbearance or hesitation in it, his blows no intermission or doubtfulness. As it is, up to the time we are now considering, there are no traces of a general persecution against the Christian name organised by the emperor as head of the State. There are numberless local and individual persecutions starting up in this city and in that, and arising from the fundamental contrariety of Christian belief to the existing heathen worship and the ordinary heathen life. Such we have and no more. And so a great host of martyrs in single combat won their crown. But the emperor did not set himself to destroy a unity which he did not see.

Now as to the character in Christians which their condition in these hundred and thirty years tended to produce, we can form a clear conclusion. Of the relative proportion of actual martyrs to the whole mass of believers, we can indeed have no accurate notion; but it is plain that all were liable to suffering as Christians in every various degree up to that ultimate point of witnessing by death. Thus the acceptance of the Christian Faith itself involved at least the spirit of confession, if not that of martyrdom. A man lived for years, perhaps a whole generation, with the prospect of suffering, which it may be never came, or came as the crown of a long period in which heroic virtues had been called forth. Thus S. Ignatius had been more than forty years bishop of Antioch, and had carried his church hardly through the bad times of Domitian, when he gained at last what he deemed perfect union with his Lord, by being ground under the teeth of lions, as “the pure bread of God.” What is here expressed with so sublime a confidence by one actual martyr, must have made the tissue of Christian life in general. Those early disciples of the cross put in the cross their victory. The habitual danger which hung about their life must have scared away the timid, the insincere, the half-hearted. Yet alternations of peace rapidly succeeded times of suffering. Throughout these hundred and thirty years there is no long-continued even local persecution. Breathing-times of comparative tranquillity come, wherein Christians can grow, propagate, and mature for the conflict which may at any time arise. Thus while the opposition made to the infant faith is quite sufficient to have destroyed an untrue religion, born of earth or human device, to have scattered and eradicated its professors, it was precisely what would favour the real advance of a faith rooted upon a suffering God, and in which suffering with Him was made the means of union with Him.

And here we halt at the accession of Marcus Aurelius, as a middle point between the day of Pentecost and the time of Constantine.