The Formation of Christendom, Volume II

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 - Another point on which S. Ignatius dwells repeatedly is the receiving the flesh of Christ in the Eucharist: thus he says of the heterodox, ad Smyrn. 6: “They abstain from the Eucharist and prayer, because they do not confess that the Eucharist is that flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ which suffered for our sins, which in His goodness the Father raised.”] 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 says, ad Rom. ii.: Ὅτι τὸν ἐπίσκοπον Συρίας ὁ Θεὸς κατηξίωσεν εὑρεθῆναι εἰς δύσιν ἀπὸ ἀνατολῆς μεταπεμψάμενος. Merivale, Hist. c. lxv. p. 150, note 1, says, “We are at a loss to account for the bishop being sent to suffer martyrdom at Rome.” This passage in the epistle confirms the acts of martyrdom. It was the wish of Trajan to make a great example, and the Bishop of Rome, S. Alexander, was at this time in prison, and shortly afterwards martyred.] 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 - See Epist. ad Magnes. 13.] He warns them to use only Christian nourishment, and to abstain from strange food, which is heresy.[160 - Ad Trall. 6.] 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 - Ad Smyrn. viii.] “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 - Compare with this expression of S. Ignatius that of the Church of Polycarp, fifty years later, describing how after his martyrdom, σὺν τοῖς Ἀποστόλοις καὶ πᾶσι δικαίοις ἀγαλλιώμενος, δοξάζει τὸν Θεὸν καὶ Πατέρα, καὶ εὐλογεῖ τὸν Κύριον ἡμῶν καὶ κυβερνήτην τῶν [ψυχῶν τε καὶ] σωμάτων ἡμῶν, καὶ ποιμένα τῆς κατὰ τὴν οἰκουμένην καθολικῆς ἐκκλησίας. Acta Polycarpi, xix Ruinart, p. 45.] 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 - Ephes. iv. 4-16.] 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 - See Eusebius, Hist. iii. 37, who speaks exactly in this sense; and an important passage in Döllinger, Kallistus und Hippolytus, 338-343, on the force of the word πρεσβύτερος, as Ecclesiæ Doctor, one particularly charged with the magisterium veritatis. See also Hagemann, die Römische Kirche, pp. 607-8.]

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 - Tillemont, Ecc. Hist. ii. 132.] 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 - Tertull. Apol. 5, and Euseb. Hist. v. 21, assert the existence of this law.] 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 - Tillemont, E. H. ii. 182-3.] And even senators,[168 - See the singular instance given by Euseb. v. 21, in the reign of Commodus. An informer accuses Apollonius of being a Christian, at a time when the imperial laws made such an accusation a capital offence. The accuser is put to death; but Apollonius, who is supposed to have been a senator, having made a brilliant defence before the Senate, suffers martyrdom.] 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 - Duci jussi (confer Acts xii. 19, ἐκέλευσεν ἀπαχθῆναι). The extreme brevity with which the most urbane, kind-hearted, and accomplished of Roman gentlemen, as Mr. Merivale conceives him, describes himself as having ordered a number of men and women to be put to death for the profession of Christianity, is remarkable and significant. Compare it with the bearing of his friend Trajan to S. Ignatius below. As soon as the saint's confession of “bearing the Crucified in his heart” is specific, Trajan without a word of remark orders his execution. The “duci jussi” of Pliny and Trajan's manner in sentencing perfectly correspond and bear witness to each other's authenticity. So later the like tone used by Junius Rusticus, prefect of the city under Marcus Aurelius, to Justin Martyr, as will be seen further on.] 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 - Pliny, Ep. x. 97, chiefly Melmoth's translation.]

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 - Acts of S. Ignatius, Ruinart, pp. 8, 9.]

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 - Ad Rom. iv.] 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 - Ἐκκλησίᾳ – ἥτις καὶ προκάθηται ἐν τότῳ χωρίου Ῥωμαίων – προκαθημένη τῆς ἀγάπης.] 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 - S. Chrysostom, Hom. on S. Ignatius, tom. ii. 600.]

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 - S. Ignatius in the 11th sec. of his epistle to the Smyrnæans requests them to send a messenger to congratulate the church of Antioch, ὅτι εἰρηνεύουσιν, καὶ ἀπέλαβον τὸ ἵδιον μέγαθος, ἀποκατεστάθη αὐτοῖς τὸ ἴδιον σωματεῖον. The word σωματεῖον, or corpusculum, indicates the completeness of a diocesan church with its bishop, the whole Church being σῶμα Χριστοῦ, as S. Ignatius had said in sec. I of the same epistle, ἐν ἑνὶ σώματι τῆς ἐκκλησίας αὐτοῦ.]

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 - There is some doubt about the time of S. Ignatius's martyrdom. We suppose it to be at the end of Trajan's reign. S. Alexander I. is reckoned a martyr, and placed in the canon of the Mass next after S. Ignatius, which seems to indicate a connection between their deaths.] 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 - So the persecution of Diocletian is said to have arisen from Apollo declaring that the just who were upon the earth prevented him from uttering true oracles; and a like answer was received by Julian the Apostate at Antioch, where the relics of S. Babylas had been translated by Gallus to Daphne, near a celebrated temple of Apollo. Here Julian, offering in vain a great number of sacrifices to the demon, was at length informed that the body of the saint condemned him to silence, and ordered the Christians to remove it. S. Chrys. tom. ii. 560.] 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 - Acts of S. Symphorosa, from Dom Ruinart, pp. 23-4.]

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 - Justin. 1 Apol. 1, 2.]

“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 - Sec. 7.]

“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 - Sec. 11.]

“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 - Sec. 17.]

“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 - Sec. 45.]

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 - Sec. 68. Chevallier's translation, sometimes altered.]

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 - Origen c. Cels. i. 3. Περὶ τοῦ κρύφα Χριστιανοὺς τὰ ἀρέσκοντα αὐτοῖς ποιεῖν καὶ διδάσκειν εἰπὼν, καὶ ὅτι οὐ μάτην τοῦτο ποιοῦσιν, ἅτε διωθούμενοι τὴν ἐπηρτημένην αὐτοῖς δίκην τοῦ θανάτου.] 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 - Σὲ τὸν καθωσιωμένον ὥσπερ ἄγαλμα αὐτῷ δήσας ἀπάγει καὶ ἀνασκολοπίζει. viii. 38, 39.] 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 - viii. 69; by this we should judge that the work of Celsus appeared not long after the punishment of the Jews by Hadrian.] 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 - Attached to Justin's first Apology.]

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 - See Trajan's remark to S. Ignatius: “You mean him that was crucified under Pontius Pilate.”] 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 - See the curious letter of Hadrian about the Alexandrians, in which the Christians spoken of are probably heretics.] 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 - They are first mentioned at Rome in the reign of Alexander Severus.] A heathen would say of Christians at this time that they had no temples, altars, or statues;[192 - See Origen c. Cels. vii. 62.] 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 - See Trajan's question, “Who art thou who art zealous to transgress our commands, besides persuading others to come to an evil end?”] 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 - Αἷρε τοὺς ἀθέους.] 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.

Chapter XI. The Second Age Of The Martyr Church

“Magnus ab integro sæclorum nascitur ordo.
Jam nova progenies cœlo demittitur alto.
Ingredere, O magnos, aderit jam tempus, honores,
Cara Dei soboles, magnum Jovis incrementum.”

There is a moment in the history of the Roman empire when it comes before us with the most imposing grandeur. The imperial rule has been definitively accepted by that proud old aristocracy under which the city of the seven hills was built up from a robber fortress to be the centre of a world-wide confederation; while on their side the nations all round the Mediterranean bow with an almost voluntary homage before the sceptre of their queen. If the north be still untameable, it has learnt to dread the talons of the Roman eagle, and cowers murmuring in its forests and morasses; if the Parthian still shoot as he flies from the western Cæsar's hosts, he has at least expiated in the ruin of Ctesiphon the capture of Crassus and the dishonour of Mark Antony. But far more than this. On the Cæsar in his undisputed greatness has dawned the real sublimity of the task which Providence had assigned to him; to mould, that is, under one rule of equal beneficence the many tongues and many nations which a course of conquest often the most unjust had brought to own his sway. And this point of time is when after the great warrior Trajan comes Hadrian the man of culture; in whom seems implanted the most restless curiosity, carrying him with the speed of a soldier and the power of a prince over every climate from Carlisle to Alexandria, from Morocco to Armenia, in order that he may see in each the good of which so many varying races of men are capable, and use them all for his grand design. To him Rome is still the head; but he has learnt to esteem at their due value the members of her great body. The first fifteen years of his reign are almost entirely spent away from Rome, in those truly imperial progresses wherein the master of this mighty realm, when he would relieve himself of his helmet, walks like the simple legionary,[195 - The Roman legionary, if he wished to lay aside his helmet, was only allowed to go bareheaded.] bareheaded in front of his soldiers, under the suns of the south, examining, wherever he comes, the whole civil and military organisation, promoting the capable and censuring the unworthy, scattering benefits with unsparing hand. York has known him as a protecting genius; Athens blends his name with that of her own Theseus as a second founder; wayward Alexandria exalts him, at least for the time, as a granter of privileges; the extreme north and utmost south acknowledge alike the unsparing zeal and majestic presence of their ruler. At that moment Rome is still Roman. While the Augustan discipline still animates her legions, the sense of the subordination of the military power to the civil spirit of a free state is not wholly lost; her proconsuls and præfects have passed out of those plundering magnates, who replenished in the tyranny of a year or two from a drained province the treasures they had squandered in a life of corruption at Rome, into the orderly and yet dignified magistrates accountable to the Republic's life-president[196 - Champagny remarks, that the emperors were never in the mind of the Romans sovereigns in the modern acceptation of the word, but life-presidents with absolute power.] for their high delegated power. Perhaps the world had never yet seen anything at once so great and so beneficent as the government of Hadrian. But one thing was wanting to the many-tongued and many-tempered peoples ruled by him, that they should of their own will accept the worship of one God, and so the matchless empire receive the only true principle of coherence and permanence in the common possession of one religion. And the thoughtful student of history can hardly restrain himself from indulging his fancy as to what might then have been the result, and into how great a structure provinces worthy of being kingdoms might then have grown by the process of an unbroken civilisation instinct with the principles of the pure Christian Faith. Then the northern flood of barbarism and the eastern tempest of a false religion, which together were to break up the fabric of a thousand years, might have been beaten back from its boundaries, and from them the messengers of light have so penetrated the world in all directions that the advance of the truth should not have been impeded by any great civil destruction, but the nations of Europe have developed themselves from their Roman cradle by a continuous growth, in which there had been no ages of conquest, violence, and confusion, no relapse into chaos, no struggle back into an intricate and yet imperfect order, but the serene advance from dawn to day.

So, however, it was not to be. The time of probation in the reigns of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius, wherein a sort of toleration had seemed to be allowed to Christians, passed away, and the beginning of a far different destiny broke upon the empire. With the accession of Marcus Aurelius the great old enemies, the North and the East, awoke from their trance in fresh vigour. A Parthian war of four years, a German war of twelve, with pestilence, earthquakes, and famines through a large part of the empire, try to the utmost the vigour and temper of one of the most upright sovereigns known to heathenism. Marcus Aurelius meets both enemies with equal courage and ability, but he dies prematurely, and leaves the rule carried so temperately by four great sovereigns successively adopted to empire at mature age, in the untried hands of the heir of his blood, a youth of nineteen, born in the purple. In this at least the great Roman was wanting both to Stoic greatness and to Roman duty. And it was a fatal error. During thirteen years this son of the most virtuous heathen shows himself the most vicious of tyrants. At a single bound Rome passes from a ruler more just than Trajan to a ruler more abandoned than Nero; and in the palace of Marcus Aurelius endures an emperor who has a double harem of three hundred victims;[197 - Champagny, Les Antonins, iii. 311.] who spares the blood of no senator, and respects the worth of no officer.

When a revolution, similar to that which swept away Domitian, has removed Commodus, the Roman world is not so fortunate as to find a second Trajan to take his place. Three great officers who command in Syria, Illyricum, and Britain, contend for the prize, and when victory has determined in favour of Septimius Severus, he rules for eighteen years with a force and capacity which may indeed be compared with Trajan's, but with a deceit and remorseless severity all his own. At one time forty senators are slaughtered for the crime of having looked with favour upon that pretender to the empire who did not succeed. Nor is this a passing cruelty, but the fixed spirit of his reign. The sway of the sword is openly proclaimed. That the army is everything is not only acted on, but laid down as a guiding principle of state to his children. The unbroken discipline of her legionaries had hitherto indeed proved the salvation of the state; but this Septimius fatally tampers with, and in so doing sows the seeds of future anarchy and dissolution.

His death in 211 places the empire in the hands of a youth of twenty-three, all but born in the purple, like Commodus, and his rival in tyranny and dissoluteness of every kind. Caracalla is endured for six years, and being killed by a plot in the camp, is succeeded by his murderer Macrinus. He again, after a year, gives place to a Syrian boy of fourteen, who took at his accession the honoured name of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, but is known to posterity as Heliogabalus. Once more during a space of four years the crimes of Commodus and Caracalla are repeated, or even exceeded. Indeed in these years from 218 to 222 the story of shame and degradation reaches its lowest point. But the soldiers of the prætorian camp themselves rise against Heliogabalus, massacre him with his mother, and place on the throne his cousin Alexander Severus, at the age of fourteen. Now Alexander has for his mother Mammæa, if not a Christian, at least a hearer of Origen, who gives her son from his earliest youth a virtuous education, who surrounds him on the perilous height of the Roman throne with the arms of her affection and her practical wisdom. Alexander rules for thirteen years, a period equal to that of Commodus, and little less than that of Nero. Younger than both at his accession and his death, his reign offers the most striking contrast to theirs. Of all heathen rulers he stands forth as the most blameless. It is a reign which, after the obscene domination of Commodus, Caracalla, and Heliogabalus, with the savagery between them of Septimius Severus immediately preceding it, seems like a romance of goodness. Simple and admirable in his private life, he rivals Marcus Aurelius in his zeal for the administration of justice, for the choice of good governors, for devotion to the public service; and, happier than Marcus Aurelius, on his name rests no stain of persecution. “He suffered the Christians to be,”[198 - “Christianos esse passus est.” Lampridius.] are the emphatic words of his biographer; concerning which it has been well remarked that little as this seems to say, it had been said of no one of his predecessors, though several had not persecuted the Church.[199 - Tillemont, Hist. Ecc. iii. 250.] And therefore this expression must mean that he left them in an entire liberty as to religion. It is indeed the exact contradiction of what, thirty years before, Tertullian had stated respecting the law in the time of Septimius Severus; for one of his complaints in pleading for Christians was, “your harsh sentence ‘that we are not allowed to exist,’ is an open appeal to brute force.”[200 - Apolog. iv. “Jampridem, cum dure definitis dicendo, non licet esse vos, et hoc sine ullo retractatu humaniore describitis, vim profitemini et iniquam ex arce dominationem, si ideo negatis licere quia vultis, non quia debuit non licere.”]

Alexander Severus, the darling of his people, perished by the hands of some treacherous soldiers suborned by his successor Maximin; and with him ends this period of seventy-four years, which we will consider together, in order to estimate the progress of the Christian Faith. A time of more remarkable contrasts in rulers cannot be found. It begins with Marcus Aurelius, and it ends with Alexander Severus, the two most virtuous of heathen princes; between them it contains Commodus, Caracalla, and Heliogabalus, the three generally reputed the most vicious; while the definitive course which the history of the empire took is given to it by another, Septimius Severus, of great abilities and mixed character, who gained the empire as a successful soldier, and was true to his origin in that he established the ultimate victory of pure force over every restriction of a civil constitution: an African unsparing of blood, who sat on the throne of Augustus, and worked out the problem of government which the founder of the empire had started by preparing the result of Diocletian.

The rule of Commodus and his successors fully revealed the fatal truth, that the five princes who from the accession of Nerva had governed as if they were really responsible to the senate, had only been a fortunate chance; that this time of prosperity rested upon no legal limitation of rights between those things wont to exist only in severance,[201 - “Res olim dissociabiles, principatum et libertatem.” Tacit. Agric. 3.] the sovereign's power and the subject's freedom; that it was no result of a constitution which had grown up under a mutual sense of benefit arising from authority exercised conscientiously, and obedience cordially rendered. The age which Tacitus[202 - “Primo statim beatissimi sæculi ortu.” Ibid.] at its commencement had called “most blessed” was indeed over, and as soon as the second Antonine left the scene, a state of things ensued in which tyranny and cruelty were as unchecked as under Nero or Domitian at their worst. It became evident that all had depended on the sovereign's personal character. From Marcus to Commodus the leap was instantaneous; and so, again, afterwards the short-lived serenity and order of Alexander's rule passed at his death into a confusion lasting for more than forty years, which threatened to break up the very existence of the empire.

But in Rome from the accession of Commodus in 180 to the death of Heliogabalus in 222 we find a profound corruption of morals, an excess of cruelty, and a disregard of civil rights, which could scarcely be exceeded. Tacitus, at the beginning of Trajan's reign, burst forth into indignation at the thought that it had cost Rusticus and Senecio their lives, in Domitian's time, to have praised Thrasea and Helvidius Priscus, and that their very writings had been publicly burned, as if that fire could extinguish the voice of the Roman people, the liberty of the senate, and the conscience of mankind. “Truly great,” he cried, “was the specimen of patient endurance which we exhibited.”[203 - Agricola, 2.] What words, then, would he have found to express the degradation of servile spirit in that selfsame city a hundred years later, when Plautianus, the favourite minister of Septimius Severus, at the marriage of his daughter with Caracalla, caused a hundred persons of good family, some of them already fathers, secretly to be made eunuchs, in order that they might serve as chamberlains to the imperial bride.[204 - See Döllinger, Hippolytus und Kattistus, p. 187, who quotes from Dio Cassius, l. 75, p. 1267, Reimar. This was a. d. 203.] Or to take another example; as Quintillus, one of the chiefs of the senate, both by birth and by the employments which he had held, a man of advanced years and living retired in the country, was seized in order to be put to death, he declared that his only surprise was that he had been suffered to live so long, and that he had made every preparation for his burial. A third incident will show both the sort of crimes for which men were punished, the protection given by the law to the individual, and the spirit and temper of the senate. It had condemned Apronianus, proconsul of Asia, without giving him a hearing, because his nurse had dreamt that he was one day to reign, concerning which he was reported to have consulted a magician. Now, in reading the informations laid against him, it was found that a witness deposed that during the consultation some senator who was bald had stretched out his head to listen. Upon this all the bald senators, even those who had never gone to the house of Apronianus, began to tremble, while the rest put their hands to their heads to make sure that they had still their hair. However, a certain Marcellinus fell under special suspicion, whereupon he demanded that the witness should be brought in, who could not fail to recognise him if guilty. The witness looked round upon them all for a long time without saying a word, until upon a sign that a certain senator made him, he declared it was Marcellinus, who forthwith was hurried out of the senate to be beheaded, before Severus was even informed of it. As he went to execution he met four of his children, to whom he said that his greatest grief was to leave them living after him in so miserable a time.[205 - Tillemont, Life of Severus, iii. 75, from Dio: a. d. 206.] It was not without reason that Tertullian at this very moment encouraged the martyrs to be constant, with the reflection that there was no one who might not, for the cause of man, be made to suffer whatever nature would most shrink from suffering in the cause of God. “The times we live in are proofs,” he cried, “of this. How many and how great are the instances we have seen, in which no height of birth, no degree of rank, no personal dignity, no time of life, have saved men from coming to the most unexpected end, for some man's cause, either at his own hands, if they stood against him, or if for him, by the hands of his adversaries.”[206 - Tertullian, ad Martyres, 4: about a. d. 196.]

It was a time at which the extremes of reckless cruelty, of profuse luxury, of shameless dissoluteness, met together; in which women were forbidden by an express law to expose themselves on the arena as gladiators; in which, when the emperor Severus would legislate against adultery, a memorial was handed to him with the names of three thousand persons whom his law would touch.[207 - Dio, quoted by Döllinger, ut supra.] Such was the character of the time which followed at once on the empire's golden age; the time in which the Church of God was lengthening her cords and strengthening her stakes, and building up her divine polity amid the worthlessness of the world's greatest empire, and the instability of all earthly things.