Chapter XIX: Book II: The Life of a Christian in the Early Days of the Faith (2)

There were many Christians, especially in the more acute periods of persecution, who were arrested and imprisoned by the government, and not a few condemned to the harsh discipline of the mines. Justin Martyr especially names assistance to imprisoned Christians as one of the regular objects to which a portion of the collections at the “meetings” was devoted. It was ever a matter of love, if not of absolute duty, to help and succour these. “If,” wrote Aristides in his _Apology_ quoted above, “the Christians learn that any one of their number is imprisoned or is in distress for the sake of the Name of Christ, they should all render aid to such a one in his necessity.”--_Apol._ xv.

See, too, among other references, Heb. x. 34; Tert. _ad Mart._ i., and _Apol._ xxxix.

Another and special object of almsgiving pressed upon the faithful was help to other and perhaps distant Churches who from one cause or other were in want. We find this urged upon Christian congregations even in apostolic days.

In S. Paul’s Epistles to the Galatians, Romans, and Corinthians we find various appeals to the generosity of these early communities to assist the Church at Jerusalem. The deep poverty of this famous Church we have already suggested was probably owing to the attempt of the Jerusalem Christians literally to carry out the idea of community of goods.

In the Letter of Dionysius of Corinth to the Roman Church written _circa_ A.D. 170, quoted by Eusebius, _H. E._ iv. 23, we find this generosity referred to as a well-known custom of the comparatively wealthy Roman congregation. “From the very first,” wrote Dionysius, “you have had this practice of aiding all the brethren in many ways, and of sending contributions to many Churches in every city ... by these gifts you keep up the hereditary custom of the Roman Christians, a practice which your bishop, Soter, has not only kept up, but even extended.” In the third century, Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria, writing to Stephen, bishop of Rome, alludes to the generous help given to the poor Churches of Syria and Arabia. “To them,” he says, “you send help regularly.”--Euseb. _H. E._ viii. 5.

Ignatius, referring to this noble generosity of the Roman congregations as early as the first years of the second century, styles the Church of Rome as “the leader of love.”

Cyprian, in the middle of the third century, several times mentions how the Church at Carthage, evidently a wealthy community, was in the habit of sending help to other and needy communities.

But there was one department in the novel teaching pressed home by the early Christian teachers which seems at once to have riveted the attention of the listeners, and its universal acceptance at once won extraordinary, possibly an undreamed of popularity in the Christian ranks. It was an entirely new departure from any custom prevalent in the world of Rome--the injunction reverently to care for _the bodies of the dead poor_.

The Emperor Julian in his summary of what he considered the chief points in the hated Christian system which had won them so many hearts, especially calls attention to this. He wrote this remarkable comment here:

“This godlessness (_i.e._ Christianity) is mainly furthered by its charity towards strangers, and its _careful attention to the bestowal of the dead_.”--_Letter to Arsacius_, in Soz. v. 15.

Lactantius in his review of the Christian virtues urged by the great teachers of the new religion, and to a great extent practised in the early centuries, gives a prominent and detailed notice of this pious and loving custom, and strikingly writes as follows: “The last and greatest office of piety is the burying of strangers and the poor,” adding that the noblest pagan teachers of virtue and justice had never touched at all upon this inescapable duty. These had left this, he adds, quite out, because they were unable to see any advantage in it.

Some of these pagan teachers, he goes on to say, even esteemed burial as superfluous, adding that it was no evil to lie unburied and neglected.

The great fourth century writer proceeds at some length to give some of the reasons which had influenced Christians so tenderly to care for their brethren who had fallen asleep: “We will not suffer the image and workmanship of God to lie exposed as a prey to beasts and birds, but we will restore it to earth from which it was taken; and although it be in the case of an unknown person, we will supply the place of relatives, whose place, since they are wanting, let benevolence take.”--Lactantius, _Inst._ vi. 12.

Aristides--middle years of second century--thus dwells upon the tender solicitude of the Christian folk for their dead: “When one of their poor passes away from the world, one of them (the brethren) looks after him, and sees to his burial according to his means.”--_Apol._ xv.

Aristides is here referring to the private charity of individual members of the community, which was often very lavish in the early centuries. Tertullian, on the other hand, writing on the same duty of caring for the brethren, includes the cost of “burying the poor” as coming out of the common fund made up of the money contributed at the public meetings of the Brotherhood.--_Apol._ xxxix.

As the amount required for these burials and the subsequent care bestowed on the places of Christian sepulture was very considerable, the public collections made in the assemblies were necessarily often largely supplemented by private alms.

All this loving care for the remains of the deceased went home to numberless hearts among the survivors of the loved, and evidently ranked high among the reasons which attracted many into the ranks of the Christian Brotherhood.

In our little picture of very early Christian life, Rome and its powerful Church has been generally selected as the scene of the life in question. In this primitive custom of reverent care for the dead,--a care which embraced the very poor as well as the rich and well-to-do, we discern the reasons which led to the first beginnings of the vast city of the Christian dead,--the wonderful city known as the Roman catacombs. This will be carefully described at some length in this work: the building and excavating of the endless corridors, the private chambers, the chapels and meeting-rooms, began even before the close of the first century of the Christian era, and went on for some two centuries and a half--the long-drawn-out age of persecution.

They constitute a mighty and ever-present proof of the accuracy of much that has been advanced in the foregoing pages on the subject of the life led--of the hopes and ideals cherished among the disciples of Jesus in that first stage of anxious trial and sore danger.

The pictures painted below in the chapters treating of the catacombs of Rome are admirable contemporary illustrations of what the writings of Aristides, Tertullian, and Lactantius tell us of the solemn duty to the dead which was insisted upon with such touching eloquence to the primitive congregations of the faithful.

V

THE SLAVE IN EARLY CHRISTIAN LIFE

There was ever present in these early assemblies of Christians one class of persons who had no rank, no place in Roman society,--a class in which Cicero had declared that nothing great or noble could exist. Slavery has been well characterized as the “most frightful feature of the corruption of ancient Rome, and it extended through every class of the community.” Economically, “the poor citizen found almost all the spheres in which an honourable livelihood might be obtained, wholly or at least in a very great part preoccupied by slaves.” Morally, “the slave population was a hotbed of vice, and it contaminated all with which it came in contact.”[70]

Now what position did the slave occupy in early Christian society? It is quite clear that the primitive Christians had no idea of abolishing slavery. It was part of the ancient society, and they accepted it even amongst themselves--apparently made no effort to abolish it; but the view they took of it in reality dealt a death-blow to the unhappy and miserable institution. It is true that whilst Christianity gradually modified its most painful and objectionable features by example and by precept, it was only after long, long years that it succeeded by a bloodless revolution to wipe away the awful curse--“The mills of God grind slowly.”

But the New Testament simply directs slaves to be faithful and obedient. In the letter to Philemon, Paul never even hints at the release of the slave Onesimus, who was very dear to him.

In 1 Cor. vii. 20, Paul urges every man to abide in the calling (_i.e._ the state of life or condition) in which he was when he was called to God; and even advises the slave to be content to remain a slave even if the opportunity to become free presents itself; for this is the interpretation which a chain of the best commentators gives to the words “use it rather.” See, too, Eph. vi. 5-9; Tit. ii. 9; 1 Pet. ii. 18.[71]

The earliest Christian writings take the same view of the question of slavery as we find in the Epistles of Paul and Peter. So in the _Didaché_ we read: “Thou shalt not give directions when thou art in anger to thy slave or thy handmaid, who trust in the same God, lest perchance they shall not fear the Lord who is over you both; for He cometh not to call men according to their outward position, but He cometh to those whom the Spirit hath made ready. And ye slaves, ye shall be subject to your masters as to God’s image, in modesty and fear” (chap. iv.).

Aristides writes as follows: “But as for their servants or handmaids, or their children if any of them have any, they (the Christians) persuade them to become Christians, for the love that they have towards them; and when they have become so, they call them without distinction Brethren.”--_Apol._, chap. xv.

But although slavery as an institution[72] was left for the time virtually untouched, Christianity in its own circles worked an immediate and vast change in the condition of the slave: “It supplied a new order of relations, in which the relations of classes were unknown, and it imparted a new dignity to the servile classes.”[73]

In the assemblies of the Christians of the first days on which we have been dwelling, the social difference between master and slave was quite unknown. They knelt side by side when they received the Holy Eucharist. They sat side by side as the instructions were given and the words of the Lord Jesus were expounded. Their prayers ascended together to the mercy-seat of the Eternal. While not unfrequently a slave was promoted to be the teacher; the highest offices in the congregation[74] were now and again filled by chosen members of the slave class. They suffered with their masters, and shared with them the glory of martyrdom.

The Acts of the Martyred Slaves were read to the congregations of the faithful, and the highest honour and veneration was paid to their memory. The slaves Blandina of Lyons, Felicitas of Carthage, Emerentiana of Rome the foster-sister of Agnes, the famous martyr--are names which deservedly rank high in the histories of the early heroines of the Church.

But although slavery was still recognized in the new Society which outwardly made no abrupt changes, which desired no sudden and violent uprooting in the old Society, a marvellous change passed over the ordinary conception of the slave.

An extract from a letter of Paulinus of Nola to Sulpicius Severus, the disciple and biographer of S. Martin of Tours (_circa_ the last years of the fourth century), will give some idea of the regard so largely entertained by Christian thinkers for the slave members of the community. Thanking Sulpicius for a young slave he had sent him, Paulinus of Nola, recognizing in the slave an earnest and devout soul, writes to his friend as follows: “He has served me, and woe is me that I have allowed him to be my servant--that he who was no servant of sin, should yet be in the service of a sinner! Unworthy that I am, every day I suffered him to wash my feet; and there was no menial duty he would not have performed had I allowed him, so unsparing was he of his body--so watchful for his soul. Ah, it is Jesus Christ that I venerate in this young man; for surely every faithful soul proceeds from God, and every humble man of heart comes from the very heart of Christ.”[75]

There is little doubt but that this authoritative teaching of the Christian masters in the matter of the perfect equality of the slave in the eyes of God, and the consequent tender and often loving treatment meted out to the Christian members of the despised and downtrodden class, gravely misliked the more thoughtful among the pagan aristocracy of Rome, and that this teaching and practice of Christians in the case of the vast slave class in the pagan Empire ranked high among the dangers which they felt threatened the existence of the old state of things. Grave considerations of this kind must have strongly influenced the minds of men like Pius and Marcus and their entourage, before they determined to carry out their bitter policy of persecution.

The Romans of the old school could have well afforded to regard with comparative indifference the enfranchisement of any number of Christian slaves. Freedmen, especially in the imperial household, were very numerous in the days of the Antonines. But the teaching that these slaves--_while still slaves_--were their brethren, and ought to be treated with love and esteem, was a new and disturbing thought in the Empire of the great Antonines.

* * * * *

Lecky, in his _History of European Morals_ (chap. iv.), has a fine passage in which he sums up the great features of the new movement of Christian charity, and its results on the world at large. It runs as follows:

“There is no fact of which an historian becomes more steadily or more painfully conscious than the great difference between the importance and the dramatic interest of the subjects he treats. Wars or massacres, the horrors of martyrdom or the splendour of individual prowess, are susceptible of such brilliant colouring that with but very little literary skill they can be so portrayed that their importance is adequately realized, and that they appeal powerfully to the emotions of the reader. But this vast and unostentatious movement of charity, operating in the village hamlets and in the lonely hospital, staunching the widow’s tears and following all the windings of the poor man’s griefs, presents few features the imagination can grasp, and leaves no deep impression upon the mind. The greatest things are those which are most imperfectly realized; and surely no achievements of the Christian Church are more truly great than those which it has effected in the sphere of charity. For the first time in the history of the world it has inspired many thousands of men and women, at the sacrifice of all worldly interests, and often under circumstances of extreme discomfort or danger, to devote their entire lives to the single object of assuaging the sufferings of humanity. It has covered the globe with countless institutions of mercy, absolutely unknown to the whole pagan world. It has indissolubly united in the minds of men the idea of supreme goodness with that of active and constant benevolence.”

The foundation stories of all this vast movement of charity and altruistic love were laid in the early years of Christianity.

The assemblies--the meetings together of the Christians of the first days--constructed and developed, as we have seen, the laws of charity; indicating the persons who were to be assisted, suggesting, too, the means and resources out of which the sufferers--the forlorn and needy--might be helped and comforted in life and in death.

All that happened subsequently--the mighty organizing work of great masters of charity, such as Basil of Cappadocian Cæsarea, and later of members of the monastic orders--was simply the development, the expansion, the application to individual needs of the primitive ordinances of the first days which we have been sketching out,--ordinances all founded upon the advice, the injunctions, the commands which we find in early Christian writings such as the _Didaché_, the _1st Epistle_ of Clement of Rome, the _Apology_ of Aristides, the _Shepherd_ of Hermas, the writings of Justin Martyr and Minucius Felix, and a very little later in the more elaborate works of Irenæus, Clement of Alexandria, and Tertullian, and repeated in the first half of the third century by eminent teachers such as Origen and Cyprian of Carthage; all primarily based more or less exactly upon the words of the Lord Jesus and of His own immediate disciples.

In the primitive assemblies of the Christian Brotherhood these things formed the groundwork of the instructions and exhortations of the teachers and preachers, and were united with the dogma of the Atonement, with the tidings of immortality, the promises of bliss and eternal peace in the life beyond the grave.

Entering into one of these early assemblies held in an upper chamber or courtyard of a wealthy Christian brother, or in one of those dark and gloomy chambers of the catacombs, “we step,” as it has been well said, “into a whole world of sympathy and of love.”

VI

DIFFICULTIES IN ORDINARY LIFE AMONG THE EARLY CHRISTIANS

But the rapt moments enjoyed by the men and women who met together in these primitive assemblies soon passed. The perfect realization of brotherhood, the sharing in the mystic Eucharist, the fervent prayers, the dwelling on the sunlit words of their Divine Master, the earnest and pressing injunctions to be generous in charity and almsgiving for the benefit of the forlorn and sick in their company, the feeling that the unseen presence of the Lord was all the while in their midst,--all these things contributed to the joy and gladness which permeated each little assembly; every one who assisted at one of these meetings could whisper in his or her heart the words of the “apostle” on the Mount of Transfiguration--“Lord, it is good for us to be here.”

But when the gathering dispersed, a reaction must have quickly set in. From that atmosphere of sympathy, of love and hope, they passed at once into the cold, hard, busy world--into family life--into the workshop, the study, the barrack, and the Forum--all coloured with--permeated by that system of gross and actual idolatry which entered into every home, every trade and profession of the Roman Empire. What was to be their conduct? how were Christians to behave in a world wholly given up to an idolatry they knew was false, and utterly hateful to the Lord whose presence they had just left?

The difficulties of a believer’s life in the early Christian centuries must have been terrible; and it must be borne in mind that these difficulties were not occasional, but of daily, almost of hourly occurrence. To enumerate a few:

1. _In the family_, in domestic life. Consider the position of a Christian slave--of a son or daughter--of a wife--in a pagan family. What scenes of strain and estrangement if one member was a Christian and the household generally clung to the old Roman religion! The son or daughter might wish to be Christ’s disciple, and yet shrink from “hating father and mother, brothers and sisters.” What constant contests would the Christian have to endure--what bitter reproaches--what perpetual danger of giving way and so endangering the immortal soul! What share could the Christian member of a pagan family take in the ordinary business and pleasures of the everyday existence, to say nothing of the extreme peril to which a member of the sect would be constantly subject of being denounced as a Christian to the authorities, who were often too ready to listen to the informer?

2. _In Trade._--Many commercial occupations were more or less closely connected with idol-worship; to say nothing of the makers and decorators of idol-images, a trade that manifestly was impossible for a Christian to be occupied in, there were hosts of artisans employed in the great arenas where the public games were held; then, too, there were the actors--the gladiators--those engaged in the schools and training-homes of these. What were such persons to do?

3. In the ordinary _pleasures of the people_ in which such multitudes took the keenest delight, was the Christian to stand aloof from all these? Was the Christian to attract a painful and dangerous notoriety by refusing to share in such dearly loved amusements, which with rare exceptions were positively hateful to every Christian’s conscience?

4. Was the civil servant or the lawyer to abandon his calling in which the worship of and reverence for the gods of Rome played so prominent a part? Was the soldier, or still more the officer of the Legions, to abandon his post and desert his colours, rather than acquiesce in the daily service and adoration of the gods of Rome. Was he to refuse to pay the customary homage to the awful Cæsar, when the slightest disrespect or failure in homage to this sovereign master, who claimed the rank of Deity, would be construed into treason and disloyalty?

5. _Education._--Could a Christian still continue to be a teacher of the young, seeing that in all the manuals of education a knowledge of the old gods still worshipped in Rome--their myths, their prowess, their various attributes--was carefully taught? The very festivals and sacred days had to be carefully observed by them, since it was by means of these the teachers’ fees were reckoned.

All such and many other like questions had to be considered and weighed by the Christian converts living in the world of Rome. Very thorny and rough was the path which had to be travelled by every earnest Christian in his way through life.

* * * * *

A striking and eloquent apologia for or explanation of the reasons which guided many of the early Christian teachers to advocate a certain feeling of toleration in various circumstances of everyday life may be quoted here:

“The (Roman) Empire was originally developed quite apart from Christianity under the shadow of the worship of the old false gods. Everything in it bore the stamp of idolatry. Its laws and its customs, first framed by patricians who were at once priests and lawgivers, then consolidated by Emperors who ranked first and foremost as sovereign pontiffs of the idol-worship, everything was coloured with and permeated by polytheism. Art--Letters--private customs--all were pagan. There was no public monument but was placed under the guardianship of some heathen deity. No poem was composed without special reference to an idol god; no feast began without a libation to an idol; no household omitted the inescapable duty which directed that a sacred fire should burn before the household gods (Lares). Thus absolutely independent of Christianity, such a civilization must needs be intensely hostile to the new faith, and its hostility never faltered one instant. Differing here from the fixed rule of universal toleration, Roman society from the very first displayed towards Christianity the bitterest contempt--insulting treatment--persecution. The religion of Jesus grew up and spread under circumstances of general ignominy and hatred ... living in such a highly civilized community--mighty and indeed all-powerful--the Church of Christ destroyed nothing, adopted everything, quietly correcting, gently changing and reforming everything, graving the Cross of its Founder on all the institutions of pagan Rome; breathing its inspiration by degrees into all its laws and customs.”[76]

VII

THE ASCETIC AND THE MORE PRACTICAL SCHOOLS OF TEACHING

The members of the Christian Brotherhood were not left without guidance as to their behaviour in the world of Rome. There were _two schools_ among the Christian teachers of authority in the primitive Church.

The one which we will term the school of “Rigourists” or “ascetics” found a brilliant and able exponent in the stern African Father, Tertullian, who taught and wrote in the latter years of the second and the earlier years of the third centuries. From the burning and impassioned words of this famous African teacher we can form a generally accurate idea of what was taught and pressed home in the school of “Rigourists.”

No compromise was ever suggested by these hard, stern teachers--no “via media” was even hinted at.

The artisan must forsake his calling if it even was connected in the most remote degree with idol-worship,[77] with the games loved of the people, with anything which appeared antagonistic to any of the Master’s commands. These words must be understood in their strict literal sense, and must be obeyed.

The soldier must abandon his colours, the civil servant his profession. The slave must at all risks refuse his obedience when that obedience involved acquiescence in any form of idolatry. The Christian wife, the son or daughter in a pagan family, must gently but firmly decline to share even in the formal ancestral worship, or to be present at the public games of the arena, or the performances in the theatre. In their dress and ornaments, in their very language, in their hours of play and work, they must hold themselves aloof. We may picture to ourselves how in many a pagan household, in the Forum, in the army and civil service, gentle, pitying men and women would be found who would shield and shelter these seemingly fanatical and earnest adherents of a despised religion; but in many cases there would be no loving, pitying ones who would strive to throw a kindly veil over what seemed to them such strange, such unpatriotic and even disloyal conduct. Then would assuredly follow arrest--imprisonment--exile--the deadly mines, where the condemned toiled in a hopeless, dreary captivity. Not unfrequently torture and death would be the guerdon of the devoted Christian under circumstances of awful pain and mortal agony.

It is out of this class that the martyrs mostly came. It was to embolden and encourage these that the little known “Schools of Martyrdom” were formed, where very earnest Christians were trained to endure all and suffer for the Name’s sake.[78]

The ascetics, however, were in the minority. There was another school in the primitive Church, strict certainly in its instructions, but more ready to make allowances; less uncompromising in its views of the everyday Christian life; less literal in its interpretation of the Divine Master’s words.

This gentler and more practical school is well represented in the works still preserved to us of several of the great teachers of early Christianity. A very conspicuous example of this school of teaching is the famous Dialogue put together by the North African Latin writer, Minucius Felix. The generally received date of the writing is _circa_ A.D. 160, in the reign of the Emperor Marcus Antoninus. It is a work of peculiar charm. One scholar terms it “a golden Book”; another (Renan) styles it “the pearl of Apologetic literature.”

It is cast in the form of a dialogue held by three persons on the then beautiful seashore of Ostia. The speakers are real historic characters of some rank and position in the Roman world in the middle years of the second century. The arguments adduced by the pagan Cæcilius are supposed to be a reproduction of a lost work of Fronto, the tutor and friend of the Emperor Marcus. The refutation of Octavius the wealthy Christian merchant, which follows and which convinced Cæcilius of the truth of the new faith, is the principal piece in the work and the part to which reference is specially made here, and it admirably voices many of the views of the second and gentler school of early Christianity. The criticism of Renan on the view of Christianity taken by Octavius is striking, and fairly accurate. It is, he says, “the conception of the new religion of amiable advocates wishful to enrol in the Christian ranks, men of culture and position. Such men as the Octavius of the Dialogue would never have written the Gospels or the Apocalypse; but, on the other hand, without such liberal interpreters, the Gospels, the Apocalypse, and the Epistles of Paul would have never penetrated beyond the circle of a narrow sect, and in the long run the sect of Christians would have disappeared.” “Minucius Felix,” the great French writer, goes on to say, “represented in those early years the preacher of Nôtre Dâme (in Paris) in our own time, addressing men of the world.”[79]

Christianity, in the eloquent presentment of Octavius, by no means requires the believer to put aside the philosophers and pagan writers whose works he admired. In the argument of Octavius, Christian teaching lives in the pages of Aristotle and Plato. He points out with rare skill and ingenuity that the new religion makes no claim on men to give up their callings and professions; for instance, advocates like Minucius, the author of “the Dialogue,” never dream, save in times of vacation, of leaving the Forum the scene of their life-work. Christians, like other men, busy themselves with the same occupations; so society may surely accept them without any scruples. The cultivation of Art--the study of Letters--are by no means incompatible with the profession of Christianity. The religion of Jesus uses all these things, and using them sanctifies them.

Eminent teachers, such as Clement of Alexandria at the close of the second century in his _Pædagogus_, give directions to believers to enable them to live a Christian life in the world. Origen, in many respects a “Rigourist,” is far from emulating Tertullian in his stern denunciations and warnings; and even such men as the saintly Cyprian, who closed his beautiful life by a voluntary martyrdom, shows by his own example that there were even times and seasons when a Christian by flight might rightly avoid arrest and suffering for the Name’s sake.

In this gentler, more accommodating school it was clear that heathen art was not forbidden. The decoration of even the earlier sepulchral chambers in the Roman catacombs plainly indicates this freedom.

That this policy of the gentler school of early teaching, which countenanced, perhaps suggested, many allowances, especially in matters of purely ceremonial idolatry, was adopted by the majority of believers, is clear from the numbers of Christians who we know lived in the imperial court, served in the army, and occupied positions in the civil service.

For instance, in the imperial court, in the days of S. Paul, we meet with salutations from Christians in Cæsar’s household (Phil. iv. 22).

The well-known “graffito” on the Palatine, of the caricature of a crucifix, is an indication that there were Christians among the imperial pages in the reign of Marcus,[80] A.D. 161-80.

Irenæus (iv. 30) in the last quarter of the second century expressly writes as follows: “And what of those who in the royal palace are believers?”

Marcia, the favourite of Commodus, if not a Christian, was more than kind to the Christian sect; that many Christians were in her circle is certain. Even Tertullian testifies (_Apol._ xxxvi.) to the fact that there were Christians in the palace of the Emperor Septimius Severus, A.D. 193-212.

In the court of Alexander Severus (A.D. 222-35) were many Christians; and it has been supposed, not without some reason, that the Emperor himself was secretly a believer.

Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria (quoted in Euseb. _H. E._ vii. 10), writing of the favourable disposition of the Emperor Valerian towards Christians in the earlier part of his reign, A.D. 253, says: “All his house (court) was filled with pious persons; it was indeed a congregation of the Lord.”

In the first part of Diocletian’s reign, A.D. 284-96, the court of Nicomedia was in great measure composed of Christians; the wife and daughter of the Emperor were believers.

From this chain of references to the presence of Christians in the imperial court from the days of S. Paul to the latter years of the third century, we are compelled to conclude that large allowances on the part of the Emperor were not unfrequently made to the sect, and even that not a few concessions outwardly to take part in the ceremonies of official paganism must have been allowed to the Christian courtier all through the period when Christianity was an unlawful and forbidden religion.

In the army a similar spirit of mutual allowance and concession must have been often shown. It is clear that from the very first there were not a few Christian soldiers in the Legions. There must have been many cases in which the superior officers connived at the scruples of Christian soldiers; while, on the other hand, the Christian Legionary must have consented generally to share in the more public and official ceremonies in which the old worship of the gods was inextricably mixed up. Nowhere were the difficulties, however, for believers more acute than in the army, and the slightest ill-will or pagan bigotry on the part of the superior officer made the position of a Christian soldier absolutely untenable even when the soldier belonged to what we have termed the gentler and more accommodating school of Christian teaching. Martyrs in the army, it has been noticed, were relatively more numerous than in the civil callings.[81]

The civil service contained undoubtedly many Christians in the early centuries of the era; see Aristides (_Apol._ xv.), who, writing of Christians, says: “Where they are judges they judge righteously.” Tertullian refers to the presence of Christians in all ranks, and states how “they could be found in the palace, in the Senate, and in the Forum” (_Ad. Nat._ i. 1 and _Apol._ i.). Cyprian, Ep. lxxx. 1, and other early authorities could be quoted here. Eus. _H. E._ viii. 1, specially mentions how provinces were occasionally ruled by Christian governors, and calls attention to a Phrygian city whose whole population including officials were Christians. He was writing of the last years of the third century. Such Christian officials must have had great allowances made to them, and they must have often availed themselves of the licence permitted to believers on the occasion of purely State ceremonials, which were literally permeated with references to the old State religion.

Instances and examples from the Old Testament books were adduced by the teachers of the gentler school of Christian life in support of the allowances made to believers to retain their court appointments and civil service offices, and to carry on their professions in spite of the idolatrous associations connected with these offices and callings.

Great saints such as Daniel--revered patriarchs such as Joseph--had been ministers of mighty idol-worshipping sovereigns, and must have been present at and given a certain countenance to official pagan ceremonies. Naaman, the eminent servant of the King of Syria, after he had accepted the worship of the God of Israel, even asked the great prophet Elisha permission to accompany his royal master into the temple of the god Rimmon, and to pay obeisance to the Syrian idol on State occasions; and asked that he might be forgiven for this apparent act of idolatry. In reply, Elisha simply bade him “go in peace” (2 Kings v. 18-19).

But in spite of these kindly allowances, these gentler rules and directions, the condition of Christians, even for those, and they certainly were in the majority, who followed the teaching of the more kindly and lenient school, was very hard and difficult. In the family life--in public life, the searchings of heart of a true believer must have been often very acute and distressing, and their position most precarious; and in those times when a wave of pagan fanaticism swept over the imperial court, the province, or the city, no maxims of earthly prudence and caution, however carefully followed out, would have been able to save them from prosecution; and prosecution was invariably followed by the breaking up of their homes, by rigorous imprisonment, confiscation of their property, loss of rank and position, too often by torture and death.

To turn once more to the sterner and smaller school of “Rigourists,” for these, after all, were “les âmes d’élite” of the Christians in the first three centuries; in later times such men and women possibly were termed fanatics, they have been often branded as wild and unpractical persons; but it was to these heroic souls after all that in great measure Christianity owed its final victory.

The wonderful and rapid spread of Christianity noticeable after the Milan toleration Edict of Constantine, A.D. 313, has often been commented upon with surprise. From being a persecuted and despised cult, Christianity became, long before the fourth century had run its course, _the religion_ of the Empire; it had previously gained evidently the hearts of the people in well-nigh all the provinces of the mighty Empire.

Now no imperial edicts--no mere favour and patronage of the Emperor and his court, could ever have won for Christianity that widespread and general acceptance among the people so noticeable within fifty years of the Milan proclamation of Constantine.[82] _Something_ more was needed. For a little over two hundred years the Christians had been sowing the seeds of a new and nobler view of life--“it had gradually taught the supreme sanctity of love--it had presented an ideal destined for centuries to draw around it all that was greatest as well as all that was noblest on earth; and one great cause of its success was that it produced more heroic actions and formed more upright men than any other creed.... Noble lives crowned by heroic deaths were the best arguments of the infant Church.”[83]

There is no doubt but that a deep impression had been gradually made upon the masses (_i.e._ the people generally of the Empire) by the undaunted behaviour under suffering, of the confessors in the two centuries which followed the death of Peter and Paul; and this impression was deepened by the events connected with the last terrible persecution of Diocletian. The extent of this last onslaught, the awful severity of its edicts, the fearful thoroughness with which these edicts were carried out, the numbers, the constancy and brave patience of the confessors, went home to the hearts of the indifferent; it affected even the enemies of the Church, and brought about a complete revulsion of feeling towards the once hated and despised sect.

And it must be remembered that the examples of the marvellous endurance of suffering, the constancy, the brave patience, the heroic deaths, were drawn in a vast majority of conspicuous cases from the school of Rigourists, from that company of men and women of intense, perhaps of exaggerated earnestness, who listened to and obeyed the burning words of a Tertullian or an Hippolytus, rather than to the gentler counsels of a Minucius Felix and the teachers who pointed out to Christians a way of living in the world which only rarely required such tremendous sacrifices as home and family, career and profession, even life itself--things very dear to men.

Surely no just historian would dare to speak slightingly of these splendid lives of utter sacrifice of self, when he reflects on the power which such lives have exercised over their fellow-men. The debt which Christianity owes to this stern school of Rigourists is simply measureless.

In the last half of the third century there arose a Christian poet--the first great songman who had appeared since the famous singers of the Augustan age had passed away. The popularity of Prudentius has been enduring; for centuries in many lands his striking and original poems have been read and re-read. Among his poems the most eagerly sought after have been the hymns descriptive of and in praise of the martyrs for the “Name’s” sake. These loved poems are known as “_Peri-Stephanôn_”--the Book of the (Martyrs’) Crowns.

It is the halo of glory surrounding these martyrs or confessors that especially strikes the historian. We see in these popular poems what a profound, what a lasting impression the sufferings of the martyrs had made on the peoples of the Roman Empire. The saint-sufferers, men or women, became soon an object of something more than reverence.

The heroic personages of Prudentius belong to no one land, to no solitary nationality. Nowhere was the truth of the well-known saying that “the blood of the martyr was the seed of the Church” more conspicuously exemplified than in the songs of Prudentius. It has been remarked with great force and truth that in the burning lilts of this great Spanish poet of the later years of the fourth century, we must perforce recognize something more than the inspiration of a solitary individual. We seem to hear in his impassioned words the echoes of the voice of the people.[84]

VIII

WHAT THE RELIGION OF JESUS OFFERED IN RETURN FOR THE HARDSHIPS
CHRISTIANS HAD TO ENDURE IN THE EARLY CENTURIES

Such was the life of a Christian for nearly two hundred and fifty years after the deaths of Peter and Paul at Rome.

For _all_, as we have urged, even for the majority who were disciples of the gentler, less exacting school of teaching, but who generally accepted the yoke and burden of Christ, the life must have been very hard and difficult, at times even full of danger; while for _some_, _i.e._, for the disciples of the school of “Rigourists,” so hard--so austere--so full of nameless perils, that men now can scarcely credit that any could really have lived so difficult, so painful a life--could have listened to and striven in real earnest to obey such rules as the great Rigourist master, Tertullian, laid down for the faithful; as, for instance:

“Fast--because rigid fasting is a preparation for martyrdom; tortures will have no material to work on; your dry skins will better resist the iron claws; your blood, already exhausted, will flow less freely.”[85]

“Women, shun the marriage bond. To what purpose will you bear children, seeing you are longing to be taken out of this sinful world, and you are desirous to send your children before you[86] (to glory).”

“Ye women (take heed how you adorn yourselves), for I know not how the wrist that is accustomed to the (gemmed) bracelet will endure the roughness of the chain. I know not how the leg that has rejoiced in the golden anklet will endure the harsh restraint of the iron fetters. I fear the neck hung round with a chain of pearls and emeralds will leave scanty room for the sword of the executioner.” “Dear sisters, let us meditate on hardships, then when they come to us we shall not feel them; let us give up luxuries and we shall not regret them; for Christians now, remember, pass their time not in gold, but in iron. At this moment are the angels weaving for you robes of martyrdom.”[87]

* * * * *

But in return for all this, Christianity offered much--in truth, a splendid guerdon for the life of sacrifice. In the first place, the Christian was delivered from the dread spectre which constantly haunted the life of the pagan--_the fear of death_. Throughout life, sleeping and waking, to the pagan of all ranks and orders, death was an enemy. What the men of the pagan Empire in the early Christian centuries felt in respect of the great universal foe--what they thought of it--is well shown in the epitaphs on the pagan tombs of the first, second, and third centuries.[88]

Complete freedom from this ever-present dread was the immediate reward received by the believer: so far was death from being an enemy, that to the Christian it appeared as the best and most longed for friend. Again and again the Church was compelled to restrain rather than to encourage candidates for martyrdom. From Paul, who wrote how “he desired to depart and be with Christ, which was far better” (Phil. i. 23); from Ignatius, whose passionate desire for a martyr’s death appears and reappears, in his Letter to the Romans, in such words as “it is good for me to die for Jesus Christ, rather than to reign over the farthest bounds of the earth”; “Suffer me to receive the pure light when I come thither, then I shall be a man indeed”; “Let me be an imitator of the passion of my God” (_To the Romans_, vi.); from the thousand epitaphs in the catacomb tombs, which we can still read, we gather this knowledge--the absolute freedom of the Christian from that fear of death which weighed so heavily upon all pagan society.

The very expressions used by the disciples of the first centuries when speaking of the dread enemy,[89] bear curious witness to the new relation of the believer to the ancient foe of man; they spoke of death as “a passage into life”--as “a sleep.” The spot where the dead were laid was now termed “a cemetery”--“a place of sleeping”; burial was called “depositio”--the body laid up as it were in trust.

Cyprian the saintly, the martyr Bishop of Carthage, well voices the feelings of Christians in the matter of death the friend:[90] “Let us think what we mean when we speak of the presence of Christ (after death), of the increasing hosts of our friends, the loved, the reverenced, the sainted who are there. Cyprian cannot even mourn the departed--he only misses them as friends gone on a long journey. He is unable to bear the putting on black garments of mourning, in memory of those who wear the fadeless white.” “Put the terror of death quite away--think only of the deathlessness beyond.” “Let us greet the day which gives to each of us his own country ... which restores us to paradise. Who that has lived in foreign lands would not hasten to go back to his own country?... We look on paradise as our country.”

The wondrous joy which came to the Christian in the assemblies we have been picturing--the fact of the new Brotherhood--the feeling of the presence of the Master in their midst, watching over them--has been already dwelt upon at some length.

The blessed consciousness of _the forgiveness of all sin_, the knowledge that in repentance and in prayer they could ever wash anew their scarred robes white in the blood of the Lamb, was a source of perpetual and ever-recurring joy to the earnest Christian. The doctrine of the atonement ever would give them constant comfort and confidence in all the difficulties and dangers of common everyday life--“Though their sins were as scarlet they would become white as snow,” was an ancient Hebrew saying of Isaiah. It was one of the precious treasures inherited by the Christian from the Jewish Church. And in the sorely harassed and tempted life of the world of Rome the words would be often repeated by the believers, with the new striking Christian addition--“when washed in the blood of the Lamb,” and the memory of the beautiful saying would ever supply fresh courage for the conflict.

* * * * *

Perhaps the most powerful and sustaining of all the Christian beliefs, the one that never for an instant was absent from their thoughts, was the _hope_--aye, more than hope, the certainty that bliss indescribable awaited the soul of the happy redeemed _the moment_ it quitted the body--“To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise”--a wonderful promise, indeed, of the Redeemer, which must have brought ineffable sweetness and repose into thousands of storm-tossed hearts,--a promise which must have made up for many a hard and painful struggle. The life so hard and difficult--so full of dangers and perplexities--would soon come to an end, and then _at once_ the beatific vision would be their guerdon, and rest and peace and joy would be the portion of the redeemed souls for ever.

Our picture of the inner life of the Christian in the early Christian centuries would be incomplete were we not to allude to the influence, perhaps scarcely recognised but ever at work, of portions of the “Revelation” of S. John. Holding, of course, in the teaching of the Christian masters a very different position to the Gospels, which, of course, formed the authoritative basis of all Christian instruction, the “Revelation” occupied a peculiar and singularly influential place in the thoughts of the early harassed believers.

Many of the more mystical and obscure sections of that wonderful composition which was very generally accepted as the work of the beloved apostle, we may assume were little dwelt upon either in public teaching or in private meditation; the mystic prophecies of the seer were, comparatively speaking, but little read, and received then as now different interpretations; but interspersed with these prophecies, and not necessarily connected with them, occur passages of surpassing beauty, in which pictures of the heaven-life are painted by no mortal hand. It was these which arrested the imagination, and found a home in many a Christian heart. The passages which contained these pictures were no doubt repeated again and again by lonely harassed men and women in the silent watches of the night, in the public worship, in the study chamber, especially in the hour of danger and trial.

The _hope_ of a glorious eternity was vividly painted in several remarkable passages of S. John’s great Vision of Heaven and the future things. The disciples of the sterner school, who were trained so to speak for martyrdom, felt themselves specially addressed when the Seer told his vision of the thrones and of those who sat on them,--they would occupy the place of the souls of those who had been slain for the witness of Jesus (Rev. xx. 4); and again they would call to mind that when the Seer asked who were these arrayed in white robes, and whence came they? he was told that these were they which came out of great tribulation, and who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb; and that therefore were they before the throne of God, and that from their eyes God would wipe away all tears (Rev. vii. 13-17).

To the disciples of the gentler school, too, words of immortal hope were spoken often in the same Book which spoke as no writing of earth had ever spoken before of the heaven-life. The Seer heard as it were the voice of _a great multitude_, and said how blessed they were which are called to the marriage-supper of the Lamb; and the same Seer heard how there should be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying; and again repeated the glorious promise that His servants (_all_ His servants) should see His face, and that they should reign for ever and ever (Rev. xix. 6, 9, xxi. 4, xxii. 4, 5).

Moreover, they read and pondered over that most beautiful, most exhaustive promise made to _all_ His faithful servants,--not only to the martyr band,--“Blessed are they that wash their robes, that they may have the right to come to the tree of life, and may enter in by the gates into the city (of God).” (Rev. xxii. 14, REVISED VERSION).

* * * * *

These and many other like sunlit sayings of the Book of Life in the Gospels, Epistles, and Revelation of S. John were ever ringing in the ears of the Christians of the first days, and telling them of the _immortal hope_ which was their blessed treasure,--words which sweetened their hard and too frequently painful lot, which made them feel that they had made a good exchange when they gave up the fleeting and often sinful pleasures of earth for the sure hope of the immortal joys of heaven. They felt how poor and tawdry after all were the things they had renounced in comparison with what awaited them when the short and weary period of human life came to an end.

In spite of what the believers renounced for the Name’s sake, notwithstanding the many daily trials and dangers to which they were ever exposed, they were strangely happy with a new happiness quite unknown in the old pagan world, with a joy no man could take from them. Pagan society, whenever it deigned to notice them, treated them with a contemptuous pity, which too often shaded into positive hatred. We see this in the “Acts” of the Martyrs from the questions put to them by the Roman officials when they were brought before the tribunals, simply because they were Christians. This was the estimate of the sect entertained by men like the great Antonine Emperors, Pius and Marcus. The summary of Fronto the famous rhetorician, Marcus’ tutor and friend, reproduced in the discourse of Cæcilius in the Dialogue of Minucius Felix, repeats too clearly the same disparaging view coloured with contempt and scarcely veiled hatred.

Nowhere is the pagan conception of the misery and wretchedness of the Christian life more clearly expressed than in the picturesque and graphic poem of Rutilius Namatianus,[91] a contemporary of Paulinus of Nola in the first years of the fifth century.

It is a comparatively late pagan criticism of Christianity, but it admirably expresses the common view of pagan society, and exactly coincides with the opinion of such eminent Romans as Marcus and his friend Fronto in the second century.

“Is there any sense,” writes Rutilius, “in living a wretched life for fear of becoming unhappy? these Christians love to torture themselves: they are more cruel even than the offended gods. I ask the question, has not the sect the secret of poisons more deadly than any possessed by Circe; for Circe only brought about a danger in the body, but these people change the very soul?”