History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene Christianity. A.D. 100-325.

HISTORY

of the

CHRISTIAN CHURCH¹¹    Schaff, Philip, History of the Christian Church, (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.) 1997. This material has been carefully compared, corrected, and emended (according to the 1910 edition of Charles Scribner's Sons) by The Electronic Bible Society, Dallas, TX, 1998.

by

PHILIP SCHAFF

Christianus sum.                   Christiani nihil a me alienum puto

VOLUME II

ANTE-NICENE CHRISTIAINITY

a.d. 100–325.

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION REVISED

A few months after the appearance of the revised edition of this volume, Dr. Bryennios, the learned Metropolitan of Nicomedia, surprised the world by the publication of the now famous Didache, which he had discovered in the Jerusalem Monastery of the Most Holy Sepulchre at Constantinople. This led me, in justice to myself and to my readers, to write an independent supplement under the title: The Oldest Church Manual, called the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, etc., which is now passing through the press.

At the same time I have taken advantage of a new issue of this History, without increasing the size and the price, to make in the plates all the necessary references to the Didache where it sheds new light on the post-apostolic age (especially on pages 140, 184, 185, 202, 226, 236, 239, 241, 247, 249, 379, 640).

I have also brought the literature up to date, and corrected a few printing errors, so that this issue may be called a revised edition. A learned and fastidious German critic and professional church historian has pronounced this work to be far in advance of any German work in the fullness of its digest of the discoveries and researches of the last thirty years. ("Theolog. Literatur-Zeitung," for March 22, 1884.) But the Bryennios discovery, and the extensive literature which it has called forth, remind me of the imperfect character of historical books in an age of such rapid progress as ours.

The Author.

New York, April 22, 1885.

FIFTH EDITION

The fourth edition (1886) was a reprint of the third, with a few slight improvements. In this fifth edition I have made numerous additions to the literature, and adapted the text throughout to the present stage of research, which continues to be very active and fruitful in the Ante-Nicene period.

Several topics connected with the catechetical instruction, organization, and ritual (baptism and eucharist) of the early Church are more fully treated in my supplementary monograph, The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, or The Oldest Church Manual, which first appeared in June, 1885, and in a third edition, revised and enlarged, January, 1889, (325 pages).

P. S.

New York, July, 1889.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

This second volume contains the history of Christianity from the end of the Apostolic age to the beginning of the Nicene.

The first edict of Toleration, A. D. 311, made an end of persecution; the second Edict of Toleration, 311 (there is no third), prepared the way for legal recognition and protection; the Nicene Council, 325, marks the solemn inauguration of the imperial state-church. Constantine, like Eusebius, the theologian, and Hosius, the statesman, of his reign, belongs to both periods and must be considered in both, though more fully in the next.

We live in an age of discovery and research, similar to that which preceded the Reformation. The beginnings of Christianity are now absorbing the attention of scholars.

During the present generation early church history has been vastly enriched by new sources of information, and almost revolutionized by independent criticism. Among the recent literary discoveries and publications the following deserve special mention:

The Syriac Ignatius (by Cureton 1845 and 1849), which opened a new chapter in the Ignatian controversy so closely connected with the rise of Episcopacy and Catholicism; the Philosophumena of Hippolytus (by Miller 1851, and by Duncker and Schneidewin, 1859), which have shed a flood of light on the ancient heresies and systems of thought, as well as on the doctrinal and disciplinary commotions in the Roman church in the early part of third century; the Tenth Book of The Pseudo-Clementine Homilies (by Dressel, 1853), which supplements our knowledge of a curious type of distorted Christianity in the post-apostolic age, and furnishes, by an undoubted quotation, a valuable contribution to the solution of the Johannean problem; the Greek Hermas from Mt. Athos (the Codex Lipsiensis, published by Anger and Tischendorf, 1856); a new and complete Greek MS. of the First Epistle of the Roman Clement with several important new chapters and the oldestwritten Christian prayer (about one tenth of the whole), found in a Convent Library at Constantinople (by Bryennios, 1875); and in the same Codex the Second (so called) Epistle of Clement, or post-Clementine Homily rather, in its complete form (20 chs. instead of 12), giving us the first post-apostolic sermon, besides a new Greek text of the Epistle of Barnabus; a Syriac Version of Clement in the library of Jules Mohl, now at Cambridge (1876); fragments of Tatian’s Diatessaron with Ephraem’s Commentary on it, in an Armenian version (Latin by Mösinger 1878); fragments of the apologies of Melito (1858), and Aristides (1878); the complete Greek text of the Acts of Thomas (by Max Bonnet, 1883); and the crowning discovery of all, the Codex Sinaiticus, the only complete uncial MS. of the Greek Testament, together with the Greek Barnabus and the Greek Hermas (by Tischendorf, 1862), which, with the facsimile edition of the Vatican Codex (1868–1881, 6 vols.), marks an epoch in the science of textual criticism of the Greek Testament and of those two Apostolic Fathers, and establishes the fact of the ecclesiastical use of all our canonical books in the age of Eusebius.

In view of these discoveries we would not be surprised if the Exposition of the Lord’s Oracles by Papias, which was still in existence at Nismes in 1215, the Memorials of Hegesippus, and the whole Greek original of Irenaeus, which were recorded by a librarian as extant in the sixteenth century, should turn up in some old convent.

In connection with these fresh sources there has been a corresponding activity on the part of scholars. The Germans have done and are doing an astonishing amount of Quellenforschung and Quellenkritik in numerous monographs and periodicals, and have given us the newest and best critical editions of the Apostolic Fathers and Apologists. The English with their strong common sense, judicial calmness, and conservative tact are fast wheeling into the line of progress, as is evident from the collective works on Christian Antiquities, and the Christian Biography, and from Bp. Lightfoot’s Clementine Epistles, which are soon to be followed by his edition of the Ignatian Epistles. To the brilliant French genius and learning of Mr. Renan we owe a graphic picture of the secular surroundings of early Christianity down to the time of Marcus Aurelius, with sharp glances into the literature and life of the church. His Historie des Origines du Christianisme, now completed in seven volumes, after twenty year’s labor, is well worthy to rank with Gibbon’s immortal work. The Rise and Triumph of Christianity is a grander theme than the contemporary Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, but no historian can do justice to it without faith in the divine character and mission of that peaceful Conqueror of immortal souls, whose kingdom shall have no end.

The importance of these literary discoveries and investigations should not blind us to the almost equally important monumental discoveries and researches of Cavalier de Rossi, Garrucci, and other Italian scholars who have illuminated the subterranean mysteries of the church of Rome and of Christian art. Neander, Gieseler, and Baur, the greatest church historians of the nineteenth century, are as silent about the catacombs as Mosheim and Gibbon were in the eighteenth. But who could now write a history of the first three centuries without recording the lessons of those rude yet expressive pictures, sculptures, and epitaphs from the homes of confessors and martyrs? Nor should we overlook the gain which has come to us from the study of monumental inscriptions, as for instance in rectifying the date of Polycarp’s martyrdom who is now brought ten years nearer to the age of St. John.

Before long there will be great need of an historic architect who will construct a beautiful and comfortable building out of the vast material thus brought to light. The Germans are historic miners, the French and English are skilled manufacturers; the former understand and cultivate the science of history, the latter excel in the art of historiography. A master of both would be the ideal historian. But God has wisely distributed his gifts, and made individuals and nations depend upon and supplement each other.

The present volume is an entire reconstruction of the corresponding part of the first edition (vol. I p. 144–528), which appeared twenty-five years ago. It is more than double in size. Some chapters (e.g. VI. VII. IX.) and several sections (e.g. 90–93, 103, 155–157, 168, 171, 184, 189, 190, 193, 198–204, etc.) are new, and the rest has been improved and enlarged, especially the last chapter on the literature of the church. My endeavor has been to bring the book up to the present advanced state of knowledge, to record every important work (German, French, English, and American) which has come under my notice, and to make the results of the best scholarship of the age available and useful to the rising generation.

In conclusion, I may be permitted to express my thanks for the kind reception which has been accorded to this revised edition of the work of my youth. It will stimulate me to new energy in carrying it forward as far as God may give time and strength. The third volume needs no reconstruction, and a new edition of the same with a few improvements will be issued without delay.

Philip Schaff.

Union Theological Seminary,

October, 1883.

Illustrations from the Catacombs.

Alphabetical Index.

SECOND PERIOD

ANTE-NICENE CHRISTIANITY

or,

THE AGE OF PERSECUTION AND MARTYRDOM

from the

DEATH OF JOHN TO CONSTANTINE THE GREAT

a.d. 100–325.

"The blood of martyrs is the seed of the church"

SECOND PERIOD

ANTE-NICENE CHRISTIANITY

or,

THE AGE OF PERSECUTION AND MARTYRDOM

from the

DEATH OF JOHN TO CONSTANTINE THE GREAT

a.d. 100–325.

§ 1. Literature on the Ante-Nicene Age

I. Sources

1. The writings of the Apostolic Fathers, the Apologists, and all the ecclesiastical authors of the 2nd and 3rd, and to some extent of the 4th and 5th centuries; particularly Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Tertullian, Cyprian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Eusebius, Jerome, Epiphanius, and Theodoret.

2. The writings of the numerous heretics, mostly extant only in fragments.

3. The works of the pagan opponents of Christianity, as Celsus, Lucian, Porphyry, Julian the Apostate.

4. The occasional notices of Christianity, in the contemporary classical authors, Tacitus, Suetonius, the younger Pliny, Dion Cassius.

II. Collections of Sources, (besides those included in the comprehensive Patristic Libraries):

Gebhardt, Harnack, and Zahn: Patrum Apostolicorum Opera. Lips., 1876; second ed. 1878 sqq.

Fr. Xav. Funk (R.C.): Opera Patrum Apost. Tübing., 1878, 1881, 1887, 2 vols. The last edition includes the Didache.

I. C. Th. Otto: Corpus Apologetarum Christianorum saeculi secundi. Jenae, 1841 sqq., in 9 vols.; 2nd ed. 1847–1861; 3rd ed. 1876 sqq. ("plurimum aucta et emendata").

Roberts And Donaldson: Ante-Nicene Christian Library. Edinburgh (T.& T. Clark), 1868–’72, 25 volumes. American edition, chronologically arranged and enlarged by Bishop A. C. Coxe, D. D., with a valuable Bibliographical Synopsis by E. C. Richardson. New York (Christian Literature Company), 1885–’87, 9 large vols.

The fragments of the earliest Christian writers, whose works are lost, may be found collected in Grabe: Spicilegium Patrum ut et Haereticorum Saeculi I. II. et III. (Oxon. 1700; new ed. Oxf. 1714, 3 vols.); in Routh: Reliquiae Sacrae, sive auctorum fere jam perditorum secundi, tertiique saeculi fragmenta quae supersunt (Oxon. 1814 sqq. 4 vols.; 2nd ed. enlarged, 5 vols. Oxf. 1846–48); and in Dom. I. B. Pitra (O. S. B., a French Cardinal since 1863): Spicilegium Solesmense, complectens sanctorum patrum scriptorumque eccles. anecdota hactenus opera, selecta e Graecis, Orientialibus et Latinis codicibus (Paris, 1852–’60, 5 vols.). Comp. also Bunsen: Christianity and Mankind, etc. Lond. 1854, vols. V., VI. and VII., which contain the Analecta Ante-Nicaena (reliquicae literariae, canonicae, liturgicae).

The haereseological writings of Epiphanius, Philastrius, Pseudo-Tertullian, etc. are collected in Franc. Oehler: Corpus haereseologicum. Berol. 1856–61, 3 vols. They belong more to the next period.

The Jewish and Heathen Testimonies are collected by N. Lardner, 1764, new ed. by Kippis, Lond. 1838.

III. Histories.

1. Ancient Historians.

Hegesippus (a Jewish Christian of the middle of the second century): Ὑπομνήματα τῶν ἐκκλησιαστικῶν πράξεων (quoted under the title πέντε ὑπομνήματα and πέντε συγγράμματα). These ecclesiastical Memorials are only preserved in fragments (on the martyrdom of James of Jerusalem, the rise of heresies, etc.) in Eusebius H. Eccl., collected by Grabe (Spicileg. II. 203–214), Routh (Reliqu. Sacrae, vol. I. 209–219), and Hilgenfeld ("Zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Theol." 1876, pp. 179 sqq.). See art. of Weizsäcker in Herzog, 2nd ed., V. 695; and of Milligan in Smith & Wace, II. 875. The work was still extant in the 16th century, and may be discovered yet; see Hilgenfeld’s "Zeitschrift" for 1880, p. 127. It is strongly Jewish-Christian, yet not Ebionite, but Catholic.

*Eusebius (bishop of Caesarea in Palestine since 315, died 340, "the father of Church History," "the Christian Herodotus," confidential friend, adviser, and eulogist of Constantine the Great): Ἐκκλησιαστικὴ ἱστορία, from the incarnation to the defeat and death of Licinius 324. Chief edd. by Stephens, Paris 1544 (ed. princeps); Valesius (with the other Greek church historians), Par. 1659; Reading, Cambr. 1720; Zimmermann, Francof. 1822; Burton, Oxon. 1838 and 1845 (2 vols.); Schwegler, Tüb. 1852; Lämmer, Scaphus. 1862 (important for the text); F. A. Heinichen, Lips. 1827, second ed. improved 1868–’70, 3 vols. (the most complete and useful edition of all the Scripta Historica of Eus.); G. Dindorf, Lips., 1871. Several versions(German, French, and English); one by Hanmer (Cambridge; 1683, etc.); another by C. F. Crusé (an Am. Episc., London, 1842, Phil., 1860, included in Bagster’s edition of the Greek Eccles. Historians, London, 1847, and in Bohn’s Eccles. Library); the best with commentary by A. C. McGiffert (to be published by "The Christian Lit. Comp.," New York, 1890).

The other historical writings of Eusebius, including his Chronicle, his Life of Constantine, and his Martyrs of Palestine, are found in Heinichen’s ed., and also in the ed. of his Opera omnia, by Migne, "Patrol. Graeca," Par. 1857, 5 vols. Best ed. of his Chronicle, by Alfred Schöne, Berlin, 1866 and 1875, 2 vols.

Whatever may be said of the defects of Eusebius as an historical critic and writer, his learning and industry are unquestionable, and his Church History and Chronicle will always remain an invaluable collection of information not attainable in any other ancient author. The sarcastic contempt of Gibbon and charge of willful suppression of truth are not justified, except against his laudatory over-estimate of Constantine, whose splendid services to the church blinded his vision. For a just estimate of Eusebius see the exhaustive article of Bishop Lightfoot in Smith & Wace, II. 308–348.

2. Modern Historians.

William Cave, (died 1713): Primitive Christianity. Lond. 4th ed. 1682, in 3 parts. The same: Lives of the most eminent Fathers of the Church that flourished in the first four centuries, 1677–’83, 2 vols.; revised by ed. H. Carey, Oxford, 1840, in 3 vols. Comp. also Cave’s Scriptorum ecclesiasticorum historia literaria, a Christo nato usque ad saeculum XIV; best ed. Oxford 1740–’43, 2 vols. fol.

*J. L. Mosheim: Commentarii de rebus Christianis ante Constantinum M. Helmst. 1753. The same in English by Vidal, 1813 sqq., 3 vols., and by Murdock, New Haven, 1852, 2 vols.

*Edward Gibbon: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. London, 1776–’88, 6 vols.; best edd. by Milman, with his own, Guizot’s and Wenck’s notes, and by William Smith, including the notes of Milman, etc. Reprinted, London, 1872, 8 vols., New York, Harpers, 1880, in 6 vols. In Chs. 15 and 16, and throughout his great work, Gibbon dwells on the outside, and on the defects rather than the virtues of ecclesiastical Christianity, without entering into the heart of spiritual Christianity which continued beating through all ages; but for fullness and general accuracy of information and artistic representation his work is still unsurpassed.

H. G. Tzschirner: Der Fall des Heidenthums. Leipz. 1829.

Edw. Burton: Lectures upon the Ecclesiastical History of the first three Centuries. Oxf. 1833, in 3 parts (in 1 vol. 1845). He made also collections of the ante-Nicene testimonies to the Divinity of Christ, and the Holy Spirit.

Henry H. Milman: The History of Christianity from the Birth of Christ to the Abolition of Paganism in the Roman Empire. Lond. 1840. 3 vols.; 2nd ed. 1866. Comp. also the first book of his History of Latin Christianity, 2d ed. London and New York, 1860, in 8 vols.

John Kaye (Bishop of Lincoln, d. 1853). Ecclesiastical History of the Second and Third Centuries, illustrated from the writinqs of Tertullian. Lond. 1845. Comp. also his books on Justin Martyr, Clement of Alex., and the Council of Nicaea (1853).

F. D. Maurice: Lectures on the Eccles. Hist. of the First and Second Cent. Cambr. 1854.

*A. Ritschl: Die Entstehung der alt-katholischen Kirche. Bonn, 1850; 2nd ed. 1857. The second edition is partly reconstructed and more positive.

*E. de Pressensé (French Protestant): Histoire de trois premiers siècles de l’église chrétienne. Par. 1858 sqq. The same in German trans. by E. Fabarius. Leipz. 1862–’63, 4 vols. English transl. by Annie Harwood Holmden, under the title: The Early Years of Christianity. A Comprehensive History of the First Three Centuries of the Christian Church, 4 vols. Vol. I. The Apost. Age; vol. II. Martyrs and Apologists; vol. III. Heresy and Christian Doctrine; vol. IV. Christian Life and Practice. London (Hodder & Stoughton), 1870 sqq., cheaper ed., 1879. Revised edition of the original, Paris, 1887 sqq.

W. D. Killen (Presbyterian): The Ancient Church traced for the first three centuries. Edinb. and New York, 1859. New ed. N. Y., 1883.

Ambrose Manahan (R. Cath.): Triumph of the Catholic Church in the Early Ages. New York, 1859.

Alvan Lamson (Unitarian): The Church of the First Three Centuries, with special reference to the doctrine of the Trinity; illustrating its late origin and gradual formation. Boston, 1860.

Milo Mahan (Episcopalian): A Church History of the First Three centuries. N. York, 1860. Second ed., 1878 (enlarged).

J. J. Blunt: History of the Christian Church during the first three centuries. London, 1861.

Jos. Schwane (R.C.): Dogmengeschichte der vornicänischen Zeit. Münster, 1862.

Th. W. Mossman: History of the Cath. Church of J. Christ from the death of John to the middle of the second century. Lond. 1873.

*Ernest Renan: L’ Histoire des origines du Christianisme. Paris, 1863–1882, 7 vols. The last two vols., I’ église Chrétienne, 1879, and Marc Aurèle, 1882, belong to this period. Learned, critical, and brilliant, but thoroughly secular, and skeptical.

*Gerhard Uhlhorn: Der Kampf des Christenthums mit dem Heidenthum. 3d improved ed. Stuttgart, 1879. English transl. by Profs. Egbert C. Smyth and C. J. H. Ropes: The Conflict of Christianity, etc. N. York, 1879. An admirable translation of a graphic and inspiring, account of the heroic conflict of Christianity with heathen Rome.

*Theod. Keim, (d. 1879): Rom und das Christenthum. Ed. from the author’s MSS. by H. Ziegler. Berlin, 1881. (667 pages).

Chr. Wordsworth (Bishop of Lincoln): A Church History to the Council of Nicea, a.d. 325. Lond. and N. York, 1881. Anglo-Catholic.

A. Plummer: The Church of the Early Fathers, London, 1887.

Of the general works on Church History, those of Baronius, Tillemont (R.C.), Schröckh, Gieseler, Neander, and Baur. (the third revised ed. of vol. 1st, Tüb. 1853, pp. 175–527; the same also transl. into English) should be noticed throughout on this period; but all these books are partly superseded by more recent discoveries and discussions of special points, which will be noticed in the respective sections.

§ 2. General Character of Ante-Nicene Christianity.

We now descend from the primitive apostolic church to the Graeco-Roman; from the scene of creation to the work of preservation; from the fountain of divine revelation to the stream of human development; from the inspirations of the apostles and prophets to the productions of enlightened but fallible teachers. The hand of God has drawn a bold line of demarcation between the century of miracles and the succeeding ages, to show, by the abrupt transition and the striking contrast, the difference between the work of God and the work of man, and to impress us the more deeply with the supernatural origin of Christianity and the incomparable value of the New Testament. There is no other transition in history so radical and sudden, and yet so silent and secret. The stream of divine life in its passage from the mountain of inspiration to the valley of tradition is for a short time lost to our view, and seems to run under ground. Hence the close of the first and the beginning of the second centuries, or the age of the Apostolic Fathers is often regarded as a period for critical conjecture and doctrinal and ecclesiastical controversy rather than for historical narration.

Still, notwithstanding the striking difference, the church of the second and third centuries is a legitimate continuation of that of the primitive age. While far inferior in originality, purity, energy, and freshness, it is distinguished for conscientious fidelity in preserving and propagating the sacred writings and traditions of the apostles, and for untiring zeal in imitating their holy lives amidst the greatest difficulties and dangers, when the religion of Christ was prohibited by law and the profession of it punished as a political crime.

The second period, from the death of the apostle John to the end of the persecutions, or to the accession of Constantine, the first Christian emperor, is the classic age of the ecclesia pressa, of heathen persecution, and of Christian martyrdom and heroism, of cheerful sacrifice of possessions and life itself for the inheritance of heaven. It furnishes a continuous commentary on the Saviour’s words: "Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves; I came not to send peace on earth, but a sword."²²   r. 4:10; Rom. 8:36; Phil. 3:10 sq. Col. 1:24 sq.; 1 Pet. 2:21 To merely human religion could have stood such an ordeal of fire for three hundred years. The final victory of Christianity over Judaism and heathenism, and the mightiest empire of the ancient world, a victory gained without physical force, but by the moral power of patience and perseverance, of faith and love, is one of the sublimest spectacles in history, and one of the strongest evidences of the divinity and indestructible life of our religion.

But equally sublime and significant are the intellectual and spiritual victories of the church in this period over the science and art of heathenism, and over the assaults of Gnostic and Ebionitic heresy, with the copious vindication and development of the Christian truth, which the great mental conflict with those open and secret enemies called forth.

The church of this period appears poor in earthly possessions and honors, but rich in heavenly grace, in world-conquering faith, love, and hope; unpopular, even outlawed, hated, and persecuted, yet far more vigorous and expansive than the philosophies of Greece or the empire of Rome; composed chiefly of persons of the lower social ranks, yet attracting the noblest and deepest minds of the age, and bearing, in her bosom the hope of the world; "as unknown, yet well-known, as dying, and behold it lives;" conquering by apparent defeat, and growing on the blood of her martyrs; great in deeds, greater in sufferings, greatest in death for the honor of Christ and the benefit of generations to come.³³   ect, as well as affection; for theirs was the fervor of a steady faith in things unseen and eternal; theirs, often, a meek patience under the most grievous wrongs; theirs the courage to maintain a good profession before the frowning face of philosophy, of secular tyranny, and of splendid superstition; theirs was abstractedness from the world and a painful self-denial; theirs the most arduous and costly labors of love; theirs a munificence in charity, altogether without example; theirs was a reverent and scrupulous care of the sacred writings; and this one merit, if they had no other, is of a superlative degree, and should entitle them to the veneration and grateful regards of the modern church. How little do many readers of the Bible, nowadays, think of what it cost the Christians of the second and third centuries, merely to rescue and hide the sacred treasures from the rage of the heathen!"

The condition and manners of the Christians in this age are most beautifully described by the unknown author of the "Epistola ad Diognetum" in the early part of the second century.⁴⁴    "The Christians," he says, "are not distinguished from other men by country, by language, nor by civil institutions. For they neither dwell in cities by themselves, nor use a peculiar tongue, nor lead a singular mode of life. They dwell in the Grecian or barbarian cities, as the case may be; they follow the usage of the country in dress, food, and the other affairs of life. Yet they present a wonderful and confessedly paradoxical conduct. They dwell in their own native lands, but as strangers. They take part in all things as citizens; and they suffer all things, as foreigners. Every foreign country is a fatherland to them, and every native land is a foreign. They marry, like all others; they have children; but they do not cast away their offspring. They have the table in common, but not wives. They are in the flesh, but do not live after the flesh. They live upon the earth, but are citizens of heaven. They obey the existing laws, and excel the laws by their lives. They love all, and are persecuted by all. They are unknown, and yet they are condemned. They are killed and are made alive. They are poor and make many rich. They lack all things, and in all things abound. They are reproached, and glory in their reproaches. They are calumniated, and are justified. They are cursed, and they bless. They receive scorn, and they give honor. They do good, and are punished as evil-doers. When punished, they rejoice, as being made alive. By the Jews they are attacked as aliens, and by the Greeks persecuted; and the cause of the enmity their enemies cannot tell. In short, what the soul is in the body, the Christians are in the world. The soul is diffused through all the members of the body, and the Christians are spread through the cities of the world. The soul dwells in the body, but it is not of the body; so the Christians dwell in the world, but are not of the world. The soul, invisible, keeps watch in the visible body; so also the Christians are seen to live in the world, but their piety is invisible. The flesh hates and wars against the soul, suffering no wrong from it, but because it resists fleshly pleasures; and the world hates the Christians with no reason, but that they resist its pleasures. The soul loves the flesh and members, by which it is hated; so the Christians love their haters. The soul is inclosed in the body, but holds the body together; so the Christians are detained in the world as in a prison; but they contain the world. Immortal, the soul dwells in the mortal body; so the Christians dwell in the corruptible, but look for incorruption in heaven. The soul is the better for restriction in food and drink; and the Christians increase, though daily punished. This lot God has assigned to the Christians in the world; and it cannot be taken from them."

The community of Christians thus from the first felt itself, in distinction from Judaism and from heathenism, the salt of the earth, the light of the world, the city of God set on a hill, the immortal soul in a dying body; and this its impression respecting itself was no proud conceit, but truth and reality, acting in life and in death, and opening the way through hatred and persecution even to an outward victory over the world.

The ante-Nicene age has been ever since the Reformation a battle-field between Catholic and Evangelical historians and polemics, and is claimed by both for their respective creeds. But it is a sectarian abuse of history to identify the Christianity of this martyr period either with Catholicism, or with Protestantism. It is rather the common root out of which both have sprung, Catholicism (Greek and Roman) first, and Protestantism afterwards. It is the natural transition from the apostolic age to the Nicene age, yet leaving behind many important truths of the former (especially the Pauline doctrines) which were to be derived and explored in future ages. We can trace in it the elementary forms of the Catholic creed, organization and worship, and also the germs of nearly all the corruptions of Greek and Roman Christianity.

In its relation to the secular power, the ante-Nicene church is simply the continuation of the apostolic period, and has nothing in common either with the hierarchical, or with the Erastian systems. It was not opposed to the secular government in its proper sphere, but the secular heathenism of the government was opposed to Christianity. The church was altogether based upon the voluntary principle, as a self-supporting and self-governing body. In this respect it may be compared to the church in the United States, but with this essential difference that in America the secular government, instead of persecuting Christianity, recognizes and protects it by law, and secures to it full freedom of public worship and in all its activities at home and abroad.

The theology of the second and third centuries was mainly apologetic against the paganism of Greece and Rome, and polemic against the various forms of the Gnostic heresy. In this conflict it brings out, with great force and freshness, the principal arguments for the divine origin and character of the Christian religion and the outlines of the true doctrine of Christ and the holy trinity, as afterwards more fully developed in the Nicene and post-Nicene ages.

The organization of this period may be termed primitive episcopacy, as distinct from the apostolic order which preceded, and the metropolitan and patriarchal hierarchy which succeeded it. In worship it forms likewise the transition from apostolic simplicity to the liturgical and ceremonial splendor of full-grown Catholicism.

The first half of the second century is comparatively veiled in obscurity, although considerable light has been shed over it by recent discoveries and investigations. After the death of John only a few witnesses remain to testify of the wonders of the apostolic days, and their writings are few in number, short in compass and partly of doubtful origin: a volume of letters and historical fragments, accounts of martyrdom, the pleadings of two or three apologists; to which must be added the rude epitaphs, faded pictures, and broken sculptures of the subterranean church in the catacombs. The men of that generation were more skilled in acting out Christianity in life and death, than in its literary defence. After the intense commotion of the apostolic age there was a breathing spell, a season of unpretending but fruitful preparation for a new productive epoch. But the soil of heathenism had been broken up, and the new seed planted by the hands of the apostles gradually took root.

Then came the great literary conflict of the apologists and doctrinal polemics in the second half of the same century; and towards the middle of the third the theological schools of Alexandria, and northern Africa, laying the foundation the one for the theology of the Greek, the other for that of the Latin church. At the beginning of the fourth century the church east and west was already so well consolidated in doctrine and discipline that it easily survived the shock of the last and most terrible persecution, and could enter upon the fruits of its long-continued sufferings and take the reins of government in the old Roman empire.

SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY.

§ 3. Literature.

I. Sources.

No statistics or accurate statements, but only scattered hints in

Pliny (107): Ep. x. 96 sq. (the letter to Trajan). Ignatius (about 110): Ad Magnes. c. 10. Ep. ad Diogn. (about 120) c. 6.

Justin Martyr (about 140): Dial. 117; Apol. I. 53.

Irenaeus (about 170): Adv. Haer. I. 10; III. 3, 4; v. 20, etc.

Tertullian (about 200): Apol. I. 21, 37, 41, 42; Ad Nat. I. 7; Ad Scap. c. 2, 5; Adv. Jud. 7, 12, 13.

Origen (d. 254): Contr. Cels. I, 7, 27; II. 13, 46; III. 10, 30; De Princ. l. IV. c. 1, § 2; Com. in Matth. p. 857, ed. Delarue.

Eusebius (d. 340): Hist. Eccl III. 1; v. 1; vii, 1; viii. 1, also books ix. and x. RUFINUS: Hist. Eccles. ix. 6.

Augustin (d. 430): De Civitate Dei. Eng. translation by M. Dods, Edinburgh, 1871; new ed. (in Schaff’s "Nicene and Post-Nicene Library"), N. York, 1887.

II. Works.

Mich. Le Quien (a learned Dominican, d. 1733): Oriens Christianus. Par. 1740. 3 vols. fol. A complete ecclesiastical geography of the East, divided into the four patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem.

Mosheim: Historical Commentaries, etc. (ed. Murdock) I. 259–290.

Gibbon: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Chap. xv.

A. Beugnot: Histoire de la destruction du paganisme en Occident. Paris 1835, 2 vols. Crowned by the Académie des inscriptions et belles-letters.

Etienne Chastel: Histoire de la destruction du paganisme dans I’ empire d’ Orient. Paris 1850. Prize essay of the Académie.

Neander: History of the Christian Relig. and Church (trans. of Torrey), I. 68–79

Wiltsch: Handbuch der kirchl. Geographie u. Statistik. Berlin 1846. I. p. 32 sqq.

Chs. Merivale: Conversion of the Roman Empire (Boyle Lectures for 1864), republ. N. York 1865. Comp. also his History of the Romans under the Empire, which goes from Julius Caesar to Marcus Aurelius, Lond. & N. York, 7 vols.

Edward A. Freeman: The Historical Geography of Europe. Lond. & N. York 1881. 2 vols. (vol. I. chs. II. & III. pp. 18–71.)

Comp. Friedländer, Sittengesch. Roms. III. 517 sqq.; and Renan: Marc-Aurèle. Paris 1882, ch. xxv. pp. 447–464 (Statistique et extension géographique du Christianisme).

V. Schultze: Geschichte des Untergangs des griech-römischen. Heidenthums. Jena, 1887.

§ 4. Hindrances and Helps.

For the first three centuries Christianity was placed in the most unfavorable circumstances, that it might display its moral power, and gain its victory over the world by spiritual weapons alone. Until the reign of Constantine it had not even a legal existence in the Roman empire, but was first ignored as a Jewish sect, then slandered, proscribed, and persecuted, as a treasonable innovation, and the adoption of it made punishable with confiscation and death. Besides, it offered not the slightest favor, as Mohammedanism afterwards did, to the corrupt inclinations of the heart, but against the current ideas of Jews and heathen it so presented its inexorable demand of repentance and conversion, renunciation of self and the world, that more, according to Tertullian, were kept out of the new sect by love of pleasure than by love of life. The Jewish origin of Christianity also, and the poverty and obscurity of a majority of its professors particularly offended the pride of the Greeks, and Romans. Celsus, exaggerating this fact, and ignoring the many exceptions, scoffingly remarked, that "weavers, cobblers, and fullers, the most illiterate persons" preached the "irrational faith," and knew how to commend it especially "to women and children."

But in spite of these extraordinary difficulties Christianity made a progress which furnished striking evidence of its divine origin and adaptation to the deeper wants of man, and was employed as such by Irenaeus, Justin, Tertullian, and other fathers of that day. Nay, the very hindrances became, in the hands of Providence, means of promotion. Persecution led to martyrdom, and martyrdom had not terrors alone, but also attractions, and stimulated the noblest and most unselfish form of ambition. Every genuine martyr was a living proof of the truth and holiness of the Christian religion. Tertullian could exclaim to the heathen: "All your ingenious cruelties can accomplish nothing; they are only a lure to this sect. Our number increases the more you destroy us. The blood of the Christians is their seed." The moral earnestness of the Christians contrasted powerfully with the prevailing corruption of the age, and while it repelled the frivolous and voluptuous, it could not fail to impress most strongly the deepest and noblest minds. The predilection of the poor and oppressed for the gospel attested its comforting and redeeming power. But others also, though not many, from the higher and educated classes, were from the first attracted to the new religion; such men as Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathaea, the apostle Paul, the proconsul Sergius Paulus, Dionysius of Athens, Erastus of Corinth, and some members of the imperial household. Among the sufferers in Domitian’s persecution were his own near kinswoman Flavia Domitilla and her husband Flavius Clemens. In the oldest part of the Catacomb of Callistus, which is named after St. Lucina, members of the illustrious gens Pomponia, and perhaps also of the Flavian house, are interred. The senatorial and equestrian orders furnished several converts open or concealed. Pliny laments, that in Asia Minor men of every rank (omnis ordinis) go over to the Christians. Tertullian asserts that the tenth part of Carthage, and among them senators and ladies of the noblest descent and the nearest relatives of the proconsul of Africa professed Christianity. The numerous church fathers from the middle of the second century, a Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Clement, Origen, Tertullian, Cyprian, excelled, or at least equalled in talent and culture, their most eminent heathen contemporaries.

Nor was this progress confined to any particular localities. It extended alike over all parts of the empire. "We are a people of yesterday," says Tertullian in his Apology, "and yet we have filled every place belonging to you—cities, islands, castles, towns, assemblies, your very camp, your tribes, companies, palace, senate, forum! We leave you your temples only. We can count your armies; our numbers in a single province will be greater." All these facts expose the injustice of the odious charge of Celsus, repeated by a modern sceptic, that the new sect was almost entirely composed of the dregs of the populace—of peasants and mechanics, of boys and women, of beggars and slaves.

§ 5. Causes of the Success of Christianity.

The chief positive cause of the rapid spread and ultimate triumph of Christianity is to be found in its own absolute intrinsic worth, as the universal religion of salvation, and in the perfect teaching and example of its divine-human Founder, who proves himself to every believing heart a Saviour from sin and a giver of eternal life. Christianity is adapted to all classes, conditions, and relations among men, to all nationalities and races, to all grades of culture, to every soul that longs for redemption from sin, and for holiness of life. Its value could be seen in the truth and self-evidencing power of its doctrines; in the purity and sublimity of its precepts; in its regenerating and sanctifying effects on heart and life; in the elevation of woman and of home life over which she presides; in the amelioration of the condition of the poor and suffering; in the faith, the brotherly love, the beneficence, and the triumphant death of its confessors.

To this internal moral and spiritual testimony were added the powerful outward proof of its divine origin in the prophecies and types of the Old Testament, so strikingly fulfilled in the New; and finally, the testimony of the miracles, which, according to the express statements of Quadratus, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, and others, continued in this period to accompany the preaching of missionaries from time to time, for the conversion of the heathen.

Particularly favorable outward circumstances were the extent, order, and unity of the Roman empire, and the prevalence of the Greek language and culture.

In addition to these positive causes, Christianity had a powerful negative advantage in the hopeless condition of the Jewish and heathen world. Since the fearful judgment of the destruction of Jerusalem, Judaism wandered restless and accursed, without national existence. Heathenism outwardly held sway, but was inwardly rotten and in process of inevitable decay. The popular religion and public morality were undermined by a sceptical and materialistic philosophy; Grecian science and art had lost their creative energy; the Roman empire rested only on the power of the sword and of temporal interests; the moral bonds of society were sundered; unbounded avarice and vice of every kind, even by the confession of a Seneca and a Tacitus, reigned in Rome and in the provinces, from the throne to the hovel. Virtuous emperors, like Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius, were the exception, not the rule, and could not prevent the progress of moral decay. Nothing, that classic antiquity in its fairest days had produced, could heal the fatal wounds of the age, or even give transient relief. The only star of hope in the gathering night was the young, the fresh, the dauntless religion of Jesus, fearless of death, strong in faith, glowing with love, and destined to commend itself more and more to all reflecting minds as the only living religion of the present and the future. While the world was continually agitated by wars, and revolutions, and public calamities, while systems of philosophy, and dynasties were rising and passing away, the new religion, in spite of fearful opposition from without and danger from within, was silently and steadily progressing with the irresistible force of truth, and worked itself gradually into the very bone and blood of the race.

"Christ appeared," says the great Augustin, "to the men of the decrepit, decaying world, that while all around them was withering away, they might through Him receive new, youthful life."

Notes.

Gibbon, in his famous fifteenth chapter, traces the rapid progress of Christianity in the Roman empire to five causes: the zeal of the early Christians, the belief in future rewards and punishment, the power of miracles, the austere (pure) morals of the Christian, and the compact church organization. But these causes are themselves the effects of a cause which Gibbon ignores, namely, the divine truth of Christianity, the perfection of Christ’s teaching and Christ’s example. See the strictures of Dr. John Henry Newman, Grammar of Assent, 445 sq., and Dr. George P. Fisher, The Beginnings of Christianity, p. 543 sqq. "The zeal" [of the early Christians], says Fisher, "was zeal for a person, and for a cause identified with Him; the belief in the future life sprang out of faith in Him who had died and risen again, and ascended to Heaven; the miraculous powers of the early disciples were consciously connected with the same source; the purification of morals, and the fraternal unity, which lay at the basis of ecclesiastical association among the early Christians, were likewise the fruit of their relation to Christ, and their common love to Him. The victory of Christianity in the Roman world was the victory of Christ, who was lifted up that He might draw all men unto Him."

Lecky (Hist. of Europ. Morals, I. 412) goes deeper than Gibbon, and accounts for the success of early Christianity by its intrinsic excellency and remarkable adaptation to the wants of the times in the old Roman empire. "In the midst of this movement," he says, "Christianity gained its ascendancy, and we can be at no loss to discover the cause of its triumph. No other religion, under such circumstances, had ever combined so many distinct elements of power and attraction. Unlike the Jewish religion, it was bound by no local ties, and was equally adapted for every nation and for every class. Unlike Stoicism, it appealed in the strongest manner to the affections, and offered all the charm of a sympathetic worship. Unlike the Egyptian religion, it united with its distinctive teaching a pure and noble system of ethics, and proved itself capable of realizing it in action. It proclaimed, amid a vast movement of social and national amalgamation, the universal brotherhood of mankind. Amid the softening influence of philosophy and civilization, it taught the supreme sanctity of love. To the slave, who had never before exercised so large an influence over Roman religious life, it was the religion of the suffering and the oppressed. To the philosopher it was at once the echo of the highest ethics of the later Stoics, and the expansion of the best teaching of the school of Plato. To a world thirsting for prodigy, it offered a history replete with wonders more strange than those of Apollonius; while the Jew and the Chaldean could scarcely rival its exorcists, and the legends of continual miracles circulated among its followers. To a world deeply conscious of political dissolution, and prying eagerly and anxiously into the future, it proclaimed with a thrilling power the immediate destruction of the globe—the glory of all its friends, and the damnation of all its foes. To a world that had grown very weary gazing on the cold passionless grandeur which Cato realized, and which Lucan sung, it presented an ideal of compassion and of love—an ideal destined for centuries to draw around it all that was greatest, as well as all that was noblest upon earth—a Teacher who could weep by the sepulchre of His friend, who was touched with the feeling of our infirmities. To a world, in fine, distracted by hostile creeds and colliding philosophies, it taught its doctrines, not as a human speculation, but as a Divine revelation, authenticated much less by reason than by faith. ’With the heart man believeth unto righteousness;’ ’He that doeth the will of my Father will know the doctrine, whether it be of God;’ ’Unless you believe you cannot understand;’ ’A heart naturally Christian;’ ’The heart makes the theologian,’ are the phrases which best express the first action of Christianity upon the world. Like all great religions, it was more concerned with modes of feeling than with modes of thought. The chief cause of its success was the congruity of its teaching with the spiritual nature of mankind. It was because it was true of the moral sentiments of the age, because it represented faithfully the supreme type of excellence to which men were then tending, because it corresponded with their religious wants, aims, and emotions, because the whole spiritual being could then expand and expatiate under its influence that it planted its roots so deeply in the hearts of men."

Merivale (Convers. of the Rom. Emp., Preface) traces the conversion of the Roman empire chiefly to four causes: 1) the external evidence of the apparent fulfilment of recorded prophecy and miracles to the truth of Christianity; 2) the internal evidence of satisfying the acknowledged need of a redeemer and sanctifier; 3) the goodness and holiness manifested in the lives and deaths of the primitive believers; 4) the temporal success of Christianity under Constantine, which "turned the mass of mankind, as with a sweeping revolution, to the rising sun of revealed truth in Christ Jesus."

Renan discusses the reasons for the victory of Christianity in the 31st chapter of his Marc-Aurèle (Paris 1882), pp. 561–588. He attributes it chiefly "to the new discipline of life," and "the moral reform," which the world required, which neither philosophy nor any of the established religions could give. The Jews indeed rose high above the corruptions of the times. "Glorie éternelle et unique, qui doit faire oublier bien des folies et des violence! Les Juifs sont les révolutionnaires du 1er et du 2e siècle de notre ère " They gave to the world Christianity. "Les populations se précipitèrent, par une sorte du mouvement instinctif, dans une secte qui satisfaisait leur aspirations les plus intimes et ouvrait des ésperances infinies." Renan makes much account of the belief in immortality and the offer of complete pardon to every sinner, as allurements to Christianity; and, like Gibbon, he ignores its real power as a religion of salvation. This accounts for its success not only in the old Roman empire, but in every country and nation where it has found a home.

§ 6. Means of Propagation.

It is a remarkable fact that after the days of the Apostles no names of great missionaries are mentioned till the opening of the middle ages, when the conversion of nations was effected or introduced by a few individuals as St. Patrick in Ireland, St. Columba in Scotland, St. Augustine in England, St. Boniface in Germany, St. Ansgar in Scandinavia, St. Cyril and Methodius among the Slavonic races. There were no missionary societies, no missionary institutions, no organized efforts in the ante-Nicene age; and yet in less than 300 years from the death of St. John the whole population of the Roman empire which then represented the civilized world was nominally Christianized.

To understand this astonishing fact, we must remember that the foundation was laid strong and deep by the apostles themselves. The seed scattered by them from Jerusalem to Rome, and fertilized by their blood, sprung up as a bountiful harvest. The word of our Lord was again fulfilled on a larger scale: "One soweth, and another reapeth. I sent you to reap that whereon ye have not labored: others have labored, and ye are entered into their labor" (John 4:38).

Christianity once established was its own best missionary. It grew naturally from within. It attracted people by its very presence. It was a light shining in darkness and illuminating the darkness. And while there were no professional missionaries devoting their whole life to this specific work, every congregation was a missionary society, and every Christian believer a missionary, inflamed by the love of Christ to convert his fellow-men. The example had been set by Jerusalem and Antioch, and by those brethren who, after the martyrdom of Stephen, "were scattered abroad and went about preaching the Word."⁵⁵    11:19. Justin Martyr was converted by a venerable old man whom he met "walking on the shore of the sea." Every Christian laborer, says Tertullian, "both finds out God and manifests him, though Plato affirms that it is not easy to discover the Creator, and difficult when he is found to make him known to all." Celsus scoffingly remarks that fuller, and workers in wool and leather, rustic and ignorant persons, were the most zealous propagators of Christianity, and brought it first to women and children. Women and slaves introduced it into the home-circle, it is the glory of the gospel that it is preached to the poor and by the poor to make them rich. Origen informs us that the city churches sent their missionaries to the villages. The seed grew up while men slept, and brought forth fruit, first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear. Every Christian told his neighbor, the laborer to his fellow-laborer, the slave to his fellow-slave, the servant to his master and mistress, the story of his conversion, as a mariner tells the story of the rescue from shipwreck.

The gospel was propagated chiefly by living preaching and by personal intercourse; to a considerable extent also through the sacred Scriptures, which were early propagated and translated into various tongues, the Latin (North African and Italian), the Syriac (the Curetonian and the Peshito), and the Egyptian (in three dialects, the Memphitic, the Thebaic, and the Bashmuric). Communication among the different parts of the Roman empire from Damascus to Britain was comparatively easy and safe. The highways built for commerce and for the Roman legions, served also the messengers of peace and the silent conquests of the cross. Commerce itself at that time, as well as now, was a powerful agency in carrying the gospel and the seeds of Christian civilization to the remotest parts of the Roman empire.

The particular mode, as well as the precise time, of the introduction of Christianity into the several countries during this period is for the most part uncertain, and we know not much more than the fact itself. No doubt much more was done by the apostles and their immediate disciples, than the New Testament informs us of. But on the other hand the mediaeval tradition assigns an apostolic origin to many national and local churches which cannot have arisen before the second or third century. Even Joseph of Arimathaea, Nicodemus, Dionysius the Areopagite, Lazarus, Martha and Mary were turned by the legend into missionaries to foreign lands.

§ 7. Extent of Christianity in the Roman Empire.

Justin Martyr says, about the middle of the second century: "There is no people, Greek or barbarian, or of any other race, by whatsoever appellation or manners they may be distinguished, however ignorant of arts or agriculture, whether they dwell in tents or wander about in covered wagons—among whom prayers and thanksgivings are not offered in the name of the crucified Jesus to the Father and Creator of all things." Half a century later, Tertullian addresses the heathen defiantly: "We are but of yesterday, and yet we already fill your cities, islands, camps, your palace, senate and forum; we have left to you only your temples."⁶⁶   sola vobis relinquimus templa."Apol.c. 37. Long before Tertullian the heathen Pliny, in his famous letter to Trajan (Epp. x. 97) had spoken of "desolata templa" and "sacra solemnia diu intermissa, " in consequence of the spread of the Christian superstition throughout the cities and villages of Asia Minor. These, and similar passages of Irenaeus and Arnobius, are evidently rhetorical exaggerations. Origen is more cautious and moderate in his statements. But it may be fairly asserted, that about the end of the third century the name of Christ was known, revered, and persecuted in every province and every city of the empire. Maximian, in one of his edicts, says that "almost all" had abandoned the worship of their ancestors for the new sect.

In the absence of statistics, the number of the Christians must be purely a matter of conjecture. In all probability it amounted at the close of the third and the beginning of the fourth century to nearly one-tenth or one-twelfth of the subjects of Rome, that is to about ten millions of souls.

But the fact, that the Christians were a closely united body, fresh, vigorous, hopeful, and daily increasing, while the heathen were for the most part a loose aggregation, daily diminishing, made the true prospective strength of the church much greater.

The propagation of Christianity among the barbarians in the provinces of Asia and the north-west of Europe beyond the Roman empire, was at first, of course, too remote from the current of history to be of any great immediate importance. But it prepared the way for the civilization of those regions, and their subsequent position in the world.

Notes.

Gibbon and Friedländer (III. 531) estimate the number of Christians at the accession of Constantine (306) probably too low at one-twentieth; Matter and Robertson too high at one-fifth of his subjects. Some older writers, misled by the hyperbolical statements of the early Apologists, even represent the Christians as having at least equalled if not exceeded the number of the heathen worshippers in the empire. In this case common prudence would have dictated a policy of toleration long before Constantine. Mosheim, in his Hist. Commentaries, etc. (Murdock’s translation I. p. 274 sqq.) discusses at length the number of Christians in the second century without arriving at definite conclusions. Chastel estimates the number at the time of Constantine at 1/15 in the West, 1/10 in the East, 1/12 on an average (Hist. de la destruct. du paganisme, p. 36). According to Chrysostom, the Christian population of Antioch in his day (380) was about 100,000, or one-half of the whole.

§ 8. Christianity in Asia.

Asia was the cradle of Christianity, as it was of humanity and civilization. The apostles themselves had spread the new religion over Palestine, Syria, and Asia Minor. According to the younger Pliny, under Trajan, the temples of the gods in Asia Minor were almost forsaken, and animals of sacrifice found hardly any purchasers. In the second century Christianity penetrated to Edessa in Mesopotamia, and some distance into Persia, Media, Bactria, and Parthia; and in the third, into Armenia and Arabia. Paul himself had, indeed, spent three years in Arabia, but probably in contemplative retirement preparing for his apostolic ministry. There is a legend, that the apostles Thomas and Bartholomew carried the gospel to India. But a more credible statement is, that the Christian teacher Pantaeus of Alexandria journeyed to that country about 190, and that in the fourth century churches were found there.

The transfer of the seat of power from Rome to Constantinople, and the founding of the East Roman empire under Constantine I. gave to Asia Minor, and especially to Constantinople, a commanding importance in the history of the Church for several centuries. The seven oecumenical Councils from 325 to 787 were all held in that city or its neighborhood, and the doctrinal controversies on the Trinity and the person of Christ were carried on chiefly in Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt.

In the mysterious providence of God those lands of the Bible and the early church have been conquered by the prophet of Mecca, the Bible replaced by the Koran, and the Greek church reduced to a condition of bondage and stagnation; but the time is not far distant when the East will be regenerated by the undying spirit of Christianity. A peaceful crusade of devoted missionaries preaching the pure gospel and leading holy lives will reconquer the holy land and settle the Eastern question.

§ 9. Christianity in Egypt.

In Africa Christianity gained firm foothold first in Egypt, and there probably as early as the apostolic age. The land of the Pharaohs, of the pyramids and sphinxes, of temples and tombs, of hieroglyphics and mummies, of sacred bulls and crocodiles, of despotism and slavery, is closely interwoven with sacred history from the patriarchal times, and even imbedded in the Decalogue as "the house of bondage." It was the home of Joseph and his brethren, and the cradle of Israel. In Egypt the Jewish Scriptures were translated more than two hundred years before our era, and this Greek version used even by Christ and the apostles, spread Hebrew ideas throughout the Roman world, and is the mother of the peculiar idiom of the New Testament. Alexandria was full of Jews, the literary as well as commercial centre of the East, and the connecting link between the East and the West. There the largest libraries were collected; there the Jewish mind came into close contact with the Greek, and the religion of Moses with the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. There Philo wrote, while Christ taught in Jerusalem and Galilee, and his works were destined to exert a great influence on Christian exegesis through the Alexandrian fathers.

Mark, the evangelist, according to ancient tradition, laid the foundation of the church of Alexandria. The Copts in old Cairo, the Babylon of Egypt, claim this to be the place from which Peter wrote his first epistle (1 Pet. 5:13); but he must mean either the Babylon on the Euphrates, or the mystic Babylon of Rome. Eusebius names, as the first bishops of Alexandria, Annianos (a.d. 62–85), Abilios (to 98), and Kerdon (to 110). This see naturally grew up to metropolitan and patriarchal importance and dignity. As early as the second century a theological school flourished in Alexandria, in which Clement and Origen taught as pioneers in biblical learning and Christian philosophy. From Lower Egypt the gospel spread to Middle and Upper Egypt and the adjacent provinces, perhaps (in the fourth century) as far as Nubia, Ethiopia, and Abyssinia. At a council of Alexandria in the year 235, twenty bishops were present from the different parts of the land of the Nile.

During the fourth century Egypt gave to the church the Arian heresy, the Athanasian orthodoxy, and the monastic piety of St. Antony and St. Pachomius, which spread with irresistible force over Christendom.

The theological literature of Egypt was chiefly Greek. Most of the early manuscripts of the Greek Scriptures—including probably the invaluable Sinaitic and Vatican MSS.—were written in Alexandria. But already in the second century the Scriptures were translated into the vernacular language, in three different dialects. What remains of these versions is of considerable weight in ascertaining the earliest text of the Greek Testament.

The Christian Egyptians are the descendants of the Pharaonic Egyptians, but largely mixed with negro and Arab blood. Christianity never fully penetrated the nation, and was almost swept away by the Mohammedan conquest under the Caliph Omar (640), who burned the magnificent libraries of Alexandria under the plea that if the books agreed with the Koran, they were useless, if not, they were pernicious and fit for destruction. Since that time Egypt almost disappears from church history, and is still groaning, a house of bondage under new masters. The great mass of the people are Moslems, but the Copts—about half a million of five and a half millions—perpetuate the nominal Christianity of their ancestors, and form a mission field for the more active churches of the West.

§ 10. Christianity in North Africa.

Böttiger: Geschichte der Carthager. Berlin, 1827.

Movers: Die Phönizier. 1840–56, 4 vols. (A standard work.)

Th. Mommsen: Röm. Geschichte, I. 489 sqq. (Book III. chs. 1–7, 5th ed.)

N. Davis: Carthage and her Remains. London & N. York, 1861.

R. Bosworth Smith: Carthage and the Carthaginians. Lond. 2nd ed. 1879. By the same: Rome and Carthage. N. York, 1880.

Otto Meltzer: Geschichte der Karthager. Berlin, vol. I. 1879.

These books treat of the secular history of the ancient Carthaginians, but help to understand the situation and antecedents.

Julius Lloyd; The North African Church. London, 1880. Comes down to the Moslem Conquest.

The inhabitants of the provinces of Northern Africa were of Semitic origin, with a language similar to the Hebrew, but became Latinized in customs, laws, and language under the Roman rule. The church in that region therefore belongs to Latin Christianity, and plays a leading part in its early history.

The Phoenicians, a remnant of the Canaanites, were the English of ancient history. They carried on the commerce of the world; while the Israelites prepared the religion, and the Greeks the civilization of the world. Three small nations, in small countries, accomplished a more important work than the colossal empires of Assyria, Babylon, and Persia, or even Rome. Occupying a narrow strip of territory on the Syrian coast, between Mount Lebanon and the sea, the Phoenicians sent their merchant vessels from Tyre and Sidon to all parts of the old world from India to the Baltic, rounded the Cape of Good Hope two thousand years before Vasco de Gama, and brought back sandal wood from Malabar, spices from Arabia, ostrich plumes from Nubia, silver from Spain, gold from the Niger, iron from Elba, tin from England, and amber from the Baltic. They furnished Solomon with cedars from Lebanon, and helped him to build his palace and the temple. They founded on the northernmost coast of Africa, more than eight hundred years before Christ, the colony of Carthage.⁷⁷   Καρχηδών), the Latin Carthago. It means New City (Neapolis). The word Kereth or Carth enters also into the names of other cities of Phoenician origin, as Cirta in Numidia. From that favorable position they acquired the control over the northern coast of Africa from the pillars of Hercules to the Great Syrtes, over Southern Spain, the islands of Sardinia and Sicily, and the whole Mediterranean sea. Hence the inevitable rivalry between Rome and Carthage, divided only by three days’ sail; hence the three Punic wars which, in spite of the brilliant military genius of Hannibal, ended in the utter destruction of the capital of North Africa (b.c. 146).⁸⁸    "Delenda est Carthago," was the narrow and cruel policy of the elder Cato. But under Augustus, who carried out the wiser plan of Julius Caesar, there arose a new Carthage on the ruins of the old, and became a rich and prosperous city, first heathen, then Christian, until it was captured by the barbarous Vandals (a.d. 439), and finally destroyed by a race cognate to its original founders, the Mohammedan Arabs (647). Since that time "a mournful and solitary silence" once more brooded over its ruins.⁹⁹   ions of N. Davis and B. Smith (Rome and Carthage, ch. xx. 263-291). The recent conquest of Tunis by France (1881) gives new interest to the past of that country, and opens a new chapter for its future. Smith describes Tunis as the most Oriental of Oriental towns, with a gorgeous mixture of races—Arabs, Turks, Moors, and Negroes—held together by the religion of Islam.

Christianity reached proconsular Africa in the second, perhaps already at the close of the first century, we do not know when and how. There was constant intercourse with Italy. It spread very rapidly over the fertile fields and burning sands of Mauritania and Numidia. Cyprian could assemble in 258 a synod of eighty-seven bishops, and in 308 the schismatical Donatists held a council of two hundred and seventy bishops at Carthage. The dioceses, of course, were small in those days.

The oldest Latin translation of the Bible, miscalled "Itala" (the basis of Jerome’s "Vulgata"), was made probably in Africa and for Africa, not in Rome and for Rome, where at that time the Greek language prevailed among Christians. Latin theology, too, was not born in Rome, but in Carthage. Tertullian is its father. Minutius Felix, Arnobius, and Cyprian bear witness to the activity and prosperity of African Christianity and theology in the third century. It reached its highest perfection during the first quarter of the fifth century in the sublime intellect and burning heart of St. Augustin, the greatest among the fathers, but soon after his death (430) it was buried first beneath the Vandal barbarism, and in the seventh century by the Mohammedan conquest. Yet his writings led Christian thought in the Latin church throughout the dark ages, stimulated the Reformers, and are a vital force to this day.

§ 11. Christianity in Europe.

"Westward the course of Empire takes its way."

This law of history is also the law of Christianity. From Jerusalem to Rome was the march of the apostolic church. Further and further West has been the progress of missions ever since.

The church of Rome was by far the most important one for all the West. According to Eusebius, it had in the middle of the third century one bishop, forty-six presbyters, seven deacons with as many sub-deacons, forty-two acolyths, fifty readers, exorcists, and door-keepers, and fifteen hundred widows and poor persons under its care. From this we might estimate the number of members at some fifty or sixty thousand, i.e. about one-twentieth of the population of the city, which cannot be accurately determined indeed, but must have exceeded one million during the reign of the Antonines.¹⁰¹⁰   is; thirty-first chapter, and Milman estimate the population of Rome at 1,200,000; Hoeck (on the basis of the Monumentum Ancyranum), Zumpt and Howson at two millions; Bunsen somewhat lower; while Dureau de la Malle tries to reduce it to half a million, on the ground that the walls of Servius Tullius occupied an area only one-fifth of that of Paris. But these walls no longer marked the limits of the city since its reconstruction after the conflagration under Nero, and the suburbs stretched to an unlimited extent into the country. Comp. vol. I. p. 359 The strength of Christianity in Rome is also confirmed by the enormous extent of the catacombs where the Christians were buried.

From Rome the church spread to all the cities of Italy. The first Roman provincial synod, of which we have information, numbered twelve bishops under the presidency of Telesphorus (142–154). In the middle of the third century (255) Cornelius of Rome held a council of sixty bishops.

The persecution of the year 177 shows the church already planted in the south of Gaul in the second century. Christianity came hither probably from the East; for the churches of Lyons and Vienne were intimately connected with those of Asia Minor, to which they sent a report of the persecution, and Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, was a disciple of Polycarp of Smyrna. Gregory of Tours states, that in the middle of the third century seven missionaries were sent from Rome to Gaul. One of these, Dionysius, founded the first church of Paris, died a martyr at Montmartre, and became the patron saint of France. Popular superstition afterwards confounded him with Dionysius the Areopagite, who was converted by Paul at Athens.

Spain probably became acquainted with Christianity likewise in the second century, though no clear traces of churches and bishops there meet us till the middle of the third. The council of Elvira in 306 numbered nineteen bishops. The apostle Paul once formed the plan of a missionary journey to Spain, and according to Clement of Rome he preached there, if we understand that country to be meant by "the limit of the West," to which he says that Paul carried the gospel.¹¹¹¹    Rom. 15:24; Clem. R. Ad Cor. c. 5 (τὸ τέρμα τῆς δύσεως)0 But there is no trace of his labors in Spain on record. The legend, in defiance of all chronology, derives Christianity in that country from James the Elder, who was executed in Jerusalem in 44, and is said to be buried at Campostella, the famous place of pilgrimage, where his bones were first discovered under Alphonse II, towards the close of the eighth century¹²¹²    See J. B. Gams (R.C.): Die Kirchengeschichte von Spanien, Regensburg, 1862-1879, 5 vols. The first vol. (422 pages) is taken up with the legendary history of the first three centuries. 75 pages are given to the discussion of Paul’s journey to Spain. Gams traces Christianity in that country to Paul and to seven disciples of the Apostles sent to Rome, namely, Torquatus, Ctesiphon, Secundus, Indaletius, Caecilius, Hesychius, and Euphrasius (according to the Roman Martyrologium, edited by Baronius, 1586).

When Irenaeus speaks of the preaching of the gospel among the Germans and other barbarians, who, "without paper and ink, have salvation written in their hearts by the Holy Spirit," he can refer only to the parts of Germany belonging to the Roman empire (Germania cisrhenana).

According to Tertullian Britain also was brought under the power of the cross towards the end of the second century. The Celtic church existed in England, Ireland, and Scotland, independently of Rome, long before the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons by the Roman mission of Augustine; it continued for some time after that event and sent offshoots to Germany, France, and the Low Countries, but was ultimately at different dates incorporated with the Roman church. It took its origin probably from Gaul, and afterwards from Italy also. The legend traces it to St. Paul and other apostolic founders. The venerable Bede (†735) says, that the British king Lucius (about 167) applied to the Roman bishop Eleutherus for missionaries. At the council of Arles, in Gaul (Arelate), in 314, three British bishops, of Eboracum (York), Londinum (London), and Colonia Londinensium (i.e. either Lincoln or more probably Colchester), were present.

The conversion of the barbarians of Northern and Western Europe did not begin in earnest before the fifth and sixth centuries, and will claim our attention in the history of the Middle Ages.

PERSECUTION OF CHRISTIANITY AND CHRISTIAN MARTYRDOM.

–––––

§ 12. Literature.

I. Sources:

Eusebius: H. E., particularly Lib. viii. and ix.

Lactantius: De Mortibus persecutorum.

The Apologies of Justin Martyr, Minucius Felix, Tertullian, and Origen, and the Epistles of Cyprian.

Theod. Ruinart: Acta primorum martyrum sincera et selecta. Par. 1689; 2nd ed. Amstel. 1713 (covering the first four cent.).

Several biographies in the Acta Sanctorum. Antw. 1643 sqq.

Les Acts des martyrs depuis l’origine de l’église Chrétienne jusqu’à nos temps. Traduits et publiés par les R. R. P. P bénédictins de la congreg. de France. Par. 1857 sqq.

The Martyrol. Hieronymianum (ed. Florentini, Luc. 1668, and in Migne’s Patrol. Lat. Opp. Hieron. xi. 434 sqq.); the Martyrol. Romanum (ed. Baron. 1586), the Menolog. Graec. (ed. Urbini, 1727); De Rossi, Roller, and other works on the Roman Catacombs.

II. Works.

John Foxe (or Fox, d. 1587): Acts and Monuments of the Church (commonly called Book of Martyrs), first pub. at Strasburg 1554, and Basle 1559; first complete ed. fol. London 1563; 9th ed. fol. 1684, 3 vols. fol.; best ed. by G. Townsend, Lond. 1843, 8 vols. 8o.; also many abridged editions. Foxe exhibits the entire history of Christian martyrdom, including the Protestant martyrs of the middle age and the sixteenth century, with polemical reference to the church of Rome as the successor of heathen Rome in the work of blood persecution. "The Ten Roman persecutions" are related in the first volume.

Kortholdt: De persecutionibus eccl. primcevae. Kiel, 1629.

Gibbon: chap. xvi.

Münter: Die Christen im heidnischen Hause vor Constantin. Copenh. 1828.

Schumann Von Mansegg (R.C.): Die Verfolgungen der ersten christlichen Kirche. Vienna, 1821.

W. Ad. Schmidt: Geschichte der Denk u. Glaubensfreiheit im ersten Jahrhundert der Kaiserherrschaft und des Christenthums. Berl. 1847.

Kritzler: Die Heldenzeiten des Christenthums. Vol. i. Der Kampf mit dem Heidthum. Leipz. 1856.

Fr. W. Gass: Das christl. Märtyrerthum in den ersten Jahrhunderten. 1859–60 (in Niedner’s "Zeitschrift für Hist. Theol." for 1859, pp. 323–392, and 1860, pp. 315–381).

F. Overbeck: Gesetze der röm. Kaiser gegen die Christen, in his Studien zur Gesch. der alten Kirche, I. Chemn. 1875.

B. Aubé: Histoire des persécutions de l’église jusqu’ à la fin des Antonins. 2nd ed. Paris 1875 (Crowned by the Académie française). By the same: Histoire des persécutions de l’église, La polémique paÿenne à la fin du II. siècle, 1878. Les Chréstiens dans l’empire romain, de la fin des Antonins au milieu du IIIe siécle (180–249), 1881. L’église et L’état dans la seconde moitié du III^e siécle, 1886.

K. Wieseler: Die Christenverfolgungen der Cäsaren, Hist. und chronol. untersucht. Gütersloh, 1878.

Gerh. Uhlhorn: Der Kampf des Christenthums mit dem Heidenthum. 3d ed. Stuttgart, 1879. Engl. transl. by Smyth & Ropes, 1879.

Theod. Keim: Rom und das Christenthum. Berlin, 1881.

E. Renan: Marc-Aurèle. Paris, 1882, pp. 53–69.

§ 13. General Survey.

The persecutions of Christianity during the first three centuries appear like a long tragedy: first, foreboding signs; then a succession of bloody assaults of heathenism upon the religion of the cross; amidst the dark scenes of fiendish hatred and cruelty the bright exhibitions of suffering virtue; now and then a short pause; at last a fearful and desperate struggle of the old pagan empire for life and death, ending in the abiding victory of the Christian religion. Thus this bloody baptism of the church resulted in the birth of a Christian world. It was a repetition and prolongation of the crucifixion, but followed by a resurrection.

Our Lord had predicted this conflict, and prepared His disciples for it. "Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves. They will deliver you up to councils, and in their synagogues they will scourge you; yea and before governors and kings shall ye be brought for My sake, for a testimony to them and to the Gentiles. And brother shall deliver up brother to death, and the father his child: and children shall rise up against parents, and cause them to be put to death. And ye shall be hated of all men for My name’s sake: but he that endureth to the end, the same shall be saved." These, and similar words, as well as the recollection of the crucifixion and resurrection, fortified and cheered many a confessor and martyr in the dungeon and at the stake.

The persecutions proceeded first from the Jews, afterwards from the Gentiles, and continued, with interruptions, for nearly three hundred years. History reports no mightier, longer and deadlier conflict than this war of extermination waged by heathen Rome against defenseless Christianity. It was a most unequal struggle, a struggle of the sword and of the cross; carnal power all on one side, moral power all on the other. It was a struggle for life and death. One or the other of the combatants must succumb. A compromise was impossible. The future of the world’s history depended on the downfall of heathenism and the triumph of Christianity. Behind the scene were the powers of the invisible world, God and the prince of darkness. Justin, Tertullian, and other confessors traced the persecutions to Satan and the demons, though they did not ignore the human and moral aspects; they viewed them also as a punishment for past sins, and a school of Christian virtue. Some denied that martyrdom was an evil, since it only brought Christians the sooner to God and the glory of heaven. As war brings out the heroic qualities of men, so did the persecutions develop the patience, the gentleness, the endurance of the Christians, and prove the world-conquering power of faith.

Number of Persecutions.

From the fifth century it has been customary to reckon ten great persecutions: under Nero, Domitian, Trajan, Marcus Aurelius, Septimius Severus, Maximinus, Decius, Valerian, Aurelian, and Diocletian.¹³¹³    So Augustin, De Civit. Dei, xviii. 52, but he mentions Antoninus for Marcus Aurelius. Lactantius counts six, Sulpitius Severus nine persecutions.2 This number was suggested by the ten plagues of Egypt taken as types (which, however, befell the enemies of Israel, and present a contrast rather than a parallel), and by the ten horns of the Roman beast making war with the Lamb, taken for so many emperors¹⁴¹⁴    Ex. chs. 5-10; Rev. 17:12 sqq. Augustin felt the impropriety of referring to the Egyptian plagues, and calls this a mere conjecture of the human mind which "sometimes hits the truth and sometimes is deceived." He also rectifies the number by referring to the persecutions before Nero, mentioned in the N. T., and to the persecutions after Diocletian, as that of Julian, and the Arian emperors. "When I think of these and the like things," he says, "it does not seem to me that the number of persecutions with which the church is to be tried can be definitely stated." But the number is too great for the general persecutions, and too small for the provincial and local. Only two imperial persecutions—those, of Decius and Diocletian—extended over the empire; but Christianity was always an illegal religion from Trajan to Constantine, and subject to annoyance and violence everywhere¹⁵¹⁵    On the relation of Christianity to the laws of the Roman empire, see Aubé, De la legatité du Christianisme dans l’empire Romain au Ier siècle. Paris 1866. Some persecuting emperors—Nero, Domitian, Galerius, were monstrous tyrants, but others—Trajan, Marcus Aurelius, Decius, Diocletian—were among the best and most energetic emperors, and were prompted not so much by hatred of Christianity as by zeal for the maintenance of the laws and the power of the government. On the other hand, some of the most worthless emperors—Commodus, Caracalla, and Heliogabalus—were rather favorable to the Christians from sheer caprice. All were equally ignorant of the true character of the new religion.

The Result.

The long and bloody war of heathen Rome against the church, which is built upon a rock, utterly failed. It began in Rome under Nero, it ended near Rome at the Milvian bridge, under Constantine. Aiming to exterminate, it purified. It called forth the virtues of Christian heroism, and resulted in the consolidation and triumph of the new religion. The philosophy of persecution is best expressed by the terse word of Tertullian, who lived in the midst of them, but did not see the end: "The blood of the Christians is the seed of the Church."

Religious Freedom.

The blood of persecution is also the seed of civil and religious liberty. All sects, schools, and parties, whether religious or political, when persecuted, complain of injustice and plead for toleration; but few practise it when in power. The reason of this inconsistency lies in the selfishness of human nature, and in mistaken zeal for what it believes to be true and right. Liberty is of very slow, but sure growth.

The ancient world of Greece and Rome generally was based upon the absolutism of the state, which mercilessly trampled under foot the individual rights of men. It is Christianity which taught and acknowledged them.

The Christian apologists first proclaimed, however imperfectly, the principle of freedom of religion, and the sacred rights of conscience. Tertullian, in prophetic anticipation as it were of the modern Protestant theory, boldly tells the heathen that everybody has a natural and inalienable right to worship God according to his conviction, that all compulsion in matters of conscience is contrary to the very nature of religion, and that no form of worship has any value whatever except as far as it is a free voluntary homage of the heart.¹⁶¹⁶    See the remarkable passageAd Scapulam, c. 2: "Tamen humani juris et naturalis potestatis est unicuique quod putaverit colere, nec alii obest, aut prodest alterius religio. Sed religionis est cogere religionem, quae sponte suscipi debeat non vi, cum et hostiae ab animo libenti expostulentur. Ita etsi nos compuleritis ad sacrificandum, nihil praestabitis diis vestris. Ab invitis enim sacrificia non desiderabunt, nisi si contentiosi sunt; contentiosus autem deus non est." Comp. the similar passage in Tertullian, Apolog. c. 24, where after enumerating the various forms of idolatry which enjoyed free toleration in the empire he continues: "Videte enim ne et hoc ad irreliqiositatis elogium concurrat, adimere libertatem reliqionis et interdicere optionem divinitatis, ut non liceat mihi colere quem velim sed cogar colere quem nolim. Nemo se ab invito coli volet, ne homo quidem."5

Similar views in favor of religious liberty were expressed by Justin Martyr,¹⁷¹⁷    Apol. I. c. 2, 4, 126 and at the close of our period by Lactantius, who says: "Religion cannot be imposed by force; the matter must be carried on by words rather than by blows, that the will may be affected. Torture and piety are widely different; nor is it possible for truth to be united with violence, or justice with cruelty. Nothing is so much a matter of free will as religion."¹⁸¹⁸    Instit. div. V. 20.7

The Church, after its triumph over paganism, forgot this lesson, and for many centuries treated all Christian heretics, as well as Jews and Gentiles, just as the old Romans had treated the Christians, without distinction of creed or sect. Every state-church from the times of the Christian emperors of Constantinople to the times of the Russian Czars and the South American Republics, has more or less persecuted the dissenters, in direct violation of the principles and practice of Christ and the apostles, and in carnal misunderstanding of the spiritual nature of the kingdom of heaven.

§ 14. Jewish Persecution.

Sources.

I. Dio Cassius: Hist. Rom. LXVIII. 32; LXIX. 12–14; Justin M.: Apol. I. 31, 47; Eusebius: H. Eccl. IV. 2. and 6. Rabbinical traditions in Derenbourg: Histoire de la Palestine depuis Cyrus jusqu’à Adrien (Paris 1867), pp. 402–438.

II. Fr. Münter.: Der Judische Krieg unter Trajan u. Hadrian. Altona and Leipz. 1821.

Deyling: Aeliae Capitol. origines et historiae. Lips. 1743.

Ewald: Gesch. des Volkes Israel, VII. 373–432.

Milman: History of the Jews, Books 18 and 20.

Grätz: Gesch. der Juden. Vol. IV. (Leipz. 1866).

Schürer: Neutestam. Zeitgeschichte (1874), pp. 350–367.

The Jews had displayed their obstinate unbelief and bitter hatred of the gospel in the crucifixion of Christ, the stoning of Stephen, the execution of James the Elder, the repeated incarceration as of Peter and John, the wild rage against Paul, and the murder of James the Just. No wonder that the fearful judgment of God at last visited this ingratitude upon them in the destruction of the holy city and the temple, from which the Christians found refuge in Pella.

But this tragical fate could break only the national power of the Jews, not their hatred of Christianity. They caused the death of Symeon, bishop of Jerusalem (107); they were particularly active in the burning of Polycarp of Smyrna; and they inflamed the violence of the Gentiles by eliminating the sect of the Nazarenes.

The Rebellion under Bar-Cochba. Jerusalem again Destroyed.

By severe oppression under Trajan and Hadrian, the prohibition of circumcision, and the desecration of Jerusalem by the idolatry of the pagans, the Jews were provoked to a new and powerful insurrection (a.d. 132–135). A pseudo-Messiah, Bar-Cochba (son of the stars, Num. 24:17), afterwards called Bar-Cosiba (son of falsehood), put himself at the head of the rebels, and caused all the Christians who would not join him to be most cruelly murdered. But the false prophet was defeated by Hadrian’s general in 135, more than half a million of Jews were slaughtered after a desperate resistance, immense numbers sold into slavery, 985 villages and 50 fortresses levelled to the ground, nearly all Palestine laid waste, Jerusalem again destroyed, and a Roman colony, Aelia Capitolina, erected on its ruins, with an image of Jupiter and a temple of Venus. The coins of Aelia Capitolina bear the images of Jupiter Capitolinus, Bacchus, Serapis, Astarte.

Thus the native soil of the venerable religion of the Old Testament was ploughed up, and idolatry planted on it. The Jews were forbidden to visit the holy spot of their former metropolis upon pain of death.¹⁹¹⁹    As reported by Justin M., a native of Palestine and a contemporary of this destruction of Jerusalem. Apol. l.c. 47. Tertullian also says (Adv. Jud. c. 13), that, "an interdict was issued forbidding any one of the Jews to linger in the confines of the district."8 Only on the anniversary of the destruction were they allowed to behold and bewail it from a distance. The prohibition was continued under Christian emperors to their disgrace. Julian the Apostate, from hatred of the Christians, allowed and encouraged them to rebuild the temple, but in vain. Jerome, who spent the rest of his life in monastic retirement at Bethlehem (d. 419), informs us in pathetic words that in his day old Jewish men and women, "in corporibus et in habitu suo iram a Domini demonstrantes," had to buy from the Roman watch the privilege of weeping and lamenting over the ruins from mount Olivet in sight of the cross, "ut qui quondam emerant sanguinem Christi, emant lacrymas suas, et ne fletus quidem i eis gratuitus sit."²⁰²⁰    Ad Zephan. 1:15 sqq. Schürer quotes the passage, p. 363.9 The same sad privilege the Jews now enjoy under Turkish rule, not only once a year, but every Friday beneath the very walls of the Temple, now replaced by the Mosque of Omar.²¹²¹    "The Wailing Place of the Jews" at the cyclopean foundation wall is just outside of the Mosque El Aska, and near "Robinson’s Arch." There I saw on Good Friday, 1877, a large number of Jews, old and young, men and women, venerable rabbis with patriarchal beards, others dirty and repulsive, kissing the stone wall and watering it with their tears, while repeating from Hebrew Bibles and prayer-books the Lamentations of Jeremiah, Psalms 76th and 79th, and various litanies. Comp. Tobler, Topographie von Jerusalem I. 629.0

The Talmud.

After this the Jews had no opportunity for any further independent persecution of the Christians. Yet they continued to circulate horrible calumnies on Jesus and his followers. Their learned schools at Tiberias and Babylon nourished this bitter hostility. The Talmud, i.e. Doctrine, of which the first part (the Mishna, i.e. Repetition) was composed towards the end of the second century, and the second part (the Gemara, i.e. Completion) in the fourth century, well represents the Judaism of its day, stiff, traditional, stagnant, and anti-Christian. Subsequently the Jerusalem Talmud was eclipsed by the Babylonian (430–521), which is four times larger, and a still more distinct expression of Rabbinism. The terrible imprecation on apostates (pratio haereticorum), designed to deter Jews from going over to the Christian faith, comes from the second century, and is stated by the Talmud to have been composed at Jafna, where the Sanhedrin at that time had its seat, by the younger Rabbi Gamaliel.

The Talmud is the slow growth of several centuries. It is a chaos of Jewish learning, wisdom, and folly, a continent of rubbish, with hidden pearls of true maxims and poetic parables. Delitzsch calls it "a vast debating club, in which there hum confusedly the myriad voices of at least five centuries, a unique code of laws, in comparison with which the law-books of all other nations are but lilliputian." It is the Old Testament misinterpreted and turned against the New, in fact, though not in form. It is a rabbinical Bible without inspiration, without the Messiah, without hope. It shares the tenacity of the Jewish race, and, like it, continues involuntarily to bear testimony to the truth of Christianity. A distinguished historian, on being asked what is the best argument for Christianity, promptly replied: the Jews.²²²²    On the literature of the Talmud see the articles in Herzog, and in McClintock & Strong, and especially Schürer, Neutestamentl. Zeitgeschichte (Leipz. 1874), pp. 45-49, to which I add Schürer’s essay: Die Predigt Jesu Christi in ihrem Verhältniss zum Altem Testament und zum Judenthum, Darmstadt, 1882. The relation of the Talmud to the Sermon on the Mount and the few resemblances is discussed by Pick in McClintock & Strong, vol. ix. 571.1

Unfortunately this people, still remarkable even in its tragical end, was in many ways cruelly oppressed and persecuted by the Christians after Constantine, and thereby only confirmed in its fanatical hatred of them. The hostile legislation began with the prohibition of the circumcision of Christian slaves, and the intermarriage between Jews and Christians, and proceeded already in the fifth century to the exclusion of the Jews from all civil and political rights in Christian states. Even our enlightened age has witnessed the humiliating spectacle of a cruel Judenhetzein Germany and still more in Russia (1881). But through all changes of fortune God has preserved this ancient race as a living monument of his justice and his mercy; and he will undoubtedly assign it an important part in the consummation of his kingdom at the second coming of Christ.

§ 15. Causes of Roman Persecution.

The policy of the Roman government, the fanaticism of the superstitious people, and the self-interest of the pagan priests conspired for the persecution of a religion which threatened to demolish the tottering fabric of idolatry; and they left no expedients of legislation, of violence, of craft, and of wickedness untried, to blot it from the earth.

To glance first at the relation of the Roman state to the Christian religion.

Roman Toleration.

The policy of imperial Rome was in a measure tolerant. It was repressive, but not preventive. Freedom of thought was not checked by a censorship, education was left untrammelled to be arranged between the teacher and the learner. The armies were quartered on the frontiers as a protection of the empire, not employed at home as instruments of oppression, and the people were diverted from public affairs and political discontent by public amusements. The ancient religions of the conquered races were tolerated as far as they did not interfere with the interests of the state. The Jews enjoyed special protection since the time of Julius Caesar.

Now so long as Christianity was regarded by the Romans as a mere sect of Judaism, it shared the hatred and contempt, indeed, but also the legal protection bestowed on that ancient national religion. Providence had so ordered it that Christianity had already taken root in the leading cities of the empire before, its true character was understood. Paul had carried it, under the protection of his Roman citizenship, to the ends of the empire, and the Roman proconsul at Corinth refused to interfere with his activity on the ground that it was an internal question of the Jews, which did not belong to his tribunal. The heathen statesmen and authors, even down to the age of Trajan, including the historian Tacitus and the younger Pliny, considered the Christian religion as a vulgar superstition, hardly worthy of their notice.

But it was far too important a phenomenon, and made far too rapid progress to be long thus ignored or despised. So soon as it was understood as a new religion, and as, in fact, claiming universal validity and acceptance, it was set down as unlawful and treasonable, a religio illicita; and it was the constant reproach of the Christians: "You have no right to exist."²³²³    "Non licet esse vos." Tertullian, Apol. 42

Roman Intolerance.

We need not be surprised at this position. For with all its professed and actual tolerance the Roman state was thoroughly interwoven with heathen idolatry, and made religion a tool of itspolicy. Ancient history furnishes no example of a state without some religion and form of worship. Rome makes no exception to the general rule. "The Romano-Hellenic state religion" (says Mommsen), "and the Stoic state-philosophy inseparably combined with it were not merely a convenient instrument for every government—oligarchy, democracy, or monarchy—but altogether indispensable, because it was just as impossible to construct the state wholly without religious elements as to discover any new state religion adapted to form a substitute for the old."²⁴²⁴    The History of Rome, translated by Dickson, vol. IV. P. II. p. 559.3

The piety of Romulus and Numa was believed to have laid the foundation of the power of Rome. To the favor of the deities of the republic, the brilliant success of the Roman arms was attributed. The priests and Vestal virgins were supported out of the public treasury. The emperor was ex-officio the pontifex maximus, and even an object of divine worship. The gods were national; and the eagle of Jupiter Capitolinus moved as a good genius before the world-conquering legions. Cicero lays down as a principle of legislation, that no one should be allowed to worship foreign gods, unless they were recognized by public statute.²⁵²⁵    "Nisi publice adscitos."4 Maecenas counselled Augustus: "Honor the gods according to the custom of our ancestors, and compel²⁶²⁶    ἀνάγκαζε, according to Dion Cassius.5 others to worship them. Hate and punish those who bring in strange gods."

It is true, indeed, that individuals in Greece and Rome enjoyed an almost unlimited liberty for expressing sceptical and even impious sentiments in conversation, in books and on the stage. We need only refer to the works of Aristophanes, Lucian, Lucretius, Plautus, Terence. But a sharp distinction was made then, as often since by Christian governments, between liberty of private thought and conscience, which is inalienable and beyond the reach of legislation, and between the liberty of public worship, although the latter is only the legitimate consequence of the former. Besides, wherever religion is a matter of state-legislation and compulsion, there is almost invariably a great deal of hypocrisy and infidelity among the educated classes, however often it may conform outwardly, from policy, interest or habit, to the forms and legal acquirements of the established creed.

The senate and emperor, by special edicts, usually allowed conquered nations the free practice of their worship even in Rome; not, however, from regard for the sacred rights of conscience, but merely from policy, and with the express prohibition of making proselytes from the state religion; hence severe laws were published from time to time against transition to Judaism.

Obstacles to the Toleration of Christianity.

To Christianity, appearing not as a national religion, but claiming to be the only true universal one making its converts among every people and every sect, attracting Greeks and Romans in much larger numbers than Jews, refusing to compromise with any form of idolatry, and threatening in fact the very existence of the Roman state religion, even this limited toleration could not be granted. The same all-absorbing political interest of Rome dictated here the opposite course, and Tertullian is hardly just in changing the Romans with inconsistency for tolerating the worship of all false gods, from whom they had nothing to fear, and yet prohibiting the worship of the only true God who is Lord over all.²⁷²⁷    Apolog. c. 24 at the close: "Apud vos quod vis coler ejus est praeter Deum verum, quasi non hic magis omnium sit Deus, cuius omnes sumus."6 Born under Augustus, and crucified under Tiberius at the sentence of the Roman magistrate, Christ stood as the founder of a spiritual universal empire at the head of the most important epoch of the Roman power, a rival not to be endured. The reign of Constantine subsequently showed that the free toleration of Christianity was the death-blow to the Roman state religion.

Then, too, the conscientious refusal of the Christians to pay divine honors to the emperor and his statue, and to take part in any idolatrous ceremonies at public festivities, their aversion to the imperial military service, their disregard for politics and depreciation of all civil and temporal affairs as compared with the spiritual and eternal interests of man, their close brotherly union and frequent meetings, drew upon them the suspicion of hostility to the Caesars and the Roman people, and the unpardonable crime of conspiracy against the state.²⁸²⁸    Hence the reproachful designation "Hostes Caesarum et populi Romani."7

The common people also, with their polytheistic ideas, abhorred the believers in the one God as atheists and enemies of the gods. They readily gave credit to the slanderous rumors of all sorts of abominations, even incest and cannibalism, practised by the Christians at their religious assemblies and love-feasts, and regarded the frequent public calamities of that age as punishments justly inflicted by the angry gods for the disregard of their worship. In North Africa arose the proverb: "If God does not send rain, lay it to the Christians." At every inundation, or drought, or famine, or pestilence, the fanatical populace cried: "Away with the atheists! To the lions with the Christians!"

Finally, persecutions were sometimes started by priests, jugglers, artificers, merchants, and others, who derived their support from the idolatrous worship. These, like Demetrius at Ephesus, and the masters of the sorceress at Philippi, kindled the fanaticism and indignation of the mob against the new religion for its interference with their gains.²⁹²⁹    Comp. Arts. 19:24; 16:16.8

§ 16. Condition of the Church before the Reign of Trajan.

The imperial persecutions before Trajan belong to the Apostolic age, and have been already described in the first volume. We allude to them here only for the sake of the connection. Christ was born under the first, and crucified under the second Roman emperor. Tiberius (a.d. 14–37) is reported to have been frightened by Pilate’s account of the crucifixion and resurrection, and to have proposed to the senate, without success, the enrollment of Christ among the Roman deities; but this rests only on the questionable authority of Tertullian. The edict of Claudius (42–54) in the year 53, which banished the Jews from Rome, fell also upon the Christians, but as Jews with whom they were confounded. The fiendish persecution of Nero (54–68) was intended as a punishment, not for Christianity, but for alleged incendiarism (64). It showed, however, the popular temper, and was a declaration of war against the new religion. It became a common saying among Christians that Nero would reappear as Antichrist.

During the rapidly succeeding reigns of Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespacian, and Titus, the church, so far as we know, suffered no very serious persecution.

But Domitian (81–96), a suspicious and blasphemous tyrant, accustomed to call himself and to be called "Lord and God," treated the embracing of Christianity a crime against the state, and condemned to death many Christians, even his own cousin, the consul Flavius Clemens, on the charge of atheism; or confiscated their property, and sent them, as in the case of Domitilia, the wife of the Clemens just mentioned, into exile. His jealousy also led him to destroy the surviving descendants of David; and he brought from Palestine to Rome two kinsmen of Jesus, grandsons of Judas, the "brother of the Lord," but seeing their poverty and rustic simplicity, and hearing their explanation of the kingdom of Christ as not earthly, but heavenly, to be established by the Lord at the end of the world, when He should come to judge the quick and the dead, he let them go. Tradition (in Irenaeus, Eusebius, Jerome) assigns to the reign of Domitian the banishment of John to Patmos (which, however, must be assigned to the reign of Nero), together with his miraculous preservation from death in Rome (attested by Tertullian), and the martyrdom of Andrew, Mark, Onesimus, and Dionysius the Areopagite. The Martyrium of Ignatius speaks of "many persecutions under Domitian."

His humane and justice-loving successor, Nerva (96–98), recalled the banished, and refused to treat the confession of Christianity as a political crime, though he did not recognise the new religion as a religio licita.

§ 17. Trajan. a.d. 98–117—Christianity Forbidden—Martyrdom of Symeon of Jerusalem, and Ignatius of Antioch.

I. Sources.

Plinius, jun.: Epist. x. 96 and 97 (al. 97 sq.). Tertullian: Apol. c. 2; Eusebius: H. E. III. 11, 32, 33, 36. Chron. pasch. p. 470 (ed. Bonn.).

Acta Martyrii Ignatii, in Ruinart, p. 8 sqq.; recent edd. by Theod. Zahn, in Patrum Apost. Opera (Lips. 1876), vol. II. pp. 301 sqq.; FUNK, Opera Patr. Apost., vol. I. 254–265; II. 218–275; and Lightfoot: S. Ignatius and S. Polyc., II. 1, 473–570.

II. Works.

On Trajan’s reign in general see Tillemont, Histoire des Empereurs; Merivale, History of the Romans under the Empire.

On Ignatius: Theod. Zahn: Ignatius von Antiochien. Gotha 1873 (631 pages). Lightfoot: S. Ignatius and S. Polyc., London 1885, 2 vols.

On the chronology: Adolph Harnack: Die Zeit des Ignatius. Leipzig, 1878 (90 pages); Comp. Keim, l.c. 510–562; but especially Lighfoot, l.c. II. 1, 390 sqq.

The Epistles of Ignatius will be discussed in chapter XIII. on ecclesiastical literature, §164 and 165.

Trajan, one of the best and most praiseworthy emperors, honored as the "father of his country," but, like his friends, Tacitus and Pliny, wholly ignorant of the nature of Christianity, was the first to pronounce it in form a proscribed religion, as it had been all along in fact. He revived the rigid laws against all secret societies,³⁰³⁰    Or prohibited clubs. This is the meaning of hetaeria (ἑταιρεία or ἑταιρία), collegium, sodalitas, sodalitium, company, brotherhood, especially a private political club or union for party purposes. The Roman sodalities were festive clubs or lodges, and easily available for political and revolutionary ends. Trajan refused to sanction a company of firemen in Nicomedia (Pliny, Ep. X. 34, al. 43). Comp. Büttner, Geschichte der politischen Hetärien in Athen (1840). and Mommsen, De collegiis et sodali us Romanorum (Kiel, 1843).9 and the provincial officers applied them to the Christians, on account of their frequent meetings for worship. His decision regulated the governmental treatment of the Christians for more than a century . It is embodied in his correspondence with the younger Pliny, who was governor of Bithynia in Asia Minor from 109 to 111.

Pliny came in official contact with the Christians. He himself saw in that religion only a "depraved and immoderate superstition," and could hardly account for its popularity. He reported to the emperor that this superstition was constantly spreading, not only in the cities, but also in the villages of Asia Minor, and captivated people of every age, rank, and sex, so that the temples were almost forsaken, and the sacrificial victims found no sale. To stop this progress, he condemned many Christians to death, and sent others, who were Roman citizens, to the imperial tribunal. But he requested of the emperor further instructions, whether, in these efforts, he should have respect to age; whether he should treat the mere bearing of the Christian name as a crime, if there were no other offence.

To these inquiries Trajan replied: "You have adopted the right course, my friend, with regard to the Christians; for no universal rule, to be applied to all cases, can be laid down in this matter. They should not be searched for; but when accused and convicted, they should be punished; yet if any one denies that be has been a Christian, and proves it by action, namely, by worshipping our gods, he is to be pardoned upon his repentance, even though suspicion may still cleave to him from his antecedents. But anonymous accusations must not be admitted in any criminal process; it sets a bad example, and is contrary to our age" (i.e. to the spirit of Trajan’s government).

This decision was much milder than might have been expected from a heathen emperor of the old Roman stamp. Tertullian charges it with self-contradiction, as both cruel and lenient, forbidding the search for Christians and yet commanding their punishment, thus declaring them innocent and guilty at the same time. But the emperor evidently proceeded on political principles, and thought that a transient and contagious enthusiasm, as Christianity in his judgment was, could be suppressed sooner by leaving it unnoticed, than by openly assailing it. He wished to ignore it as much as possible. But every day it forced itself more and more upon public attention, as it spread with the irresistible power of truth.

This rescript might give occasion, according to the sentiment of governors, for extreme severity towards Christianity as a secret union and a religio illicita. Even the humane Pliny tells us that he applied the rack to tender women. Syria and Palestine suffered heavy persecutions in this reign.

Symeon, bishop of Jerusalem, and, like his predecessor James, a kinsman of Jesus, was accused by fanatical Jews, and crucified a.d. 107, at the age of a hundred and twenty years.

In the same year (or probably between 110 and 116) the distinguished bishop Ignatius of Antioch was condemned to death, transported to Rome, and thrown before wild beasts in the Colosseum. The story of his martyrdom has no doubt been much embellished, but it must have some foundation in fact, and is characteristic of the legendary martyrology of the ancient church.

Our knowledge of Ignatius is derived from his disputed epistles,³¹³¹    In three recensions, two in Greek, and one in Syriac. The seven shorter Greek Ep. are genuine. See below § 165.0 and a few short notices by Irenaeus and Origen. While his existence, his position in the early Church, and his martyrdom are admitted, everything else about him is called in question. How many epistles he wrote, and when he wrote them, how much truth there is in the account of his martyrdom, and when it took place, when it was written up, and by whom—all are undecided, and the subject of protracted controversy. He was, according to tradition, a pupil of the Apostle John, and by his piety so commended himself to the Christians in Antioch that he was chosen bishop, the second after Peter, Euodius being, the first. But although he was a man of apostolic character and governed the church with great care, he was personally not satisfied, until he should be counted worthy of sealing his testimony with his blood, and thereby attaining to the highest seat of honor. The coveted crown came to him at last and his eager and morbid desire for martyrdom was gratified. The emperor Trajan, in 107, came to Antioch, and there threatened with persecution all who refused to sacrifice to the gods. Ignatius was tried for this offence, and proudly confessed himself a "Theophorus" ("bearer of God") because, as he said, he had Christ within his breast. Trajan condemned him to be thrown to the lions at Rome. The sentence was executed with all haste. Ignatius was immediately bound in chains, and taken over land and sea, accompanied by ten soldiers, whom he denominated his "leopards," from Antioch to Seleucia, to Smyrna, where he met Polycarp, and whence be wrote to the churches, particularly to that in Rome; to Troas, to Neapolis, through Macedonia to Epirus, and so over the Adriatic to Rome. He was received by the Christians there with every manifestation of respect, but would not allow them to avert or even to delay his martyrdom. It was on the 20th day of December, 107, that he was thrown into the amphitheater: immediately the wild beasts fell upon him, and soon naught remained of his body but a few bones, which were carefully conveyed to Antioch as an inestimable treasure. The faithful friends who had accompanied him from home dreamed that night that they saw him; some that he was standing by Christ, dropping with sweat as if he had just come from his great labor. Comforted by these dreams they returned with the relics to Antioch.

Note on the Date of the Martyrdom of Ignatius.

The date a.d.107 has in its favor the common reading of the best of the martyrologies of Ignatius (Colbertium)ἐννάτῳ ἔτει, in the ninth year, i.e. from Trajan’s accession, a.d. 98. From this there is no good reason to depart in favor of another reading τέταρτον ἔτος, the nineteenth year, i.e. a.d. 116. Jerome makes the date a.d. 109. The fact that the names of the Roman consuls are correctly given in the Martyrium Colbertinum, is proof of the correctness of the date, which is accepted by such critics as Ussher, Tillemont, Möhler, Hefele, and Wieseler. The latter, in his work Die Christenverfolgungen der Caesaren, 1878, pp. 125 sqq., finds confirmation of this date in Eusebius’s statement that the martyrdom took place before Trajan came to Antioch, which was in his 10th year; in the short interval between the martyrdom of Ignatius and Symeon, son of Klopas (Hist. Ecc. III. 32); and finally, in the letter of Tiberian to Trajan, relating how many pressed forward to martyrdom—an effect, as Wieseler thinks, of the example of Ignatius. If 107 be accepted, then another supposition of Wieseler is probable. It is well known that in that year Trajan held an extraordinary triumph on account of his Dacian victories: may it not have been that the blood of Ignatius reddened the sand of the amphitheatre at that time?

But 107 a.d. is by no means universally accepted. Keim (Rom und das Christenthum, p. 540) finds the Martyrium Colbertinum wrong in stating that the death took place under the first consulate of Sura and the second of Senecio, because in 107 Sura was consul for the third and Senecio for the fourth time. He also objects that Trajan was not in Antioch in 107, but in 115, on his way to attack the Armenians and Parthians. But this latter objection falls to the ground if Ignatius was not tried by Trajan personally in Antioch. Harnack concludes that it is only barely possible that Ignatius was martyred under Trajan. Lightfoot assigns the martyrdom to between 110 and 118.

§ 18. Hadrian. a.d. 117–138.

See Gregorovius: Gesch. Hadrians und seiner Zeit (1851); Renan: L’E’glise, chrétienne (1879), 1–44, and Wagenmann in Herzog, vol. v. 501–506.

Hadrian, of Spanish descent, a relative of Trajan, and adopted by him on his death-bed, was a man of brilliant talents and careful education, a scholar an artist, a legislator and administrator, and altogether one of the ablest among the Roman emperors, but of very doubtful morality, governed by changing moods, attracted in opposite directions, and at last lost in self-contradictions and utter disgust of life. His mausoleum (Moles Hadriani) still adorns, as the castle of Sant’ Angelo, the bridge of the Tiber in Rome. He is represented both as a friend and foe of the church. He was devoted to the religion of the state, bitterly opposed to Judaism, indifferent to Christianity, from ignorance of it. He insulted the Jews and the Christians alike by erecting temples of Jupiter and Venus over the site of the temple and the supposed spot of the crucifixion. He is said to have directed the Asiatic proconsul to check the popular fury against the Christians, and to punish only those who should be, by an orderly judicial process, convicted of transgression of the laws.³²³²    The rescript of Hadrian to Minucius Fundanus (124 or 128), preserved by Eusebius in a Greek translation, (H. H. E., IV. V. 8, 9), is almost an edict of toleration, and hence doubted by Baur, Keim, Aubé, but defended as genuine by Neander (I. 101, Engl. ed.), Wieseler, Funk, Renan (l.c. p. 32 sqq). Renan represents Hadrian as a rieur spirituel, un Lucian couronné prenat le monde comme un jeu frivole (p. 6), and therefore more favorable to religious liberty than the serious Trajan and the pious Antoninius and Marcus Aurelius. But Friedländer (III. 492) accepts the report of Pausanias that Hadrian was zealously devoted to the worship of the gods. Keim regards him as a visionary and hostile to Christianity as well as to Judaism.1 But no doubt he regarded, like Trajan, the mere profession of Christianity itself such a transgression.

The Christian apologies, which took their rise under this emperor, indicate a very bitter public sentiment against the Christians, and a critical condition of the church. The least encouragement from Hadrian would have brought on a bloody persecution. Quadratus and Aristides addressed their pleas for their fellow-Christians to him, we do not know with what effect.

Later tradition assigns to his reign the martyrdom of St. Eustachius, St. Symphorosa and her seven sons, of the Roman bishops Alexander and Telesphorus, and others whose names are scarcely known, and whose chronology is more than doubtful.

§ 19 Antoninus Pius. a.d. 137–161. The Martyrdom of Polycarp.

Comte de Champagny (R.C.): Les Antonins. (a.d. 69–180), Paris, 1863; 3d ed. 1874. 3 vols., 8 vo. Merivale’s History.

Martyrium Polycarp (the oldest, simplest, and least objectionable of the martyr-acts), in a letter of the church of Smyrna to the Christians in Pontus or Phrygia, preserved by Eusebius, H. Eccl. IV. 15, and separately edited from various MSS. by Ussher (1647) and in nearly all the editions of the Apostolic Fathers, especially by O. v. Gebhardt, Harnack, and Zahn, II. 132–168, and Prolog. L-LVI. The recension of the text is by Zahn, and departs from the text of the Bollandists in 98 places. Best edition by Lightfoot, S. Ign. and S. Polycarp, I. 417 sqq., and II. 1005–1047. Comp. the Greek Vita Polycarpi, in Funk, II. 315 sqq.

Ignatius: Ad. Polycarpum. Best ed., by Lightfoot, l.c.

Irenaeus: Adv. Haer. III. 3. 4. His letter to Florinus in Euseb. v. 20.

Polycrates of Ephesus (c. 190), in Euseb. v. 24.

On the date of Polycarp’s death:

Waddington: Mémoire sur la chronologie de la vie du rhéteur Aelius Aristide (in "Mém. de l’ Acad: des inscript. et belles letters," Tom. XXVI. Part II. 1867, pp. 232 sqq.), and in Fastes des provinces Asiatiques, 1872, 219 sqq.

Wieseler: Das Martyrium Polykarp’s und dessen Chronologie, in his Christenverfolgungen, etc. (1878), 3 87.

Keim: Die Zwölf Märtyrer von Smyrna und der Tod des Bishops Polykarp, in his Aus dem Urchristenthum (1878), 92–133.

E. Egli: Das Martyrium des Polyk., in Hilgenfeld’s "Zeitschrift für wissensch. Theol." for 1882, pp. 227 sqq.

Antoninus Pius protected the Christians from the tumultuous violence which broke out against them on account of the frequent public calamities. But the edict ascribed to him, addressed to the deputies of the Asiatic cities, testifying to the innocence of the Christians, and holding them up to the heathen as models of fidelity and zeal in the worship of God, could hardly have come from an emperor, who bore the honorable title of Pius for his conscientious adherence to the religion of his fathers;³³³³    He always offered sacrifice himself as high-priest. Friedländer III. 492.2 and in any case he could not have controlled the conduct of the provincial governors and the fury of the people against an illegal religion.

The persecution of the church at Smyrna and the martyrdom of its venerable bishop, which was formerly assigned to the year 167, under the reign of Marcus Aurelius, took place, according to more recent research, under Antoninus in 155, when Statius Quadratus was proconsul in Asia Minor.³⁴³⁴    So Waddington, who has made it almost certain that Quadratus was Roman consul a.d. 142, and proconsul in Asia from 154 to 155, and that Polycarp died Feb. 23, 155. He is followed by Renan (1873), Ewald (1873), Aubé (1875), Hilgenfeld (1874), Lightfoot (1875), Lipsius (1874), 0. v. Gebhardt (1875), Zahn, Harnack (1876), Egli (1882), and again by Lightfoot (1885, l.c. I. 647 sqq). Wieseler and Keim learnedly defend the old date (166-167), which rests on the authority of Eusebius and Jerome, and was held by Masson and Clinton. But Lightfoot refutes their objections (I. 647, sqq.), and sustains Waddington.3 Polycarp was a personal friend and pupil of the Apostle John, and chief presbyter of the church at Smyrna, where a plain stone monument still marks his grave. He was the teacher of Irenaeus of Lyons, and thus the connecting link between the apostolic and post-apostolic ages. As he died 155 at an age of eighty-six years or more, he must have been born a.d. 69, a year before the destruction of Jerusalem, and may have enjoyed the friendship of St. John for twenty years or more. This gives additional weight to his testimony concerning apostolic traditions and writings. We have from him a beautiful epistle which echoes the apostolic teaching, and will be noticed in another chapter.

Polycarp steadfastly refused before the proconsul to deny his King and Saviour, whom he had served six and eighty years, and from whom he had experienced nothing but love and mercy. He joyfully went up to the stake, and amidst the flames praised God for having deemed him worthy "to be numbered among his martyrs, to drink the cup of Christ’s sufferings, unto the eternal resurrection of the soul and the body in the incorruption of the Holy Spirit." The slightly legendary account in the letter of the church of Smyrna states, that the flames avoided the body of the saint, leaving it unharmed, like gold tried in the fire; also the Christian bystanders insisted, that they perceived a sweet odor, as of incense. Then the executioner thrust his sword into the body, and the stream of blood at once extinguished the flame. The corpse was burned after the Roman custom, but the bones were preserved by the church, and held more precious than gold and diamonds. The death of this last witness of the apostolic age checked the fury of the populace, and the proconsul suspended the persecution.

§ 20. Persecutions under Marcus Aurelius. a.d. 161–180.

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus: (b. 121, d. 180):·Τῶν εἰς ἑαυτὸν Βιβλία ιβ ̔̑’, or Meditations. It is a sort of diary or common place book, in which the emperor wrote down, towards the close of his life, partly amid the turmoil of war "in the land of the Quadi" (on the Danube in Hungary), for his self-improvement, his own moral reflections) together with striking maxims of wise and virtuous men. Ed. princeps by Xylander Zurich 1558, and Basle 1568; best ed with a new Latin trans. and very full notes by Gataker, Lond. 1643, Cambr. 1652, and with additional notes from the French by Dacier, Lond. 1697 and 1704. New ed. of the Greek text by J. M. Schultz, 1802 (and 1821); another by Adamantius Coraïs, Par. 1816. English translation by George Long, Lond. 1863, republ. Boston, revised edition, London, 1880. There are translations into most European languages, one in Italian by the Cardinal Francis Barberini (nephew of Pope Urban VIII), who dedicated his translation to his own soul, "to make it redder than his purple at the sight of the virtues of this Gentile." Comp. also the letters of the famous rhetorician M. Corn. Fronto, the teacher of M. Aurelius, discovered and published by Angelo Mai, Milan 1815 and Rome 1823 (Epistolarum ad Marcum Caesarem Lib. V., etc.) They are, however, very unimportant, except so far as they show the life-long congenial friendship between the amiable teacher and his imperial pupil.

Arnold Bodek: Marcus AureliusAntoninus als Freund und Zeitgenosse les Rabbi Jehuda ha-Nasi. Leipz. 1868. (Traces the connection of this emperor with the Jewish monotheism and ethics.)

E. Renan: Marc-Aurèle et la fin du monde antique. Paris 1882. This is the seventh and the last vol. of his work of twenty years’ labor on the "Histoire des Origines du Christianisme." It is as full of genius, learning and eloquence, and as empty of positive faith as the former volumes. He closes the period of the definite formation of Christianity in the middle of the second century, but proposes in a future work to trace it back to Isaiah (or the "Great Unknown") as its proper founder.

Eusebius: H. E. V. 1–3. The Letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne to the Christians of Asia Minor. Die Akten, des Karpus, des Papylus und der Agathonike, untersucht von AD. Harnack. Leipz., 1888.

On the legend of the Legio fulminatrix see Tertullian: Apol. 5; Euseb.: H. E V. 5.; and Dion Cass.: Hist. LXXI. 8, 9.

Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher on the throne, was a well-educated, just, kind, and amiable emperor, and reached the old Roman ideal of self-reliant Stoic virtue, but for this very reason he had no sympathy with Christianity, and probably regarded it as an absurd and fanatical superstition. He had no room in his cosmopolitan philanthropy for the purest and most innocent of his subjects, many of whom served in his own army. He was flooded with apologies of Melito, Miltiades, Athenagoras in behalf of the persecuted Christians, but turned a deaf ear to them. Only once, in his Meditations, does he allude to them, and then with scorn, tracing their noble enthusiasm for martyrdom to "sheer obstinacy" and love for theatrical display.³⁵³⁵    Med. xi. 3: Μὴ κατὰ ψιλὴν παράταξιν, ὡς οἱ Χριστιανοὶ, ἁλλὰ λελογισμένος καὶ σεμνῶς καὶ, ὥστε καὶ ἂλλον π εῖσαι ατραγῴδως4 His excuse is ignorance. He probably never read a line of the New Testament, nor of the apologies addressed to him.³⁶³⁶    Bodek (l.c. p. 82 sqq.) maintains, contrary to the common view, that Marcus Aurelius was personally indifferent to heathenism and Christianity, that his acts of respect for the worship of the gods, related by Capitolinus and others, were simply official tributes, and that the persecutions of the Christians did probably not originate with him. "Er wareben so wenig ein Feind des Christenthums, als er ein Feind des Heidenthums war: was wie religiöser Fanatismus aussah,war in Wahrheit nur politischer Conservatismus" (p. 87). On the other hand, Bodek claims for him a friendly sympathy with Judaism in its monotheistic and ethical features, and assumes that he had intimate relations with a Jewish rabbi. But there is nothing in his twelve books "Do seipso et ad seipsum," which is inconsistent with an enlightened heathen piety under the unconscious influence of Christianity, yet hostile to it partly from ignorance of its true nature, partly from a conscientious regard to his duty as the pontifex maximus of the state religion. The same was the case with Trajan and Decius. Renan (p. 262 sqq.) calls the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius "le livre le plus purement humain qu’il y ait. Il ne tranche aucune question controversée. En théologie, Marc Aurèle flotte entre le déisme pur, le polythéisme enterprété dans un sens physique, à la façon des stoïciens, et une sorte de panthéisme cosmique."5

Belonging to the later Stoical school, which believed in an immediate absorption after death into the Divine essence, he considered the Christian doctrine of the immortality of the soul, with its moral consequences, as vicious and dangerous to the welfare of the state. A law was passed under his reign, punishing every one with exile who should endeavor to influence people’s mind by fear of the Divinity, and this law was, no doubt, aimed at the Christians.³⁷³⁷    "Si quis aliquid fecerit, quo leves hominum animi superstitio numinis terrerentur, Divus Marcus hujusmodi homines in insulam relegari rescripsit."Dig. XLVIII. tit. 19. 1. 13, quoted by Lecky in Hist. of Europ. Morals, I. 448. 96 At all events his reign was a stormy time for the church, although the persecutions cannot be directly traced to him. The law of Trajan was sufficient to justify the severest measures against the followers of the "forbidden" religion.

About the year 170 the apologist Melito wrote: "The race of the worshippers of God in Asia is now persecuted by new edicts as it never has been heretofore; shameless, greedy sycophants, finding occasion in the edicts, now plunder the innocent day and night." The empire was visited at that time by a number of conflagrations, a destructive flood of the Tiber, an earthquake, insurrections, and particularly a pestilence, which spread from Ethiopia to Gaul. This gave rise to bloody persecutions, in which government and people united against the enemies of the gods and the supposed authors of these misfortunes. Celsus expressed his joy that "the demon" [of the Christians] was "not only reviled, but banished from every land and sea," and saw in this judgment the fulfilment of the oracle: "the mills of the gods grind late." But at the same time these persecutions, and the simultaneous literary assaults on Christianity by Celsus and Lucian, show that the new religion was constantly gaining importance in the empire.

In 177, the churches of Lyons and Vienne, in the South of France, underwent a severe trial. Heathen slaves were forced by the rack to declare, that their Christian masters practised all the unnatural vices which rumor charged them with; and this was made to justify the exquisite tortures to which the Christians were subjected. But the sufferers, "strengthened by the fountain of living water from the heart of Christ," displayed extraordinary faith and steadfastness, and felt, that "nothing can be fearful, where the love of the Father is, nothing painful, where shines the glory of Christ."

The most distinguished victims of this Gallic persecution were the bishop Pothinus, who, at the age of ninety years, and just recovered from a sickness, was subjected to all sorts of abuse, and then thrown into a dismal dungeon, where he died in two days; the virgin Blandina, a slave, who showed almost superhuman strength and constancy under the most cruel tortures, and was at last thrown to a wild beast in a net; Ponticus, a boy of fifteen years, who could be deterred by no sort of cruelty from confessing his Saviour. The corpses of the martyrs, which covered the streets, were shamefully mutilated, then burned, and the ashes cast into the Rhone, lest any remnants of the enemies of the gods might desecrate the soil. At last the people grew weary of slaughter, and a considerable number of Christians survived. The martyrs of Lyons distinguished themselves by true humility, disclaiming in their prison that title of honor, as due only, they said, to the faithful and true witness, the Firstborn from the dead, the Prince of life (Rev. 1:5), and to those of his followers who had already sealed their fidelity to Christ with their blood.

About the same time a persecution of less extent appears to have visited Autun (Augustodunum) near Lyons. Symphorinus, a young man of good family, having refused to fall down before the image of Cybele, was condemned to be beheaded. On his way to the place of execution his own mother called to him: "My son, be firm and fear not that death, which so surely leads to life. Look to Him who reigns in heaven. To-day is thy earthly life not taken from thee, but transferred by a blessed exchange into the life of heaven."

The story of the "thundering legion"³⁸³⁸    Legio fulminatrix, κεραυνοφόρος. The twelfth legion bore the name Fulminata as far back as the time of Trajan; and hence it cannot be derived from this event.7 rests on the fact of a remarkable deliverance of the Roman army in Hungary by a sudden shower, which quenched their burning thirst and frightened their barbarian enemies, a.d. 174. The heathens, however, attributed this not to the prayers of the Christian soldiers, but to their own gods. The emperor himself prayed to Jupiter: "This hand, which has never yet shed human blood, I raise to thee." That this event did not alter his views respecting the Christians, is proved by the persecution in South Gaul, which broke out three years later.

Of isolated cases of martyrdom in this reign, we notice that of Justin Martyr, at Rome, in the year 166. His death is traced to the machinations of Crescens, a Cynic philosopher.

Marcus Aurelius was succeeded by his cruel and contemptible son, Commodus (180–192), who wallowed in the mire of every sensual debauchery, and displayed at the same time like Nero the most ridiculous vanity as dancer and singer, and in the character of buffoon; but he was accidentally made to favor the Christians by the influence of a concubine,³⁹³⁹    φιλόθεος παλλακή8 Marcia, and accordingly did not disturb them. Yet under his reign a Roman senator, Apollonius, was put to death for his faith.

§ 21. Condition of the Church from Septimius Severus to Philip the Arabian. a.d. 193–249.

Clemens Alex.: Strom. II. 414. Tertull.: Ad Scapulam, c. 4, 5; Apol. (a.d. 198), c. 7, 12, 30, 37, 49.

Respecting the Alexandrian martyrs comp. Euseb.: VI. 1 and 5.

The Acts of the Carthaginian martyrs, which contain their ipsissima verba from their diaries in the prisons, but bear a somewhat Montanistic stamp, see in Ruinart, p 90 sqq.

Lampridius: Vita Alex. Severi, c. 22, 29, 49.

On Philip the Arabian see Euseb.:VI. 34, 36. Hieron.: Chron. ad ann. 246.

J. J. Müller: Staat und Kirche unter Alex. Severus. Zürich 1874.

F. Görres: Kaiser Alex. Severus und das Christenthum. Leipz., 1877.

Jean Réville: La religion à Rome sous les Sévères. Paris, 1886 (vii and 302 pp.); Germ. transl. by Krüger, 1888.

With Septimius Severus (193–211), who was of Punic descent and had a Syrian wife, a line of emperors (Caracalla, Heliogabalus, Alexander Severus) came to the throne, who were rather Oriental than Roman in their spirit, and were therefore far less concerned than the Antonines to maintain the old state religion. Yet towards the close of the second century there was no lack of local persecutions; and Clement of Alexandria wrote of those times: "Many martyrs are daily burned, confined, or beheaded, before our eyes."

In the beginning of the third century (202) Septimius Severus, turned perhaps by Montanistic excesses, enacted a rigid law against the further spread both of Christianity and of Judaism. This occasioned violent persecutions in Egypt and in North Africa, and produced some of the fairest flowers of martyrdom.

In Alexandria, in consequence of this law, Leonides, father of the renowned Origen, was beheaded. Potamiaena, a virgin of rare beauty of body and spirit, was threatened by beastly passion with treatment worse than death, and, after cruel tortures, slowly burned with her mother in boiling pitch. One of the executioners, Basilides, smitten with sympathy, shielded them somewhat from abuse, and soon after their death embraced Christianity, and was beheaded. He declared that Potamiaena had appeared to him in the night, interceded with Christ for him, and set upon his head the martyr’s crown.

In Carthage some catechumens, three young men and two young women, probably of the sect of the Montanists, showed remarkable steadfastness and fidelity in the dungeon and at the place of execution. Perpetua, a young woman of noble birth, resisting, not without a violent struggle, both the entreaties of her aged heathen father and the appeal of her helpless babe upon her breast, sacrificed the deep and tender feelings of a daughter and a mother to the Lord who died for her. Felicitas, a slave, when delivered of a child in the same dungeon, answered the jailor, who reminded her of the still keener pains of martyrdom: "Now I suffer, what I suffer; but then another will suffer for me, because I shall suffer for him." All remaining firm, they were cast to wild beasts at the next public festival, having first interchanged the parting kiss in hope of a speedy reunion in heaven.

The same state of things continued through the first years of Caracalla (211–217), though this gloomy misanthrope passed no laws against the Christians.

The abandoned youth, El-Gabal, or Heliogabalus (218–222), who polluted the throne by the blackest vices and follies, tolerated all the religions in the hope of at last merging them in his favorite Syrian worship of the sun with its abominable excesses. He himself was a priest of the god of the sun, and thence took his name.⁴⁰⁴⁰    Unless we should prefer to derive it from אֵלּ
   and גִבִִָל9

His far more worthy cousin and successor, Alexander Severus (222–235), was addicted to a higher kind of religious eclecticism and syncretism, a pantheistic hero-worship. He placed the busts of Abraham and Christ in his domestic chapel with those of Orpheus, Apollonius of Tyana, and the better Roman emperors, and had the gospel rule, "As ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them," engraven on the walls of his palace, and on public monuments⁴¹⁴¹    Yet he meant no more than toleration, as Lampridius says, 22 (21): Judaeis privilegia reservavit, Christianos esse passus est.0. His mother, Julia Mammaea, was a patroness of Origen.

His assassin, Maximinus the Thracian (235–238), first a herdsman, afterwards a soldier, resorted again to persecution out of mere opposition to his predecessor, and gave free course to the popular fury against the enemies of the gods, which was at that time excited anew by an earthquake. It is uncertain whether he ordered the entire clergy or only the bishops to be killed. He was a rude barbarian who plundered also heathen temples.

The legendary poesy of the tenth century assigns to his reign the fabulous martyrdom of St. Ursula, a British princess, and her company of eleven thousand (according to others, ten thousand) virgins, who, on their return from a pilgrimage to Rome, were murdered by heathens in the neighborhood of Cologne. This incredible number has probably arisen from the misinterpretation of an inscription, like "Ursula et Undecimilla" (which occurs in an old missal of the Sorbonne), or "Ursula et XI M. V.," i.e. Martyres Virgines, which, by substituting milia for martyres, was increased from eleven martyrs to eleven thousand virgins. Some historians place the fact, which seems to form the basis of this legend, in connexion with the retreat of the Huns after the battle of Chalons, 451. The abridgment of Mil., which may mean soldiers (milites) as well as thousands (milia), was another fruitful source of mistakes in a credulous and superstitious age.

Gordianus (208–244) left the church undisturbed. Philip the Arabian (244–249) was even supposed by some to be a Christian, and was termed by Jerome "primus omnium ex Romanis imperatoribus Christianus." It is certain that Origen wrote letters to him and to his wife, Severa.

This season of repose, however, cooled the moral zeal and brotherly love of the Christians; and the mighty storm under the following reign served well to restore the purity of the church.

§ 22. Persecutions under Decius, and Valerian. a.d. 249–260. Martyrdom of Cyprian.

Dionysius Alex., in Euseb. VI. 40–42; VII. 10, 11.

Cyprian: De Lapsis, and particularly his Epistles of this period. On Cyprian’s martyrdom see the Proconsular Acts, and Pontius: Vita Cypriani.

Franz Görres: Die Toleranzedicte des Kaisers Gallienus, in the "Jahrbücher für protest. Theol.," 1877, pp. 606–630. By the same: Die angebliche Christenverfolgung zur Zeit der Kaiser Numerianus und Carinus, in Hilgenfeld’s "Zeitschrift für wissenschaftl. Theologie." 1880 pp. 31–64.

Decius Trajan (249–251), an earnest and energetic emperor, in whom the old Roman spirit once more awoke, resolved to root out the church as an atheistic and seditious sect, and in the year 250 published an edict to all the governors of the provinces, enjoining return to the pagan state religion under the heaviest penalties. This was the signal for a persecution which, in extent, consistency, and cruelty, exceeded all before it. In truth it was properly the first which covered the whole empire, and accordingly produced a far greater number of martyrs than any former persecution. In the execution of the imperial decree confiscation, exile, torture, promises and threats of all kinds, were employed to move the Christians to apostasy. Multitudes of nominal Christians,⁴²⁴²    "Maximus fratrum numerus," says Cyprian.1 especially at the beginning, sacrificed to the gods (sacrificati, thurificati), or procured from the, magistrate a false certificate that they had done so (libellatici), and were then excommunicated as apostates (lapsi); while hundreds rushed with impetuous zeal to the prisons and the tribunals, to obtain the confessor’s or martyr’s crown. The confessors of Rome wrote from prison to their brethren of Africa: "What more glorious and blessed lot can fall to man by the grace of God, than to confess God the Lord amidst tortures and in the face of death itself; to confess Christ the Son of God with lacerated body and with a spirit departing, yet free; and to become fellow-sufferers with Christ in the name of Christ? Though we have not yet shed our blood, we are ready to do so. Pray for us, then, dear Cyprian, that the Lord, the best captain, would daily strengthen each one of us more and more, and at last lead us to the field as faithful soldiers, armed with those divine weapons (Eph. 6:2) which can never be conquered."

The authorities were specially severe with the bishops and officers of the churches. Fabianus of Rome, Babylas of Antioch, and Alexander of Jerusalem, perished in this persecution. Others withdrew to places of concealment; some from cowardice; some from Christian prudence, in hope of allaying by their absence the fury of the pagans against their flocks, and of saving their own lives for the good of the church in better times.

Among the latter was Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, who incurred much censure by his course, but fully vindicated himself by his pastoral industry during his absence, and by his subsequent martyrdom. He says concerning the matter: "Our Lord commanded us in times of persecution to yield and to fly. He taught this, and he practised it himself. For since the martyr’s crown comes by the grace of God, and cannot be gained before the appointed hour, he who retires for a time, and remains true to Christ, does not deny his faith, but only abides his time."

The poetical legend of the seven brothers at Ephesus, who fell asleep in a cave, whither they had fled, and awoke two hundred years afterwards, under Theodosius II. (447), astonished to see the once despised and hated cross now ruling over city and country, dates itself internally from the time of Decius, but is not mentioned before Gregory of Tours in the sixth century.

Under Gallus (251–253) the persecution received a fresh impulse thorough the incursions of the Goths, and the prevalence of a pestilence, drought, and famine. Under this reign the Roman bishops Cornelius and Lucius were banished, and then condemned to death.

Valerian (253–260) was at first mild towards the Christians; but in 257 he changed his course, and made an effort to check the progress of their religion without bloodshed, by the banishment of ministers and prominent laymen, the confiscation of their property, and the prohibition of religious assemblies. These measures, however, proving fruitless, he brought the death penalty again into play.

The most distinguished martyrs of this persecution under Valerian are the bishops Sixtus II. of Rome, and Cyprian of Carthage.

When Cyprian received his sentence of death, representing him as an enemy of the Roman gods and laws, he calmly answered: "Deo gratias!" Then, attended by a vast multitude to the scaffold, he proved once more, undressed himself, covered his eyes, requested a presbyter to bind his hands, and to pay the executioner, who tremblingly drew the sword, twenty-five pieces of gold, and won the incorruptible crown (Sept. 14, 258). His faithful friends caught the blood in handkerchiefs, and buried the body of their sainted pastor with great solemnity.

Gibbon describes the martyrdom of Cyprian with circumstantial minuteness, and dwells with evident satisfaction on the small decorum which attended his execution. But this is no fair average specimen of the style in which Christians were executed throughout the empire. For Cyprian was a man of the highest social standing and connection from his former eminence, as a rhetorician and statesman. His deacon, Pontius relates that "numbers of eminent and illustrious persons, men of mark family and secular distinction, often urged him, for the sake of their old friendship with him, to retire." We shall return to Cyprian again in the history of church government, where he figures as a typical, ante-Nicene high-churchman, advocating both the visible unity of the church and episcopal independence of Rome.

The much lauded martyrdom of the deacon St. Laurentius of Rome, who pointed the avaricious magistrates to the poor and sick of the congregation as the richest treasure of the church, and is said to have been slowly roasted to death (Aug. 10, 258) is scarcely reliable in its details, being first mentioned by Ambrose a century later, and then glorified by the poet Prudentius. A Basilica on the Via Tiburtina celebrates the memory of this saint, who occupies the same position among the martyrs of the church of Rome as Stephen among those of Jerusalem.

§ 23. Temporary Repose. a.d. 260–303.

Gallienus (260–268) gave peace to the church once more, and even acknowledged Christianity as a religio licita. And this calm continued forty years; for the edict of persecution, issued by the energetic and warlike Aurelian (270–275), was rendered void by his assassination; and the six emperors who rapidly followed, from 275 to 284, let the Christians alone.

The persecutions under Carus, Numerianus and Carinus from 284 to 285 are not historical, but legendary.⁴³⁴³    See Franz Görres, l.c.2

During this long season of peace the church rose rapidly in numbers and outward prosperity. Large and even splendid houses of worship were erected in the chief cities, and provided with collections of sacred books and vessels of gold and silver for the administration of the sacraments. But in the same proportion discipline relaxed, quarrels, intrigues, and factions increased, and worldliness poured in like a flood.

Hence a new trial was a necessary and wholesome process of purification.⁴⁴⁴⁴    Eusebius, H. E. VIII. 1.3

§ 24. The Diocletian Persecution, a.d. 303–311.

I. Sources.

Eusebius: H. E. Lib. VIII. – X; De Martyr. Palaest. (ed. Cureton, Lond, 1861); Vita Const. (ed. Heinichen, Lips. 1870).

Lactantius: De Mortibus Persec. c. 7 sqq. Of uncertain authorship.

Basilius M.: Oratio in Gordium mart.; Oratio in Barlaham mart.

II. Works.

Baronius: Annal. ad ann. 302–305.

Gibbon: Chrs. XIII., XIV. and XVI.

Jak. Burckhardt: Die Zeit Constantins des Gr. Basel, 1853, p. 325.

Th. Keim: Der Uebertritt Constantins des Gr. zum Christenthum. Zürich 1852. The same: Die römischen Toleranzedicte für das Christenthum (311–313), in the "Tüb. Theol. Jahrb." 1852. (His. Rom und das Christenthum only comes down to a.d. 192.)

Alb. Vogel: Der Kaiser Diocletian. Gotha 1857.

Bernhardt: Diokletian in s. Verhältnisse zu den Christen. Bonn, 1862.

Hunziker: Regierung und Christenverfolgung des Kaisers Diocletianus und seiner Nachfolger. Leipz. 1868.

Theod. Preuss: Kaiser Diocletian und seine Zeit. Leipz. 1869.

A. J. Mason: The Persecution of Diocletian. Cambridge, 1876. Pages 370. (Comp. a review by Ad. Harnack in the "Theol. Literaturzeitung" for 1877. No. 7. f. 169.)

Theod. Zahn: Constantin der Grosse und die Kirche. Hannover, 1876.

Brieger.: Constantin der Gr. als Religionspolitiker. Gotha, 1880. Comp. the Lit. on Constantine, in vol. III., 10, 11.

The forty years’ repose was followed by, the last and most violent persecution, a struggle for life and death.

"The accession of the Emperor Diocletian is the era from which the Coptic Churches of Egypt and Abyssinia still date, under the name of the ’Era of Martyrs.’ All former persecutions of the faith were forgotten in the horror with which men looked back upon the last and greatest: the tenth wave (as men delighted to count it) of that great storm obliterated all the traces that had been left by others. The fiendish cruelty of Nero, the jealous fears of Domitian, the unimpassioned dislike of Marcus, the sweeping purpose of Decius, the clever devices of Valerian, fell into obscurity when compared with the concentrated terrors of that final grapple, which resulted in the destruction of the old Roman Empire and the establishment of the Cross as the symbol of the world’s hope."⁴⁵⁴⁵    So Arthur James Mason begins his book on thePersecution of Diocletian.4

Diocletian (284–305) was one of the most judicious and able emperors who, in a trying period, preserved the sinking state from dissolution. He was the son of a slave or of obscure parentage, and worked himself up to supreme power. He converted the Roman republican empire into an Oriental despotism, and prepared the way for Constantine and Constantinople. He associated with himself three subordinate co-regents, Maximian (who committed suicide, 310), Galerius (d. 311), and Constantius Chlorus (d. 306, the father of Constantine the Great), and divided with them the government of the immense empire; thereby quadrupling the personality of the sovereign, and imparting vigor to provincial administration, but also sowing the seed of discord and civil war⁴⁶⁴⁶    Maximian (surnamed Herculius) ruled in Italy and Africa, Galerius (Armentarius) on the banks of the Danube, and afterwards in the East, Constantius (Chlorus) in Gaul, Spain, and Britain; while Diocletian reserved to himself Asia, Egypt, and Thrace, and resided in Nicomedia. Galerius married a daughter of Diocletian (the unfortunate Valeria), Constantius a (nominal) daughter of Maximian (Theodora), after repudiating their former wives. Constantine, the son of the divorced Helena, married Fausta, the daughter of Maximian as his second wife (father and son being married to two sisters). He was raised to the dignity of Caesar, July 25, 306. See Gibbon, chs. XIII and XIV.5. Gibbon calls him a second Augustus, the founder of a new empire, rather than the restorer of the old. He also compares him to Charles V., whom he somewhat resembled in his talents, temporary success and ultimate failure, and voluntary retirement from the cares of government.

In the first twenty years of his reign Diocletian respected the toleration edict of Gallienus. His own wife Prisca his daughter Valeria, and most of his eunuchs and court officers, besides many of the most prominent public functionaries, were Christians, or at least favorable to the Christian religion. He himself was a superstitious heathen and an oriental despot. Like Aurelian and Domitian before him, he claimed divine honors, as the vicar of Jupiter Capitolinus. He was called, as the Lord and Master of the world, Sacratissimus Dominus Noster; he guarded his Sacred Majesty with many circles of soldiers and eunuchs, and allowed no one to approach him except on bended knees, and with the forehead touching the ground, while he was seated on the throne in rich vestments from the far East. "Ostentation," says Gibbon, "was the first principle of the new system instituted by Diocletian." As a practical statesman, he must have seen that his work of the political restoration and consolidation of the empire would lack a firm and permanent basis without the restoration of the old religion of the state. Although he long postponed the religious question, he had to meet it at last. It could not be expected, in the nature of the case, that paganism should surrender to its dangerous rival without a last desperate effort to save itself.

But the chief instigator of the renewal of hostility, according to the account of Lactantius, was Diocletian’s co-regent and son-in-law, Galerius, a cruel and fanatical heathen.⁴⁷⁴⁷    Lactantius (De Morte. Persec. c. 9), calls him "a wild beast, " in whom dwelt "a native barbarity and a savageness foreign to Roman blood." He died at last of a terrible disease, of which Lacantius gives a minute account (ch. 33).6 He prevailed at last on Diocletian in his old age to authorize the persecution which gave to his glorious reign a disgraceful end.

In 303 Diocletian issued in rapid succession three edicts, each more severe than its predecessor. Maximian issued the fourth, the worst of all, April 30, 304. Christian churches were to be destroyed; all copies of the Bible were to be burned; all Christians were to be deprived of public office and civil rights; and at last all, without exception, were to sacrifice to the gods upon pain of death. Pretext for this severity was afforded by the occurrence of fire twice in the palace of Nicomedia in Bithynia, where Diocletian resided ⁴⁸⁴⁸    Lactantius charges the incendiarism on Galerius who, as a second Nero, endangered the residence for the purpose of punishing the innocent Christians. Constantine, who then resided at the Court, on a solemn occasion at a later period, attributes the fire to lightning (Orat. ad Sanct. c. 25), but the repetition of the occurrence strengthens the suspicion of Lactantius.7. It was strengthened by the tearing down of the first edict by an imprudent Christian (celebrated in the Greek church under the name of John), who vented in that way his abhorrence of such "godless and tyrannical rulers," and was gradually roasted to death with every species of cruelty. But the conjecture that the edicts were occasioned by a conspiracy of the Christians who, feeling their rising power, were for putting the government at once into Christian hands, by a stroke of state, is without any foundation in history. It is inconsistent with the political passivity of the church during the first three centuries, which furnish no example of rebellion and revolution. At best such a conspiracy could only have been the work of a few fanatics; and they, like the one who tore down the first edict, would have gloried in the deed and sought the crown of martyrdom.⁴⁹⁴⁹    Gibbon, ch. XVI., intimates the probability of a political plot. In speaking of the fire in the imperial palace of Nicomedia, he says: "The suspicion naturally fell on the Christians; and it was suggested, with some degree of probability, that those desperate fanatics, provoked by their present sufferings, and apprehensive of impending calamities, had entered into a conspiracy with their faithful brethren, the eunuchs of the palace, against the lives of two emperors, whom they detested as the irreconcilable enemies of the Church of God." The conjecture of Gibbon was renewed by Burkhardt in his work on Constantine, pp. 332 ff, but without any evidence. Baur rejects it as artificial and very improbable. (Kirchengesch. I. 452, note). Mason (p. 97 sq.) refutes it.8

The persecution began on the twenty-third day of February, 303, the feast of the Terminalia (as if to make an end of the Christian sect), with the destruction of the magnificent church in Nicomedia, and soon spread over the whole Roman empire, except Gaul, Britain, and Spain, where the co-regent Constantius Chlorus, and especially his son, Constantine the Great (from 306), were disposed, as far as possible, to spare the Christians. But even here the churches were destroyed, and many martyrs of Spain (St. Vincentius, Eulalia, and others celebrated by Prudentins), and of Britain (St. Alban) are assigned by later tradition to this age.

The persecution raged longest and most fiercely in the East under the rule of Galerius and his barbarous nephew Maximin Daza, who was intrusted by Diocletian before his retirement with the dignity of Caesar and the extreme command of Egypt and Syria⁵⁰⁵⁰    See Lactant., De Morte Persec. ch. 18 and 19, 32, and Gibbon, ch. XIV. V. (vol. II. 16 in Smith’s edition). The original name of Maximin was Daza. He must not be confounded with Maximian (who was older and died three years before him). He was a rude, ignorant and superstitious tyrant, equal to Galerius in cruelty and surpassing him in incredible debauchery (See Lact. l.c. ch. 37 sqq.). He died of poison after being defeated by Licinius in 313.9. He issued in autumn, 308, a fifth edict of persecution, which commanded that all males with their wives and servants, and even their children, should sacrifice and actually taste the accursed offerings, and that all provisions in the markets should be sprinkled with sacrificial wine. This monstrous law introduced a reign of terror for two years, and left⁵¹⁵¹    See on this edict of Maximin, Euseb. Mart. Pal. IX. 2; the Acts of Martyrs in Boll., May 8, p. 291, and Oct. 19, p. 428; Mason, l.c. 284 sqq.0 the Christians no alternative but apostasy or starvation. All the pains, which iron and steel, fire and sword, rack and cross, wild beasts and beastly men could inflict, were employed to gain the useless end.

Eusebius was a witness of this persecution in Caesura, Tyre, and Egypt, and saw, with his own eyes, as he tells us, the houses of prayer razed to the ground, the Holy Scriptures committed to the flames on the market places, the pastors hunted, tortured, and torn to pieces in the amphitheatre. Even the wild beasts, he says, not without rhetorical exaggeration, at last refused to attack the Christians, as if they had assumed the part of men in place of the heathen Romans; the bloody swords became dull and shattered; the executioners grew weary, and had to relieve each other; but the Christians sang hymns of praise and thanksgiving in honor of Almighty God, even to their latest breath. He describes the heroic sufferings and death of several martyrs, including his friend, "the holy and blessed Pamphilus," who after two years of imprisonment won the crown of life (309), with eleven others—a typical company that seemed to him to be "a perfect representation of the church."

Eusebius himself was imprisoned, but released. The charge of having escaped martyrdom by offering sacrifice is without foundation.⁵²⁵²    Lightfoot vindicates him in his learned art. Euseb. in Smith and Wace, Dict. of Christ. Biogr. II. 311.1

In this, as in former persecutions, the number of apostates who preferred the earthly life to the heavenly, was very great. To these was now added also the new class of the traditores, who delivered the holy Scriptures to the heathen authorities, to be burned. But as the persecution raged, the zeal and fidelity of the Christians increased, and martyrdom spread as by contagion. Even boys and girls showed amazing firmness. In many the heroism of faith degenerated to a fanatical courting of death; confessors were almost worshipped, while yet alive; and the hatred towards apostates distracted many congregations, and produced the Meletian and Donatist schisms.

The number of martyrs cannot be estimated with any degree of certainty. The seven episcopal and the ninety-two Palestinian martyrs of Eusebius are only a select list bearing a similar relation to the whole number of victims as the military lists its of distinguished fallen officers to the large mass of common soldiers, and form therefore no fair basis for the calculation of Gibbon, who would reduce the whole number to less than two thousand. During the eight years⁵³⁵³    Or ten years, if we include the local persecutions of Maximin and Licinius after the first edict of toleration (311-313).2 of this persecution the number of victims, without including the many confessors who were barbarously mutilated and condemned to a lingering death in the prisons and mines, must have been much larger. But there is no truth in the tradition (which figures in older church histories) that the tyrants erected trophies in Spain and elsewhere with such inscriptions as announce the suppression of the Christian sect.⁵⁴⁵⁴    As "Nomine Christianorum deleto; superstitione Christiana ubique deleta, et cultu Deorum propagato." See the inscriptions in full in Baronius (ad. ann. 304, no. 8, 9; but they are inconsistent with the confession of the failure in the edict of toleration, and acknowledged to be worthless even by Gams (K. Gesch. v. Spanien, I. 387).3

The martyrologies date from this period several legends, the germs of which, however, cannot now be clearly sifted from the additions of later poesy. The story of the destruction of the legio Thebaica is probably an exaggeration of the martyrdom of St. Mauritius, who was executed in Syria, as tribunus militum, with seventy soldiers, at the order of Maximin. The martyrdom of Barlaam, a plain, rustic Christian of remarkable constancy, and of Gordius, a centurion (who, however, was tortured and executed a few years later under Licinius, 314) has been eulogized by St. Basil. A maiden of thirteen years, St. Agnes, whose memory the Latin church has celebrated ever since the fourth century, was, according to tradition, brought in chains before the judgment-seat in Rome; was publicly exposed, and upon her steadfast confession put to the sword; but afterwards appeared to her grieving parents at her grave with a white lamb and a host of shining virgins from heaven, and said: "Mourn me no longer as dead, for ye see that I live. Rejoice with me, that I am forever united in heaven with the Saviour, whom on earth I loved with all my heart." Hence the lamb in the paintings of this saint; and hence the consecration of lambs in her church at Rome at her festival (Jan. 21), from whose wool the pallium of the archbishop is made. Agricola and Vitalis at Bologna, Gervasius and Protasius at Milan, whose bones were discovered in the time of Ambrose Janurius, bishop of Benevent, who became the patron saint of Naples, and astonishes the faithful by the annual miracle of the liquefaction of his blood, and the British St. Alban, who delivered himself to the authorities in the place of the priest he had concealed in his house, and converted his executioner, are said to have attained martyrdom under Diocletian.⁵⁵⁵⁵    For details see the Martyrologies, the "Lives of Saints, " also Baronius Annal. This historian is so fully convinced of the "insigne et perpetuum miraculum sanguinis S. Januarii," that he thinks; it unnecessary to produce; my witness, since "tota Italia, et totus Christianus orbis testis est locupletissimus!"Ad ann. 305 no. 6.4

§ 25. The Edicts of Toleration. a.d. 311–313.

See Lit. in § 24, especially Keim, and Mason (Persecution of Diocletian, pp. 299 and 326 sqq.)

This persecution was the last desperate struggle of Roman heathenism for its life. It was the crisis of utter extinction or absolute supremacy for each of the two religions. At the close of the contest the old Roman state religion was exhausted. Diocletian retired into private life in 305, under the curse of the Christians; he found greater pleasure in planting cabbages at Salona in his native Dalmatia, than in governing a vast empire, but his peace was disturbed by the tragical misfortunes of his wife and daughter, and in 313, when all the achievements of his reign were destroyed, he destroyed himself.

Galerius, the real author of the persecution, brought to reflection by a terrible disease, put an end to the slaughter shortly before his death, by a remarkable edict of toleration, which he issued from Nicomedia in 311, in connexion with Constantine and Licinius. In that document he declared, that the purpose of reclaiming the Christians from their wilful innovation and the multitude of their sects to the laws and discipline of the, Roman state, was not accomplished; and that he would now grant them permission to hold their religious assemblies provided they disturbed not the order of the state. To this he added in conclusion the significant instruction that the Christians, "after this manifestation of grace, should pray to their God for the welfare of the emperors, of the state, and of themselves, that the state might prosper in every respect, and that they might live quietly in their homes."⁵⁶⁵⁶    M. de Broglie (L’Église et l’Empire, I. 182) well characterizes this manifesto: "Singulier document, moitié insolent, moitié suppliant, qui commence par insulter chrétiens et finit par leur demander de prier leur maÎ tre pour lui." Mason (1. c. p. 299): "The dying emperor shows no penitence, makes no confession, except his impotence. He wishes to dupe and outwit the angry Christ, by pretending to be not a persecutor but a reformer. With a curse, he dashes his edict of toleration in the church’s face, and hopes superstitiously that it will win him indemnity."5

This edict virtually closes the period of persecution in the Roman empire.

For a short time Maximin, whom Eusebius calls "the chief of tyrants," continued in every way to oppress and vex the church in the East, and the cruel pagan Maxentius (a son of Maximian and son-in-law of Galerius) did the same in Italy.

But the young Constantine, who hailed from the far West, had already, in 306, become emperor of Gaul, Spain, and Britain. He had been brought up at the court of Diocletian at Nicomedia (like Moses at the court of Pharaoh) and destined for his successor, but fled from the intrigues of Galerius to Britain, and was appointed by his father and proclaimed by the army as his successor. He crossed the Alps, and under the banner of the cross, he conquered Maxentius at the Milvian bridge near Rome, and the heathen tyrant perished with his army of veterans in the waters of the Tiber, Oct. 27, 312. A few months afterwards Constantine met at Milan with his co-regent and brother-in-law, Licinius, and issued a new edict of toleration (313), to which Maximin also, shortly before his suicide (313), was compelled to give his consent at Nicomedia.⁵⁷⁵⁷    It is usually stated (also by Keim, l.c., Gieseler, Baur, vol. I.. 454 sqq.), that Constantine and Licinius issued two edicts of toleration, one in the year 312, and one from Milan in 313, since the last refers to a previous edict, but the reference seems to be to directions now lost for officials which accompanied the edict of Galerius (311), of which Constantine was a co-signatory. There is no edict of 312. See Zahn and especially Mason (p. 328 sq.), also Uhlhorn (Conflict, etc., p. 497, Engl. translation).6 The second edict went beyond the first of 311; it was a decisive step from hostile neutrality to friendly neutrality and protection, and prepared the way for the legal recognition of Christianity, as the religion of the empire. It ordered the full restoration of all confiscated church property to the Corpus Christianorum, at the expense of the imperial treasury, and directed the provincial magistrates to execute this order at once with all energy, so that peace may be fully established and the continuance of the Divine favor secured to the emperors and their subjects.

This was the first proclamation of the great principle that every man had a right to choose his religion according to the dictates of his own conscience and honest conviction, without compulsion and interference from the government.⁵⁸⁵⁸    "Ut daremus et Christianis et omnibus liberam potestatem sequendi religionem, quam quiscunque voluisset." See Euseb. H. X. 5; Lactant. De Mort. Pers. c. 48. Mason (p. 327) says of the Edict of Milan: "It is the very first announcement of that doctrine which is now regarded as the mark and principle of civilization, the foundation of solid liberty, the characteristic of modern politics. In vigorous and trenchant sentences it sets forth perfect freedom of conscience, the unfettered choice of religion."7 Religion is worth nothing except as an act of freedom. A forced religion is no religion at all. Unfortunately, the successors of Constantine from the time of Theodosius the Great (383–395) enforced the Christian religion to the exclusion of every other; and not only so, but they enforced orthodoxy to the exclusion of every form of dissent, which was punished as a crime against the state.

Paganism made another spasmodic effort. Licinius fell out with Constantine and renewed the persecution for a short time in the East, but he was defeated in 323, and Constantine became sole ruler of the empire. He openly protected and favored the church, without forbidding idolatry, and upon the whole remained true to his policy of protective toleration till his death (337). This was enough for the success of the church, which had all the vitality and energy of a victorious power; while heathenism was fast decaying at its root.

With Constantine, therefore, the last of the heathen, the first of the Christian, emperors, a new period begins. The church ascends the throne of the Caesars under the banner of the once despised, now honored and triumphant cross, and gives new vigor and lustre to the hoary empire of Rome. This sudden political and social revolution seems marvellous; and yet it was only the legitimate result of the intellectual and moral revolution which Christianity, since the second century, had silently and imperceptibly wrought in public opinion. The very violence of the Diocletian persecution betrayed the inner weakness of heathenism. The Christian minority with its ideas already controlled the deeper current of history. Constantine, as a sagacious statesman, saw the signs of the times and followed them. The motto of his policy is well symbolized in his military standard with the inscription: "Hoc signo vinces."⁵⁹⁵⁹    For a fuller account of Constantine and his relation to the Church. see the next volume.8

What a contrast between Nero, the first imperial persecutor, riding in a chariot among Christian martyrs as burning torches in his gardens, and Constantine, seated in the Council of Nicaea among three hundred and eighteen bishops (some of whom—as the blinded Confessor Paphnutius, Paul of Neocaesarea, and the ascetics from Upper Egypt clothed in wild raiment—wore the insignia of torture on their maimed and crippled bodies), and giving the highest sanction of civil authority to the decree of the eternal deity of the once crucified Jesus of Nazareth! Such a revolution the world has never seen before or since, except the silent, spiritual, and moral reformation wrought by Christianity itself at its introduction in the first, and at its revival in the sixteenth century.

§ 26. Christian Martyrdom.

I. Sources.

Ignatius: Epistolae. Martyrum Polycarpi. Tertullian: Ad Martyres. Origenes: Exhortatio ad martyrium (προτρεπτικοʹς Λόγος εἷς μαρτύπιον.) Cyprian: Ep. 11 ad mart. Prudentius: Περιʹ στεφάωνʹhymni XIV. Comp. Lit. § 12.

II. Works.

Sagittarius: De mart. cruciatibus, 1696.

H. Dodwell: De paucitate martyrum, in his Dissertationes Cyprianiae. Lond. 1684.

Ruinart (R.C.): Praefatio generalis in Acta Martyrum.

P. W. Gass: Das christl. Märtyrerthum in den ersten Jahrhunderten, in Niedner’s "Zeitschrift f. Hist. Theol." 1859 and ’60.

E. de Pressensé: The Martyrs and Apologists. Translated from the French. London and N. Y. 1871. (Ch. II. p. 67 sqq.).

Chateaubriand: Les martyrs ou le triomphe de la rel. chrét. 2 vols. Paris 1809 and often (best Engl. trsl. by O W. Wight, N. York, 1859.) Has no critical or historical value, but merely poetical.

Comp. in part Mrs. Jameson: Sacred and Legendary Art. Lond. 1848. 2 vols.

To these protracted and cruel persecutions the church opposed no revolutionary violence, no carnal resistance, but the moral heroism of suffering and dying for the truth. But this very heroism was her fairest ornament and staunchest weapon. In this very heroism she proved herself worthy of her divine founder, who submitted to the death of the cross for the salvation of the world, and even prayed that his murderers might be forgiven. The patriotic virtues of Greek and Roman antiquity reproduced themselves here in exalted form, in self-denial for the sake of a heavenly country, and for a crown that fadeth not away. Even boys and girls became heroes, and rushed with a holy enthusiasm to death. In those hard times men had to make earnest of the words of the Lord: "Whosoever doth not bear his cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple." "He, that loveth father and mother more than me, is not worthy of me." But then also the promise daily proved itself true: "Blessed are they, who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." "He, that loseth his life for my sake, shall find it." And it applied not only to the martyrs themselves, who exchanged the troubled life of earth for the blessedness of heaven, but also to the church as a whole, which came forth purer and stronger from every persecution, and thus attested her indestructible vitality.

These suffering virtues are among the sweetest and noblest fruits of the Christian religion. It is not so much the amount of suffering which challenges our admiration, although it was terrible enough, as the spirit with which the early Christians bore it. Men and women of all classes, noble senators and learned bishops, illiterate artisans and poor slaves, loving mothers and delicate virgins, hoary-headed pastors and innocent children approached their tortures in no temper of unfeeling indifference and obstinate defiance, but, like their divine Master, with calm self-possession, humble resignation, gentle meekness, cheerful faith, triumphant hope, and forgiving charity. Such spectacles must have often overcome even the inhuman murderer. "Go on," says Tertullian tauntingly to the heathen governors, "rack, torture, grind us to powder: our numbers increase in proportion as ye mow us down. The blood of Christians is their harvest seed. Your very obstinacy is a teacher. For who is not incited by the contemplation of it to inquire what there is in the core of the matter? And who, after having joined us, does not long to suffer?"⁶⁰⁶⁰    Comp. a similar passage in the anonymous Ep. ad Diognetum, c. 6 and 7 at the close, and in Justin M., Dial .c. Tryph. Jud. c. 110.9

Unquestionably there were also during this period, especially after considerable seasons of quiet, many superficial or hypocritical Christians, who, the moment the storm of persecution broke forth, flew like chaff from the wheat, and either offered incense to the gods (thurificati, sacrificati), or procured false witness of their return to paganism (libellatici, from libellum), or gave up the sacred books (traditores). Tertullian relates with righteous indignation that whole congregations, with the clergy at the head, would at times resort to dishonorable bribes in order to avert the persecution of heathen magistrates.⁶¹⁶¹    De fuga in persec. c. 13: "Massaliter totae ecclesiae tributum sibi irrogaverunt."0 But these were certainly cases of rare exception. Generally speaking the three sorts of apostates (lapsi) were at once excommunicated, and in many churches, through excessive rigor, were even refused restoration.

Those who cheerfully confessed Christ before the heathen magistrate at the peril of life, but were not executed, were honored as confessors.⁶²⁶²    Ὁμολογήται, confessores, Matt. 10:32; 1 Tim. 6:12.1 Those who suffered abuse of all kind and death itself, for their faith, were called martyrs or bloodwitnesses.⁶³⁶³    Μάρτυρες, Acts 22:20; Heb. 12:1; 1 Pet. 5:1; Rev. 17:6.2

Among these confessors and martyrs were not wanting those in whom the pure, quiet flame of enthusiasm rose into the wild fire of fanaticism, and whose zeal was corrupted with impatient haste, heaven-tempting presumption, and pious ambition; to whom that word could be applied: "Though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing." They delivered themselves up to the heathen officers, and in every way sought the martyr’s crown, that they might merit heaven and be venerated on earth as saints. Thus Tertullian tells of a company of Christians in Ephesus, who begged martyrdom from the heathen governor, but after a few had been executed, the rest were sent away by him with the words: "Miserable creatures, if you really wish to die, you have precipices and halters enough." Though this error was far less discreditable than the opposite extreme of the cowardly fear of man, yet it was contrary to the instruction and the example of Christ and the apostles,⁶⁴⁶⁴    Comp. Matt. 10:23; 24:15-20; Phil. 1:20-25; 2 Tim. 4:6-8.3 and to the spirit of true martyrdom, which consists in the union of sincere humility and power, and possesses divine strength in the very consciousness of human weakness. And accordingly intelligent church teachers censured this stormy, morbid zeal. The church of Smyrna speaks thus: "We do not commend those who expose themselves; for the gospel teaches not so." Clement of Alexandria says: "The Lord himself has commanded us to flee to another city when we are persecuted; not as if the persecution were an evil; not as if we feared death; but that we may not lead or help any to evil doing." In Tertullian’s view martyrdom perfects itself in divine patience; and with Cyprian it is a gift of divine grace, which one cannot hastily grasp, but must patiently wait for.

But after all due allowance for such adulteration and degeneracy, the martyrdom of the first three centuries still remains one of the grandest phenomena of history, and an evidence of the indestructible divine nature of Christianity.

No other religion could have stood for so long a period the combined opposition of Jewish bigotry, Greek philosophy, and Roman policy and power; no other could have triumphed at last over so many foes by purely moral and spiritual force, without calling any carnal weapons to its aid. This comprehensive and long-continued martyrdom is the peculiar crown and glory of the early church; it pervaded its entire literature and gave it a predominantly apologetic character; it entered deeply into its organization and discipline and the development of Christian doctrine; it affected the public worship and private devotions; it produced a legendary poetry; but it gave rise also, innocently, to a great deal of superstition, and undue exaltation of human merit; and it lies at the foundation of the Catholic worship of saints and relics.

Sceptical writers have endeavored to diminish its moral effect by pointing to the fiendish and hellish scenes of the papal crusades against the Albigenses and Waldenses, the Parisian massacre of the Huguenots, the Spanish Inquisition, and other persecutions of more recent date. Dodwell expressed the opinion, which has been recently confirmed by the high authority of the learned and impartial Niebuhr, that the Diocletian persecution was a mere shadow as compared with the persecution of the Protestants in the Netherlands by the Duke of Alva in the service of Spanish bigotry and despotism. Gibbon goes even further, and boldly asserts that "the number of Protestants who were executed by the Spaniards in a single province and a single reign, far exceeded that of the primitive martyrs in the space of three centuries and of the Roman empire." The victims of the Spanish Inquisition also are said to outnumber those of the Roman emperors.⁶⁵⁶⁵    The number of Dutch martyrs under the Duke of Alva amounted, according to Grotius, to over 100,000; according to P. Sarpi, the R. Cath. historian, to 50,000. Motley, in his History of the Rim of the Dutch Republic, vol. II. 504, says of the terrible reign of Alva: "The barbarities committed amid the sack and ruin of those blazing and starving cities are almost beyond belief; unborn infants were torn from the living bodies of their mothers; women and children were violated by the thousands; and whole populations burned and hacked to pieces by soldiers in every mode which cruelty, in its wanton ingenuity, could devise." Buckle and Friedländer (III. 586) assert that during the eighteen years of office of Torquemada, the Spanish Inquisition punished, according to the lowest estimate, 105,000 persons, among whom 8,800 were burnt. In Andalusia 2000 Jews were executed, and 17,000 punished in a single year.4

Admitting these sad facts, they do not justify any sceptical conclusion. For Christianity is no more responsible for the crimes and cruelties perpetrated in its name by unworthy professors and under the sanction of an unholy alliance of politics and religion, than the Bible for all the nonsense men have put into it, or God for the abuse daily and hourly practised with his best gifts. But the number of martyrs must be judged by the total number of Christians who were a minority of the population. The want of particular statements by contemporary writers leaves it impossible to ascertain, even approximately, the number of martyrs. Dodwell and Gibbon have certainly underrated it, as far as Eusebius, the popular tradition since Constantine, and the legendary poesy of the middle age, have erred the other way. This is the result of recent discovery and investigation, and fully admitted by such writers as Renan. Origen, it is true, wrote in the middle of the third century, that the number of Christian martyrs was small and easy to be counted; God not permitting that all this class of men should be exterminated.⁶⁶⁶⁶    Ὀλίγοι κατὰ καιροὺς καὶ σφόδρα εὐαρίθμητοι τεθνήκασι.. Adv. Cels. III. 8 The older testimony of Melito of Sardis, in the well-known fragment from his Apology, preserved by Eusebius IV. 26, refers merely to the small number of imperial persecutors before Marcus Aurelius.5 But this language must be understood as referring chiefly to the reigns of Caracalla, Heliogabalus, Alexander Severus and Philippus Arabs, who did not persecute the Christians. Soon afterwards the fearful persecution of Decius broke out, in which Origen himself was thrown into prison and cruelly treated. Concerning the preceding ages, his statement must be qualified by the equally valid testimonies of Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria (Origen’s teacher), and the still older Irenaeus, who says expressly, that the church, for her love to God, "sends in all places and at all times a multitude of martyrs to the Father."⁶⁷⁶⁷    Adv. Haer. IV. c. 33, § 9: Ecclesia omni in loco ob eam, quam habet erga Deum dilectionem, multitudinem martyrum in omni tempore praemittit ad Patrem.6 Even the heathen Tacitus speaks of an "immense multitude" (ingens multitudo) of Christians, who were murdered in the city of Rome alone during the Neronian persecution in 64. To this must be added the silent, yet most eloquent testimony of the Roman catacombs, which, according to the calculation of Marchi and Northcote, extended over nine hundred English miles, and are said to contain nearly seven millions of graves, a large proportion of these including the relics of martyrs, as the innumerable inscriptions and instruments of death testify. The sufferings, moreover, of the church during this period are of course not to be measured merely by the number of actual executions, but by the far more numerous insults, slanders, vexatious, and tortures, which the cruelty of heartless heathens and barbarians could devise, or any sort of instrument could inflict on the human body, and which were in a thousand cases worse than death.

Finally, while the Christian religion has at all times suffered more or less persecution, bloody or unbloody, from the ungodly world, and always had its witnesses ready for any sacrifice; yet at no period since the first three centuries was the whole church denied the right of a peaceful legal existence, and the profession of Christianity itself universally declared and punished as a political crime. Before Constantine the Christians were a helpless and proscribed minority in an essentially heathen world, and under a heathen government. Then they died not simply for particular doctrines, but for the facts of Christianity. Then it was a conflict, not for a denomination or sect, but for Christianity itself. The importance of ancient martyrdom does not rest so much on the number of victims and the cruelty of their sufferings as on the great antithesis and the ultimate result in saving the Christian religion for all time to come. Hence the first three centuries are the classical period of heathen persecution and of Christian martyrdom. The martyrs and confessors of the ante-Nicene age suffered for the common cause of all Christian denominations and sects, and hence are justly held in reverence and gratitude by all.

Notes.

Dr. Thomas Arnold, who had no leaning to superstitious and idolatrous saint-worship, in speaking of a visit to the church of San Stefano at Rome, remarks: "No doubt many of the particular stories thus painted will bear no critical examination; it is likely enough, too, that Gibbon has truly accused the general statements of exaggeration. But this is a thankless labor. Divide the sum total of the reported martyrs by twenty—by fifty, if you will; after all you have a number of persons of all ages and sexes suffering cruel torment and death for conscience’ sake, and for Christ’s; and by their sufferings manifestly with God’s blessing ensuring the triumph of Christ’s gospel. Neither do I think that we consider the excellence of this martyr spirit half enough. I do not think that pleasure is a sin; but though pleasure is not a sin, yet surely the contemplation of suffering for Christ’s sake is a thing most needful for us in our days, from whom in our daily life suffering seems so far removed. And as God’s grace enabled rich and delicate persons, women and even children, to endure all extremities of pain and reproach, in times past; so there is the same grace no less mighty now; and if we do not close ourselves against it, it might be in us no less glorious in a time of trial."

Lecky, a very able and impartial historian, justly censures the unfeeling chapter of Gibbon on persecution. "The complete absence," he says (History of European Morals, I. 494 sqq.), "of all sympathy with the heroic courage manifested by the martyrs, and the frigid, and in truth most unphilosophical severity with which the historian has weighed the words and actions of men engaged in the agonies of a deadly, struggle, must repel every generous nature, while the persistence with which he estimates persecutions by the number of deaths rather than the amount of suffering, diverts the mind from the really distinctive atrocities of the Pagan persecutions .... It is true that in one Catholic country they introduced the atrocious custom of making the spectacle of men burnt alive for their religious opinions an element in the public festivities. It is true, too, that the immense majority of the acts of the martyrs are the transparent forgeries of lying monks; but it is also true that among the authentic records of Pagan persecutions there are histories, which display, perhaps more vividly than any other, both the depth of cruelty to which human nature may sink, and the heroism of resistance it may attain. There was a time when it was the just boast of the Romans, that no refinement of cruelty, no prolongations of torture, were admitted in their stern but simple penal code. But all this was changed. Those hateful games, which made the spectacle of human suffering and death the delight of all classes, had spread their brutalising influence wherever the Roman name was known, had rendered millions absolutely indifferent to the sight of human suffering, had produced in many, in the very centre of an advanced civilisation, a relish and a passion for torture, a rapture and an exultation in watching the spasms of extreme agony, such as an African or an American savage alone can equal. The most horrible recorded instances of torture were usually inflicted, either by the populace, or in their presence, in the arena. We read of Christians bound in chains of red-hot iron, while the stench of their half-consumed flesh rose in a suffocating cloud to heaven; of others who were torn to the very bone by, shells or hooks of iron; of holy virgins given over to the lust of the gladiator or to the mercies of the pander; of two hundred and twenty-seven converts sent on one occasion to the mines, each with the sinews of one leg severed by a red-hot iron, and with an eye scooped from its socket; of fires so slow that the victims writhed for hours in their agonies; of bodies torn limb from limb, or sprinkled with burning lead; of mingled salt and vinegar poured over the flesh that was bleeding from the rack; of tortures prolonged and varied through entire days. For the love of their Divine Master, for the cause they believed to be true, men, and even weak girls, endured these things without flinching, when one word would have freed them from their sufferings, No opinion we may form of the proceedings of priests in a later age should impair the reverence with which we bend before the martyr’s tomb.

§ 27. Rise of the Worship of Martyrs and Relics.

I. Sources.

In addition to the works quoted in §§ 12 and 26, comp. Euseb. H. E. IV. 15; De Mart. Palaest. c. 7. Clem. Alex.: Strom. IV. p. 596. Orig.: Exhort. ad mart. c. 30 and 50. In Num. Kom. X. 2. Tertull.: De cor. mil. c. 3; De Resurr. carn. c. 43. Cypr.: De lapsis, c. 17; Epist. 34 and 57. Const. Apost.: l. 8.

II. Works.

C. Sagittarius: De natalitiis mart. Jen. 1696.

Schwabe: De insigni veneratione, quae obtinuit erga martyres in primit. eccl. Altd. 1748.

In thankful remembrance of the fidelity of this "noble army of martyrs," in recognition of the unbroken communion of saints, and in prospect of the resurrection of the body, the church paid to the martyrs, and even to their mortal remains, a veneration, which was in itself well-deserved and altogether natural, but which early exceeded the scriptural limit, and afterwards degenerated into the worship of saints and relics. The heathen hero-worship silently continued in the church and was baptized with Christian names.

In the church of Smyrna, according to its letter of the year 155, we find this veneration still in its innocent, childlike form: "They [the Jews] know not, that we can neither ever forsake Christ, who has suffered for the salvation of the whole world of the redeemed, nor worship another. Him indeed we adore (προσκυνοῦμεν) as the Son of God; but the martyrs we love as they deserve (ἀγαπῶμεν ἀξίως) for their surpassing love to their King and Master, as we wish also to be their companions and fellow-disciples."⁶⁸⁶⁸    Martyrium Polycarpi, cap. 17; Comp. Eusebius, H. E. IV. 15.7 The day of the death of a martyr was called his heavenly birth-day,⁶⁹⁶⁹    Ἡμέρα γενέθλιος, γενέθλια, natales, natalitia martyrum.8 and was celebrated annually at his grave (mostly in a cave or catacomb), by prayer, reading of a history of his suffering and victory, oblations, and celebration of the holy supper.

But the early church did not stop with this. Martyrdom was taken, after the end of the second century, not only as a higher grade of Christian virtue, but at the same time as a baptism of fire and blood,⁷⁰⁷⁰    Lavacrum sanguinis, βάπτισμα διὰ πυρός, comp. Matt. 20:22; Luke 12:50; Mark 10:39.9 an ample substitution for the baptism of water, as purifying from sin, and as securing an entrance into heaven. Origen even went so far as to ascribe to the sufferings of the martyrs an atoning virtue for others, an efficacy like that of the sufferings of Christ, on the authority of such passages as 2 Cor. 12:15; Col. 1:24; 2 Tim. 4:6. According to Tertullian, the martyrs entered immediately into the blessedness of heaven, and were not required, like ordinary Christians, to pass through the intermediate state. Thus was applied the benediction on those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, Matt. 5:10–12. Hence, according to Origen and Cyprian, their prayers before the throne of God came to be thought peculiarly efficacious for the church militant on earth, and, according to an example related by Eusebius, their future intercessions were bespoken shortly before their death.

In the Roman Catacombs we find inscriptions where the departed are requested to pray for their living relatives and friends.

The veneration thus shown for the persons of the martyrs was transferred in smaller measure to their remains. The church of Smyrna counted the bones of Polycarp more precious than gold or diamonds.⁷¹⁷¹    It is worthy of note, however, that some of the startling phenomena related in the Martyrium Polycarpi by the congregation of Smyrna are omitted in the narrative of Eusebius (IV. 15), and may be a later interpolation.0 The remains of Ignatius were held in equal veneration by the Christians at Antioch. The friends of Cyprian gathered his blood in handkerchiefs, and built a chapel over his tomb.

A veneration frequently excessive was paid, not only to the deceased martyrs, but also the surviving confessors. It was made the special duty of the deacons to visit and minister to them in prison. The heathen Lucian in his satire, "De morte Peregrini," describes the unwearied care of the Christians for their imprisoned brethren; the heaps of presents brought to them; and the testimonies of sympathy even by messengers from great distances; but all, of course, in Lucian’s view, out of mere good-natured enthusiasm. Tertullian the Montanist censures the excessive attention of the Catholics to their confessors. The libelli pacis, as they were called—intercessions of the confessors for the fallen—commonly procured restoration to the fellowship of the church. Their voice had peculiar weight in the choice of bishops, and their sanction not rarely overbalanced the authority of the clergy. Cyprian is nowhere more eloquent than in the praise of their heroism. His letters to the imprisoned confessors in Carthage are full of glorification, in a style somewhat offensive to our evangelical ideas. Yet after all, he protests against the abuse of their privileges, from which he had himself to suffer, and earnestly exhorts them to a holy walk; that the honor they have gained may not prove a snare to them, and through pride and carelessness be lost. He always represents the crown of the confessor and the martyr as a free gift of the grace of God, and sees the real essence of it rather in the inward disposition than in the outward act. Commodian conceived the whole idea of martyrdom in its true breadth, when he extended it to all those who, without shedding their blood, endured to the end in love, humility, and patience, and in all Christian virtue.

CHAPTER III.

LITERARY CONTEST OF CHRISTIANITY WITH JUDAISM AND HEATHENISM.

§ 28. Literature.

I. Sources.

Tacitus (Consul 97, d. about 117): Annal. xv. 44. Comp. his picture of the Jews, Hist. v. 1–5.

Plinius (d. about 114): Ep. x. 96, 97.

Celsus (flourished about 150): Ἀληθὴς λόγος. Preserved in fragments in Origen’s Refutation (8 books Κατὰ Κέλσου); reconstructed, translated and explained by Theodor Keim: Celsus’ Wahres Wort, Aelteste wissenschaftliche Streitschrift, antiker Weltanschauung gegen das Christenthum, Zürich 1873 (293 pages).

Lucian (d. about 180): Περὶ τῆς Περεγρίνου τελευτῆς c. 11–16; and Ἁληθὴς ἱστορία I. 30; II. 4, 11.

Porphyrius (about 300): Κατὰ Χριστιανῶν λόγοι. Only fragments preserved, and collected by Holstein, Rom. 1630. His most important works are lost. Those that remain are ed. by A. Nauck, 1860.

II. Works.

Nath. Lardner: Collection of Ancient Jewish and Heathen Testimonies to the Truth of the Christian Religion (Lond. 1727–’57) in the VI. and VII. vols. of his Works, ed. by Kippis, London, 1838. Very valuable.

Mosheim: introduction to his Germ. translation of Origen against Celsus. Hamb. 1745.

Bindemann: Celsus und seine Schriften gegen die Christen, in Illgen’s "Zeitschr. für hist. Theol." Leipz. 1842. N. 2, p. 58–146.

Ad. Planck: Lukian u. das Christenthum, in the "Studien u. Kritiken," 1851. N. 4; translated in the "Bibliotheca Sacra," Andover, 1852.

F. Chr. Baur: Das Christenthum der 3 ersten Jahrh. Tüb. secd. ed. 1860 (and 1863) pp. 370–430.

Neander: General History of the Christian Religion and Church; Engl. trans. by Torrey, vol. I., 157–178. (12th Boston ed.)

Richard von der Alm: Die Urtheile heidnischer und jüdischer Schriftsteller der vier ersten Jahrh. ueber Jesus und die ersten Christen. Leipz. 1865. (An infidel book.)

H. Kellner (R.C.): Hellenismus und Christenthum oder die geistige Reaction des antiken Heidenthums gegen das Christenthum. Köln 1866 (454 pp.)

B. Aubé: De l’ Apologétique chrétienne au II^e siécle. St. Justin, philosophe et martyr, 2nd ed. Paris 1875. By the same: Histoire des Persecutions de l’église. The second part, also under the titleLa polémique païenne à la fin du II^e siécle. Paris 1878.

E. Renan: Marc-Aurèle (Paris 1882), pp. 345 (Celse et Lucien), 379 sqq. (Nouvelles apologies).

J. W. Farrar: Seekers after God. London, 1869, new ed. 1877. (Essays on Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, compared with Christianity.)

Comp. the Lit. quoted in § 12, especially Uhlhorn and Keim (1881), and the monographs on Justin M., Tertullian, Origen, and other Apologists, which are noticed in sections treating of these writers.

§ 29. Literary Opposition to Christianity.

Besides the external conflict, which we have considered in the second chapter, Christianity was called to pass through an equally important intellectual and literary struggle with the ancient world; and from this also it came forth victorious, and conscious of being the perfect religion for man. We shall see in this chapter, that most of the objections of modern infidelity against Christianity were anticipated by its earliest literary opponents, and ably and successfully refuted by the ancient apologists for the wants of the church in that age. Both unbelief and faith, like human nature and divine grace, are essentially the same in all ages and among all nations, but vary in form, and hence every age, as it produces its own phase of opposition, must frame its own mode of defense.

The Christian religion found at first as little favor with the representatives of literature and art as with princes and statesmen. In the secular literature of the latter part of the first century and the beginning of the second, we find little more than ignorant, careless and hostile allusions to Christianity as a new form of superstition which then began to attract the attention of the Roman government. In this point of view also Christ’s kingdom was not of the world, and was compelled to force its way through the greatest difficulties; yet it proved at last the mother of an intellectual and moral culture far in advance of the Graeco-Roman, capable of endless progress, and full of the vigor of perpetual youth.

The pious barbarism of the Byzantine emperors Theodosius II. and Valentinian III. ordered the destruction of the works of Porphyrius and all other opponents of Christianity, to avert the wrath of God, but considerable fragments have been preserved in the refutations of the Christian Fathers, especially Origen, Eusebius, Cyril of Alexandria (against Julian), and scattered notices of Jerome and Augustin.

§ 30. Jewish Opposition. Josephus and the Talmud.

The hostility of the Jewish Scribes and Pharisees to the gospel is familiar from the New Testament. Josephus mentions Jesus once in his archaeology, but in terms so favorable as to agree ill with his Jewish position, and to subject the passage to the suspicion of interpolation or corruption.⁷²⁷²    Joseph. Antiqu. l. XVIII.c. 3, sect. 3. Comp. on this much disputed passage, vol. I., p. 92.1 His writings, however, contain much valuable testimony to the truth of the gospel history. His "Archaeology" throughout is a sort of fifth Gospel in illustration of the social and political environments of the life of Christ.⁷³⁷³    It is the special merit of Keim to have thoroughly utilized Josephus for the biography of Jesus.2 His "History of the Jewish War," in particular, is undesignedly a striking commentary on the Saviour’s predictions concerning the destruction of the city and temple of Jerusalem, the great distress and affliction of the Jewish people at that time, the famine, pestilence, and earthquake, the rise of false prophets and impostors, and the flight of his disciples at the approach of these calamities.⁷⁴⁷⁴    These coincidences have been traced out in full by Lardner, Works, ed. Kippis, vol. VI. p. 406 ff.3

The attacks of the later Jews upon Christianity are essentially mere repetitions of those recorded in the Gospels—denial of the Messiahship of Jesus, and horrible vituperation of his confessors. We learn their character best from the dialogue of Justin with the Jew Trypho. The fictitious disputation on Christ by Jason and Papiscus, first mentioned by Celsus, was lost since the seventh century.⁷⁵⁷⁵    Ἱάσονος καὶ Παπίσκου ἄντιλογία περὶ Χριστοῦ. D. Origenes Contra Cels. IV. 51. Celsus says, that he read the book which defends the allegorical interpretation, with pity and hatred. Comp. Harnack, Altchristl. Literatur, vol. 1. (1882). p. 115 sqq.4 It seems to have been a rather poor apology of Christianity against Jewish objections by a Jewish Christian, perhaps by Aristo of Pella.

The Talmud is the Bible of Judaism separated from, and hostile to, Christianity, but it barely notices it except indirectly. It completed the isolation of the Jews from all other people.

§ 31. Pagan Opposition. Tacitus and Pliny.

The Greek and Roman writers of the first century, and some of the second, as Seneca, the elder Pliny, and even the mild and noble Plutarch, either from ignorance or contempt, never allude to Christianity at all.

Tacitus and the younger Pliny, contemporaries and friends of the emperor Trajan, are the first to notice it; and they speak of it only incidentally and with stoical disdain and antipathy, as an "exitiabilis superstition" "prava et immodica superstitio," "inflexibilis obstinatio." These celebrated and in their way altogether estimable Roman authors thus, from manifest ignorance, saw in the Christians nothing but superstitious fanatics, and put them on a level with the hated Jews; Tacitus, in fact, reproaching them also with the "odium generis humani." This will afford some idea of the immense obstacles which the new religion encountered in public opinion, especially in the cultivated circles of the Roman empire. The Christian apologies of the second century also show, that the most malicious and gratuitous slanders against the Christians were circulated among the common people, even charges of incest and cannibalism,⁷⁶⁷⁶    Οἰδιπόδειοι μίξεις, incesti concubitus; and θυεστεῖα δεῖπνα, Thyesteae epulae5 which may have arisen in part from a misapprehension of the intimate brotherly love of the Christians, and their nightly celebration of the holy supper and love-feasts.

Their Indirect Testimony to Christianity.

On the other hand, however, the scanty and contemptuous allusions of Tacitus and Pliny to Christianity bear testimony to a number of facts in the Gospel History. Tacitus, in giving an account of the Neronian persecution, incidentally attests, that Christ was put to death as a malefactor by Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius; that he was the founder of the Christian sect, that the latter took its rise in Judaea and spread in spite of the ignominious death of Christ and the hatred and contempt it encountered throughout the empire, so that a "vast multitude" (multitudo ingens) of them were most cruelly put to death in the city of Rome alone as early as the year 64. He also bears valuable testimony, in the fifth book of his History, together with Josephus, from whom he mainly, though not exclusively takes his account, to the fulfilment of Christ’s prophecy concerning the destruction of Jerusalem and the overthrow of the Jewish theocracy.

As to Pliny’s famous letter to Trajan, written about 107, it proves the rapid spread of Christianity in Asia Minor at that time among all ranks of society, the general moral purity and steadfastness of its professors amid cruel persecution, their mode and time of worship, their adoration of Christ as God, their observance of a "stated day," which is undoubtedly Sunday, and other facts of importance in the early history of the Church. Trajan’s rescript in reply to Pliny’s inquiry, furnishes evidence of the innocence of the Christians; he notices no charge against them except their disregard of the worship of the gods, and forbids them to be sought for. Marcus Aurelius testifies, in one brief and unfriendly allusion, to their eagerness for the crown of martyrdom.

§ 32. Direct Assaults. Celsus.

The direct assault upon Christianity, by works devoted to the purpose, began about the middle of the second century, and was very ably conducted by a Grecian philosopher, Celsus, otherwise unknown; according to Origen, an Epicurean with many Platonic ideas, and a friend of Lucian. He wrote during the persecuting reign of Marcus Aurelius.⁷⁷⁷⁷    Origen (I. 8) indefinitely assigns him to the reign of Hadrian and the Antonines; most historians (Mosheim, Gieseler, Baur, Friedländer) to a.d. 150 or later; others (Tillemont, Neander, Zeller) to about 160 or 170; Keim (1. c. p. 267) to a.d. 178. As the place of composition Keim (p. 274) suggests Rome, others Alexandria. He ably defends his identity with the friend of Lucian (p. 291), but makes him out a Platonist rather than an Epicurean (p. 203 sqq.).6

Celsus, with all his affected or real contempt for the new religion, considered it important enough to be opposed by an extended work entitled "A True Discourse," of which Origen, in his Refutation, has faithfully preserved considerable fragments.⁷⁸⁷⁸    See the restoration of Celsus from these fragments by Dr. Keim, quoted above.7 These represent their author as an eclectic philosopher of varied culture, skilled in dialectics, and familiar with the Gospels, Epistles, and even the writings of the Old Testament. He speaks now in the frivolous style of an Epicurean, now in the earnest and dignified tone of a Platonist. At one time he advocates the popular heathen religion, as, for instance, its doctrine of demons; at another time he rises above the polytheistic notions to a pantheistic or sceptical view. He employs all the aids which the culture of his age afforded, all the weapons of learning, common sense, wit, sarcasm, and dramatic animation of style, to disprove Christianity; and he anticipates most of the arguments and sophisms of the deists and infidels of later times. Still his book is, on the whole, a very superficial, loose, and light-minded work, and gives striking proof of the inability of the natural reason to understand the Christian truth. It has no savor of humility, no sense of the corruption of human nature, and man’s need of redemption; it is full of heathen passion and prejudice, utterly blind to any spiritual realities, and could therefore not in the slightest degree appreciate the glory of the Redeemer and of his work. It needs no refutation, it refutes itself.

Celsus first introduces a Jew, who accuses the mother of Jesus of adultery with a soldier named Panthera;⁷⁹⁷⁹    Πάνθηρ, panthera, here, and in the Talmud, where Jesus is likewise called יֶשׁיּ בֵנ ףַּנְדִירָא
   is used, like the Latin lupa, as a type of ravenous lust hence as a symbolical name for μοιχείρ. So Nitzsch and Baur. But Keim (p. 12) takes it as a designation of the wild rapacious (πᾶν θηρῶν) Roman soldier. The mother of Jesus was, according to the Jewish informant of Celsus, a poor seamstress, and engaged to a carpenter, who plunged her into disgrace and misery when he found out her infidelity.8 adduces the denial of Peter, the treachery of Judas, and the death of Jesus as contradictions of his pretended divinity; and makes the resurrection an imposture. Then Celsus himself begins the attack, and begins it by combating the whole idea of the supernatural, which forms the common foundation of Judaism and Christianity. The controversy between Jews and Christians appears to him as foolish as the strife about the shadow of an ass. The Jews believed, as well as the Christians, in the prophecies of a Redeemer of the world, and thus differed from them only in that they still expected the Messiah’s coming. But then, to what purpose should God come down to earth at all, or send another down? He knows beforehand what is going on among men. And such a descent involves a change, a transition from the good to the evil, from the lovely to the hateful, from the happy to the miserable; which is undesirable, and indeed impossible, for the divine nature. In another place he says, God troubles himself no more about men than about monkeys and flies. Celsus thus denies the whole idea of revelation, now in pantheistic style, now in the levity of Epicurean deism; and thereby at the same time abandons the ground of the popular heathen religion. In his view Christianity has no rational foundation at all, but is supported by the imaginary terrors of future punishment. Particularly offensive to him are the promises of the gospel to the poor and miserable, and the doctrines of forgiveness of sins and regeneration, and of the resurrection of the body. This last he scoffingly calls a hope of worms, but not of rational souls. The appeal to the omnipotence of God, he thinks, does not help the matter, because God can do nothing improper and unnatural. He reproaches the Christians with ignorance, credulity, obstinacy, innovation, division, and sectarianism, which they inherited mostly from their fathers, the Jews. They are all uncultivated, mean, superstitious people, mechanics, slaves, women, and children. The great mass of them he regarded as unquestionably deceived. But where there are deceived, there must be also deceivers; and this leads us to the last result of this polemical sophistry. Celsus declared the first disciples of Jesus to be deceivers of the worst kind; a band of sorcerers, who fabricated and circulated the miraculous stories of the Gospels, particularly that of the resurrection of Jesus; but betrayed themselves by contradictions. The originator of the imposture, however, is Jesus himself, who learned that magical art in Egypt, and afterwards made a great noise with it in his native country.

But here, this philosophical and critical sophistry virtually, acknowledges its bankruptcy. The hypothesis of deception is the very last one to offer in explanation of a phenomenon so important as Christianity was even in that day. The greater and more permanent the deception, the more mysterious and unaccountable it must appear to reason.

Chrysostom made the truthful remark, that Celsus bears witness to the antiquity of the apostolic writings. This heathen assailant, who lived almost within hailing distance of St. John, incidentally gives us an abridgement of the history of Christ as related by the Gospels, and this furnishes strong weapons against modern infidels, who would represent this history as a later invention. "I know everything" he says; "we have had it all from your own books, and need no other testimony; ye slay yourselves with your own sword." He refers to the Gospels of Matthew, Luke, and John, and makes upon the whole about eighty allusions to, or quotations from, the New Testament. He takes notice of Christ’s birth from a virgin in a small village of Judaea, the adoration of the wise men from the East, the slaughter of the infants by order of Herod, the flight to Egypt, where he supposed Christ learned the charms of magicians, his residence in Nazareth, his baptism and the descent of the Holy Spirit in the shape of a dove and the voice from heaven, the election of disciples, his friendship with publicans and other low people, his supposed cures of the lame and the blind, and raising of the dead, the betrayal of Judas, the denial of Peter, the principal circumstances in the history of the passion and crucifixion, also the resurrection of Christ.⁸⁰⁸⁰    Keim (Geschichte Jesu von Nazara, I. 22) says of Celsus: "Von der Jungfraugeburt bis zum Jammer des Todes bei Essig und Galle, bis zu den Wundern des Todes und der Auferstehung hat er unsere Evangelien verfolgt, und anderen Quellen,welche zum Theil heute noch fliessen, hat er den Glauben an die Hasslichkeit Jesu und an die Sündhaftigkeit seiner Jünger abgewonnen." Comp. Keim’s monograph on Celsus, pp. 219-231. On the bearing of his testimony on the genuineness of the Gospel of John, see vol. 1. p. 708.9

It is true he perverts or abuses most of these facts; but according to his own showing they were then generally and had always been believed by the Christians. He alludes to some of the principal doctrines of the Christians, to their private assemblies for worship, to the office of presbyters. He omits the grosser charges of immorality, which he probably disowned as absurd and incredible.

In view of all these admissions we may here, with Lardner, apply Samson’s riddle: "Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness."⁸¹⁸¹    Judges xiv. 14. Comp. Lardner’s Works, vol. VII. pp. 210-270. Dr. Doddridge and Dr. Leland made good use of Celsus against the Deists of the last century. He may with still greater effect be turned against the more radical theories of Strauss and Renan. For Keim’s estimate, see his Celsus, 253-261.0

§ 33. Lucian.

Edd. of Lucian’s works by Hemsterhuis and Reiz (1743 sqq.), Jacobitz (1836–39), Dindorf (1840 and 1858), Bekker (1853), Franc. Fritzsche (1860–’69). The pseudo-Lucianic dialogue Philopatris (φιλόπατρις, loving one’s country, patriot) in which the Christians are ridiculed and condemned as enemies of the Roman empire, is of a much later date, probably from the reign of Julian the Apostate (363). See Gesner: De aetate et auctore Philopatridis, Jen. 1714.

Jacob:Charakteristik Lucians. Hamburg 1822.

G. G. Bernays: Lucian und die Cyniker. Berlin. 1879.

Comp. Keim: Celsus, 143–151; Ed. D. Zeller:Alexander und Peregrinus , in the "Deutsche Rundschau," for Jan. 1877; Henry Cotterill: Peregrinus Proteus (Edinb. 1879); Ad. Harnack in Herzog (ed. II.), VIII. 772–779; and the Lit. quoted in § 28.

In the same period the rhetorician Lucian (born at Samosata in Syria about 120, died in Egypt or Greece before 200), the Voltaire of Grecian literature, attacked the Christian religion with the same light weapons of wit and ridicule, with which, in his numerous elegantly written works, he assailed the old popular faith and worship, the mystic fanaticism imported from the East, the vulgar life of the Stoics and Cynics of that day, and most of the existing manners and customs of the distracted period of the empire. An Epicurean, worldling, and infidel, as he was, could see in Christianity only one of the many vagaries and follies of mankind; in the miracles, only jugglery; in the belief of immortality, an empty dream; and in the contempt of death and the brotherly love of the Christians, to which he was constrained to testify, a silly enthusiasm.

Thus he represents the matter in an historical romance on the life and death of Peregrinus Proteus, a contemporary Cynic philosopher, whom he make the basis of a satire upon Christianity, and especially upon Cynicism. Peregrinus is here presented as a perfectly contemptible man, who, after the meanest and grossest crimes, adultery, sodomy, and parricide, joins the credulous Christians in Palestine, cunningly imposes on them, soon rises to the highest repute among them, and, becoming one of the confessors in prison, is loaded with presents by them, in fact almost worshipped as a god, but is afterwards excommunicated for eating some forbidden food (probably meat of the idolatrous sacrifices); then casts himself into the arms of the Cynics, travels about everywhere, in the filthiest style of that sect; and at last about the year 165, in frantic thirst for fame, plunges into the flames of a funeral pile before the assembled populace of the town of Olympia, for the triumph of philosophy. This fiction of the self-burning was no doubt meant for a parody on the Christian martyrdom, perhaps with special reference to Polycarp, who a few years before had suffered death by fire at Smyrna (155).⁸²⁸²    Harnack, l.c. denies a reference to Polycarp.1

Lucian treated the Christians rather with a compassionate smile, than with hatred. He nowhere urges persecution. He never calls Christ an impostor, as Celsus does, but a "crucified sophist;" a term which he uses as often in a good sense as in the bad. But then, in the end, both the Christian and the heathen religions amount, in his view, to imposture; only, in his Epicurean indifferentism, he considers it not worth the trouble to trace such phenomena to their ultimate ground, and attempt a philosophical explanation.⁸³⁸³    Berneys (l.c. p. 43) characterizes Lucian very unfavorably: "ein anscheinend nicht sehr glücklicher Advocat, ist er ohne ernste Studien ins Literatenthum übergegangen; unwissend und leichtfertig trägt er lediglich eine nihilistische Oede in Bezuq auf alle religiösen und metaphysischen Fraqen zur Schau und reisst alle als verkehrt und lächerlich herunter." Berneys thinks that the Peregrinus Proteus is not directed against the Christians, but against the Cynic philosophers and more particularly against the then still living Theagenes.2

The merely negative position of this clever mocker of all religions injured heathenism more than Christianity, but could not be long maintained against either; the religious element is far too deeply seated in the essence of human nature. Epicureanism and scepticism made way, in their turns, for Platonism, and for faith or superstition. Heathenism made a vigorous effort to regenerate itself, in order to hold its ground against the steady advance of Christianity. But the old religion itself could not help feeling more and more the silent influence of the new.

§ 34. Neo-Platonism.

I. Sources.

Plotinus: Opera Omnia, ed. Oxf 1835, 3 vols.; ed. Kirchhoff, Lips. 1856; ed. Didot, Par. 1856; H. F. Müller, Berlin 1878–80.

Porphyrius: Κατὰ Χριστιανῶν λόγοι (fragments collected in Holstein: Dissert. de vita et scriptis Porphyr. Rom. 1630). His biographies of Pythagoras, Plotinus, and other works were ed. by A. A. Nauck, 1860.

Hierocles: Λόγοι φιλαλήθεις πρός Χριστιανούς (fragments in Euse b.: Contra Hierocl. lib., and probably also in Macarius Magnes: Ἀποκριτικὸς ἢ Μονογενής Par. 1876).

Philostratus: De Vita Apollonii Tyanensis libri octo (Greek and Latin), Venet. 1501; ed. Westerman, Par. 1840; ed. Kayser, Zürich, 1853, 1870. Also in German, French and English translations.

II. Works.

Vogt: Neuplatonismus u. Christenthum. Berl. 1836.

Ritter:Gesch. der Philos. vol. 4th, 1834 (in English by Morrison, Oxf. 1838).

Neander: Ueber das neunte Buch in der zweiten Enneade des Plotinus. 1843. (vid. Neander’s Wissenschaftl. Abhandlungen, published by Jacobi, Berl. 1851, p. 22 sqq.)

Ullmann: Einflusz des Christentums auf Porphyrius, in "Stud. u. Krit." 1832.

Kirchner:Die Philosophie des Plotin. Halle, 1854.

F. Chr. Baur: Apollonius von Tyana u. Christus. Tüb. 1832, republ. by Ed. Zeller, in Drei Abhandlungen zur Gesch. der alten Philosophie U. ihres Verh. zum Christenthum. Leipzig, 1876, pp. 1–227.

John H. Newman: Apollonius Tyanaeus. Lond. 1849 (Encycl. Metropol. Vol. X., pp. 619–644).

A. Chassang: Ap. de T., sa vie, ses voyages, ses prodiges, etc. Paris, 1862. Translation from the Greek, with explanatory notes.

H. Kellner: Porphyrius und sein Verhültniss zum Christenthum, in the Tübingen "Theol. Quartalschrift," 1865. No. I.

Albert Réville: Apollonius of Tyana, the Pagan Christ of the third century, translated from the French. Lond. 1866.

K. Mönkeberg: Apollonius v. Tyana. Hamb. 1877.

Fr. Ueberweg: History of Philosophy (Eng. transl. N. York, 1871), vol. I. 232–259.

Ed. Zeller: Philosophie der Griechen, III. 419 sqq.

More earnest and dignified, but for this very reason more lasting and dangerous, was the opposition which proceeded directly and indirectly from Neo-Platonism. This system presents the last phase, the evening red, so to speak, of the Grecian philosophy; a fruitless effort of dying heathenism to revive itself against the irresistible progress of Christianity in its freshness and vigor. It was a pantheistic eclecticism and a philosophico-religious syncretism, which sought to reconcile Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy with Oriental religion and theosophy, polytheism with monotheism, superstition with culture, and to hold, as with convulsive grasp, the old popular religion in a refined and idealized form. Some scattered Christian ideas also were unconsciously let in; Christianity already filled the atmosphere of the age too much, to be wholly shut out. As might be expected, this compound of philosophy and religion was an extravagant, fantastic, heterogeneous affair, like its contemporary, Gnosticism, which differed from it by formally recognising Christianity in its syncretism. Most of the NeoPlatonists, Jamblichus in particular, were as much hierophants and theurgists as philosophers, devoted themselves to divination and magic, and boasted of divine inspirations and visions. Their literature is not an original, healthy natural product, but an abnormal after-growth.

In a time of inward distraction and dissolution the human mind hunts up old and obsolete systems and notions, or resorts to magical and theurgic arts. Superstition follows on the heels of unbelief, and atheism often stands closely connected with the fear of ghosts and the worship of demons. The enlightened emperor Augustus was troubled, if he put on his left shoe first in the morning, instead of the right; and the accomplished elder Pliny wore amulets as protection from thunder and lightning. In their day the long-forgotten Pythagoreanism was conjured from the grave and idealized. Sorcerers like Simon Magus, Elymas, Alexander of Abonoteichos, and Apollonius of Tyana (d. a.d. 96), found great favor even with the higher classes, who laughed at the fables of the gods. Men turned wishfully to the past, especially to the mysterious East, the land of primitive wisdom and religion. The Syrian cultus was sought out; and all sorts of religions, all the sense and all the nonsense of antiquity found a rendezvous in Rome. Even a succession of Roman emperors, from Septimius Severus, at the close of the second century, to Alexander Severus, embraced this religious syncretism, which, instead of supporting the old Roman state religion, helped to undermine it.⁸⁴⁸⁴    The oldest apostle of this strange medley of Hellenic, Persian, Chaldean and Egyptian mysteries in Rome was Nigidius Figulus, who belonged to the strictest section of the aristocracy, and filled the praetorship in 696 a.u.c. (58 b.c.) He foretold the father of the subsequent emperor Augustus on the very day of his birth his future greatness. The system was consecrated by the name of Pythagoras, the primeval sage of Italian birth, the miracleworker and necromancer. The new and old wisdom made a profound impression on men of the highest rank and greatest learning, who took part in the citation of spirits, as in the nineteenth century, spirit-rapping and tablemoving exercised for a while a similar charm. "These last attempts to save the Roman theology, like the similar efforts of Cato in the field of politics, produce at once a comical and a melancholy impression. We may smile at the creed and its propagators, but still it is a grave matter when all men begin to addict themselves to absurdity." Th. Mommsen, History of Rome, vol. IV. p. 563 (Dickson’s translation. Lond. 1867.)3

After the beginning of the third century this tendency found philosophical expression and took a reformatory turn in Neo-Platonism. The magic power, which was thought able to reanimate all these various elements and reduce them to harmony, and to put deep meaning into the old mythology, was the philosophy of the divine Plato; which in truth possessed essentially a mystical character, and was used also by learned Jews, like Philo, and by Christians, like Origen, in their idealizing efforts and their arbitrary allegorical expositions of offensive passages of the Bible. In this view we may find among heathen writers a sort of forerunner of the NeoPlatonists in the pious and noble-minded Platonist, Plutarch, of Boeotia (d. 120), who likewise saw a deeper sense in the myths of the popular polytheistic faith, and in general, in his comparative biographies and his admirable moral treatises, looks at the fairest and noblest side of the Graeco-Roman antiquity, but often wanders off into the trackless regions of fancy.

The proper founder of Neo-Platonism was Ammonius Saccas, of Alexandria, who was born of Christian parents, but apostatized, and died in the year 243. His more distinguished pupil, Plotinus, also an Egyptian (204–269), developed the NeoPlatonic ideas in systematic form, and gave them firm foothold and wide currency, particularly in Rome, where he taught philosophy. The system was propagated by his pupil Porphyry of Tyre (d. 304), who likewise taught in Rome, by Jamblichus of Chalcis in Coelo-Syria (d. 333), and by Proclus of Constantinople (d. 485). It supplanted the popular religion among in the educated classes of later heathendom, and held its ground until the end of the fifth century, when it perished of its own internal falsehood and contradictions.

From its love for the ideal, the supernatural, and the mystical, this system, like the original Platonism, might become for many philosophical minds a bridge to faith; and so it was even to St. Augustin, whom it delivered from the bondage of scepticism, and filled with a burning thirst for truth and wisdom. But it could also work against Christianity. Neo-Platonism was, in fact, a direct attempt of the more intelligent and earnest heathenism to rally all its nobler energies, especially the forces of Hellenic philosophy and Oriental mysticism, and to found a universal religion, a pagan counterpart to the Christian. Plotinus, in his opposition to Gnosticism, assailed also, though not expressly, the Christian element it contained. On their syncretistic principles the Neo-Platonists could indeed reverence Christ as a great sage and a hero of virtue, but not as the Son of God. They ranked the wise men of heathendom with him. The emperor Alexander Severus (d. 235) gave Orpheus and Apollonius of Tyana a place in his lararium by the side of the bust of Jesus.

The rhetorician Philostratus, the elder, about the year 220, at the request of Julia Domna, the wife of Septimius Severus, and a zealous patron of the reform of paganism, idealized the life of the pagan magician and soothsayer Apollonius, of the Pythagorean school, and made him out an ascetic saint, a divinely inspired philosopher, a religious reformer and worker of miracles, with the purpose, as is generally assumed, though without direct evidence, of holding him up as a rival of Christ with equal claims to the worship of men.⁸⁵⁸⁵    Philostratus himself gives no intimation of such design on his part, and simply states that he was requested by the empress Julia Domna (a.d. 217), to draw up a biography of Apollonius from certain memoranda of Damis, one of his friends and followers. The name of Christ is never mentioned by him; nor does he allude to the Gospels, except in one instance, where he uses the same phrase as the daemon in St. Luke (viii. 28): "I beseech thee, torment me not (μή με βασανίσῃς .). Vita Apoll. IV. 25. Bishop Samuel Parker, in a work on the Divine Authority of the Christian Religion (1681), Lardner, Neander (K G. I. 298), and J. S. Watson (in a review of Re’ville’s Apoll. of T., in the "Contemporary Review" for 1867, p. 199 ff.), deny the commonly received opinion, first maintained by Bishop Daniel Hust, and defended by Baur, Newman, and Re’ville, that Philostratus intended to draw a parallel between his hero and Christ. The resemblance is studied and fictitious, and it is certain that at a later date Hierocles vainly endeavored to lower the dignity of Christ by raising this Pythagorean adventurer as portrayed by Philostratus, to a level with the eternal Son of God.4

The points of resemblance are chiefly these: Jesus was the Son of God, Apollonius the son of Jupiter; the birth of Christ was celebrated by the appearance of angels, that of Apollonius by a flash of lightning; Christ raised the daughter of Jairus, Apollonius a young Roman maiden, from the dead; Christ cast out demons, Apollonius did the same; Christ rose from the dead, Apollonius appeared after his death. Apollonius is made to combine also several characteristics of the apostles, as the miraculous gift of tongues, for he understood all the languages of the world. Like St. Paul, he received his earlier education at Tarsus, labored at Antioch, Ephesus, and other cities, and was persecuted by Nero. Like the early Christians, he was falsely accused of sacrificing children with certain mysterious ceremonies.⁸⁶⁸⁶    Comp. the account of the resemblance by Baur, l.c. pp. 138 sqq.5 With the same secret polemical aim Porphyry and Jamblichus embellished the life of Pythagoras, and set him forth as the highest model of wisdom, even a divine being incarnate, a Christ of heathenism.

These various attempts to Christianize paganism were of course as abortive as so many attempts to galvanize a corpse. They made no impression upon their age, much less upon ages following. They were indirect arguments in favor of Christianity: they proved the internal decay of the false, and the irresistible progress of the true religion, which began to mould the spirit of the age and to affect public opinion outside of the church. By inventing false characters in imitation of Christ they indirectly conceded to the historical Christ his claim to the admiration and praise of mankind.

§ 35. Porphyry and Hierocles

See the Lit. in § 34.

One of the leading Neo-Platonists made a direct attack upon Christianity, and was, in the eyes of the church fathers, its bitterest and most dangerous enemy. Towards the end of the third century Porphyry wrote an extended work against the Christians, in fifteen books, which called forth numerous refutations from the most eminent church teachers of the time, particularly from Methodius of Tyre, Eusebius of Caesarea, and Apollinaris of Laodicea. In 448 all the copies were burned by order of the emperors Theodosius II. and Valentinian III., and we know the work now only from fragments in the fathers.

Porphyry attacked especially the sacred books of the Christians, with more knowledge than Celsus. He endeavored, with keen criticism, to point out the contradictions between the Old Testament and the New, and among the apostles themselves; and thus to refute the divinity of their writings. He represented the prophecies of Daniel as vaticinia post eventum, and censured the allegorical interpretation of Origen, by which transcendental mysteries were foisted into the writings of Moses, contrary to their clear sense. He took advantage, above all, of the collision between Paul and Peter at Antioch (Gal. 2:11), to reproach the former with a contentious spirit, the latter with error, and to infer from the whole, that the doctrine of such apostles must rest on lies and frauds. Even Jesus himself he charged with equivocation and inconsistency, on account of his conduct in John 7:8 compared with verse 14.

Still Porphyry would not wholly reject Christianity. Like many rationalists of more recent times, he distinguished the original pure doctrine of Jesus from the second-handed, adulterated doctrine of the apostles. In another work⁸⁷⁸⁷    Περὶ τῆς ἐκ λογίων φιλοσοφίας. Fabricius, Mosheim, Neander, and others, treat the work as genuine, but Lardner denies it to Porphyry.6 on the "Philosophy of Oracles," often quoted by Eusebius, and also by Augustin,⁸⁸⁸⁸    De Civit. Dei, l. XIX. c. 22, 23; Comp. also Eusebius,Demonstr. Evang. III. 6.7 he says, we must not calumniate Christ, who was most eminent for piety, but only pity those who worship him as God. "That pious soul, exalted to heaven, is become, by a sort of fate, an occasion of delusion to those souls from whom fortune withholds the gifts of the gods and the knowledge of the immortal Zeus." Still more remarkable in this view is a letter to his wife Marcella, which A. Mai published at Milan in 1816, in the unfounded opinion that Marcella was a Christian. In the course of this letter Porphyry remarks, that what is born of the flesh is flesh; that by faith, love, and hope we raise ourselves to the Deity; that evil is the fault of man; that God is holy; that the most acceptable sacrifice to him is a pure heart; that the wise man is at once a temple of God and a priest in that temple. For these and other such evidently Christian ideas and phrases he no doubt had a sense of his own, which materially differed from their proper scriptural meaning. But such things show how Christianity in that day exerted, even upon its opponents, a power, to which heathenism was forced to yield an unwilling assent.

The last literary antagonist of Christianity in our period is Hierocles, who, while governor of Bythynia, and afterwards of Alexandria under Diocletian, persecuted that religion also with the sword, and exposed Christian maidens to a worse fate than death. His "Truth-loving Words to the Christians" has been destroyed, like Porphyry’s work, by the mistaken zeal of Christian emperors, and is known to us only through the answer of Eusebius of Caesarea.⁸⁹⁸⁹    To this may be added the extracts from an unnamed heathen philosopher (probably Hierocles or Porphyrius) in the apologetic work of Macarius Magnes (about 400), which was discovered at Athens in 1867, and published by Blondel;, Paris 1876. See L. Duchesne, De Marcario Magnete et scriptis ejus, Par. 1877, and Zöckler in Herzog, ed. II. vol. IX. 160.8 He appears to have merely repeated the objections of Celsus and Porphyry, and to have drawn a comparison between Christ and Apollonius of Tyana, which resulted in favor of the latter. The Christians says he, consider Jesus a God, on account of some insignificant miracles falsely colored up by his apostles; but the heathens far more justly declare the greater wonder-worker Apollonius, as well as an Aristeas and a Pythagoras, simply a favorite of the gods and a benefactor of men.

§ 36. Summary of the Objections to Christianity.

In general the leading arguments of the Judaism and heathenism of this period against the new religion are the following:

1. Against Christ: his illegitimate birth; his association with poor, unlettered fishermen, and rude publicans: his form of a servant, and his ignominious death. But the opposition to him gradually ceased. While Celsus called him a downright impostor, the Syncretists and Neo-Platonists were disposed to regard him as at least a distinguished sage.

2. Against Christianity: its novelty; its barbarian origin; its want of a national basis; the alleged absurdity of some of its facts and doctrines, particularly of regeneration and the resurrection; contradictions between the Old and New Testaments, among the Gospels, and between Paul and Peter; the demand for a blind, irrational faith.

3. Against the Christians: atheism, or hatred of the gods; the worship of a crucified malefactor; poverty, and want of culture and standing; desire of innovation; division and sectarianism; want of patriotism; gloomy seriousness; credulity; superstition, and fanaticism. Sometimes they were charged even with unnatural crimes, like those related in the pagan mythology of Oedipus and his mother Jocaste (concubitus Oedipodei), and of Thyestes and Atreus (epulae Thyesteae). Perhaps some Gnostic sects ran into scandalous excesses; but as against the Christians in general this charge was so clearly unfounded, that it is not noticed even by Celsus and Lucian. The senseless accusation, that they worshipped an ass’s head, may have arisen, as Tertullian already intimates,⁹⁰⁹⁰    Apol.c. 16:"Somniastis caput asininun esse deum nostrum. Hanc Cornelius Tacitus suspicionem ejusmodi dei inseruit,"etc.9 from a story of Tacitus, respecting some Jews, who were once directed by a wild ass to fresh water, and thus relieved from the torture of thirst; and it is worth mentioning, only to show how passionate and blind was the opposition with which Christianity in this period of persecution had to contend.

§ 37. The Apologetic Literature of Christianity.

Comp. Lit. in § 1 and 12.

I. The sources are all the writings of the Apologists of the second and third centuries; particularly Justin M.: Apologia I. and II.; Tertull.: Apologeticus; Minucius Felix: Octavius; Origen: Contra Celsum (κατὰ Κέλσου) libr. VIII. Aristidis, Philosophi Atheniensis, Sermones duo, Venetiis 1878. (From an Armenian translation). Complete editions of the Apologists: Apologg. Christ. Opp. ed. Prud. Maranus, Par. 1742; Corpus Apologetarum Christianorum seculi secundi, ed. Th. Otto, Jenae, 1847 sqq. ed. III. 1876 sqq. A new ed. by O. v. Gebhardt and E. Schwartz, begun 1888.

II. Fabricius:Dilectus argumentorum et Syllabus scriptorum, qui veritatem Rel. Christ. asseruerunt. Hamb. 1725.

Tzschirner: Geschichte der Apologetik. Lpz. 1805 (unfinished).

G. H. Van Sanden: Gesch. der Apol. translated from Dutch into German by Quack and Binder. Stuttg. 1846. 2 vols.

Semisch: Justin der Mürt. Bresl. 1840. II. 56–225.

W. B. Colton: The Evidences of Christianity as exhibited in the writings of its Apologists down to Augustine (Hulsean Prize Essay, 1852), republ. in Boston, 1854.

Karl Werner (R.C.): Geschichte der apologetischen und polemischen Literatur der christl. Theologie. Schaffhausen, 1861–’65. 5 vols. (vol. I. belongs here).

James Donaldson: A Critical History of Christian Literature and Doctrine from, the Death of the Apostles to the Nicene Council. London, 1864–66. 3 vols.

Adolf Harnack: Die Ueberlieferung der Griechischen Apologeten des zweiten Jahrhunderts in der alten Kirche und im Mittelalter. Band I. Heft 1 and 2. Leipz. 1882.

These assaults of argument and calumny called forth in the second century the Christian apologetic literature, the vindication of Christianity by the pen, against the Jewish zealot, the Grecian philosopher, and the Roman statesman. The Christians were indeed from the first "ready always to give an answer to every man that asked them a reason of the hope that was in them." But when heathenism took the field against them not only with fire and sword, but with argument and slander besides, they had to add to their simple practical testimony a theoretical self-defence. The Christian apology against non-Christian opponents, and the controversial efforts against Christian errorists, are the two oldest branches of theological science.

The apologetic literature began to appear under the reign of Hadrian, and continued to grow till the end of our period. Most of the church teachers took part in this labor of their day. The first apologies, by Quadratus, bishop of Athens, Aristides, philosopher of Athens, and Aristo of Pella, which were addressed to the emperor Hadrian, and the later works of Melito of Sardis, Claudius Apollinaris of Hierapolis, and Miltiades, who lived under Marcus Aurelius, were either entirely lost, or preserved only in scattered notices of Eusebius. But some interesting fragments of Melito and Aristides have been recently discovered.⁹¹⁹¹    See on the works of these Apologists, lost and partly recovered, Harnack, l.c. pp. 100 sqq.; 240 sqq.; and Renan, L’egl. chrét. p. 40 sqq. We shall refer to them in the chapter on Christian literature.0 More valuable are the apologetical works of the Greek philosopher and martyr, Justin (d. 166), which we possess in full. After him come, in the Greek church, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus of Antioch, and Hermias in the last half of the second century, and Origen, the ablest of all, in the first half of the third.

The most important Latin apologists are Tertullian (d. about 220), Minucius Felix (d. between 220 and 230; according to some, between 161 and 200), the later Arnobius and Lactantius, all of North Africa.

Here at once appears the characteristic difference between the Greek and the Latin minds. The Greek apologies are more learned and philosophical, the Latin more practical and juridical in their matter and style. The former labor to prove the truth of Christianity and its adaptedness to the intellectual wants of man; the latter plead for its legal right to exist, and exhibit mainly its moral excellency and salutary effect upon society. The Latin also are in general more rigidly opposed to heathenism, while the Greek recognize in the Grecian philosophy a certain affinity to the Christian religion.

The apologies were addressed in some cases to the emperors (Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius) or the provincial governors; in others, to the intelligent public. Their first object was to soften the temper of the authorities and people towards Christianity and its professors by refuting the false charges against them. It may be doubtful whether they ever reached the hands of the emperors; at all events the persecution continued.⁹²⁹²    Orosius, however, relates in big Hist. vii. 14, that Justin M., by his Apology, made the emperor Antoninus Pius "benignum erqa Christianos."1 Conversion commonly proceeds from the heart and will, not from the understanding and from knowledge. No doubt, however, these writings contributed to dissipate prejudice among honest and susceptible heathens, to spread more favorable views of the new religion, and to infuse a spirit of humanity into the spirit of the age, the systems of moral philosophy and the legislation of the Antonines.

Yet the chief service of this literature was to strengthen believers and to advance theological knowledge. It brought the church to a deeper and clearer sense of the peculiar nature of the Christian religion, and prepared her thenceforth to vindicate it before the tribunal of reason and philosophy; whilst Judaism and heathenism proved themselves powerless in the combat, and were driven to the weapons of falsehood and vituperation. The sophisms and mockeries of a Celsus and a Lucian have none but a historical interest; the Apologies of Justin and the Apologeticus of Tertullian, rich with indestructible truth and glowing piety, are read with pleasure and edification to this day.

The apologists do not confine themselves to the defensive, but carry the war aggressively into the territory of Judaism and heathenism. They complete their work by positively demonstrating that Christianity is the divine religion, and the only true religion for all mankind.

§ 38. The Argument against Judaism.

In regard to the controversy with Judaism, we have two principal sources: the Dialogue of Justin Martyr with the Jew Trypho,⁹³⁹³    Διάλογος πρὸς Τρύφωνα Ἰουδαῖον. .2 based, it appears, on real interviews of Justin with Trypho; and Tertullian’s work against the Jews.⁹⁴⁹⁴    Adverus Judaeos. Also Cyprian’s Testimoni adv. Judaeos.3 Another work from the first half of the second century by Aristo of Pella, entitled "A Disputation of Jason and Papiscus concerning Christ," is lost.⁹⁵⁹⁵    Ἰάσονος καὶ Παπίσκου ἀντιλογία περὶ Χ ριστοῦ. Comp. the discussion of Harnack, l.c. pp. 115-130. He assigns the book to a.d. 135 or soon after. It disappeared in the seventh century.4 It was known to Celsus who speaks contemptuously of it on account of its allegorical interpretation. Origen deems it useful for ordinary readers, though not calculated to make much impression on scholars. It was intended to show the fulfillment of the old prophecies in Christ, and ends with the conviction of the Jew Papiscus and his baptism by Jason. The author was a Jewish Christian of Pella, the city of refuge for the Christians of Jerusalem before the destruction.

I. The defensive apology answered the Jewish objections thus:

(1) Against the charge, that Christianity is an apostasy from the Jewish religion, it was held, that the Mosaic law, as far as it relates to outward rites and ceremonies was only a temporary institution for the Jewish nation foreshadowing the substance of Christianity, while its moral precepts as contained in the Decalogue were kept in their deepest spiritual sense only by Christians; that the Old Testament itself points to its own dissolution and the establishment of a new covenant;⁹⁶⁹⁶    Is. 51:4 sqq.; 55r> sqq.; Jer. 31:31 sqq.5 that Abraham was justified before he was circumcised, and women, who could not be circumcised, were yet saved.

(2) Against the assertion, that the servant-form of Jesus of Nazareth, and his death by the cross, contradicted the Old Testament idea of the Messiah, it was urged, that the appearance of the Messiah is to be regarded as twofold, first, in the form of a servant, afterwards in glory; and that the brazen serpent in the wilderness, and the prophecies of David in Psalm 22, of Isaiah 53, and Zech. 13, themselves point to the sufferings of Christ as his way to glory.

(3) To the objection, that the divinity of Jesus contradicts the unity of God and is blasphemy, it was replied, that the Christians believe likewise in only one God; that the Old Testament itself makes a distinction in the divine nature; that the plural expression: "Let us make man,"⁹⁷⁹⁷    Gen. 1:26; Comp. 3:216 the appearance of the three men at Mamre⁹⁸⁹⁸    Gen. 18:1 sqq.7 of whom one was confessedly God,⁹⁹⁹⁹    Gen. 21:12.8 yet distinct from the Creator,¹⁰⁰¹⁰⁰    Gen. 19:24.9 indicate this; and that all theophanies (which in Justin’s view are as many christophanies), and the Messianic Psalms,¹⁰¹¹⁰¹    Ps. 110:1 sqq.; 45:7 sqq.; 72:2-19, and others00 which ascribe divine dignity to the Messiah, show the same.

II. The aggressive apology or polemic theology urges as evidence against Judaism:

(1) First and mainly that the prophecies and types of the Old Testament are fulfilled in Jesus Christ and his church. Justin finds all the outlines of the gospel history predicted in the Old Testament: the Davidic descent of Jesus, for example, in Isa. 11:1; the birth from a virgin in 7:14]; the birth at Bethlehem in Micah 5:1; the flight into Egypt in Hosea 11:1 (rather than Ps. 22:10?); the appearance of the Baptist in Is. 40:1–17; Mal. 4:5; the heavenly voice at the baptism of Jesus in Ps. 2:7; the temptation in the wilderness under the type of Jacob’s wrestling in Gen. 32:24 sqq.; the miracles of our Lord in Is. 35:5; his sufferings and the several circumstances of his crucifixion in Is. 53 and Ps. 22. In this effort, however, Justin wanders also, according to the taste of his uncritical age, into arbitrary fancies and allegorical conceits; as when he makes the two goats, of which one carried away the sins into the wilderness, and the other was sacrificed, types of the first and second advents of Christ; and sees in the twelve bells on the robe of the high priest a type of the twelve apostles, whose sound goes forth into all the world.¹⁰²¹⁰²    Ps. 19:4; Comp. Rom. 10:18..01

(2) The destruction of Jerusalem, in which Judaism, according to the express prediction of Jesus, was condemned by God himself, and Christianity was gloriously vindicated. Here the Jewish priest and historian Josephus, who wrote from personal observation a graphic description of this tragedy, had to furnish a powerful historical argument against his own religion and for the truth of Christianity. Tertullian sums up the prophetic predictions of the calamities which have befallen the Jews for rejecting Christ, "the sense of the Scriptures harmonizing with the events."¹⁰³¹⁰³    Adv.Jud. c. 1302

§ 39. The Defense against Heathenism.

I. The various Objections and Accusations of the heathens, which we have collected in §

(1) The attack upon the miraculous in the evangelical history the apologists could meet by pointing to the similar element in the heathen mythology; of course proposing this merely in the way of argumentum ad hominem, to deprive the opposition of the right to object. For the credibility of the miraculous accounts in the Gospels, particularly that of the resurrection of Jesus, Origen appealed to the integrity and piety of the narrators, to the publicity of the death of Jesus, and to the effects of that event.

(2) The novelty and late appearance of Christianity were justified by the need of historical preparation in which the human race should be divinely trained for Christ; but more frequently it was urged also, that Christianity existed in the counsel of God from eternity, and had its unconscious votaries, especially among the pious Jews, long before the advent of Christ. By claiming the Mosaic records, the apologists had greatly the advantage as regards antiquity over any form of paganism, and could carry their religion, in its preparatory state, even beyond the flood and up to the very gates of paradise. Justin and Tatian make great account of the fact that Moses is much older than the Greek philosophers, poets, and legislators. Athenagoras turns the tables, and shows that the very names of the heathen gods are modern, and their statues creations of yesterday. Clement of Alexandria calls the Greek philosophers thieves and robbers, because they stole certain portions of truth from the Hebrew prophets and adulterated them. Tertullian, Minucius Felix and others raise the same charge of plagiarism.

(3) The doctrine of the resurrection of the body, so peculiarly offensive to the heathen and Gnostic understanding, was supported, as to its possibility, by reference to the omnipotence of God, and to the creation of the world and of man; and its propriety and reasonableness were argued from the divine image in man, from the high destiny of the body to be the temple of the Holy Spirit, and from its intimate connection with the soul, as well as from the righteousness and goodness of God. The argument from analogy was also very generally used, but often without proper discrimination. Thus, Theophilus alludes to the decline and return of the seasons, the alternations of day and night, the renewal of the waning and waxing moon, the growth of seeds and fruits. Tertullian expresses his surprise that anybody should deny the possibility and probability of the resurrection in view of the mystery of our birth and the daily occurrences of surrounding nature. "All things," he says, "are preserved by dissolution, renewed by perishing; and shall man ... the lord of all this universe of creatures, which die and rise again, himself die only to perish forever?"¹⁰⁴¹⁰⁴    Apolog. c. 43. Comp. his special tract De resurrectione Carnis, c. 12, where he defends the doctrine more fully against the Gnostics and their radical misconception of the nature and import of the body.03

(4) The charge of immoral conduct and secret vice the apologists might repel with just indignation, since the New Testament contains the purest and noblest morality, and the general conduct of the Christians compared most favorably with that of the heathens. "Shame! shame!" they justly cried; "to roll upon the innocent what you are openly guilty of, and what belongs to you and your gods!" Origen says in the preface to the first book against Celsus: "When false witness was brought against our blessed Saviour, the spotless Jesus, he held his peace, and when he was accused, returned no answer, being fully persuaded that the tenor of his life and conduct among the Jews was the best apology that could possibly be made in his behalf .... And even now he preserves the same silence, and makes no other answer than the unblemished lives of his sincere followers; they are his most cheerful and successful advocates, and have so loud a voice that they drown the clamors of the most zealous and bigoted adversaries."

II. To their defence the Christians, with the rising consciousness of victory, added direct arguments against heathenism, which were practically sustained by, its dissolution in the following period.

(1) The popular religion of the heathens, particularly the doctrine of the gods, is unworthy, contradictory, absurd, immoral, and pernicious. The apologists and most of the early church teachers looked upon the heathen gods not as mere imaginations or personified powers of nature or deifications of distinguished men, but as demons or fallen angels. They took this view from the Septuagint version of Ps. 96:5,¹⁰⁵¹⁰⁵    Πάντες οἱ θεοὶ τῶν εθνῶν δαιμόνια. Comp. 1 Cor. 10:20.04 and from the immorality of those deities, which was charged to demons (even sexual intercourse with fair daughters of men, according to Gen. 6:2).

"What sad fates," says Minucius Felix, "what lies, ridiculous things, and weaknesses we read of the pretended gods! Even their form, how pitiable it is! Vulcan limps; Mercury has wings to his feet; Pan is hoofed; Saturn in fetters; and Janus has two faces, as if he walked backwards .... Sometimes Hercules is a hostler, Apollo a cow-herd, and Neptune, Laomedon’s mason, cheated of his wages. There we have the thunder of Jove and the arms of Aeneas forged on the same anvil (as if the heavens and the thunder and lightning did not exist before Jove was born in Crete); the adultery of Mars and Venus; the lewdness of Jupiter with Ganymede, all of which were invented for the gods to authorize men in their wickedness." "Which of the poets," asks Tertullian, "does not calumniate your gods? One sets Apollo to keep sheep; another hires out Neptune to build a wall; Pindar declares Esculapius was deservedly scathed for his avarice in exercising the art of medicine to a bad purpose; whilst the writers of tragedy and comedy alike, take for their subjects the crimes or the miseries of the deities. Nor are the philosophers behindhand in this respect. Out of pure contempt, they would swear by an oak, a goat, a dog. Diogenes turned Hercules into ridicule; and the Roman Cynic Varro introduces three hundred Joves without heads." From the stage abuser the sarcastic African father selects, partly from his own former observation, those of Diana being flogged, the reading of Jupiter’s will after his decease, and the three half-starved Herculesses! Justin brings up the infanticide of Saturn, the parricide, the anger, and the adultery of Jupiter, the drunkenness of Bacchus, the voluptuousness of Venus, and he appeals to the judgment of the better heathens, who were ashamed of these scandalous histories of the gods; to Plato, for example, who for this reason banishes Homer from his ideal State. Those myths, which had some resemblance to the Old Testament prophecies or the gospel history, Justin regards as caricatures of the truth, framed by demons by abuse of Scripture. The story of Bacchus, for instance rests in his fanciful view, on Gen. 49:11 sq.; the myth of the birth of Perseus from a virgin, on Is. 7:14; that of the wandering of Hercules, on Ps. 19:6; the fiction of the miracles of Esculapius on Is. 35:1 sqq.

Origen asks Celsus, why it is that he can discover profound mysteries in those strange and senseless accidents, which have befallen his gods and goddesses, showing them to be polluted with crimes and doing many shameful things; whilst Moses, who says nothing derogatory to the character of God, angel, or man, is treated as an impostor. He challenges any one to compare Moses and his laws with the best Greek writers; and yet Moses was as far inferior to Christ, as he was superior to the greatest of heathen sages and legislators.

(2) The Greek philosophy, which rises above the popular belief, is not suited to the masses, cannot meet the religious wants, and confutes itself by its manifold contradictions. Socrates, the wisest of all the philosophers, himself acknowledged that he knew nothing. On divine and human things Justin finds the philosophers at variance among themselves; with Thales water is the ultimate principle of all things; with Anaximander, air; with Heraclitus, fire; with Pythagoras, number. Even Plato not seldom contradicts himself; now supposing three fundamental causes (God, matter, and ideas), now four (adding the world-soul); now he considers matter is unbegotten, now as begotten; at one time he ascribes substantiality to ideas, at another makes them mere forms of thought, etc. Who, then, he concludes, would intrust to the philosophers the salvation of his soul?

(3) But, on the other hand, the Greek apologists recognized also elements of truth in the Hellenic literature, especially in the Platonic and Stoic philosophy, and saw in them, as in the law and the prophecies of Judaism, a preparation of the way for Christianity. Justin attributes all the good in heathenism to the divine Logos, who, even before his incarnation, scattered the seeds of truth (hence the name "Logos spermaticos"), and incited susceptible spirits to a holy walk. Thus there were Christians before Christianity; and among these he expressly reckons Socrates and Heraclitus.¹⁰⁶¹⁰⁶    Also the Stoics and some of the poets as far as their moral teaching went, Comp. Just. Apol. II.c. 8, and 13.05 Besides, he supposed that Pythagoras, Plato, and other educated Greeks, in their journeys to the East, became acquainted with the Old Testament writings, and drew from them the doctrine of the unity of God, and other like truths, though they in various ways misunderstood them, and adulterated them with pagan errors. This view of a certain affinity between the Grecian philosophy and Christianity, as an argument in favor of the new religion, was afterwards further developed by the Alexandrian fathers, Clement and Origen.¹⁰⁷¹⁰⁷    See the introduction of E. Spiess to his Logos spermatikos, Leipz. 1871.06

The Latin fathers speak less favorably of the Greek philosophy; yet even Augustin acknowledges that the Platonists approach so nearly to Christian truth that with a change of some expressions and sentences they would be true Christians (in theory).¹⁰⁸¹⁰⁸    De Vera Religione IV. 7: "Proxime Platonici a veritate Christiana absunt vel veri Christiani sunt paucis mutatis verbis atque sententiis." Retract. I. 13: "Res ipsa quae nunc religio Christiana nuncupatur, erat apud antiquos, nec defuit ab initio generis humani., quousque Christus veniret in carnem, unde vera religio, quae jam erat, coepit appellari Christiana." Comp. Lactantius, De Falsa Religione, I. 5; De Vita Beata, VII. 7; Minucius Fel., Octav. 2007

§ 40. The Positive Apology.

The Christian apology completed itself in the positive demonstration of the divinity of the new religion; which was at the same time the best refutation of both the old ones. As early as this period the strongest historical and philosophical arguments for Christianity were brought forward, or at least indicated, though in connection with many untenable adjunct.

1. The great argument, not only with Jews, but with heathens also, was the prophecies; since the knowledge of future events can come only from God. The first appeal of the apologists was, of course, to the prophetic writings of the Old Testament, in which they found, by a very liberal interpretation, every event of the gospel history and every lineament of our Saviour’s character and work. In addition to the Scriptures, even such fathers as Clement of Alexandria, and, with more caution, Origen, Eusebius, St. Jerome, and St. Augustin, employed also, without hesitation, apocryphal prophecies, especially the Sibylline oracles, a medley of ancient heathen, Jewish, and in part Christian fictions, about a golden age, the coining of Christ, the fortunes of Rome, and the end of the world.¹⁰⁹¹⁰⁹    Comp. Dr. Friedlieb:Die Sibyllinischen Weissagungen vollständig gesammelt, mitkritischem Commentare und metrischer Übersetzung. Leipz. 1852. Another edition with a Latin version by C. Alexandre, Paris 1841, second ed. 1869, 2 tom. We have at present twelve books of χρησμοί σιβυλλιακοίin Greek hexameter, and some fragments. They have been critically discussed by Blondel (1649), Bleek (1819), Volkmann (1853), Ewald (1858), Tübigen (1875), Reuss, and Schürer (see Lit. in his N. T. Zeitgesch. p. 513). The Sibyl figures in the Dies Irae alongside with King David (teste David cum Sibylla), as prophesying the day of judgment.08 And indeed, this was not all error and pious fraud. Through all heathenism there runs, in truth, a dim, unconscious presenti-ment and longing hope of Christianity. Think of the fourth Eclogue of Virgil, with its predictions of the "virgo" and "nova progenies" from heaven, and the "puer," with whom, after the blotting out of sin and the killing of the serpent, a golden age of peace was to begin. For this reason Virgil was the favorite poet of the Latin church during the middle ages, and figures prominently in Dante’s Divina Comedia as his guide through the dreary regions of the Inferno and Purgatorio to the very gates of Paradise. Another pseudo-prophetic book used by the fathers (Tertullian, Origen, and apparently Jerome) is "The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, "written by a Jewish Christian between a.d. 100 and 120. It puts into the mouth of the twelve sons of Jacob farewell addresses and predictions of the coming of Christ, his death and resurrection, of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, the rejection of the gospel by the Jews, and the preaching of Paul, the great apostle of the Gentiles, the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the world.¹¹⁰¹¹⁰    Best edition by Robert Sinker from the Cambridge MS., Cambridge, 1869, and an Appendix, 1879; an English translation by Sinker, in the "Ante-Nicene Library," vol. XXII. ( Edinb. 1871). Discussions by Nitzsch (1810), Ritschl (1850 and 1857), Vorstmann (1857), Kayser (1851), Lücke (1852), Dillmann (in Herzog, first ed. XII. 315), Lightfoot (1875), and Warfield (in "Presbyt. Review," York, January, 1880, on the apologetical value of the work for its allusions to various books of the N. T.).09

2. The types. These, too, were found not only in the Old Testament, but in the whole range of nature. Justin saw everywhere, in the tree of life in Eden, in Jacob’s ladder, in the rods of Moses and Aaron, nay, in every sailing ship, in the wave-cutting oar, in the plough, in the human countenance, in the human form with outstretched arms, in banners and trophies—the sacred form of the cross, and thus a prefiguration of the mystery of redemption through the crucifixion of the Lord.¹¹¹¹¹¹    Apol. l.c, 55; Dial. c. Tryph. c. 91.10

3. The miracles of Jesus and the apostles, with those which continued to be wrought in the name of Jesus, according to the express testimony of the fathers, by their contemporaries. But as the heathens also appealed to miraculous deeds and appearances in favor of their religion, Justin, Arnobius, and particularly Origen, fixed certain criteria, such as the moral purity of the worker, and his intention to glorify God and benefit man, for distinguishing the true miracles from Satanic juggleries. "There might have been some ground," says Origen, "for the comparison which Celsus makes between Jesus and certain wandering magicians, if there had appeared in the latter the slightest tendency to beget in persons a true fear of God, and so to regulate their actions in prospect of the day of judgment. But they attempt nothing of the sort. Yea, they themselves are guilty of the most grievous crimes; whereas the Saviour would have his hearers to be convinced by the native beauty of religion and the holy lives of its teachers, rather than by even the miracles they wrought."

The subject of post-apostolic miracles is surrounded by much greater difficulties in the absence of inspired testimony, and in most cases even of ordinary immediate witnesses. There is an antecedent probability that the power of working miracles was not suddenly and abruptly, but gradually withdrawn, as the necessity of such outward and extraordinary attestation of the divine origin of Christianity diminished and gave way to the natural operation of truth and moral suasion. Hence St. Augustin, in the fourth century, says: "Since the establishment of the church God does not wish to perpetuate miracles even to our day, lest the mind should put its trust in visible signs, or grow cold at the sight of common marvels."¹¹²¹¹²    On the other hand, however, St. Augustin lent the authority of his name to some of the most incredible miracles of his age, wrought by the bones of St. Stephen, and even of Gervasius and Protasius. Comp. the treatise of Fr. Nitzsch (jun.) on Augustin’s Doctrine of Miracles, Berlin 1865; and on the general subject J. H. Newman’s Two Essays on Biblical and Ecclesiastical Miracles, third ed. London 1873; and J. B. Mozley’s Bampton Lectures On Miracles. Oxford and Lond. (1865), fifth ed. 1880, Lect. VIII. which treats of false miracles.11 But it is impossible to fix the precise termination, either at the death of the apostles, or their immediate disciples, or the conversion of the Roman empire, or the extinction of the Arian heresy, or any subsequent era, and to sift carefully in each particular case the truth from legendary fiction.

It is remarkable that the genuine writings of the ante-Nicene church are more free from miraculous and superstitious elements than the annals of the Nicene age and the middle ages. The history of monasticism teems with miracles even greater than those of the New Testament. Most of the statements of the apologists are couched in general terms, and refer to extraordinary cures from demoniacal possession (which probably includes, in the language of that age, cases of madness, deep melancholy, and epilepsy) and other diseases, by the invocation of the name of Jesus.¹¹³¹¹³    They are analogous to the "faith-cures, " real or pretended, of our own age.12 Justin Martyr speaks of such cures as a frequent occurrence in Rome and all over the world, and Origen appeals to his own personal observation, but speaks in another place of the growing scarcity of miracles, so as to suggest the gradual cessation theory as held by Dr. Neander, Bishop Kaye, and others. Tertullian attributes many if not most of the conversions of his day to supernatural dreams and visions, as does also Origen, although with more caution. But in such psychological phenomena it is exceedingly difficult to draw the line of demarcation between natural and supernatural causes, and between providential interpositions and miracles proper. The strongest passage on this subject is found in Irenaeus, who, in contending against the heretics, mentions, besides prophecies and miraculous cures of demoniacs, even the raising of the dead among contemporary events taking place in the Catholic church;¹¹⁴¹¹⁴    Adv. Haer. II. 31, (S) 4: Ἢδη δὲ καὶ νεκροὶ ἠγέρθ̓σαν καὶ παρέμεινον σὺν ἡμῖν ἱκανοῖς ἕτεσι. These two passages can hardly be explained, with Heumann and Neander, as referring merely to cases of apparent death.13 but he specifies no particular case or name; and it should be remembered also, that his youth still bordered almost on the Johannean age.

4. The moral effect of Christianity upon the heart and life of its professors. The Christian religion has not only taught the purest and sublimest code of morals ever known among men, but actually exhibited it in the life sufferings, and death of its founder and true followers. All the apologists, from the author of the Epistle to Diognetus down to Origen, Cyprian, and Augustin, bring out in strong colors the infinite superiority of Christian ethics over the heathen, and their testimony is fully corroborated by the practical fruits of the church, as we shall have occasion more fully to show in another chapter. "They think us senseless," says Justin, "because we worship this Christ, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, as God next to the Father. But they would not say so, if they knew the mystery of the cross. By its fruits they may know it. We, who once lived in debauchery, now study chastity; we, who dealt in sorceries, have consecrated ourselves to the good, the increate God; we, who loved money and possessions above all things else, now devote our property freely to the general good, and give to every needy one; we, who fought and killed each other, now pray for our enemies; those who persecute us in hatred, we kindly try to appease, in the hope that they may share the same blessings which we enjoy."¹¹⁵¹¹⁵    Apol. l.c. 13 and 14.14

5. The rapid spread of Christianity by purely moral means, and in spite of the greatest external obstacles, yea, the bitter persecution of Jews and Gentiles. The anonymous apologetic Epistle to Diognetus which belongs to the literature of the Apostolic Fathers, already thus urges this point: "Do you not see the Christians exposed to wild beasts, that they may be persuaded to deny the Lord, and yet not overcome? Do you not see that the more of them are punished, the greater becomes the number of the rest? This does not seem to be the work of man: this is the power of God; these are the evidences of his manifestation."¹¹⁶¹¹⁶    Ad Diogn. c. 7.15 Justin Martyr and Tertullian frequently go on in a similar strain. Origen makes good use of this argument against Celsus, and thinks that so great a success as Christianity met among Greeks and barbarians, learned and unlearned persons in so short a time, without any force or other worldly means, and in view of the united opposition of emperors, senate, governors, generals, priests, and people, can only be rationally accounted for on the ground of an extraordinary providence of God and the divine nature of Christ.

6. The reasonableness of Christianity, and its agreement with all the true and the beautiful in the Greek philosophy and poesy. All who had lived rationally before Christ were really, though unconsciously, already Christians. Thus all that is Christian is rational, and all that is truly rational is Christian. Yet, on the other hand, of course, Christianity is supra-rational (not irrational).

7. The adaptation of Christianity to the deepest needs of human nature, which it alone can meet. Here belongs Tertullian’s appeal to the "testimonia animae naturaliter Christianae;" his profound thought, that the human soul is, in its inmost essence and instinct, predestined for Christianity, and can find rest and peace in that alone. "The soul," says he, "though confined in the prison of the body, though perverted by bad training, though weakened by lusts and passions, though given to the service of false gods, still no sooner awakes from its intoxication and its dreams, and recovers its health, than it calls upon God by the one name due to him: ’Great God! good God!’—and then looks, not to the capitol, but to heaven; for it knows the abode of the living God, from whom it proceeds."¹¹⁷¹¹⁷    Tert. Apolog. c. 17. Comp. the beautiful passage in De Testim Animae, c. 2: "Si enim anima aut divina aut a Deo data est, sine dubio datorem num novit, et si novit, utique et timet .... O testimonium veritatis, quae apud ipsa daemonia testem efficit Christianorum."16

This deep longing of the human soul for the living God in Christ, Augustin, in whom Tertullian’s spirit returned purified and enriched, afterwards expressed in the grand sentence: "Thou, O God, hast made us for thee, and our heart is restless, till it rests in thee."¹¹⁸¹¹⁸    Aug. Confess. I. 1: "Fecisti nos ad Te, et inquietum est cor nostrum, donec requiescat in Te."17

ORGANIZATION AND DISCIPLINE OF THE CHURCH.

I. The chief sources for this chapter are the Epistles of Ignatius, the works of Irenaeus, Tertullian, and especially Cyprian, and the so-called Constitutiones Apostolicae,

II. See the Literature in vol. I. § 58 (p. 481 sqq. ), particularly the works of Rothe, Ritchsl, Lightfoot, and Hatch.

§ 41. Progress in Consolidation.

In the external organization of the church, several important changes appear in the period before us. The distinction of clergy and laity, and the sacerdotal view of the ministry becomes prominent and fixed; subordinate church offices are multiplied; the episcopate arises; the beginnings of the Roman primacy appear; and the exclusive unity of the Catholic church develops itself in opposition to heretics and schismatics. The apostolical organization of the first century now gives place to the old Catholic episcopal system; and this, in its turn, passes into the metropolitan, and after the fourth century into the patriarchal. Here the Greek church stopped, and is governed to this day by a hierarchical oligarchy of patriarchs equal in rank and jurisdiction; while the Latin church went a step further, and produced in the middle ages the papal monarchy. The germs of this papacy likewise betray themselves even in our present period, particularly in Cyprian, together with a protest against it. Cyprian himself is as much a witness for consolidated primacy, as for independent episcopacy, and hence often used and abused alike by Romanists and Anglicans for sectarian purposes.

The characteristics, however, of the pre-Constantinian hierarchy, in distinction from the post-Constantinian, both Greek and Roman, are, first, its grand simplicity, and secondly, its spirituality, or freedom from all connection with political power and worldly splendor. Whatever influence the church acquired and exercised, she owed nothing to the secular government, which continued indifferent or positively hostile till the protective toleration edict of Constantine (313). Tertullian thought it impossible for an emperor to be a Christian, or a Christian to be an emperor; and even after Constantine, the Donatists persisted in this view, and cast up to the Catholics the memory of the former age: "What have Christians to do with kings? or what have bishops to do in the palace?"¹¹⁹¹¹⁹    "Quid Christianis cum regibus ? aut quid episcopis cum palatio?"18 The ante-Nicene fathers expected the ultimate triumph of Christianity over the world from a supernatural interposition at the second Advent. Origen seems to have been the only one in that age of violent persecution who expected that Christianity, by continual growth, would gain the dominion over the world.¹²⁰¹²⁰    Contra Cels. VIII. 68. Comp. the remarks of Neander, I. 129 (Boston ed.).19

The consolidation of the church and its compact organization implied a restriction of individual liberty, in the interest of order, and a temptation to the abuse of authority. But it was demanded by the diminution of spiritual gifts, which were poured out in such extraordinary abundance in the apostolic age. It made the church a powerful republic within the Roman empire, and contributed much to its ultimate success. "In union is strength," especially in times of danger and persecution such as the church had to pass through in the ante-Nicene age. While we must deny a divine right and perpetual obligation to any peculiar form of government as far as it departs from the simple principles of the New Testament, we may concede a historical necessity and great relative importance to the ante-Nicene and subsequent organizations of the church. Even the papacy was by no means an unmixed evil, but a training school for the barbarian nations during the middle ages. Those who condemn, in principle, all hierarchy, sacerdotalism, and ceremonialism, should remember that God himself appointed the priesthood and ceremonies in the Mosaic dispensation, and that Christ submitted to the requirements of the law in the days of his humiliation.

§ 42. Clergy and Laity.

The idea and institution of a special priesthood, distinct from the body of the people, with the accompanying notion of sacrifice and altar, passed imperceptibly from Jewish and heathen reminiscences and analogies into the Christian church. The majority of Jewish converts adhered tenaciously to the Mosaic institutions and rites, and a considerable part never fully attained to the height of spiritual freedom proclaimed by Paul, or soon fell away from it. He opposed legalistic and ceremonial tendencies in Galatia and Corinth; and although sacerdotalism does not appear among the errors of his Judaizing opponents, the Levitical priesthood, with its three ranks of high-priest, priest, and Levite, naturally furnished an analogy for the threefold ministry of bishop, priest, and deacon, and came to be regarded as typical of it. Still less could the Gentile Christians, as a body, at once emancipate themselves from their traditional notions of priesthood, altar, and sacrifice, on which their former religion was based. Whether we regard the change as an apostasy from a higher position attained, or as a reaction of old ideas never fully abandoned, the change is undeniable, and can be traced to the second century. The church could not long occupy the ideal height of the apostolic age, and as the Pentecostal illumination passed away with the death of the apostles, the old reminiscences began to reassert themselves.¹²¹¹²¹    Renan, looking at the gradual development of the hierarchy out of the primitive democracy, from his secular point of view, calls it, the most profound transformation "in history, and a triple abdication: first the club (the congregation) committing its power to the bureau or the committee (the college of presbyters), then the bureau to its president (the bishop) who could say: "Je suis le club,"and finally the presidents to the pope as the universal and infallible bishop; the last process being completed in the Vatican Council of 1870. See his E’glise chrétienne, p. 88, and his English Conferences (Hibbert Lectures, 1880), p 90.20

In the apostolic church preaching and teaching were not confined to a particular class, but every convert could proclaim the gospel to unbelievers, and every Christian who had the gift could pray and teach and exhort in the congregation.¹²²¹²²    Comp. Acts 8:4; 9:27; 13:15; 18:26, 28; Rom. 12:6; 1 Cor. 12:10, 28; 14:1-6, 31. Even in the Jewish Synagogue the liberty of teaching was enjoyed, and the elder could ask any member of repute, even a stranger, to deliver a discourse on the Scripture lesson (Luke 4:17; Acts 17:2).21 The New Testament knows no spiritual aristocracy or nobility, but calls all believers "saints" though many fell far short of their vocation. Nor does it recognize a special priesthood in distinction from the people, as mediating between God and the laity. It knows only one high-priest, Jesus Christ, and clearly teaches the universal priesthood, as well as universal kingship, of believers.¹²³¹²³    1 Pet. 2:5, 9; 5:3; Rev. 1:6; 5:10; 20:6. See Neander, Lightfoot, Stanley, etc., and vol. I. 486 sqq. I add a passage from Hatch’s; Bampton Lectures on The Organization of the Early Christian Churches (1881), p. 139: "In earlier times there was a grander faith. For the kingdom of God was a kingdom of priests. Not only the ’four and twenty elders’ before the throne, but the innumerable souls of the sanctified upon whom ’the second death had no power,’ were ’kings and priests unto God.’ Only in that high sense was priesthood predicable of Christian men. For the shadow had passed: the reality had come: the one High Priest of Christianity was Christ."22 It does this in a far deeper and larger sense than the Old;¹²⁴¹²⁴    Exod. 19:6.23 in a sense, too, which even to this day is not yet fully realized. The entire body of Christians are called "clergy" (κλῆροι a peculiar people, the heritage of God.¹²⁵¹²⁵    1 Pet. 5:3. Here Peter warns his fellow-presbyters not to lord it (κυριεύειν)over the κλῆροι or the κληρονομία, i.e., the lot or inheritance of the Lord, the charge allotted to them. Comp. Deut. 4:20; 9:29 (LXX),24

On the other hand it is equally clear that there was in the apostolic church a ministerial office, instituted by Christ, for the very purpose of raising the mass of believers from infancy and pupilage to independent and immediate intercourse with God, to that prophetic, priestly, and kingly position, which in principle and destination belongs to them all.¹²⁶¹²⁶    Comp. Eph. 4:11-1325 This work is the gradual process of church history itself, and will not be fully accomplished till the kingdom of glory shall come. But these ministers are nowhere represented as priests in any other sense than Christians generally are priests, with the privilege of a direct access to the throne of grace in the name of their one and eternal high-priest in heaven. Even in the Pastoral Epistles which present the most advanced stage of ecclesiastical organization in the apostolic period, while the teaching, ruling, and pastoral functions of the presbyter-bishops are fully discussed, nothing is said about a sacerdotal function. The Apocalypse, which was written still later, emphatically teaches the universal priesthood and kingship of believers. The apostles themselves never claim or exercise a special priesthood. The sacrifice which all Christians are exhorted to offer is the sacrifice of their person and property to the Lord, and the spiritual sacrifice of thanksgiving and praise.¹²⁷¹²⁷    Rom. 12:1; Phil. 2:17; 1 Pet. 2:5; Heb. 13:16.26 In one passage a Christian "altar" is spoken of, in distinction from the Jewish altar of literal and daily sacrifices, but this altar is the cross on which Christ offered himself once and forever for the sins of the world.¹²⁸¹²⁸    Heb. 13:10. So θυσιαστήριον is understood by Thomas Aquinas, Bengel, Bleek, Lünemann, Riehm, etc. Others explain it of the Lord’s table, Lightfoot (p. 263) of the congregation assembled for common worship.27

After the gradual abatement of the extraordinary spiritual elevation of the apostolic age, which anticipated in its way the ideal condition of the church, the distinction of a regular class of teachers from the laity became more fixed and prominent. This appears first in Ignatius, who, in his high episcopalian spirit, considers the clergy the necessary medium of access for the people to God. "Whoever is within the sanctuary (or altar), is pure; but he who is outside of the sanctuary is not pure; that is, he who does anything without bishop and presbytery and deacon, is not pure in conscience."¹²⁹¹²⁹    Ad Trall.c. 7: ὁ ἔντὸς θυσιαστήιον ὦν καθαρός ἐστιν ὁ δέ ἐκτὸς θυσιαστηρίου ὢν οὐ καθαρός ἐστιν· τουτέστιν, ὁ χωρὶς ἐπισκόπου καὶ πρεσβυτερίου καὶ διακόνου πράσσων τι, οὖτος οὐ καθαρός ες̓τιν τῇ συνειδήσει.Funk’s ed. I. 208. Some MSS. omit the second clause, perhaps from homoeoteleuton. Von Gebhardt and Harnack also omit it in the Greek text, but retain it in the Latin (qui extra attare est, non mundus est). The τουτέστιν evidently requires the clause.28 Yet he nowhere represents the ministry as a sacerdotal office. The Didache calls "the prophets" high-priests, but probably in a spiritual sense.¹³⁰¹³⁰    Cf. ch. 13. See note in Schaff’s edition, p. 20629 Clement of Rome, in writing to the congregation at Corinth, draws a significant and fruitful parallel between the Christian presiding office and the Levitical priesthood, and uses the expression "layman" (λαϊκος ἄνθρωπος) as antithetic to high-priest, priests, and Levites.¹³¹¹³¹    Ad Cor. 40: "Unto the high-priest his proper services have been intrusted, and to the priests their proper office is appointed, and upon the levites their proper ministrations are laid. The layman is bound by the layman’s ordinances (ὁ λαϊκὸς ἄνθρωπος τοῖς λαϊκοῖς προστάγμασιν δέδεται)." The passage occurs in the text of Bryennios as well as in the older editions, and there is no good reason to suspect it of being an interpolation in the hierarchical interest, as Neander and Milman have done. Bishop Lightfoot, in his St. Clement of Rome, p. 128 sq., puts a mild construction upon it, and says that the analogy does not extend to the three orders, because Clement only knows two (bishops and deacons), and that the high priesthood of Christ is wholly different in kind from the Mosaic high priesthood, and exempt from those very limitations on which Clement dwells in that chapter.30 This parallel contains the germ of the whole system of sacerdotalism. But it is at best only an argument by analogy. Tertullian was the first who expressly and directly asserts sacerdotal claims on behalf of the Christian ministry, and calls it "sacerdotium," although he also strongly affirms the universal priesthood of all believers. Cyprian (d. 258) goes still further, and applies all the privileges, duties, and responsibilities of the Aaronic priesthood to the officers of the Christian church, and constantly calls them sacerdotes and sacerdotium. He may therefore be called the proper father of the sacerdotal conception of the Christian ministry as a mediating agency between God and the people. During the third century it became customary to apply the term "priest" directly and exclusively to the Christian ministers especially the bishops.¹³²¹³²    Sacerdos, also summus sacerdos (Tertullian, De Bapt. 7), and oncepontifex maximus (De Pudic. 1, with ironical reference, it seems, to the Roman bishop); ordo sacerdotalis (De Exhort. Cast. 7); ἱερεύς and sometimes ἀρχιερεύς (Apost. Const. II. 34, 35, 36, 57; III. 9; vi. 15, 18, etc.). Hippolytus calls his office an ἀρχιερατεία and διδασκαλία (Ref. Haer. I. prooem.). Cyprian generally applies the term sacerdos to the bishop, and calls his colleagues consacerdotales.31 In the same manner the whole ministry, and it alone, was called "clergy," with a double reference to its presidency and its peculiar relation to God.¹³³¹³³    Κλῆρος,clerus, τάξιςordo, ordosacerdotalis (Tertulli, De Ehort. Cast. 7), ordo eccelesiasticus orecclesiae (De Monog. 11; De Idolol. 7); κληρικοί, clerici. The first instance perhaps of the use of clerus in the sense of clergy is in Tertullian,De Monog. c. 12: "Unde enim episcopi et clerus ?" and: "Extollimur et inflamur adversus clerum." Jerome (Ad Nepotian.) explains this exclusive application of clerus to ministers, "vel quia de sorte sunt Domini, vel quia ipse Dominus sors, id est, pars clericorum est." The distinction between the regular clergy, who were also monks, and the secular clergy or parish priests, is of much later date (seventh or eighth century).32 It was distinguished by this name from the Christian people or "laity."¹³⁴¹³⁴    Λαός, λαϊκοί, plebs. In Tertullian, Cyprian, and in the Apostolic Constitutions the term " layman" occurs very often. Cyprian speaks (250) of a " conference held with bishops, presbyters, deacons, confessors, and also with laymen who stood firm"(in persecution), Ep. 30, ad Rom33 Thus the term "clergy," which first signified the lot by which office was assigned (Acts 1:17, 25), then the office itself, then the persons holding that office, was transferred from the Christians generally to the ministers exclusively.

Solemn "ordination" or consecration by the laying on of hands was the form of admission into the "ordo ecclesiasticus" or "sacerdotalis." In this order itself there were again three degrees, "ordines majores," as they were called: the diaconate, the presbyterate, and the episcopate—held to be of divine institution. Under these were the "ordines minores," of later date, from sub-deacon to ostiary, which formed the stepping-stone between the clergy proper and the people.¹³⁵¹³⁵    .Occasionally, however we find a somewhat wider terminology. Tertullian mentions, De Monog c. 12, the ordo viduarum among the ordines ecclesiastici, and even the much later Jerome (see In Jesaiam, l. v.c. 19, 18), enumerates quinque ecclesiae ordines, episcopos, presbyteros, diaconos, fideles, catechumenos.34

Thus we find, so early as the third century, the foundations of a complete hierarchy; though a hierarchy of only moral power, and holding no sort of outward control over the conscience. The body of the laity consisted of two classes: the faithful, or the baptized and communicating members, and the catechumens, who were preparing for baptism. Those church members who lived together in one place,¹³⁶¹³⁶    Πάροικοι, παρεπίδημοι, Eph. 2:19; 1 Pet. 2:11.35 formed a church in the narrower sense.¹³⁷¹³⁷    or parish, παροικία.36

With the exaltation of the clergy appeared the tendency to separate them from secular business, and even from social relations—from marriage, for example—and to represent them, even outwardly, as a caste independent of the people, and devoted exclusively to the service of the sanctuary. They drew their support from the church treasury, which was supplied by voluntary contributions and weekly collections on the Lord’s Day. After the third century they were forbidden to engage in any secular business, or even to accept any trusteeship. Celibacy was not yet in this period enforced, but left optional. Tertullian, Gregory of Nyssa, and other distinguished church teachers, lived in wedlock, though theoretically preferring the unmarried state. Of an official clerical costume no certain trace appears before the fourth century; and if it came earlier into use, as may have been the ease, after the example of the Jewish church, it must have been confined, during the times of persecution, to the actual exercises of worship.

With the growth of this distinction of clergy and laity, however, the idea of the universal priesthood continued from time to time to assert itself: in Irenaeus,¹³⁸¹³⁸    Adv. Haer. iv. 8, §.37 for example, and in an eccentric form in the Montanists, who even allowed women to teach publicly in the church. So Tertullian, with whom clerus and laici were at one time familiar expressions, inquires, as the champion of the Montanistic reaction against the Catholic hierarchy: "Are not we laymen priests also?"¹³⁹¹³⁹    Nonne et laici sacerdotes sumus?38 It is written, he continues: "He hath made us kings and priests (Rev. 1:6). It is the authority of the church alone which has made a distinction between clergy and laity. Where there is no college of ministers, you administer the sacrament, you baptize, you are a priest for yourself alone. And where there are three of you, there is a church, though you be only laymen. For each one lives by his own faith, and there is no respect of persons with God."¹⁴⁰¹⁴⁰    De Exhort. Cast. c. 7. Comp. also De Monog. 7, 12; De Bapt. 17; De Orat. 1839 All, therefore, which the clergy considered peculiar to them, he claimed for the laity as the common sacerdotal privilege of all Christians.

Even in the Catholic church an acknowledgment of the general priesthood showed itself in the custom of requiring the baptized to say the Lord’s Prayer before the assembled congregation. With reference to this, Jerome says: "Sacerdotium laici, id est, baptisma." The congregation also, at least in the West, retained for a long time the right of approval and rejection in the choice of its ministers, even of the bishop. Clement of Rome expressly requires the assent of the whole congregation for a valid election;¹⁴¹¹⁴¹    . Ad Cor. 44: Σύευδοκάσης τῆς ἐκκλησίας πάσης , consentiente universa ecclesia.40 and Cyprian terms this an apostolic and almost universal regulation.¹⁴²¹⁴²    Ep. lx. 3-4 (ed. Goldhorn).41 According to his testimony it obtained also in Rome, and was observed in the case of his contemporary, Cornelius.¹⁴³¹⁴³    Ep. lv. 7:"Factus est Cornelius episcopus de Dei et Christi ejus judicio, de clericorum paene omnium testimonio, de plebis quae tum adfuit suffragio, et de sacerdotum antiquorum et bonorum virorum collegio."42 Sometimes in the filling of a vacant bishopric the "suffragium" of the people preceded the "judicium" of the clergy of the diocese. Cyprian, and afterwards Athanasius, Ambrose, Augustin, and other eminent prelates, were in a manner pressed into the bishopric in this democratic way. Cyprian, with all his high-church proclivities, declares it his principle to do nothing as bishop without the advice of the presbyters and deacons, and the consent of the people.¹⁴⁴¹⁴⁴    Sine consensu plebis.43 A peculiar influence, which even the clergy could not withstand, attached to the "confessors," and it was sometimes abused by them, as in their advocacy of the lapsed, who denied Christ in the Decian persecution.

Finally, we notice cases where the function of teaching was actually exercised by laymen. The bishops of Jerusalem and Caesarea allowed the learned Origen to expound the Bible to their congregations before his ordination, and appealed to the example of several bishops in the East.¹⁴⁵¹⁴⁵    Euseb., H. E. VI. 19: "There [in Caesarea] he [Origen] was also requested by the bishops to expound the sacred Scriptures publicly in the church, although he had not yet obtained the priesthood by the imposition of hands." It is true this was made the ground of a charge against him by Demetrius, bishop of Alexandria; but the charge was that Origen had preached "in the presence of bishops," not that he had preached as a layman. And the bishops of Jerusalem and Caesarea adduced several examples of holy bishops inviting capable laymen to preach to the people. Prudentius and Aedesius, while laymen, founded the church in Abyssinia, Socrates, Hist. Eccl. I. 19.44 Even in the Apostolical Constitutions there occurs, under the name of the Apostle Paul, the direction: "Though a man be a layman, if experienced in the delivery of instruction, and reverent in habit, he may teach; for the Scripture says: ’They shall be all taught of God.’ "¹⁴⁶¹⁴⁶    Const. Apost. VIII. 31. Ambrosiaster, or Hilary the Deacon, in his Com. Ad Eph. 4:11, 12, says that in early times "omnes docebant et omnes baptizabant."45 The fourth general council at Carthage (398) prohibited laymen from teaching in the presence of clergymen and without their consent; implying at the same time, that with such permission the thing might be done.¹⁴⁷¹⁴⁷    Can. 98: "Laicus praesentibus clericis nisi ipsis jubentibus, docere non audeat." The 99th canon forbids women, no matter how "learned or holy," to "presume to teach men in a meeting." Pope Leo I. (Ep 92 and 93) forbids lay preaching in the interest of ecclesiastical order. Charlemagne enacted a law that "a layman ought not to recite a lesson in church, nor to say the Hallelujah but only the Psalm or responses without the Hallelujah."46

It is worthy of notice that a number of the most eminent church teachers of this period, Hermas, Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Tertullian, Arnobius, and Lactantius, were either laymen, or at most only presbyters. Hermas, who wrote one of the most popular and authoritative books in the early church, was probably a layman; perhaps also the author of the homily which goes under the name of the Second Epistle of Clement of Rome, and has recently been discovered in full both in the original Greek and in a Syriac translation; for he seems to distinguish himself and his hearers from the presbyters.¹⁴⁸¹⁴⁸    The Greek text (of which only a fragment was known before) was found and published by Bryennios, 1875, the Syriac version by Bensley, 1876. See Harnack’s ed. in the Patres Apost. vol. I., and Lightfoot, S. Clement of Rome, Appendix (1877). Harnack, Hilgenfeld, and Hatch (l.c. 114; note) suppose that the homily was delivered by a layman, but Lightfoot (p. 304) explains the language above alluded to as a common rhetorical figure by which the speaker places himself on a level with his audience.47

§ 43. New Church Officers.

The expansion of the church, the development of her cultus, and the tendency towards hierarchical pomp, led to the multiplication of offices below the diaconate, which formed the ordines minores. About the middle of the third century the following new officers are mentioned:

1. Sub-deacons, or under-helpers;¹⁴⁹¹⁴⁹    Ὑποδιάκονοι,subdiaconi, perhaps the same as the ὑπηρέται of the New Testament and the earlier fathers.48 assistants and deputies of the deacons; the only one of these subordinate offices for which a formal ordination was required. Opinions differ as to its value.

2. Readers,¹⁵⁰¹⁵⁰    Ἄναγνωσται, lectores, mentioned by Tertullian.49 who read the Scriptures in the assembly and had charge of the church books.

3. Acolyths,¹⁵¹¹⁵¹    Ἄκόλυθοι, acolythi.50 attendants of the bishops in their official duties and processions.

4. Exorcists,¹⁵²¹⁵²    Ἔξορκισταί,exorcistae51 who, by prayer and the laying on of hands, cast out the evil spirit from the possessed,¹⁵³¹⁵³    Δαιμονιζόμενοι, ἐνεργούμενοι52 and from catechumens, and frequently assisted in baptism. This power had been formerly considered a free gift of the Holy Spirit.

5. Precentors,¹⁵⁴¹⁵⁴    Ψάλται, psalmistae cantores53 for the musical parts of the liturgy, psalms, benedictions, responses, etc.

6. Janitors or sextons,¹⁵⁵¹⁵⁵    θυρωροί, πυλωροί, ostiarii janitores.54 who took care of the religious meeting-rooms, and at a later period also of the church-yards.

7. Besides these there were in the larger churches catechists, and, where the church language in the worship was not understood, interpreters; but the interpreting was commonly done by presbyters, deacons, or readers.

The bishop Cornelius of Rome (d. 252), in a letter on the Novatian schism,¹⁵⁶¹⁵⁶    In Euseb. vi. 43.55 gives the number of officers in his church as follows: Forty-six presbyters, probably corresponding to the number of the meeting-houses of the Christians in the city; seven deacons, after the model of the church at Jerusalem (Acts vi); seven sub-deacons; forty-two acolyths, and fifty-two exorcists, readers, and janitors.

As to the ordines majores, the deacons during this period rose in importance. In addition to their original duties of caring for the poor and sick, they baptized, distributed the sacramental cup, said the church prayers, not seldom preached, and were confidential advisers, sometimes even delegates and vicars of the bishops. This last is true especially of the "archdeacon," who does not appear, however, till the fourth century. The presbyters, on the contrary, though above the deacons, were now overtopped by the new office of bishop, in which the entire government of the church became centred.

§ 44. Origin of the Episcopate.

Besides the works already cited, compare the special works and essays on the Ignatian controversy, published since 1837, by Rothe (close of his Anfänge, etc.), Hefele (R.C.), Baur, Hilgenfeld, Bunsen, Petermann, Cureton, Lipsius, Uhlhorn, Zahn, Lightfoot (I. 376 sqq). Also R. D. Hitchcock on the Origin of Episcopacy, N. Y. 1867 (in the "Am. Presbyt. & Theol. Review" for Jan. 1867, pp. 133–169); Lightfoot on the Christian Ministry (1873); Hatch on the Organization of the Early Christian Church (1881); Renan, L’Eglise chrétienne (1879), ch. VI.Progrés de l’épiscopat; and Gore, The Ministry of the Church (1889).

The most important and also the most difficult phenomenon of our period in the department of church organization is the rise and development of the episcopate as distinct from the presbyterate. This institution comes to view in the second century as the supreme spiritual office, and is retained to this day by all Roman and Greek Christendom, and by a large part of the Evangelical church, especially the Anglican communion. A form of government so ancient and so widely adopted, can be satisfactorily accounted for only on the supposition of a religious need, namely, the need of a tangible outward representation and centralization, to illustrate and embody to the people their relation to Christ and to God, and the visible unity of the church. It is therefore inseparable from the catholic principle of authority and mediation; while the protestant principle of freedom and direct intercourse of the believer with Christ, consistently carried out, infringes the strict episcopal constitution, and tends to ministerial equality. Episcopacy in the full sense of the term requires for its base the idea of a real priesthood and real sacrifice, and an essential distinction between clergy and laity. Divested of these associations, it resolves itself into a mere superintendency.¹⁵⁷¹⁵⁷    Such is the Swedish and Danish Lutheran, the American Methodist, and the Moravian episcopate, which recognizes the validity of non-episcopal orders. The Anglican church harbors a high-church and a low-church theory of episcopacy, the one derived from the mediaeval hierarchy, the other from the Reformation, but repudiates the primacy as an antichristian usurpation, although it must be confessed to be almost as old as episcopacy, its roots going back to Clement of Rome, or at all events to the age of Irenaeus.56

During the lifetime of the apostles, those eye- and ear-witnesses of the divine-human life of Jesus, and the inspired organs of the Holy Spirit, there was no room for proper bishops; and those who were so called, must have held only a subordinate place. The church, too, in the first century was as yet a strictly supernatural organization, a stranger in this world, standing with one foot in eternity, and longing for the second coming of her heavenly bridegroom. But in the episcopal constitution the church provided an extremely simple but compact and freely expansible organization, planted foot firmly upon earth, became an institution for the education of her infant people, and, as chiliastic hopes receded, fell into the path of quiet historical development; yet unquestionably she thus incurred also the danger of a secularization which reached its height just when the hierarchy became complete in the Roman church, and which finally necessitated a reformation on the basis of apostolical Christianity. That this secularization began with the growing power of the bishops even before Constantine and the Byzantine court orthodoxy, we perceive, for instance, in the lax penitential discipline, the avarice, and the corruption with which Hippolytus, in the ninth book of his Philosophumena, reproaches Zephyrinus and Callistus, the Roman bishops of his time (202–223); also in the example of the bishop Paul of Samosata, who was deposed in 269 on almost incredible charges, not only against his doctrine, but still more against his moral character.¹⁵⁸¹⁵⁸    Comp. Euseb. vii. 27-3057 Origen complains that there are, especially in the larger cities, overseers of the people of God, who seek to outdo the pomp of heathen potentates, would surround themselves, like the emperors, with a body-guard, and make themselves terrible and inaccessible to the poor.¹⁵⁹¹⁵⁹    See the passages quoted by Gieseler, vol. I. 282 sq. (Harpers’ ed. of New York.)58

We consider, first, the origin of the episcopate. The unreliable character of our documents and traditions from the transition period between the close of the apostolic church and the beginning of the post-apostolic, leaves large room here for critical research and combination. First of all comes the question: Was the episcopate directly or indirectly of apostolic (Johannean) origin?¹⁶⁰¹⁶⁰    This is the Greek, the Roman Catholic, and the high Anglican theory. It is advocated by a very few Continental Protestants as Chevalier Bunsen, Rothe and Thiersch (an Irvingite), who trace episcopacy to John in Ephesus.59 Or did it arise after the death of the apostles, and develope itself from the presidency of the congregational presbytery?¹⁶¹¹⁶¹    So the Lutheran, Presbyterian, and some eminent Episcopal writers. We mention Mosheim, Neander, Lightfoot, Stanley, Hatch. Also Baur and Renan, who judge as mere critics.60 In other words, was the episcopate a continuation and contraction of, and substitute for, the apostolate, or was it an expansion and elevation of the presbyterate?¹⁶²¹⁶²    Bishop Lightfoot (l.c. p. 194) thus states the question with his own answer: "The episcopate was formed, not out of the apostolic order by localization, but out of the presbyterial by elevation; and the title, which originally was common to all, came at length to be appropriated to the chief among them."61 The later view is more natural and better sustained by facts. Most of its advocates date the change from the time of Ignatius in the first quarter of the second century, while a few carry it further back to the close of the first, when St. John still lived in Ephesus.

I. For the apostolic origin of episcopacy the following points may be made:

(1) The position of James, who evidently stood at the head of the church at Jerusalem,¹⁶³¹⁶³    Acts 15:13; 21:18. Comp. vol. I. 264 sqq.62 and is called bishop, at least in the pseudo-Clementine literature, and in fact supreme bishop of the whole church.¹⁶⁴¹⁶⁴    Ἐπίσκοπος έπισκόπων.63 This instance, however, stands quite alone, and does not warrant an inference in regard to the entire church.

(2) The office of the assistants and delegates of the apostles, like Timothy, Titus, Silas, Epaphroditus, Luke, Mark, who had a sort of supervision of several churches and congregational officers, and in a measure represented the apostles in special missions. But, in any case, these were not limited, at least during the life of the apostles, each to a particular diocese; they were itinerant evangelists and legates of the apostles; only the doubtful tradition of a later day assigns them distinct bishoprics. If bishops at all, they were missionary bishops.

(3) The angels of the seven churches of Asia,¹⁶⁵¹⁶⁵    Rev. 1:20. For the different views see vol. I. 49764 who, if regarded as individuals, look very like the later bishops, and indicate a monarchical shaping of the church government in the days of John. But, apart from the various interpretations of the Apocalyptic ἄγγελοι, that office appears not co-ordinate with the apostolate of John, but subordinate to it, and was no more than a congregational superintendency.

(4) The testimony of Ignatius of Antioch, a disciple of John, in his seven (or three) epistles from the beginning of the second century (even according to the shorter Syriac version), presupposes the episcopate, in distinction from the presbyterate, as already existing, though as a new institution, yet in its growth.

(5) The statement of Clement of Alexandria,¹⁶⁶¹⁶⁶    Quis dives salvus, c. 42.65 that John instituted bishops after his return from Patmos; and the accounts of Irenaeus,¹⁶⁷¹⁶⁷    Adv.Haer. III. 366 Tertullian,¹⁶⁸¹⁶⁸    De PraescR.C. 3267 Eusebius,¹⁶⁹¹⁶⁹    H. E.III. 3668 and Jerome,¹⁷⁰¹⁷⁰    Catal. sub Polyc69 that the same apostle nominated and ordained Polycarp (with whom Irenaeus was personally acquainted) bishop of Smyrna.

(6) The uncertain tradition in Eusebius, who derived it probably from Hegesippus, that the surviving apostles and disciples of the apostles, soon after the destruction of Jerusalem, elected Symeon, the son of Klopas and a cousin of Jesus, bishop of that city and successor of James. But this arrangement at best was merely local, and not general.¹⁷¹¹⁷¹    H. E. III. 11. Comp. the fragment of Hegesippus, in IV. 22. Lightfoot (Philippians p. 202) remarks against Rothe’s inference: "The account of Hegesippus confines the object of this gathering to the appointment of a successor of St. James. If its deliberations had exerted that vast and permanent influence on the future of the church which Rothe’s theory supposes, it is scarcely possible that this early historian should have been ignorant of the fact, or knowing it should have passed it over in silence."70

(7) The tradition of the churches of Antioch and Rome, which trace their line of bishops back to apostolic institution, and kept the record of an unbroken succession.

(8) A passage in the second of the Pfaff Fragments of Irenaeus, which speaks of "second ordinances of the apostles" (δεύτεραι τῶν ἀποστόλων διατάξεις). Rothe understands by these the institution of the episcopate. But aside from the doubtful genuineness of the Fragments, these words are at all events of unsettled interpretation, and, according to the connection, relate not to the government of the church at all, but to the celebration of the eucharist.

(9) Equally uncertain is the conclusion drawn from an obscure passage in the Epistle of Clement of Rome to the Corinthians, which admits of different interpretations.¹⁷²¹⁷²    Ad Corinth. c. 44: Οἱ ἀπόστολοι ἡμων ἔγνωσαν διὰ τοῦ κυρίουἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ ὅτι ἔρις ἔσται ἐπὶ τοῦ ὀνόματος τῆς ἐπισκοπῆς . Διὰ ταύτην οὖ́ν τὴν αἰτίαν πρόγνωσιν εἰληφότες τελείαν κατέστησαν τοὺς προειρημένους καὶ μεταξὺ ἐπινομὴν (or ἐπιμονὴν) ἔδωκαν, ὅπως , ἐὰν κοιμηθῶσιν, διαδέξωνται ἕτεροι δεδοκιμασμένοι ἄνδρες τὴν λειτουργίαν αὐτῶν. " Our apostles knew through our Lord Jesus Christ that there would be strife over the name of the bishop’s office [i.e., the office of the ministry, in general; Comp. Acts 1:20; Sept. Num. 4:16; Ps. 109:8; 2 Chr. 23:18]. For this cause, therefore, having complete foreknowledge, they appointed the aforesaid persons [i.e., presbyter-bishops and deacons; Comp. c. 42 and 57], and afterwards they made the disposition [or provided a continuance, if we read with Lightfoot ἐπιμονήν.], that if these should fall asleep, other approved men should succeed to their ministration."71 The apostles, it is said, foreseeing the future controversy about the name of the episcopal office, appointed bishops and deacons, and afterwards made the disposition,¹⁷³¹⁷³    The reading is obscure and disputed. The Alexandrian MS. reads: ἐπινομήν, the Constantinopolitan: ἐπιδομήν (both have EΠI-OMHN). The former word is rare (from or from νέμω or fromνόμος) is not found in the dictionaries; and hence various emendations have been proposed, as άπονομήν (Junius), ἐπιδοχήν (Bryennios), ἐπιβολήν (von Gebhardt and Harnack), ἐπιμονήν (Bunsen, Lightfoot), ἐπιτροπήν (Hilgenfeld), ἐπιλογήν, ἐπινομίαν, ἐπιστολήν, ἐπιταγήν, ἔτι νόμον. Rothe (Anfänge, p. 374) ingeniously translates ἐπινομήν " testamentary disposition" (testamentarische Verfügung =ἐπινομίς ,an after-enactment, a codicil), and identifies it with the δεύτεραι διατάξεις of the fragment of Irenaeus. But this is rejected by the latest editors as untenable. Lightfoot (with Bunsen) reads ἐπιμονήν, permanence (not "life-tenure," as Bunsen rendered it). The drift of the passage, however, does not so much depend upon the meaning of this word as upon the question whether the apostles, or the congregational officers are the grammatical subjects of the following verb, κοιμηθῶσιν.72 that when they should fall asleep, other approved men should follow them in office. Rothe refers "they" and "them" to the apostles as the main subject. But these words naturally refer to the congregational officers just before mentioned, and in this case the "other approved men" are not successors of the apostles, but of the presbyter-bishops and deacons.¹⁷⁴¹⁷⁴    See also Gebhardt and Harnack (presbyteri et diaconi illi, quos apostoli ipsi constituerunt), the Roman Catholic editor Funk ("κοιμηθῶσιν, sc. episcopi et diaconi de quorum successione Clemens agit"), and Bishop Lightfoot ("the first generation of presbyters appointed by the apostles themselves"). (Comp. also on this whole passage Lightfoot, Philippians, p. 203, where he refutes Rothe’s interpretation; Baur Ursprung des Episcopats, p. 53; Ewald, Gesch. des Volkes Israel, VII. 300; Ritschl, Altkath. K. 358 and 413, and Ilgenfeld, Apost. Väter, 70.73 This view is sustained by the connection. The difficulty in the Corinthian congregation was a rebellion, not against a single bishop, but against a number of presbyter-bishops, and Clement reminds them that the apostles instituted this office not only for the first generation, but provided for a permanent succession, and that the officers were appointed for life, and could therefore not be deposed so long as they discharged their duties. Hence he goes on to say, immediately after the disputed passage in chapter 44: "Wherefore we think that those cannot justly be thrown out of their ministry who were appointed either by them (the apostles), or afterwards by other eminent men, with the consent of the whole congregation; and who have with all lowliness and innocency ministered to the flock of Christ, in peace, and without self-interest, and were for a long time commended by all."

(10) Finally, the philosophical consideration, that the universal and uncontested spread of the episcopate in the second century cannot be satisfactorily explained without the presumption of at least the indirect sanction of the apostles. By the same argument the observance of Sunday and infant baptism are usually traced to apostolic origin. But it is not quite conclusive, since most of the apostles died before the destruction of Jerusalem. It could only apply to John, who was the living centre of the church in Asia Minor to the close of the first century.¹⁷⁵¹⁷⁵    Hence Rothe traces the institution to John. And Bishop Lightfoot (Philippians, p. 204) is inclined to this view: "Asia Minor was the nurse, if not the mother of episcopacy in the Gentile churches. So important an institution, developed in a Christian community, of which St. John was the living centre and guide, could hardly, have grown up without his sanction: and early tradition very distinctly connects his name with the appointment of bishops in these parts." He repeats the same view more confidently in his Ignat. and Polyc., I. 377.74

II. The theory of the post-apostolic origin of the episcopate as a separate office or order, and its rise out of the presidency of the original congregational presbyterate, by way of human, though natural and necessary, development, is supported by the following facts:

(1) The undeniable identity of presbyters and bishops in the New Testament,¹⁷⁶¹⁷⁶    Acts 20:17, 28; Phil. 1:1; Tit. 1:5; 1 Tim. 3:1-7, 8-13; 1 Pet. 5:1, 2. Comp. the author’s Hist. of the Apost. Ch. §§ 132, 133, pp. 522-531 (N. York ed.); and vol. I. p. 492 sqq.75 conceded even by the best interpreters among the church fathers, by Jerome, Chrysostom, and Theodoret, and by the best scholars of recent times.

(2) Later, at the close of the first and even in the second century, the two terms are still used in like manner for the same office. The Roman bishop Clement, in his First Epistle to the Corinthians says, that the apostles, in the newly-founded churches, appointed the first fruits of the faith, i.e., the first converts, "bishops and deacons."¹⁷⁷¹⁷⁷    C. 42. Comp. the Commentary of Lightfoot. "It is impossible that he should have omitted the presbyters, more especially as his one object is to defend their authority, which had been assailed. The words ἐπίσκοπὸς and πρεσβύτερος therefore are synonymes in Clement, as they are in the apostolic writers. In Ignatius and Polycarp they first appear as distinct titles."76 He here omits the πρεσβύτεροι, as Paul does in Phil. 1:1, for the simple reason that they are in his view identical with ἐπίσκοποι; while conversely, in c. 57, he enjoins subjection to presbyters, without mentioning bishops.¹⁷⁸¹⁷⁸    The ἡγούμενοι, c. 1, also, and the προηγούμενοι, c. 21, are not bishops, but congregational officers collectively, as in Heb. 13:7, 17, 24.77 The Didache mentions bishops and deacons, but no presbyters.¹⁷⁹¹⁷⁹    Ch. 15: Χειροτονήσατε ἑαυτοῖς ἐπισκόπους καὶ διακόνους. See Schaff’s monograph on the Didache, p. 211 sq78 Clement of Alexandria distinguishes, it is true, the deaconate, the presbyterate, and the episcopate; but he supposes only a two-fold official character, that of presbyters, and that of deacons—a view which found advocates so late as the middle ages, even in pope Urban II., a.d. 1091. Lastly, Irenaeus, towards the close of the second century, though himself a bishop, makes only a relative difference between episcopi and presbyteri; speaks of successions of the one in the same sense as of the other; terms the office of the latter episcopatus; and calls the bishops of Rome "presbyters".¹⁸⁰¹⁸⁰    Adv. Haer. iii. 2, §5. Comp. also the letter of Irenaeus to the Roman bishop Victor in Euseb., v. 24.79 Sometimes, it is true, he appears to use the term "presbyters" in a more general sense, for the old men, the fathers.¹⁸¹¹⁸¹    Comp. 2 Jno. 1. and 1.80 But in any case his language shows that the distinction between the two offices was at that time still relative and indefinite.

(3) The express testimony of the learned Jerome, that the churches originally, before divisions arose through the instigation of Satan, were governed by the common council of the presbyters, and not till a later period was one of the pres-byters placed at the head, to watch over the church and suppress schisms.¹⁸²¹⁸²    Ad Titum i. 7. Comp. Epist. 83 and 85.81 He traces the difference of the office simply to "ecclesiastical" custom as distinct from divine institution.¹⁸³¹⁸³    Ad Tit. i. 7: "Sicut ergo presbyteri sciunt, see ex ecclesiae consuetudine ei, qui sibi praepositus fuerit, esse subjectos, ita episcopi noverint, se magis consuetudine quam dispositionis Dominicae veritate presbyteris esse majores et in commune debere ecclesiam regere." The Roman deacon Hilary (Ambrosiaster) says, ad 1 Tim. 3:10:"Hic enim episcopus est, qui inter presbyteros primus est." Comp. also Chrysostom Hom. xi. in Epist, 1 ad Tim. 38.82

(4) The custom of the church of Alexandria, where, from the evangelist Mark down to the middle of the third century, the twelve presbyters elected one of their number president, and called him bishop. This fact rests on the authority of Jerome,¹⁸⁴¹⁸⁴    Epist. ad Evangelum (Opp. iv. p. 802, ed. Martinay): Alexandriae a Marco evangelista usque ad Heraclam et Dionysium episcopos presbyteri semper unum ex se electum in excelsiori gradu collocatum episcopum nominabant, quomodo si exercitus imperatorem faciat, aut diaconi elegant de se, quem industrium noverint et archidiaconum vocent.83 and is confirmed independently by the Annals of the Alexandrian patriarch, Eutychius, of the tenth century.¹⁸⁵¹⁸⁵    Ed. Oxon. 1658, p. 331: "Constituit evangelista Marcus una cum Hakania patriarcha duodecim presbyteros, qui nempe cum patriarcha manerent, adeo ut cum vacaret patriachatus, unum e duodecim presbyteris eligerent, cnius capiti reliqui undecim manus imponentes ipsi benedicerent et patriarcham crearent, deinde virum aliquem insignem eligerent, quem secum presbyterum constituerent,loco ejus, qui factus est patriarcha, ut ita semper exstarent duodecim. Neque desiit Alexandriae institutum hoc de presbyteris, ut scilcet patriarchas crearent ex presbyteris duodecim, usque ad tempera Alexandri patriarchae Alexandriae. Is autem vetuit, ne deinceps patriarcham presbyteri crearent. Et decrervit, ut mortuo patriarcha convenient episcopi, qui patriarcham ordinarent."84 The latter states that Mark instituted in that city a patriarch (this is an anachronism) and twelve presbyters, who should fill the vacant patriarchate by electing and ordaining to that office one of their number and then electing a new presbyter, so as always to retain the number twelve. He relates, moreover, that down to the time of Demetrius, at the end of the second century, there was no bishop in Egypt besides the one at Alexandria; consequently there could have been no episcopal ordination except by going out of the province.

III. Conclusion. The only satisfactory conclusion from these various facts and traditions seems to be, that the episcopate proceeded, both in the descending and ascending scale, from the apostolate and the original presbyterate conjointly, as a contraction of the former and an expansion of the latter, without either express concert or general regulation of the apostles, neither of which, at least, can be historically proved. It arose, instinctively, as it were, in that obscure and critical transition period between the end of the first and the middle of the second century. It was not a sudden creation, much less the invention of a single mind. It grew, in part, out of the general demand for a continuation of, or substitute for, the apostolic church government, and this, so far as it was transmissible at all, very naturally passed first to the most eminent disciples and fellow-laborers of the apostles, to Mark, Luke, Timothy, Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, Papias, which accounts for the fact that tradition makes them all bishops in the prominent sense of the term. It was further occasioned by the need of a unity in the presbyterial government of congregations, which, in the nature of the case and according to the analogy of the Jewish αρχισυνάγωγος,¹⁸⁶¹⁸⁶    Mark 5:35, 36, 38; Luke 8:41-49; Acts 18:8-17.85 required a head or president. This president was called bishop, at first only by eminence, as primus inter pares; afterwards in the exclusive sense. In the smaller churches there was, perhaps, from the beginning, only one presbyter, who of himself formed this centre, like the chorepiscopi or country-bishops in the fourth century. The dioceses of the bishops in Asia Minor and North Africa, owing to their large number, in the second and third centuries, can hardly have exceeded the extent of respectable pastoral charges. James of Jerusalem, on the other hand, and his immediate successors, whose positions in many respects were altogether peculiar, seem to have been the only bishops in Palestine. Somewhat similar was the state of things in Egypt, where, down to Demetrius (a.d. 190–232), we find only the one bishop of Alexandria.

We cannot therefore assume any strict uniformity. But the whole church spirit of the age tended towards centralization; it everywhere felt a demand for compact, solid unity; and this inward bent, amidst the surrounding dangers of persecution and heresy, carried the church irresistibly towards the episcopate. In so critical and stormy a time, the principle, union is strength, division is weakness, prevailed over all. In fact, the existence of the church at that period may be said to have depended in a great measure on the preservation and promotion of unity, and that in an outward, tangible form, suited to the existing grade of culture. Such a unity was offered in the bishop, who held a monarchical, or more properly a patriarchal relation to the congregation. In the bishop was found the visible representative of Christ, the great Head of the whole church. In the bishop, therefore, all sentiments of piety found a centre. In the bishop the whole religious posture of the people towards God and towards Christ had its outward support and guide. And in proportion as every church pressed towards a single centre, this central personage must acquire a peculiar importance and subordinate the other presbyters to itself; though, at the same time, as the language of Clement and Irenaeus, the state of things in Egypt, and even in North Africa, and the testimony of Jerome and other fathers, clearly prove, the remembrance of the original equality could not be entirely blotted out, but continued to show itself in various ways.

Besides this there was also a powerful practical reason for elevating the powers of the bishop. Every Christian congregation was a charitable society, regarding the care of the widow and orphan, the poor and the stranger as a sacred trust; and hence the great importance of the bishop as the administrative officer by whom the charitable funds were received and the alms disbursed. In Greek communities the title bishop (ἐπίσκοπος, ἐπιμελιτής), was in wide use for financial officers. Their administrative functions brought them in close relation to the deacons, as their executive aids in the care of the poor and sick. The archdeacon became the right arm, the "eye" and "heart" of the bishop. In primitive times every case of poverty or suffering was separately brought to the notice of the bishop and personally relieved by a deacon. Afterwards institutions were founded for widows and orphans, poor and infirm, and generally placed under the superintendence of the bishop; but personal responsibility was diminished by this organized charity, and the deacons lost their original significance and became subordinate officers of public worship.¹⁸⁷¹⁸⁷    The philanthropic and financial aspect of episcopacy has been brought out very fully by Hatch, in his Bampton Lectures on The Organization of the Early Christian Churches, Lect. II.86

Whatever may be thought, therefore, of the origin and the divine right of the episcopate, no impartial historian can deny its adaptation to the wants of the church at the time, and its historical necessity.

But then, this primitive catholic episcopal system must by no means be confounded with the later hierarchy. The dioceses, excepting those of Jerusalem, Ephesus, Alexandria, Antioch, and Rome, must have long remained very small, if we look at the number of professing Christians. In the Apocalypse seven such centres of unity are mentioned within a comparatively small compass in Asia Minor, and at a time when the number of Christians was insignificant. In the year 258, Cyprian assembled a council of eighty-seven bishops of North Africa. The functions of the bishops were not yet strictly separated from those of the presbyters, and it was only by degrees that ordination, and, in the Western church, confirmation also, came to be intrusted exclusively to the bishops.

§ 45. Development of the Episcopate. Ignatius.

It is matter of fact that the episcopal form of government was universally established in the Eastern and Western church as early as the middle of the second century. Even the heretical sects, at least the Ebionites, as we must infer from the commendation of the episcopacy in the pseudo-Clementine literature, were organized on this plan, as well as the later schismatic parties of Novatians, Donatists, etc. But it is equally undeniable, that the episcopate reached its complete form only step by step. In the period before us we must note three stages in this development connected with the name of Ignatius in Syria (d. 107 or 115), Irenaeus in Gaul (d. 202), and Cyprian in North Africa (d. 258).

The episcopate first appears, as distinct from the presbyterate, but as a congregational office only (in distinction from the diocesan idea), and as yet a young institution, greatly needing commendation, in the famous seven (or three) Epistles of Ignatius of Antioch a disciple of the apostles, and the second bishop of that see (Evodius being the first, and Hero the third). He is also the first who uses the term "catholic church," as if episcopacy and catholicity sprung up simultaneously. The whole story of Ignatius is more legendary than real, and his writings are subject to grave suspicion of fraudulent interpolation. We have three different versions of the Ignatian Epistles, but only one of them can be genuine; either the smaller Greek version, or the lately discovered Syriac.¹⁸⁸¹⁸⁸    The question of the genuineness will be discussed in §165. Cureton (1845) Bunsen, Lipsius, and others accept the Syriac version as the original form of the Ignatian epistles, and regard even the short Greek text as corrupt, but yet as dating from the middle of the second century. Rothe, Hefele, Schaff (first ed.), Düsterdieck, Uhlhorn, Zahn, Harnack, defend the genuineness of the shorter Greek recension. The larger Greek recension is universally given up as spurious. The origin of the hierarchical system is obscured by pious frauds. See below, §164 and 165.87 In the latter, which contains only three epistles, most of the passages on the episcopate are wanting, indeed; yet the leading features of the institution appear even here, and we can recognise ex ungue leonem.¹⁸⁹¹⁸⁹    In the Syriac Ep. to Polycarp, the word bishop occurs four times; in the Syriac Ep. to the Ephesians, God is blessed for having given them such a bishop as Onesimus. In the shorter Greek Ep. to Polycarp episcopacy is mentioned in the salutation, and in three of the eight chapters (ch. 5 twice, ch. 6 twice, ch. 8 once). In the 21 chapters of the Greek Ep. to the Ephesians, the word bishop occurs thirteen times, presbyter three times, and deacon once (in the first six chapters, and ch. 21). In the Greek Trallians, the bishop appears nine times; in the Magnesians, eleven times; in the Philadelphians, eight times; in the Smynaeans, nine times. Thus in the three Syriac Epistles the bishop is mentioned but six times; in the seven shorter Greek Epistles about fifty times; but one of the strongest passages is found in the Syriac Epistle to Polycarp (ch. 5. and 6.).88 In any case they reflect the public sentiment before the middle of the second century.

The substance of these epistles (with the exception of that to the Romans, in which, singularly enough, not a word is said about bishops¹⁹⁰¹⁹⁰    Except that Ignatius speaks of himself as "the bishop of Syria," who "has found favor with God, being sent from the East to the West" (ch. 2). The verb ἐπισκοπέω is also used, but of Christ (ch. 9).89), consists of earnest exhortations to obey the bishop and maintain the unity of the church against the Judaist