__________________________________________________________________

   Title: History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene
   Christianity. A.D. 100-325.
   Creator(s): Schaff, Philip (1819-1893)
   Print Basis: Third edition, revised
   Rights: Public Domain
   CCEL Subjects: All; History;
   LC Call no: BR145.S3
   LC Subjects:

   Christianity

   History
     __________________________________________________________________

   HISTORY

   of the

   CHRISTIAN CHURCH [1]

   by

   PHILIP SCHAFF

   Christianus sum.                   Christiani nihil a me alienum puto

   VOLUME II

   ANTE-NICENE CHRISTIAINITY

   a.d. 100-325.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [1] 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.
     __________________________________________________________________

   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 Moesinger 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.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 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. Tuebing., 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):
   Hupomnemata ton ekklesiastikon praxeon (quoted under the title pente
   hupomnemata and pente sungrammata). 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 fuer wissenschaftliche Theol." 1876, pp. 179
   sqq.). See art. of Weizsaecker 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): Ekklesiastike
   historia, 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, Tueb. 1852; Laemmer, 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. Cruse (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 Schoene, 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 Pressense (French Protestant): Histoire de trois premiers
   siecles de l'eglise chretienne. 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 vornicaenischen Zeit.
   Muenster, 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' eglise Chretienne, 1879, and
   Marc Aurele, 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.), Schroeckh, Gieseler, Neander, and Baur. (the third revised ed.
   of vol. 1st, Tueb. 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.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 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." [2] 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. [3]

   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. [4] "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.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [2] r. 4:10; Rom. 8:36; Phil. 3:10 sq. Col. 1:24 sq.; 1 Pet. 2:21

   [3] 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!"

   [4]
     __________________________________________________________________

CHAPTER I:

   SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 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, S: 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 Academie des inscriptions et
   belles-letters.

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

   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. Friedlaender, Sittengesch. Roms. III. 517 sqq.; and Renan:
   Marc-Aurele. Paris 1882, ch. xxv. pp. 447-464 (Statistique et extension
   geographique du Christianisme).

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

   S: 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.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 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-Aurele (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 eternelle et unique, qui doit faire oublier bien
   des folies et des violence! Les Juifs sont les revolutionnaires du 1er
   et du 2e siecle de notre ere " They gave to the world Christianity.
   "Les populations se precipiterent, par une sorte du mouvement
   instinctif, dans une secte qui satisfaisait leur aspirations les plus
   intimes et ouvrait des esperances 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.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 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." [5] 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.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [5] 11:19.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 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." [6] 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 Friedlaender (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.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [6] ola vobis relinqitimus 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.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 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.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 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.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 10. Christianity in North Africa.

   Boettiger: Geschichte der Carthager. Berlin, 1827.

   Movers: Die Phoenizier. 1840-56, 4 vols. (A standard work.)

   Th. Mommsen: Roem. 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. [7] 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). [8] "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. [9]

   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.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [7] Karchedon), 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.

   [8]

   [9] 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.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 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. [10] 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. [11] 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 century [12]

   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.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [10] 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

   [11] Rom. 15:24; Clem. R. Ad Cor. c. 5 (to terma tes duseos)

   [12] 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).
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________

CHAPTER II:

   PERSECUTION OF CHRISTIANITY AND CHRISTIAN MARTYRDOM.

"Semen est sanguis Christianorum."--Tertullian.

   -----
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 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'eglise Chretienne jusqu'`a
   nos temps. Traduits et publies par les R. R. P. P benedictins 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.

   Muenter: 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. Maertyrerthum in den ersten Jahrhunderten.
   1859-60 (in Niedner's "Zeitschrift fuer Hist. Theol." for 1859, pp.
   323-392, and 1860, pp. 315-381).

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

   B. Aube: Histoire des persecutions de l'eglise jusqu' `a la fin des
   Antonins. 2nd ed. Paris 1875 (Crowned by the Academie franc,aise). By
   the same: Histoire des persecutions de l'eglise, La polemique payenne
   `a la fin du II. siecle, 1878. Les Chrestiens dans l'empire romain, de
   la fin des Antonins au milieu du IIIe siecle (180-249), 1881. L'eglise
   et L'etat dans la seconde moitie du III^e siecle, 1886.

   K. Wieseler: Die Christenverfolgungen der Caesaren, Hist. und chronol.
   untersucht. Guetersloh, 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-Aurele. Paris, 1882, pp. 53-69.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 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. [13] 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 emperors [14] 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 everywhere [15] 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.
   [16] 5

   Similar views in favor of religious liberty were expressed by Justin
   Martyr, [17] 6 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." [18] 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.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [13] So Augustin, De Civit. Dei, xviii. 52, but he mentions Antoninus
   for Marcus Aurelius. Lactantius counts six, Sulpitius Severus nine
   persecutions.

   [14] 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."

   [15] On the relation of Christianity to the laws of the Roman empire,
   see Aube, De la legatite du Christianisme dans l'empire Romain au Ier
   siecle. Paris 1866.

   [16] 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."

   [17] Apol. I. c. 2, 4, 12

   [18] Instit. div. V. 20.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 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'`a Adrien
   (Paris 1867), pp. 402-438.

   II. Fr. Muenter.: 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.

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

   Schuerer: 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. [19]
   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." [20] 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. [21] 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. [22] 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.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [19] 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."

   [20] Ad Zephan. 1:15 sqq. Schuerer quotes the passage, p. 363.

   [21] "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.

   [22] On the literature of the Talmud see the articles in Herzog, and in
   McClintock & Strong, and especially Schuerer, Neutestamentl.
   Zeitgeschichte (Leipz. 1874), pp. 45-49, to which I add Schuerer's
   essay: Die Predigt Jesu Christi in ihrem Verhaeltniss 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.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 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." [23] 2

   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." [24] 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.
   [25] 4 Maecenas counselled Augustus: "Honor the gods according to the
   custom of our ancestors, and compel [26] 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. [27] 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. [28] 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.
   [29] 8
     __________________________________________________________________

   [23] "Non licet esse vos." Tertullian, Apol. 4

   [24] The History of Rome, translated by Dickson, vol. IV. P. II. p.
   559.

   [25] "Nisi publice adscitos."

   [26] anankaze, according to Dion Cassius.

   [27] 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."

   [28] Hence the reproachful designation "Hostes Caesarum et populi
   Romani."

   [29] Comp. Arts. 19:24; 16:16.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 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.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 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, S: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, [30] 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, [31] 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)ennato etei, 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 tetarton etos, 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, Moehler, 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.
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   [30] Or prohibited clubs. This is the meaning of hetaeria (hetaireia or
   hetairia), 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. Buettner,
   Geschichte der politischen Hetaerien in Athen (1840). and Mommsen, De
   collegiis et sodali us Romanorum (Kiel, 1843).

   [31] In three recensions, two in Greek, and one in Syriac. The seven
   shorter Greek Ep. are genuine. See below S: 165.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 18. Hadrian. a.d. 117-138.

   See Gregorovius: Gesch. Hadrians und seiner Zeit (1851); Renan:
   L'E'glise, chretienne (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. [32] 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.
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   [32] 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,
   Aube, 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 couronne 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 Friedlaender
   (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.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 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: Memoire sur la chronologie de la vie du rheteur Aelius
   Aristide (in "Mem. 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 Zwoelf Maertyrer 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 fuer
   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; [33] 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. [34] 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.
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   [33] He always offered sacrifice himself as high-priest. Friedlaender
   III. 492.

   [34] 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), Aube (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.
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