A Deliverer of the human race through the Jewish nation had been promised from time immemorial. The day came when He was to appear, and He was eagerly expected; moreover, One actually did make His appearance at that date in Palestine, and claimed to be He. He left the earth without apparently doing much for the object of His coming. But when He was gone, His disciples took upon themselves to go forth to preach to all parts of the earth with the object of preaching _Him_, and collecting converts _in His Name_. After a little while they are found wonderfully to have succeeded. Large bodies of men in various places are to be seen, professing to be His disciples, owning Him as their King, and continually swelling in number and penetrating into the populations of the Roman Empire; at length they convert the Empire itself. All this is historical fact. Now, we want to know the farther historical fact, viz. the cause of their conversion; in other words, what were the topics of that preaching which was so effective? If we believe what is told us by the preachers and their converts, the answer is plain. They "preached Christ;" they called on men to believe, hope, and place their affections, in that Deliverer who had come and gone; and the moral instrument by which they persuaded them to do so, was a description of the life, character, mission, and power of that Deliverer, a promise of His invisible Presence and Protection here, and of the Vision and Fruition of Him hereafter. From first to last to Christians, as to Abraham, He Himself is the centre and fulness of the dispensation. They, as Abraham, "see His day, and are glad."
A temporal sovereign makes himself felt by means of his subordinate administrators, who bring his power and will to bear upon every individual of his subjects who personally know him not; the universal Deliverer, long expected, when He came, He too, instead of making and securing subjects by a visible graciousness or majesty, departs;-_but_ is found, through His preachers, to have imprinted the Image(50) or Idea of Himself in the minds of His subjects individually; and that Image, apprehended and worshipped in individual minds, becomes a principle of a.s.sociation, and a real bond of those subjects one with another, who are thus united to the body by being united to that Image; and moreover that Image, which is their moral life, when they have been already converted, is also the original instrument of their conversion. It is the Image of Him who fulfils the one great need of human nature, the Healer of its wounds, the Physician of the soul, this Image it is which both creates faith, and then rewards it.
When we recognize this central Image as the vivifying idea both of the Christian body and of individuals in it, then, certainly, we are able to take into account at least two of Gibbon"s causes, as having, in connexion with that idea, some influence both in making converts and in strengthening them to persevere. It was the Thought of Christ, not a corporate body or a doctrine, which inspired that zeal which the historian so poorly comprehends; and it was the Thought of Christ which gave a life to the promise of that eternity, which without Him would be, in any soul, nothing short of an intolerable burden.
Now a mental vision such as this, perhaps will be called cloudy, fanciful, unintelligible; that is, in other words, miraculous. I think it is so.
How, without the Hand of G.o.d, could a new idea, one and the same, enter at once into myriads of men, women, and children of all ranks, especially the lower, and have power to wean them from their indulgences and sins, and to nerve them against the most cruel tortures, and to last in vigour as a sustaining influence for seven or eight generations, till it founded an extended polity, broke the obstinacy of the strongest and wisest government which the world has ever seen, and forced its way from its first caves and catacombs to the fulness of imperial power?
In considering this subject, I shall confine myself to the proof, as far as my limits allow, of two points,-first, that this Thought or Image of Christ was the principle of conversion and of fellowship; and next, that among the lower cla.s.ses, who had no power, influence, reputation, or education, lay its princ.i.p.al success.(51)
As to the vivifying idea, this is St. Paul"s account of it: "I make known to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you have received, and wherein you stand; by which also you are saved. For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures," &c., &c. "I am the least of the Apostles; but, whether I or they, so we preached, and so you believed." "It has pleased G.o.d by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe."
"We preach Christ crucified." "I determined to know nothing among you, but Jesus Christ, and Him crucified." "Your life is hid with Christ in G.o.d.
When Christ, who is your life, shall appear, then you also shall appear with Him in glory." "I live, but now not I, but Christ liveth in me."
St. Peter, who has been accounted the master of a separate school, says the same: "Jesus Christ, whom you have not seen, yet love; in whom you now believe, and shall rejoice."
And St. John, who is sometimes accounted a third master in Christianity: "It hath not yet appeared what we shall be; but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like to Him, because we shall see Him as He is."
That their disciples followed them in this sovereign devotion to an Invisible Lord, will appear as I proceed.
And next, as to the worldly position and character of His disciples, our Lord, in the well-known pa.s.sage, returns thanks to His Heavenly Father "because," He says, "Thou hast hid these things"-the mysteries of His kingdom-"from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to little ones." And, in accordance with this announcement, St. Paul says that "not many wise men according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many n.o.ble,"
became Christians. He, indeed, is one of those few; so were others his contemporaries, and, as time went on, the number of these exceptions increased, so that converts were found, not a few, in the high places of the Empire, and in the schools of philosophy and learning; but still the rule held, that the great ma.s.s of Christians were to be found in those cla.s.ses which were of no account in the world, whether on the score of rank or of education.
We all know this was the case with our Lord and His Apostles. It seems almost irreverent to speak of their temporal employments, when we are so simply accustomed to consider them in their spiritual a.s.sociations; but it is profitable to remind ourselves that our Lord Himself was a sort of smith, and made ploughs and cattle-yokes. Four Apostles were fishermen, one a petty tax collector, two husbandmen, and another is said to have been a market gardener.(52) When Peter and John were brought before the Council, they are spoken of as being, in a secular point of view, "illiterate men, and of the lower sort," and thus they are spoken of in a later age by the Fathers.
That their converts were of the same rank as themselves, is reported, in their favour or to their discredit, by friends and enemies, for four centuries. "If a man be educated," says Celsus in mockery, "let him keep clear of us Christians; we want no men of wisdom, no men of sense. We account all such as evil. No; but, if there be one who is inexperienced, or stupid, or untaught, or a fool, let him come with good heart." "They are weavers," he says elsewhere, "shoemakers, fullers, illiterate, clowns." "Fools, low-born fellows," says Trypho. "The greater part of you," says Caecilius, "are worn with want, cold, toil, and famine; men collected from the lowest dregs of the people; ignorant, credulous women;"
"unpolished, boors, illiterate, ignorant even of the sordid arts of life; they do not understand even civil matters, how can they understand divine?" "They have left their tongs, mallets, and anvils, to preach about the things of heaven," says Libanius. "They deceive women, servants, and slaves," says Julian. The author of Philopatris speaks of them as "poor creatures, blocks, withered old fellows, men of downcast and pale visages." As to their religion, it had the reputation popularly, according to various Fathers, of being an anile superst.i.tion, the discovery of old women, a joke, a madness, an infatuation, an absurdity, a fanaticism.
The Fathers themselves confirm these statements, so far as they relate to the insignificance and ignorance of their brethren. Athenagoras speaks of the virtue of their "ignorant men, mechanics, and old women." "They are gathered," says St. Jerome, "not from the Academy or Lyceum, but from the low populace." "They are whitesmiths, servants, farm-labourers, woodmen, men of sordid trades, beggars," says Theodoret. "We are engaged in the farm, in the market, at the baths, wine-shops, stables, and fairs; as seamen, as soldiers, as peasants, as dealers," says Tertullian. How came such men to be converted? and, being converted, how came such men to overturn the world? Yet they went forth from the first, "conquering and to conquer."
The first manifestation of their formidable numbers is made just about the time when St. Peter and St. Paul suffered martyrdom, and was the cause of a terrible persecution. We have the account of it in Tacitus. "Nero," he says, "to put an end to the common talk [that Rome had been set on fire by his order], imputed it to others, visiting with a refinement of punishment those detestable criminals who went by the name of Christians. The author of that denomination was Christus, who had been executed in Tiberius"s time by the procurator, Pontius Pilate. The pestilent superst.i.tion, checked for a while, burst out again, not only throughout Judea, the first seat of the evil, but even throughout Rome, the centre both of confluence and outbreak of all that is atrocious and disgraceful from every quarter.
First were arrested those who made no secret of their sect; and by this clue a vast mult.i.tude of others, convicted, not so much of firing the city, as of hatred to the human race. Mockery was added to death; clad in skins of beasts, they were torn to pieces by dogs; they were nailed up to crosses; they were made inflammable, so that, when day failed, they might serve as lights. Hence, guilty as they were, and deserving of exemplary punishment, they excited compa.s.sion, as being destroyed, not for the public welfare, but from the cruelty of one man."
The two Apostles suffered, and a silence follows of a whole generation. At the end of thirty or forty years, Pliny, the friend of Trajan, as well as of Tacitus, is sent as that Emperor"s Propraetor into Bithynia, and is startled and perplexed by the number, influence, and pertinacity of the Christians whom he finds there, and in the neighbouring province of Pontus. He has the opportunity of being far more fair to them than his friend the historian. He writes to Trajan to know how he ought to deal with them, and I will quote some portions of his letter.
He says he does not know how to proceed with them, as their religion has not received toleration from the state. He never was present at any trial of them; he doubted whether the children among them, as well as grown people, ought to be accounted as culprits, whether recantation would set matters right, or whether they incurred punishment all the same; whether they were to be punished, merely because Christians, even though no definite crime was proved against them. His way had been to examine them, and put questions to them; if they confessed the charge, he gave them one or two chances, threatening them with punishment; then, if they persisted, he gave orders for their execution. "For," he argues, "I felt no doubt that, whatever might be the character of their opinions, stubborn and inflexible obstinacy deserved punishment. Others there were of a like infatuation, whom, being citizens, I sent to Rome."
Some satisfied him; they repeated after him an invocation to the G.o.ds, and offered wine and incense to the Emperor"s image, and in addition, cursed the name of Christ. "Accordingly," he says, "I let them go; for I am told nothing can compel a real Christian to do any of these things." There were others, too, who sacrificed; who had been Christians, some of them for as many as twenty years.
Then he is curious to know something more definite about them. "This, the informers told me, was the whole of their crime or mistake, that they were accustomed to a.s.semble on a stated day before dawn, and to say together a hymn to Christ as a G.o.d, and to bind themselves by an oath [sacramento]
(not to any crime, but on the contrary) to keep from theft, robbery, adultery, breach of promise, and making free with deposits. After this they used to separate, and then to meet again for a meal, which was social and harmless. However, they left even that off, after my Edict against their meeting."
This information led him to put to the torture two maid-servants, "who were called ministers," in order to find out what was true, what was false in it; but he says he could make out nothing, except a depraved and excessive superst.i.tion. This is what led him to consult the Emperor, "especially because of the number who were implicated in it; for these are, or are likely to be, many, of all ages, nay, of both s.e.xes. For the contagion of this superst.i.tion has spread, not only in the cities, but about the villages and the open country." He adds that already there was some improvement. "The almost forsaken temples begin to be filled again, and the sacred solemnities after a long intermission are revived. Victims, too, are again on sale, purchasers having been most rare to find."
The salient points in this account are these, that, at the end of one generation from the Apostles, nay, almost in the lifetime of St. John, Christians had so widely spread in a large district of Asia, as nearly to suppress the Pagan religions there; that they were people of exemplary lives; that they had a name for invincible fidelity to their religion; that no threats or sufferings could make them deny it; and that their only tangible characteristic was the worship of our Lord.
This was at the beginning of the second century; not a great many years after, we have another account of the Christian body, from an anonymous Greek Christian, in a letter to a friend whom he was anxious to convert.
It is far too long to quote, and difficult to compress; but a few sentences will show how strikingly it agrees with the account of the heathen Pliny, especially in two points,-first, in the numbers of the Christians, secondly, on devotion to our Lord as the vivifying principle of their a.s.sociation.
"Christians," says the writer, "differ not from other men in country, or speech, or customs. They do not live in cities of their own, or speak in any peculiar dialect, or adopt any strange modes of living. They inhabit their native countries, but as sojourners; they take their part in all burdens, as if citizens, and in all sufferings, as if they were strangers.
In foreign countries they recognize a home, and in every home they see a foreign country. They marry like other men, but do not disown their children. They obey the established laws, but they go beyond them in the tenor of their lives. They love all men, and are persecuted by all; they are not known, and they are condemned; they are poor, and make many rich; they are dishonoured, yet in dishonour they are glorified; they are slandered, and they are cleared; they are called names, and they bless. By the Jews they are a.s.sailed as aliens, by the Greeks they are persecuted, nor can they who hate them say why.
"Christians are in the world, as the soul in the body. The soul pervades the limbs of the body, and Christians the cities of the world. The flesh hates the soul, and wars against it, though suffering no wrong from it; and the world hates Christians. The soul loves the flesh that hates it, and Christians love their enemies. Their tradition is not an earthly invention, nor is it a mortal thought which they so carefully guard, nor a dispensation of human mysteries which is committed to their charge; but G.o.d Himself, the Omnipotent and Invisible Creator, has from heaven established among men His Truth and His Word, the Holy and Incomprehensible, and has deeply fixed the same in their hearts; not, as might be expected, sending any servant, angel, or prince, or administrator of things earthly or heavenly, but the very Artificer and Demiurge of the Universe. Him G.o.d hath sent to man, not to inflict terror, but in clemency and gentleness, as a King sending a King who was His Son; He sent Him as G.o.d to men, to save them. He hated not, nor rejected us, nor remembered our guilt, but showed Himself long-suffering, and, in His own words, bore our sins. He gave His own Son as a ransom for us, the just for the unjust.
For what other thing, except His Righteousness, could cover our guilt? In whom was it possible for us, lawless sinners, to find justification, save in the Son of G.o.d alone? O sweet interchange! O heavenly workmanship past finding out! O benefits exceeding expectation! Sending, then, a Saviour, who is able to save those who of themselves are incapable of salvation, He has willed that we should regard Him as our Guardian, Father, Teacher, Counsellor, Physician; our Mind, Light, Honour, Glory, Strength, and Life.(53)"
The writing from which I have been quoting is of the early part of the second century. Twenty or thirty years after it St. Justin Martyr speaks as strongly of the spread of the new Religion: "There is not any one race of men," he says, "barbarian or Greek, nay, of those who live in waggons, or who are Nomads, or Shepherds in tents, among whom prayers and eucharists are not offered to the Father and Maker of the Universe, through the name of the crucified Jesus."
Towards the end of the century, Clement:-"The word of our Master did not remain in Judea, as philosophy remained in Greece, but has been poured out over the whole world, persuading Greeks and Barbarians alike, race by race, village by village, every city, whole houses, and hearers one by one, nay, not a few of the philosophers themselves."
And Tertullian, at the very close of it, could in his _Apologia_ even proceed to threaten the Roman Government:-"We are a people of yesterday,"
he says; "and yet we have filled every place belonging to you, cities, islands, castles, towns, a.s.semblies, your very camp, your tribes, companies, palaces, senate, forum. We leave you your temples only. We can count your armies, and our numbers in a single province will be greater.
In what war with you should we not be sufficient and ready, even though unequal in numbers, who so willingly are put to death, if it were not in this Religion of ours more lawful to be slain than to slay?"
Once more, let us hear the great Origen, in the early part of the next century:-"In all Greece and in all barbarous races within our world, there are tens of thousands who have left their national laws and customary G.o.ds for the law of Moses and the word of Jesus Christ; though to adhere to that law is to incur the hatred of idolaters, and the risk of death besides to have embraced that word. And considering how, in so few years, in spite of the attacks made on us, to the loss of life or property, and with no great store of teachers, the preaching of that word has found its way into every part of the world, so that Greek and barbarians, wise and unwise, adhere to the religion of Jesus, doubtless it is a work greater than any work of man."
We need no proof to a.s.sure us that this steady and rapid growth of Christianity was a phenomenon which startled its contemporaries, as much as it excites the curiosity of philosophic historians now; and they too then had their own ways of accounting for it, different indeed from Gibbon"s, but quite as pertinent, though less elaborate. These were princ.i.p.ally two, both leading them to persecute it,-the obstinacy of the Christians and their magical powers, of which the former was the explanation adopted by educated minds, and the latter chiefly by the populace.
As to the former, from first to last, men in power magisterially reprobate the senseless obstinacy of the members of the new sect, as their characteristic offence. Pliny, as we have seen, found it to be their only fault, but one sufficient to merit capital punishment. The Emperor Marcus seems to consider obstinacy the ultimate motive-cause to which their unnatural conduct was traceable. After speaking of the soul, as "ready, if it must now be separated from the body, to be extinguished, or dissolved, or to remain with it;" he adds, "but the readiness must come of its own judgment, not from simple perverseness, as in the case of Christians, but with considerateness, with gravity, and without theatrical effect, so as to be persuasive." And Diocletian, in his Edict of persecution, professes it to be his "earnest aim to punish the depraved persistence of those most wicked men."
As to the latter charge, their founder, it was said, had gained a knowledge of magic in Egypt, and had left behind him in his sacred books the secrets of the art. Suetonius himself speaks of them as "men of a magical superst.i.tion;" and Celsus accuses them of "incantations in the name of demons." The officer who had custody of St. Perpetua, feared her escape from prison "by magical incantations." When St. Tiburtius had walked barefoot on hot coals, his judge cried out that Christ had taught him magic. St. Anastasia was thrown into prison as dealing in poisons; the populace called out against St. Agnes, "Away with the witch! away with the sorceress!" When St. Bonosus and St. Maximilian bore the burning pitch without shrinking, Jews and heathen cried out, "Those wizards and sorcerers!" "What new delusion," says the magistrate concerning St.
Roma.n.u.s, in the Hymn of Prudentius, "has brought in these sophists who deny the worship of the G.o.ds? how doth this chief sorcerer mock us, stilled by his Thessalian charm to laugh at punishment?(54)"
It is indeed difficult to enter into the feelings of irritation and fear, of contempt and amazement, which were excited, whether in the town populace or in the magistrates in the presence of conduct so novel, so unvarying, so absolutely beyond their comprehension. The very young and the very old, the child, the youth in the heyday of his pa.s.sions, the sober man of middle age, maidens and mothers of families, boors and slaves as well as philosophers and n.o.bles, solitary confessors and companies of men and women,-all these were seen equally to defy the powers of darkness to do their worst. In this strange encounter it became a point of honour with the Roman to break the determination of his victim, and it was the triumph of faith when his most savage expedients for that purpose were found to be in vain. The martyrs shrank from suffering like other men, but such natural shrinking was incommensurable with apostasy. No intensity of torture had any means of affecting what was a mental conviction; and the sovereign Thought in which they had lived was their adequate support and consolation in their death. To them the prospect of wounds and loss of limbs was not more terrible than it is to the combatant of this world.
They faced the implements of torture as the soldier takes his post before the enemy"s battery. They cheered and ran forward to meet his attack, and as it were dared him, if he would, to destroy the numbers who kept closing up the foremost rank, as their comrades who had filled it fell. And when Rome at last found she had to deal with a host of Scaevolas, then the proudest of earthly sovereignties, arrayed in the completeness of her material resources, humbled herself before a power which was founded on a mere sense of the unseen.
In the colloquy of the aged Ignatius, the disciple of the Apostles, with the Emperor Trajan, we have a sort of type of what went on for three, or rather four centuries. He was sent all the way from Antioch to Rome to be devoured by the beasts in the amphitheatre. As he travelled, he wrote letters to various Christian Churches, and among others to his Roman brethren, among whom he was to suffer. Let us see whether, as I have said, the Image of that Divine King, who had been promised from the beginning, was not the living principle of his obstinate resolve. The old man is almost fierce in his determination to be martyred. "May those beasts," he says to his brethren, "be my gain, which are in readiness for me! I will provoke and coax them to devour me quickly, and not to be afraid of me, as they are of some whom they will not touch. Should they be unwilling, I will compel them. Bear with me; I know what is my gain. Now I begin to be a disciple. Of nothing of things visible or invisible am I ambitious, save to gain Christ. Whether it is fire or the cross, the a.s.sault of wild beasts, the wrenching of my bones, the crunching of my limbs, the crushing of my whole body, let the tortures of the devil all a.s.sail me, if I do but gain Christ Jesus." Elsewhere in the same Epistle he says, "I write to you, still alive, but longing to die. My Love is crucified! I have no taste for perishable food. I long for G.o.d"s Bread, heavenly Bread, Bread of life, which is Flesh of Jesus Christ, the Son of G.o.d. I long for G.o.d"s draught, His Blood, which is Love without corruption, and Life for evermore." It is said that, when he came into the presence of Trajan, the latter cried out, "Who are you, poor devil, who are so eager to transgress our rules?" "That is no name," he answered, "for Theophorus." "Who is Theophorus?" asked the Emperor. "He who bears Christ in his breast." In the Apostle"s words, already cited, he had "Christ in him, the hope of glory." All this may be called enthusiasm; but enthusiasm affords a much more adequate explanation of the confessorship of an old man, than do Gibbon"s five reasons.
Instances of the same ardent spirit, and of the living faith on which it was founded, are to be found wherever we open the _Acta Martyrum_. In the outbreak at Smyrna, in the middle of the second century, amid tortures which even moved the heathen bystanders to compa.s.sion, the sufferers were conspicuous for their serene calmness. "They made it evident to us all,"
says the Epistle of the Church, "that in the midst of those sufferings they were absent from the body, or rather, that the Lord stood by them, and walked in the midst of them."
At that time Polycarp, the familiar friend of St. John, and a contemporary of Ignatius, suffered in his extreme old age. When, before his sentence, the Proconsul bade him "swear by the fortunes of Caesar, and have done with Christ," his answer betrayed that intimate devotion to the self-same Idea, which had been the inward life of Ignatius. "Eighty and six years," he answered, "have I been His servant, and He has never wronged me, but ever has preserved me; and how can I blaspheme my King and my Saviour?" When they would have fastened him to the stake, he said, "Let alone; He who gives me to bear the fire, will give me also to stand firm upon the pyre without your nails."
Christians felt it as an acceptable service to Him who loved them, to confess with courage and to suffer with dignity. In this chivalrous spirit, as it may be called, they met the words and deeds of their persecutors, as the children of men return bitterness for bitterness, and blow for blow. "What soldier," says Minucius, with a reference to the invisible Presence of our Lord, "does not challenge danger more daringly under the eye of his commander?" In that same outbreak at Smyrna, when the Proconsul urged the young Germanicus to have mercy on himself and on his youth, to the astonishment of the populace he provoked a wild beast to fall upon him. In like manner, St. Justin tells us of Lucius, who, when he saw a Christian sent off to suffer, at once remonstrated sharply with the judge, and was sent off to execution with him; and then another presented himself, and was sent off also. When the Christians were thrown into prison, in the fierce persecution at Lyons, Vettius Epagathus, a youth of distinction who had given himself to an ascetic life, could not bear the sight of the sufferings of his brethren, and asked leave to plead their cause. The only answer he got was to be sent off the first to die. What the contemporary account sees in his conduct is, not that he was zealous for his brethren, though zealous he was, nor that he believed in miracles, though he doubtless did believe; but that he "was a gracious disciple of Christ, following the Lamb whithersoever He went."
In that memorable persecution, when Blandina, a slave, was seized for confessorship, her mistress and her fellow-Christians dreaded lest, from her delicate make, she should give way under the torments; but she even tired out her tormentors. It was a refreshment and relief to her to cry out amid her pains, "I am a Christian." They remanded her to prison, and then brought her out for fresh suffering a second day and a third. On the last day she saw a boy of fifteen brought into the amphitheatre for death; she feared for him, as others had feared for her; but he too went through his trial generously, and went to G.o.d before her. Her last sufferings were to be placed in the notorious red-hot chair, and then to be exposed in a net to a wild bull; they finished by cutting her throat. Sanctus, too, when the burning plates of bra.s.s were placed on his limbs, all through his torments did but say, "I am a Christian," and stood erect and firm, "bathed and strengthened," say his brethren who write the account, "in the heavenly well of living water which flows from the breast of Christ," or, as they say elsewhere of all the martyrs, "refreshed with the joy of martyrdom, the hope of blessedness, love towards Christ, and the spirit of G.o.d the Father." How clearly do we see all through this narrative what it was which nerved them for the combat! If they love their brethren, it is in the fellowship of their Lord; if they look for heaven, it is because He is the Light of it.
Epipodius, a youth of gentle nurture, when struck by the Prefect on the mouth, while blood flowed from it, cried out, "I confess that Jesus Christ is G.o.d, together with the Father and the Holy Ghost." Symphorian, of Autun, also a youth, and of n.o.ble birth, when told to adore an idol, answered, "Give me leave, and I will hammer it to pieces." When Leonidas, the father of the young Origen, was in prison for his faith, the boy, then seventeen, burned to share his martyrdom, and his mother had to hide his clothes to prevent him from executing his purpose. Afterwards he attended the confessors in prison, stood by them at the tribunal, and gave them the kiss of peace when they were led out to suffer, and this, in spite of being several times apprehended and put upon the rack. Also in Alexandria, the beautiful slave, Potamiaena, when about to be stripped in order to be thrown into the cauldron of hot pitch, said to the Prefect, "I pray you rather let me be dipped down slowly into it with my clothes on, and you shall see with what patience I am gifted by Him of whom you are ignorant, Jesus Christ." When the populace in the same city had beaten out the aged Apollonia"s teeth, and lit a fire to burn her, unless she would blaspheme, she leaped into the fire herself, and so gained her crown. When Sixtus, Bishop of Rome, was led to martyrdom, his deacon, Laurence, followed him weeping and complaining, "O my father, whither goest thou without thy son?" And when his own turn came, three days afterwards, and he was put upon the gridiron, after a while he said to the Prefect, "Turn me; this side is done." Whence came this tremendous spirit, scaring, nay, offending, the fastidious criticism of our delicate days? Does Gibbon think to sound the depths of the eternal ocean with the tape and measuring-rod of his merely literary philosophy?
When Barulas, a child of seven years old, was scourged to blood for repeating his catechism before the heathen judge-viz. "There is but one G.o.d, and Jesus Christ is true G.o.d"-his mother encouraged him to persevere, chiding him for asking for some drink. At Merida, a girl of n.o.ble family, of the age of twelve, presented herself before the tribunal, and overturned the idols. She was scourged and burned with torches; she neither shed a tear, nor showed other signs of suffering. When the fire reached her face, she opened her mouth to receive it, and was suffocated.
At Caesarea, a girl, under eighteen, went boldly to ask the prayers of some Christians who were in chains before the Praetorium. She was seized at once, and her sides torn open with the iron rakes, preserving the while a bright and joyous countenance. Peter, Dorotheus, Gorgonius, were boys of the imperial bedchamber; they were highly in favour with their masters, and were Christians. They too suffered dreadful torments, dying under them, without a shadow of wavering. Call such conduct madness, if you will, or magic: but do not mock us by ascribing it in such mere children to simple desire of immortality, or to any ecclesiastical organization.
When the persecution raged in Asia, a vast mult.i.tude of Christians presented themselves before the Proconsul, challenging him to proceed against them. "Poor wretches!" half in contempt and half in affright, he answered, "if you must die, cannot you find ropes or precipices for the purpose?" At Utica, a hundred and fifty Christians of both s.e.xes and all ages were martyrs in one company. They are said to have been told to burn incense to an idol, or they should be thrown into a pit of burning lime; they without hesitation leapt into it. In Egypt a hundred and twenty confessors, after having sustained the loss of eyes or of feet, endured to linger out their lives in the mines of Palestine and Cilicia. In the last persecution, according to the testimony of the grave Eusebius, a contemporary, the slaughter of men, women, and children, went on by twenties, sixties, hundreds, till the instruments of execution were worn out, and the executioners could kill no more. Yet he tells us, as an eye-witness, that, as soon as any Christians were condemned, others ran from all parts, and surrounded the tribunals, confessing the faith, and joyfully receiving their condemnation, and singing songs of thanksgiving and triumph to the last.
Thus was the Roman power overcome. Thus did the Seed of Abraham, and the Expectation of the Gentiles, the meek Son of man, "take to Himself His great power and reign" in the hearts of His people, in the public theatre of the world. The mode in which the primeval prophecy was fulfilled is as marvellous, as the prophecy itself is clear and bold.
"So may all Thy enemies perish, O Lord; but let them that love Thee shine, as the sun shineth in his rising!"