The Formation of Christendom, Volume II

II. In the last review which we took of her material progress we said that to the eye of Pius Antoninus she would not yet appear from her multitude as a power in the state. But before the end of the seventy-four years which we are here considering as one period, it was otherwise. Already in the reign of Commodus, Eusebius states that the word of salvation was bringing to the worship of the one God men out of every race, so that in Rome itself many distinguished for wealth and rank embraced it with their whole families.[208 - Euseb. Hist. v. 21.] A few years later, when Tertullian writes his apology, he makes the heathen complain “that the state is overrun with us, that Christians are found in the country, in forts, in islands; that every sex and age and condition and rank come over to them.”[209 - Tertullian, Apol. i. 37; ad Scap. 2.] And again; “we are of yesterday, and have already filled every place you have, your cities, islands, forts, boroughs, councils, your very camps, tribes, corporations, the palace, senate, and forum. Your temples only we leave you. For what war should we not be equal, we who are so ready to be slaughtered, if our religion did not command us rather to suffer death than to inflict it.” Elsewhere he speaks of Christians as “so great a multitude of men as to be almost the majority in every city.” Now make whatsoever allowance we will for Tertullian's vehemence, such statements, laid before adversaries, if they had not a great amount of truth in them, would bring ridicule on his cause rather than strengthen it. Tertullian besides wrote at the time of the general persecution set on foot by Septimius Severus against the Christian Faith, which itself was a proof of what importance it had assumed. We may perhaps put the first twenty years of the third century as the point at which, having passed through the period when it was embraced by individuals with a several choice, it was become the faith of families, and one step only remained, that it should become the faith of nations.[210 - De Rossi, Archeol. Cristiana, 1866, p. 33, makes this estimate.]

Let us consider a moment the mode of its increase. It was twofold. The plant of which a root was fixed by the Apostles and their successors in each of the cities of the empire grew, gathering to itself in every place the better minds of heathenism, and exercising from the beginning a marked attraction upon the more religious sex and upon the most down-trodden portion of society; women were ever won to it by the purity which its doctrines inculcated, slaves by its tender charity: it gave a moral emancipation to both. If we possessed a continuous and detailed history of the Christian Faith in any one city, say Rome, or Alexandria, or Antioch, or Ephesus, or Carthage, or Corinth, for the first three centuries, what a wonderful exhibition of spiritual power and material weakness it would offer. By fixing the mind on Christianity as merely one object, as an abstraction, we lose in large part the sense of the moral force to which its propagation bears witness. It was in each city a community,[211 - From a passage in the account of the Martyrs of Lyons, a. d. 177 (Euseb. Hist. v. 1, p. 201, l. 3), it appears that the word “Church” was only given to a mother or cathedral church by writers of that time.] which had its centre and representative in its Bishop, which had its worship, discipline, and rule of life presided over by him; its presbytery, diaconate, and deaconesses; its sisterhoods and works of charity, spiritual and temporal: a complete government and a complete society held together by purely spiritual bonds, which the state sometimes ignored, not unfrequently persecuted, but never favoured. Such was the grain of mustard-seed, from north to south, from east to west, in presence of the political Roman, the sensitive and lettered Greek, the sensuous African, the volatile and disputatious Alexandrian, the corrupt Antiochene. It had one sort of population to deal with at Rome, quite another in the capital of Egypt, a third at Ephesus, which belonged to the great goddess Diana, and the statue which had fallen down from heaven, a fourth at Carthage, where the hot Numidian blood came in contact with the civilisation of Rome, a fifth at Corinth, the mistress of all art and luxury. And so on. Now in each and all of these cities and a hundred others the divine plant met with various soils and temperatures; but in them all it grew. It had its distinct experiences, encountering many a withering heat and many a stormy blast, and watered full oft with blood, but in them all the seed, dropped so imperceptibly that the mightiest and most jealous of empires was unconscious of what was cast into its bosom, became a tree. It was an organic growth of vital power. Christianity, during the ten ages of persecution, is the upspringing of several hundred such communities, distinct as we see here, and as described above by S. Ignatius, but at the same time coinherent, as we saw in the beginning, and as we shall find presently. As, then, all the cities of the Roman empire had a secular political and social life, and a municipal government of their own, so had the Christian Faith in each of them a corresponding life of spiritual government and inward thought; and if we had the materials to construct the history of this Faith in any one, it would give us a wonderful insight into the course of that prodigious victory over the world which the whole result presents. We cannot do so. The data for it do not exist, and because they do not, we allude here to this first mode of growth made by the Christian Faith.

Its second mode was thus. The Apostolical Churches, as they severally grew, scattered from their bosoms a seed as prolific as their own. They sent out those who founded communities such as their own. Thus the Christian plant was communicated from Rome to all the west. With every decade of years it crept silently over the vast regions of Gaul and Spain, advancing further west and north. This extension was not a chance springing up of Christians in different localities. It always took place by the founding[212 - Thus S. Irenæus (iii. 3. 3) speaks of S. Peter and S. Paul as θεμελιώσαντες καὶ οἰκοδομήσαντες the Church of Rome, and of the Church of Ephesus (ibid. iv.) as τεθεμελιωμένη ὑπὸ Παύλου.] of sees, with the apostolic authority, after the apostolic model. If the Roman colonia had its rites of inauguration, and was a transcript of the great city, its senate and its forum, so much more the Christian city had its prototype and derived its authority from the great citadel of the Faith, wherein Peter's prerogative was stored up,[213 - This S. Innocent states to S. Augustine and the African bishops in 417 as a fact well known to them: “Scientes quid Apostolicæ Sedi, cum omnes hoc loco positi ipsum sequi desideremus Apostolum, debeatur, a quo ipse episcopatus et tota auctoritas nominis hujus emersit.” Coustant, Epist. Rom. Pontif. 888.] and whence it had a derivation wider in extent and more ample in character than that of Rome the natural city. But we will take from another quarter what is as perfect a specimen of this extension as any that can be found. In the great city of Alexandria, the centre of intellectual and commercial life to all the East and the whole Greek name, S. Peter set up the chair of his disciple Mark. There the evangelist taught and there in due time suffered. Dragged by an infuriated populace through the streets he thus gave up his soul. But the plant which he so watered with his blood was of extraordinary vigour. It not only grew amid the intensest intellectual rivalry of Greek and Jew in the capital, but likewise in course of time occupied the whole civil government which obeyed the præfect of Egypt. From Alexandria, Egypt and the Pentapolis of Cyrene derived their Christian faith and government; and so powerful was this bond that the bishop of the capital exercised control over all the bishops of the civil diocese, as it was then termed. He was in power a patriarch long before he had that name, or even the name of archbishop. How great and strict this rule was we may judge from an incident preserved by Photius,[214 - Photius, συναγωγαὶ καὶ ἀποδείξεις, quoted by Döllinger, Hippolytus und Kallistus, p. 264, 5.] which occurred in the very last year of the period we are considering, in 235. Heraclas, bishop of Alexandria, a former pupil of Origen, had inflicted upon that great writer a second expulsion from the Church for his erroneous teaching. Origen on his way to Syria came to the city of Thmuis, where bishop Ammonius allowed him, in spite of the above-mentioned censure of Heraclas, to preach. When Heraclas heard this, he came to Thmuis and deposed Ammonius, and appointed in his stead Philippus as bishop. Afterwards, on the earnest request of the people of the city, he restored Ammonius to the office of bishop, and ordained that he and Philippus should be bishops together. The latter, however, voluntarily gave way to Ammonius, and succeeded him at his death. Such, ninety years before the Nicene Council, which recognised and approved these powers of the bishop of Alexandria, as being after the model of those exercised by the bishop of Rome,[215 - Can. 6. Concil. Nic. τὰ ἀρχαῖα ἔθη κρατείτω, τὰ ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ καὶ Λιβύῃ καὶ Πενταπόλει, ὥστε τὸν Ἀλεξανδρείας ἐπίσκοπον πάντων τούτων ἔχειν τὴν ἐξουσίαν, ἐπειδὴ και τῷ εν Ῥωμῃ επισκοπῳ τοῦτο συνηθεσ εστιν. See Hagemann, die Römische Kirche, 596-8.] was his authority by the natural force of the hierarchic principle which built up the Church. And so little were these Christian communities, which we have seen so complete in their own organic growth, independent of the bond which held the whole Church together, and of which the authority of the Egyptian primate was itself a derivation.

These, then, were the two modes in which the Christian Faith pursued and attained its orderly increase; as a seed it grew to a plant in each city, and as a plant it ramified, or as Tertullian says, carried “the vine-layer of the faith”[216 - “Traducem fidei et semina doctrinæ.” De Præscrip. 20.] from city to city, from province to province. In the meantime the last disciples of the Apostles, those who from the especial veneration with which they were regarded as teachers of the Faith and “second links in the chain of tradition,” were termed Presbyters,[217 - See Döllinger, Hipp. u. Kall. p. 338-343, for the meaning of this word in the time of S. Irenæus, as carrying with it a special magisterium fidei. “Presbyteros” was added as a title of honour to the name of Bishop. In S. Irenæus tho same persons have as Bishops the succession of the Apostles, as Presbyteri “the charisma of the truth.” Papias marks the Asiatic Presbyteri as those who had heard of S. John; and Clement of Alex. speaks of Presbyteri who, occupied with the office of teaching, and deeming it diverse from that of composition, did not write. Eclogæ xxvii. p. 996.] had died out. S. Polycarp, at the time of his martyrdom in 167, was probably the sole remaining one, though his pupil S. Irenæus had known others. When the latter, upon the martyrdom of S. Pothinus in 177, is raised to the government of the See of Lyons, we may consider that no one survived in possession of that great personal authority which belonged to those who had themselves been taught by Apostles; and so at the third generation from the last of these the Church throughout the world stood without any such support, simply upon that basis of the tradition and teaching of the truth, and of the succession of rulers, on which the Apostles had placed it, to last for ever. Now in this position it had already, throughout the whole course of the second century, been violently assaulted by a family of heresies, which growing upon one root – a natural philosophy confusing the being of God with the world – burst forth into an astonishing variety of outward forms. Gnosticism completely altered and defaced Christian doctrine under each of the four great heads, the Being of God, the Person of Christ, the nature of man, the office and function of the Church. Into the Godhead it introduced a dualism, recognising with the absolute good an absolute evil represented by matter: it denied the reality of the Incarnation; it made the body a principle of evil in man's nature: but we will here limit ourselves to the characteristic and formal principle of the system from which it derived its name, to Gnosis as the means of acquiring divine truth. Now the Christian religion taught that revealed truth was to be attained by the individual through receiving, upon the ground of the divine veracity, those mysterious doctrines superior but not contrary to reason which it unfolded; and that the communication of such doctrines might continue unimpaired and unchanging, it taught that our Lord had established a never-failing authority charged with the execution of this office, and assisted by the perpetual presence of His Spirit with it to the end. But the Gnostics admitted only in the case of the imperfect or natural man that faith was the means for acquiring religious truth; to the spiritual, the proper gnostic, gnosis should take the place of faith: for to many a heathen, accustomed to unlimited philosophical speculation, the absolute subjection of the intellect to divine authority, required by the principle of faith, was repugnant. Now this Gnosis was in their mind not knowledge grounded upon faith, but either philosophic science, or a supposed intuition of truth, which was not only to replace faith, but the whole moral life, inasmuch as the completion and sanctification of man were to be wrought by it. And thus instead of an external authority the individual reason was set up as the highest standard of religious truth, the issue of which could only be rationalism in belief and sectarianism in practice.

This formal principle of Gnosticism when duly carried out would deny the idea of the Church, its divine institution, its properties and prerogatives. For the gnostic mode of attaining divine truth, as above stated, contains in it such a denial. Besides this, the gnostic doctrine that matter was the seat of evil, destroyed the belief that Christ had assumed a body: the gnostic doctrine that the supreme God could enter into no communion with man made their Æon Christ no member of human society, but a phantom which had enlightened the man Jesus, and then returned back to the “Light-realm.” Not being really the Son of God, he could have no Church which was his body: not really redeeming, for sin to the gnostic had only a physical, not a moral cause, he was but a teacher, and therefore had created no institution to convey grace; which, moreover, was superfluous, for whatever elements of good human nature had were derived from creation and not from redemption. Nor was such an universal institution wanted, since not all men but only the spiritual were capable of being drawn up to the Light-realm. The Gnostic therefore required neither hierarchy nor priesthood, since the soul of this system was the gnosis of the individual. For this a body enjoying infallibility through the assistance of the Holy Ghost was not needed. It was enough for enthusiasts and dreamers to pursue their speculations without any limit to free inquiry, save what themselves chose to impose as the interpretation of such scriptures as they acknowledged, or as the exhibition of a private tradition with which they held themselves to be favoured.

Lastly, the idea of Sacraments, as conveying grace under a covering of sense, would be superfluous to the gnostic, inasmuch as the spiritual elements in man belong to him by nature, and are not communicated by a Redeemer, and would be repulsive to him because matter is a product of the evil principle, and cannot be the channel of grace from out the Light-realm.[218 - I am indebted for the above sketch of Gnosticism mainly to Schwane, Dogmengeschichte der vornicänischen Zeit, p. 648-51.]

My purpose here has only been to say just so much of Gnosticism as may show how the whole Christian truth was attacked by it, and especially the existence and functions of the Church.

And this may indeed be termed the first heresy in that it struck its roots right up into Apostolic times. Irenæus, Eusebius, and Epiphanius account Simon Magus to be its father, and the father of all heresy. As such it is not without significance that he encountered the first of the Apostles in Samaria, endeavouring to purchase from him the gifts of grace and miraculous power, and that he likewise afterwards encountered him at Rome. To this the first manifestation of Gnosticism succeed heretical doctrines concerning the Person of our Lord, which sprung out of Judaism; but no sooner are these overcome than Gnosticism in its later forms spreads from Syria and Alexandria over the whole empire, everywhere confronting the Church, seducing her members, and tempting especially speculative minds within her. A mixture itself of Platonic, Philonic, Pythagorean, and Parsic philosophy, affecting to gather the best out of all philosophies and religions, in which it exactly represented the eclectic spirit of its age, arraying itself in the most fantastic garb of imagination, but at the bottom no dubious product of the old heathen pantheism, it set itself to the work, while it assumed Christian names, of confusing and distracting Christian truth. From the beginning of the second century it was the great enemy which beset the Church. It may, then, well represent to us the principle of heresy itself, and as such let us consider on what principles it was met by the Church's teachers.

Now to form a correct notion of the danger to which the Christian people at this time was exposed, we must have before us that it was contained in several hundred communities, each of them forming a complete spiritual society and government. These had arisen under the pressure of such hostility on the part of the empire that it is only in the time of the last emperor during this period, Alexander Severus, that churches are known to have publicly existed at Rome.[219 - Tillemont, Hist. des Emp. iii. 281, deduces it from a passage of Origen on S. Matt. tom. iii. p. 857 c.] For a very long time all meetings of Christians and all celebration of their worship was secret. It is obvious what an absolute freedom of choice on the part of all those who became Christians this fact involved. Nor did that freedom cease when they had been initiated into the new religion. Their fidelity to the Christian faith was all through their subsequent life solicited by the danger in which as Christians they stood. Only a continuous freedom of choice on their part could maintain it. And not only did every temporal interest turn against it, but in the case at least of the more intellectual converts the activity of thought implied in their voluntary acceptance of a new belief served as a material on which the seductions of false teachers might afterwards act, unless it was controlled by an everliving faith, and penetrated by an active charity. The more these Christian communities multiplied, the more it was to be expected that some of them would yield to the assaults of false teachers. It is in just such a state of things that a great dogmatic treatise was written against Gnosticism by one who stood at only a single remove from the Apostle John, being the disciple of his disciple Polycarp. Irenæus, by birth a native of lesser Asia, enjoyed when young the instructions and intimate friendship of the bishop of Smyrna. In his old age he delighted to remember how Polycarp had described his intercourse with John, and with those who had seen the Lord: how he repeated their discourse, and what he had heard from them respecting the teaching and the miracles of that Word of life whom they had seen with their own eyes. “These things,” says Irenæus, “through the mercy of God I then diligently listened to, writing them down not on paper, but on my heart, and by His grace I ruminate upon them perpetually.”[220 - Frag. Epist. ad Florin. tom. i. p. 340.] Later in life he left Smyrna, and settled in Lyons, of which Church he was a presbyter when the terrible persecution of 177 broke out there. Elected thereupon to succeed a martyr as bishop, he crowned an episcopate of twenty-five years with a similar martyrdom. He wrote, as he says, during the episcopate of Eleutherius, who was the twelfth bishop of Rome from Peter, and sat from 177 to 192. After describing at length the Gnostic errors concerning the divine nature, he sets forth in contrast the unity of the truth as declared by the Church in the following words:

“The Church, though she be spread abroad through the whole world unto the ends of the earth, has received from the Apostles and their disciples faith in one God;” and he proceeds to recite her creed, in substance the same as that now held: then he adds, dwelling with emphasis on the very point which I have been noting, the sprinkling about, that is, of distinct communities so widely dispersed, which yet are one in their belief.

“This proclamation and this faith the Church having received, though she be disseminated through the whole world, carefully guards, as the inhabitant of one house, and equally believes these things as having one soul and the same heart, and in exact agreement these things she proclaims and teaches and hands down, as having one mouth. For, though the languages through the world be dissimilar, the power of the tradition is one and the same. Nor have the churches founded in Germany otherwise believed or otherwise handed down, nor those in Spain, nor in Gaul, nor in the East, nor in Egypt, nor those in the middle of the world. But as the sun, God's creature, in all the world is one and the same, so too the proclamation of the truth shines everywhere, and lights all men that are willing to come to the knowledge of the truth. Nor will he among the Church's rulers who is most powerful in word say other than this, for no one is above his teacher;[221 - He seems to refer to Matt. x. 24: οὐκ ἔστι μαθητὴς ὑπὲρ τὸν διδάσκαλον.] nor will he that is weak in word diminish the tradition, for the Faith being one and the same, neither he that can say much on it has gathered too much, nor he that can say little is deficient.”

Against the gnostic claim to possess a private tradition, in virtue of which each of them “depraving the rule of the truth was not ashamed to preach himself,” he sets forth the one original tradition which the Apostles,[222 - S. Irenæus, lib. iii. c. 2; lib. iii. c. 1.] only “when they had first been invested with the power of the Holy Ghost coming down on them, and endued with perfect knowledge,” delivered to the churches founded by them. “And this tradition of the Apostles, manifested in the whole world, may be seen in every church by all who have the will to see what is true, and we can give the chain of those who by the Apostles were appointed bishops in the churches, and their successors down to our time, who have neither taught nor known any such delirious dream as these imagine. For, had the Apostles known any reserved mysteries, which they taught to the perfect separately and secretly from the rest, assuredly they would have delivered them to those especially to whom they intrusted the churches themselves. For very perfect and irreprehensible in all respects did they wish those to be whom they left for their own successors,[223 - “Quos et successores relinquebant, suum ipsorum locum magisterii tradentes.”] delivering over to them their own office of teaching, by correct conduct on whose part great advantage would accrue, as from their fall the utmost calamity. But since it were very long, in a volume like this, to enumerate the succession of all the churches, we take the church the greatest, the most ancient, and known to all, founded and established at Rome by the two most glorious Apostles Peter and Paul, and pointing out the tradition which it has received from the Apostles, and the faith which it has announced to men, reaching down to us by the succession of its bishops, we confound all those who form societies other than they ought, in any way, whether for the sake of self-fancied doctrines, or through blindness and an evil mind. For, with this church, on account of its superior principate, it is necessary that every church agree, that is, the faithful everywhere (every church) in which by the (faithful) everywhere, the apostolic tradition is preserved.

“The blessed Apostles, then, having founded and built up the church, committed to Linus the administration of its episcopate… Anencletus succeeds him, from whom in the third place from the Apostles Clemens inherits the episcopate… He is succeeded by Evaristus; Evaristus by Alexander, who is followed by Xystus sixth from the Apostles. Then Telesphorus, who was gloriously martyred; next Hyginus; then Pius; after whom Anicetus. Soter followed Anicetus; and now in the twelfth degree from the Apostles Eleutherius holds the place of bishop. By this order and succession the tradition from the Apostles in the Church and the teaching of the truth have come down to us. And this proof is most complete that it is one and the same life-giving Faith which has been preserved in the Church from the Apostles up to this time, and handed down in truth… With such proofs, then, before us, we ought not still to search among others for the truth, which it is easy to take from the Church, since the Apostles most fully committed unto this, as unto a rich storehouse, all which is of the truth, so that everyone, whoever will, may draw from it the draught of life. For this is the gate of life: all the rest are thieves and robbers. They must therefore be avoided; but whatever is of the Church we must love with the utmost diligence, and lay hold of the tradition of the truth. For how? if on any small matter question arose, ought we not to recur to the most ancient churches in which the Apostles lived, and take from them on the matter in hand what is certain and plain. And suppose the Apostles had not even left us writings, ought we not to follow that order of tradition which they delivered to those to whom they intrusted the churches? To this order many barbarous nations of believers in Christ assent, having salvation written upon their hearts by the Holy Spirit without paper and ink, and diligently guarding the old tradition.”[224 - S. Irenæus, lib. iii. c. 3, 4.]

This capital point of the ever-living teaching office he further dwells on:

“The Faith received in the Church we guard in it, which being always from the Spirit of God, like an admirable deposit in a good vessel, is young itself, and makes young the vessel in which it is. For this office on the part of God[225 - “Hoc enim Ecclesiæ creditum est Dei munus.”] is intrusted to the Church, as the breath of life was given to the body, in order that all the members receiving may be quickened, and in this is placed the communication of Christ, that is, the Holy Spirit, the earnest of incorruption, the confirmation of our faith, and the ladder by which we ascend to God. For, says he, in the Church God has placed Apostles, Prophets, Teachers, and all the remaining operation of the Spirit; of whom all those are not partakers who do not run to the Church, but deprive themselves of life by an evil opinion and a still worse conduct. For where the Church is, there also is the Spirit of God: and where the Spirit of God is, there is the Church and all grace: but the Spirit is Truth. Wherefore they who are not partakers of Him are neither nourished unto life from the breasts of the mother, nor receive that most pure fountain which proceeds from the Body of Christ, but dig out for themselves broken cisterns from earthly ditches, and from the filth drink foul water, avoiding the Faith of the Church lest they be brought back, and rejecting the Spirit that they may not be taught. So estranged from the truth they deservedly wallow in every error, tossed about by it, having different opinions on the same subjects at different times, and never holding one firm mind, choosing rather to be sophists of words than disciples of the truth; for they are not founded upon the one rock, but on the sand, which has in it a multitude of pebbles.”[226 - Lib. iii. c. 24.]

And he elsewhere contrasts the certainty within, and the uncertainty without, this teaching power:

“The said heretics, then, being blind to the truth, cannot help walking out of the track into one path after another, and hence it is that the vestiges of their doctrine are scattered about without any rule or sequence. Whereas the road of those who are of the Church goes round the whole world, because it possesses a firm tradition from the Apostles, and gives us to see that all have one and the same faith, where all enjoin one and the same God the Father, believe one disposition of the Son of God's incarnation, know the same gift of the Spirit, meditate on the same precepts, guard the same regimen of ecclesiastical rule, await the same advent of the Lord, and support the same salvation of the whole man, body and soul alike. Now the Church's preaching is true and firm, in whom one and the same way of salvation is shown through the whole world. For to her is intrusted the light of God; and hence the wisdom of God, by which He saves all men, ‘is sung at her entrance, acts with confidence in her streets, is proclaimed on her walls, and speaks ever in the gates of the city.’ For everywhere the Church proclaims the truth: she is the seven-branched candlestick bearing Christ's light.”[227 - Lib. v. c. 20.]

It has been necessary to give at considerable length the very words of S. Irenæus, because they are stronger and more perspicuous than any summary of them can be, and because they exhibit a complete answer not to this particular heresy only, but to all heresy for ever. Such an answer, coming from one who stood at the second generation from S. John, is of the highest value. Thus he meets the gnostic principle that divine truth is acquired by the individual through some process of his own mind, which in this particular case is termed gnosis, but which may bear many other names, by appealing to an external standard, the Rule of Faith in the Church from the beginning, which by its unity points to its origin and lineage from the apostles and Christ. And this serves to bring out the central idea which rules his whole mind, that “where the Church is, there also is the Spirit of God; and where the Spirit of God is, there is the Church and all grace: but the Spirit is Truth.” The deposit of which he spoke is not a dead mass, or lump of ore, requiring only safe custody, but a living Spirit dwelling in the Church, the source within her of unity, truth, and grace, using her teaching office, which is set up in her episcopate, for the drawing out and propagation of the deposit from the double fountain of Tradition and Scripture, for these her teachers as such have a divine gift of truth.[228 - “Qui cum episcopatus successione charisma veritatis certum secundum placitum Patris acceperunt.” iv. 26, 2; and 5, “ubi igitur charismata Domini posita sunt, ibi discere oportet veritatem, apud quos est ea quæ est ab apostolis ecclesiæ successio.”] It is thus that he expands without altering the doctrine of his teacher Polycarp's fellow-disciple, “Where Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.”[229 - S. Ignatius, quoted above, p. 206.] And from it he proceeds to what follows necessarily on such a conception, that this Church must have a visible point of unity. As then he appeals to the churches founded by Apostles as the principal centres of living tradition, so before yet one of these churches had fallen into possession of heretics,[230 - Schwane, p. 661.] before yet there was any disagreement between them, he singles out one for its superior principate, on account of which it was necessary for every church to agree with it, which he grounds on its descent from S. Peter and S. Paul, giving every link in the chain of succession during the hundred and ten years which had elapsed between their martyrdom and his own episcopate. He sees an especial prerogative lodged in that church as the means of securing the whole Church's organic unity; and this prerogative is, that it is among churches what S. Peter and S. Paul were among Apostles;[231 - Hagemann, p. 622.] as the first general western council expressed it, “in it the Apostles sit daily, and their blood without intermission bears witness to the glory of God.”[232 - Letter of the Synod of Arles to Pope Sylvester: “Quoniam recedere a partibus istis minime potuisti, in quibus et Apostoli quotidie sedent, et cruor ipsorum sine intermissione Dei gloriam testatur.” Mansi, Concilia, ii. 469.]

Thus the conception expressed by Irenæus, with the greatest emphasis and continual repetition, in order to refute heresy, is that all truth and grace are stored up in the one body of the Church; to which his doctrine of the Roman Primacy is as the keystone to the arch. For everything in his view depends on the unity, the intrinsic harmony, of the truth which he is describing as lodged in the episcopate: the means therefore of securing that unity are part of its conception. Accordingly, to see in its due force his statement that every church must agree with the Roman Church, it must not be severed from the context and taken by itself, but viewed in connexion with the argument as part of which it stands. If the Church is to speak one truth with one mouth, which is his main idea, she must have an organic provision for such a result, which he places in the necessary agreement of all churches with one: and this is his second idea, subsidiary to the first, and completing it.

Irenæus by birth and education represents in all this the witness of the Asiatic churches; as bishop of Lyons, the churches of Gaul.

A few years after Irenæus, Tertullian in a professed treatise against heresy lays down exactly the same principles. With him, too, the main idea is the possession of all truth and grace by the one Body which Christ formed and the Apostles established. This he thus exhibits:

“We must not appeal to the Scriptures, nor try the issue on points on which the victory is either none, or doubtful, or too little doubtful. For though the debate on the Scriptures should not so turn out as to place each party on an equal footing, the order of things requires that that question should be first proposed which is the only one now to be discussed, To whom does the Faith itself belong? Whose are the Scriptures? From whom and through whom, when and to whom, was that discipline by which men become Christians delivered? For wherever the truth of that which is the Christian discipline at once and faith be shown to be, there will be the truth of the Scriptures, of their exposition, and of all Christian traditions. Our Lord Jesus Christ (may He suffer me so to speak for the present), whoever He is, of whatever God the Son, of whatever substance God and Man, of whatever reward the promiser, Himself declared so long as He was on earth, whether to the people openly, or to the disciples apart, what He was, what He had been, what will of the Father He administered, what duty of man He laid down. Of whom He had attached to his own side twelve in chief, the destined teachers of the nations. One of these having fallen off from Him, He bade the other eleven, on his departure to the Father after the resurrection, go and teach the nations, who were to be baptised into the Father, into the Son, and into the Holy Ghost. The Apostles then forthwith, the meaning of their title being the Sent, assuming by lot Matthias as a twelfth into the place of Judas, by the authority of the prophecy in the psalm of David, when they had obtained the promised power of the Holy Ghost for miracles and utterance, first through Judea bore witness to the Faith in Christ Jesus, and established churches, thence proceeding into the world promulgated the same doctrine of the same Faith to the nations, and thereupon founded churches in every city, from which the other churches thenceforth borrowed the vine-layer of the Faith and the seeds of the doctrine, and are daily borrowing them that they may become churches. And for this cause they are themselves also counted apostolical, as being the offspring of apostolical churches. The whole kind must be classed under its original. And thus these churches so many and so great are that one first from the Apostles, whence they all spring. Thus all are the first, and all apostolical, while all being the one prove unity: whilst there is between them communication of peace, and the title of brotherhood, and the token of hospitality.[233 - Tertull. de Præsc. 19, 20.] And no other principle rules these rights than the one tradition of the same sacrament.”[234 - The word here stands evidently for the whole body of Christian truth, rites, and discipline, the communication of which was a sacramentum.]

Here is the summing up of what Irenæus had said with the force, brevity, and incisiveness which characterise Tertullian. Further on he rejects any appeal on the part of heretics to scripture:

“If the truth be in our possession, as many as walk by the rule which the Church has handed down from the Apostles, the Apostles from Christ, and Christ from God, the reasonableness of our proposition is manifest, which lays down that heretics are not to be allowed to enter an appeal to scriptures, since without scriptures we prove them to have no concern with scriptures. For if they are heretics, they cannot be Christians, inasmuch as they do not hold from Christ what they follow by their own choice, and in consequence admit the name of heretics.[235 - That is, he opposes the word choosers to the word Christians; the one signifying those who believe what they choose, the other those who believe what Christ taught.] Therefore not being Christians, they have no right to Christian writings. To whom we may well say, Who are you? when did you come? and whence? What are you, who are not mine, doing in my property? By what right dost thou, Marcion, cut down my wood? By what license dost thou, Valentinus, turn the course of my waters? By what power remove my landmarks? This is my possession: how are you sowing it and feeding on it at your pleasure? It is mine, I repeat: I had it of old; I had it first: I have the unquestioned title-deeds from the first proprietors. I am the heir of the Apostles. According to their will, according to their trust, according to the oath I took from them, I hold it. You, assuredly, they have ever disinherited and renounced, as aliens, as enemies. But why are heretics aliens and enemies to Apostles, save from difference of doctrine, which each at his own pleasure has either brought forward or received against Apostles?”[236 - De Præscrip. 37.]

Thus Tertullian adds the witness of the African church to that of the Asiatic and Gallic churches in Irenæus.

We have noted the great church of Alexandria as a most complete instance of the growth whereby from the mother see the hierarchy took possession of a land. But the principle of such growth was the ecclesiastical rule, and its strength the energy with which that rule was preserved. This rule was twofold: the rule of discipline, or outward regimen, what we now call a constitution; and the rule of Faith. What the church of Alexandria was in discipline has been seen above: and now just at this time we have in the first great teacher of this church, who has come down to us, the most decisive exhibition of this rule as a defence against this same gnostic heresy. “As,” says Clement, “a man like those under the enchantment of Circe should become a beast, so whoever has kicked against the tradition of the Church, and started aside into the opinions of human heresies, has ceased to be a man of God, and faithful to the Lord.” … “There are three states of the soul, ignorance, opinion, knowledge. Those who are in ignorance, are the Gentiles; those in knowledge, the true Church; those in opinion, the adherents of heresies.” … “We have learnt that bodily pleasure is one thing, which we give to the Gentiles; strife a second, which we adjudge to heresies; joy a third, which is the property of the Church.” Again, he speaks of those who “not using the divine words well, but perversely, neither enter themselves into the kingdom of heaven, nor suffer those whom they have deceived to attain the truth. They have not indeed the key to the entrance, but rather a false key, whereby they do not enter as we do through the Lord's tradition, drawing back the veil, but cutting out a side way, and secretly digging through the Church's wall, they transgress the truth, and initiate into rites of error the soul of the irreligious. For that they have made their human associations later than the Catholic Church, it needs not many words to show.” Then, after referring to the origin and propagation “of the Lord's teaching,”[237 - ἡ τοῦ κυρίου κατὰ τὴν παρουσίαν διδασκαλία.] exactly after the mode of Irenæus and Tertullian, he concludes, “So it is clear from the most ancient and true Church, that these heresies coming in subsequently to it, and others still later, are innovations from it, as coins of adulterate stamp. From what has been said, then, I consider it manifest that the true Church, the really ancient Church, is one, in which are enrolled all who are just according to (God's) purpose. For inasmuch as there is one God and one Lord, therefore that which is most highly precious is praised for being alone, since it is an imitation of the one Principle. The one Church, then, which they try by force to cut up into many heresies, falls under the same category as the nature of the One. So then we assert that the ancient and Catholic Church is one alone in its foundation, in its idea, in its origin, and in its excellence, collecting by the will of the one God, through the one Lord, into the unity of one Faith, according to the peculiar covenants, or rather to the one covenant at different times, the preordained whom God predestined, having known before the foundation of the world that they would be just. But the excellence of the Church, as the principle of the whole construction, is in unity, surpassing all other things, and having nothing similar or equal to itself.”[238 - Clem. Alex. Strom. vii. 16, p. 890-894; 17, p. 897-900. The sections 15-17, p. 886-900, treat of the spirit and conduct of heresy.]

One other writer remains, the larger part of whose life falls within this period, greater in renown than either of the foregoing; and into whatever particular errors Origen may have fallen, he did not swerve from their doctrine as to the mode of meeting error itself. “Since,” says he, “there are many who think that they hold the tenets of Christ, while some of them hold different tenets from those who went before them, let the ecclesiastical preaching as handed down by the order of succession from the Apostles, and maintained even to the present time in the churches, be preserved: that alone is to be believed as truth which in nothing is discordant from the ecclesiastical and apostolical tradition.”[239 - De Principiis, pref. p. 47. See also on Matt. tom. iii. 864, a passage equally decisive.] And the ground for such a principle he has given elsewhere:

“The divine words assert that the whole Church of God is the Body of Christ, animated by the Son of God, while the limbs of this Body as a whole are particular believers: since as the soul quickens and moves the body, whose nature it is not to have the movement of life from itself, so the Word moving to what is fitting, and working in, the whole body, the Church, moves likewise each member of the Church, who does nothing without the Word.”[240 - Cont. Cels. vi. 48, tom. i. 670.]

The four great writers, then, of this period, Irenæus, Tertullian, Clement, and Origen, none of them indeed from Rome, but representing the churches of Asia, Gaul, Africa, and Egypt, exactly concur in the principle by which they refuted heresy, the propagation, that is, of the rule of Faith in its purity and integrity, by those who possessed the succession of the Apostles and their office of teaching, in which lay a divine gift of the truth.

But to those who proceeded from this basis it was a further labour to set forth the true knowledge against the false. And we may trace the following results of heresy, quite unintended by itself, in its operation on the Church.

1. In the first place, S. Augustine continually remarks that the more accurate enucleation of true doctrine usually proceeded from the attacks of heresy; and this happened so continually that it seems to him a special instance of that law of divine Providence which educes good from evil. “If the truth,” says he, “had not lying adversaries, it would be examined with less carefulness,” and so “a question started by an opponent becomes to the disciple an occasion of learning.”[241 - De Civ. Dei, xvi. 2.] And he observes that “we have found by experience that every heresy has brought into the Church its own questions, against which the divine Scripture was defended with greater care than if no such necessity had existed.”[242 - De dono persev. 53.] Thus the doctrine of the Trinity owed its perfect treatment to the Arian assault on it; the doctrine of penance to that of Novatian; the doctrine of baptism to those who wished to introduce the practice of rebaptising; even the unity of Christ was brought out with greater clearness by the attempt to rend it, and the doctrine of one Catholic Church diffused through the whole world cleared from its objectors by showing that the mixture of evil men in it does not prejudice the good.[243 - Enarr. in Ps. 54, tom. iv. 513.] And he illustrates his meaning by a very picturesque image: “When heretics calumniate, the young of the flock are disturbed; in their disturbance they inquire; so the young lamb butts its mother's udder till it gets sufficient nutriment for its thirst.”[244 - Serm. 51, tom. v. 288.] For the doctors of the Church being called upon for an answer supply the truth which before was latent. And there is no more signal instance of the great writer's remark than himself; for the attacks of the most various heresies led him during forty years of unwearied mental activity into almost every question of theology.

The gnostic heresy, then, presents us with the first instance of a law which will run all through the Church's history. Peter, the first Apostle, meets and refutes Simon Magus, the first propagator of falsehood, who receives divine sacraments and then claims against the giver to be “the great power of God.” This fact is likewise the symbol of a long line of action, wherein it is part of the divine plan to make the perpetual restlessness of error subserve the complete exhibition of truth. The Gnostics denied the divine monarchy; at once mutilated and misinterpreted Scripture; claimed to themselves a secret tradition of truth. We owe to them in consequence the treatises of Irenæus, Tertullian, and Clement, and a written exhibition of the Church's divine order, succession, and unity, as well as a specific mention of the tie which held that unity together; and the mention of this tie at so early a period might otherwise have been wanting to us. But these three writers do but represent to us partially an universal result. The danger which from gnostic influence beset all the chief centres of ecclesiastical teaching marks the transition from the first state of simple faith to that of human learning, inquiry, and thought, turned upon the objects of Christian belief. The Gnostics had a merit which they little imagined for themselves. They formed the first doctors of post-apostolic times. Irenæus, Tertullian, and Clement are a great advance upon the more simple and external exhibition of Christianity which we find in the apologists. In them the Church is preparing to encounter the deepest questions moved against her by Greek philosophy. They are her first champions in that contest with Hellenic culture which was a real combat of mind, not a mere massacre of unresisting victims, and which lasted for five hundred years.

2. Secondly, when the gnostic attack began, the canon of the New Testament was still unfixed. Nothing can be more certain than that the Apostles did not set forth any official collection of their writings, and that no such collection existed shortly after their death. This fact most plainly shows that the Christian religion at their departure did not rest for its maintenance upon writings. Not only had our Lord written no word Himself, but He left no command to His Apostles to write. His command was to propagate His Gospel and to found His kingdom by oral teaching; and His promise was that the Holy Ghost should accompany, follow upon, and continue with, this their action. What we find is, that they did this, and that the writings which besides they left, being from the first kept and venerated by the several churches to which they were addressed, gradually became known through the whole body of the Church. With the lapse of time they would become more and more valuable. Moreover, when the Gnostics set themselves to interpolate and corrupt them, and to fabricate false writings, the need of a genuine collection became more and more urgent. It is from the three writers above mentioned, towards the end of the second century, that we learn that such a collection existed, in forming which these principles were followed: only to admit writings which tradition attested to spring from an Apostle or a witness of our Lord's life,[245 - S. Mark's Gospel would be referred to S. Peter, and S. Luke's writings to S. Paul.] among whom Paul was specially counted: secondly, only such writings as were attested by some church of apostolical foundation: and thirdly, only such writings the doctrine contained in which did not differ from the rule of faith orally handed down in the churches of apostolic origin, or in the one Catholic Church, excluding all such as were at variance with the doctrine hitherto received. Thus in the settlement of the Canon authority as well as tradition intervened; an authority which felt itself in secure possession of the same Holy Spirit who had inspired the Apostles, and of the same doctrine which they had taught.[246 - See Schwane, p. 779-80.]

With the reception of a book into the Canon of Scripture was joined a belief in its inspiration, which rested on what was a part of oral tradition, that is, that the Apostles as well in their oral as in their written teaching had enjoyed the infallible guidance of the Holy Spirit. It is evident that such a tradition reposes, in the last instance, upon the authority of the Church.[247 - Schwane, p. 783-4.]

If by means of the gnostic attacks the Canon of the New Testament, as we now possess it, was not absolutely completed, it had at least advanced a very great way towards that completion, which we have finally attested as of long standing in a Council held at Carthage in 397.[248 - “Quia a patribus ista accepimus in ecclesia legenda.” n. 47.]

3. Another result of the gnostic attack was the setting forth the tradition of the Faith, seated and maintained in the apostolic churches, as the rule for interpreting Scripture. The Gnostics in two ways impeached this rule, by claiming a private tradition of their own, and by interpreting such scripture as they chose to acknowledge after their own pleasure. Irenæus, Tertullian, and Clement found an adequate answer to both errors by showing that the Faith which the Apostles had set forth in their writings could not contradict the Faith which they had established in the Church. These were two sources of the same doctrine; but it is by the permanent connection and interpenetration of the two that the truth is maintained; and that which holds both together, that which utters and propagates the truth which they jointly contain, is the Teaching office, the mouth of the Church. Hence the force of the appeal in Irenæus to the succession of the episcopate, and to the divine gift of truth which the Apostles had handed down therein with their teaching office. Hence Tertullian's exclusion of heretics from the right to possess scriptures which belong only to the Church. Hence Clement's description of the only true Gnostic, as “one who has grown old in the study of the Scriptures, while he preserves the apostolic and ecclesiastical standard of doctrine.”[249 - Stromata, vii. c. 16, p. 896.] For neither in founding churches, nor in teaching orally, nor in writing, did the Apostles exhaust or resign the authority committed to them.[250 - See Kleutgen, Theologie der Vorzeit, iii. 957; Schwane, vol. i. 3.] The authority itself, which was the source of all this their action, after all that they had founded, taught, or written, continued complete and entire in them, and was transmitted on to their successors, for the maintenance of the work assigned to it. It is this perpetual living power which Irenæus so strongly testifies,[251 - L. iv. 26. 2, p. 262. “Quapropter iis qui in Ecclesia sunt presbyteris obaudire oportet,” &c.] to which he attaches the gift of the Spirit, not scripture, nor tradition, but that which carries both scripture and tradition through the ages, which is “as the breath of life to the body, which is always from the Spirit of God, wherein is placed the communication of Christ, which is always young, and makes young the vessel in which it is.”[252 - L. iii. 24, p. 223.] The writings which the Holy Ghost has inspired, and the tradition of the Faith which He has established, would be subject, the one to misinterpretation, the other to alteration and corruption, without that particular presence of His, in which consists the divine gift of truth, the teaching office, “the making disciples all nations.”

4. And the action of heresy, which was so effective in bringing out the function of the teaching church, was not without force in extending and corroborating the function of the ruling church. The first synods of which we have mention are those assembled in Asia Minor towards the end of the second century against the diffusion of Montanism.[253 - Schwane, p. 683.] But what through the loss of records has been mentioned only in this one case must have taken place generally, since it is obvious that as soon as erroneous doctrines spread from one diocese to another, they would call forth joint action against them. Since then heresies have been the frequent, almost the exclusive, cause of councils. The parallel is fruitful in thought, which is suggested between the action of error in eliciting the more precise expression of the truth which it abhors, and its action in strengthening the governing power of the body which it assaults. In the one case and in the other the result is that which it least desires and intends; heresy, disbelieving and disobeying, is made to perfect the faith and build up the hierarchy.

Now to sum up our sketch of the internal history of the Christian Faith in the seventy-four years which elapse from the accession of Marcus Aurelius to the death of Alexander Severus. At the first-named date we find that it had spread beyond the confines of the Roman empire, and taken incipient possession of all the great centres of human intercourse by founding its hierarchy in them. At the second date it has subdued the powerful and widespread family of heresies which threatened to distort and corrupt its doctrines, and has done this by the vigour of its teaching office, which combined in one expression the yet fresh apostolic tradition stored up in its churches, and the doctrine of its sacred scriptures; while it has well-nigh determined the number and genuineness of these, severing them off from all other writings. The episcopate in which its teaching office resides appears not as a number of bishops, each independent and severed, and merely governing his diocese upon a similar rule, but with a bond recognised among them, the superior principate of the Roman See. That is, as the teaching office itself is in them all the voice of living teachers, so its highest expression is the voice of the living Peter in his see. And this bond as discerned and recognised by the Asiatic disciple of S. Polycarp, the bishop of the chief city of Gaul, is so strong that he uses for it rather the term denoting physical necessity than moral fitness:[254 - Observed by Hagemann, p. 618, referring to the words of S. Irenæus, “ad hanc enim Ecclesiam propter potiorem prinicipalitatem necesse est omnem convenire Ecclesiam,” &c. It must be remembered that the proper word for the power which held together the whole Roman empire was Principatus, the very word used by S. Augustine to express the original authority of the Roman See: “Romanæ Ecclesiæ, in qua semper apostolicæ cathedræ viguit principatus.” Ep. 43.] as if he would say: As Christ has made the Church, it must agree from one end to the other in doctrine and communion with the doctrine and communion of the Church in which Peter, to whom He has committed His sheep, speaks and rules. And so powerful is the derivation of this authority that he who sits in the place of Mark, whom Peter sent, punishes by degradation a bishop who disregards his sentence in the case of a great writer, the brightest genius of the Church in that day. And when we look at the spiritual state of the world at the commencement of the third century, we find that Christianity, having formed and made its place in human society, is penetrating through it more and more in every direction. It is then that we discern the first beginnings of that great spiritual creation, in which Reason has been applied to Faith under the guidance of Authority, which the Christian Church, alone being in possession of these three constituents, could alone produce, and has carried on from that day to this. Alexandria was at this time the seat of a Jewish religious philosophy; it had just become the seat likewise of a heathen religious philosophy; there was within its church a great catechetical school, in which the Faith as taught by the apostolical and ecclesiastical tradition according to the scriptures was communicated. It was to be expected that its teachers, such men as Pantænus, Clement, and Origen, would be led on from the more elementary work of imparting the rudiments of the Faith to the scientific consideration of its deeper mysteries; and even the sight of what was going on around them among Jews and Greeks would invite them to attempt the construction of a Christian religious philosophy.

Moreover Gnosticism, of which Alexandria was the chief focus, had raised the question of the unity and nature of the Godhead, and professed a false gnosis as the perfection of religion. By this also thoughtful minds were led to consider the true relation of knowledge to faith, and hence to attempt the first rudiments of a Theology, the Science of Faith.

To refute heathenism both as a Philosophy and as a Religion, and to set forth Christianity as the absolute truth, was the very function of such men as Clement and Origen; and the former in his work entitled The Pedagogue exhibits the conduct of life according to the principles and doctrines of Christianity; while his Stromata, or Tapestries, exhibit the building up of science on the foundation of faith.[255 - See Kuhn, Einleitung in die katholische Dogmatik, i. 345-6.] We can hardly realise now the difficulties which beset his great pupil Origen, when, carrying on the master's thought, he endeavoured to found a theology. The fact that he was among the first to venture on such a deep, is the best excuse that can be made for those speculative errors into which he fell.

III. And now we turn to the conduct of the empire towards this religion which has grown up in its bosom.

At once with the accession of Marcus Aurelius a temper of greater severity to Christians is shown. The sort of toleration expressed in the rescript of Pius to the province of Asia is withdrawn. No new law about them is enacted, for none is needed, but the old law is let loose. The almost sublime clemency of Marcus towards his revolted general Cassius, his reign of nineteen years unstained with senatorial blood, and the campaigns prolonged from year to year of one who loved his philosophic studies above all things, and yet at the call of imperial duty gave up night and day to the rudest toils of a weary conflict with barbarous tribes on the frontier, have won for him immortal honour: his regard for his subjects in general has sometimes given him in Christian estimation the place of predilection among all princes ancient and modern.[256 - Guizot ranks Marcus Aurelius with S. Louis, as the only rulers who preferred conscience to gain in all their conduct.] It is well, then, to consider his bearing towards Christians. Now among his teachers was that Junius Rusticus, grandson of the man who perished for the sake of liberty in Domitian's time, and in his day no doubt a perfect specimen of the Roman gentleman and noble, a blending of all that was best in Cicero, Lælius, and Cato, whom Marcus made Prefect of Rome, and to whom when bearing that office he addressed a rescript containing the words, “to Junius Rusticus, Prefect of the city, our friend.” And what this friend of Marcus thought on the most important subjects we may judge from the sentiments of another friend and fellow-teacher of the emperor, Maximus of Tyre, who has left written, “how God rules a mighty and stable kingdom having for its limits not river or lake or shore or ocean, but the heaven above and the earth beneath, in which He, impassive as law, bestows on those who obey him the security of which He is the fountain: and the gods his children need not images any more than good men statues. But just as our vocal speech requires not in itself any particular characters, yet human weakness has invented the alphabetical signs whereby to give expression to its remembrance, so the nature of the gods needs not images, but man, removed from them as far as heaven from earth, has devised these signs, by which to give them names. There may be those strong enough to do without these helps, but they are rare, and as schoolmasters guide their scholars to write by first pencilling letters for them, so legislators have invented these images as signs of the divine honour, and helps to human memory. But God is the father and framer of all things, older than heaven, superior to time and all fleeting nature, legislator ineffable, unexpressed by voice, unseen by eye; and we who cannot grasp his essence rest upon words and names, and forms of gold, ivory, and silver, in our longing to conceive Him, giving to His nature what is fair among ourselves. But fix Him only in the mind; I care not whether the Greek is kindled into remembrance of Him by the art of Phidias, or the Egyptian by the worship of animals, that fire is his symbol to these, and water to those; only let them understand, let them love, let them remember Him alone.”[257 - Maximus Tyrius, diss. 17, 12; Reiske, and diss, ii. 2. 10.]

I doubt not that Junius Rusticus was familiar with such thoughts as these, and as a matter of philosophic reflection assented to them. And now let us study the scene which was enacted in his presence and by his command.[258 - Acta Martyrum sincera, Ruinart, p. 58-60.]

“At a time when the defenders of idolatry had proposed edicts in every city and region to compel Christians to sacrifice, Justin and his companions were seized and brought before the Prefect of Rome, Rusticus. When they stood before his tribunal, the Prefect Rusticus said: Well, be obedient to the gods and the emperor's edicts. Justin answered: No man can ever be blamed or condemned who obeys the precepts of our Saviour Jesus Christ. Then the Prefect Rusticus asked: In what sect's learning or discipline are you versed? Justin replied: I endeavoured to learn every sort of sect, and tried every kind of instruction; but at last I adhered to the Christian discipline, though that is not acceptable to those who are led by the error of a false opinion. Rusticus said: Wretch, is that the sect in which you take delight? Assuredly, said Justin; since together with a right belief I follow the example of Christians. What belief is that, I pray? said the Prefect. Justin replied: The right belief which we as Christians join with piety is this, to hold that there is one God, the Maker and Creator of all things which are seen and which are not seen by the body's eyes, and to confess one Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God, foretold of old by the prophets, who will also come to judge the human race, and who is the herald of salvation and the teacher of those who learn of Him well. I indeed as a man am feeble, and far too little to say anything great of His infinite Godhead: this I confess to be the office of prophets, who many ages ago by inspiration foretold the advent upon earth of the same whom I have called the Son of God.

“The Prefect inquired where the Christians met. Justin answered: Each where he will and can. Do you suppose that we are accustomed all to meet in the same place? By no means, since the God of the Christians is not circumscribed by place, but being invisible fills heaven and earth, and is everywhere adored, and His glory praised by the faithful. The Prefect said: Come, tell me where you meet and assemble your disciples. Justin answered: For myself I have hitherto lodged near the house of a certain Martin, by the Timiotine bath. It is the second time I have come to Rome, and I know no other place than the one mentioned. And if anyone chose to come to me, I communicated to him the doctrine of truth. You are, then, a Christian, said Rusticus. Assuredly, said Justin, I am.

“Then the Prefect asked Charito: Are you too a Christian? Charito replied: By God's help I am a Christian. The Prefect asked the woman Charitana whether she too followed the Faith of Christ. She replied: I also by the gift of God am a Christian. Then Rusticus said to Evelpistus: And who are you? He replied: I am Cæsar's slave, but a Christian to whom Christ has given liberty, and by His favour and grace made partaker of the same hope with those whom you see. The Prefect then asked Hierax whether he too was a Christian; and he replied: Certainly I am a Christian, since I worship and adore the same God. The Prefect inquired: Was it Justin who made you Christians? I, said Hierax, both was and will be a Christian. Pæon likewise stood before him and said: I too am a Christian. Who taught you? said the Prefect. He replied: I received this good confession from my parents. Then Evelpistus said: I also was accustomed to hear with great delight Justin's discourses, but it was from my parents that I learnt to be a Christian. Then the Prefect: And where are your parents? In Cappadocia, said Evelpistus. The Prefect likewise asked Hierax where his parents were, and Hierax replied: Our true Father is Christ, and our mother the Faith, by which we believe on Him. But my earthly parents are dead. It was, however, from Iconium in Phrygia that I was brought hither. The Prefect asked Liberianus whether he too was a Christian and without piety towards the gods. He said: I also am a Christian, for I worship and adore the only true God.

“Then the Prefect turned to Justin and said: You fellow, who are said to be eloquent, and think you hold the true discipline. If you are beaten from head to foot, is it your persuasion that you will go up to heaven? Justin answered: I hope if I suffer what you say, that I shall have what those have who have kept the commands of Christ. For I know that to all who live thus the divine grace is preserved until the whole world have its consummation. The Prefect Rusticus replied: It is, then, your opinion that you will go up to heaven to receive some reward? I do not opine, said Justin, but I know, and am so certain of this that I am incapable of doubt. Rusticus said: Let us come at length to what is before us and urgent. Agree together and with one mind sacrifice to the gods. Justin replied: No one of right mind deserts piety to fall into error and impiety. The Prefect Rusticus said: Unless you be willing to obey our commands, you will suffer torments without mercy. Justin answered: What we most desire is to suffer torments for our Lord Jesus Christ and to be saved: for this will procure for us salvation and confidence before that terrible tribunal of the same our Lord and Saviour, at which by divine command the whole world shall attend. The same likewise said all the other martyrs, adding: What thou wilt do, do quickly; for we are Christians and sacrifice not to idols.

“The Prefect hearing this pronounced the following sentence: Let those who have refused to sacrifice to the gods, and to obey the emperor's edict, be beaten with rods, and led away to capital punishment, as the laws enjoin. And so the holy martyrs praising God were led to the accustomed place, and after being beaten were struck with the axe, and consummated their martyrdom in the confession of the Saviour. After which certain of the faithful took away their bodies, and laid them in a suitable place, by the help of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever.”

As the pillars of Trajan and Antonine faithfully record the deeds of those whose names they bear, and stand before posterity as a visible history, so, I conceive, the judgment of Ignatius by Trajan, and that of Justin by Rusticus, under the eye as it were of Marcus Aurelius and in his name, embody to us perfectly the mind and conduct of those great emperors towards Christians. The marble of Phidias could present no more perfect sculpture, the pencil of Apelles no more breathing picture, than the simple transcription of the judicial record given above. In the mind of Marcus the jealousy of the old Roman for his country's worship joined with the philosopher's dislike of Christian principles to move him from that more equable temper which dictated the later moderation of his immediate predecessor. It scarcely needed the spirit which ruled at Rome to kindle passionate outbreaks against Christians in the various cities of the empire. We have just seen the impassive majesty of Roman law declaring at the chief seat of power that to be a Christian is a capital crime. If we go at the same time to Smyrna, there the voices of a furious populace are demanding that an aged man venerable through the whole region for his innocent life and his virtues, be cast to the lions, because he is “the teacher of impiety, the father of the Christians, the destroyer of our gods, who has instructed many not to sacrifice to them or adore them.” No grander scene among all the deeds of men is preserved to us, as described by his own church at the time, than the martyrdom of Polycarp, as after eighty-six years of Christian service he stood bound at the stake before the raging multitude in the theatre, and uttered his last prayer: “I thank thee, O God of angels and powers, and all the generation of the just who live before thee, that thou hast thought me worthy of this day and hour to receive a portion in the number of thy martyrs, in the chalice of thy Christ.” Ten years later, in the great city of Lyons a similar spectacle was offered on a far larger scale. The Bishop Pothinus, more than ninety years old, is carried before the tribunal, “the magistrates of the city following him, and all the multitude pursuing him with cries as if he were Christ.” But the triumph of the bishop is accompanied by that of many among his flock, of whom while all were admirable, yet the slave Blandina, poor and contemptible in appearance, surpassed the rest. “She was exposed to the beasts raised as it were upon a cross, and so praying most contentedly to God, she inspired the utmost ardour in her fellow combatants, who with the eyes of the body saw in this their sister's person Him who had been crucified for them in order to persuade those who should believe in Him that whoever suffers for the glory of Christ shall obtain companionship with the living God.”[259 - Ruinart, p. 67.] Since the wild beasts refused to touch her, Blandina and the survivors among her fellow-sufferers were remanded to prison, in order that the pleasure of the emperor might be taken, one of them being a Roman citizen. For this persecution had arisen without any command of his, and the punishments were inflicted in virtue of the ordinary law. After an interval, as it would seem, of two months, a rescript was received from Marcus Aurelius which ordered that those who confessed should be punished ignominiously, those who denied, be dismissed. “And so at the time of our great fair, when a vast multitude from the various provinces flock thither, the governor ordered the most blessed martyrs to be brought before his tribunal, exhibiting them to the people as in theatric pomp; and after a last interrogation those who were Roman citizens were beheaded, and the rest given to the wild beasts.”[260 - Ruinart, p. 68.] But Blandina, after being every day brought to behold the sufferings of her companions, “the last of all, like a noble mother who had kindled her children to the combat, and sent them forward as conquerors to the king, – was eager to follow them, rejoicing and exulting over her departure, as if invited to a nuptial banquet, not cast before wild beasts. At length, after scourging and tearing and burning, she was put in a net and exposed to the bull. Tossed again and again by him, yet feeling now nothing which was done to her, both from the intensity of hope with which she grasped the rewards of faith, and from her intimate intercourse in prayer with Christ, in the end she had her throat cut, as a victim, while the heathen themselves confessed that never had they seen a woman who had borne so much and so long.”[261 - Ruinart, p. 69.]

These three scenes of martyrdom at Rome, at Smyrna, and at Lyons, will give a notion of the grounds upon which Eusebius asserts that in the reign of Marcus Aurelius innumerable martyrs suffered[262 - Hist. v. i. μυριάδας μαρτύρων διαπρέψαι στοχασμῷ λαβεῖν ἔνεστιν.] throughout the world through popular persecutions. Respecting the following reign of Commodus he says, on the contrary, that the Church enjoyed peace, for while the law which considered Christianity an illicit religion had not been revoked, it was made capital to inform against any one as Christian; and yet if the information took place, and the crime was proved, the punishment of death ensued, as in the case of the senator Apollonius recorded by him.[263 - Ib, v. 21.] This state of things would seem to have lasted about seventeen years, until the year 197, when Severus, some time after his accession, became unfavourable to Christians. And it brings us to Tertullian, whose writings are full of testimonies to the sufferings endured by Christians for their Faith. For some time these sufferings would seem to fall under the same sort of intermittent popular persecution, which we have seen prevailing in the time of Marcus: but in the year 202 Severus published an edict forbidding any to become Jews or Christians. And forthwith a persecution broke out so severe and terrible, that many thought the time of Antichrist was come. It was no longer the mere action of an original law against all unauthorised religions, but an assault led on by the emperor himself, who turned directly the imperial power against Christianity as a whole. It raged especially at Alexandria, where the master of the catechetical school writes: “we have before our eyes every day abundant instances of martyrs, tortured by fire, impaled, beheaded: they are superior to pleasure; they conquer suffering; they overcome the world.”[264 - Clem. Alex. Strom. ii. c. 20, p. 494.] Then it was that Origen, a youth of seventeen, desired to share the martyrdom of his father Leonides, and that seven whom he had himself instructed, gained this crown. Then it was that the slave Potamiæna, in the bloom of youth and beauty, not only rejected every blandishment of corruption, but suffered the extremest torture of fire to preserve her innocence and faith, and gained at Alexandria such a name as St. Lawrence afterwards gained at Rome. So at Carthage Perpetua and Felicitas, young mothers, with their companions repeated the example of those whom we have seen suffering at Lyons; in which city a second persecution as vehement as the first breaking out numbered Irenæus with his predecessor Pothinus, his people in this case as in the other accompanying the pastor's sacrifice with their own.