Church and State as Seen in the Formation of Christendom Part 20

But belief becomes concrete and actual in wors.h.i.+p. What was the wors.h.i.+p offered by the nations of the Roman empire to their various G.o.ds? From end to end this vast region was covered with magnificent temples, rich with the offerings of successive generations, wherein day by day and often many times a day sacrifices of living animals were offered by priests appointed to that end. I only refer here to this rite of sacrifice, because I have dwelt sufficiently upon it in a former place.

The varieties of the wors.h.i.+p accompanying it were great, but the substance of the rite identical; the number and names and offices of the deities to whom it was offered were bewildering.[184] The customs and traditions which encircled these various temples and the rites offered in them struck their roots into the family, the social, and the political life of the various peoples among which they stood.

What, as over against this "palpable array of sense," was the Christian wors.h.i.+p which the new teachers brought with them?

It was withdrawn into the innermost recess of the Christian society itself. For many generations they had not public churches, but were reduced to meet in secret. And those who shared the Christian members.h.i.+p received, in a.s.semblies held in the silence of the early morning, under cover of some private house, a victim which they adored as the very Body and Blood of the G.o.d who for their sakes had become incarnate, for their sakes also had suffered His Body to be broken, and His Blood poured out.

Instead of the sacrifices of slain animals, whose blood was sprinkled upon the wors.h.i.+ppers, the Christian received the Immaculate Lamb of G.o.d, offered upon a mystical altar, in commemoration of that one Sacrifice by virtue of which he was a Christian.

If the contrast in belief between the one Christian G.o.d and the many G.o.ds of heathendom was great, the contrast between heathen sacrifices and the one Christian Sacrifice was at least as great-perhaps the more wonderful in this, that while natural reason fought in every human breast for the doctrine of the Divine Unity, no reason nor thought of man could ever have imagined a Sacrifice at once so tremendous and so gracious as that which the Christian wors.h.i.+pped, wherein the Victim which received his homage contained and imparted his life.

But if the doctrine of the Divine Unity destroyed the heathen G.o.ds, and so rendered its adherents liable to be called "G.o.dless" by their wors.h.i.+ppers, no less did the doctrine of the Christian Sacrifice, which abolished at a stroke the whole wors.h.i.+p of heathendom, create the keenest antagonism; they who were without G.o.ds were said to be without altars; they who never presented themselves at the heathen sacrifices were accounted as outcasts and sacrilegious men who renounced all piety.

Yet complete and thorough as the antagonism drawn forth in these two great points of belief and wors.h.i.+p, perhaps the third const.i.tuent element of the Christian society, its government, was even more calculated to awaken the jealousy and excite the resentment, if not of the various peoples which composed the empire, at least of the Roman rulers.

The priests who ministered in the mult.i.tudinous temples to the various deities of the Roman world, were as various as the objects of their wors.h.i.+p. No common hierarchy held together the priests of Egyptian, Asiatic, h.e.l.lenic, Roman G.o.ds, and all the intermediate gradations. But far more than this, there was an absence of hierarchy in the particular or national G.o.ds of each several country; the priest of Jupiter had nothing to do with the priest of Apollo, the priest of Juno, and the rest. The conception of many G.o.ds had introduced unnumbered weaknesses, anomalies, and incongruities into the arrangements of their ministers.

When that which was wors.h.i.+pped was divided, the ministers of the several parts became rivals, with this grand result, as it affected the civil power, that it stood in one great ma.s.s of solid unity over against different religions, varying in their objects, crossing each other, contradicting each other. Thus it was that the original independence of divine wors.h.i.+p had been lost; no one of these various priesthoods could maintain any real opposition to the civil ruler; no one of them presented any body of concordant doctrine which man's mind could approve, or his heart accept. That which ought to be most sacred among men was by internal contradictions become weak and contemptible.

How, on the other hand, stood the case of the Christian society as to government?

And here as for a long time the Christian altar lay concealed from the sight of the heathen, and they knew not Him who was offered on it, so for a long time the Christian ruler was withdrawn from recognition. They did not even surmise that which grew up gradually and silently in the midst of them: the establishment, that is, of a _new_ spiritual power, of _one_ power for all nations, of a spiritual governor in every city, a member of this one power. It may safely be said that while Trajan did not apprehend the existence of any such power in his empire, Decius had come to the knowledge of it, and he liked it so little that it was said of him by an eye-witness how he would rather hear of a compet.i.tor for his throne than of a Bishop being set at Rome in the See of Peter.

But from the beginning the power was there, concealed in the humility of the mustard seed, while it rested upon the authority of Him who had dropped the seed into the soil.

This power of spiritual government was _new_, in that it sprung from the Person of our Lord Himself, and until He communicated the charge contained in it, did not exist. It was pointed out in type and prophecy to Adam, to Noah, and to Moses, but realised in Him at His resurrection.

Thus, whereas these priesthoods which it came to displace were the ultimate form of corruption into which the original wors.h.i.+p inst.i.tuted by G.o.d when man fell had sunk, the Redeemer, in the work of His dispensation, sent forth this pastors.h.i.+p of spiritual rule afresh from Himself, gave it to Peter and His Apostles, and propagated it through them upon earth.

For this reason, as coming from one who was Lord of all, it was one for all nations. Corresponding to the unity of the Triune G.o.d, and the unity of the Christian Sacrifice, it was one in its origin, its duration, its effect. What greater contrast could there possibly be than between the diversity and contradiction of heathen priests ministering in numberless religions, and the unity of the Christian priesthood, a replication in every instance of Christ's person, between wors.h.i.+ps varying with every country in their bearers and their rites, and the unity of the Christian episcopate, a replication of His charge to feed His sheep, resting on one Sacrifice as unique as its own rule.

And, again, that which was one in origin, duration, and effect, stretched itself forth and dilated itself to embrace every city, placing at its head a spiritual ruler, who was distinct but not separate from his fellows; who preached one doctrine and ministered to one wors.h.i.+p, as he also partic.i.p.ated in one power.

If we embrace in one view the three const.i.tuents on which we have touched-belief, wors.h.i.+p, and government-and contemplate the Christian people which is its outcome, how total a contrast does it present in the Christian habit of life to that of the heathen. The Christian wors.h.i.+ps a single G.o.d, who by the greatest of mysteries is at once one and three; who has a triple personality; he partakes of a wors.h.i.+p in which that G.o.d, offered first as a Victim for him, becomes his Food; he is governed by one who bears the person of that G.o.d, whose priesthood is the foundation of his rule, and whose teaching is bound up with both rule and wors.h.i.+p.

That which the heathen called nature was to the Christian the ever-living operation of a creative hand hiding under shapes which met the senses an illimitable power, wisdom, and goodness; and the majesty of the G.o.d whom he thus adored was presented to him in the holiest rite of his wors.h.i.+p as the Victim who redeemed him, and the Food which nourished his spiritual life. Greek and Egyptian, Syrian and African, Roman and barbarian, it was difficult to say from which he was most removed in all his thoughts of G.o.d and man, and the world around.

But to the whole body of people thus created it was the s.h.i.+fting of the basis on which the heathen State rested, because it was the discovery of the one Lord from whom all rule descended, and in whose name it was administered. The Roman ruled not in virtue of the principle that one G.o.d had made all the nations of the earth of one blood, and part.i.tioned the kingdoms of the earth among them, but by virtue of the fact that the children of the wolf-cub had been the strongest in fight and the firmest in discipline, and had reduced a hundred peoples beneath their sway. The Roman himself wors.h.i.+pped and protected in others the wors.h.i.+p of ancestral, that is, national G.o.ds, and the G.o.d of the Christians claimed not to be national, and to dethrone them all. The Roman, and the nations he held in subjection, believed in a mult.i.tude of traditionary doctrines respecting the earth and its inhabitants, and the powers presiding over them, some true and some false, mixed up in each case with peculiar and national interests, and all these the Christian swept away in the sublime belief, austere at once and tender, of a single Being who created, sustained, and ruled all, with the love of a Creator for all, while He kept watch over every thought, word, and action of every rational creature; that is, who was Judge and Rewarder, as well as Creator. And, lastly, this new Christian people held as the very bond of its existence that being the Body of Christ, it was to embrace all nations, and be co-extensive with the earth, co-enduring with man's race.

This was the people and the power which, having been more or less concealed during five generations from the watchful eyes of Roman statesmen, may be said to have come forth and shown itself by the multiplication of its numbers and the tenacity of its purpose, and the fixity of its doctrines in the time of Marcus Aurelius, and which five more generations of Romans, until the time of Constantine, either watched with ever-increasing anxiety, or tolerated in the mistaken hope of a.s.similating, or finally contended with for life or death in fearful persecutions.

And this was the people and power before which the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, when he saw it in the persons of women and slaves and aged men, who sacrificed their lives for their belief, lost his philosophic indifference, and persecuted it as if he had been a voluptuous profligate like Nero, or a cruel tyrant like Domitian.

That the belief, the wors.h.i.+p, and the spiritual government which carried both, had been from their first appearance in the reign of Tiberius independent of the imperial rule, whose officer crucified their Founder, under the t.i.tle of the King of the Jews, we have seen in all the preceding chapters. But how was this independence actually acquired and maintained? By what talisman did the Christians compel the emperors to acknowledge that there were things of G.o.d to be rendered to G.o.d, as well as things of Caesar to be rendered to Caesar? For when this fight began the Emperor claimed all things, the things of Caesar as Emperor, and the things of G.o.d as Pontifex Maximus.

Melito, Bishop of Sardis, addressing an apology for the Christian faith to Marcus Aurelius, besought him to "protect a philosophy which was nurtured together and began together with Augustus;"[185] and, in fact, it was at the moment when Augustus closed the temple of Ja.n.u.s, and proclaimed that there was peace in the Roman world, that our Lord was born at Bethlehem. Thirty-three years after, He was crucified by the governor of a province who represented the person of the Emperor Tiberius, and on the ground that he had infringed the rights of that emperor by calling Himself King of the Jews. Forthwith, when "Peter rose up in the midst of the brethren" to propose the appointment of a twelfth apostle, that he might take the place of the traitor who had betrayed his Master to death, we are told the number of the persons together was about a hundred and twenty. This number, then, indicated those disciples of our Lord who had been gained during His ministry, and were then at Jerusalem.

We have another indication of numbers, where it is said that our Lord, before His ascension, was seen by "more than five hundred brethren at once,"[186] which would indicate the larger number of His adherents in Galilee.

These two statements give a notion as to the extent to which the teaching of our Lord had been accepted when the event of His public execution took place, which was intended by those who brought it about to effect the destruction of His claim to teach the world, and which was calculated, according to all human judgment, to produce the effect intended.

The empire of Augustus, and "the philosophy nurtured and begun together with it," took their several courses, and at the end of three hundred years the greatest man who had sat upon the throne of Augustus in all that interval came to the conclusion that the Christian Church was become the power of the time. What makes the greatness of Constantine, we have been told, makes him one of those characters in the world's history who are the individual expression of the spirit of their time, is, that he understood his time, that he perceived the weakness and powerlessness of the heathen world, the inward dissolution of the old beliefs; that the Christian faith was alone the substantial power of the time, the Christian faith, as the Corpus Christianorum, in the strong, flexible, and yet compact organisation of the Catholic Church, as seen in its one episcopate. Constantine knew Christianity only in this form; and the majestic unity into which the episcopate of the Church had already grown was for him so imposing that he saw in the Christian Church[187] the power through which the Roman empire, greatly needing a regeneration, could alone be made capable of it. That was the real power which could give a new basis to the State when it was falling into self-dissolution.

To indicate the greatness of the change involved in the action of the Roman emperor, we may here use the words of St. Gregory the Great to the Anglo-Saxon King Ethelbert, when he wrote to him at the end of the sixth century: "Ill.u.s.trious Son, guard carefully the grace which thou hast received by a divine gift; hasten to extend the Christian faith among the peoples subject to thee, for He will render the name of your glory yet more glorious to your posterity, whose honour you seek and preserve in the world. For so Constantine, most pious emperor of old, calling back the Roman commonwealth from the perverted wors.h.i.+p of idols, subjected it with himself to Jesus Christ, our omnipotent Lord G.o.d."[188]

But what had pa.s.sed in the interval, since the officer of Tiberius crucified the Head, that the successor of Tiberius, Constantine, should recognise the Body as the only power which could hold together his tottering State?

What had happened was such facts as these.

After the Jews had spent their utmost malice in persecuting the Christian messengers, first at Jerusalem, upon St. Stephen's death, and then throughout the empire, wherever the authority of the Sanhedrim could reach them, Nero, the last emperor of the family of Augustus, moved by Jewish instigation, turned upon Christians the accusation of burning Rome, and slew what the Roman historian calls a "huge mult.i.tude" of them, with torments so atrocious that pity for them began to arise even among those who hated them.

Secondly, at the distance of another generation, Domitian slew his cousin, even while he held the consulate, and an unknown number of other Christians, on the imputed charge of impiety, that is, of deserting the heathen G.o.ds.

Thirdly, twenty years later, in the time of Trajan, we learn, by his correspondence with Pliny, that the mere profession of the Christian faith was a capital crime; and the punishment of Ignatius, in the Roman amphitheatre, made his name famous to all future generations. We know not to how many in the reign of Trajan the profession of the Christian faith was the sacrifice of life. But the Bishop of Antioch, if the most ill.u.s.trious, was far from the only victim.

Fourthly, an abundance of martyrs in the reign of his successor, Hadrian, testifies the continuance and the exercise of this law proscribing the Christian profession. The n.o.ble Roman matron who witnessed the execution of her seven children is an instance how savage a man of letters and curious taste could be, when there was a question of Christian realities crossing his feelings as a heathen.

Fifthly, the reign of Marcus Aurelius, n.o.blest of heathen rulers, is conspicuous for the number of its martyrs, in Asia Minor and in Gaul, as well as at Rome; for the increasing number of the Christians had now brought the religion into general notice. It is of this time that Irenaeus, an eye-witness, shortly himself to be one of those he commemorates, writes "that the Church in every place, on account of that love which she bears to G.o.d, sends forward a mult.i.tude of martyrs in every time to the Father; while all the rest (by which he means the various sects), not only are not able to show this thing among them, but do not even say that such a martyrdom is necessary.... For the reproach of those who suffer persecution for the sake of justice, and endure all penalties, and are done to death for their affection towards G.o.d and their confession of His Son, these the Church alone continuously maintains, often thereby weakened, and straightway increasing its members, and becoming entire again."[189] Of this time Eusebius writes, that by the attacks made in various cities through the enmity of the populace calling upon the magistrates to execute the laws, "martyrs almost numberless were conspicuous through the whole world."[190]

Sixthly, after another generation, in the time of Septimius Severus, Eusebius states that there were martyrdoms in every part of the Church.

This is the time of which Tertullian writes that Christians were now everywhere, and from their numbers would have been able to wage a civil war with their persecutors, had their religion permitted them. Of this also an eye-witness, Clement of Alexandria, says, "It was a good remark of Zeno about the Indians, that he would rather see one Indian roasted than hear any number of arguments about the endurance of pain. But we have every day a rich stream displayed before our eyes of martyrs roasted, impaled, and beheaded. All these the fear of the law has been a tutor to lead to Christ, and has wrought them up to show their piety by shedding their blood. 'G.o.d hath stood in the congregation of G.o.ds, and being in the midst of them He judgeth G.o.ds.' Who are these? They who are superior to pleasure; they who conquer sufferings; they who know each thing which they do; possessors of true knowledge, who have mastered the world."[191] This was the time when Origen, a youth of seventeen, tried to share with his father, Leonides, the martyr's crown, while death, as the result of sufferings undergone in confession, was reserved for him fifty years later in the persecution under Decius. Many writings of Tertullian bear witness of the persecution of his own time, respecting which he says: "You crucify and impale Christians; you tear open their sides with hooks; we lay down our necks; we are driven before wild beasts; we are burnt in fires; we are banished into islands."[192]

Again, we pa.s.s thirty years, in which, while emperors hold their hands, yet individual Christians suffer under the law which proscribes their religion in general, and then we come to a seventh persecution of great severity under the Emperor Maximinus, which lasts for three years. After another interval of ten years we reach the great persecution of Decius, the eighth in number, which aims with decision at the general destruction of the Christian clergy and people.

The ten years which commence with the reign of Decius contain also two general persecutions under the Emperors Gallus and Valeria.n.u.s. It is in this period that three Popes, Fabian, Lucius, and Stephen, Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, and Laurence, Deacon at Rome, are crowned with martyrdom. The extant letters of Cyprian and Dionysius of Alexandria bear witness to the wide extent of suffering inflicted upon all cla.s.ses.

Upon this succeeds the longest period of rest which occurs during the three centuries, and is terminated by the persecution commenced in the year 303 by Diocletian, which is likewise the longest, and also the most universal, and the most severe of all.

No human record preserves the names or a.s.signs the numbers of all those who sacrificed their lives for the sake of their Master in these ten persecutions, and in the intervals of comparative peace which lay between them; in all of which it needed but the execution of the empire's existing laws to imperil any Christian life. A persecution meant that the sovereign power called upon the several governors of provinces and magistrates in cities to execute the law.

Thus the period from the Crucifixion in the year 29, to the Edict of Toleration in 313, a s.p.a.ce of 284 years, bears one character. It is that of opposition by the great world-empire to the free propagation of the religion of Christ. Not only is every human motive which can have force upon the mind of man set against this propagation, but at constantly recurring times men and women and children give up the joys of home, the security of civilised life, wealth, peace, social happiness, in order to maintain and profess their belief in a crucified man as Son of G.o.d and Saviour of the world. To this end a great mult.i.tude during ten generations sacrifice life itself, and that often not by simple death, but under torments the most severe and prolonged which the ingenuity of savage enemies can invent.

Martyrdom was the ripe fruit of the Christian mind carried to its highest degree of excellence; the imitation of a crucified Lord in finished perfection. The martyr expressed in his own soul and body the truth uttered concerning his Lord, that "though He was a Son, yet learnt He obedience through the things that He suffered." The martyrs were the choice soldiers and champions of the great army of faith which arose upon the earth between Augustus and Constantine. It was by the sufferings of these three hundred years that the Church won, over against the persistent enmity of the Civil Power, the inestimable right of liberty in her faith, her wors.h.i.+p, and her government.

But how did the army itself arise of which the martyrs were the champions? When I attempt to collect in one view the history of these first three centuries, what I find most wonderful is, not that they who believed in a crucified Head were ready as His members to suffer in and for Him, but that men and women of the most various nations, characters, and ranks, came to accept a crucified Head. Martyrdom is the outcome of a perfect faith-but the faith itself, whence was it, and how came it? Hear the Apostle who laboured more abundantly than all others describe his own work: "Christ sent me to preach the Gospel, not in wisdom of speech, lest the cross of Christ should be made void. For the word of the cross to them indeed that perish is foolishness, but to them that are saved, that is to us, it is the power of G.o.d. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; and the prudence of the prudent I will reject. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world?

Hath not G.o.d made foolish the wisdom of this world? For seeing that in the wisdom of G.o.d the world by wisdom knew not G.o.d, it pleased G.o.d by the foolishness of our preaching to save them that believe. For both the Jews require signs, and the Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews indeed a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness, but unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of G.o.d and the wisdom of G.o.d. For the foolishness of G.o.d is wiser than men, and the weakness of G.o.d is stronger than men. For see your vocation, brethren, that there are not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many n.o.ble; but the foolish things of the world hath G.o.d chosen, that He may confound the wise, and the weak things of the world hath G.o.d chosen that He may confound the strong. And the base things of the world and the things that are contemptible hath G.o.d chosen, and things that are not that He might bring to nought things that are: that no flesh should glory in His sight. But of Him are you in Christ Jesus, who of G.o.d is made unto us wisdom and justice, and sanctification and redemption, that, as it is written, he that glorieth may glory in the Lord. And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not in loftiness of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of Christ. For I judged not myself to know anything among you, but Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling; and my speech and my preaching was not in the persuasive words of human wisdom, but in showing of the spirit and of power; that your faith might not stand on the wisdom of men, but on the power of G.o.d. Howbeit we speak wisdom among the perfect, yet not the wisdom of this world, neither of the princes of this world, that come to nought: but we speak the wisdom of G.o.d in a mystery, a wisdom which is hidden, which G.o.d ordained before the world, unto our glory: which none of the princes of this world knew, for if they had known it, they would never have crucified the Lord of Glory. But as it is written, That eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man what things G.o.d hath prepared for them that love Him. But to us G.o.d hath revealed them by His Spirit."[193]

Thus St. Paul wrote to some of his early converts about the year 50. The records which would have described by a continuous and detailed history the labours of the Apostles and their successors in the two centuries and a half which followed these words, have almost entirely perished. Their result subsists in the conversion of the Roman world, and the recognition of the kingdom of Christ by the kingdom of Caesar. These words describe the process. We have no more to say than this, and no less. The Church has not to show in all this period great and renowned men among her members; she has not to show men distinguished for their science; she has not to show men who made themselves of mark in public life, who had wealth, or influential connections, or anything which makes power according to the natural const.i.tution of the world.[194] Even her great writers were not yet come; of those whose writings have come down to us, Tertullian and Origen were her sole men of genius. Among those who sat in the chair of Peter, there had as yet arisen no one such as the great Leo, whose word was equal to the power which he swayed. Her schools of theology scarcely existed; no golden tongue among her preachers had yet spoken "with lips of flame;" no heathen rhetorician, converted in the middle of life, had become the great doctor for future ages, a fountain at once of philosophy and theology. She knew and she preached nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified, and the effect was that no such contrast exists in all history as that supplied by the weakness of that company, the number of whose names was about 120, who met to elect a successor to the traitor apostle, and the grandeur of that body represented by the 318 Fathers at Nicaea, on whom the majesty of the Roman people waited in the person of Constantine. For behind those Fathers was the Christian people, converts of every race, from the haughtiest patrician of Cornelian blood to the humblest slave of Egypt, who had heard and obeyed the call to believe on Jesus Christ and Him crucified. There had been ten generations of youths and maidens who had offered to Him the very flower of human beauty and superhuman purity; mothers who had surrendered their children, husbands who had lost both wives and children, bishops maimed, or one-eyed, for the love of Christ, who had laboured in mines, a host of missionaries who had been treated as "the offscourings of the world," all for the sake of that Crucified One, who was ever before their eyes, and in their hearts; to whom they were joined by suffering with Him, and who promised them, in recompense for those sufferings, that which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive, but G.o.d had revealed by His Spirit.

For no greater change can be conceived for man to accept, than to pa.s.s from the life which a Pomponia Graecina or a Callista would lead in her Roman or her Grecian home, into the life of a Lucina burying martyred apostles, or the death of a Callista, in a dungeon of the third century; between the prosperous Caecilius in the midst of the wealth and luxury of Carthage, and the Cyprian who, after ten years of apostolic labour, uttered his _Deo gratias_ upon the Propraetor's sentence of death. Nor must we take only as samples those who were conspicuous for their work as Christians, even though it were accompanied by sufferings. We must take rather the staple of the common Christian life in its opposition to the discarded heathendom-the life of charity, of poverty, of chast.i.ty pursued by those of humblest position, over against the hatred, the avarice, the impurity out of which they came. The acceptance of such a law as the Christian law, founded upon such a belief as the Christian belief, is in any one case the result of a power quite beyond man, whatever his learning, eloquence, or persuasiveness from any natural gift may be, to bring about in his fellow-men. What, then, was that power shown in instances innumerable-shown when the acceptance of Christ crucified as the exemplar of life involved the risk of losing life, and all which made life naturally sweet or even tolerable, involved a living crucifixion?

The state of virginity, confession of any kind, and finally martyrdom, made the highest point of this life; but we must look upon the great ma.s.s of the Christian people as that which produced such fruits. The Martyrs, whatever their number, were no doubt relatively few in comparison with those who were not martyred. They were "the first-fruits of the thres.h.i.+ng-floor which the world would offer to the Redeemer;" how numerous must have been the grains of wheat out of which they were chosen? They were "the new leaven and the salt of humanity, which by the offering of their bodies and the pouring out their blood would sanctify the whole ma.s.s;"[195] but how great was the spiritual power which had descended into that ma.s.s? Surely Chrysostom had good reason when he selected the creation of the Christian people as that one miracle of Christ which no heathen gainsayer could deny.

What we find, then, as an ultimate fact in the historical conversion of the heathen world, is this internal action of the Holy Spirit in the preaching of the Apostles and their successors, by which the Christian people was formed in spite of the world around them; in spite of seductions from the pride of life, the desire of the eyes, the terrible empire of sensuous beauty; in spite of terrors which involved every suffering as well us every privation of lawful enjoyments.

All that vast development of doctrine, wors.h.i.+p, and government, which we have been endeavouring to trace out, has been from first to last originated, accompanied, and maintained by the action of the Holy Spirit upon each individual heart. Here at last is the power which we seek in vain to detect as lodged in any natural gift possessed by the preacher.

The heart is that sanctuary of liberty which no human power can invade: the heart's free acceptance of the belief offered to it is the result which no human power can win. If the Church's one Episcopate has thrown the net of Christ over the whole empire, and into regions more or less barbarous beyond it; if the Church's one doctrine has grown out into palpable form, scattering the G.o.ds of heathendom with the demons who lurked under their masks, and uplifting the strong personality of the divine Triad, in spite of pantheism, to universal adoration; if the Church's one wors.h.i.+p has come forth from the catacombs into the light of day, and the celebration over a martyr's body in an obscure vault to a celebration in lordly temple, rich with marble and precious stones; the one adequate cause for all is the manifestation of spirit and of power, the cross set up in the heart of man before it was applied to living members of the body: it is a process inexplicable save upon the supposition of divine power. That world which by wisdom knew not G.o.d, which philosophy had failed to convert, was converted in a great proportion of its subjects by the foolishness of G.o.d which was wiser than men, and the weakness of G.o.d which was stronger than men. A crucified G.o.d was the palmary test of this foolishness and weakness; the army of martyrs was its witness; the empire's recognition of the Church's freedom in doctrine, wors.h.i.+p, and government, was the victory which it gained.

Those who lived in the midst of this great movement fully recognised its wonderful character. Thus Clement of Alexandria, in his address to the Greeks, exclaimed: "The power of G.o.d casting its beams upon the earth with incredible rapidity and most attractive kindness has filled everything with the seed of salvation. For the Lord could not have brought about so great a work in so small a time without a divine goodwill and affection; despicable in appearance, wors.h.i.+pped in deed; purifier, Saviour, propitious, the Divine Word, the most manifest truly G.o.d, equal to the Lord of the universe, for He was His Son, 'and the Word was in G.o.d.' Nor was He disbelieved when first announced; nor when He took upon Him human form and fas.h.i.+oned Himself after the flesh, and acted the saving drama of the manhood, was He ignored. For He was a lawful combatant and a fellow-combatant with His creature; and when swifter than the sun He dawned upon us at the Father's will. He was communicated most speedily to all men, and with the utmost ease caused G.o.d to s.h.i.+ne upon us; showing whence He was Himself, and who He was by what He taught and by what He did; bearer to us of the treaty and the reconciliation, our Saviour Word, a fountain of life and of peace, poured over the whole face of the earth; through whom the world has become a very sea of blessings."[196]

No less were eye-witnesses struck with the impotence of philosophy in comparison with the doctrine of the cross. Thus the same Clement in another place says: "The heaven-taught wisdom is that alone which is with us, from which spring all the sources of wisdom; such, I mean, as lead to the truth. For certainly when the Lord who was to teach us came to men He had innumerable pointers of His way, to announce, to prepare, to precede Him, from the very foundation of the world. They pre-signified Him by action and by word, they prophesied His coming, the where and the when, and His signs. From afar off the Law provides for Him, and Prophecy; then His precursor declares His presence; then the heralds teaching the power of His appearance signify it. [But philosophers[197]] pleased their own only, and not all these, for Socrates pleased Plato, and Plato Xenocrates, and Aristotle Theophrastus, and Zeno Cleanthes. They persuaded those only who embraced their own sect. But the word of our Teacher did not remain in Judea alone, as philosophy did in Greece. It was poured over the whole world, persuading from nation to nation, village to village, city to city, whole houses of Greeks at once and of barbarians, and each one of the hearers by himself, and bringing over to the truth not a few of the philosophers themselves. Now, as for the Greek philosophy, if any one in authority offers it hindrance, forthwith it disappears; whereas our doctrine, from its very first announcement, has been thwarted by kings and tyrants, and magistrates, and governors, with all their satellites and men innumerable, who make war upon us, and do their utmost to cut us off. For all which it flourishes the more. For it does not die out like a human doctrine, nor fade away like a weak gift, since no gift of G.o.d is weak; but it continues unhindered, having the prophecy that it shall be persecuted to the end."[198]

If such was the marvel of conversion, viewed in itself, it is well also to listen to another eye-witness of the consequences which this change of life brought with it. The heathen objected that Christians ought to be thankful for the sufferings which they wanted. Tertullian replied:

"Well, it is quite true that it is our desire to suffer, but it is in the way that the soldier longs for war. No one indeed suffers willingly, since suffering necessarily implies fear and danger. Yet the man who objected to the conflict both fights with all his strength, and, when victorious, he rejoices in the battle, because he reaps from it glory and spoil. It is our battle to be summoned to your tribunals, that there, under fear of execution, we may battle for the truth. But the day is won when the object of the struggle is gained. This victory of ours gives us the glory of pleasing G.o.d, and the spoil of life eternal. But we are overcome-yes, when we have obtained our wishes. Therefore we conquer in dying: we go forth victorious at the very time we are subdued. Call us, if you like, Sarmenticii and Semaxii, because, bound to a half-axle stake, we are burnt in a circle heap of f.a.ggots. This is the att.i.tude in which we conquer; it is our victory-robe; it is for us a sort of triumphal car. Naturally enough, therefore, we do not please the vanquished; on account of this, indeed, we are counted a desperate, reckless race. But the very desperation and recklessness you object to in us, among yourselves lift high the standard of virtue in the cause of glory and of fame. Mucius, of his own will, left his right hand on the altar: what sublimity of mind! Empedocles gave his whole body at Catana to the fires of Etna: what mental resolution! A certain foundress of Carthage gave herself away in second marriage to the funeral pile: what a n.o.ble witness of her chast.i.ty! Regulus, not wis.h.i.+ng that his one life should count for the lives of many enemies, endured these crosses over all his frame: how brave a man, even in captivity a conqueror!

Anaxarchus, when he was being beaten to death by a barley-pounder, cried out, 'Beat on, beat on at the case of Anaxarchus; no stroke falls on Anaxarchus himself.' O magnanimity of the philosopher, who even in such an end had jokes upon his lips! I omit all reference to those who with their own sword, or with any other milder form of death, have bargained for glory. Nay, see how even torture-contests are crowned by you. The Athenian courtezan, having wearied out the executioner, at last bit off her tongue, and spat it in the face of the raging tyrant, that she might at the same time spit away her power of speech, nor be longer able to confess her fellow-conspirators, if, even overcome, that might be her inclination. Zeno, the eleatic, when he was asked by Dionysius what good philosophy did, on answering that it gave contempt of death, was, all unquailing, given over to the tyrant's scourge, and sealed his opinion even to the death. We all know how the Spartan lash, applied with the utmost cruelty, under the very eyes of friends encouraging, confers on those who bear it honour proportionate to the blood which the young man shed. O glory legitimate because it is human, for whose sake it is reckoned neither reckless fool-hardiness nor desperate obstinacy to despise death itself and all sorts of savage treatment, for whose sake you may, for your native place, for the empire, for friends.h.i.+p, endure all you are forbidden to do for G.o.d! And you cast statues in honour of persons such as these, and you put inscriptions upon images, and cut out epitaphs on tombs, that their names may never perish. In so far as you can by your monuments, you yourselves afford a sort of resurrection to the dead. Yet he who expects the true resurrection from G.o.d is insane if for G.o.d he suffers. But go zealously on, good presidents; you will stand higher with the people if you sacrifice the Christians at their wish.