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1 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. I 
 
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ARNOLD PRIZE ESSAY, 
 1861. 
 
ARNOLD PRIZE ESSAY, 1861. 
 
 THE CHKISTIANS IN ROME, 
 
 DURING 
 
 THE THREE FIRST CENTURIES. 
 
 BY 
 
 si. 
 
 GEORGE HERBERT MOBERLY, B.A 
 
 SCHOLAR OF CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, OXFORD. 
 
 Victi victorious leges dederunt." Seneca. 
 
 OXFORD, 
 
 • HENRY HAMMANS; 
 
 WHITTAKER AND CO, LONDON. 
 1861. 
 
u 
 
 v 
 
 « N ^ 
 
THE 
 
 CHRISTIANS IN ROME, 
 
 DURING THE THREE FIRST CENTURIES. 
 
 It has been said, that to leave the authority of 
 Scripture for that of tradition, is like leaving the 
 summit of a high hill where all is brilliant sun- 
 shine, and descending its side in the midst of 
 impenetrable mist. In the enquiry which is now 
 proposed, the mist gathers closely round our 
 steps from the first ; we have almost nothing of 
 the bright sunlight of Scripture to guide us ; we 
 are plunged into sudden darkness at the abrupt 
 end of the history of the Acts : and it unfolds 
 itself but gradually and scantily, so as to shew 
 but little of the features of the landscape for 
 the first three hundred years. The very found- 
 ation of the Roman Church is a matter of 
 question. 
 
 No certain information is given us 
 
 FIRST • 
 
 in Scripture either of the time when, or 
 century. r ' 
 
 ot the persons by whom, that Church 
 
 was founded. St. Paul writes an Epistle to the 
 
 Church at Rome ; he tells them that their faith 
 
was already spoken of through the whole world a ; 
 1 brethren' come to meet him when he is being 
 brought prisoner to Rome b : these are the only 
 direct references we have to the subject. It 
 is implied in these expressions, that a Church 
 of unusual strength and vigour had been growing 
 up in Rome, previously to the time at which they 
 were written : but no direct information is given 
 us by Scripture as to its foundation, progress, or 
 extent. 
 
 But on one point all, even those who adopt the 
 most opposite theories upon this question, seem 
 to be agreed : that it was through the Jews that 
 Christianity first crept into Rome ; through the 
 permission of Jewish rites and customs, that the 
 introduction of Christian rites and customs was 
 tolerated. That there was a large and flourishing 
 colony of Jews at Rome under the early emperors, 
 brought there probably by Pompey after his 
 eastern war, is beyond a doubt. So large was it, 
 that the Transtiberine suburb, a ' monstrous cantle' 
 of the city, was assigned them as a Ghetto — the 
 Jews' quarter. No consistent policy was uniformly 
 pursued with regard to them by the early em- 
 perors. Augustus, it seems, favoured them ; for 
 Josephus speaks of an embassy of Jews to Rome, 
 which was supported by above 8,000 of the 
 same nation resident there d : and the same em- 
 
 a Rom. i. 8. b Acts xxviii. 15. 
 
 c Philo, leg. ad Caium, p. 1014. ttjv nepav tov Tiftepecos irordpov, 
 jj.eydX.Tjv rrjs t Pd)p.r)s diTOTopr)v % KaT(ixop.evr)v npos *Iovdaia>v. 
 d Josephus, Antiq xvii. 11. 
 
peror issued a rescript to the Asiatic cities for the 
 protection of the Jews, and the security of theii 
 religious worship 6 ; which therefore, it would 
 seem, must have been well protected in his capital. 
 But Tiberius drove them from Rome f , and Caligula 
 ill-treated and insulted them g . Nevertheless, the 
 very fact of such ill-treatment leads us to expect an 
 increasingly influential population ; " a nation often 
 chastised, yet largely increasing V which are the 
 terms in which Dio Cassius speaks of them. The 
 same writer speaks of their being perfectly free and 
 open in the exercise of their religion in the time 
 of Pompey 1 ; and says, that in the time of Claudius 
 they were forbidden by an edict to assemble 
 together, though this was the only one of their 
 peculiar customs which was put down k ; language 
 which can hardly mean less than that the custom of 
 worshipping openly in synagogues, which had begun 
 in the time of Pompey, was still in use in that of 
 Claudius. His edict may have been the imme- 
 diate cause of what followed — a tumult, " at the 
 instigation of Chrestus 1 ," the result of which was 
 
 e Milmaris Early Christianity, vol. ii. p. 25. 
 f Sueton, Tib. 36. 
 g Euseb. ii. 5, 6. 
 
 h yevos .... KoXova6ev fiev noWatas, av£r/9ev be iiri irketdTov. 
 Dio Cass, xxxvii. 17. 
 ' D. C. xxxvii. 1. 
 
 k tc5 drj irarpico vofxco /3to) xP a> } x * V0VS i^Xevaf fxr} <TVvadpoi.£e(rdai. 
 
 D. CAx. 6. 
 
 1 Judaeos, impulsore Chresto assidue turaultuantes, Roma 
 expulit." Suet. Claud. 25. 
 
 B 2 
 
that the Jews were again banished from Rome. 
 This took place probably in A.D. 54 m . 
 
 By this decree, as is well known, Aquila and 
 Priscilla were expelled from Rome, and took 
 refuge, with many others probably, at Corinth, 
 where they fell in with St. Paul", who came 
 southward to that city just about the same time. 
 At the end of a year and six months, when they 
 were left by him at Ephesus as he was sailing to 
 Antioch, we find them competent to instruct 
 others more perfectly in the way of God . When 
 Paul writes his Epistle to the Romans, probably 
 four years after his arrival at Corinth, he greets 
 Aquila and Priscilla first among the friends of 
 whose names his last chapter is full — calls them 
 "his helpers in Christ Jesus p " — salutes "the 
 church which is in their house q :" thus shewing 
 clearly that they had not kept their light to 
 themselves. 
 
 This then (A.D. 58.) is the first date at which 
 we have documentary evidence that the Gospel 
 was taught in Rome ; and it seems likely that it 
 was upon the death of Claudius (which happened 
 the year before this) that the rigour of the late 
 edict was relaxed, and that the Jews crept back 
 to their old quarters. But we do not certainly 
 know that this was the first date of the intro- 
 duction of Christianity into Rome. Many are 
 of opinion that Christians had found their way 
 
 m Hemsens " Paulns" p. 405. 
 
 n Acts xviii. 1,2. ° Acts xviii. 26. 
 
 p Rom. xvi. 3. ,J Rom. xvi. 5. 
 
thither long before, and that Aquila and Priscilla 
 were already converted before they met with 
 Paul. Bertholdt even supposes that the Gospel 
 had reached Rome during the lifetime of Christ : 
 others say that the " strangers of Rome/' who 
 were present at the great Pentecost 1 , must have 
 carried it back to their native country. But this 
 is mere unauthenticated conjecture : the only 
 passage which may possibly be evidence for a 
 prior date is that of Suetonius already quoted, — 
 that the Jews raised a tumult at Rome " at the 
 instigation of Chrestus 8 "; which may be an allegory 
 pointing to a dispute about Christianity which 
 caused the expulsion of the Jews by Claudius. 
 
 It is impossible to determine this question with 
 certainty. When we examine the eighteenth 
 chapter of the Acts, to see if it is probable that 
 Aquila and Priscilla should have been already 
 Christians upon their arrival at Corinth, the 
 Sacred text does not help us materially. All we 
 can say is, that it is expressly said to have been 
 "because he was of the same craft*,'' that Paul 
 joined himself to them, not because they were 
 fellow-Christians : and that it is more likely that 
 they should have been two of the Jews whom he 
 " persuaded V' than that such an important ad- 
 ditional motive for his abiding with them should 
 have been omitted, had it existed. It is clear 
 that, if the Gospel had been taught among the 
 Jews at Rome before this date, it could not have 
 
 r Acts ii. 10. s Suet. CI. 25. 
 
 f Acts xviii. 3. u Acts xviii. 4. 
 
been taught by an Apostle, or even by any dis- 
 tinguished convert to Christianity : for Paul, in 
 his Epistle, lays claim to not building " on another 
 man's foundation V On the other hand, if the 
 Roman Church had been proximately founded 
 by himself, that fact would not only explain his 
 use of this expression, but also would be a good 
 reason for his writing to the Romans — the only 
 Epistle extant to a Church he had never yet 
 seen — and expressing such an ardent desire to 
 come among them. 
 
 While therefore it must be allowed to be possible 
 that the Church of Rome was founded by Jews 
 at an earlier date than 54, the probability seems 
 to lie the other way. But on whichever side of 
 the question the truth lies, it is clear that it was 
 among the Jews, in the Transtiberine quarter of 
 the city, that Christianity first made its appearance 
 in Rome. The greater number of the Christians 
 would naturally be Jews, but not all : for some 
 Gentiles appear to have been converts from 
 the first. The earliest document which throws 
 light on Christian Rome is Paul's Epistle to the 
 Romans, written the very year after the death of 
 Claudius. This, though it is mainly addressed 
 to Jews, (many of its arguments being such as 
 Gentiles could hardly have understood,) is said 
 at the opening to be addressed to all the saints 
 in Rome x , Jews and Gentiles; and among the 
 twenty-nine names of persons greeted at the end, 
 
 v Rom. xv. 20. x Rom. i. 7. 
 
flve y are derived from the Latin, not from the 
 Greek, and therefore may fairly be assumed to 
 represent Gentile natives. But the proportion of 
 the Jews being so great, we can well understand 
 how Jewish usages and practices came from the 
 first to have a hold over the Roman Church : 
 how it required all St. Paul's most forcible lan- 
 guage to make the Jews among the believers 
 cease from despising their Gentile brethren : and 
 how, even after Paul's death, there still should 
 have lingered a party in the Church who JudaizeA, 
 that is, who strove to bring the Church which the 
 Gospel had freed again under the yoke of the 
 Jewish law. 
 
 Such was the state of the Church when Paul 
 came to Rome, not as a free visitor, but as a 
 captive. If we remember how small, as yet, was 
 the number of Christians compared with that of 
 the Jews, it will not surprise us to find that the 
 Jews professed ignorance of him and his religion z , 
 and attended in great numbers a meeting to hear 
 him " expound the kingdom of God" in his hired 
 house, where he was allowed to remain by the 
 kindness of Burrus, the praetorian praefect. In the 
 two years during which he lived there he begot 
 many children in the faith, and those of all ranks ; 
 from those of Caesar's household to the poor slave 
 Onesimus. But his chief successes were among 
 the army : the fact and the cause of his imprison- 
 ment, he himself says, were well known in the 
 
 y Junia, Urbanus, Rufus, Julia, Lucius. 
 z Acts xxviii. 21, 22. 
 
8 
 
 praetor ium % a barrack attached to the palace on 
 the Palatine ; probably the often-changed soldier, 
 whom the harshness of Burrus's successor caused 
 to be chained to him, belonged to the praetorian 
 guard ; and centurions had always been forward 
 in the reception of Christianity. When he is 
 liberated at the end of the two years, we lose 
 sight of him for a time. 
 
 His converts may have done much to restore 
 the balance between the Gentile and Jewish 
 portions of the Church. Anyhow, it is probable 
 that they were now more equally proportioned 
 than before : and, it seems, at bitter strife between 
 themselves. It is singular that while the Church 
 has scarcely been founded at Rome, when it must 
 have wanted all its strength to resist those outside, 
 we should find evident traces of two parties in it 
 mutually opposed to each other. But the book 
 which purports to be by Clement, the third bishop 
 of Rome, and which really seems to be the work 
 of some Judaizing Christian in Rome, reveals to 
 us an extent of strife in the infant Church which 
 would hardly have been believed. It is a defence 
 of St. Peter against Paul — of Judaic against Anti- 
 judaic Christianity ; and though unnamed, it is at 
 Paul evidently that the writer directs his censure 
 and sarcastic inuendoes all through the work. 
 
 The mention of St. Peter leads to another topic 
 of great difficulty : the determining of the measure 
 of his relation with the Roman Church. It is 
 well known, that successive church-historians grow 
 
 a Phil. i. 13. (with Alford's note.) 
 
9 
 
 in their certainty about his movements, till Jerome 
 in the fourth century assigns twenty-five years for 
 his bishopric of Rome. These accounts, if they 
 stood alone, would not be of much weight, since 
 it is evident that each depends upon and amplifies 
 the accounts of his predecessors ; even Eusebius's 
 testimony must here be received with more caution 
 than usual, as he wrote after Constantine had 
 established Christianity as the religion of the 
 State, when it would obviously be to the credit of 
 Roman ecclesiastical antiquity to have lengthened 
 St. Peter's stay at Rome as much as possible. 
 It is more difficult to go against the consentient 
 testimony of the universal Church, which from all 
 quarters talks of the Roman see as " cathedra 
 Petri," "successorium Petri," as early as the third 
 century. Yet we have every historical probability 
 bearing the other way. We find him still at 
 Jerusalem till after the Council of Jerusalem b , 
 which is never placed before A.D. 48, and by the 
 best authorities not till A. D. 53. Thus disappear 
 Jerome's twenty-five years. He is not mentioned 
 even for a greeting in St. Paul's Epistle [A.D. 58], 
 which he surely would have been had he been 
 there. After this it is impossible to speak with 
 confidence : but we know that at the Council of 
 Jerusalem his share in the work was agreed to be 
 to go to the circumcision c ; so it seems strange 
 that he should have selected Rome, the capital of 
 the Gentile world, for his head quarters. His first 
 Epistle contains a greeting from " her of Babylon" 
 
 f Acts xv. 7. c Gal. ii. 9, 7. 
 
10 
 
 to the Church of Asia d : and it seems hardly 
 straightforward to suppose, with Eusebius, that he 
 was speaking there metaphorically of Rome as the 
 great whore of the west : especially as we do read 
 of great colonies of Jews in Babylonia. It may 
 be thought, that the existence of a party who said 
 they were of Peter, proves that he had at least 
 visited Rome in person : but this it is not necessary 
 to suppose. There were three parties in like 
 manner at Corinth when Paul addressed his first 
 Epistle to the Corinthians, — Petrine, Pauline, and 
 Apolline e , — yet no one supposes from this that 
 Peter had been at Corinth. Rather the mutual 
 opposition of the Judaizing and Hellenizing 
 Christians in Rome goes against the supposition 
 of the presence there at one time of both Peter 
 and Paul. But all f concur in placing his death at 
 Rome, with that of Paul, in the Neronian perse- 
 cution ; and here there is no adverse testimony. 
 And we shall understand how Peter, captured at 
 a distance, should be brought to Rome for con- 
 demnation and execution, even though he was 
 no Roman citizen as Paul was, when we read that 
 this was exactly the case of Ignatius of Smyrna, 
 also no Roman citizen g , in the second century. 
 May not the tradition of the Church, which 
 represents him as having exercised the episcopal 
 
 d 1 Pet. v. 13. e 1 Cor. i. J 2. 
 
 f The testimonies to St. Peters death at Rome are three : 
 IrencBus adv. Hser. — Dionysius of Corinth apud Eusebium — 
 and Epiphaniw. 
 
 s Blunfs Three First Centuries, p. 69. 
 
11 
 
 authority in Rome for some years before his 
 death, have arisen from the notorious fact that 
 the Roman Church originally was Jewish ? Peter 
 was the Apostle of the circumcision, known to be 
 especially directing his efforts to the conversion 
 of Jews, and the head as it were of the Jewish 
 portion of the Church ; so that it seems at least 
 possible that the name of " Petrine" may have 
 originally attached to it from this, and been 
 asserted with greater vehemence as the strife 
 grew more angry between this and the Gentile 
 or Pauline party : till in a few generations it was 
 forgotten that Peter had not actually been among 
 the Romans, especially as he suffered and left his 
 bones among them. 
 
 The suggestion that the story of Peter's residence 
 at Rome only points to the existence of a Petrine 
 party in the Church, naturally leads to another 
 suggestion. Eusebius says, that Peter, " the great 
 champion of the Apostles," " like God's noble 
 general, wearing God's armour of proof 11 ," came 
 to Rome to support the Church against the wiles 
 of Simon the Magician, his old foe. The story of 
 Justin's confirmatory of this, that he had seen an 
 altar to " Simon Sanctus" in Rome, has been 
 sufficiently disproved lately by a discovery in the 
 same spot of an inscription to the Sabine god 
 " Semo Sancus 1 ." Notwithstanding this, Simon 
 
 h Euseb. ii. 14. top mprepov kcu /xeyav reov airoo-Tokasv. old tis 
 yevvalos Qeov arparrjyos, rots delois ottXois <fipa£dp.epos. 
 
 1 Robertsons Church Hist. vol. i. p. 41. n. Milmaris Early 
 Christianity, vol. ii. p. 98. 
 
12 
 
 may have been at Rome: but, without judging 
 the story of Eusebius to be mythical, the Roman 
 tradition will be sufficiently accounted for, if we 
 suppose that Orientalism, of which Simon Magus 
 was the popular embodiment, had taken root in 
 Rome before Christianity. The insidious mixture 
 of Orientalism with Christianity, and the struggles 
 of the Church to purify herself from the heresies, 
 which all arose from the East, or at least from the 
 speculative fancies which the East infused into the 
 West, will form a distinct branch of the Church's 
 history during these three centuries : and will be 
 found to exercise an influence upon her position 
 at the present day, at least as important as her 
 long and fierce struggles with the Paganism of the 
 old Roman empire, or with the Judaism which 
 fought against her from the first, and perhaps, 
 while its opposition lasted, was the bitterest foe 
 of all the three. 
 
 For let it be remembered, that besides the Jews 
 who had been converted, and who therefore 
 formed the staple of the Judaizing Christians, 
 there was another body of Jews, the original 
 Jews of Rome : who far outnumbered these 
 others, who would hold no communication with 
 them, but who hated the Church with a hatred 
 probably unparalleled in the religious animosities 
 of the world. Before it reached Europe, the 
 Asiatic Jews had found Christianity growing up 
 amongst them, and had strenuously opposed it : 
 the charge which sealed the fate of Stephen was 
 that he meditated innovations in the Jewish 
 
13 
 
 customs 1 '; through all the cities of Asia Minor 
 the fiercest opponents of the Gospel were Jews, 
 who were filled with envy, particularly it is pro- 
 bable at seeing many of their own number con- 
 verted, and who were always the first to resort to 
 violence. But in Asia the chief cause was wanting 
 which in Rome embittered the Jews against the 
 Christians. As at Corinth, Gallio cared not to 
 distinguish between the two sects of an Eastern 
 religion, declaring it a matter of words and names 
 and of the Jewish law 1 ; so in Rome, the law 
 courts looked on Christianity merely as a sect 
 of Judaism, and could not discriminate between 
 them, because of their contempt for both. The 
 peculiar customs of the Christians are ascribed to 
 Jews by Arrian m ; Seneca uses language to recount 
 the spread of Judaism which can hardly be under- 
 stood of anything but Christianity . Thus the 
 Jews, who had found themselves and their quarter 
 to be the first where Christianity effected a lodg- 
 ment in Rome, were forced to become its most 
 reluctant protectors. They had nursed a religion 
 against their will, which they hated ; they still 
 
 k Acts vi. 13, 14. l Acts xviii. 12—17. 
 
 m Arrian ii. 9. quoted by Lipsius, notes to Suet. Claud. 25. 
 
 orav Tiva iirajK^OTepl^ovTa Xboajxev, elcoOa/jLev Xeyetv, ovk icrTiv 'lovdaios, 
 aXX' v7TOKplv€Tai m orav §' avakdfir] to nddos to tov fiefiafifitpov Kai 
 yprjlievov, tot€ Kai €Ctt\ rco 6vt\ Kai KaXeWai 'iovSaios. 
 
 n Seneca, lib. * contra superstitiones,' quoted by Augustine, 
 de Civ. Dei, vi. 4. De illis sane Judaeis conloquendere, ait 
 " Cura interim usque eo sceleratissimaB gentis consuetudo 
 convaluit, ut per omnes jam tenas recepta sit : victi victoribus 
 leges dedecunt." 
 
14 
 
 hated, but could not avoid screening it. It must 
 have seemed to them a peculiar curse, that the 
 Roman tribunals persisted in confounding with 
 them their bitterest foes, with whom they must 
 constantly have been asserting their diversity. 
 But they could not shake themselves free of the 
 parasite which had grown upon them, and which 
 was soon to tower independently, leaving them 
 barren and withering. 
 
 At first, this systematic indifference of the 
 authorities proved a safeguard to the Church ; 
 for the Jews, though at times ill-treated, were 
 hardly less despised than the Christians. But by 
 the time of Nero's persecution, we find the position 
 of the two religions remarkably altered. The 
 Christians are marked men : we hear of no ill- 
 treatment of the Jews. Heathen writers so far 
 recognise their separate identity as to say, that 
 a race of people, addicted to the superstition 
 called Christian, were afflicted with unheard of 
 tortures. What was it then which brought Chris- 
 tianity into such distinct prominence, as to make 
 it the mark of a persecution from which the Jews 
 were safe ? 
 
 This has been a perplexing question to many 
 writers : and some have gone far to seek a theory, 
 which should account for Nero's thus suddenly 
 singling out with such precision the Christians 
 from among the Jews to suffer for their Chris- 
 tianity. Milman conjectures that it was the 
 
 Milman s Early Christianity, vol. ii p. 36 Latin Chris- 
 tianity, vol. i. p. 26. 
 
15 
 
 gloomy predictions of the Christians concerning 
 the fire of the judgment day which brought them 
 into connnexion with the fire of Rome, and so 
 formed, according to Tacitus, Nero's excuse for the 
 cruelties which he delighted in exercising upon 
 them. Such words, no* doubt, may often have 
 been on a Christian's lips, and may have served to 
 fasten suspicion upon him, when all Rome was 
 eagerly and tremblingly inquiring for the incen- 
 diary. But there is one fact less uncertain than 
 this, which goes far to establish the cause of the 
 unerringness of Nero's persecution. The Jews, as 
 has been said, hated the Christians bitterly. The 
 vindictive assertion of unconquerable difference 
 on the part of the Jews must have been at least 
 as frequent as the occasions of confusion between 
 the two religions on the part of the Roman 
 government. The Jews must have looked for- 
 ward with revengeful hope to a time, if it ever 
 were in store for them, when they should have 
 possession of the ear of the authorities, and be 
 enabled to crush the rising Christian community. 
 Such an opportunity was afforded to them now. 
 Poppaea, Nero's mistress, strangely called a pious 
 woman by Josephus, espoused the Jewish cause : 
 Aliturus, a Jew by birth, was a favourite actor of 
 the emperor. It happened that at this time 
 Felix, the procurator of Judaea, had sent bound 
 from Jerusalem to Rome some Jewish priests, 
 upon a trivial charge. Josephus the historian, 
 then a young man of twenty-six, a personal friend 
 of theirs, came to Rome to plead their cause. 
 
16 
 
 IIu was introduced by Aliturus to Poppaea; and 
 having gained her ear, had gained the emperor's. 
 The priests were dismissed, and Josephus was 
 loaded with presents by Poppaea. From this 
 time, no doubt, the Jews were favoured at court : 
 and hence it should nof surprise us to hear of 
 the persecution of the Christians. Hence too 
 vanishes all surprise at the precision with which 
 the Christians were identified : the Jews must 
 have marked their principal opponents long since 
 for vengeance when the day of retribution came ; 
 and it seemed to have come at last. The de- 
 lighted vindictiveness which revelled in the 
 invention of new and horrible torments, may 
 not have been entirely Nero's wanton cruelty p . 
 
 In such a time the heads of the Church — 
 Peter and Paul — could not hope to escape : they 
 suffered together, on the same day, according to 
 the account given in Eusebius' 1 , But meanwhile, 
 if the Jews had had the principal share in exciting 
 this persecution, it was their last effort of revenge. 
 Poppaea died while it lasted (A.D. 65,) : Nero was 
 killed three years after : and in the year of con- 
 fusion which followed — which saw four successive 
 emperors on the throne — the Jews were lost sight 
 of; and with them the distinction between Chris- 
 tianity and Judaism, clearly seen while Jews were 
 its exponents, was lost sight of too. Equal con- 
 tempt was felt for both ; and this state of feeling 
 lasted until the destruction of Jerusalem, which 
 not only gave the final blow to the Jews as rivals 
 
 p Tacitus, Annals, xv. 44. <i Euseb ii. 25. 
 
17 
 
 to the Christians, by taking away the central point 
 round which Judaism had rallied : but also trans- 
 ferred the active hatred, which had been the 
 portion of the Christians in Nero's reign, to the 
 Jews. They were taxed severely and insultingly, 
 and ill-treated in every way at Rome. Nay, we 
 find that to be a Jew was a subject for perse- 
 cution ; for it was on a charge of impiety, coupled 
 with Jewish manners, that Flavius Clemens suf- 
 fered death at the hands of his cousin Domitian, 
 and that Domitilla his wife was banished r . Most 
 writers have supposed that such a strange accu- 
 sation can mean nothing but that they were 
 Christians : but it should be remembered, that 
 impiety was exactly what would be objected by a 
 Roman to a devout Jewish proselyte, as well as to 
 a Christian ; and that it was the Jewish nation, 
 not the Christian religion, which had been all 
 along the enemies of the Flavian house. Still we 
 are assured by Dio Cassius that many others suf- 
 fered, some death, some spoliation 8 , on the same 
 charges : and this may possibly include some 
 Christians as well as Jews. But when we find 
 that church-historians reckon this as a second 
 general persecution, we look in vain for more 
 instances than this doubtful one of loss of life ; 
 and are forced to think that they enforce the 
 parallel between the ten persecutions and the ten 
 plagues of Egypt too strongly. Nothing so general 
 
 r Dio Cassius, lxvii. 14. eyickrjfia dOeorrjTos — es ra ra>v 'lovSaiW 
 rj6r) i^OKeXKovres. 
 
 s lb. ol fiev cmeOavov, ol 8e rcov yovv ovct'kov eo~T€pr)6r)<rav. 
 
 C 
 
18 
 
 or so horrible can have happened as under Nero 
 without our having heard something of it, as we 
 hear of that, from profane sources ; they them- 
 selves allow that it lasted for a very short time* ; 
 and according to Tertullian, Domitian himself 
 coming to his senses — certainly his successor 
 Nerva" — reversed the sentences of banishment, 
 and prohibited all further accusations of Jewish 
 manners. 
 
 Thus we see that before the end of the first 
 century, within fifty years after the probable date 
 of the foundation of the Roman Church, one of 
 the three great enemies of the Church is power- 
 less to hurt her. Nero's persecution was a last 
 gigantic effort of the Jews to exterminate Chris- 
 tianity : though they employed for this end the 
 civil arm, over which they had temporary power, 
 just as they were forced to convict our Saviour at 
 a Roman tribunal before they could compass his 
 death. Immediately after this, by a strange 
 reverse, they sink with a change of dynasty from 
 counsellors into outcasts ; so that to be under a 
 suspicion of Jewish manners is to be open to 
 insult and persecution. But under neither dynasty 
 was Paganism, as such, fully awakened to grapple 
 with Christianity, as such : Nero persecuted the 
 Christian religion, to please the Jewish nation ; 
 
 1 Tertull. ap. Euseb. iii. 20. are e^cov r\ avveareais, ra^icrra 
 enavaaro, dvaKaXeadpevos ovs i£rj\a.Kei. 
 
 u Dio Cassius, lxviii. 1. Kai 6 Nepovas rods re Kpivofievovs eV 
 dcre/3eta d(prJK€, Kai tovs (pevyovras Karrjyaye' rois re drj aWocs our 
 do-f/3eias ovt 'lovdaiicov (Siov KaraiTiao-Qai Tipas (rvvex<npW ev - 
 
19 
 
 Domitian persecuted the Jewish nation, not the 
 Christian religion ; though, in the ignorance which 
 all Rome then shared with regard to the distinction 
 between them, one must often have been mistaken 
 for the other. 
 
 The history of the struggles of the 
 Church with external Judaism is thus 
 
 CENTURY. . it 
 
 over ; and now, as they diverged more 
 and more, the distinction between them grew 
 more and more marked, till in A. D. 138, on the 
 occasion of BarCochba's rebellion, the Romans, by 
 the foundation of a new colony i£lia on the site of 
 Jerusalem, and the exclusion of Jews from it 
 while Christians were admitted, forcibly shewed 
 their appreciation of the real difference between 
 them. The time was for ever past when a 
 Jew could be mistaken for a Christian ; and 
 though their hatred did not relax, they were 
 never again powerful enough to annoy the Church 
 effectually. 
 
 The same event which finally distinguished the 
 two religions, was a crisis which must have shaken 
 Judaism within the Church. Would the Jewish 
 Christians follow their nation or their religion? 
 Would they be excluded from MMa. as Jews, or 
 admitted as Christians ? The course taken by 
 the Christians of Judaea was the best they could 
 adopt : they elected a Gentile bishop, and returned 
 to Jerusalem, leaving some few dissentients at 
 Pella, now clearly marked as schismatics, under 
 the name of Ebionites. But not only in Judaea, 
 but in all the world, and especially at Rome as the 
 
 c 2 
 
20 
 
 head-quarters of the Gentiles, must the same 
 event have shaken the credit of Judaic Chris- 
 tianity. Nevertheless, so closely had Jewish 
 principles inwound themselves with Christianity, 
 that they still lingered, and are heard of as dis- 
 tracting the Church, for nearly a century more. 
 Their loss of influence is well illustrated by the 
 history of the controversy on the time of Easter. 
 
 It is a question whether Rome ever held the 
 Judaic or Quartodeciman practice on this point — 
 that which killed the lamb on the fourteenth day 
 of Nisan, and celebrated the Paschal supper three 
 days after, without regard to the day of the week. 
 This question is involved in that of the foundation 
 of the Roman Church, already discussed : — if the 
 Church was planted in Rome by Jews anterior 
 to A. D. 54, it is probable that they would have 
 adhered to the customs of their country on this 
 point as well as on others ; but if it was not 
 founded till after that date, and by immediate 
 disciples of Paul, he probably would have had 
 influence enough upon them, even though they 
 were Jews, to introduce his own, the Gentile or 
 Antijudaic practice ; of always celebrating the Re- 
 surrection on the first day of the week, and fasting 
 for a week before it. Any how, by the time of 
 Bishop Xystus, (A. D. 120.) the Gentile practice 
 had obtained at Rome. He and his four suc- 
 cessors, we are told by Irenaeus, did not allow the 
 Jewish usage within their own Church, yet com- 
 municated, by sending the Eucharist to and fro, 
 as freely as before with other Churches which did 
 
21 
 
 allow it x . In A.D. 159, Polycarp visited Rome, 
 with the intention, among other things, of per- 
 suading Anicetus, the then Bishop, to adopt the 
 practice of the Jews, which had been adopted by 
 the Asiatic Churches, over which he presided. 
 But Anicetus was firm, even against the age and 
 saintliness of Polycarp : and though as a mark of 
 personal respect he allowed him to celebrate the 
 Eucharist in Rome 7 , (a highly esteemed honour,) 
 they parted without agreement on this point, 
 though with mutual cordiality. But by A.D. 196, 
 the Judaic party have lost even more ground in 
 Rome. For then Bishop Victor 2 , not content 
 with the measures of his predecessors, attempts to 
 break off communion with the Churches which held 
 still the Jewish practice. And though he was 
 forced to desist, from the general outcry of uni- 
 versal Christendom, his conduct well illustrates 
 how sensibly the Judaic party must have declined 
 in importance since the beginning of the century. 
 When this matter is dropped, we hear no more of 
 Judaizing in the Church of Rome. 
 
 But the Church was now grappling with 
 another deadly foe —more deadly because even 
 
 * Euseb. V. 24. ovre avTol eTrjprjo-av, ovre rois p.er avrcov eirerpcrrov 
 .... Kal ov8e7TOT€ dia to eidos tovto aTYe^XrjOrjcrdv rives, dXX' avroi pr) 
 Trjpovvres ol Tvpb o~ov Tvpeo-fivrepoi rols dno T(ov 7rapoiKia>v rrjpovaiv 
 €7rep,7rov €vxapio~Tiav. 
 
 y lb. Kal tovtcov ovt(os ixdvT(ov eicoivdivr]o~av iavrolg' Kai iv rr} 
 eKKkrjalq 7rapexa>pr)cr€v 6 'Avlktjtos tt)v ev^aptcrriai/ ra> UoXvKdpnco, Kar 
 €vrpo7rr)v SrjXovoTi, 
 
 z lb. Irenseus writes to beg Victor &s pr) diroKonroi okas 
 
 €KKkr)o~tas GeoO. 
 
22 
 
 more insidious than Judaism. This has already 
 been mentioned by the name of Orientalism : a 
 general name, signifying no single set of opinions, 
 but including all the developments of that 
 tendency to speculation which characterized the 
 Asiatics. But its ramifications, fanciful and innu- 
 merable as they were, all sprang from one great 
 primary idea, which was but a revival of the 
 dualistic doctrines of Zoroaster and the Magians. 
 The characteristic of all Orientalism was a belief 
 in two Principles — one the creator of good, one 
 of evil. Ahriman and Ormuzd in disguise were 
 the two gods who were preached in Rome even 
 before the advent of Christianity. For whether 
 we treat the story of Simon Magus as a myth 
 or not, it is certain that what under such an 
 explanation it would import — the infusion into 
 Rome of Oriental ideas before the importation 
 thither of the Gospel — is true as a fact. But 
 Orientalism for some time held aloof from the 
 Church ; they proselytized side by side with each 
 other without coming into close contact. Simon 
 himself, though baptized by Philip a , can in no 
 other sense be called a Christian. But in the 
 second century Christians caught the infection of 
 these heathen fancies, and the dreamy mutterings 
 of the East found an echo in the West, At the 
 same time Orientalism assumed a still more alarm- 
 ing character, from being wrought out with all 
 the subtle refinements of the Greek language : 
 and becoming Christianized under the name of 
 
 a Acts viii. 13. 
 
23 
 
 Gnosticism, exercised a more fatal influence on 
 the Church even than Judaism, after it had in 
 like manner mingled with Christianity. The 
 growth and diffusion of Gnostic heresies belongs 
 altogether to the second century of the Christian 
 era. The two religions' had not commingled 
 at all before this period ; and after it, though 
 heresies traceable to Eastern sources still pre- 
 vailed, they had departed from the primary idea 
 which originally characterized Orientalism. 
 
 Phrygia, immemorially remarkable for religious 
 frenzy, had given birth to two opposite phases of 
 mind — one sternly practical and ascetic, the other 
 wildly imaginative, according to the varying dis- 
 position of individuals. These two streams from 
 the Phrygian mountains inundated the whole of 
 the East, and even penetrated westward. Both 
 Marcion and Valentinus, having spread their 
 heresies through Asia, came naturally to Rome 
 as to the head quarters of Christianity in the 
 West ; and there was something so singularly 
 taking in their fancies to minds which were at 
 once refined and unpractical, that they were 
 enabled to do much damage to the cause of 
 truth in Rome. 
 
 What they had in common may be told in a 
 few words. They both attempted to harmonize 
 the fundamental truths of the Gospel with the 
 Dualism which had been the faith of their 
 country. They both tried to reconcile the Bible 
 language about the One Supreme God, with what 
 was told them of the two Principles by Zoroaster : 
 
24 
 
 an attempt essentially impossible, and therefore a 
 failure. According to Marcion, the creator of 
 matter rivalled, according to Valentinus he was 
 subordinate to, the creator of mind. 
 
 Marcion (who, though he gave his name to a 
 sect, was preceded in his opinions by Cerdon b ) 
 held that there had primarily existed two distinct 
 Principles , a good and an evil, the evil Principle 
 being the opponent but the inferior of the good. 
 But this inferiority was practically of so little 
 weight, that the Principles were always at war 
 with one another. This idea he developed in his 
 book called the " Antitheses," where the evil 
 and the good — the Old Testament and the New — 
 the Jews and the Christians — are paired off in 
 mutual opposition. 
 
 But Valentinus his contemporary solved the 
 problem another way. The Demiurgus, or creator 
 of matter, was no longer the opponent but the 
 descendant of the Supreme God, through a wild 
 genealogy d . There was no rivalry here, but 
 complete subordination. The imperfect because 
 material creation of the Demiurgus, was perfected 
 by Christ, also the offspring of the Supreme ; the 
 New Testament did not destroy but superseded 
 the Old ; Judaism was the childhood, Christianity 
 the manhood, of the world. So while Marcion 
 cut out the whole of the Old Testament to suit 
 
 b Euseb. iv. 10, 11. 
 
 c Rhodon, ap. Euseb. V. 13. erepoi de, Kadcos Kai avros 6 vavrrjs 
 Map/dew, dvo dpxas elarjyovvTai. 
 d ' Adv. omn. Haer.' c. v. 
 
25 
 
 his doctrines, Valentinus adopted it entire, assigned 
 it the second place in his system, and accommo- 
 dated his doctrines to it, though often violently 
 allegorizing its plain meaning 6 . 
 
 But while these two leaders taught thus the 
 two most easily recognizable extremes of Gnostic 
 opinion in Rome, a third, Florinus*, timidly lifted 
 up his voice with another solution of the problem 
 of the existence of good and evil. There is but 
 one God, he said, but he is the active creator, 
 not merely the passive permitter, of evil, in the 
 same sense in which he is the creator of good. 
 His friend Irenaeus — whom we shall see again in 
 the character of a mediator — wrote him an urgent 
 epistle " on Monarchy — or that God is not the 
 creator of evil g ." The result was the opposite of 
 what Irenseus intended. Florinus wavered : but 
 instead of submitting to the Catholic faith, he 
 at length adopted the views of Valentinus h , to 
 which (if his alternative lay between the two 
 heresiarchs) his own were evidently more akin ; 
 for he was not prepared to admit the two hostile 
 principles of Marcion. 
 
 e Tertull. ' de praescr. riser.' " Marcion exerte et palam 
 machsera |non stylo usus est, quoniam ad materiam suam 
 csedem Scripturarum confecit. Valentinus autem pepercit : 
 quoniam non ad materiam Scripturas, sed materiam ad 
 Scripturas excogitavit, et tarn en plus abstulit et plus adjecit." 
 
 f Euseb. v. 15. 
 
 g Euseb. v. 20. nepl fiovapx^as rj ivep\ tov pf) elvai rbv Qeov 
 
 7TOir)TrjV KClKtoV. 
 
 h Euseb. V. 10. v7ro<rvpop.€vov rfj Kara OvaXcvrlvov 7r\dvij. See 
 Massuetus, quoted in Boutlis ' Script. Eccl.' vol. i. p. 35. 
 
26 
 
 The two extreme Gnostic heresies continued to 
 attract disciples after the disappearance of their 
 first preachers : and they would probably have 
 had more success in their proselytism, had it not 
 been that the speculative tone of the East was 
 becoming absorbed in the practical genius of the 
 Roman world. This practical turn of mind was 
 what really gave birth in the last half of the second 
 century to Montanism. Waiving theoretical 
 questions on the origin of evil, and so not recog- 
 nised as a Gnostic, Montanus was yet an Oriental. 
 He came from Phrygia : religious frenzy worked 
 upon his practical mind, and resulted in asceticism; 
 and his sect, which soon reached Rome though 
 without its founder, was rigorously self-denying. 
 He was an eclectic in his principles : or rather, 
 his sect imitated Marcion in severe discipline, and 
 improved upon the doctrines of Valentinus as to 
 the development of the world, holding Montanism 
 to be the manhood and perfection of mankind, of 
 which Judaism and Christianity were but imperfect 
 stages. As to the moral tone of their mind, the 
 Montanists were the Jesuits of the ancients : 
 exhibiting the same rigorous sternness, the same 
 lofty devotion, the same boldness in proselytism. 
 These characteristics captivated many : and they 
 had been careful, as they hoped, not to incur 
 the charge of heresy by doctrine or discipline 
 opposed to that of the Church ; though it is 
 difficult to see how they could have reconciled 
 this pretence with their acknowledged depreciation 
 of the Gospel in comparison with certain pre- 
 
27 
 
 tended revelations of the Holy Spirit to Montanus. 
 But Irenaeus — again a peacemaker, " in nature, as 
 well as in name 1 ," according to Eusebius — actually 
 came to Rome on an embassy from the Gallic 
 Churches to plead their cause k ; and bitter were 
 their complaints when the report of one Praxeas 
 of their evil deeds in the east induced the Bishop 
 of Rome to condemn their heresy and excom- 
 municate its leaders 1 . They found a refuge in 
 Africa, which, placed morally as well as locally 
 midway between the East and the West — between 
 the regions of soaring fancies and of hard realities 
 — was a more congenial soil for them ; and here 
 it was that they made a convert of the greatest 
 ecclesiastical writer of the time, Tertullian. 
 
 Thus before the end of the second century, 
 Gnosticism in both its forms had died out of sight, 
 and Montanism had been formally expelled from 
 Rome. But it is hardly possible to over-estimate 
 the amount of influence which these heresies had 
 upon the Roman Church, while they were flourish- 
 ing there. The spirit of speculation must have 
 thoroughly infected the whole Church ; and it 
 could hardly have been possible for any Christian 
 to hold nakedly the truths once delivered to the 
 
 * Euseb. V. 24. (pepSvvpos ris &>v rfj rrpoo-qyopiq avrcp re rto rponco 
 clp-qvortoios. 
 
 k Euseb. v. 4. 
 
 1 Tertull. adv. Prax. c. 1. " Nam idem turn episcopum 
 Romanum agnoscentem jam prophetias Montani, &c. et ex 
 ea agnitem pacem ecclesiis Asise et Phrygian inferentur .... 
 coegit et literas pacis revocare jam emissas, et a proposito 
 recipiendorum charismatum concessam." 
 
28 
 
 saints, without some taint of the new mystical 
 opinions. 
 
 But meanwhile that which was destined to be 
 the most powerful antagonist to Christianity was 
 stirring itself reluctantly to the contest. Paganism 
 was to be its last and its longest foe, and to play 
 the most conspicuous part among the enemies of 
 the Church. We cannot sufficiently admire the 
 Providence which restrained this most deadly foe 
 for so long, and caused it not even yet for awhile 
 to be fully awake to the destruction which Chris- 
 tianity was to bring upon it. Three circumstances 
 are especially to be noted as having contributed 
 to defer the contest with Paganism, and so to rear 
 the infant Church till it was strong enough to 
 meet that contest. 
 
 The first of these has already been pointed out 
 in detail, and need here be alluded to only in 
 summary. It is the way in which Christianity, 
 while in extreme infancy, grew without attracting 
 the notice of Paganism, till it had taken such firm 
 root in Rome, that the utmost efforts failed to 
 eradicate it. We have seen how it grew under 
 the shadow of Judaism, which though cordially 
 hating it, and even persecuting it when it had the 
 power, yet could not avoid unwillingly protecting 
 it. Nero's persecution, as has been already sug- 
 gested, though commonly attributed to the em- 
 peror's wantonness, (never to any deeper cause,) 
 may probably have been caused by Jewish hatred, 
 as it began and ended with the beginning and 
 ending of Jewish influence. And Nero's per- 
 
29 
 
 secution stands alone, as an isolated fact, in the 
 history of the first century : (for the second 
 so-called persecution was directed more against 
 Jews than against Christians ;) so that Christianity 
 had not yet in the first hundred years been 
 weighed on its own merits by Paganism. But by 
 the second century it began to attract more 
 consistent notice : as Judaism grew weaker, and 
 as Christians grew more numerous and influential, 
 it was inevitable that they should force themselves 
 more and more on the notice of the popular 
 religion. 
 
 Another circumstance which tended much to 
 strengthen the cause of Christianity was that 
 now, when the tenets of its professors were just 
 beginning to attract notice, the empire had passed 
 into the hands of mild and equitable rulers. Had 
 Nero or Domitian been revived in Trajan and 
 Hadrian, the whole Christian population might 
 have been swept from within the boundaries of 
 Roman rule. But the moderate character of all 
 the four emperors who succeeded Domitian was 
 in favour of the growth of Christianity. It was 
 not that they were too much occupied to weigh 
 the religious state of the empire. Trajan's wars 
 and Hadrian's peaceful policy yet left them time 
 to consider and legislate exactly for the position 
 of the empire in regard to the Church. It was 
 their own moderation which made the wide differ- 
 ence to Christianity between their rule, and that 
 of those who both preceded and followed them ; 
 that imperial moderation which culminated in the 
 
30 
 
 reign of the wise and benevolent Antoninus. 
 Aurelius, who succeeded him and closed the 
 century, was a differently-constituted man ; equally 
 well-intentioned, and even more earnest-minded, 
 but philosophic and intolerant : and his reign was 
 a bloody period for the Church. 
 
 And a third point which tended to moderate 
 the rancour with which Christianity was received 
 by the Roman world was, that Paganism had 
 changed and still was changing its own character. 
 Had Christianity in its infancy had to cope with 
 the degrading Polytheism which formed the whole 
 religious belief of the earlier Romans, it would 
 have had to pass through a terrible ordeal indeed., 
 from which there is no saying how far it would 
 have come out victorious. The religion of the 
 Romans at this time was far from being identical 
 with that of their fathers. The deeper thought of 
 the later Greeks had shaken the Roman belief in 
 the many gods, and all was tending to make them 
 centralize, so to speak, their religious faith. The 
 Epicureans, though they admitted the existence 
 of Gods, represented them as idle, and exalted 
 Natural Law into their Supreme Deity : the Stoics 
 boldly rejected the exoteric fables about a plurality 
 of Gods, and declared that there was but One. 
 All the Schools agreed in this — that it was neces- 
 sary to suppose that One Power governed the 
 universe— call it Nature, or the Unknown God, 
 or whatever else they would. This belief had 
 worked its way through the upper portion, and 
 now was powerfully leavening the mass of Roman 
 
31 
 
 society. The old superstitions were kept up in 
 form, it is true ; but rather from a politic design 
 of keeping the people quiet, than because all who 
 professed them were satisfied with the popular 
 belief. At the end of the century we find an 
 emperor himself learning and teaching the Stoical 
 doctrines, and no mean expositor of the tenets of 
 Zeno. 
 
 Accordingly the dealings which Paganism had 
 with Christianity were at first comparatively mild. 
 Even at the beginning of the second century trials 
 on account of profession of Christianity were rare. 
 Pliny, in his celebrated letter to Trajan, (A.D. 104.) 
 confesses that he had never been present at such 
 a trial m : though he had filled the offices of 
 tribunus militum, of quaestor Caesaris, of praetor, 
 and of consul ; and had been propraetor of Pontica 
 for eight or nine years. Thus, though his ex- 
 pression shews that such trials were not unpre- 
 cedented, they could not at any rate have been 
 common. And we find that when Ignatius is 
 being conveyed to Rome as a prisoner, he seeks 
 to avert the kindly interference of the Roman 
 Christians on his behalf 11 ; which shews a spirit 
 of fairness on the part of the government, and 
 disposition to accept Christian evidence, such as 
 we should not have expected in the second 
 century. 
 
 m Plin. lib. x. 97. " Cognitionibus de Christianis interfui 
 nunquam." 
 
 n Ign. ad Hom. i. 4. (po(3ovpai yap rr)V vp&v dyanrju, prj avrrj pe 
 dBiKr}(Tf] ._ . . 7rapaKa\a) vpas, pr) evvoia anaipos yevrjcrde poi. 
 
32 
 
 Such was the disposition of the heathen to the 
 Christians at first, and as long as their religion 
 remained unaggressive. And till it rose to some- 
 thing like a level with the old religion, it must 
 have remained perfectly unaggressive. Who could 
 have been so harmless and innocent in their lives, 
 who could have been such good citizens, soldiers 
 or servants, as devout Christians ? The heathen 
 must have been astonished, because they were 
 unaware of their inner principle of consistency, 
 at the sight of a body of men growing up among 
 them unaccountably, so perfectly unaggressive, 
 yet holding to the distinctive points which shewed 
 their difference of religion with such tenacity. 
 They would try at first by persuasion, by remon- 
 strance, by cajolery, to win them to conformity 
 with the common practice ; and it would not be 
 till all these milder arts had failed, that they would 
 be driven to more open and violent measures to 
 force them to abjure their faith. 
 
 What first no doubt caused the Christians to be 
 noticed was their own rigid (though often timid) 
 abstinence from all participation in the religious 
 rites of their country. The consciences of the 
 first believers, we know, scrupled to partake of 
 meat bought in the shambles, knowing that it 
 might have been consecrated to an idol's service . 
 Their language would be rigidly and markedly 
 free from all the defilements of pagan oaths. 
 How could they enter the temples of those who 
 were to them no gods but devils ? How could 
 1 Cor. viii. 
 
33 
 
 they sanction by their presence the games at 
 which human blood was poured forth like water, 
 and which never began without idolatrous sacri- 
 fices and lying omens ? Their absence from these 
 things would attract notice ; and being noticed, 
 and questioned, the Christians could not but own 
 to a wholly different belief to the popular one. 
 
 Nor was their belief only different. Christianity, 
 as it grew more powerful, must have lost its un- 
 aggressive character, and claimed to be exclusive 
 as the sole ground of its existence at all. If God 
 were God, Jupiter was a devil, and all his worship 
 devil-worship. No other religion could stand 
 beside it : if it gained ascendancy, the rest must 
 be crushed. Now the Romans had admitted all 
 sorts of foreign religions to an equality with their 
 own ; the mysteries of Osiris and Isis, of the Sun, 
 and of Dualism, were openly tolerated in Rome ; 
 an emperor would gladly have introduced Christ 
 to take rank among his country's gods p : but 
 when they saw clearly that either the old religion 
 or the new must fall, they refused to desert the 
 old and abide by the new. 
 
 This claim of Christianity to be exclusive first 
 made itself heard in the " Apologies." These 
 documents, at first no more than fugitive state- 
 ments of grievances, grew very rapidly into im- 
 portance, as they were couched in a shape well- 
 suited to the wants of a necessarily literary body, 
 till they became a regular series of well-sustained 
 defences, to which the Church could appeal as 
 
 p Euseb. ii. 2. 
 D 
 
34 
 
 occasion required. There is a far wider transition 
 between the matter of the Apologies of Quadratus 
 and Aristides q , (A.D. 123.) really no more than a 
 complaint of "divers evil men," and the attacks 
 upon pagan absurdities in Justin's first Apology, 
 written not thirty years after — even than between 
 this and Tertullian's masterpiece of written ad- 
 vocacy for the Christian faith, which belongs to 
 the third century. That the heathen felt the 
 weight of these recorded arguments is plain from 
 Celsus' attack on Christianity, probably in answer 
 to them ; a shallow ignorant work, which plainly 
 shews how unsuccessful Paganism was likely to be 
 in turning their own weapons against the Christians. 
 But meanwhile strength, if not right, was on the 
 pagan side : and the controversy too often ended 
 in the blood of the Christians, who had thus dared 
 to be outspoken. 
 
 But for all this, the martyrdoms of the second 
 century were comparatively few. During the 
 greater part of it the emperors only yielded to 
 the more and more strongly expressed rancour 
 of the enemies of the Christians ; and thus their 
 decrees are stamped with a negative character 
 throughout, prescribing the limits of persecution, 
 rather than urging it upon their subordinates. 
 Persecution is hardly the name for this very 
 reluctant and intermittent warfare. We are able 
 to give a very exact account of the instructions 
 for the treatment of Christians given by these 
 
 q See Fragments of Quadratus and Aristides, Routh's 
 ' Reliquiae Sacra3,' (vol. ii. pp. 73, 74.) 
 
35 
 
 emperors to their officers abroad, (tallying sub- 
 stantially, it is to be presumed, with their own 
 practice at home) ; and to compare them with 
 what we know to have been their actual treatment 
 of persons accused of Christianity. 
 
 (i.) Trajan r , in his answer to Pliny's letter of 
 enquiry about the treatment of Christians, re- 
 commends that they should be let alone, unless 
 openly accused of Christianity. If brought to 
 trial, let the nature of the evidence determine the 
 verdict : the crime is punishable if the evidence is 
 good, but if it is unsupported, let it be rejected. 
 Let us see how far Trajan practically acted in the 
 spirit of this advice. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, 
 had long been notoriously preaching the faith in 
 his city ; in the course of Trajan's reign he is 
 condemned, brought to Rome, and executed. 
 But the whole transaction is quite in keeping with 
 the terms of Trajan's advice to Pliny. Ignatius 
 had not been touched while unaccused ; when the 
 emperor was on a visit to Antioch, he was carried 
 a prisoner, though a willing prisoner 8 , before him : 
 and the evidence must have been too plain and 
 undoubted to admit of hesitation as to the verdict, 
 if the terms of the rescript were to be followed ; 
 
 r C. Plin. epp. x. 98. " Conquirendi non sunt : si de- 
 ferantur, et arguantur, puniendi sunt: sine auctore vero 
 propositi libelli nullo crimine locum habere debent." 
 
 s eKova-los rjyero 7rp6s Tpaiavov. (' Marty rium S. Ignatii' from 
 Jacobsons ' Patres Apostolici.') [The passive voice of fjyero 
 is surely not counteracted by the adverb £kov<tig>s, as ' Clericus' 
 suggests in his note.] 
 
 d2 
 
36 
 
 for all Antioch must have borne witness to his 
 doctrine and resounded with his preaching. 
 
 (ii.) Next, Hadrian answers a like question from 
 a similarly-situated provincial governor, in a tone 
 which implies still greater tenderness to the Chris- 
 tians. Reiterating Trajan's instructions, he adds 
 the following : " Do not punish for Christianity 
 alone, unless convicted besides of illegality ; and 
 do not merely reject, but punish false evidence'." 
 What he meant by "illegality," his successor 
 Antoninus Pius still further defines, saying that 
 his predecessor forbade punishment for any thing 
 but plain treason against the Roman sovereignty". 
 We do not hear from history of a single martyr 
 having suffered in Hadrian's reign, which therefore 
 has been regarded as a time of unbroken peace to 
 the Church. But a record has been lately dis- 
 entombed from the bowels of the earth, which 
 tells another tale. This is a rudely-carved epitaph, 
 found in the Catacombs of Rome ; those under- 
 ground vaults which formed the refuge of the 
 hunted Christians throughout the early ages, and 
 which doubtless became more and more a home 
 to them as persecution thickened. Its simple but 
 touching language runs as follows 31 : " In the time 
 
 1 Euseb. iv 9, quoting Hadrians rescript to Minucius Fun- 
 daClUS. ct ns ovv KaTrjyopet koX deUvvo-i ri Trapa tovs Popovs npar- 
 Tovras, ovtg)S opi£e Kara ttjv 8vvap.iv rov dpaprr)paros' a>s pa t6v 
 'Hpaickea e'l tls o~vKo(pavTias yapw rovro 7rpoT€ivoi, 8ia\dp(3ave vnep rrjs 
 deivoTrjTos, Kal <pp6vri£e onccs av eKducrjo-eias. 
 
 u Euseb. iv. 13. ols Ka\ dvTeypayjre [Trarrjp] pr]8ev ivoxKciv rots 
 ToiovTOis, el pq (paivoivro ti nepl rr)V 'Pcopalwv rjyepoviav iyxeipovvres* 
 
 x See Maitland's ' Church in the Catacombs,' p. 127. 
 
37 
 
 of the emperor Hadrian, the young Marius, a 
 military officer, (who had lived long enough, when 
 he ended his life in blood for Christ's sake,) at 
 length rested in peace. Erected to the well- 
 deserving in grief and fear 7 ." But we may observe, 
 that the execution of Marius was strictly within 
 the letter of Hadrian's rescript. Marius was a 
 military officer, and as such would have the 
 military oaths tendered to him, which as a wor- 
 shipper of Christ he could not take; he would 
 therefore render himself liable to the punishment 
 for " illegality," or treason against Rome. 
 
 (iii.) Antoninus Pius simply confirms 2 the in- 
 structions of his predecessor. His conduct, so far 
 as we know, was quite in keeping with the tenor 
 of this confirmation ; for we hear of no Christian 
 martyrdoms under his quiet and peaceful reign. 
 
 An inscription indeed which has been also found 
 in the Roman Catacombs runs in the following 
 classical and imaginative language : " Alexander 
 is not dead, but lives beyond the stars 
 
 y The original Latin is as follows : " Tempore Adriani 
 imperatoris Marius adolescens dux militum qui satis vixit 
 dum vitam pro Christo sanguine consunsit in pace tandem 
 quievit benemerentes cum lacrimis et metu posuerunt." 
 [Maitland thinks the word " benemerentes" doubtful. May it 
 not be a mistake for benemerenti ? The last clause would 
 then correspond with the notices of the erection of the 
 epitaphs at the end of many other inscriptions. On p. 131 
 is a similar omission of the nominative to the verb : " bene- 
 merenti fecit."] 
 
 z Euseb. iv. 26. tcus noXeai nepi tov prjdev vecoreplfeiv nep\ rjp&u 
 cypatyev. 
 
38 
 
 He ended his life in the reign of Antoninus, who, 
 foreseeing that his good deeds would soon outrun 
 all hope of payment, returned him evil for good. 
 O luckless times ! when, for all our de- 
 votions and prayers, not even in caverns is safety 
 
 possible He has scarce lived at all, who 
 
 has lived in Christian times V What can these 
 sad times of distress have been ? Can the same 
 emperor who had taken all Christians under his 
 protection, and who, according to all testimony, 
 was the mildest ruler that ever sat on a throne, 
 have merited such a bitter reproach for ingratitude 
 and cruelty ? Surely what is said of the times 
 agrees much better with the character of those of 
 the second Antoninus, Marcus Aurelius ; who, 
 during the latter part of his reign, was a stern and 
 
 a Maitland, p. 39. The whole of this curious epitaph is 
 as follows : " Alexander mortuus non est seel vivit super 
 astra et corpus in hoc tumulo quiescit vitam explevit sub 
 Antonino imp quiubi multum benejicia antevenire pr&videret 
 pro gratia odium reddidit* genua enim flectens vero Deo 
 sacrificaturus ad supplicia ducitur o tempora infausta quibus 
 inter sacra et vota ne in cavernis quidem salvari possimus 
 quid miserius vita sed quid miserius in morte cum ab amicis 
 et parentibus sepeliri nequeant tandem in ccelo coruscant 
 parum vixit qui vixit iv. x. tern." [in Christianis temporibus. 
 M.] 
 
 * [Translated as in the text, because of a striking (and it seems 
 hitherto unperceived) coincidence with a passage of Tacitus, Ann. 
 iv. 18. " Nam beneficia eo usque lseta sunt, dum videntur exsolvi 
 posse; ubi multum antevenere> 'pro gratia odium redditur." This 
 cannot surely he an undesigned coincidence; and it is all the more 
 striking, as it would he written within fifty years after Tacitus' 
 death.] 
 
39 
 
 relentless persecutor of the Church. It has been 
 conjectured 1 , that the alarm of a Marcomannic 
 war (A. D. 166.) first made him persecute the 
 Christians to appease the wrath of the gods : so 
 that this, perhaps, is the most natural time to 
 assign for Alexander's death. The next year saw 
 the martyrdom of Justin, who in his second Apology 
 had predicted his approaching fate : and who was 
 sacrificed by the philosophic Aurelius to the 
 malignity of one Crescens, a Cynic philosopher. 
 
 Thus we have seen the century, throughout 
 which the emperors have only reluctantly con- 
 sented to executions of Christians, end suddenly 
 in blood with the last years of Aurelius' reign. 
 Christians in other countries governed by Rome 
 did not escape the persecution in the capital city ; 
 but it was in Rome itself that it must have raged 
 most fiercely. The tone of despair which pervades 
 Alexander's epitaph may be taken to represent 
 the general feelings of Christians at this time. 
 Life was scarce life worth having, when such was 
 the rigour with which Aurelius prosecuted his 
 search, that even the Catacombs were ransacked 
 for victims. 
 
 This is the first time that we find the Church 
 attacked on its own merits by Paganism. Before, 
 she had been confounded with Judaism — or, 
 when not confounded, another enemy, not Pagan- 
 
 b Milman's * Early Christianity,' vol. ii. p. 182. 
 c e. g. Polycarp in Smyrna, and the martyrs of Lyons and 
 Vienne. 
 
40 
 
 ism, had been the principal in the persecution. 
 Now first she tasted the bitter cup mixed for her 
 by the conscious opposition of heathen. But 
 even this, bitter as it was, was as nothing to what 
 she was to drain hereafter. The proscription now 
 was set on foot by philosophers, and conducted 
 throughout in a rigorously calm spirit by the 
 philosophic neo-paganism of the day ; but the 
 Christians had yet to experience the savage and 
 wanton brutality of persecutors of another stamp, 
 when it came to the last deadly issue, the last 
 struggle for life of the old Polytheism against the 
 new worship. 
 
 But for the present a complete lull 
 
 rp TT J T> T-» 
 
 succeeded the storm. We might almost 
 say, that during the first half of the 
 third century, the vials of wrath ceased their 
 outpouring on the Church. This would be lite- 
 rally true, were it not for the short but savage 
 reign of Maximin, who however treated all re- 
 ligions alike d : all the other emperors of the half- 
 century being indifferent, because too insecure in 
 their own seat to be violently opposed to the new 
 religion ; and some even more actively favourable 
 to it. Here then was a long breathing-space 
 between the first and the last persecutions, which 
 the Church ought to have improved to great 
 
 d I omit to notice what is called the persecution of 
 Severus ; because the edict only forbad proselytism, not Chris- 
 tian worship : and because persecution under it was confined 
 to Africa, and certainly did not extend to Rome. Cf. Eobert- 
 sons " Church History," vol. i. pp. 65, 66. 
 
41 
 
 purpose for strengthening her hands and enlarging 
 the sphere of her work. 
 
 But this, her halcyon time as regarded external 
 relations, she unhappily clouded by internal dis- 
 putes. In her infancy she can hardly be said to 
 have any internal history ; and though she had 
 been growing rapidly for the last century, she 
 had been occupied too exclusively with constant 
 attacks from her exterior foes, to be much con- 
 cerned about her own inner development. But 
 during this lull between the storms germs of 
 corruption and disunion appear ; questions of faith 
 occasion disputes within her camp. And now too 
 her hierarchy comes into distinct notice. We 
 have hardly heard before of any individual Bishops 
 of Rome. They have been humble men, living in 
 an unmarked dwelling beyond the Tiber 6 , in the 
 quarter which first received Christianity into 
 Rome : not one that we know of has been con- 
 spicuous enough to be called upon to seal his faith 
 with his blood. Now, they suddenly start into 
 individual life ; and grow to exercise that arbitrary 
 power over doctrines as well as discipline, which 
 they are destined to keep for upwards of a thou- 
 sand years. 
 
 Our thoughts naturally turn back to the heretics, 
 as the most likely to disturb the internal peace of 
 the Church during a period of outward quiet. 
 But Orientalism had run itself out in Rome ; the 
 Christians of the West, thoroughly imbued with 
 
 e See a note on " Callistus' residence in Trastevere," in 
 Bunsens " Hippolytus and his Age," vol. iv. p. 127. 
 
42 
 
 Christian ideas, no longer doubt about the sole 
 government of the world. All are " Monarchians" 
 in this sense. But they also believed in the 
 Father and the Son ; and it seemed strange that 
 the lips of Monarchians should utter two Divine 
 Names. How could they reconcile the distinct per- 
 sonality of the Two, with the Single Godhead which 
 their Christianity no less bound them to believe ? 
 
 Bishop Victor, who headed the orthodox Church 
 in the last ten years of the second century, had 
 met and refuted the two obvious heresies upon 
 this point. On the one hand, he had condemned 
 Theodotus for saying that Christ was a mere man, 
 and that the Father alone was God. But the 
 other solution of the problem was more fanciful 
 and common : at least three heresiarchs held 
 various modifications of the view which has been 
 fatally known to the Church in all ages by the 
 name of Sabellianism ; which said that the Father 
 and Son were not distinct, but operations, energies, 
 or representations of One Monad. Of these, two 
 had been condemned by the same Bishop Victor : 
 Praxeas, who taught himself in Rome ; and 
 Noetus, though his Roman disciple, Epigonus*. 
 
 But Victor was succeeded (A.D. 202.) by Zephy- 
 rinus, a weak man, unable to steady himself in the 
 midst of conflicting opinions, and moreover igno- 
 rant and venal g , if we may believe the evidence of 
 
 f Bwxsens •' Hippolytus," vol. i. pp. 114, 119. 
 
 e " Refutatio Hceresium," p. 285. (published by E. Miller, 
 under the title of " Origenis Philosophumena" Oxford, 1851,) 
 civbpa dypdnfiarov kcu affetpov tcov eK<\r](ria(TTiKS>v bpcav . . . ovra 
 b(ap6KrjTVTi)v kcu (piKdpyvpov, eireiOev. 
 
43 
 
 an adversary. Callistus, a man of low origin and 
 disreputable precedents, gained a complete mastery 
 over him, and swayed him backwards and for- 
 wards, making him use at different times glaringly 
 inconsistent language. Sectarian differences ran 
 high. The orthodox called the Monarchians 
 " Patripassians ;" the Monarchians retorted by 
 the name of " Ditheists," and Callistus, the Pope's 
 pope, repeated the foul imputation. As long 
 as he occupied any but the highest place, it was 
 Callistus' interest that there should be at least 
 two parties in the Church whom he might play 
 off upon one another : but as it would embarrass 
 him if there were more than two, he persuaded 
 Sabellius, (the third Monarchian, who was just be- 
 ginning his career,) to coalesce with the Noetians, 
 persuading him of the identity of their views h . 
 
 Zephyrinus dying at this juncture, Callistus 
 stepped into his place (A.D. 218). Having no 
 further to climb, his policy now was to undo his 
 former work, and make the Church one. He 
 threw off Sabellius 1 : and, finding himself unable 
 to return to the orthodox party after the language 
 he had used of them, invented a theory of his 
 own k , to escape the odious name of Patripassian. 
 The Father, he said, suffered not as the Son, but 
 
 h H. H. p. 285. vnb KaXklorTov (2a/3eXXios) dveaeUro irpbs to 
 boyfxa to KXeofievovs panelv, (paanovTos to. opoia (ppoveiv, Cleomenes 
 was a disciple of Noetus, Bunsen, i. p. 114. 
 
 5 K. H. p. k 289. anecoo-ev, (qy. excommunicated?) tov 2a/3e'XXioi/. 
 
 k Ibid, aldovfxevos to. d\r)6rj Xeyeiv, 8\a to brjpoo-ia f)fxiv oveibl^ovra 
 etVeTv dideoi eo~Te, .... ecpevpev aipeaiv Toidvde. 
 
44 
 
 with the Son, being inseparable from him. This 
 teaching would probably have had more influence 
 and done greater harm to the Church, had it not 
 been accompanied with gross moral perversion. 
 The Pope publicly announced indulgence for sin 
 to all Callistians 1 , and openly allowed a system of 
 concubinage even among the clergy. But this 
 was going too far ; a revulsion took place towards 
 orthodoxy ; and the whole dispute was soon after 
 drowned in the horrors of Maximin's reign, in 
 which a new Bishop, Pontianus, was the first of 
 the Roman see who was called on to suffer 
 martyrdom for his faith, (A.D. 235.) 
 
 The details on this period are borrowed from 
 a lately-discovered work, now generally acknow- 
 ledged to be by Hippolytus, the contemporary 
 Bishop of Portus, and presbyter of the Roman 
 see. His double position gives us an insight into 
 the constitution of the hierarchy at that time, and 
 shews us the germ of what developed later into 
 the College of Cardinals. 
 
 Each of the presbyters at Rome probably had 
 charge of one of the churches of the city. A letter 
 of 251, written by the then Bishop Cornelius, says 
 that there were then forty-six presbyters ; and 
 fifty years later we hear of " more than forty" 
 churches in Rome. During these fifty years then 
 the number had certainly not increased ; — which 
 is strange, considering that the date of the first 
 Christian churches in Rome is fixed to only 
 
 1 R. H. p. ^90. ov Aoyiferai avra fj d/xapria, (pacrlv, el 7rpo(r8pdfxot 
 tji tov KaXAtcrroi; (r^nkfj. 
 
45 
 
 twenty years before Cornelius* letter (A.D. 230). 
 The churches were termed " cardines," whence 
 the presbyters who served them were called 
 " cardinales ;" they met regularly to debate on 
 church matters, under the presidency of their 
 bishop. Now a circumstance like that of Hip- 
 polytus' being chosen Bishop of Portus when he 
 was already a Roman presbyter, may probably 
 have led to what we afterwards find an undoubted 
 fact : — the introduction of the nine or ten suburb- 
 icarian bishops into the council of the cardinals, 
 distinguished by the name of cardinal-bishops; 
 whereas the others were cardinal-priesis. And 
 when we recollect that it was the former class 
 who, eight centuries after, were invested with the 
 exclusive right of electing the Pope, we shall see 
 the full-blown Roman hierarchy in germ in the 
 third century. 
 
 It is tempting to argue from the number of the 
 organized staff to the number of Christians in 
 Rome at this time : but obviously impossible to 
 do it with anything like precision. It would also 
 be an interesting enquiry, if we had materials for 
 conducting it, to trace the gradual increase of the 
 Church from her first few conversions till she had 
 swelled to her third-century proportions : and to 
 find, if possible, indications of the ranks from 
 which she made most converts. But here we are 
 left almost wholly in the dark. We know that 
 St. Paul's labours ranged from the highest to the 
 lowest — from those of Caesar's household, to the 
 poor runaway slave. We hear of Domitian's 
 
46 
 
 cousin, and a few others of imperial rank in the 
 course of the three centuries, embracing the 
 despised religion : — and on the other hand we find, 
 that the first Christians were sent for a punish- 
 ment as " arenarii" to dig out the sandpits which 
 formed a network under Rome ; and they seem 
 to have made many converts among that lowest 
 class. Thus out of the highest and the lowest 
 rank we can gather some scanty records of prose- 
 lytism : about the middle class nothing would be 
 known, were it not that the earth is daily yielding 
 her treasures, and the Catacombs of Rome are 
 giving us more and more information about the 
 class usually unnoticed by history. And yet it is 
 among these that Christianity must have made 
 the most way. Revolutions which are destined 
 to shake a nation do not commonly spring exclu- 
 sively either from the nobles or the rabble : the 
 former are in too conspicuous a position for any 
 change in them to go long unmarked — the latter 
 exercise too little influence upon the mass of 
 people. It is the middle rank, receiving from 
 both extremities, and holding what it receives 
 tenaciously and noiselessly, which alone is capable 
 of revolutionizing a state. The yeoman — the 
 substantial burgher — the mechanic — the retired 
 scholar— such as these must have formed the 
 heart and strength of Roman Christianity; though 
 of this, from the nature of things, we have no 
 record. 
 
 It is of more practical consequence, with regard 
 to the modern claims of the Papacy, to determine 
 
47 
 
 the degree of recognised authority which the 
 Roman Church possessed over others in the third 
 century. For that Rome had a precedence, and 
 exercised at least a moral influence, can hardly 
 be doubted by any who remember that she was 
 an apostolic Church, the only one in the West ; 
 and that she could shew the scenes of the mar- 
 tyrdom of at least two of the Apostles of our 
 Lord m . Thus as the depositary of apostolical 
 doctrine, as their elder sister in the faith, other 
 Churches looked up to her, and were willing to 
 follow her precedents. But that there were no 
 pretensions to authority, at least in the first 
 century, is plain from the fact, that Clement of 
 Rome (A.D. 91 — 100), hearing of dissensions in the 
 Church at Corinth, (itself, be it remembered, 
 apostolic, and of at least as early an origin as 
 that of Rome,) had sent the Corinthians a letter" 
 '" persuading them to peace, and refreshing their 
 faith, and that tradition which they had so lately 
 received from the Apostles." No authority is 
 claimed here — it is the exhortation of an equal, 
 not the imperious demand of a superior. 
 
 m Tertull. ' de prescript, hser.' c. 36. " Si Italias adjaces, 
 habes Eomam, unde nobis auctoritas praesto est. Ista quam 
 felix ecclesia! cui totam doctrinam apostoli cum sanguine suo 
 profuderunt : ubi Petrus passioni Dominicae adsequatur : ubi 
 Paulus Joannis exitu coronatur : ubi apostolus Joannes post- 
 quam in oleum igneum demersus nihil passus est in insulam 
 relegatur." 
 
 n Tertull. quoted Euseh. V. 6. els elprjvrjv o-Vfx(Si(3d£ovaa avrovs, 
 Kai avaveovcra ttjv tt'kttlv avrcov, Kai r/v vecoa-ri cmb reov airocrTokoiv 
 napadocriv eiKrjcpei, 
 
48 
 
 In the second century, however, we find how 
 easily and naturally precedence breeds love of 
 power. The unwarrantable efforts of Bishop Victor 
 (A.D. 170 — 202), to enforce upon Asia his own 
 practice with reference to the time of Easter, have 
 been already noticed . This dispute between Rome 
 and Asia had been pacified by Gaul p ; for Irenaeus 
 — a third time a ' peacemaker' — had written to 
 Victor a strong letter of remonstrance, which led 
 to his ultimate cession of the point in dispute. 
 
 But in the third century the utmost claims of 
 Victor are repeated and outdone by Bishop Stephen 
 (A.D. 256) ; if it is fair to judge from the increased 
 amount of opposition with which they met. Here, 
 as in the former case, Rome had right on her side : 
 but she attempted to enforce that right by tyran- 
 nical means, and met with just resistance and 
 signal failure. The difference between the Churches 
 had grown out of what should only have drawn 
 closer the bonds of union — the persecution by 
 Decius. After the long peace of the Church, 
 which had lasted with scarcely an interruption 
 for half a century, it was time that she should 
 be recalled to look to the hole of the pit whence 
 she was digged. Christians had forgotten that 
 they were all one family, all opposed to the 
 world's prevalent belief; and the lesson which 
 should have taught them this, severe and horrible 
 as it was, did but give birth to fresh discords. 
 
 Next to Rome, Carthage was the city most 
 exposed to the fury of Decius. The same year 
 
 p. 21. p Euseb. v. 24. 
 
49 
 
 sent Fabian of Rome to martyrdom and Cyprian 
 of Carthage into retirement. What Rome was to 
 the Italian, Carthage was to the African Churches ; 
 till she had grown to rival, if not to equal, Rome 
 in spiritual precedency : and it is curious to see 
 the old strife of the Punic wars played over again 
 under different colours. Their constant inter- 
 course, their community of language, of govern- 
 ment, and now of sufferings, could never bind 
 Carthage thoroughly to Rome. The same questions 
 were always rising in both Churches, but always 
 were met with different decisions. It is a Cartha- 
 ginian that opposes a Roman Bishop in the third 
 century, and the remonstrance comes from an 
 Asiatic. 
 
 In 251, with the death of Decius, the perse- 
 cution came to an end. But so sudden and so 
 severe had it been, that many both in Rome and 
 at Carthage had been shaken in their allegiance 
 to Christ, and had bought their life by the accept- 
 ance of " libelli" or false certificates of having 
 sacrificed to the heathen gods. Now arose the 
 question as to whether to readmit these libellatics 
 into the Church or not ; which both Rome and 
 Carthage had decided in the negative, while the 
 persecution still continued. But when there was 
 no longer any opportunity for them to prove their 
 sincerity by dying for the faith they had denied, 
 Rome and Carthage found themselves at issue as 
 to the amount of penance requisite before re- 
 admission ; and the two decisions gave rise to 
 schisms in the two Churches. Carthage required 
 
 E 
 
50 
 
 rigorous penance as the price of readmission : 
 Rome prescribed milder terms. Yet in Carthage, 
 one Novatus separated from the Church when he 
 was unable to obtain less harsh terms: in Rome, 
 a man of strangely similar name, Novatian, headed 
 a party which enforced greater rigour. Stranger 
 still, Novatus crossed the sea to aid Novatian in 
 designs at Rome, which must have been directly 
 opposed to his own at Carthage. 
 
 Novatism at Carthage is soon forgotten — 
 Novatianism at Rome ripens into a confirmed 
 schism. It is when this has lost its vigour, and 
 Novatianist stragglers begin to return to the 
 Church, that a further question arises. How are 
 these schismatics, now more than penitent waverers, 
 to be readmitted ? Rome and Carthage are again 
 at issue. Cyprian decided, that though schismatical 
 baptism was null, a lapse into heresy or schism 
 did not render void an orthodox baptism pre- 
 viously received ; but that in this case the only 
 further ceremony needed to restore a penitent to 
 full Church privileges was imposition of hands. 
 Pope Stephen of Rome held the doctrine which, 
 confirmed by the Council of Aries in 314, is still 
 held by the Church — that baptism was good by 
 whomsoever administered, and therefore that in 
 any case imposition of hands alone was needed. 
 But Stephen went unwarrantable lengths in his 
 efforts to enforce his doctrine. He denounced 
 Cyprian as a false Christ, refused hospitality to 
 his messengers, and broke off communion with 
 the Church of Carthage. On this Firmilian, 
 
51 
 
 Bishop of Caesarea, and the spokesman of the 
 Churches of Asia Minor, (which themselves had 
 been excommunicated by Stephen for a difference 
 on the same question,) wrote to Cyprian a letter 9 , 
 condemning Stephen in the strongest terms for 
 his audacity in arrogating to himself the sole right 
 of dictation on the practice of Christendom. 
 The storm which Stephen had raised from all the 
 Churches was violent indeed ; and the dissension 
 of the third century might have anticipated by 
 eight hundred years the rupture between the East 
 and West, had not the question been fortunately 
 solved by Stephen's death in 257. 
 
 The strife between Rome and Carthage was 
 again drowned in blood under Valerian, in a 
 persecution which joined Cyprian and Xystus, 
 Stephen's successor, in the same glorious martyr- 
 dom (A.D. 258). 
 
 But now the final ordeal of the Church was 
 drawing near. Paganism, which had only inertly 
 and intermittently opposed her before, was now 
 fully awakened to its own impending dissolution. 
 Christianity numbered its tens of thousands even 
 in the capital city, and threatened to outnumber 
 the heathen through all the cities of the empire. 
 It had grown to these alarming proportions, while 
 Paganism had been dallying philosophically with 
 all religious interests : now the authorities felt 
 that their own indifference had fostered it. They 
 saw that there could be no firm standing-point 
 
 q " Firmiliani Epistola ad S. Cyprianum," in BoutJis " Script. 
 Eccl. Opuscula," (vol. i. p. 217.) 
 
52 
 
 between the many gods of old Rome and the One 
 God of the Christians ; and they hated the latter, 
 more than they despised the former alternative. 
 And while terror threw them back upon their old 
 gods, reviving superstition represented the saving 
 might of these deserted, but still kind divinities, 
 in the bright colours of hope. War to the knife, 
 the extirpation of all the Christians, was now the 
 only hope of saving the glory of Rome, which 
 must fall with the fall of her gods. 
 
 The persecution in which Galerius, Diocletian, 
 and Maximin were chief actors, raged through the 
 whole empire alike for two years, in the East alone 
 for eight more (A.D. 303 — 313). It was the last 
 and deadliest struggle of Polytheism against purity. 
 The dim conviction that it would be the last, 
 whichever way it resulted — the virulence of the 
 religion of old Rome, now that it was once more 
 in possession of the civil arm to wreak its venge- 
 ance — and even the reluctance of Diocletian to 
 take extreme measures until forced into them by 
 the malignity of his colleague Galerius — all con- 
 tributed to make this the most searching trial 
 through which the Church ever had to pass. 
 Fortunately, trials of the same kind, though 
 inferior in degree, had lately nerved her to bear 
 this her last and severest : Decius had found 
 many, Diocletian found few, to compromise their 
 faith. Neither age, sex, nor condition exempted 
 a Christian from agony and death. The leaded 
 scourges 1 , knotted clubs 8 , teeth for tearing the 
 r " plumbatse." s " scorpiones." 
 
53 
 
 flesh 4 , and all the other tortures which malignity 
 could devise, were invented to add to their agony ; 
 and when death relieved them, no decent burial 
 was allowed them, but their bones were thrown to 
 the wild beasts, or cast into the Tiber. One 
 martyr alone u — probably an unmarked and un- 
 distinguished man — was happy enough to be 
 buried in the tomb of his family, with a record 
 which preserves to this day the fact and date of 
 his martyrdom. 
 
 But at length the fiery trial came to an end ; 
 Diocletian had abdicated, both Galerius and Maxi- 
 min had died in remorse and torture, and Con- 
 stantine and Licinius were left alone at the head 
 of the Roman world. The edict of Milan restored 
 Christians to their civil and religious rights ; and 
 upon the death of Licinius nine years afterwards, 
 Christianity became established as the religion of 
 the state. At once the Church issued from her 
 temporary depression to enter upon a far wider 
 sphere of power than she had possessed before. 
 Her dark days were over, and centuries of autho- 
 rity and magnificence were now before her. Would 
 that her faith, which up to this time had been 
 refined again and again by affliction, had been 
 
 ' " ungulse." 
 
 u Lannus is the only martyr who, according to Maitland, 
 has sufficient authentic record of his having suffered under 
 this persecution. His epitaph runs as follows : " Lannus, 
 Xti martir hie requiescit sub Dioclitiano passus. e. p. s." 
 fet posteris suis]. (Maitland, p. 130.) 
 
54 
 
 more proof to the corrupting influences of power 
 and irresponsibility. 
 
 Thus we have found the attempt to trace the 
 progress and growth of Christianity, through her 
 days of depression to the opening of her career of 
 power, to consist mainly of a record of her strug- 
 gles with three great foes. Of these, we have 
 seen Judaism, perhaps the most bitter of all while 
 its power lasted, yield the first; — Orientalism ex- 
 haust its main strength in the second century, yet 
 still preserve an influence at least on the mode 
 of thought in the third ;— and Paganism retain its 
 attitude of alternate hostility and indifference, till 
 it gathers all its strength for the final struggle at 
 the end of the third century. 
 
 It would be more difficult, though perhaps more 
 practically useful, to gauge the amount and cha- 
 racter of the influences which each of the three 
 permanently left on the Roman Church ; for any 
 permanent impression on this is sure to have 
 affected in some degree the whole of the Chris- 
 tianity of Western Europe, and to be felt in its 
 consequences even at the present day. 
 
 (i.) After the dispersion of the Jews as a body, 
 we have seen Judaic principles gradually lose their 
 hold upon the Roman Church. But though the 
 distinctive Judaic tenets were sunk thus early, still 
 to the presence of such a formalizing element may 
 perhaps be attributable the spirit of legality, which 
 is more and more distinctly traceable in the 
 Roman Church as it hardens into a systematic 
 
55 
 
 organization, and becomes encrusted with doctrines 
 of late growth and cumbrous rules of discipline. 
 Still the spirit of Christian liberty, which is 
 inherent in the Gospel system as explained by 
 St. Paul, was not extinct within her ; an open 
 rupture was always inevitable, but was delayed 
 till the Teutonic kingdoms at last threw off the 
 yoke in the Reformation, and proclaimed their 
 independence of the grievous burdens which the 
 Church of Rome had laid upon their shoulders. 
 
 (ii.) Her struggle with Orientalism left its stamp 
 both upon the doctrine and upon the discipline of 
 the Roman Church ; but with different effects 
 upon each, Any cause which made Christians 
 think out and define the doctrines which had only 
 been contained by implication in the early Creeds, 
 must have done invaluable good to the Church, 
 though at the cost of heresies without number. 
 But it is certain that the tendency to asceticism 
 and celibacy, which formed the chief characteristic 
 of the discipline of the mediaeval Church, had its 
 origin in the devout tone and lofty aspirations of 
 the Phrygian heretics. This, whatever incidental 
 good it may have done by preserving the religious 
 tone of Europe through the dark ages, cannot 
 now but be regarded as an unmixed evil ; at least 
 by those who have protested against the corrupt- 
 ing influences of the Roman monasticism, which 
 is but the systematized form of this tendency. 
 
 (iii.) Paganism, with which the Church main- 
 tained her struggle the longest, had the greatest 
 effects both for evil and for good upon her 
 
56 
 
 character. The good effects are to be sought in 
 the patient constancy, the enduring abnegation 
 of self, with which she went through the ordeal 
 of suffering. With a few exceptions — all jealously 
 noted, yet surely very few in comparison with the 
 many instances of heroic endurance — her sons did 
 not shrink from the danger, nor think it strange 
 concerning the fiery trial which was to try them. 
 Surely some supernatural strength must have been 
 vouchsafed to those who had entered upon the 
 martyr-conflict, to bear them through to the last. 
 But the evil effects were to come when Christianity 
 had apparently gained her triumph over Paganism. 
 Perhaps it was unavoidable that the principle of 
 the defeated superstition should to some extent 
 mingle with the conquering faith ; anyhow it is 
 hardly to be doubted that invocation of saints, 
 worshipping of martyrs, and most of the other 
 glosses with which Rome has since overlaid the 
 true faith, are but relics of the religion of the 
 heathen world. May it prove more and more 
 true— as it has to a great extent proved true 
 already — that the Protestant Church, in giving up 
 these spoils of Paganism, has not forfeited an inch 
 of the spirit of true endurance and constancy, with 
 which the Romans went through the furnace of 
 affliction in the three first Christian centuries. 
 
 BAXTER, PRINTER, OXFORD. 
 

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