would justify consultation, especially on account of the number of those in peril. For many of all ages, of every rank, and even of both sexes are and will be called into danger. The infection of this superstition has not only spread to the cities, but even to the villages and country districts. It seems possible to stay it and bring about a reform. It is plain enough that the temples, which had been almost deserted, have begun to be frequented again, that the sacred rights, which had been neglected for a long time, have begun to be restored, and that fodder for victims, for which till now there was scarcely a purchaser, is sold. From which one may readily judge what a number of men can be reclaimed if repentance is permitted. (b) Trajan's Reply You have followed the correct procedure, my Secundus, in conducting the cases of those who were accused before you as Christians, for no general rule can be laid down as a set form. They ought not to be sought out; if they are brought before you and convicted, they ought to be punished, provided that he who denies that he is a Christian, and proves this by making supplication to our gods, however much he may have been under suspicion in the past, shall secure pardon on repentance. In the case of no crime should attention be paid to anonymous charges, for they afford a bad precedent and are not worthy of our age. 32. Effect of the Persecutions (Tertullian, Apology, chap. 50) The early Christian spirit is shown in the following extract from Tertullian (c. 150-230 A.D.), one of the Fathers of the Western Church. His A pology is an important work on the relations of the Christians and the imperial government. Nor does your cruelty, however exquisite, avail you; it is rather a temptation to us. The oftener we are mown down by you, the more in number we grow; the blood of Christians is seed. Many of your writers exhort to the courageous bearing of pain and death, as Cicero in Tusculans, as Seneca in his Chances, as Diogenes, Pyrrhus, Callinicus; and yet their words do not find as many disciples as Christians do, teachers not by words, but by their deeds. That very obstinacy you rail against is the preceptress. For who that contemplates it, is not excited to inquire what is at the bottom of it? who, after inquiry, does not embrace our doctrines? and when he has embraced them, desires not to suffer that he may become partaker of the fulness of God's grace, that he may obtain from God complete forgiveness, by giving in exchange his blood? For that secures the remission of all offences. 33. Edicts of Diocletian against the Christians (Eusebius, P., Church History, book VIII, chaps. 2, 6) The following descriptions of the edicts of Diocletian, 303 A.D., are from the early Church historian, Eusebius Pamphili, who was Bishop of Cæsarea from 314 to his death, about 340 A.D. 2. This was the nineteenth year of the reign of Diocletian, in Dystrus (which the Romans call March), when the feast of the Saviour's passion was near at hand, and royal edicts were published everywhere, commanding that the churches should be razed to the ground, the Scriptures destroyed by fire, those who held positions of honor degraded, and the household servants, if they persisted in the Christian profession, be deprived of their liberty. And such was the first decree against us. But issuing other decrees not long after, the Emperor commanded that all the rulers of the churches in every place should be first put in prison and afterwards compelled by every device to offer sacrifice. 6. Then as the first decrees were followed by others commanding that those in prison should be set free, if they would offer sacrifice, but that those who refused should be tormented with countless tortures; who could again at that time count the multitude of martyrs throughout each province, and especially throughout Africa and among the race of the Moors, in Thebais and throughout Egypt, from which having already gone into other cities and provinces, they became illustrious in their martyrdoms! 34. Certificate of having sacrificed to the Pagan Gods The following certificate, issued in Egypt during the persecutions of Decius, in 250 A.D., comes from an old papyrus, found in 1893. It was issued in a small village in Egypt, and shows how suspected Christians were forced to clear themselves of suspicion by sacrificing publicly to the old gods. To the Commissioners of Sacrifice in the Village of Alexander's Island: from Aurelius Diogenes, the son of Satabus, of the Village of Alexander's Island, aged 72 years: scar on his right eyebrow. I have always sacrificed regularly to the gods, and now, in your presence, in accordance with the edict, I have done sacrifice, and poured the drink offering, and tasted of the sacrifices, and I request you to certify the same. Farewell. Handed in by me, Aurelius Diogenes. I certify that I saw him sacrificing . . . [Signature obliterated,] Magistrate. Done in the first year of the Emperor, Cæsar Gaius Messius Quintus Trajanus Decius, Pius, Felix, Augustus: the second of the month Epith. (June 26, 250 A.D.) 35. The Empire and Christianity in Conflict (Kingsley, Chas., Introduction to Hypatia; selected) The Reverend Charles Kingsley (1819-75), an English writer, in the Introduction to his historical novel Hypatia, gives a good picture of the conflict between the Empire and the Christian Church, and the final victory of the latter, from which the following selection has been taken. For somewhat more than four hundred years the Roman Empire and the Christian Church, born into the world almost at the same moment, had been developing themselves side by side as two great rival powers, in deadly struggle for the possession of the human race. The weapons, of the Empire had been not merely an overwhelming physical force, and a ruthless lust of aggressive conquest: but, even more powerful still, an unequalled genius for organization, and an uniform system of external law and order. This was generally a real boon to conquered nations, because it substituted a fixed and regular spoliation for the fortuitous and arbitrary miseries of savage warfare: but it arrayed, meanwhile, on the side of the Empire the wealthier citizens of every province, by allowing them their share in the plunder of the laboring classes beneath them. These, in the country districts, were utterly enslaved; while in the cities, nominal freedom was of little use to masses kept from starvation by the alms of the government, and drugged into brutish good-humor by a vast system of public spectacles, in which the realms of nature and of art were ransacked to glut the wonder, lust, and ferocity of a degraded population. Against this vast organization the Church had been fighting for now four hundred years, armed only with its own mighty and all-embracing message, and with the manifestation of a spirit of purity and virtue, of love and self-sacrifice, which had proved itself mightier to melt and weld together the hearts of men than all the force and terror, all the mechanical organization, all the sensual baits with which the Empire had been contending against that Gospel in which it had recognized instinctively, and at first sight, its internecine foe. And now the Church had conquered. The weak things of this world had confounded the strong. In spite of the devilish cruelties of persecutors; in spite of the contaminating atmosphere of sin which surrounded her; in spite of having to form herself, not out of a race of pure and separate creatures, but by a most literal "new birth" out of those very fallen masses who insulted and persecuted her; in spite of having to endure within herself continual outbursts of the evil passions in which her members had once indulged without check; in spite of a thousand counterfeits which sprung up around her and within her, claiming to be parts of her, and alluring men to themselves by that very exclusiveness and party arrogance which disproved their claim; in spite of all she had conquered. The very emperors had arrayed themselves on her side. Julian's last attempt to restore paganism by imperial influences had only proved that the old faith had lost all hold upon the hearts of the masses; at his death the great tide wave of new opinion rolled on unchecked, and the rulers of the earth were fain to swim with the stream; to accept, in words at least, the Church's law as theirs; to acknowledge a King of kings to whom even they owed homage and obedience; and to call their own slaves their "poorer brethren," and often, too, their "spiritual superiors." But if the emperors had become Christian, the Empire had not. Here and there an abuse was lopped off; or an edict was passed for the visitation of prisons and for the welfare of prisoners; or a Theodosius was recalled to justice and humanity for a while by the stern rebukes of an Ambrose. But the Empire was still the same: still a great tyranny, enslaving the masses; crushing national life; fattening itself and its officials on a system of world-wide robbery; and, while it was paramount, there could be no hope for the human race. 36. The Edict of Toleration by Galerius (Lactantius, On the Death of the Persecutors, chaps. 34, 35) Lactantius was a teacher of rhetoric at Nicomedia, and later was appointed tutor to one of Constantine's sons. He wrote a history of Christianity from Nero to Galerius, from which this edict is taken. 34. Among other arrangements which we are always accustomed to make for the prosperity and welfare of the Republic, we had desired formerly to bring all things into harmony with the ancient laws and public order of the Romans, and to provide that even the Christians who had left the religion of their fathers should come back to reason; since, indeed, the Christians themselves, for some reason, had followed such a caprice and had fallen into such a folly that they would not obey the institutes of antiquity, which perchance their own ancestors had first established; but at their own will and pleasure, they would thus make laws unto themselves which they should observe, and would collect various peoples in divers places in congregations. Finally, when our law had been promulgated to the effect that they should con form to the institutes of antiquity, many were subdued by the fear of danger, many even suffered death. And yet since most of them persevered in their determination, and we saw that they neither paid the reverence and awe due to the gods nor worshipped the God of the Christians, in view of our most mild clemency and the constant habit by which we are accustomed to grant indulgence to all, we thought that we ought to grant our most prompt indulgence also to these, so that they may again be Christians and may hold their conventicles, provided that they do nothing contrary to good order. But we shall tell the magistrates in another letter what they ought to do. Wherefore, for this our indulgence, they ought to pray to their God for our safety, for that of the Republic, and for their own, that the Republic may continue uninjured on every side, and that they may be able to live securely in their homes. 35. This edict is published at Nicomedia on the day before the Kalends of May, in our eighth consulship and the second of Maximus. 37. The Faith of Catholic Christians In 438 a collection of Roman laws was issued under the title of Codex Theodosianus. One of these laws, dated 380, shows how completely the Christian belief had come to dominate the Roman State. We desire that all those who are under the sway of our clemency shall adhere to that religion which, according to his own testimony, coming down even to our own day, the blessed apostle Peter delivered to the Romans, namely, the doctrine which the pontiff Damasus (Bishop of Rome) and Peter, Bishop of Alexandria, a man of apostolic sanctity, accept. According to the teachings of the apostles and of the Gospel we believe in one Godhead of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, the blessed Trinity, alike in majesty. We ordain that the name of Catholic Christians shall apply to all those who obey this present law. All others we judge to be mad and demented; we declare them guilty of the infamy of holding heretical doctrine; their assemblies shall not receive the name of churches. They shall first suffer the wrath of God, then the punishment in accordance with divine judgment we shall inflict. 38. Privileges and Immunities granted the Clergy (Theodosian Code) Another selection from the Codex Theodosianus, a collection of Roman laws made in 438 A.D. The following grants of privileges and immunities made to the clergy show still further the hold of |