Persecution

Persecution

1. Introduction.-For so persecuted they the prophets which were before you (Mat 5:12). If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you (Joh 15:20). Jesus Christ traced the red trail of the martyrs blood throughout the history of Israel, which He sums up in the words-from the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zachariah (Gen 4:8, 2Ch 24:20-21, Luk 11:51). He Himself was in the succession of martyrs, for the trail is deeply marked in connexion with His life. But the trail does not cease at the tragedy of the Cross. It is obvious that our Lord often warned His disciples in regard to the attitude of Jerusalem and Rome to those who would remain faithful to Him and His teaching. He could see the blood-stained track in connexion with the history of the Church. We must consider our subject in the light of this three-fold reference, so that we may see to what degree, and in what sense, the term persecution is applicable to the attitude of the nation through its rulers (1) to her religious teachers, (2) to Christ, and (3) to His followers. When we deal with Jesus Christ and His followers we shall find Jerusalem allying herself with Rome in her effort to crush the New Teacher and His teaching, and finally Rome taking matters into her own hands, and devoting her whole energy to the extermination of what one of her historians described as a pestilent superstition._

If we define persecution provisionally as the infliction of suffering, whether it be temporary discomfort or death, upon individuals for holding or advocating religious views, and adopting or propagating religious practices, which are obnoxious to the community, or to those in authority, we shall have a definition sufficiently broad and comprehensive to cover the cases in connexion with which the term has been used. It may not be necessary for the persecuted persons to be active in the propagation of their tenets, although the strong conviction, which has generally inspired men to endure persecution rather than abandon their views, produces the missionary spirit. Those who inflict punishment on religious offenders may not admit the charge of persecution, as, according to them, the whole life of the individual is subject to the control of the State, and any and every activity comes under the law of the land. In the strict sense of the term, the infliction of suffering on account of religious opinions is persecution, if the adoption of such views on the part of individuals is not incompatible with loyalty to the throne or the secular power, and with the due discharge of their duties as citizens of the realm. From the point of view of the State, such punishment deserves to be described as persecution if the secular authorities admit the contention that there is a sphere within which the secular authority has no jurisdiction, and if nevertheless it punish those who use their freedom within this sphere. But the advocates of punishment in the case of religious recusancy deny the existence of such a sphere in the life of the individual, and therefore they do not plead guilty to the charge of persecution. In short, the whole problem is concerned with the assertion on the part of the individual, and the denial on the part of the State, that there is a sphere within which the subject is free, and must be permitted to follow the promptings of his conscience. When we consider, in its historical aspects, the relationship between the individual and the State, and when we trace the struggle on the part of the former to secure that measure of freedom which individuality presupposes, it becomes clear that there is a region which the individual claims as his own peculiar territory. For the annexation of this territory, and afterwards for the defence of it, Hebrew prophet and Christian martyr have laid down their lives, and the struggle has been continued throughout the centuries in many lands. It is being increasingly recognized that the individual has demonstrated the justice of his claim to the sole possession of this territory. Within this limited sphere he is free. To change the figure, whilst the individual admits the right of the State to enter the Outer Court and even the Holy Place, there is a Holy of Holies which is reserved for himself. There he deals not with the State, or with his fellow-citizens, but with God. As we follow the struggle for religious freedom, whether the struggle be with the secular authority or with a Church which has taken the place of the State, and exercises its functions, it is plain that the conflict is waged around this territory-the freedom of the religious man. Whether they are Hebrew prophets or Christian martyrs-Albigenses, Pilgrim Fathers, or Huguenots-the struggle is at bottom of the same nature, and for the same ideal. It will not be denied that various motives have been operative, both in the case of those who persecute, and of those who submit to persecution; for it is seldom that human motives are unmixed. Nevertheless the passion for religious freedom has been a genuine and powerful factor in all the truculent conflicts between the State or the Church on the one hand, and individuals or communities on the other who have refused to conform. It may be said that no other motive would have been potent enough to create that sheer obstinacy of which Marcus Aurelius had occasion to complain in the case of the Christians of his time. But kings have been loath to acknowledge the right of subjects to decide for themselves how they are to worship, or what they are to believe. States have persecuted because they have refused to recognize the existence of a sphere in which men are free, and men have endured persecution because they have grasped, more or less clearly, the truth that freedom belongs to the very essence of the religious attitude, and determines its moral worth. They have endured great affliction, and taken joyfully the spoiling of their possessions, seeing they had themselves for a better possession. This better spiritual possession was conditioned by their retaining their religious freedom (Heb 10:32; Heb 10:34).

2. Persecution in the OT.-In Mat 5:12 Jesus Christ warns His disciples of the troublous times which await them at the hands of the representatives of Judaism, and reminds them that their experience will be a repetition of the bitter experience of the nations religious teachers whom God had raised up from time to time, and whose writings indicate their growing insight into the nature of God and religion. To Jerusalem our Lord gave the hard but not unjust name of prophet-killer (Mat 23:35, Luk 13:34). Stephen re-echced his Masters interpretation of the nations attitude when he asked which of the prophets did not your fathers persecute? (Act 7:52). Jesus charged His contemporaries with raising sepulchres to the prophets whom their ancestors had put to death (Luk 11:47). He did not mean that they erected expiatory monuments to the nations martyrs. The sepulchres they built indicated their approval of the misdeeds of their forefathers. In the parable of the Vineyard He gave a similar account of the nations attitude to her God-sent teachers (Mar 12:3 ff.).

But it is obvious that the prophets were not simply men who suffered for their religious opinions. They were aggressive religious and social reformers. In their teaching they came into collision with the existing order of things in social life and religious custom. In the period which succeeded the settlement of the Israelites in Canaan the people adopted the gods and the religious observances of the original inhabitants of the land. The prophets of this early age advocated the sole worship of Jahweh. Moses impressed upon Israel the two-fold truth-Jahweh is Israels God, and Israel is Jahwehs people. The burden of early prophecy was Israel for Jahweh and Jahweh for Israel. They were patriots rather than religious teachers. Patriotism and religion were identical. They opposed the popular tendency to worship the gods, and imitate the religion, of Canaan, as it indicated disloyalty to Jahweh. They were not fully aware of any profound difference between Jahweh and other gods, except that Jahweh was the God of Israel, and, as such, interested in the welfare of Israel and entitled to their undivided homage.

When we come to Elijah, we find ourselves on the confines of a new age. Henceforth the prophets denounced the existing order of things-religious and social. They ethicized theology and religion, and in their capacity as religious teachers they became inevitably social reformers, for the whole basis and structure of society were religious. The message they delivered became increasingly unpalatable, especially to those who were responsible for the existing State. The true prophets parted company with the false prophets because they would not fall in and preach what was popular. In the time of Elijah the antagonism between the prophet and the throne-or between religious conviction and the secular authority-issues in open conflict. Elijah is more than a passive resister; he carries the conflict into the enemys territory, and fights the throne with its own weapons. We have seen that Elijah, like his predecessors, advocated the sole worship of Jahweh. Ahab had married the daughter of the king of Tyre, and proceeded to strengthen the alliance between Israel and Tyre by introducing the worship of Melkarth, the presiding deity of Tyre. The example of the throne was a potent influence in the life of Israel. It was easy to persuade the people that the alliance with Tyre was not complete unless the Tyrian Baal shared with Jahweh the homage of Israel. The people were halting between two opinions. They were not conscious of any inconsistency or duplicity. If gods could help, the more gods they worshipped the better. There was safety in numbers. Elijah stemmed the tide and a strong party refused to follow the example of the throne. The conflict between Elijah and Ahab was not simply whether one god or another should be worshipped-Jahweh of Israel or Melkarth of Tyre. It was a clashing of two incompatible theologies. It is probable that Ahab would have recommended the worship of both deities. The tendency of the age was in the direction of religious syncretism. But from Elijahs standpoint it was a matter of impossibility to practise this religious dualism. We can trace in Elijahs attitude the germ of that exclusiveness which is inevitable when the terms right and wrong or true and false are introduced into religion. The line of cleavage is sharply drawn in the story of the prophets life. Right is exclusive; truth is intolerant. It was absolutely necessary that the stand should be made and the protest raised. To Elijah Baal and Yahweh represented, so to speak, a contrast of principles, of profound and ultimate practical convictions; both could not be right, nor could they exist side by side. For him there existed no plurality of Divine Powers, operating with equal authority in different spheres, but everywhere One Holy and Mighty Being, who revealed Himself, not in the life of nature, but in those laws by which alone human society is held together, in the ethical demands of the spirit (J. Wellhausen, Isr. und jd. Gesch.3, Berlin, 1897, p. 74, quoted in Century Bible, 1 and 2 Kings, Edinburgh, n.d., p. 222). We must not be surprised or disappointed that Elijah believed in the use of force. Centuries must pass before the idea is fully understood that religion is voluntary, and that ccercion is alien to its very nature. Elijah delighted in violent measures. He was at home in an environment of earthquake, storm, and fire. He met the king on his own ground, and prosecuted the struggle with his own weapons. Moral suasion would have made no appeal to the mind of the age, and it was only poetic justice that the prophet was able to turn the tables on his adversaries. It is not always easy to decide whether Elijah or Ahab is the persecutor, for both believed in violence as the only means to the end which they had in view. But we find in the story of the life and work of Elijah a religious conviction that is daring enough to stand up to the secular authority and defy its directions. Ahabs policy may seem to suggest breadth of mind, whilst Elijahs attitude betokens theological narrowness; but in this case the narrow way was the way of life, whilst the broad way was also the way of death.

But Elijah came into still closer grips with Ahab. He denounced the throne on moral grounds. He spoke in the name of Jahweh, and therefore in the name of righteousness. The prophets predecessors identified the cult of Jahweh with patriotism. Elijah identified the worship of Jahweh with social morality. This was the new note which prophecy struck, and it occurs as a refrain in the teaching of all his successors. Elijah had the courage to denounce Ahab for his treatment of Naboth, and the prophet did so, not as a statesman or economist, but as a theologian. The religion of Jahweh issues in social righteousness. Ahab might worship Baal and steal his subjects private property. As a worshipper of Jahweh he could only do justly. Jahwehs will was everlasting right. The problem raised by the kings seizure of Naboths estate was not social or economical, but religious, for it fell within the scope of the religion of Jahweh. Ahabs conduct was not larceny, but sacrilege. It was not the violation of a social law as such that roused the anger of the prophet, but his defiance of the will of God. For Jahweh requires of His worshippers that they do justly (Mic 6:8). When the prophet condemned the kings effort to legitimize the worship of the Tyrian Baal, or his unsocial conduct, he spoke in the name of God, and in the interest of religion. He was prepared to employ force himself, as he was ready to endure persecution rather than cease from condemning what he believed to be wrong or false, i.e. contrary to the Divine will, or from advocating what he believed to be right and true. We shall search in vain for a parallel fact in the whole Semitic world. In other lands the prophets were obliging courtiers and fell in with the royal wishes. We should traverse the Semitic world in vain for an attitude like that of Micaiah-ben-Imlah-what the Lord saith unto me, that will I speak (1Ki 22:14)-when the king had given peremptory orders that he should fall in with his fellow-prophets. The latter received their reward in royal bounties, but Micaiahs message secured for him the bread-and-water diet of the jail (1Ki 22:27).

Elijah was the Wycliffe of Hebrew prophetism; the principles which emerge in connexion with the story of his life were clearly grasped by Amos and his successors, and fearlessly applied to the criticism of the religious and social situation of Israel and Judah. The prophets loved their nation and their country. There never were truer patriots than Hosea and Jeremiah. But they were not patriots of the common type. They would not preach smooth things. That was the privilege of the court-prophets whose message was inspired from the throne. The false prophet was concerned with the question What does the king want? The true prophet was concerned with the question What does Jahweh your God require? The latter was sure of his ground and of the Divine approval as the former was of his reward and of the royal favour. The prophets thus came into collision with current theology, for they declared that Jahweh was not simply the God of Israel, but the God of righteousness, and they came up against popular religion, for they identified religion with the practice of social justice. Their patriotism was sincere and unmistakable, but they placed social righteousness above the mere continuity or safety of the realm or the mere practice of ceremonial religion. Their theology played havoc with the current belief that Jahweh was simply the God of Israel, as well as with the prevalent view that religion was ritual. If Jahweh was a moral governor, and if, further, the national life was totally at variance with the requirements of ethical religion, the expected day of Jahweh would be darkness and not light-disaster, not deliverance (Amo 5:18). The power that worked for righteousness in national and international affairs would wreck any society which ignored or violated the fundamental principle of moral government, for the will of Jahweh must prevail. Their theology made the prophets preachers of judgment and destruction. The doom which they announced might be staved off by national repentance and reform, but Jeremiah, who had witnessed a religious reformation carried out by the throne, was forced to the conclusion that repentance of the true kind was beyond the reach of Judah. The nations illness was incurable (Jer 30:12-15). It was inevitable that the prophet should come into collision with the State. The prophet would not be cajoled, threatened, or silenced; his consciousness of the urgency of his message was such that silence, or even any modification of the truth as he perceived it, would be moral treachery. The prophet is necessarily insistent, uncompromising, intolerant, exclusive. To him the line of demarcation between the true and false-the right and wrong-is clear, and it must be recognized and enforced. The retort of the nations official leaders to this fearless exposition of the demands of true religion was persecution.

3. Persecution of the Jews by the Seleucid kings.-It is universally admitted that the Exile introduced a new epoch in the history of the Jew. But it is easy to exaggerate the nature of the cleavage. There are no absolute beginnings in the history of nations. The student has no difficulty in discovering ample evidence of continuity in social organization and religious praxis. Nevertheless the post-Exilic period was a new age in the history of the nation. The religious leaders of the new age believed that the Exile was the judgment announced by their pre-Exilic predecessors. The nation had completed her period of servitude and made ample compensation for all her sins. Her iniquity was pardoned (Isa 40:2). According to the teaching of the prophets the Israel of God would be a nation which organized its whole life-social and religious-in accordance with the Divine will. Such a people would constitute a kingdom of God. It was the belief of the post-Exilic community that its national life was organized on the lines laid down in the Book of the Law. Judah had become once more the people of Jahweh; in possession of a Bible which embodied the will of God, and controlled her whole life, she stood over against the Gentile world, with its idols and superstitions. God was known and worshipped only in Judah. Pure religion was the sole possession of the Jew.

The rest of the world was without God and without religion, for the gods of the nations were idols, and their religions were superstitions. The post-Exilic Jew was conscious of his superiority among the nations of the Semitic world, and his tendency was to stand aloof in contemptuous isolation. In post-Exilic literature we can trace the universalism of Deutero-Isaiah and the particularism of Ezekiel and Ezra. The Jew owed no less to the universalism of the former than to the particularism of the latter his sense of superiority to the rest of the world. In both Judah occupied a central and unique position. According to Deutero-Isaiah it was the mission of Israel to convert the nations of the world and make the religion of Judah the religion of the nations. According to Ezekiel the Jew would come to his inheritance through the annihilation of the heathen. The one believed in the incorporation, and the other in the destruction, of the nations. The Jew found a solid foundation for his religious exclusivism in Deutero-Isaiah as well as in Ezekiel. To the former Jahweh alone was God, and Israel was His servant and His missionary to the ends of the earth. No God but Jahweh-no religion but the religion of Judah: a people that held that view dwelt alone in the ancient world with its easy-going polytheism and its indolent syncretism.

The result was that every conqueror found in Judah an attitude which he discovered nowhere else throughout the Semitic world, and he could no more understand the significance of it than the Roman Emperor at a later date could understand the attitude of the Christian believer. Other nations were prepared to fall in with the wishes of the conqueror. They were willing conformists, but Judah was an implacable nonconformist. You are the only people, said Agrippa, in his effort to dissuade the Jews from rebelling against Rome, who think it a disgrace to be servants of those to whom all the world hath submitted. Judah would not submit, and the reasons for her recusancy were not so much political as religious. Judahs nationalism was rooted in her religion. The cause of Judah was the cause of Jahweh. The Kingdom of God was identified with the kingdom of Judah. It is interesting to note that the nations religious teachers in the past arraigned Israel on the ground of her eagerness to imitate neighbouring nations by adopting their gods and religious customs. It was during the exile in Babylon that the Jew thoroughly mastered the prophetic doctrine of the uniqueness of Jahweh and of His religion. Conscious of the nature of the possession which he had in his religion, he cultivated national self-confidence and self-reliance, which ultimately degenerated into national pride and exclusiveness. In exile the Jew learnt how to resist the pressure of a hostile environment, and the lesson stood him in good stead throughout the post-Exilic period, for the position of Judah in the Semitic world was precisely the position of the exiles in Babylon. The Book of Daniel, which purports to describe the situation of the Jew in exile, could not be otherwise than a powerful appeal to Judah in the 2nd cent. b.c. to imitate the heroes of the Exile and remain loyal to her ancestral faith and religion. But a nation like this was a disturbing element and a standing menace to the unity of the Empire to which it belonged. Most nations are conquered when their army is defeated, their territory annexed, and their independence taken from them. Nation after nation in the Semitic world succumbed to the domination of the Macedonian conqueror. But neither Assyria nor Babylon, nor Persia, nor Macedon nor Rome conquered Judah, for a nation is conquered only when her soul is subjugated. Judah retained her unconquerable soul. Antiochus Epiphanes, the most powerful representative of the Seleucid dynasty, made an effort to complete the subjugation of Judah by conquering her soul, but in his campaign he came across a stronghold in the nations conscience-or her religious self-consciousness-which defied all his assaults. The invader possessed no arms to carry the campaign to a successful issue. Antiochus was an extremely able ruler. It was his programme to unify his Empire by universalizing Hellenism. Greek civilization was to be the tie that would bind together the different parts of his heterogeneous Empire. It was a magnificent scheme, well conceived and vigorously carried out, and the Emperor met with little or no opposition until he reached Judah. He did not persecute on religious grounds. The Emperor had no deep-rooted objection to the religion of Judah-except its exclusiveness. He approached the problem as a ruler, and his policy was the unification of his Empire by exterminating national religions. But Judahs resistance was religious and not political. Mattathias of Modin raised the standard of revolt, and the rising, in its initial stages, was inspired by loyalty to the ancestral religion. It ultimately resolved itself into an attempt to secure the political independence of Judah, for the simple reason that full religious liberty is a precarious possession without political independence. But it was the desecration of the Temple, and the attempt to force loyal Jews to sacrifice to heathen deities that roused the are of the nation, and moved the Maccabaean family to defend the national religion. It is extremely probable that many Psalms date from this period, and the fierce nature of the struggle carried on by the Maccabees in defence of their nation, religion, and laws is reflected in those passionate hymns which still throb with the intense feeling which the conflict roused in the breasts of the asidim, or loyalists, who supported Judas Maccabaeus in his campaign.

In regard to persecution on the part of the Church of Rome, Lecky writes: If men believe with an intense and realising faith that their own view of a disputed question is true beyond all possibility of mistake these men will, sooner or later, persecute to the full extent of their power._ This intense faith, which accounts for the will to persecute on the part of the Church, also explains the willingness on the part of religious persons to be persecuted rather than abandon their faith. Antiochus Epiphanes was not actuated by any such intense faith in Greek culture. He was concerned solely with his dream of a homogeneous Empire, but Judaism was inspired by this intense faith, with the result that the Jew, as afterwards the Christian believer, constituted a problem to the rulers of the ancient world. Seleucid rulers found in Judaism, as Roman procurators and proconsuls found in Christianity, an obstinacy which baffled all their efforts to secure universal uniformity. It was not an inheritance in the case of the Christian Church from the Jewish synagogue, but the outcome of the intense faith which inspired Jew and Christian to endure torture, not accepting deliverance (Heb 11:35).

4. Persecution of Jesus by the Jews.-Irenaeus called Jesus Christ the Master of Martyrdom. The martyrs followed in His footsteps. In each martyr Origen saw the Lord Himself condemned. The true imitatio Christi was martyrdom. John calls Jesus Christ the faithful witness (Rev 1:5), and Paul adds that He witnessed the good confession (1Ti 6:13). Our Lord warned His disciples that the persecution which He endured would also be their lot (Joh 15:18). It becomes, therefore, necessary to examine the opposition which culminated in the tragedy of the Cross, and the reasons which actuated Jerusalem and Rome in their combined resolve to compass His death. According to the Gospels, Jesus Christ was conscious of a growing premonition as to the issue of the conflict between Himself on the one hand and the Pharisees and Sadducees on the other, the representatives of the democracy and the aristocracy of Judaea . The Pharisees were the nationalist party, and carried on the traditions of the asidim, or loyalists, who supported Judas Maccabaeus in his struggle for religious liberty in the 2nd cent., whilst the Sadducees were the priestly caste, and were willing to put up with Roman domination as long as they were left in undisturbed possession of priestly prerogatives, and especially of the revenues of the Temple. Jesus Christ could not miss their growing hostility to Him and His teaching, and the ominous closing of the ranks on the part of these prominent parties which otherwise had very little in common. The Pharisees were profoundly religious. Their religion consisted in rigid observance of the Law, and of the traditions of the fathers. To the religious zeal of the Puritan they added intense patriotism. But their religion was soulless formalism. They were not lacking in religious self-confidence. The Pharisaic Paul contended that in the light of the Pharisaic ideal he was blameless (Philippians 3). They made a fetish of the Law. It had come from God, and contained a complete and final system of religious praxis. They were rigorously and exclusively Jewish in their outlook. There was nothing good outside Judaism. They were immovably opposed to anything and everything foreign. Among them the Messianic hope flourished. From their midst emanated the apocalyptic literature of the nation, with its dream of a glorious triumph for Judah. The dream of a world-wide kingdom troubled the long sleep of Jewish oppression, and occasionally the sleep was disturbed by a violent effort to realize the national ambition and shake off the yoke which weighed like an incubus upon the nations soul. But the Pharisees did not fall in with the policy of the zealots or Cananaeans or the followers of Judas of Galilee (Act 5:37). They shared the zealots hatred of everything alien or non-Jewish, but they recognized the futility of rebellion. They were too well aware of the irresistible might of Rome. It was their mission to keep the national life Jewish, and religion pure and undefiled, and God would appear on their behalf in the fullness of time and bring in the Messianic age. It is evident that the Pharisees were keenly interested in Jesus Christ and in the claim which was being made that He was the Messiah. They would welcome any reliable evidence that the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand, and that the hope of the nation was nearing fulfilment. The Pharisees generally mingled with the crowd which followed Jesus, and they were not always present as captious critics. Their astonishment that Jesus ate with publicans and sinners proves that they expected different conduct from one who was going to realize the Messianic ideal, and bring in the Messianic age (Mar 2:15). They were on the same quest when they asked for a sign-some unmistakable evidence that He was the Divinely-appointed Saviour of the nation. Nicodemus was a Pharisee, and displays the Pharisees interest in Jesus Christ and His claim to be the Messiah (John 3). But it was soon obvious to the Pharisees that Jesus could not be the Messiah whom they expected. He displayed no respect for the Pharisaic ideal, in either its political or its religious aspects. He contradicted the Messianic expectation as it was held among the Pharisees-viz. a great national hero who could and would bring in the Messianic age as it was understood by them. He also opposed Pharisaism as a religious system. He undermined their whole philosophy of religion. He was especially severe on their emphasis on trivial rules, and their neglect of the weightier matters of the law (Mat 23:23). It was evident to the Pharisees that, if this teaching prevailed, the national hope was doomed, for the teaching of Jesus implied that the outstanding institutions of Judaism were not essential. They could all be scrapped as obsolete and useless. Towards the end of His life Jesus Christ makes no effort to conceal His contempt for Pharisaism. He condemns the Pharisee on religious, not on political, grounds. It was as obvious to the Pharisee as to Jesus that their respective teaching was mutually antagonistic. There was no hope for Pharisaic religion if the teaching of Jesus prevailed. Paul discovered in his own way at a later stage that Pharisaism and Christianity were incompatible.

It was only towards the end of His life that the Sadducees became prominent in controversy with Jesus. They possessed neither the piety nor the patriotism of the Pharisees. They were interested in the continuance of the Temple and its worship, as the Pharisees were concerned with the continuance of the Synagogue and its service. They were interested in religion only in so far as it involved the continued existence of the Temple where they found their living. They were immovably conservative, for they were anxious that the existing order of things should remain undisturbed. They were supreme in the Sanhedrin, and they were favourable to Rome as long as they were secure in the enjoyment of the Temple revenue. As friends of Rome, they were naturally afraid of the growing popularity of Jesus. They knew the Jewish temperament, and they knew the disposition of Rome. They were anxious that the religious and political situation should remain undisturbed, that they might continue to enjoy the privileges which Roman rule extended to them. After the raising of Lazarus and the impression which it made upon the people, the high priests and Pharisees were thrown into consternation, for they feared that the disturbance would attract the notice of the Roman representative, who would take away their place and their nation (Joh 11:48). Jesus clearing of the Temple roused the anger of the Sadducees, for it interfered with vested interests. It was this act that moved them to compass His death (Mar 11:15; Mar 11:18). The only restraint was their fear of the people.

The charge of blasphemy was often on the lips of His Pharisaic adversaries, and from the Jewish point of view the indictment was perfectly intelligible. To the Pharisees, who rejected the Messianic claims of Jesus, His utterances and His deeds were often blasphemous (Mar 2:7, Joh 5:16; Joh 5:18), just as to His disciples who acknowledged Him to be the Messiah the attitude of the Jews was equally blasphemous (Mar 15:29, Act 13:45; Act 18:6; Act 19:37). Any disparaging speech in reference to Jahweh was blasphemy, or any act which was disparaging to His dignity, e.g. Sennacheribs sneer that Jahweh was no better than the numerous gods of the nations which the Assyrian army had conquered (2Ki 19:16). The worship of Jahweh with the rites of the Baalim was blasphemy, for it degraded Jahweh to the level of Baal (Eze 20:27). Any irreverent allusion to any institution connected with Jahweh came under the same condemnation, e.g. Jesus alleged reference to the Temple (Mar 14:58, Act 6:13). His violation of the sacredness of the Sabbath was of the same nature (Num 15:32, Joh 10:33; Joh 10:36). When Jesus arrogated to Himself the right to forgive sins, He encroached upon the prerogatives of Deity, and He was guilty of blasphemy (Mar 2:7, Mat 9:3). John adds that His assumption of Divinity was provocative of violent opposition. The high priest, at the trial of Jesus, put to Him the question, Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed, or the Son of God? (Mar 14:61, Mat 26:63). It was a definite challenge whether He was the Messiah or not. The answer was equally clear and emphatic, and the charge of blasphemy was at once raised. The alternatives were clear-Jesus was the Messiah, or else He was a blasphemer, and as such worthy of death (Lev 24:16). This was the technical charge against Jesus, but it is obvious that His whole teaching was antagonistic to and subversive of the religious formalism and narrow nationalism of the Pharisee no less than the scepticism and worldliness of the Sadducee. But the Sanhedrin could not inflict capital punishment without the confirmation of the Roman governor. It was therefore necessary to put in an indictment of a different character in order to make sure of the verdict. The prosecutors held that according to Jewish law (Lev 24:16) Jesus was guilty of death, for He made Himself Son of God (Joh 19:7). It would not be difficult to make out that His claims to be the Messiah or King of the Jews constituted not only blasphemy but high treason, and the Roman Emperor was exceedingly sensitive on the question of laesa majestas or high treason. The main object of the prosecution was to bring home the charge of high treason as the only indictment that would move Pilate to confirm the verdict of the Sanhedrin. Luke sums up the three points in the indictment. (1) Perverting the nation. This was a charge of seditious agitation. His adversaries knew what they were about when they suggested that He was trying to work up a revolt in Palestine. (2) Forbidding the payment of tribute to Caesar. Jesus Christ had recently discriminated between duty to God and obligations to Caesar, and His words suggested the existence of a sphere to which the authority of Caesar did not extend. (3) Making Himself to be Messiah, king. The Jewish leaders raised the cry of blasphemy over the claim. It was the political aspect of the claim which they emphasized before Pilate. The insinuation of the mob, that Pilate would not uphold the authority of Caesar if he released Jesus, stung the Roman governor to the quick and materially helped to get his confirmation of the findings of the Sanhedrin. It is obvious that, as far as Pilate was concerned, everything depended upon the significance of the Messianic claim made by Jesus, and accepted by His accusers for their own purpose, at His trial. In their desperate efforts to secure an adverse verdict the Jews were prepared to trample underfoot the national expectation of a Messiah-We have no king but Caesar. They knew what charge would carry weight before the proconsul. It is obvious that Pilate was moved by the charge. The Jewish world at the time was full of unrest, and insurrections were not uncommon. The Jews repeated the charge, in their opposition to Paul at Thessalonica. They knew that would get a hearing from the representative of Caesar (Act 17:7). It is obvious that the Jews were actuated in their opposition to Jesus Christ by motives which were partly nationalistic and partly religious, whilst Pilate, the Imperial representative, was concerned mainly with the political aspects of the situation.

5. Persecution of the Christians by the Jews.-We have already referred to the fact that Jesus Christ prepared His disciples for persecution. He seemed to have a clear premonition as to the issue of His own life. He was equally certain that fidelity to His teaching would evoke the deep and implacable hostility of Judaism and of the Roman Empire. Their contention that the Crucified Jesus was the Messiah and a Saviour for all nations would offend Jewish nationalism, and the ethical ideal of the gospel would evoke the scorn and the hatred of the Graeco-Roman world. Jerusalem and Rome would work together in opposition to His disciples, as they had done in opposition to Him, and for the same reasons. The unexpected manner in which references to persecution as the inevitable lot of His faithful followers occur in His speeches proves that it was ever on His mind. He met every situation that arose in the history of the early Church. Fidelity to Him and His teaching would be supremely difficult, but it would not miss its reward. He pronounced a beatitude on those who would suffer persecution for righteousness sake-i.e. upon those who would bring upon their own heads the hostility of the world on account of their adherence to His teaching. Their endurance of persecution for this reason entitled them to membership in the Kingdom of God. Through their endurance of the hostility of the world without flinching or denying their faith, they would win their souls, and thereby prove their claim to be citizens of the kingdom of heaven (Luk 21:19). The vivid and constant sense of their belonging to another kingdom-real and abiding-would alone enable them to endure the hatred of the world; no other motive would be sufficiently strong. Persecution was the crucible which tested the faith of the disciple-its genuineness and its strength. Persecution would be the form in which the antagonism of the world-Jewish and pagan-would manifest itself. It would be a tribute to the reality of their faith. The believers would be sheep in the midst of wolves. But theirs was a life which wolves could not harm. Let not the lambs fear the wolves when they are dead are words which are ascribed to Christ in an ancient homily (J. B. Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers, pt. i., London, 1890, vol. ii. p. 219). Sanhedrins and synagogues-the political and religious institutions-of Judah would be arrayed against the disciples. They would be dragged before kings like Herod Agrippa (Acts 26) or Emperors like Nero (2Ti 4:6) and Roman governors like Felix and Festus (Act 24:24; Act 25:6). Peter reminds his readers that they must be careful that persecution is due to their Christian faith and Christian conduct (1Pe 4:16). Among the rewards of fidelity to Jesus Christ are houses with persecutions (Mar 10:30). We are not surprised when we read of the persecutions that many lapsed from the faith-the good seed was choked (Mat 13:21). But the true believer will face all the trials and sufferings of life (Romans 8, 1Co 4:12, 2Co 4:9; 2Co 12:10).

Jesus forecast of the future was fulfilled to the letter, and His disciples had not long to wait. The representatives of Rome did not appear on the scene for some time; the opposition came from the Jews. The earliest Christians were Jews, and the earliest form of apostolic Christianity was essentially Jewish. Its early exponents were only dimly aware of the full content of the claim which they made when they contended that Jesus was the Christ. It required many minds to bring out the full meaning of the teaching of the Master. The author of Acts rendered a service in this connexion which comes next only to the Gospels and Pauls Epistles. It is clear that the burden of the apostolic preaching was the fulfilment of the Messianic hope in Jesus. Jesus is the Christ. The disciples never abandoned their belief that Jesus was the Messiah-viz. the Messiah of Jewish belief. We hoped that it was he which should redeem Israel are the pathetic words in which two disciples express their poignant disappointment (Luk 24:21). Dost thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? is the question put to Jesus Christ after His resurrection (Act 1:6). The Crucifixion laid their Jewish hope in ruins. The Resurrection, however, brought about a renewal of their faith, but it had changed its content. The apostolic gospel was simply the claim that Jesus, who had been crucified and buried, but who had risen and ascended to heaven, was the Messiah. It is noteworthy that the Sadducees, and not the Pharisees, began the opposition to Peter and his fellow disciples. It was the claim that Jesus was the Messiah that evoked their antagonism. As the movement seemed to spread at an alarming rate, the Sadducees feared a popular rising. They were satisfied with things as they were, and they were exceedingly anxious not to give any offence to Rome. They opposed the apostolic preaching, as they had opposed the claim of Jesus to be the Messiah, for they knew how similar movements had ended. The Pharisees took no part, at first, in the opposition to the new movement. This seeming indifference is quite intelligible. We have already pointed out that the Pharisees were greatly interested in Jesus and in the claim which was made by His followers that He was the Messiah. They were equally interested in the apostolic contention that the Resurrection demonstrated the truth of His Messiahship. The rising from the dead had put the whole matter in a new light. The disciples themselves had temporarily relinquished their view that Jesus was the expected deliverer, but the Resurrection enabled them to recover their faith in a transfigured form. We are not surprised that many Pharisees were among the early disciples (Act 15:5). Gamaliel, a prominent Pharisee, counselled caution in dealing with the new movement. He suggested that they should wait developments and accept the verdict of Providence. It was a Pharisaic belief that history judged all movements. Gamaliel was willing to keep an open mind, and in this attitude he represented the more enlightened Pharisaism of the day. When they considered the question in the light of the Resurrection, there seemed nothing in the doctrine that Jesus was the Messiah which was inconsistent with the Messianic hope as it prevailed among the Pharisees. But they had not long to wait before they saw the significance of the new movement, and their interest was converted into determined and relentless opposition when they understood its true inwardness. The historian of Acts puts into the mouth of Stephen one of the most epoch-making utterances in the New Testament. Stephen was a Hellenistic Jew, and his early training had fitted him to grasp the universality of the gospel. Christianity was the true completion of the religion of Israel, and, therefore, the supersession of Judaism. It was the fulfilment of the hope of Israel. The religious teachers of the nation had tried to bring out the true nature of religion, but the nation, in the person of its official leaders, had offered continued resistance to the Holy Ghost, with the result that the religion of the prophets had degenerated into Judaism. In the light of Stephens conception of the gospel, Jewish institutions were temporary; they had no abiding significance. They were not essential to the spiritual and universal gospel of Christianity. This speech contradicted Pharisaism at every point. Stephen was charged with speaking words against this holy place, and the law (Act 6:13). He spoke blasphemous words against Moses and against God (Act 6:11). These accusations were inevitable from the Pharisaic point of view, for to the orthodox Pharisee the Law was a complete and final system. The charge of blasphemy had been brought against Jesus Christ, and the repetition of the indictment in the case of Stephen shows that the disciple had understood the mind of the Master. Henceforth the opposition of Judaism to the Christian Church is uncompromising and unbroken, and the martyrdom of Stephen was followed by the death of other prominent members of the Church. But the scattering of the Church meant the spreading of the gospel. There seems little doubt that refugees played no small part in the earliest missionary activities of the Church. It is hardly possible to exaggerate the opposition which Judaism was able to offer to the young churches which came into existence in different towns and villages in Asia Minor and in Europe, for throughout the Roman Empire there were large Jewish settlements. In connexion with the repeated outbreaks of persecution in various centres, the unbelieving Jew was the dark figure that stood in the background. There is truth in Tertullians statement_ that Jewish synagogues were the chief sources of persecution. The historian of Acts saw in Judaism the real opponent of Christianity. To him there was no other rival religion, for the heathen world was irreligious. Its numerous religions were not worthy of the name. To the strict Pharisee it was also equally clear that the real opponent of Judaism was Christianity. Judaism could hold its own against heathen religions, but Christianity was a powerful rival, for it deprived Judaism of everything except its nationalism. The Jew repeated, in the case of the Christian missionary, the charge which had been brought against Jesus. He knew that it carried weight with the representative of Rome. In Thessalonica they urged certain vile fellows of the rabble to lead the opposition. The charge of high treason was insinuated in the words These all act contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, one Jesus (Act 17:7). It was this charge that finally decided Pilate to speak the fateful word and hand over Jesus to His persecutors. Generally throughout the Acts, Rome, in the person of its proconsuls, is represented as taking on the whole a favourable view of Christianity. The brunt of the opposition came from the representatives of Judaism. But much depended on the temperament and character of the Roman governor as well as on the manner in which the prosecutors conducted the charge. The Jews in Corinth were not quite so alive to the possibilities of the situation as their compatriots at Thessalonica. The Corinthian Jews indicted Paul for urging men to worship contrary to the Law. Gallio replied that he was not concerned about their religious controversies. He would interfere only in case of crime or political misdemeanour (Act 18:14-15). It is possible that the historian lays stress on the favourable attitude of Rome to the early Christians in order to impress on his Roman readers that there was no real incompatibility between the Christian religion and the interests of the Empire. The Christian Church felt the force of Jewish persecution in a peculiarly violent manner in the first half of the 2nd cent. when they refused to join in the revolt of Bar Cochba-the Son of the Star (Num 24:17), who headed a Messianic movement. The Christians refused to admit his claim, and were exposed to the vengeance of both Rome and the would-be Messiah. To the Romans they were Jews, whilst to the insurrectionists they were renegades.

The Church of Pentecost consisted entirely of Jews who accepted the apostolic doctrine that Jesus-Crucified and Risen-was the Messiah. Apart from that confession, they remained Jews and retained their Judaism in its entirety; and we must not read too much into that elementary creed. Even Peter and John, not to mention their converts, had not fully understood the teaching of Jesus. But it is an astonishing fact that within half a century the leading minds of the Church had set forth the content of the Christian religion, in Gospel and Epistle. When the Jew perceived the universal character of the gospel, he became its relentless opponent. He was too much of a nationalist to accept a gospel that placed all nations on an equality, whilst his reverence for the Law would not permit him to believe that it could be superseded. His nationalism and conservatism made him a bitter persecutor of the Way. There were two alternatives for the Jew-conversion or persecution. He had a profound reverence for the Torah. It was complete and final. The orthodox Jew believed that the world would be saved by being Judaized, as the Christian preacher believed it would be saved by being evangelized. Judaism was not one religion among many-it was the religion. The Jew claimed for Judaism what the Christian apologist claimed for Christianity-finality and absoluteness. The Jew had to embrace Christianity or oppose it by every means at his disposal. Both Judaism and Christianity were exclusive religious. The Jew who refused to be converted must have possessed that intense faith in which Lecky has discovered the origin of persecution. The Christian religion also produced a faith which counted it all joy to suffer for righteousness sake. It was this exclusiveness and sense of superiority which made Judah the best hated nation in the ancient world; but for the same reason the Christian Church won the bitter hatred of the Graeco-Roman world with its indolent syncretism and low ethical ideals. It has been maintained that persecution in the strict sense of the term originated within Judaism, and in this doctrine of exclusiveness, inasmuch as the Jew persecuted Christians solely for their religious views-i.e. for heresy, and for no other reason. But there was a close intermingling of religious and political motives, and in Judah especially nationalism and religion were closely associated.

6. The attitude of Rome to Christianity.-The representatives of Rome paid little or no attention to the new and magical superstition which had sprung up in Judah. To them Christianity was simply a Jewish movement. But they were alive to the possibilities of the movement and were always on the look-out for political developments in connexion with any religious agitation. Rome was familiar with Messianic risings in Palestine, and the Jew never missed an opportunity of laying before the Emperor a charge of disloyalty against Christians. It was the only way to overcome the apparent apathy of Rome. Throughout Acts, Rome is represented, in the person of her proconsuls, as indifferent to the quarrels between Christian missionaries and their Jewish adversaries (Act 18:14-15; Act 25:19). The attitude of Pilate to Jesus was typical of the attitude of Roman governors to His followers. They were interested in religious doctrines in the light of their influence on individuals as subjects of the Empire. They were often guilty of gross indifference. The Jews relied on the apathy of Roman governors and frequently took matters into their own hands. It is admitted that the Empire possessed a magnificent system of law. But it is easy to indulge in exaggerated language in regard to the administration of law, especially in remote parts of the Empire. Roman governors frequently turned their blind eye to the sufferings inflicted on Christians by their Jewish or pagan persecutors.

It is obvious that for some time Rome looked upon the followers of Christ as a Jewish sect. In so far as the representative of Rome had condemned Jesus on political grounds, it would follow that His disciples would experience similar treatment at the hands of Imperial governors. It is interesting in this connexion to consider the account which the Roman historian gives of the movement. According to Tacitus, the founder of the sect, Chrestus by name, had been condemned by Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius. His followers were vulgarly called Christians. They were universally hated on account of the abominable deeds of which they were guilty, and their hatred of the human race. The execution of their leader gave a temporary check to the pestilent superstition. But it broke out afresh, and extended to Rome, where everything that is vile and scandalous accumulated._ The historian gives the ordinary Roman view. Christians were simply Christs faction. The attitude of Pilate to the Founder of the sect should also be the attitude of Rome to His followers-an attitude of contempt mixed with hatred. In view of this fact the question arises how it came about that Rome ultimately became such an implacable enemy of the pestilent superstition, which at first seemed to be beneath contempt.

In religion Rome practised ample tolerance. This does not mean that Roman Emperors favoured religious liberty or freedom of conscience. Centuries must elapse before governments will be found to admit the rights of individuals in religion, or even of States which form parts of a larger Empire, although Jesus Christ did suggest a sphere within which Caesar could exercise no jurisdiction. But Roman Emperors would not admit that view, for the power of the State, in the person of the ruler, was absolute, and it covered all the activities of life. Nevertheless it was the policy of Rome to allow conquered States to retain their gods and their religious customs, in so far as the free exercise of their ancestral religion or their worship of their national deities did not interfere with loyalty to the Empire, and especially with their willingness to pay homage to the Emperor by sacrificing in his name. Romes interest in religion was entirely political. It was the continuance and stability of the Empire that concerned Rome and her rulers. Religions were tolerated and encouraged in so far as they promoted tranquillity and good order. The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful._ The toleration of local or national religions was part of Romes method of governing her extensive dominions. The Jews, wrote Celsus, are not to be blamed, because each man ought to live according to the custom of his country; but the Christians have forsaken their national rites for the doctrine of Christ._

Rome permitted the worship of national gods and the continuance of national cults. But there was no religious liberty in this apparent tolerance. The gods worshipped and the cults practised in different parts of the Empire had to receive the Imperial sanction. Cicero_ remarks that the worship of gods which had not been recognized by law was a punishable offence. No religion had any standing until it received the Imperial imprimatur. No gods could be worshipped unless they were publice adsciti. The States approval was necessary. Christianity was not a national faith, and for a time it did not secure the Imperial sanction. In the former sense it was a unique phenomenon within the Empire. It seems that for a time Christianity enjoyed the privileges which had been extended to Judaism as a national religion. Judaism had been treated with exceptional favour, for the Jew was exempted from the worship of the Emperor. It was a concession to Jewish monotheism. But the open rupture between Judaism and Christianity which was manifest to the world by the middle of the century, and the persistent persecution of Christians by Jews, compelled Rome to inquire into the meaning of the new movement. The Empire tolerated old and national religions, but Christianity was a thing of yesterday, and belonged to no nation, but embraced all peoples. As such Christianity stood outside the law of the Empire. It created divisions in every nation, and town, and family. Judaism was the religion of the Jews, but Christianity gathered or created its own clientele. John saw a great multitude, which no man could number, out of every nation, and of all tribes and peoples and tongues (Rev 7:9). That was the condemnation of the Christian religion in the opinion of Imperial Rome. The first edict of toleration (a.d. 311) cast in the face of the Christian religion that it had collected a various society from the different provinces of the Empire. Christianity, because of its non-national or international character, was divisive and anarchical, although, when rightly understood, the gospel supplied the universal religion and formed the bond of union which made of all nations a world-wide brotherhood.

What Judaism was in the pre-Christian world, Christianity was in the Roman Empire-an exclusive religion. From the very start Christianity was proclaimed as the religion of fulfilment. It was final and absolute-and in none other is there salvation; for neither is there any other name under heaven that is given among men, wherein we must be saved (Act 4:12). Peter stated in the name of Christianity what every orthodox Jew would have claimed for Judaism. Christianity was essentially exclusive and intolerant. The apostles proclaimed one God-the Father of their Lord Jesus Christ. They preached one Saviour-the Crucified Christ. There was only one religion-and that was Christianity. When Jesus stated that He was the way, the truth, and the life (Joh 14:6), it became impossible for His disciples to be tolerant of any other religion, for tolerance would be treachery. We have already traced the germ of this antagonism between the true and the false in the teaching of Elijah, who maintained that Jahweh and Baal were mutually exclusive, and it developed into the religion of post-Exilic Judah. Paul had stated the Christian attitude-Though there be that are called gods, to us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we unto him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him (1Co 8:5 f.). The Christian who worshipped the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ could not fall in with the prevalent syncretism which implied that every god was as good as another, and every religion a matter of nationality. The Empire had experienced the same exclusiveness in the case of Judah, and had, in the interest of tranquillity, made allowance for it by extending to the Jew privileges which were denied to every other dependent people. But Judaism could advance the plea that it was a national religion. Roman Emperors had found it necessary to legislate against aggressive missionary activity whether on the part of Jews or Christians. The Pharisees compassed sea and land to make one proselyte, whilst the Christian Church from the beginning displayed unparalleled missionary zeal, and for a considerable period there was no abatement in its enthusiasm. Marcus Aurelius published an edict against those who caused tumults by introducing new worships, whilst a succeeding Emperor prohibited Christians and Jews from making converts.

When we bear in mind the missionary zeal of the early Church, and the tremendous religious conviction which it presupposes, it seems an extraordinary thing that the charge of atheism was brought against the Christians. But it is quite intelligible from the point of view of the prevalent polytheism. The Christians refused to worship any of the gods of the Graeco-Roman world. Whereas the literature of the age suggests that religion was a diminishing force in the life of the Empire, it is universally admitted that the gods were very real beings to the masses. Even among the upper classes there was more affectation than conviction in the scepticism which they aired. Despite the contemptuous references to the superstitions which prevailed in different parts of the Empire, the genuine Roman was steeped in superstition. Paul might justly have said of the Empire what he said of Athens-I perceive that ye are somewhat religious (Act 17:22). The whole Roman world was unusually addicted to the worship of divinities._ It was inevitable that heathen worshippers should call Christians atheists, for they refused to recognize their gods, and their refusal implied disbelief in their existence, or at any rate in their power. Not only did Christians refuse to take part, on the occasion of great public festivals, in the cult of the gods, but their religion seemed to lack all the visible symbols of religion. The spiritual religion of the Christian was no religion to the masses in Roman towns. How could religion without temples, altars, sacrifices, possess any value? It also happened that imprudent enthusiasts showed little respect for the altars and the temples of the gods. Their conduct was sacrilege, and sacrilege and atheism were synonymous terms. Polytheism prevailed throughout the Empire, and in such a world the uncompromising monotheism of Christians was atheism, for it denied the existence of the numerous gods which were worshipped in different parts of the Empire. Paul had already said that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice they sacrifice to devils and not to God (1Co 10:20). The representative of paganism in the Apology of Minucius Felix states in regard to Christians: They despise the temples as dead houses; they scorn the gods; they mock sacred things._ Their Christianity required that attitude, but it gave point to the charge of atheism, for the masses believed in gods, but not in God.

But the patriotic Roman accused Christians of atheism for another reason, and here atheism implied treason to the Empire, or lse-majest. Rome tolerated the worship of various gods, but this tolerance was simply political expediency. The result was a vast heterogeneous Empire consisting of various races, with various religions held together as much by the universal dread of the Roman army as by the widespread respect for Roman justice. Another bond of union, religious in character, was necessary to secure the unity of the Empire. The genius of the Roman people was an object of worship as far back as the 3rd cent. in the history of Rome. It combined religion and patriotism. When the Roman Empire was established, and the powers of the State were centred in the Emperor, the cult of the genius of the Roman people became the worship of Caesar. Caesar-worship became the Imperial religion; it was the spiritual symbol of the political union, _ and as such it formed a test of loyalty. Antiochus Epiphanes ruled over a similar, but smaller Empire. He endeavoured to solve the problem by stamping out national customs and universalizing Greek culture. Rome allowed national cults to remain, but demanded on the part of each conquered people the cult of the Emperor. The eastern part of the Empire welcomed this Imperial religion; towns vied with each other in erecting temples to Caesar, and in holding religious festivals in honour of the Imperial divinity. But the Jew was exempted; the proposal of Caligula to place his statue in the Temple roused fierce opposition, and the Emperor was forced to abandon his plan. It was in connexion with these religious celebrations that outbreaks of popular persecution occurred. It may be assumed that the authorities looked on with acquiescence, for the martyrs had refused to join in the worship of the Beast (Rev 2:13; Rev 13:8; Rev 13:15). Rome required an act of idolatry as evidence of loyalty to the Empire. To that Imperial rule Christians would not conform. For the Christian there was but one Lord and Master, to whom he owned supreme allegiance; this he was prepared to prove by the renunciation of all things, even life itself. For the Christian the unity of the race was symbolized not by a Tiberius or a Marcus Aurelius, but by the incarnation of Jesus Christ._ To the Roman representative it seemed a simple matter, but to the Christian acquiescence would have been equivalent to the renunciation of his faith. The watchword of the Zealots, no king but Jehovah, was equivalent to no alien ruler in Judah. It was a direct challenge-and it was intended to be such-to Roman domination. Our Lord had stated in the presence of Pilate that His Kingship and His Kingdom were not of this world. Yet the ideals and therefore the interests of the two kingdoms-the kingdom of Caesar and the Kingdom of Christ-often clashed, with the result that it was impossible to be a loyal subject of Caesar and a faithful follower of Christ, and Rome had ingeniously devised a way of compelling Christians to submit to their Emperor or to deny their Lord. To them Christ was Lord, and they would not allow any mortal man to claim the Lordship which their faith attributed to Christ.

Gatherings of Christians for prayer and worship were looked upon as secret societies, and popular imagination ran riot in surmising what transpired. It is possible that Pauls counsel, greet one another with an holy kiss, had been too literally and too lavishly interpreted. In any case the practice of the kiss of peace suggested diverse abominations to the vivid and impure mind of the masses. The celebration of the Lords Supper and the holding of love-feasts were capable of various interpretations. The coarse mind of the age looked upon them as Thyestean feasts and Cedipodean incest. But whilst popular imagination busied itself with the practices carried on at these gatherings of Christians, it was their secrecy that roused the suspicion of the authorities. Mutual benefit societies or clubs abounded in different parts of the Empire. But they were subject to rigid supervision, and they were permitted in accordance with laws which were rigidly enforced. They might easily degenerate into secret societies of a dangerous character. Caecilius, who speaks in the name of paganism in the Apology of Minucius Felix, describes Christians as a people who skulk and shun the light of day._ It was a common charge against them that they separated themselves and broke away from the rest of mankind._ The Imperial authorities were suspicious of such clandestine gatherings, for they might be held with the sole object of fomenting political disaffection.

Whilst Christianity gradually roused the suspicion of the Emperors and their representatives, it evoked the contempt and the hatred of the people at large. The educated classes looked with contempt upon what Tacitus described as a pestilent superstition, and this was the attitude of Rome even to many national cults which, for political reasons, it allowed conquered nations to continue, but especially to the Christian religion. The upper classes, with all their scepticism, would hold in respect the traditional religion of Rome, for everything that was characteristically Roman appealed to their patriotism, but there were many things connected with the Christian religion for which the typical Roman would entertain no feeling except contempt. The Christian ideal would not make any appeal to the Roman temperament. The stoical ideal was more to the taste of the typical Roman. The symbol of Christianity is the Cross, which stands for self-sacrifice and self-renunciation. That would make little impression in Rome, where self-assertion and self-aggrandizement were the dominant virtues. The Roman was a born ruler. He was the superman of the ancient world. The gospel of the Cross would not be likely to make a deep impression on the average Roman. His contempt for it would be greatly increased when the constitution of the churches was observed. For some time they consisted entirely of the lower classes. Not many mighty, not many noble, were enrolled among the followers of the Nazarene (1Co 1:26-28). It was not simply rhetorical exaggeration on the part of Celsus (c._ a.d. 178) when he wrote: If a man be educated let him keep clear of us Christians; we want no men of wisdom, no men of sense; we account all such as evil. No; but if there be one who is inexperienced, or stupid, or untaught, let him come with good heart; they are weavers, shcemakers, fullers, illiterate clowns._ Men collected from the lowest dregs of the people; ignorant, credulous women, is the description given in the Apology of Minucius Felix by the spokesman of paganism._ The upper classes would despise a superstition which seemed to attract only their slaves.

Many so-called persecutions, as we shall see, were popular outbreaks, and reveal the deep hatred which the populace felt towards Christians; and the reasons for this unpopularity are not far to seek. We can see from Acts that the preaching of the gospel interfered with vested interests and provoked violent opposition. The fortune-tellers in Philippi (Act 16:19) and the silversmiths in Ephesus (Act 19:24) had no difficulty in creating a riot, but they were careful to conceal their true motive. In Philippi the ringleaders appealed to the patriotism of the city, whilst in Ephesus they took advantage of the superstitious propensities of the masses.

We have already suggested that Christianity involved a new principle of division. To the Roman who believed in a united Empire, Christianity was a divisive force, and as such fraught with danger to the Empire. In the case of families this was peculiarly distressful. Jesus Christ had already warned His disciples that the preaching of the gospel would produce family quarrels. Christianity would set a man at variance with his father, and the daughter with her mother (Mat 10:35). It was in this connexion that our Lord used the words, I came not to send peace, but a sword. His forecast was literally fulfilled, and this introduction of strife into family life was undoubtedly a fruitful cause of many violent outbreaks; and the representatives of Roman law and order were not always disposed to quell such disorder, as they shared in this widespread contempt and hatred.

But what roused the hatred of all classes more than anything else was the seemingly supercilious aloofness of Christians from the life of society. Jesus Christ had said before Pilate that the Kingdom He represented was spiritual, and therefore not a rival kingdom to the Empire which the proconsul represented (Joh 18:36). Paul and Peter maintained that it was possible to be citizens of the Roman Empire and members of the Kingdom of Heaven. Nevertheless the two kingdoms sometimes clashed, and their ideals came into violent conflict. The consistent Christian found that it was not possible to be a citizen of the Kingdom of which Jesus was the Founder, and participate in all the activities and frivolities which were enjoined by the representatives of the Empire of Caesar. Not many years had elapsed when the followers of Jesus perceived the full force of His words-because ye are not of the world, therefore the world hateth you (Joh 15:19). The Christian witnessed every day many things which were opposed to the gospel which he had embraced. He was in duty bound to stand aloof. He was exhorted to live at peace with all men-as much as in you lieth (Rom 12:18). The words involved a significant reminder. The modification arose, not from the weakness of human nature, but from the uncompromising nature of the gospel. There were limits beyond which compliance with the requirements of the Empire implied disloyalty to the Christian ideal. The Christian believer was permitted-and urged-to submit to all the laws of the Empire provided such submission did not involve any violation of the principles of the Kingdom. When the ideals and interests of the two Empires clashed, to doubt on the part of the Christian would be disloyalty, and to falter would be sin. The Edict of Toleration extended freedom of belief and worship, provided respect for the established laws of the Empire was preserved. The gospel permitted to the Christian community the right to discharge their duties freely as subjects of Rome provided due respect to the principles and ideals of the Kingdom was preserved. The Christian believer was primarily a citizen of the Kingdom, and only secondarily a subject of the Empire. His first concern was to seek the Kingdom of God. When the Empire transcended these limits which his gospel defined for the Christian, there was no alternative for him but that attitude which Marcus Aurelius described as sheer obstinacy. The Empire of Caesar did not understand religious conviction, or else it would not recognize its right to exist. But conscience has reasons of which political expediency knows nothing. During this dark and tragic period the Christian Church defended the liberty wherewith Christ had made men free. Christianity had brought within mens reach another Kingdom than that of Rome. The Christian believer could see the new Jerusalem coming down from above-near enough to earth for him to enrol himself as a member of it. It was a Kingdom of superb ideals, and it was a Kingdom that would not perish. Nineveh and Babylon had been buried in the dust of the desert. Jerusalem was in ruins. The same fate would overtake Rome. But the Christian looked for the city which hath the foundations, whose builder and maker is God (Heb 11:10). Inspired by this hope the Christian stood aloof from the life of the town in which he lived. He abstained from many of the ordinary duties of citizenship. He was hated for his hatred of the human race, in other words, for his rejection of the aims and ideals of Rome as embodied in society and religion.

It was only in the slow course of time that the intrinsic incompatibility of the principles of Christianity and of the ideals of the Empire became obvious. (a) Christian theology came into collision with the confused polytheism of the Empire; (b) Christianity as a personal religion conflicted with the collective or national religions of the Empire. (c) The lofty ethical ideal of Christianity, on its two sides of holiness and love, was antagonistic to paganism, on its two sides of worldliness and selfishness. The conflict between the two ideals grew in intensity as the truth of Christianity was unfolded in credal statement and moral character, for the ideals of the Empire were visible in the customs and practices of society. Christianity could not be itself without giving offence to the Empire. In view of this intrinsic incompatibility, it was inevitable that the Empire should attempt to put down Christianity, or that Christianity should replace the ideals of the Empire by its own; but such a substitution of ideals is impossible on a national scale, for Christianity works upon society through the individual. There was a third alternative. The Empire and Christianity might come to an understanding by effecting a compromise of ideals. It is obvious that the Christianity which was adopted by the Empire was not the pure religion and undefiled of the Gospels and Epistles. The Roman Empire did not adopt a policy of persecution from the commencement. The attitude of Rome towards Christianity was foreshadowed in the attitude of Gallio to the arraignment of the Christian evangelists by their Jewish adversaries. Rome cared for none of these things. Christianity was simply a religious controversy within Judaism, and for a considerable period no danger to the Empire was suspected. It was not of sufficient importance for historians like Tacitus (Ann. xv. 44) and Suetonius (Claudius, 25) to pay any serious attention to it. They dismissed it in a few contemptuous words as a pestilent or magical superstition. The desperate efforts which the Jews made to involve Christians in a charge of high treason prove that Rome would consider only the political possibilities of the new religion. But it soon became clear that Christianity was distinct from Judaism and even antagonistic to it. The violent opposition which the Jews offered to the new movement was sufficient evidence that Christianity was not an offshoot of Judaism. It was also equally evident that Christianity inherited many of the outstanding characteristics of Judaism, especially its exclusiveness and intolerance-in other words, its claim to be the religion. Rome had recognized this peculiar feature of Judaism, and had made allowance for it, in the interest of peace and order, and also on the ground of its being an old national religion. Rome paid great deference to ancestral faiths; in one sense the Imperial religion-apart from the worship of the Emperor-was a congeries of national cults.

Even when Christianity was seen to be an independent movement, Gentile as much as Jewish, it was for a time beneath Imperial notice. Persecutions of a kind there were from the time of Nero (a.d. 54-68), but they were not decreed by the Imperial authorities. They were isolated occurrences, and generally the outcome of popular indignation aroused by local causes; and as Roman officials generally shared the popular hatred of Christians, they were not too careful to quell outbreaks of violence on the part of enraged mobs in various towns. The words of Suetonius-Judaeos impulsore Chresto assidue tumultuantes Roma expulit [viz. Claudius]-do not refer to the expulsion of Christians from Rome on account of their Christianity. The historian makes a blundering reference to unseemly controversies among the Jews of the city with regard to the claim made by Christians that Jesus was the Messiah. They were banished not because they had embraced the gospel, but as disturbers of the peace.

7. Persecution of Christians by the Roman Empire.-The persecution of Christians in the time of Nero (a.d. 54-68) is a noteworthy example of the cruel treatment meted out to them in different parts of the Empire, with this difference, that the outbreak in Rome was due to the instigation of the Emperor, whereas similar violences elsewhere were possible through the connivance of the Imperial officials. The general hatred of Christians accounts for the readiness with which the populace accepted Neros diabolical insinuation that the Christians were the originators of the disastrous fire which demolished portions of the city. We have already referred to the superstitious fears of the masses. Calamities were evidence of the wrath of the gods, and it was a common belief that the atheism of the Christians was one of the chief causes of misfortunes. Tertullian has summed up the popular attitude in the well-known words, They think the Christians to blame for every public calamity, for every loss that afflicts the people. If the Tiber rises to the walls, if the Nile does not rise over the fields, if the sky gives no rain, if the earth quakes, if there is famine or plague, immediately the shout is raised, To the lions with the Christians! _ The words were written at a much later period, but they were true of the popular feeling from the beginning. When it was necessary to assuage the anger of the gods, victims were selected whose death gave as much satisfaction to the persons who offered them as to the deities. It is evident that Nero when he realized the state of things turned popular attention from himself by fixing it on the Christian community. It was an astute move, for it was currently rumoured that Christians looked forward to the dissolution of the present order of things. Peter gave expression to the current belief when he wrote: The heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall be dissolved with fervent heat, and the earth and the works that are therein will be burned up (2Pe 3:10). Such instances of mob law are a lurid reflexion on the administration of justice, even in the heart of the Empire. But it may be urged that Nero is too exceptional a case to use for purposes of generalization. It is this outbreak of ferocity at the instigation of the Emperor that accounts for the marked difference of tone between some of the Epistles, e.g. Rom 13:1, 2Th 2:6; 1Pe 2:14, and the Apocalypse, where Rome is the woman drunken with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus (Rev 17:6).

By the time of Domitian (81-96) it was becoming evident that the Christian religion was fraught with danger to the unity and solidarity of the Empire. We have already remarked on the inevitable tendency of the gospel to produce dissension even within the small circle of the family. Christianity seemed to make for disruption, not for unity. Rome believed in national religions. This was one of the pillars on which the Empire rested. It was clear that Christianity undermined one of the main pillars of the Imperial fabric. It was an act of disloyalty for a citizen of the Empire to embrace a religion that ran counter to every other religion. Domitian took steps to prevent the spread of this disruptive religion by an edict which forbade aggressive missionary activity among Roman citizens.

During the 2nd cent. the Empire was governed by a succession of rulers as famous for their broad statesmanship as for their lofty character-e.g., Trajan (a.d. 98-117), Hadrian (a.d. 117-138), Antoninus Pius (a.d. 138-161) and Marcus Aurelius (a.d. 161-180). They assumed their Imperial duties with a due sense of the responsibility of their position. They shared the view that the Christian religion was inimical to the interests of the Empire. They were agreed that its adherents must be ccerced into acceptance of the official religion-especially the cult of the Emperor. They were truly Roman in their assumption that the safety of the Empire was the supreme consideration. The individual must sink his personal interests or idiosyncrasies and devote himself to the service of the State; that was the highest virtue. Civis Romanus sum was less an assertion of rights than a recognition of duties. The individual possessed no rights except such as the State granted. Conscience had no existence, and conscientious objection had no meaning in the Roman Empire.

By the end of the century the Imperial authorities came to the conclusion that the time had arrived when the policy of the Empire in reference to Christianity must be defined. The new religion was gathering strength, and it was sufficiently powerful to merit the serious attention of the throne. In connexion with the reign of Trajan (a.d. 98-117) reference must be made to the significant correspondence between the Emperor and one of his provincial governors, viz. Pliny the Younger, who was propraetor of the province of Bithynia Pontus (a.d. 110). In his communication to Trajan, Pliny refers to the numerical strength of Christians in his province. The heathen temples were deserted. It does not follow that this was the situation in other parts of the Empire. He acquitted Christians who were prepared to renounce Christ and sacrifice to the gods of the Empire. He condemned others, not on the ground of their Christianity, but of their refusal to recant and fall in with the official religion of the Empire, i.e. on the ground of their obstinacy. Such an attitude was impossible in a subject of the Roman Empire. It violated the fundamental idea of citizenship. Pliny commends Christians for their morality. They were under a pledge to abstain from every crime. Trajan in his reply approves of the propraetors action, but lays down two conditions, viz. that Christians must not be sought out, and that anonymous accusations must be prohibited. Whereas Christians were entitled to a fair trial, yet in the light of this correspondence they were outlaws, for the condition of retaining their civic rights as subjects of the Empire, or even of their personal safety, was the denial of their religion. Their life depended on their ceasing to be Christians. Trajan made it plain that it was possible to take action against the adherents of Christianity without any special legislation, inasmuch as there were aspects of Christianity which contravened the existing laws. Popular outbreaks were still frequent, and their frequency arose from the fact that the authorities were not likely to interfere. Nevertheless Hadrian issued an edict in which he demanded for Christians the right of a fair and judicial investigation.

Antoninus Pius (138-161) and Marcus Aurelius (161-180) were men of outstanding virtues; they admired and embodied the old Roman spirit, and they endeavoured to bring the Empire back to the old paths; but they attempted the impossible, and Christianity was the most formidable obstacle to the carrying out of their policy of a united Empire. Christianity was anarchical in its emphasis on the individual. It encouraged individualism; Marcus Aurelius looked upon it as sheer obstinacy. The Empire was a vast machine, and any tendency to freedom of action or independence threw the whole machine out of gear. Roman subjects were simply parts of one stupendous whole, and the efficient working of the whole would be secured through the complete subordination of the individual parts. In their official capacity these Emperors would look with complete disfavour upon a religion which set the individual even above the State. Apart from this, the gospel would make no great impression on the typical Roman temperament; it lacked the strength and robustness of Stoicism. Its adherents displayed excessive zeal and enthusiasm, and nothing was more obnoxious to the Roman who had learnt complete self-mastery.

In the 3rd cent. the situation changed, and Christianity advanced by leaps and bounds. The stigma of being the religion of the lower classes had been removed, for it was no longer true that not many mighty, not many noble are called. Christianity had very largely captured the intelligence and the wealth of the Empire. The attitude of the Emperors had changed. Many of them-e.g. Elagabalus (a.d. 218-222), Alexander Severus (a.d. 222-235), and Philip the Arabian (a.d. 244-249)-were foreigners who had worked their way to the head of the army, and therefrom to the Imperial purple. They were able soldiers, but they were not statesmen, and they were not interested in the retention of Roman customs and institutions. Elagabalus and Alexander Severus were of Syrian origin on their mothers side, and they were naturally disposed to favour Oriental gods and customs. The syncretism of the age found a vivid illustration in the strange assortment of gods which Alexander Severus brought together in the Imperial palace-viz. images of Jesus Christ, Abraham, and Orpheus. During this period Christianity made rapid and astonishing progress. It was to all intents and purposes a religio licita. The statesmanship of Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius made them into stern opponents of the Christian religion, whilst the laxity of their successors was equivalent to tolerance-but it was the tolerance of indifference.

Decius (249-251) introduced a new period as regards the relationship between the Church and the Empire. The Emperor was face to face with a formidable foe. The Empire was threatened on its northern and western frontiers by Franks and Goths. It was a matter of pressing urgency to consolidate the Empire in view of this formidable danger. The view prevailed that the nation could not offer a united front to an external foe unless it was of one way of thinking on all subjects. Rome had not yet discovered that religious freedom does not issue in political dissension. Decius was an able ruler, and he saw that the old doctrine of the absoluteness of the State must be restored. Recusancy must be for ever suppressed. Decius inaugurated the first general persecution of Christianity on the part of the Empire. This was a deliberate effort to stamp out Christianity, and the repressive measures were those which have been generally adopted by governments in all lands when they have attempted to suppress religious liberty and establish a state of ecclesiastical uniformity. We are not surprised to read that many failed to stand the test, inasmuch as the personnel of the Church had considerably changed during the first half of the century. Many had embraced the gospel who were complete strangers to the meaning and demand of Christian faith. But it is a marvellous fact that there were in various parts of the Empire men and women in large numbers who triumphantly stood the test and endured torture, not accepting deliverance. Valerian (253-260) continued the repressive measures of Decius-but with added violence. Attendance at meetings for Christian worship became a capital offence. The meeting-places of Christians were confiscated, and all subjects of the Empire were required to conform to the Imperial demands. But Christianity had become an integral part of the life of the Empire, and the successors of Valerian came to the conclusion that they had undertaken an impossible task. The Church enjoyed peace for a considerable period, and during this period it fortified its position to such an extent that the organizers of the next general persecution undertook a still more hopeless task.

For nineteen years after his accession Diocletian (284-305) carried on the policy of his immediate predecessors. He was one of the most statesmanlike Emperors that ever occupied the Imperial throne. He was in a sense the successor of the Emperors of the 2nd cent., and attempted to carry out their policy of consolidating the Empire. In the government of the Empire he secured the services of a colleague, and in addition he appointed two assistant Emperors. In the West Maximin ruled as Augustus, and had Constantius Chlorus as his Caesar, whilst Diocletian associated with himself Galerius as his Caesar. Galerius was an extremely able soldier, and it was his influence that weighed with Diocletian in his decision to resume the policy of Decius. In the West there was peace, for Constantius was favourably disposed towards the Christian religion. It was the festival of the Roman god Terminus in Nicomedia, the new capital of the Empire, that marked the commencement of the persecution under Diocletian. On an occasion like this men would vie with each other in words and deeds expressive of their patriotism, and the absence of the Christian section of the population would be marked. Whilst the people were assembled together to celebrate the cult of the Emperor, the Christians would be gathered together in their own church. We are not surprised that the destruction of this church was the beginning of hostilities.

Four edicts were published, and each one possessed its distinctive features. The first edict required the instant demolition of all churches and the burning of all Bibles. Christians who refused to conform were deprived of all civil rights, and they were placed beyond the pale of the laws of the Empire. The second edict was especially directed against the officials of the Church, whilst the third offered release to the imprisoned clergy who were prepared to recant, and further torture in case of refusal. The fourth edict held out to all Christians, laymen and clergy, the choice between death and sacrifice. Although persecution was not continuous and not universal throughout the Empire, Galerius continued his policy; but on the eve of his death he attached his name, along with those of Constantine (the son of Constantius) and Licinius, to the first Edict of Toleration, published in Nicomedia in a.d. 311. The edict, in Gibbons translation, is as follows: We were particularly desirous of reclaiming, into the way of reason and nature, the deluded Christians, who had renounced the religion and ceremonies instituted by their fathers, and, presumptuously despising the practice of antiquity, had invented extravagant laws and opinions, according to the dictates of their fancy, and had collected a various society from the different provinces of our empire. The edicts which we have published to enforce the worship of the gods, having exposed many of the Christians to danger and distress, many having suffered death, and many more, who still persist in their impious folly, being left destitute of any public exercise of religion, we are disposed to extend to those unhappy men the effects of our wonted clemency. We permit them, therefore, freely to profess their private opinions, and to assemble in their conventicles without fear or molestation, provided always that they preserve a due respect to the established laws and government._

It is evident that the organizers of this attempt to stamp out Christianity expected a different issue to their campaign of persecution. They were not aware of the strength of conviction which the faith of the Christians had developed. The edict hints at the Roman belief in ancestral religions. The Imperial objection to Christianity is given in the words a various society from the different provinces, whilst the closing sentence about respect to the established laws is a reminder of the view which States have only reluctantly abandoned-viz. that religious freedom is fraught with danger to the State. In 313 Constantine became sole Emperor of the West and issued the Edict of Milan-the Magna Carta of religious liberty. All subjects of the Empire were granted complete freedom of worship. But this universal toleration was not of long duration. The traditional doctrine in regard to the presuppositions of a united Empire reasserted itself, and Constantius adopted Christianity as the Imperial religion and at the same time reduced paganism to a religio illicita. The adoption of Christianity as the religion of the Empire was a great triumph for the gospel, but there are victories which are as disastrous as defeats. The Church had to pay a heavy price for promotion. The Emperor demanded and obtained from the Christian Church the homage and submission which his predecessors enjoyed in the case of paganism. The friendship of Rome was fraught with greater danger than its enmity. The Church lost its freedom and its power. The subsequent persecution of paganism was not due to the intolerance of the Church. One of the outstanding motives which actuated the Empire in its attempt to stamp out Christianity led to its efforts to suppress paganism. Imperial unity demanded ecclesiastical uniformity. During the reign of Theodosius the Great, paganism was finally abolished by a series of enactments similar to those adopted by previous Emperors in their efforts to suppress Christianity. But the abolition of paganism by Theodosius was as unreal as the establishment of Christianity by Constantius. Religious reforms which emanate from the throne are futile; they are genuine only as they originate in the heart of a people. The spirit of paganism lived on when the forms and institutions of the Christian religion had been universally adopted. Yet all ancient governments-and some modern-have acted on the assumption that ecclesiastical uniformity alone produces and guarantees national unity. In the most progressive European countries it is accepted that political unity is compatible with full religious freedom.

We have emphasized the fact that Rome persecuted for political reasons. It was the safety and stability of the Empire that weighed with her Emperors. But it is necessary to guard against a common misconception. The Empire was not an irreligious organization that opposed the spread of religion. It possessed its official religion; and it was necessary for those in authority, in spite of the prevalent scepticism, more affected than real, to provide for the belief which prevailed, that the gods existed and that they possessed unlimited power for good and evil. It was the Imperial view, strengthened by the innate conservatism of human nature in religous matters, that the existing religious situation was better adapted and even essential to the social and political needs of the Empire. Rome did not classify religions as true or false, but as conducive or inimical to the interests of the Empire.

8. Persecution of heretics by the Roman Church.-For several centuries after the adoption of Christianity as the Imperial religion the Holy Roman Empire was united in its religious life. Western Europe was governed by a theocracy; the Church was supreme. Uniformity of thought and worship prevailed throughout the civilized world. But it was the uniformity of death; there was as little living intellectuality as there was vital religion. Catholicism was then, writes Lecky, perfectly in accordance with the intellectual wants of Europe. It was not a tyranny, for the intellectual latitude it permitted was fully commensurate with the wants of the people. As long as a church is so powerful as to form the intellectual condition of the age, to supply the standing-point from which every question is viewed, its authority will never be disputed._ Lecky thinks only of the intellectual situation in Europe. But the same explanation applies to the religions State; Catholicism was in accordance with the religious needs of the period. The Renaissance was the intellectual awakening of Europe, and the Reformation was the awakening of the conscience of Europe, and the former was due to the discovery of the literature of Greece and Rome as the latter resulted from a study of the Gospels and Epistles. For centuries Western Europe had embraced the intellectual system, and, of course, the religious customs which the Church permitted. Rome dictated to the understanding no less than to the conscience of the West. Towards the end of the 11th cent. there were signs of awakening dissatisfaction with both the religion and the creed of the Church. But the way of the innovator was hard. By the end of the century the Church had attained the zenith of its influence, and before the middle of the 13th cent. Rome had manufactured her machine for the repression of heresy in the form of the Inquisition (a.d. 1233), and the period of persecution had been already inaugurated by Innocent III. in the persecution of the Albigenses in the south of France (1220). All rulers were required to take an oath that they would exterminate from their dominions all those who were branded as heretics by the Church, and the universal dread of the papal Interdict reduced to abject submission the princes and sovereigns of Western Europe, e.g. King John of England. Statutes against heresy formed integral parts of the legal system of all Western States, e.g. De haeretico comburendo in England (1400-1676). We have observed that the persecution of Christianity by the Roman Empire was mainly motived by political considerations. In ancient Empires the central authority was absolute, and there was no sphere or activity which lay outside or beyond the law of the realm. It was suspected that the enjoyment of religious freedom would bring about a desire for civil liberty and thus the solidarity of the Empire would be disturbed, and its unity imperilled. The leaven of liberty once introduced into the life of a people would gradually spread and ultimately affect the whole mass. Rome persecuted the Church because religious uniformity was essential to the unity of the Empire, and paganism was favourable, whilst Christianity was inimical to its stability and safety. When Christianity became a religio licita measures were adopted to keep in check, through Imperial supervision, its individualistic and anarchical tendencies. After the establishment of Christianity Rome crushed paganism as it had attempted to suppress Christianity, in order to safeguard the unity of the Empire, and according to the political creed of the age there was no reliable unity without uniformity. Romes policy was the suppression of political insubordination. The Church, on the other hand, persecuted on religious grounds. Her policy was the repression of heresy. The Church had formulated her theological creed and had elaborated her religious cult, and neither theology nor cult was subject to revision or innovation. Lecky thus accounts for the adoption of persecution by the Church: If men believe with an intense and realising faith that their own view of a disputed question is true beyond all possibility of mistake, if they further believe that those who adopt other views will be doomed by the Almighty to an eternity of misery which, with the same moral disposition but with a different belief, they would have escaped, these men will, sooner or later, persecute to the full extent of their power._ Persecutions on purely religious grounds originate in the doctrine of exclusive salvation, but it is not true that the Church of Rome persecuted solely on religious grounds-whether in the interest of the heretic, or to stamp out heresy. The doctrine embodied in the words extra ecclesiam nulla salus does not fully account for the attitude of Rome. It must be remembered that the Holy Roman Empire inherited the traditions of its pagan predecessor. It also inherited the Imperial passion for universal dominion. But the Imperialism of the Church was partly, if not chiefly, religious. In the background of the papal mind was the belief in the universality of the gospel. It was a superb scheme-one great Empire, uniform in belief and worship-and for a time the idea was practically realized. The Roman Church repressed heresy no less in the interest of Imperial solidarity than in the interest of truth. Persecutions on purely religious grounds, i.e. for heresy, are found in connexion with religious denominations which possess rigidly defined confessions of belief and which are independent of the secular authority.

9. Persecution in Protestant countries.-The doctrine that the State was supreme, as well in religious as in secular affairs, was universally accepted in Western Europe at the time of the Reformation, with the result that repressive measures with a view to securing religious uniformity were general. The supremacy of the State was the only adequate safeguard against papal interference, and in most lands the Reformation was exploited by princes or kings as a means to an end. It was currently accepted that the prince or sovereign possessed the right to determine the religion-creed and cult-of the State or province over which he ruled. The principle adopted by the various Germanic States was tersely expressed in the words cujus regio, ejus religio. Each State, in the person of the central authority, determined its own religion, but there was no religious freedom for the individual. His alternatives were submission or emigration. This doctrine of the absoluteness of the State was an inheritance from the past, and it was inevitable under the circumstances which then obtained in Western Europe that it should be emphasized. From about a.d. 1200 until the middle of the 16th cent. the Pope exercised complete dominion among the nations of Western Europe. But the rise of distinct nationalities, with different interests and ideals, produced a desire for national liberty. National sentiment became a powerful force in the life of nations. The longing for political liberty on the part of nations was no less genuine than the desire on the part of individuals to enjoy intellectual and religious freedom, and civil rulers took advantage of this powerful sentiment to secure their own freedom from papal interference. The history of the Reformation in England is a case in point. In its initiation it was neither more nor less than the rejection by the monarch of the supremacy of the Pope or of his right of interference in English-and, in fact, in the kings-affairs. Henry VIII. appointed himself as sole and supreme head of the Church of England. The terrors of the Interdict were things of the past. But whereas the nation was free from papal supremacy, the individual had no freedom in his religious beliefs or exercises. When Dissent appeared, as it inevitably did in all lands where the right of private judgment and liberty of conscience had been affirmed, the secular authority met such dissidence with persecution.

It may be pointed out in passing that there are three ways in which the problem of the relationship between the Church and the State may be solved. (a) The State may dominate the Church, or (b) the Church may govern the State, or (c) their respective spheres and functions may be delimited and mapped out, and the two estates may be separate and independent of each other. Under the second and third regime we find persecutions for purely religious reasons.

The State may be supreme, and determine the conduct of the citizens in religious no less than in civil matters. There is no liberty of belief or worship. The religious life of the individual, as far as external acts are concerned, must follow the lines laid down by the central authority. He must fall in with the official religion, and his submission applies to creed as well as to cult. The State exercises the right to formulate its theology and to draw up its mode of worship, and to impose them on all subjects of the realm. If there are different religious bodies within the State, as in many Western countries after the Reformation, the State may recognize or establish one form of religion, with the result that we have not a State religion but a State Church, whilst other religious bodies are subject to various political disabilities until religious equality is secured. The State may grant complete religious freedom to all denominations, and religious communities may formulate their own creed and elaborate their own mode of worship in complete independence of the secular authority. This is separatism, and obtains, for instance, in the United States, and is being generally accepted, as the solution of the problem, in Great Britain.

The history of religion in Great Britain especially illustrates the gradual abandonment of the doctrine of the absoluteness of the State and of its right to decide the religion of its subjects, and of the gradual adoption of the doctrine of separatism.

After Henry VIII. established himself as head of the Church there followed a prolonged and fierce struggle between Anglicanism and Roman Catholicism for supremacy. During the reign of Edward VI. Protestantism was the State religion and Romanism was suppressed, whilst during Marys reign Roman Catholicism enjoyed a short spell of power and the fires of Smithfield were lit._ Under Elizabeth, Protestantism once more regained the upper hand and Roman Catholicism was proscribed. But throughout the protracted conflict between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism religious and political motives were strangely intermixed. The ultimate triumph of Protestantism was largely due to the fact that it was identical with patriotism, whilst Catholicism was associated with a continental Powers attempt to conquer England. During the Stuart period the conflict became a three-cornered fight-for Protestantism was divided into two hostile camps, viz. Episcopalianism and Presbyterianism; but when the struggle was at its height, Roman Catholicism was out of it.

Protestantism in its struggle with Roman Catholicism allied itself with the patriotic sentiment of the nation. Episcopalianism in its conflict with Presbyterianism advocated the absoluteness of the throne, and its right to control the life of its subjects, civil and religious, whilst Presbyterianism, which had embraced the Genevan ideal of a theocratic State (see below), allied itself with a democratic movement in favour of parliamentary or constitutional government. It was not a struggle for religious freedom or for liberty of conscience, for there was nothing to choose in the matter of tolerance between Presbyterianism and Episcopalianism, and both parties would willingly, and perhaps conscientiously, have resorted to the use of force, in the form of legislation, to secure the prevalence of their own creed and mode of worship. It was Cromwell alone who prevented the establishment of Presbyterianism as the State Church.

The restoration of the monarchy carried with it the restitution of Episcopalianism, and there ensued a series of laws, perhaps without a parallel in any land in point of severity, with a view to the extirpation of religious dissidence; but towards the close of the century the Act of Toleration granted freedom of worship to the different Dissenting bodies, although many of the civil disabilities which were imposed upon Dissent by the repressive legislation of Charles II. remained and still remain. It was during this period-the second half of the 17th cent.-that many able advocates of toleration mapped out the respective spheres and functions of the State and the Church, as, e.g., Milton and Locke. From the close of the Stuart period the trend of opinion has been towards separatism, the germ of which is seen in Lockes doctrine that the function of the State is to protect the material interests of the citizens, whilst the Church is charged with the cure of souls. This doctrine struck the death-knell of persecution by the State on politico-religious grounds.

It is worthy of mention that the old idea of the absoluteness of the State, and therefore of the right of ccercion in religious matters, advocated by pagan Rome, and by Episcopalianism during the reign of Charles II., has been maintained by many rationalist writers, e.g. Hobbes. Plato had found room for religion in his ideal State, and contended that all citizens should believe in the State gods on pain of imprisonment and death. Hobbes in his Leviathan developed the doctrine of the absolute power of the sovereign in all departments, civil and religious. Whether religion was true or false was a matter of no great concern; the main consideration was its utility for purposes of government.

We have observed above that the Church may be supreme and the State be controlled and governed by the Church. This is the theocratic ideal of government, and it resulted quite logically from the Reformers emphasis on the supremacy of conscience or the absoluteness of religion. Separatism was not the first choice of the Reformers; that was only the second best.

From the 12th cent. the Pope was the dominant figure in European politics. In the Interdict he possessed a weapon which brought princes and kings to the dust before his Holiness. He possessed the keys of heaven and hell. He opened and shut to whomscever he would. But it was among the Reformers-an important section of them-that the idea of a theocratic State prevailed. Their central creed was not the freedom, but the supremacy, of conscience. Savonarola attempted to establish a theocracy in Florence-a State built on the teaching of the Bible. His ideal was a Christocratic kingdom, but according to his teaching such a kingdom presupposed a redeemed democracy.

Calvins ideal was a theocratic State. He tried in Geneva the experiment which cost Savonarola his life in Florence. It is impossible to over-estimate the service he rendered to the Reformation. He was the theologian as well as the statesman of Protestantism, for he gave systematic expression to its theology and he organized its ecclesiastical polity. In both cases, he maintained, he was building on the Word of God. His theology was based on biblical exposition, as his form of Church government was founded on apostolic practice. But the greatest service, perhaps, which Calvin rendered to Protestantism was the new moral direction which he gave to religion. The Protestant movement was saved from being sunk in the quicksands of doctrinal dispute chiefly by the new moral direction given to it at Geneva. The religious instinct of Calvin discerned the crying need of human nature for social discipline. The Christianity of the Middle Ages had preached the base and demoralising surrender of the individual-the surrender of his understanding to the Church, of his conscience to the priest, of his will to the prince The policy of Calvin was a vigorous effort to supply what the revolutionary movement wanted-a positive education of the individual soul. The power thus generated was too expansive to be confined to Geneva. It went forth into all countries. From every part of Protestant Europe eager hearts flocked hither to catch something of the inspiration. Calvinism saved Europe._ Among the eager spirits who flocked to Geneva and came under the spell of Calvins teaching were men from our own land, and they returned with their souls aglow with the inspiration of this new moral direction which Calvin gave to religion. The Puritans were disciples of Calvin in their theology, in their Church polity, and in their insistence on vital religion; and in this moral and social interpretation of Christianity lies, perhaps, their greatest service to their country.

As in the case of Savonarola, Calvin was much more concerned with the right of the religious element to dominate the secular or political than with the right of conscience to be free from the sway of the secular authority. The leading spirits of the Reformation started with something more stable and positive than the right of private judgment or even liberty of conscience. The Reformation was a revolt from the religion of the 15th cent. in favour of the religion of the Gospels and Epistles. It was a repudiation of the authority of Lateran Councils and the affirmation of the authority of the Bible. It was a shifting of the seat of authority. There was no inconsistency between Calvins Protestantism and his intolerance of views which did not coincide with his own. He had constructed his system of theology and his conception of the nature and function of the Church by means of careful biblical exegesis. He believed he had understood the mind of the Master. It was to him a matter of supreme urgency that the will of God as declared in His Word should prevail.

A grave wrong is committed when it is thrown in the face of Calvin and other Reformers that they preached the right of private judgment and liberty of conscience, while as a matter of fact they were guilty of brutal intolerance. The Reformation was not due to the prevalence of the right of private judgment or of liberty of conscience. The Reformers would not have gathered together a single church if they had had nothing more stable and reliable than private judgment to oppose to the authority of Rome in the person of the Pope. They appealed from Synods to the Scriptures, and their belief in the Scriptures was absolute. To the Reformers the authority of conscience was the authority of the Word of God. Many of them would have listened with disdain to the contention that conscience was free; to them conscience was master. Their creed was not so much the liberty, as the supremacy, of conscience. To them the language of conscience was not simply, I will not submit, but rather, I must enforce. We have observed above that the religious conviction that makes the martyr tends also to make the persecutor, unless along with this conviction there is a clear recognition of the fact that ccercion is opposed to the very nature of religion. Intense and realising faith finds it extremely difficult to be tolerant. The leading spirits of the Reformation possessed the prophets conviction of the truth of their message. The prophetic attitude presupposes something more than the assent of the understanding to a proposition or dogma. It implies that some truth has seized the soul of the prophet. The conviction is more moral than intellectual; it has more to do with conscience than with reason. The prophets creed is not a proposition which the theoretical understanding accepts, but a truth which has captured the practical understanding. The Reformers were akin to the prophets in their overpowering conviction of the truth of their message, but instead of the prophets Thus saith the Lord, the Reformers said Thus saith the Scripture. What the Reformers meant by a matter of conscience was precisely this-what was taught in Gods Word. Conscience is proverbially intolerant. Had it, wrote Joseph Butler, strength, as it has right; had it power, as it has manifest authority, it would absolutely govern the world._ Calvin was anxious to invest conscience, i.e. the Word of God, with strength equal to its right, power equal to its authority, so that it might govern. The Reformers were intolerant in the name of conscience; they were intractable in the name of Gods Word. It may be impossible to justify the martyrdom of Servetus, but we must not look upon it as if it were a solitary occurrence in those troublous days.

Reformers who had come under the influence of Calvin accepted his ideal of a theocratic State or a kingdom of saints. The Pilgrim Fathers did not cross the Atlantic in order to enjoy the right of private judgment or religious liberty. They wanted freedom to believe what they deemed to be true, and to worship God in the way which they deemed right. They wanted freedom to make the Bible their sole guide and law book. They were not prepared to grant liberty of worship and liberty of thought in their own province. Their aim was the establishment of a State where their own Christianity would be the State religion. They did not believe in the separation of the Church from the State; they were anxious to found a community in which their Puritanism would be supreme. The Bible was to be the nations law book, and to its teaching every member of the community must subscribe. The Pilgrim Fathers believed too much in their own view of Christianity to tolerate any other and conflicting views. Nothing is more flagrantly unjust than the indictment that the men of the Mayflower preached tolerance when they left the shores of Great Britain, and practised intolerance when they landed on Plymouth Rock. Tolerance did not come from Geneva, or from those who had come under the influence of Geneva, but from the Socinians of Italy and the Anabaptists of Holland. The founder of the first State where toleration was practised was Roger Williams, who emigrated to America in 1631 and welcomed to Providence all who were prepared to extend to all the religious liberty which they claimed for themselves.

Presbyterianism in England and Scotland was equally intolerant. The leaders of Presbyterianism were disciples of Calvin, and they had his profound belief in the authority of the Word of God. They carefully formulated their creed; they elaborated their conception of the nature of the Church; they had very clear and definite notions in regard to the place and function of religion in the national life. They accepted the Calvinistic doctrine of a theocratic State. They wanted something more than a Church that was independent of the State. Their ideal was a Church which dominated the State, and they were prepared to use every possible means-Army and Parliament-to secure the establishment of their conception of Christianity. The Presbyterianism of the 17th cent. possessed that intense and realising faith, issuing in ccercion and persecution, as a legitimate, because alone effectual, means of establishing the true and exterminating the false.

10. Conclusion.-We have indicated the gradual abandonment of ccercion on the part of the State because the view became general that (1) religious liberty, enjoyed to the fullest extent, does not lead to disloyalty to the State, and that (2) ccercion is incompatible with religious faith. The gradual disappearance of intolerance from among religious bodies has been due to the prevalence of the view that absolute certainty is difficult of attainment, and that no system or creed embodies the whole truth of Christianity. There have been cases of persecution for heresy within comparatively recent times, but the present trend is strongly and decisively towards tolerance.

It was in the 17th cent. that the cause of tolerance was advocated in many lands and by many extremely able writers, but reference may be made to Milton, the master mind of England in this period, who to a greater degree than other thinkers of his age impressed the thought of England and helped by his writings to reconcile intense religious conviction with tolerance and to create that tolerant spirit which prevails in the modern world. Truth, according to Milton, is many-sided. It is widely diffused among men. Every system contains a small part of it, mixed with error, but no system has it in its entirety. No religious body has a monopoly of the truth. It is interesting to compare this exposition of religious liberty with the defence of tolerance advanced by Themistius, the famous orator of the time of the Emperor Valens: Toleration is a divine law which can never be violated, as God Himself has clearly demonstrated His desire for a diversity of religions. God delights in the variety of the homage which is rendered to Him; He likes the Syrians to use certain rites, the Greeks others, and the Egyptians others again._ It is to be feared that the tolerance of the 20th cent. has more affinity with that of Themistius than with that of Milton. The modern attitude suggests that every religion is as good as any other. The tolerance of the modern world springs from its feeble, anaemic faith, as the intolerance of the Reformers sprang from their intense and realising faith. The words of Fox are not without a considerable element of truth: The only foundation for toleration is a degree of scepticism, and without it there can be none._ But there is another foundation for toleration, and to that Milton has directed attention in his Areopagitica.

Liberty of conscience entire, or in the whole, is where a man, according to the dictates of his own conscience, may have the free exercise of his religion, without impediment to his preferment or employment in the State._ Persecution is the denial of this free exercise of religion, and in its widest sense it includes any and every impediment to the subjects preferment or employment in the State. Persecution is generally defined as the infliction of pain or death upon others unjustly for adhering to a religious creed or mode of worship either by way of penalty or in order to force them to renounce their principles. The insertion of the word unjustly presupposes a sphere of activity in connexion with the life of the individual over which the State has no right to exercise any jurisdiction. The existence of such a sphere was hinted at in our Lords words, Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesars, and to God the things that are Gods. There is within man an inviolable adytum which the secular authority may not enter. Micaiah-ben-Imlah was clearly aware of such a sphere when he preferred obedience to the will of Jahweh to acquiescence in the caprice of the king. The author of the Book of Daniel appealed to his contemporaries, and to all generations, to take their stand on this holy ground. The apostles dealt with the same fact when they said that circumstances might arise when it was their duty to obey God rather than men. In such cases conscience could not hesitate without being guilty of moral treachery. Persecution is the denial of this free exercise of religion; but we have already seen that ancient States did not recognize the existence of a sphere in the life of the individual in which the State had no jurisdiction. In the ancient world conscience had no rights. The whole life of the individual was subject to the control of the State. Under these circumstances persecution in the case of religious recalcitrance was simply another name for the punishment of political offenders. Refusal to worship the gods or to observe the official religion was a crime of the deepest dye, as the provocation of the gods imperilled the safety of the State. The Jewish Law was severe on blasphemy, for the wrath of Jahweh would mean disaster to the nation. It was a political crime of a very grave character. Tacitus might scornfully write,_ deorum injuriae dis curae-it was the business of the gods to avenge any insults they might receive. But if the anger of the gods issued in national calamities, as the masses believed, it was the States urgent business that there should be no religious shirkers or slackers within the Empire, to provoke the gods to anger, and thus bring down misfortune on the nation. Persecution or the application of force to ensure submission in religious matters was inevitable when the State claimed the right to control the whole life of its subjects, secular and religious. Persecution is applicable to this attitude of the State if the individuals who claim religious freedom admit in every other respect their responsibility to the State and acknowledge their obligation to submit to all the laws of the realm. But ancient States were reluctant to admit that this free exercise of religion was compatible with loyalty to the State, and there was no general recognition of the voluntary nature of religion. It is the increasing recognition of the fact that the religious attitude must be deliberate, spontaneous, unccerced, that has accounted for the corresponding growth of the spirit of tolerance which prevails in the modern world. Until comparatively recent times it was currently accepted that ccercion was a legitimate and effectual means of securing religious acquiescence. Ccercion may bring about external submission, but it cannot result in living acceptance of the truth which is being pressed. In the words of the author of the earliest English book which defends liberty of conscience, as king and bishop cannot command the wind, so they cannot command faith._

We see the germ of the doctrine in some of the Fathers, many of whom denounced ccercion in matters of faith and pointed out that force is inimical to conviction, which is the very life of religion. Tertullian writes: However, it is a fundamental human right, a privilege of nature, that every man should worship according to his own convictions: one mans religion neither harms nor helps another man. It is assuredly no part of religion to compel religion-to which free-will and not force should lead us-the sacrificial victims even being required of a willing mind. You will render no real service to your gods by compelling us to sacrifice. For they can have no desire of offerings from the unwilling, unless they are animated by a spirit of contention, which is a thing altogether undivine._ Lactantius followed in a similar strain: But it is religion alone in which freedom has placed its dwelling. For it is a matter which is voluntary above all others, nor can necessity be imposed upon any, so as to worship that which he does not wish to worship. Someone may perhaps pretend, he cannot wish it._ Many of the leading Fathers, such as Hilary of Poictiers and Chrysostom, emphasized the same truth. But Augustine overshadowed all his predecessors, and he gave his view in favour of the persecution of paganism and heresy. He developed his theory of persecution from the words Compelle intrare._ He has been charged with flagrant inconsistency because whilst paganism was the Imperial religion he advocated toleration, whereas, after the establishment of the Christian religion, he urged ccercion. It may be urged, on the other hand, that Augustines experience during the Donatist controversy led him to change his mind in regard to the persecution of heresy. But apart from that possibility, the charge of inconsistency is not so obvious as is sometimes supposed. To Augustine Christianity was the religion. Paganism, in every form of it, was false. He advocated the extirpation of paganism and heresy for the same reason as he had advocated toleration for Christianity. He was superficially inconsistent, but there was deep inner consistency in his attitude. To him Christianity and paganism stood to each other as the true and false or right and wrong or good and evil, and evil must be opposed in every possible way, and good must be promoted by all possible means. Whether he advocated tolerance or ccercion, his main contention was that the good should prevail, and that the evil should be repressed; inner consistency made it imperative that he should advocate toleration in favour of Christianity when paganism was in power, and ccercion against paganism when Christianity had secured a footing. It is evident that Augustine had solid grounds for thinking that ccercion in the early stages of the religious life was effectual. The preaching of the gospel has not always appealed to the highest ethical motives. The terrors of hell have played a prominent part in the making of saints. If Martineaus view is correct that the administration of any uneasiness to body or mind, in consequence of a mans belief, or with a view to change it, is persecution, the preaching even of the 20th cent. is very largely persecution. There can be no successful preaching which does not produce uneasiness of mind, for the experiences of the penitent soul must issue in great uneasiness of mind. Various motives are at work in the initial stages of the religious life. Augustine had evidence of the advantages of compulsion, and it was the universal belief of mediaeval Christendom, and certainly of mediaeval States, that ccercion was compatible with the nature of Christianity. The few voices which had been raised on behalf of the spontaneity of religious faith were forgotten for many weary centuries until in writings of the advocates of religious liberty in the 17th and 18th centuries the truth was once more set forth with greater clearness and force. It was the prevalent view of monarchs no less than of ecclesiastical leaders that refusal to comply with the demands of the throne or the curia was obstinacy. There are not wanting persons in the 20th cent. to whom passive resistance is only a form of pig-headedness. Whilst the struggle for religious freedom was being waged on the Continent and in Great Britain, many exceedingly able writers published books and pamphlets on the spontaneous nature of religious faith. Persecution, wrote Milton,_ is wholly unnecessary, for who knows not that Truth is strong next to the Almighty, and even mischievous and harmful, for each individual must discover the truth for himself, or else be for ever a stranger to it.

Literature.-In addition to the general works on Ecclesiastical History the following works may be mentioned: Lactantius, de Mortibus Persecutorum (a.d. 314); A. J. Mason, The Persecution of Diocletian, Cambridge, 1876; B. Aub, Histoire des perscutions de lglise jusqud la fin des Antonins, Paris, 1875; F. Pollock, The Theory of Persecution, in Essays in Jurisprudence and Ethics, London, 1882; P. Allard, Histoire des perscutions pendant les deux premiers sicles2, Paris, 1892, Histoire des perscutions pendant la premire moiti du 111e sicle2, do., 1894, Les dernires perscutions du 111e sicle2, do., 1898; W. E. H. Lecky, History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe, 2 vols., London, 1865; E. G. Hardy, Christianity and the Roman Government, do., 1894; W. M. Ramsay, The Church in the Roman Empire, do., 1894; W. E. Addis, Christianity and the Roman Empire, do., 1893; J. A. F. Gregg, The Decian Persecution, Edinburgh, 1897; P. J. Healy, The Valerian Persecution, London, 1905; H. B. Workman, Persecution in the Early Church, do., 1906; J. Herkless, The Early Christian Martyrs and their Persecutions, do., n.d.; F. Ruffini, Religious Liberty, tr._ J. P. Heyes, do., 1912; J. B. Bury, History of Freedom of Thought, do., 1913.

T. Lewis.

Fuente: Dictionary of the Apostolic Church

PERSECUTION

Is any pain or affliction which a person designedly inflicts upon another; and, in a more restrained sense, the sufferings of Christians on account of their religion. Persecution is threefold.

1. Mental, when the spirit of a man rises up and opposes another.

2. Verbal, when men give hard words and deal in uncharitable censures.

3. Actual or open, by the hand, such as the dragging of innocent persons before the tribunal of Justice, Mat 10:18. The unlawfulness of persecution for conscience sake must appear plain to every one that possesses the least degree of thought or of feeling. “To banish, imprison, plunder, starve, hang, and burn men for religion, ” says the shrewd Jortin, “is not the Gospel of Christ; it is the Gospel of the Devil. Where persecution begins, Christianity ends. Christ never used any thing that looked like force or violence, except once; and that was to drive bad men out of the temple, and not to drive them in.” We know the origin of it to be from the prince of darkness, who began the dreadful practice in the first family on earth, and who, more or less, has been carrying on the same work ever since, and that almost among all parties. “Persecution for conscience sake, ” says Dr. Doddridge, “is every way inconsistent, because,

1. It is founded on an absurd supposition, that one man has a right to judge for another in matters of religion.l

2. It is evidently opposite to that fundamental principle of morality; that we should do to others as we could reasonably desire they should do to us.

3. It is by no means calculated to answer the end which its patrons profess to intend by it.

4. It evidently tends to produce a great deal of mischief and confusion in the world.

5. The Christian religion must, humanly speaking, be not only obstructed, but destroyed, should persecuting principles universally prevail.

6. Persecution is so far from being required, or encouraged by the Gospel, that it is most directly contrary to many of its precepts, and indeed to the whole of it.” The chief objects who have fell a prey to this diabolical spirit have been Christians; a short account of whose sufferings we shall here give, as persecuted by the Jews, Heathens, and those of the same name. Persecution of Christians by the Jews. Here we need not be copious, as the New Testament will inform the reader more particularly how the first Christians suffered for the cause of truth. Jesus Christ himself was exposed to it in the greatest degree. The four evangelists record the dreadful scenes, which need not here be enlarged on.

After his death, the apostles suffered every evil which the malice of the Jews could invent, and their mad zeal execute. They who read the Acts of the Apostles, will find that, like their Master, they were despised and rejected of men, and treated with the utmost indignity and contempt. II. Persecution of Christians by the Heathen. Historians usually reckon ten general persecutions, the first of which was under the emperor Nero, thirty-one years after our Lord’s ascension, when that emperor, having set fire to the city of Rome, threw the odium of that execrable action on the Christians. First. Those were apprehended who openly avowed themselves to be of that sect; then by them were discovered an immense multitude, all of whom were convicted. Their death and tortures were aggravated by cruel derision and sport; for they were either covered with the skins of wild beasts and torn in pieces by devouring dogs, or fastened to crosses, and wrapped up in combustible garments, that, when the day-light failed, they might, like torches, serve to dispel the darkness of the night. For this tragical spectacle Nero lent his own gardens; and exhibited at the same time the public diversions of the circus; sometimes driving a chariot in person, and sometimes standing as a spectator, while the shrieks of women burning to ashes supplied music for his ears.

2. The second general persecution was under Domitian, in the year 95, when 40, 000 were supposed to have suffered martyrdom.

3. The third began in the third year of Trajan, in the year 100, and was carried on with great violence for several years.

4. The fourth was under Antoninus, when the Christians were banished from their houses, forbidden to show their heads, reproached, beaten, hurried from place to place, plundered, imprisoned, and stoned.

5. The fifth began in the year 127, under Severus, when great cruelties were committed. In this reign happened the martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas, and their companions. Perpetua had an infant at the breast, and Felicitas was just delivered at the time of their being put to death. These two beautiful and amiable young women, mothers of infant children, after suffering much in prison, were exposed before an insulting multitude to a wild cow, who mangled their bodies in a most horrid manner: after which they were carried to a conspicuous place, and put to death by the sword.

6. The sixth began with the reign of Maximinus, in 235.

7. The seventh, which was the most dreadful ever known, began in 250, under the emperor Decius, when the christians were in all places driven from their habitations, stripped of their estates, tormented with racks, &c.

8. The eighth began in 257, under Valerian. Both men and women suffered death, some by scourging, some by the sword, and some by fire.

9. The ninth was under Aurelian, in 274; but this was inconsiderable, compared with the others before-mentioned.

10. The tenth began in the nineteenth year of Dioclesian, 303. In this dreadful persecution, which lasted ten years, houses filled with Christians were set on fire, and whole droves were tied together with ropes, and thrown into the sea. It is related that 17, 000 were slain in one month’s time; and that during the continuance of this persecution, in the province of Egypt alone, no less than 144, 000 Christians died by the violence of their persecutors; besides 700, 000 that died through the fatigues of banishment, or the public works to which they were condemned. III. Persecution of Christians by those of the same name. Numerous were the persecutions of different sects from Constantine’s time to the reformation; but when the famous Martin Luther arose, and opposed the errors and ambition of the church of Rome, and the sentiments of this good man began to spread, the pope and his clergy joined all their forces to hinder their progress. A general council of the clergy was called: this was the famous council of Trent, which was held for near eighteen successive years, for the purpose of establishing popery in greater splendour, and preventing the reformation.

The friends to the reformation were anathematized and excommunicated, and the life of Luther was often in danger, though at last he died on the bed of peace. From time to time innumerable schemes were suggested to overthrow the reformed church, and wars were set on foot for the same purpose. The invincible armada, as it was vainly called, had the same end in view. The inquisition, which was established in the twelfth century against the Waldenses (

See INQUISITION) was not more effectually set to work. Terrible persecutions were carried on in various parts of Germany, and even in Bohemia, which continued about thirty years, and the blood of the saints was said to flow like rivers of water. The countries of Poland, Lithuania, and Hungary, were in a similar manner deluged with Protestant blood. In HOLLAND, and in the other Low Countries, for many years the most amazing cruelties were exercised under the merciless and unrelenting hands of the Spaniards, to whom the inhabitants of that part of the world were then in subjection. Father Paul observes, that these Belgic martyrs were 50, 000; but Grotius and others observe, that there were 100, 000 who suffered by the hand of the executioner.

Herein, however, Satan and his agents failed of their purpose; for in the issue great part of the Netherlands shook off the Spanish yoke, and erected themselves into a separate and independent state, which has ever since been considered as one of the principal Protestant countries of the universe. FRANCE. No country, perhaps, has ever produced more martyrs than this. After many cruelties had been exercised against the Protestants, there was a most violent persecution of them in the year 1572, in the reign of Charles IX. Many of the principal Protestants were invited to Paris under a solemn oath of safety, upon occasion of the marriage of the king of Navarre with the French king’s sister. The queen dowager of Navarre, a zealous Protestant, however, was poisoned by a pair of gloves before the marriage was solemnized. Coligni, admiral of France, was basely murdered in his own house, and then thrown out of the window to gratify the malice of the duke of Guise: his head was afterwards cut off, and sent to the king and queen-mother; and his body, after a thousand indignities offered to it, hung by the feet on a gibbet. After this the murderers ravaged the whole city of Paris, and butchered in three days, above ten thousand lords, gentlemen, presidents, and people of all ranks.

A horrible scene of things, says Thuanus, when the very streets and passengers resounded with the noise of those that met together for murder and plunder; and groans of those who were dying, and the shrieks of such as were just going to be butchered, were everywhere heard; the bodies of the slain thrown out of the windows; the courts and chambers of the houses filled with them; the dead bodies of others dragged through the streets; their blood running through the channels in such plenty, that torrents seemed to empty themselves in the neighbouring river, in a word, an innumerable multitude of men, women with child, maidens, and children, were all involved in one common destruction; and the gates and entrances of the king’s palace all besmeared with their blood. From the city of Paris the massacre spread throughout the whole kingdom. In the city of Meaux they threw above two hundred into gaol; and after they had ravished and killed a great number of women, and plundered the houses of the Protestants, they executed their fury on those they had imprisoned; and calling them one by one, they were killed, as Thuanus expresses, like sheep in a market. In Orleans they murdered above five hundred, men, women, and children, and enriched themselves with the spoil.

The same cruelties were practised at Angers, Troyes, Bouges, La Charite, and especially at Lyons, where they inhumanly destroyed above eight hundred Protestants; children hanging on their parents’s necks; parents embracing their children; putting ropes about the necks of some, dragging them through the streets, and throwing them, mangled, torn, and half dead, into the river. According to Thuanus, above 30, 000 Protestants were destroyed in this massacre; or, as others affirm, above 100, 000. But what aggravates these scenes with still greater wantonness and cruelty, was, the manner in which the news was received at Rome. When the letters of the pope’s legate were read in the assembly of the cardinals, by which he assured the pope that all was transacted by the express will and command of the king, it was immediately decreed that the pope should march with his cardinals to the church of St. Mark, and in the most solemn manner give thanks to God for so great a blessing conferred on the see of Rome and the Christian world; and that, on the Monday after, solemn mass should be celebrated in the church of Minerva, at which the pope, Gregory, XIII. and cardinals were present; and that a jubilee should be published throughout the whole Christian world, and the cause of it declared to be, to return thanks to God for the extirpation of the enemies of the truth and church in France. In the evening the cannon of St. Angelo were fired to testify the public joy; the whole city illuminated with bonfires; and no one sign of rejoicing omitted that was usually made for the greatest victories obtained in favour of the Roman church!!! But all these persecutions were, however, far exceeded in cruelty by those which took place in the time of Louis XIV.

It cannot be pleasant to any man’s feelings, who has the least humanity, to recite these dreadful scenes of horror, cruelty, and devastation; but to show what superstition, bigotry, and fanaticism are capable of producing, and for the purpose of holding up the spirit of persecution to contempt, we shall here give as concise a detail as possible. The troopers, soldiers, and dragoons, went into the Protestants’ houses, where they marred and defaced their household stuff; broke their looking- glasses and other utensils; threw about their corn and wine; sold what they could not destroy; and thus, in four or five days, the Protestants were stripped of above a million of money. But this was not the worst: they turned the dining rooms of gentlemen into stables for horses, and treated the owners of the houses where they quartered with the greatest cruelty, lashing them about, not suffering them to eat or drink. When they saw the blood and sweat run down their faces, they sluiced them with water, and, putting over their heads kettle-drums turned upside down, they made a continual din upon them till these unhappy creatures lost their senses. At Negreplisse, a town near Montaubon, they hung up Isaac Favin, a Protestant citizen of that place, by his arm-pits, and tormented him a whole night by pinching and tearing off his flesh with pincers.

They made a great fire round about a boy, twelve years old, who, with hands and eyes lifted up to heaven, cried out, “My God, help me!” and when they found the youth resolved to die rather than renounce his religion, they snatched him from the fire just as he was on the point of being burnt. In several places the soldiers applied red hot irons to the hands and feet of men, and the breasts of women. At Nantes, they hung up several women and maids by their feet, and others by their arm-pits, and thus exposed them to public view stark naked. They bound mothers, that gave suck, to posts, and let their sucking infants lie languishing in their sight for several days and nights, crying and gasping for life. Some they bound before a great fire, and, being half toasted, let them go; a punishment worse than death. Amidst a thousand hideous cries, they hung up men and women by the hair, and some by their feet, on hooks in chimneys, and smoked them with wisps of wet hay till they suffocated. They tied some under the arms with ropes, and plunged them again and again into wells; they bound others, put them to torture, and with a funnel filled them with wine till the fumes of it took away their reason, when they made them say they consented to be Catholics. They stripped them naked, and, after a thousand indignities, stuck them with pins and needles from head to foot. In some places they tied fathers and husbands to their bed-posts, and, before their eyes, ravished their wives and daughters with impunity.

They blew up men and women with bellows till they burst them. If any, to escape these barbarities, endeavoured to save themselves by flight, they pursued them into the fields and woods, where they shot at them, like wild beasts, and prohibited them from departing the kingdom (a cruelty never practised by Nero or Dioclesian, ) upon pain of confiscation of effects, the galleys, the lash, and perpetual imprisonment. With these scenes of desolation and horror the popish clergy feasted their eyes, and made only matter of laughter and sport of them!!! ENGLAND has also been the seat of much persecution. Though Wickliffe, the first reformer, died peaceably in his bed, yet such was the malice and spirit of persecuting Rome, that his bones were ordered to be dug up, and cast upon a dunghill. The remains of this excellent man were accordingly dug out of the grave, where they had lain undisturbed four-and-forty years. His bones were burnt, and the ashes cast into an adjoining brook. In the reign of Henry VIII. Bilney, Bayman, and many other reformers were burnt; but when queen Mary came to the throne, the most severe persecutions took place. Hooper and Rogers were burnt in a slow fire. Saunders was cruelly tormented a long time at the stake before he expired. Taylor was put into a barrel of pitch, and fire set to it. Eight illustrious persons, among whom was Ferrar, bishop of St. David’s, were sought out, and burnt by the infamous Bonner in a few days. Sixty-seven persons were this year, A. D. 1555, burnt, amongst whom were the famous Protestants, Bradford, Ridley, Latimer, and Philpot.

In the following year, 1556, eighty-five persons were burnt. Women suffered; and one, in the flames, which burst her womb, being near her time of delivery, a child fell from her into the fire, which being snatched out by some of the observers more humane that the rest, the magistrate ordered the babe to be again thrown into the fire, and burnt. Thus even the unborn child was burnt for heresy! O God, what is human nature when left to itself! Alas! dispositions ferocious as infernal then reign, and usurp the heart of man! The queen erected a commission court, which was followed by the destruction of near eighty more. Upon the whole, the number of those who suffered death for the reformed religion in this reign, were no less that two hundred and seventy-seven persons; of whom were five bishops, twenty-one clergymen, eight gentlemen, eight-four tradesmen, one hundred husbandmen, labourers, and servants, fifty-five women, and four children. Besides these, there were fifty-four more under prosecution, seven of whom were whipped, and sixteen perished in prison. Nor was the reign of Elizabeth free from this persecuting spirit. If any one refused to consent to the least ceremony in worship, he was cast into prison, where many of the most excellent men in the land perished.

Two Protestant Anabaptists were burnt, and many banished. She also, it is said, put two Brownists to death; and though her whole reign was distinguished for its political prosperity, yet it is evident that she did not understand the rights of conscience; for it is said that more sanguinary laws were made in her reign than in any of her predecessors, and her hands were stained with the blood both of Papists and Puritans. James I. succeeded Elizabeth; he published a proclamation, commanding all Protestants to conform strictly, and without any exception, to all the rites and ceremonies of the church of England. Above five hundred clergy were immediately silenced, or degraded, for not complying. Some were excommunicated, and some banished the country. The Dissenters were distressed, censured, and fined, in the Star-chamber. Two persons were burnt for heresy, one at Smithfield, and the other at Litchfield. Worn out with endless vexations, and unceasing persecutions, many retired into Holland, and from thence to America. It is witnessed by a judicious historian, that, in this and some following reigns, 22, 000 persons were banished from England by persecution to America. In Charles the First’s time arose the persecuting Laud, who was the occasion of distress to numbers. Dr. Leighton, for writing a book against the hierarchy, was fined ten thousand pounds, perpetual imprisonment, and whipping. He was whipped, and then placed in the pillory; one of his ears cut off, one side of his nose slit; branded on the cheek with a red hot iron, with the letters S. S. whipped a second time, and placed in the pillory.

A fortnight afterwards, his sores being yet uncured, he had the other ear cut off, the other side of his nose slit, and the other cheek branded. He continued in prison till the long parliament set him at liberty. About four years afterwards, William Prynn, a barrister, for a book he wrote against the sports on the Lord’s day, was deprived from practising at Lincoln’s Inn, degraded from his degree at Oxford, set in the pillory, had his ears cut off, imprisoned for life, and fined five thousand pounds. Nor were the Presbyterians, when their government came to be established in England, free from the charge of persecution. In 1645 an ordinance was published, subjecting all who preached or wrote against the Presbyterian directory for public worship to a fine not exceeding fifty pounds; and imprisonment for a year, for the third offence, in using the episcopal book of common prayer, even in a private family. In the following year the Presbyterians applied to Parliament, pressing them to enforce uniformity in religion, and to extirpate popery, prelacy, heresy, schism, &c. but their petition was rejected; yet in 1648 the parliament, ruled by them, published an ordinance against heresy, and determined that any person who maintained, published, or defended the following errors, should suffer death. These errors were.

1. Denying the being of a God.

2. Denying his omnipresence, omniscience, &c.

3. Denying the Trinity in any way.

4. Denying that Christ had two natures.

5. Denying the resurrection, the atonement, the Scriptures. In Charles the Second’s reign the act of uniformity passed, by which two thousand clergymen were deprived of their benefices. Then followed the conventicle act, and the Oxford act, under which, it is said, eight thousand persons were imprisoned and reduced to want, and many to the grave. In this reign also, the Quakers were much persecuted, and numbers of them imprisoned. Thus we see how England had bled under the hand of bigotry and persecution; nor was toleration enjoyed until William III. came to the throne, who showed himself a warm friend to the rights of conscience. The accession of the present royal family was auspicious to religious liberty; and as their majesties have always befriended the toleration, the spirit of persecution has been long curbed. IRELAND has likewise been drenched with the blood of the Protestants, forty or fifty thousand of whom were cruelly murdered in a few days, in different parts of the kingdom, in the reign of Charles I. It began on the 23d of October, 1641. Having secured the principal gentlemen, and seized their effects, they murdered the common people in cold blood, forcing many thousands to fly from their houses and settlements naked into the bogs and woods, where they perished with hunger and cold.

Some they whipped to death, others they stripped naked, and exposed to shame, and then drove them like herds of swine to perish in the mountains: many hundreds were drowned in rivers, some had their throats cut, others were dismembered. With some the execrable villians made themselves sport, trying who could hack the deepest into an Englishman’s flesh: wives and young virgins abused in the presence of their nearest relations; nay, they taught their children to strip and kill the children of the English, and dash out their brains against the stones. Thus many thousands were massacred in a few days, without distinction of age, sex, or quality, before they suspected their danger, or had time to provide for their defence. SCOTLAND, SPAIN, &c. Besides the above-mentioned persecutions, there have been several others carried on in different parts of the world. Scotland for many years together has been the scene of cruelty and blood-shed, till it was delivered by the monarch at the revolution. Spain, Italy, and the valley of Piedmont, and other places, have been the seats of much persecution. Popery, we see has had the greatest hand in this mischievous work. It has to answer, also, for the lives of millions of Jews, Mahometans, and barbarians. When the Moors conquered Spain, in the eighth century, they allowed the Christians the free exercise of their religion; but in the fifteenth century, when the Moors were overcome, and Ferdinand subdued the Moriscoes, the descendants of the above Moors, many thousands were forced to be baptised, or burnt, massacred, or banished, and the children sold for slaves; besides innumerable Jews, who shared the same cruelties, chiefly by means of the infernal courts of inquisition.

A worst slaughter, if possible, was made among the natives of Spanish America, where fifteen millions are said to have been sacrificed to the genius of popery in about forty years. It has been computed that fifty millions of Protestants have at different times been the victims of the persecutions of the Papists, and put to death for their religious opinions. Well, therefore, might the inspired penman say, that at mystic Babylon’s destruction, ‘was found in her the blood of prophets, of saints, and of all that was slain upon the earth, ‘ Rev 18:24. To conclude this article, Who can peruse the account here given without feeling the most painful emotions, and dropping a tear over the madness and depravity of mankind? Does it not show us what human beings are capable of when influenced by superstition, bigotry, and prejudice?

Have not these baneful principles metamorphosed men into infernals; and entirely extinguished all the feelings of humanity, the dictates of conscience, and the voice of reason? Alas! what has sin done to make mankind such curses to one another? Merciful God! by they great power suppress this worst of all evils, and let truth and love, meekness and forbearance universally prevail! Limborch’s Introduction to his History of the Inquisition; Memoirs of the Persecutions of the Protestants in France by Lewis De Enarolles; Comber’s History of the Parisian Massacre of St. Bartholomew; A. Robinson’s History of Persecution; Lockman’s History of Popish Persec. Clark’s Looking-Glass for Persecutors; Doddridge’s Sermon on Persecution; Jortin’s ditto, ser. 9. vol. 4: Bower’s Lives of the Popes; Fox’s Martyrs; Woodrow’s History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland; Neal’s History of the Puritans, and of New England; History of the Bohemian Persecutions.

Fuente: Theological Dictionary

Persecution

GENERAL

Persecution may be defined in general as the unlawful coercion of another’s liberty or his unlawful punishment, for not every kind of punishment can be regarded as persecution. For our purpose it must be still further limited to the sphere of religion, and in that sense persecution means unlawful coercion or punishment for religion’s sake.

The Church has suffered many kinds of persecution. The growth and the continued existence of Christianity have been hindered by cultured paganism and by savage heathenism. And in more recent times agnosticism has harassed the Church in the various states of America and Europe. But most deplorable of all persecutions have been those that Catholicism has suffered from other Christians. With regard to these it has to be considered that the Church herself has appealed to force, and that, not only in her own defence, but also, so it is objected, in unprovoked attack. Thus by means of the Inquisition (q. v.) or religious wars she was herself the aggressor in many instances during the Middle Ages and in the time of the Reformation. And even if the answer be urged that she was only defending her own existence, the retort seems fairly plausible that pagan and heathen powers were only acting in their own defence when they prohibited the spread of Christianity. The Church would therefore seem to be strangely inconsistent, for while she claims toleration and liberty for herself she has been and still remains intolerant of all other religions.

In answer to this objection, we may admit the fact and yet deny the conclusion. The Church claims to carry a message or rather a command from God and to be God’s only messenger. In point of fact it is only within recent years, when toleration is supposed to have become a dogma, that the other “champions of Revelation” have abandoned their similar claims. That they should abandon their right to command allegiance is a natural consequence of Protestantism; whereas it is the Church’s claim to be the accredited and infallible ambassador of God which justifies her apparent inconsistency. Such intolerance, however, is not the same as persecution, by which we understand the unlawful exercise of coercion. Every corporation lawfully constituted has the right to coerce its subjects within due limits. And though the Church exercises that right for the most part by spiritual sanctions, she has never relinquished the right to use other means. Before examining this latter right to physical coercion, there must be introduced the important distinction between pagans and Christians. Regularly, force has not been employed against pagan or Jew: “For what have I to do to judge them that are without?” (1 Corinthians 5:12); see JEWS AND JUDAISM: Judaism and Church Legislation.

Instances of compulsory conversions such as have occurred at different periods of the Church’s history must be ascribed to the misplaced zeal of autocratic individuals. But the Church does claim the right to coerce her own subjects. Here again, however, a distinction must be made. The non-Catholic Christians of our day are, strictly speaking, her subjects; but in her legislation she treats them as if they were not her subjects. The “Ne temere”, e.g., of Pius X (1907), recognizes the marriages of Protestants as valid, though not contracted according to Catholic conditions: and the laws of abstinence are not considered to be binding on Protestants. So, with regard to her right to use coercion, the Church only exercises her authority over those whom she considers personally and formally apostates. A modern Protestant is not in the same category with the Albigenses or Wyclifites. These were held to be personally responsible for their apostasy; and the Church enforced her authority over them: It is true that in many cases the heretics were rebels against the State also; but the Church’s claim to exercise coercion is not confined to such cases of social disorder. And what is more, her purpose was not only to protect the faith of the orthodox, but also to punish the apostates. Formal apostasy was then looked upon as treason against God &#151 a much more heinous crime than treason against a civil ruler, which, until recent times, was punished with great severity. (See APOSTASY; HERESY.) It was a poisoning of the life of the soul in others (St. Thomas Aquinas, II-II, Q. xi, articles 3, 4.)

There can be no doubt, therefore, that the Church claimed the right to use physical coercion against formal apostates. Not, of course, that she would exercise her authority in the same way to-day, even if there were a Catholic State in which other Christians were personally and formally apostates. She adapts her discipline to the times and circumstances in order that it may fulfil its salutary purpose. Her own children are not punished by fines, imprisonment, or other temporal punishments, but by spiritual pains and penalties, and heretics are treated as she treated pagans: “Fides suadenda est, non imponenda” (Faith is a matter of persuasion, not of compulsion) &#151 a sentiment that roes back to St. Basil (“Revue de l’Orient Chrétien”, 2nd series, XIV, 1909, 38) and to St. Ambrose, in the fourth century, the latter applying it even to the treatment of formal apostates. It must also be remembered that when she did use her right to exercise physical coercion over formal apostates, that right was then universally admitted. Churchmen had naturally the ideas of their time as to why and how penalties should be inflicted. Withal, the Roman Inquisition (q. v.) was very different from that of Spain, and the popes did not approve the harsh proceedings of the latter. Moreover, such ideas of physical coercion in matters spiritual were not peculiar to Catholics (see TOLERATION). The Reformers were not less, but, If anything, more, intolerant (see INQUISITION). If the intolerance of Churchmen is blamable, then that of the Reformers is doubly so. From their own standpoint, it was unjustifiable. First, they were in revolt against the established authority of the Church, and secondly they could hardly use force to compel the unwilling to conform to their own principle of private judgment. With this clear demarcation of the Reformer’s private judgment from the Catholic’s authority, it hardly serves our purpose to estimate the relative violence of Catholic and Protestant Governments during the times of the Reformation. And yet it is well to remember that the methods of the maligned Inquisition in Spain and Italy were far less destructive of life than the religious wars of France and Germany. What is, however, more to our purpose is to notice the outspoken intolerance of the Protestant leaders; for it gave an additional right to the Church to appeal to force. She was punishing her defaulting subjects and at the same time defending herself against their attacks.

Such compulsion, therefore, as is used by legitimate authority cannot be called persecution, nor can its victims be called martyrs. It is not enough that those who are condemned to death should be suffering for their religious opinions. A martyr is a witness to the truth; whereas those who suffered the extreme penalty of the Church were at the most the witnesses to their own sincerity, and therefore unhappily no more than pseudo-martyrs. We need not dwell upon the second objection which pretends that a pagan government might be justified in harassing Christian missionaries in so far as it considered Christianity to be subversive of established authority. The Christian revelation is the supernatural message of the Creator to His creatures, to which there can be no lawful resistance. Its missionaries have the right and the duty to preach it everywhere. They who die in the propagation or maintenance of the Gospel are God’s witnesses to the truth, suffering persecution for His sake.

OUTLINE OF PRINCIPAL PERSECUTIONS

The brief outline here given of persecutions directed against the Church follows the chronological order, and is scarcely more than a catalogue of the principal formal and public onslaughts against Catholicism. Nor does it take into account other forms of attack, e. g., literary and social persecution, some form of suffering for Christ’s sake being a sure note of the True Church (John 15:20; 2 Timothy 3:12; Matthew 10:23). For a popular general account of persecutions of Catholics previous to the nineteenth century See Leclercq, “Les Martyrs” (5 vols., Paris, 1902-09).

Roman Persecutions (52-312)

The persecutions of this period are treated extensively under MARTYR. See also MARTYRS, ACTS OF THE, and the articles on individual martyrs or groups of martyrs (MARTYRS, THE TEN THOUSAND; FORTY MARTYRS; AGAUNUM, for the Theban Legion).

Under Julian the Apostate (361-63)

Constantine’s edict of toleration had accelerated the final triumph of Christianity. But the extreme measures passed against the ancient religion of the empire, and especially by Constans, even though they were not strictly carried out, roused considerable opposition. And when Julian the Apostate (361-63) came to the throne, he supported the defenders of paganism, though he strove to strengthen the old religion by recommending works of charity and a priesthood of Strictly moral lives which, a thing unheard of, should preach and instruct. State protection was withdrawn from Christianity, and no section of the Church favoured more than another, so that the Donatists and Arians were enabled to return.

All the privileges formerly granted to clerics were repealed; civil jurisdiction taken from the bishops, and the subsidies to widows and virgins stopped. Higher education, also, was taken out of the hands of Christians by the prohibition of anyone who was not a pagan from teaching classical literature. And finally, the tombs of martyrs were destroyed. The emperor was afraid to proceed to direct persecution, but he fomented the dissensions among the Christians, and he tolerated and even encouraged the persecutions raised by pagan communities and governors, especially in Alexandria, Heliopolis, Maiouma, the port of Gaza, Antioch, Arethusa, and Cæsarea in Cappadocia (cf. Grergory of Nazianzus, Orat. IV, 86-95; P. G., XXXV, 613-28). Many, in different places, suffered and even died for the Faith, though another pretext was found for their death, at least by the emperor. Of the martyrs of this period mention may be made of John and Paul (q. v.), who suffered in Rome; the soldiers Juventinus and Maximian (cf. St. John Chrysostom’s sermon on them in P. G., L, 571-77); Macedonius, Tatian, and Theodulus of Meros in Phrygia (Socrates, III, 15; Sozomen, V, 11); Basil, a priest of Ancyra (Sozomen, V, 11). Julian himself seems to have ordered the executions of John and Paul, the steward and secretary respectively of Constantia, daughter of Constantine. However, he reigned only for two years, and his persecution was, in the words of St. Athanasius, “but a passing cloud”.

In Persia

When the persecution of Christianity was abandoned by the Roman Government, it was taken up by Rome’s traditional enemy, the Persians, though formerly they had been more or less tolerant of the new religion. On the outbreak of war between the two empires, Sapor II (310-80), under the instigation of the Persian priests, initiated a severe persecution of the Christians in 339 or 340. It comprised the destruction or confiscation of churches and a general massacre, especially of bishops and priests. The number of victims, according to Sozomen (Hist. Eccl., II, 9-14), was no less than 16,000, among them being Symeon, Bishop of Seleucia; there was a respite from the general persecution, but it was resumed and with still greater violence by Bahram V (420-38), who persecuted savagely for one year, and was not prevented from causing numerous individual martyrdoms by the treaty he made (422) with Theodosius II, guaranteeing liberty of conscience to the Christians. Yezdegerd II (438-57), his successor, began a fierce persecution in 445 or 446, traces of which are found shortly before 450. The persecution of Chosroes I from 541 to 545 was directed chiefly against the bishops and clergy. He also destroyed churches and monasteries and imprisoned Persian noblemen who had become Christians. The last persecution by Persian kings was that of Chosroes II (590-628), who made war on all Christians alike during 627 and 628. Speaking generally, the dangerous time for the Church in Persia was when the kings were at war with the Roman Empire.

Among the Goths

Christianity was introduced among the Goths about the middle of the third century, and “Theophilus Episcopus Gothiæ” was present at the Council of Nicæa (325). But, owing to the exertions of Bishop Ulfilas (340, died 383), an Arian, Arianism was professed by the great majority of the Visigoths of Dacia (Transylvania and West Hungary), converts from paganism; and it passed with them into Lower Mœsia across the Danube, when a Gothic chieftain, after a cruel persecution drove Ulfilas and his converts from his lands, probably in 349. And subsequently, when in 370 the Visigoths, pressed by the Huns, crossed the Danube and entered the Roman Empire, Arianism was the religion practised by the Emperor Valens. This fact, along with the national character given to Arianism by Ulfilas (q. v.), made it the form of Christianity adopted also by the Ostrogoths, from whom it spread to the Burgundians, Suevi, Vandals, and Lombards.

The first persecution we hear of was that directed by the pagan Visigoth King Athanaric. begun about 370 and lasting for two, or perhaps six, years after his war with Valens. St. Sabas was drowned in 372, others were burnt, sometimes in a body in the tents which were used as churches. When, in the fifth and sixth centuries, the Visigoths invaded Italy, Gaul, and Spain, the churches were plundered, and the Catholic bishops and clergy were often murdered; but their normal attitude was one of toleration, Euric (483), the Visigoth King of Toulouse, is especially mentioned by Sidonius Apollinaris (Ep. vii, 6) as a hater of Catholicism and a persecutor of the Catholics, though it is not clear that he persecuted to death. In Spain there was persecution at least from time to time during the period 476-586, beginning with the aforesaid Euric, who occupied Catalonia in 476. We hear of persecution by Agila (549-554) also, and finally by Leovigild (573-86). Bishops were exiled and church goods seized. His son Hermenigild, a convert to the Catholic Faith, is described in the seventh century (e.g. by St. Gregory the Great) as a martyr. A contemporary chronicler, John of Biclaro, who had himself suffered for the Faith, says that the prince was murdered in prison by an Arian, Sisibert; but he does not say that Leovigild approved of the murder (see HERMINGILD; and Hodgkin, “Italy and her Invaders”, V, 255). With the accession of Reccared, who had become a Catholic, Arianism ceased to be the creed of the Spanish Visigoths.

As for the Ostrogoths, they seem to have been fairly tolerant, after the first violences of the invasion. A notable exception was the persecution of Theodoric (524-26). It was prompted by the repressive measures which Justin I had issued against the Arians of the Eastern Empire, among whom Goths would of coarse be included. One of the victims of the persecution was Pope John I who died in prison.

Among the Lombards

St. Gregory the Great, in parts of his “Dialogues”, describes the sufferings which Catholics had to endure at the time of the Lombard invasion under Alboin (568) and afterwards. But on the whole, after Autharis’s death (590) the Lombards were not troublesome, except perhaps in the Duchies of Benevento and Spoleto. Autharis’s queen, Theudelinda, a Catholic princess of Bavaria, was able to use her influence with her second husband, Agilulf, Autharis’s successor, so that he, although probably remaining an Arian, was friendly to the Church and allowed his son to be baptized a Catholic (see LOMBARDY).

Among the Vandals

The Vandals, Arians like the Visigoths and the others, were the most hostile of all towards the Church. During the period of their domination in Spain (422-29) the Church suffered persecution, the details of which are unknown. In 429, under the lead of Genseric, the Goths crossed over to Africa, and by 455 had made themselves masters of Roman Africa. In the North, the bishops were driven from their sees into exile. When Carthage was taken in 439 the churches were given over to the Arian clergy, and the bishop Quodvultdeus (a friend of St. Augustine) and the greater part of the Catholic clergy were stripped of what they had, put on board unseaworthy ships, and carried to Naples. Confiscation of church property and exile of the clergy was the rule throughout the provinces of the North, where all public worship was forbidden to Catholics. In the provinces of the South, however, the persecution was not severe. Some Catholic court officials, who had accompanied Genseric from Spain, were tortured, exiled, and finally put to death because they refused to apostatize. No Catholic, in fact, was allowed to hold any office.

Genseric’s son, Huneric, who succeeded in 477, though at first somewhat tolerant, arrested and banished under circumstances of great cruelty nearly five thousand Catholics, including bishops and clergy, and finally by an edict of 25 Feb., 484, abolished the Catholic worship, transferred all churches and church property to the Arians, exiled the bishops and clergy, and deprived of civil rights all those who would not receive Arian baptism. Great numbers suffered savage treatment, many died, others were mutilated or crippled for life. His successor, Guntamund (484-96), did not relax the persecution until 487. But in 494 the bishops were recalled, though they had afterwards to endure some persecution from Trasamund (496-523). And complete peace came to the Church at the accession of Genseric’s son Hilderic, with whom the Vandal domination ended (see AFRICA).

In Arabia

Christianity penetrated into South Arabia (Yemen) in the fourth century. In the sixth century the Christians were brutally persecuted by the Jewish King Dunaan, no less than five thousand, including the prince, Arethas, being said to have suffered execution in 523 after the capture of Nagra. The Faith was only saved from utter extinction at this period by the armed intervention of the King of Abyssinia. And it did in fact disappear before the invading forces of Islam.

Under the Mohammedans

With the spread of Mohammedanism in Syria, Egypt, Persia, and North Africa, there went a gradual subjugation of Christianity. At the first onset of invasion, in the eighth Century, many Christians were butchered for refusing to apostatize; afterwards they were treated as helots, subject to a special tax, and liable to suffer loss of goods or life itself at the caprice of the caliph or the populace. In Spain the first Mohammedan ruler to institute a violent persecution of the Christians was the viceroy Abderrahman II (821-52). The persecution was begun in 850, was continued by Mohammed (852-87) and lasted with interruptions till 960, when the Christians were strong enough to intimidate their persecutors. The number of martyrs was small, Eulogius, Archbishop of Toledo (11 March, 859), who has left us an account of the persecution, being himself the most famous (see MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM).

Under the Iconoclasts

The troubles brought on the Church of the East by the Iconoclastic emperors cover a period of one hundred and twenty years. Leo III (the Isaurian) published two edicts against images about 726 and 730. The execution of the edicts was strenuously resisted. Popes Gregory II and Gregory III protested in vigorous language against the autocratic reformer, and the people resorted to open violence. But Constantine V (Copronymus, 741-75) continued his father’s policy, summoning a council at Constantinople in 754 and then persecuting the orthodox party. The monks formed the especial object of his attack. Monasteries were demolished, and the monks themselves shamefully maltreated and put to death. Under Constantine VI (780-97), through the influence of his mother, the regent Irene, the Seventh Œcumenical Council was summoned in 787, and rescinded the decrees of Copronymus’s Council. But there was a revival of the persecution under Leo V (813-20), the bishops who stood firm, as well as the monks, being the special objects of his attack, while many others were directly done to death or died as a result of cruel treatment in prison. This persecution, which was continued under Michael II (820-29), reached its most fierce phase under Theophilus (829-42). Great numbers of monks were put to death by this monarch; but at his decease the persecutions ended (842) (see ICONOCLASM).

MODERN PERIOD

We have reviewed the persecutions undergone by the Church during the first millennium of her existence. During her second millennium she has continued to suffer persecution in her mission of spreading the Gospel, and especially in Japan and China (see MARTYRS, JAPANESE; MARTYRS IN CHINA). She has also had to face the attacks of her own children, culminating in the excesses and religious wars of the Reformation.

For an account of the persecutions of Irish, English, and Scotch Catholics, see ENGLAND; IRELAND; SCOTLAND; PENAL LAWS; and the numerous articles on individual martyrs, e. g. EDMUND CAMPION, BLESSED; PLUNKETT, OLIVER, VENERABLE.

Poland

Within the last century, Poland has suffered what is perhaps the most notable of recent persecutions. Catholicism had continued to be the established religion of the country until the intervention of Catherine II of Russia (1762-96). By means of political intrigues and open hostility, she first of all secured a position of political suzerainty over the country, and then effected the separation of the Ruthenians from the Holy See, and incorporated them with the Orthodox Church of Russia. Nicholas I (1825-55), and Alexander II (1855-81), resumed her policy of intimidation and forcible suppression. The latter monarch especially showed himself a violent persecutor of the Catholics, the barbarities that were committed in 1863 being so savage as to call forth a joint protest from the Governments of France, Austria, and Great Britain. After his death the Catholics were granted a certain measure of toleration, and in 1905 Nicholas II granted them full liberty of worship (see POLAND; RUSSIA).

For the persecution of Catholics in the Ottoman Empire see TURKEY.

In modern times, however, a new element has been added to the forces opposing the Church. There have indeed been occasional recrudescences of the “Reformers”, violence dictated by a frenzied fear of Catholic progress. Such were for instance the Charleston and Philadelphia disturbances in 1834 and 1844, and the “No Popery” cries against the establishment of the Catholic hierarchy in England and Holland in 1850 and 1853. But this was no more than the spirit of the Reformation. For the attitude of the South American republics during the nineteenth century, see the articles on those countries.

Liberalism

A new spirit of opposition appears in the so-called “Liberalism” and in Free Thought, whose influence has been felt in Catholic as well as Protestant countries. Its origin is to be traced back to the infidel philosophy of the eighteenth century. At the end of that century it had grown so strong that it could menace the Church with armed violence. In France six hundred priests were murdered by Jourdan, “the Beheader”, in 1791, and in the next year three hundred ecclesiastics, including an archbishop and two bishops, were cruelly massacred in the prisons of Paris. The Reign of Terror ended in 1795. But the spirit of infidelity which triumphed then has ever since sought and found opportunities for persecution. And it has been assisted by the endeavours of even so-called Catholic governments to subordinate the Church to the State, or to separate the two powers altogether. In Switzerland the Catholics were so incensed by the attacks of the Liberal party on their religious freedom that they resolved on an appeal to arms. Their Sonderbund (q. v.) or “Separate League” was at first successful in the war of 1843, and in spite of its final defeat by the forces of the Diet in 1847 the result has been to secure religious liberty throughout Switzerland. Since that time the excitement caused by the decree on Papal Infallibility found vent in another period of hostile legislation; but the Catholics have been strong enough to maintain and reinforce their position in the country.

In other countries Liberalism has not issued in such direct warfare against the Church; though the defenders of the Church have often been ranged against revolutionaries who were attacking the altar along with the throne. But the history of the nineteenth century reveals a constant opposition to the Church. Her influence has been straitened by adverse legislation, the monastic orders have been expelled and their property confiscated, and, what is perhaps most characteristic of modern persecution, religion has been excluded from the schools and universities. The underlying principle is always the same, though the form it assumes and the occasion of its development are peculiar to the different times and places. Gallicanism in France, Josephinism in Austria, and the May Laws of the German Empire have all the same principle of subordinating the Church to the Government, or separating the two powers by a secularist and unnatural divorce. But the solidarity of Catholics and the energetic protests of the Holy See succeeded often in establishing Concordats to safeguard the independent rights of the Church. The terms of these concessions have not always been observed by Liberal or Absolutist Governments. Still they saved the Church in her time of peril. And the enforced separation of Church from State which followed the renunciation of the Concordats has taught the Catholics in Latin countries the dangers of Secularism (q. v.) and how they must defend their rights as members of a Church which transcends the limits of states and nations, and acknowledges an authority beyond the reach of political legislation. In the Teutonic countries, on the other hand, the Church does not loom so large a target for the missiles of her enemies. Long years of persecution have done their work, and left the Catholics with a greater need and a greater sense of solidarity. There is less danger of confusing friend and foe, and the progress of the Church is made more apparent.

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GENERAL: SYDNEY SMITH, The Pope and the Spanish Inquisition in The Month, LXXIV (1802), 375-99; cf. Dublin Review, LXI (1867), 177-78; KOHLER, Reform und Ketzerprocess (Tübingen, 1901); CAMUT, La Tolérance protestante (Paris, 1903); RUSSELL, Maryland; The Land of Sanctuary (Baltimore, 1907); PAULUS, Zu Luthers These über die Ketzerverbrennung in Hist. Polit. Blätter, CXL (1908), 357-67; MOULARD, Le Catholique et le pouvoir coercitif de l’Eglise in Revue pratique de l’Apologétique, VI (1908), 721-36; KEATING, Intolerance, Persecution, and Proselytism in The Month, CXIII (1909), 512-22; DE CAUZOUS, Histoire de l’Inquisition en France, I (Paris, 1909).

ROMAN MARTYRS: An exhaustive and reliable work is Allard, “Les Persécutions” (5 vols., Paris, 1885); also his “Ten Lectures on the Martyrs” (New York, 1907); and for an exhaustive literature see Healy, “The Valerian Persecution” (Boston).

JULIAN THE APOSTATE: SOZOMEN, Hist. Eccl., V, 11; SOCRATES, III, 15; AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS, XXI-XXV; TILLEMONT, Mémoires, VII, 322-43; 717-45; LECLERCQ, Les Martyrs, III (Paris, 1904); ALLARD, Le Christianisme et l’empire romain de Néron à Théodore (Paris, 1897), 224-31; IDEM, Julien l’Apostat, III, 52-102; 152-158 (Paris, 1903); DUCHESNE, Histoire ancienne de l’Eglise, II (Paris, 1907), 328-35.

PERSIA: SOZOMEN, op. cit., 9-14; Acta Sanctorum Martyrum, ed. ASSEMANI, I (Rome, 1748), Syriac text with Lat. tr.; Acta Martyrum et Sanctorum, II, III, IV, ed. BEDJAN (Leipzig, 1890-95), Syriac text (for discussion of these two authorities See DUVAL, Littérature syriaque (Paris, 1899), 130-43). A list of martyrs who suffered under Sapor II was first published by WRIGHT and reproduced in the Martyrologium Hieronymianum by DE ROSSI AND DUCHESNE in Acta SS., Nov., II, part I, lxiii (Brussels, 1894); HOFFMANN, Auszüge aus syrischen Akten persischer Martyrer, text, tr., and notes (Leipzig. 1886); LECLERCQ, op. cit., III; DUVAL, Littérature syriaque (Paris, 1897), 129-47; LABOURT, Le Christianisme dans l’empire perse (Paris, 1904); DUCHESNE, op. cit. (Paris, 1910), 553-64.

GOTHS: KAUFFMAN, Aus der Schule des Wulfila: Auxentii Dorostorensis Epistola de fide, vita et obitu Wulfila (Strasburg, 1899). AUXENTIUS’S account is also found in WAlTZ, Ueber das leben und die lehre des Ulfila (Hanover, 1840); HODGKIN, Italy and her Invaders, I (Oxford, 1892). 80-93; DUCHESNE, op. cit., II (Paris, 1908); SCOTT, Ulfilas, Apostle of the Goths (Cambridge, 1885). For general account of Goths and Catholicism, See UHLHORN, Kampfe und Siege des Christentums in der germanischen Welt (Stuttgart, 1898).

FOR VISIGOTHS: SOCRATES, op. cit., IV, 33; Contemporary letter on St. Sabas, Acta SS., 12 April; see also later document on St. Nicetas, ibid., 15 Sept., and HODGKIN, op. cit., I, 1, 175; DAHN, Urgeschichte der germanischen und romanischen Volker, I (Berlin, 1881), 426 sq., for Athanaric’s persecution; SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS, ep. vii, 6 in Mon. Germ. Hist.: Auct. Antiq., VIII, HODGKIN, op. cit., II, 484, for Euric; JOHN OF BICLARO in Mon. Germ, Hist,: Auct. Antiq., XI, 211; GORRES, Kirche und Staat im Westgotenreich von Eurich bis Leovigild in Theol, Stud. u. Krit. (Gotha, 1893), 708-34; GAMS, Kirchengeschichte Spaniens, I, II (Augsburg, 1862), 4; LECLERCQ, L’Espagne chrétienne (Paris, 1906); ASCHBACH, Gesch. der Westgoten (Frankfort, 1827).

FOR OSTROGOTHS: Vita S. Severini in Mon. Germ, Hist.: Auct. Antiq., 1; PAPENCORDT, Gesch, der stadt Rom. (Paderborn, 1857), 62 sq.; PFEILSCHRIFTER, Der Ostrogotenkönig Theodoric der Grosse und die Katholische Kirche in Kirchengeschichtliche Studien, III (Münster, 1896), 1, 2; GRISAR, Geschichte Roms und der Papste im Mittelalter, I (Freiburg im Br., 1901), 86, 481.

AMONG THE LOMBARDS: ST. GREGORY THE GREAT, Dialogues, III, 27, 28, 37, 39; iv, 21-23, see HODGKIN, op. cit., VI, 97, 104; PAUL THE DEACON, Historia Langobardorum, I-IV in Mon. Germ. Hist.: Script. Langob. et Ital. (Hanover, 1878), 45 Sq., see HODGKIN, op. cit., V. 68-80; DAHN, op. cit.; GRISAR, op. cit.

AMONG THE VANDALS: IDATIUS in Mon. Germ, Hist.: Auct. Antiq., XI, 13-36; MIGNE, P. L., LI; VICTOR VITENSIS, Historia persecutionis Africanœ provinciœ, ed, HALM in Mon. Germ. Hist., loc. cit., III; PETSCHENIG, Corpus Script. eccles. lat., VII (Vienna, 1881); MIGNE, P. L., LVII; PROSPER, Chronicon in Mon. Germ. Hist., loc. cit.. IX; MIGNE, P. L., LI; RUINART, Hist. persec. Vand. in P. L., LVIII; PAPENCORDT, Gesch. der Vandalischen Herrschaft in Afrika (Berlin, 1837); DAHN, op. cit.; HODGKIN, op. cit., II, 229-30, 269-82; LECLERCQ, L’Afrique chrétienne, II (Paris, 1904); IDEM, Les Martyrs, III (Paris, 1904); DUCHESNE, op. cit., III, 626-45.

IN ARABIA: FELL, Die Christenverfolgung in Südarabien in Zeitsch. der deutschen morgent. Gesellechaft (1881), XXV. (See ARABIA.)

UNDER THE MOHAMMEDANS: PARGOIRE, L’Eglise byzantine, (Paris, 1905), 153-6, 275-9; LECLERCQ, L’Afrique chrétienne, II (Paris, 1904); IDEM, Les Martyrs, IV (Paris, 1905). For Spain: See EULOGIUS and Bibliography; Vita S. Eulogii, by ALVARUS in P. L., CXV, 705 sq.; EULOGIUS, Memoriale Sanctorum seu libri III de martyribus cordubensibus; MIGNE, P. L., CXV, 731; Dozy, Histoire des Mussulmans d’Espagne, II (Leyden, 1861); GAMS, Kirchengesch. Spaniens, II (Ratisbon, 1864); HAINES, Christianity and Islam in Spain, 756-1031 (London, 1889); LECLERCQ, L’Espagne chrétienne (Paris, 1906).

ICONOCLASTS: Theodori Studitœ Epistola, P. G., XCIX; TOUGARD, La Persécution iconoclaste d’après la correspondance de S. Théodore Studite in Revue des Questions historiques, L (1891), 80, 118; HERGENROTHER, Photius, I, 226 sqq. (Ratisbon, 1867); LOMBARD, Constantin V, Empereur des Romains (Paris, 1902); PARGOIRE, L’Eglise byzantine de 527-847 (Paris, 1905), contains abundant references to lives and acts of martyrs.

MODERN PERIOD: BRÜCK-KISSLING, Gesch. der kath. Kirche im neunzehnten Jahrh. (5 vols., Mainz and Münster, 1908); MACCAFFREY, History of the Catholic Church in the Nineteenth Century (2 vols., Dublin, 1909); GOYAU, L’Allemagne religieuse (3 vols., Paris, 1906).

JAMES BRIDGE Transcribed by Douglas J. Potter Dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XICopyright © 1911 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, February 1, 1911. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York

Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia

Persecution

is any pain or affliction which a person designedly inflicts upon another. In its variability it is threefold:

(1.) Mental, when the spirit of a man rises up and malignantly opposes another;

(2.) Verbal, when men give hard words and deal in uncharitable censures;

(3.) Actual or open by the hand; such as the dragging of innocent persons before the civil tribunal.

In its more restricted sense, persecution for conscience’ sake concerns us here only in so far as it has occurred within the Church, or the Church has been the guilty, party. The Church of Christ, in her purity, knows nothing of intolerance, and therefore can never be guilty of persecution. Indeed, the unlawfulness of persecution for conscience’ sake, under the New- Testament dispensation, must appear plain to every one that possesses the least degree of Christian thought or feeling, To banish, imprison, plunder, starve, hang, and burn men for religion, says the shrewd Jortin, is not the Gospel of Christ; it is the Gospel of the devil. Where persecution begins, Christianity ends. Christ never used anything that looked like force or violence except once; and that was to drive bad men out of the Temple, and not to drive them in. Yet would we not overlook that true religion is essentially aggressive and intolerant of error, inasmuch as it earnestly contends for the faith, and therefore abhors indifferentism and syncretism, believing that their true source is not faith and charity, but the very opposite of these, Laodicean lukewarmness and tacit infidelity. Toleration of error on the part of the Church would render useless God’s revelation of truth, would make God the abettor of error would either destroy the Church as a society of believers, or contradict the divine order which establishes it as the way of salvation. But the Church as such uses only spiritual weapons the earnestness of entreaty, the force of prayer, the terrors of conscience, the powers of the Gospel. Its punishments, too, are entirely spiritual censures, and the different degrees of excommunication. This is shown from the nature of religion in general and the spirit of Christianity in particular; from the constitution of the Church as a spiritual body; from the tenor of Scripture, which explains the compulsion of Luk 14:23 as being spiritual compulsion only; from Paul’s language to Timothy, as 2Ti 2:24, etc. (see Samuel Clarke’s Sermons against Persecution for Religion, Serm. 1, p. 659), and from the fathers (see Bp. Taylor’s Liberty of Prophesying, 14). For these very reasons, however, all temporal penalties inflicted by the Church as a spiritual body must be classed as persecution; for such penalties can be meted out only by a power either usurped or wrongfully given.

The Church, being a spiritual society, has no power over the physical, i.e. the body. Its capital punishment is deliverance to Satan. It may impose penance, it may enjoin restitution. it may arbitrate, but these sentences it can enforce only by spiritual inducements. Coercive jurisdiction it has none; and if any such jurisdiction be assigned it, it becomes so far a minister of the civil authority which makes the assignation; and so far it leaves its own sphere and becomes a temporal power. Temporal pains and penalties belong only to the temporal power, which moves in the external sphere of overt acts, and does not deal with the will and conscience. The cause of this is that, inasmuch as Almighty God has put man’s life into man’s keeping, and entrusted him with goods, the society which is to have power over life and goods is not formed without man’s concurrence. The Church, on the other hand, is not formed by man’s consultation, nor can it be modified at man’s pleasure. Man joins it by voluntary submission, without any power of altering its constitution. The Church, therefore, has no power over life and goods; for the power over these which God has once given he will not take away. The concurrence of men in the formation of civil society is properly considered by holding up the ideal of a social contract, a contract perpetually forming and modifying, as the mind of a nation expresses itself in law; and such ordinances of man are ratified by God’s providence, which has worked also in their formation. Whence it is said, Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake. Such compact, then, according to the religious state of those who make it, may be (1) a complete identity of the members of the Church and State; (2) or an established and preferred Church, with toleration in different degrees for other religious bodies (Jeremy Taylor, e.g., advocated toleration for all those who accept the Apostles’ Creed); (3) or complete equality of all religious bodies. Any one of these positions the Church of Christ may hold. In any case it ought to retain distinctly its proper position as a society of divine institution in the world, but not of the world. Especially it ought not to usurp in the name of religion the powers and aims of the state law. There cannot be a greater mistake in statesmanship than to confound the temporal and spiritual estates and jurisdictions. The Church as a spiritual body has nothing to do with the state. It continues its own course, neither intruding into the sphere of the state nor refusing to aid the state, but ever rejecting an alliance with the state. SEE CHURCH AND STATE.

It is from dogmatism invested with political power, and authorized to use that power for the inculcation of its dogmas, that persecution is sure to spring, aye, really springs. The first community based on freedom of conscience was the Roman Catholic colony of Maryland; yet Roman Catholicism in Maryland was as dogmatic as in Spain. The great consequence from the principles we have tried to establish is that the temporal penalties spoken of can be inflicted only for overt acts. The compact of society does not profess to touch the mind. It leaves the will and conscience to the divine institution of the Church.. Consequently for matters of opinion, for belief privately held, there can be no temporal penalty at all. The temporal penalty is outside the power of the Church; the private belief is outside the supervision of the state. We may therefore define persecution thus: the infliction of temporal penalties by the spirituality as the spirituality, or by the civil power for other than overt acts. Roger Williams has the honor of being the first in modern times who took the right ground in regard to liberty of conscience. It was he who, in 1642, cleared the subject from the subtleties of a thousand years of darkness, and held up to Christian abhorrence in all its forms the Bloody Tenet (as he justly called it) of persecution for conscience’ sake. John Owen, John Milton, John Locke, and a host of later writers have followed in, his steps. Persecution for conscience’ sake, says Dr. Doddridge, is every way inconsistent; because,

1. It is founded on an absurd supposition that one man has a right to judge for another in matters of religion.

2. It is evidently opposite to that fundamental principle’ of morality that we should do to others as we could reasonably desire they should do to us.

3. It is by no means calculated to answer the end which its patrons profess to intend by it.

4. It evidently tends to produce a great deal of mischief and confusion in the world.

5. The Christian religion must, humanly speaking, be not only obstructed, but destroyed, should persecuting principles universally prevail.

6. Persecution is so far from being required or encouraged by the Gospel, that it is most directly contrary to many of its precepts, and indeed to the whole of it. SEE RELIGIOUS LIBERTY; SEE TOLERATION.

Romanism has alone stood out in the Christian Church supplying an interpretation of the Scriptures which Protestantism has as steadfastly discarded. Popes and Church councils have repeatedly declared the extermination of heretics a duty, and pronounced execrable and damnable all opinions to the contrary; so much so that there is no doctrine whatever more absolutely asserted by the Church officially than this; and the moderate nominal Romanist who allows himself to dissent from it might just as well set his individual judgment against that of the Church upon any other article of its creed. The liberal Protestant must be told that the very central and fundamental conception of the Roman Catholic system must produce, as its natural and inevitable consequence, wherever it is dominant, those three great objects of sacerdotal ambition in the Middle Ages persecution of recusants at home, propagation of the faith by force abroad, and the supremacy of the religious over the civil power. If these objects are but partially attainable in our modern world, it is because the principle itself has lost its power over the minds of men; half the world is anti-Catholic, and multitudes, who are Roman Catholics by birth and education, and who, in their indifference, are satisfied with the forms of the religion they have inherited, have never really imbibed its spirit.

The doctrine of the Papacy is this: God has entrusted the salvation of mankind to the Church that is, to the clerical order. This salvation is essentially effected by the administration of the sacraments. The spiritual dominion exercised by the Church extends by right over the whole world; every human creature belongs to it as much as he belongs to the civil society of which he is born a member, without any choice of his own, both the one and the other being established of God. Lastly, the great mission of the Church is to make this right a fact, by bringing the entire race to obedience to their spiritual advisers, and to the habitual use of the sacraments, and by obtaining from all local civil governments entire freedom of action for the universal spiritual government. A bad logician may admit this theory, and deny its consequences; but no man can embrace it from the heart, and prize it as the great divine appointment for the everlasting weal of mankind, without approving its consequences, and desiring practically to follow them out. Why scruple at converting barbarians by the sword? The method has been successful; whole populations have thus been brought within reach of sacramental grace; and if the hearts of a first generation are-too obdurate to profit by it, their descendants will. Why shudder at the fearful punishment of heretics? They are rebels, rebels against the highest and holiest authority: we must, cut off the diseased member for the good of the whole body: we must punish those that would poison souls. Why be astonished at the assumption of a priest’s superiority over the kings of the earth?

Is he not a nearer representative of God, the possessor of a higher order of authority, addressing itself to the deepest powers and susceptibilities of our nature? The king, as well as the peasant, in all his conduct comes under the cognizance of the authorized interpreter of the divine will. The king of England, wrote Innocent III to Philip Augustus, thy brother in the faith, complains that thou hast sinned against him: he has given thee warning; he has taken as witnesses great lords, in order to re-establish peace; and when that failed, he has accused thee to the Church. The Church has sought to employ paternal love, and not the severity of a judge. She has entreated thee to conclude a peace, or, at least, a truce; and if thou wilt not hear the Church, must thou not be to us as a pagan and a publican? It is impossible to adopt the conception of the Church and its agency supposed in the pope’s reasoning, and not admit that his conclusion is just and scriptural. An expression constantly recurring in Innocent’s letters is that of the liberty of the Church: in its use he was not always wrong; for the pretensions of the spiritual power produced reprisals and usurpations on the part of the temporal; but the phrase generally meant that the civil power was to walk out of the Church’s way whenever they came into conflict. And so it ought to do, if it were true that the Creator of heaven and earth had founded the sacerdotal body, and given it the mission to take men and save them, as children are carried out of a burning house, with a merely passive cooperation of their own. The priest’ does not want to be king; but he claims the right to reign over the king, which is the surest way of reigning; and, from his point of view, the great business of the secular arm the reason for which it exists is the repression of heresy. It is an arm, and no more. Here are two systems in presence of each other. On the one, man belongs to himself, that he may give himself to God; the Church is the society formed by those who have freely given themselves to God; individual piety thus logically, even when not chronologically, preceding collective life; the knowledge of God in Jesus Christ being the introduction to the Church, and the ordinances of the latter being means of grace, the blessing of which depends upon the recipient’s moral state and personal relation to God. On the other system, man belongs to the sacerdotal order, and the services of the Church are the only introduction to Jesus Christ: she is the nursing mother of his members, receiving them into her bosom before they are conscious of it, and feeding them with ordinances, the blessing of which is independent of the recipient’s moral experiences. It is evident that conceptions so utterly at, variance must make their opposition felt throughout the whole series of ecclesiastical relations, in the character of their proselytism, in their manner of dealing with the impenitent, in their attitude toward the heretic or the heathen.

As has already been said, religious indifference may make the merely nominal Catholic tolerant, but the real Romanist must persecute wherever he has the power; he must interpret after the letter that favorite text of the Dominicans, Compel them to come in. That is no misrepresentation which makes him say to his adversaries, When you are the stronger, you ought to tolerate me; for it is your duty to tolerate truth. But when I am the stronger, I shall persecute you; for it is my duty to persecute error. What are Rome’s doings in Spain and Italy at the present moment? Let the Romish hierarchy become dominant in some distant island at the antipodes, away from all foreign influences and all excuse of political interest, and it will immediately exhibit its inevitable tendencies. In 1840 the inhabitants of the largest of the Marquesas, at the instigation of their priests, expelled from the island the minority that had become Protestant. An infallible Church can persecute with a good conscience; for the infallibility of an authority implies its resistless evidence, so that it cannot be resisted without guilt, nor can it ever be mistaken in its blows. This is so true that it is avowed by the most consistent ultramontane organs of England and the Continent, by the Tablet, and more unreservedly still by the Universe. Nay, the zeal of the Anglo-Catholic might shame many a lukewarm Romanist; for one of the symptoms of a thorough appropriation of the sacramental system among recreant Protestants is a cordial approbation of the use of the sword against the Albigenses and their fellows, who dared to mar the unity of the Church. The late dean Hurter retained the presidency of the Protestant clergy L, Schaffhausen for many years after he wrote his Life of Innocent III; yet in that work he boldly advocates the propagation of Christianity by force, and. notwithstanding some hypocritical reserves, can hardly be said to conceal his sympathy with the crusaders of Simon de Montfort and the inquisitors of the Middle Ages. We have an authoritative declaration of Romish doctrine in the bull of Pius VI, A.D. 1794, which condemns the reforming Synod of Ricci, bishop of Pistoia.

The synod had affirmed, Abusum fore auctoritatis ecclesise transferendo illam ultra limites doctrinne ac morum, et eam extendendo ad res exteriores, et per vim exigendo id quod pendet a persuasione et corde, turn etiamn multo minus ad eamr pertinere, exigere per vim exteriorem subjectionem suis decretis; and this proposition is declared heretical so far as by the Indeterminate words extendendo ad res exteriores denenoted an abuse of Church power; and Qua parte insinuat, ecclesiam non habere auctoritatem subjectionis suis decretis exigendse aliter quam per media quae pendent a persuasione-quatenus intendat ecclesiam; non habere collatam sibi a Deo potestatem, non solum dirigendi per consilia et suasiones, sed etiam jubendi per leges, ac devios contumacesque exteriore judicio ac salubribus poenis coercendi atque cogendi (ex Bened. XIV in brevi Ad Assiduas, anni 1755; comp. Damnatio Synodi Pistoiensis, art. iv, v, in the Appendix to Canones Conc. Trident. Tauchnitz ed. p. 298). By this determination of two popes must be interpreted the oath taken by a bishop upon consecration: Haereticos, schismaticos, et rebelles eidem Domino nostro vel successoribus praedictis, pro posse persequar et impugnabo (Pontificale Ronm.). The claim from the Church of the power of temporal punishment is distinct. The union of civil sovereignty over the Papal States with the ecclesiastical primacy makes such a claim more natural to the head of the Romish Church; but as the history of the Papal States does not recommend such a union of the temporal and civil powers, so neither does the history of the Romish obedience recommend a transfer of coercive jurisdiction from the civil to the ecclesiastical tribunals. That there is no such power divinely given to the Church we have endeavored to show. See Elliott, Romanism; Milman, Lat. Christianity; Leakey, Hist. of Europ. Morals, and his Hist. of Rationalism, 1:74, 156, 331, 350, and esp. 2:11, 99; Thompson, Papacy and the Civil Power (see Index); Riddle, Persecutions of the Papacy (Lond. 1859, 2 vols. 8vo). SEE ROMANISM.

Fuente: Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature

Persecution

The first great persecution for religious opinion of which we have any record was that which broke out against the worshippers of God among the Jews in the days of Ahab, when that king, at the instigation of his wife Jezebel, “a woman in whom, with the reckless and licentious habits of an Oriental queen, were united the fiercest and sternest qualities inherent in the old Semitic race”, sought in the most relentless manner to extirpate the worship of Jehovah and substitute in its place the worship of Ashtoreth and Baal. Ahab’s example in this respect was followed by Manasseh, who “shed innocent blood very much, till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another” (2 Kings 21:16; comp. 24:4). In all ages, in one form or another, the people of God have had to suffer persecution. In its earliest history the Christian church passed through many bloody persecutions. Of subsequent centuries in our own and in other lands the same sad record may be made.

Christians are forbidden to See k the propagation of the gospel by force (Matt. 7:1; Luke 9:54-56; Rom. 14:4; James 4:11, 12). The words of Ps. 7:13, “He ordaineth his arrows against the persecutors,” ought rather to be, as in the Revised Version, “He maketh his arrows fiery [shafts].”

Fuente: Easton’s Bible Dictionary

PERSECUTION

Those who love evil rather than good will inevitably want to persecute those who desire to live godly lives (Joh 3:19-20; 2Ti 3:12). Christians should not be surprised when they suffer persecution. If they show themselves to be Christs people, they can expect the sort of opposition that Christ suffered. They should consider it a privilege to suffer for Christs sake (Mat 5:10-11; Joh 15:20; Act 5:41; 2Co 12:10; 1Pe 4:12-13).

Both Jesus and the New Testament writers taught Christians that they should pray for their persecutors. Certainly they should not try to return evil upon those who attack them. Gods people should have confidence in him that, when they are persecuted, they will know how to act and what to say (Mat 5:44; Mat 10:17-20; Rom 12:14; 1Pe 2:21-24; 1Pe 4:14-16).

Persecution tests the genuineness of a persons faith, but true believers will endure it, knowing that God will not forsake them (Mat 13:21; Rom 5:3-5; Rom 8:35; 2Co 4:9; 2Th 1:4). The early Christians proved the reality of Gods presence with them when they suffered persecution, much of which was at the hands of the Jews (Act 4:29-31; Act 5:17-21; Act 7:54-56; Act 18:9-10; 2Ti 4:17).

This persecution came first from the Sadducees (Act 4:1-3; Act 5:17; Act 5:27-28), then from the Pharisees, whose fiery leader was the young Saul of Tarsus (Act 7:58-60; Act 8:1-3; Act 9:4; Gal 1:13; Php 3:6). When Saul the persecutor was converted to Paul the Christian preacher, he himself was persecuted by the Jews, violently and unceasingly (Act 9:15-16; Act 14:19-20; Act 16:22-24; Act 21:35-36; 2Co 11:23-25). In his preaching Paul warned of the persecution that believers could expect; yet people continued to turn to God. And as Paul warned, they met opposition from their fellow citizens (Act 14:22; 1Th 1:6; 1Th 2:13-16).

During the reign of Nero the persecution of Christians became government policy throughout the Empire. Government officials and common people alike hated the Christians for their refusal to follow the practices of a society that they considered idolatrous and immoral (1 Peter 2;12; 4:12-16). So severe was the persecution that some Christians were tempted to give up their faith in the hope of avoiding trouble (Heb 10:32-36).

Although official persecution later died down, it increased again towards the end of the century during the reign of the Emperor Domitian. But no matter how great the persecution, Gods people are repeatedly assured that in the end they will triumph (Rev 2:13; Rev 6:9-11; Rev 12:11; Rev 19:1-2).

Fuente: Bridgeway Bible Dictionary

Persecution

PERSECUTION.(1) Christ foresaw that persecution would be His inevitable lot and that of His true followers. Repeatedly He foretold the main incidents of His Passion (Mat 16:21; Mat 17:22-23; Mat 20:18-19; Mat 26:2, Mat 8:31; Mat 9:31; Mat 10:32-34). (2) Christ also forewarned His disciples that they too must suffer persecution (Mat 24:9, Mar 4:17; Mar 10:30, Luk 11:49; Luk 21:12; Luk 21:16, Joh 16:2-4; Joh 16:33). (3) Persecution was the test of true discipleship. It was mentioned in the parable of the Sower as the cause of defection among superficial believers (Mar 4:17, Mat 13:21). (4) It was the sure means of gaining a blessing, and as such is particularly referred to in the Beatitudes (Mat 5:10-12).

The methods of persecution adopted against Christ and His immediate followers were such as contempt and disparagement (Joh 8:48); ascription of Christs miracles to the power of the Evil One (Mat 12:24); expulsion of those believing on Him from the synagogue (Joh 9:22; Joh 9:34); attempts to entrap Him in His words (Mat 22:15, Joh 8:6); questioning His authority (Mar 11:28, Mat 21:23); (after the failure of the former) illegal arrest and the heaping of every kind of insult upon the Prisoner, who was entitled to protection from the authorities until the authorized penalty was laid upon Him (Mat 26:67 ff. and parallels). See also art. Name, p. 217b.

It was the fear of persecution that drove the disciples to forsake their Master at the hour of His arrest (Mat 26:56 and parallels).

C. H. Prichard.

Fuente: A Dictionary Of Christ And The Gospels

Persecution

PERSECUTION.Jesus Christ frequently warned His disciples that persecution would be the lot of all who followed Him (Joh 15:18; Joh 15:20). So far from being dismayed at this, it should be a cause of rejoicing (Mat 5:11-12). The early Church had not long to wait for the fulfilment of these words. The martyrdom of Stephen was the signal for a fierce outburst of persecution against the Christians of Jerusalem, by which they were scattered in all directions. Saul of Tarsus was the moving spirit in this matter, until, on his road to Damascus to proceed against the Christians there, Christs foe became His soldier. The conversion of Saul seems to have stayed the persecution. The attempt of Caligula to set up his statue in the Temple at Jerusalem also diverted the attention of the Jews from all else. Hence the churches had rest (Act 9:31).

The next persecution was begun by Herod, who put to death the Apostle St. James, and would have done the same to St. Peter had he not been delivered. Herods motive was probably to gain a cheap popularity, but the persecution was ended by his own sudden and terrible death.

After this the history of persecution becomes more the history of the sufferings of certain individuals, such as St. Paul, though passages in the Epistles show us that the spirit of persecution was alive even if the details of what took place are hidden from us (1Th 2:14, Heb 10:32-33, 1Pe 2:19-25). Finally, in the Revelation of St. John, the seer makes frequent reference to the persecution and martyrdom of the saints as the lot of the Church in all ages.

Morley Stevenson.

Fuente: Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible

Persecution

pur-se-kushun (, diogmos (Mat 13:21; Mar 4:17; Mar 10:30; Act 8:1; Act 13:50; Rom 8:35; 2Co 12:10; 2Th 1:4; 2Ti 3:11)):

1.Persecution in Old Testament Times

2.Between the Testaments

3.Foretold by Christ

4.A Test of Discipleship

5.A Means of Blessing

6.Various Forms

7.In the Case of Jesus

8.Instigated by the Jews

9.Stephen

10.The Apostles James and Peter

11.Gentile Persecution

Christianity at First Not a Forbidden Religion

12.The Neronic Persecution

(1)Testimony of Tacitus

(2)Reference in 1 Peter

(3)Tacitus Narrative

(4)New Testament References

13.Persecution in Asia

14.Rome as Persecutor

15.Testimony of Pliny, 112 AD

16.2nd and 3rd Centuries

17.Best Emperors the Most Cruel Persecutors

18.Causes of Persecution

19.200 Years of Persecution

20.Persecution in the Army

21.Tertullian’s Apology

22.The Third Race

23.Hatred against Christians

24.The Decian Persecution

25.Libelli

26.The Edict of Milan

27.Results of Persecution

The importance of this subject may be indicated by the fact of the frequency of its occurrence, both in the Old Testament and New Testament, where in the King James Version the words persecute, persecuted, persecuting are found no fewer than 53 times, persecution 14 times, and persecutor 9 times.

1. Persecution in Old Testament Times:

It must not be thought that persecution existed only in New Testament times. In the days of the Old Testament it existed too. In what Jesus said to the Pharisees, He specially referred to the innocent blood which had been shed in those times, and told them that they were showing themselves heirs – to use a legal phrase – to their fathers who had persecuted the righteous, from the blood of Abel the righteous unto the blood of Zachariah (Mat 23:35).

2. Between the Testaments:

In the period between the close of the Old Testament and the coming of Christ, there was much and protracted suffering endured by the Jews, because of their refusal to embrace idolatry, and of their fidelity to the Mosaic Law and the worship of God. During that time there were many patriots who were true martyrs, and those heroes of faith, the Maccabees, were among those who know their God … and do exploits (Dan 11:32). ‘We have no need of human help,’ said Jonathan the Jewish high priest, ‘having for our comfort the sacred Scriptures which are in our hands’ (1 Macc 12:9).

In the Epistle to the Hebrews, persecution in the days of the Old Testament is summed up in these words: Others had trial of mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment: they were stoned, they were sawn asunder, they were tempted, they were slain with the sword: they went about in sheepskins, in goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, illtreated (of whom the world was not worthy) (Heb 11:36-38).

3. Foretold by Christ:

Coming now to New Testament times, persecution was frequently foretold by Christ, as certain to come to those who were His true disciples and followers. He forewarned them again and again that it was inevitable. He said that He Himself must suffer it (Mat 16:21; Mat 17:22, Mat 17:23; Mar 8:31).

4. A Test of Discipleship:

It would be a test of true discipleship. In the parable of the Sower, He mentions this as one of the causes of defection among those who are Christians in outward appearance only. When affliction or persecution ariseth for the word’s sake, immediately the stony-ground hearers are offended (Mar 4:17).

5. A Means of Blessing:

It would be a sure means of gaining a blessing, whenever it came to His loyal followers when they were in the way of well-doing; and He thus speaks of it in two of the Beatitudes, Blessed are they that have been persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven; Blessed are ye when men shall reproach you, and persecute you … for my sake (Mat 5:10, Mat 5:11; see also Mat 5:12).

6. Various Forms:

It would take different forms, ranging through every possible variety, from false accusation to the infliction of death, beyond which, He pointed out (Mat 10:28; Luk 12:4), persecutors are unable to go. The methods of persecution which were employed by the Jews, and also by the heathen against the followers of Christ, were such as these: (1) Men would revile them and would say all manner of evil against them falsely, for Christ’s sake (Mat 5:11). (2) Contempt and disparagement: Say we not well that thou art a Samaritan, and hast a demon? (Joh 8:48); If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more them of his household! (Mat 10:25). (3) Being, solely on account of their loyalty to Christ, forcibly separated from the company and the society of others, and expelled from the synagogues or other assemblies for the worship of God: Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man’s sake (Luk 6:22); They shall put you out of the synagogues (Joh 16:2). (4) Illegal arrest and spoliation of goods, and death itself.

All these various methods, used by the persecutor, were foretold, and all came to pass. It was the fear of apprehension and death that led the eleven disciples to forsake Jesus in Gethsemane and to flee for their lives. Jesus often forewarned them of the severity of the persecution which they would need to encounter if they were loyal to Him: The hour cometh, that whosoever killeth you shall think that he offereth service unto God (Joh 16:2); I send unto you prophets … some of them shall ye kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute from city to city (Mat 23:34).

7. In the Case of Jesus:

In the case of Christ Himself, persecution took the form of attempts to entrap Him in His speech (Mat 22:15); the questioning of His authority (Mar 11:28); illegal arrest; the heaping of every insult upon Him as a prisoner; false accusation; and a violent and most cruel death.

8. Instigated by the Jews:

After our Lord’s resurrection the first attacks against His disciples came from the high priest and his party. The high-priesthood was then in the hands of the Sadducees, and one reason which moved them to take action of this kind was their ‘sore trouble,’ because the apostles proclaimed in Jesus the resurrection from the dead (Act 4:2; Act 5:17). The gospel based upon the resurrection of Christ was evidence of the untruth of the chief doctrines held by the Sadducees, for they held that there is no resurrection. But instead of yielding to the evidence of the fact that the resurrection had taken place, they opposed and denied it, and persecuted His disciples. For a time the Pharisees were more moderate in their attitude toward the Christian faith, as is shown in the case of Gamaliel (Act 5:34); and on one occasion they were willing even to defend the apostle Paul (Act 23:9) on the doctrine of the resurrection. But gradually the whole of the Jewish people became bitter persecutors of the Christians. Thus, in the earliest of the Pauline Epistles, it is said, Ye also suffered the same things of your own countrymen, even as they (in Judea) did of the Jews; who both killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove out us, and please not God, and are contrary to all men (1Th 2:14, 1Th 2:15).

9. Stephen:

Serious persecution of the Christian church began with the case of Stephen (Acts 7:1-60); and his lawless execution was followed by a great persecution directed against the Christians in Jerusalem. This great persecution (Act 8:1) scattered the members of the church, who fled in order to avoid bonds and imprisonment and death. At this time Saul signalized himself by his great activity, persecuting this Way unto the death, binding and delivering into prisons both men and women (Act 22:4).

10. The Apostles, James and Peter:

By and by one of the apostles was put to death – the first to suffer of the glorious company of the apostles – James the brother of John, who was slain with the sword by Herod Agrippa (Act 12:2). Peter also was imprisoned, and was delivered only by an angel (Act 12:7-11).

11. Gentile Persecution:

During the period covered by the Acts there was not much purely Gentilepersecution: at that time the persecution suffered by the Christian church was chiefly Jewish. There were, however, great dangers and risks encountered by the apostles and by all who proclaimed the gospel then. Thus, at Philippi, Paul and Silas were most cruelly persecuted (Acts 16:19-40); and, even before that time, Paul and Barnabas had suffered much at Iconium and at Lystra (Act 14:5, Act 14:19). On the whole the Roman authorities were not actively hostile during the greater part of Paul’s lifetime. Gallio, for instance, the deputy of Achaia, declined to go into the charge brought by the Jews at Corinth against Paul (Act 18:14, Act 18:15, Act 18:16). And when Paul had pleaded in his own defense before King Herod Agrippa and the Roman governor Festus, these two judges were agreed in the opinion, This man doeth nothing worthy of death or of bonds (Act 26:31). Indeed it is evident (see Ramsay, St. Paul the Traveler and the Roman Citizen, 308) that the purpose of Paul’s trial being recorded at length in the Acts is to establish the fact that the preaching of the gospel was not forbidden by the laws of the Roman empire, but that Christianity was a religio licita, a lawful religion.

Christianity at First Not a Forbidden Religion.

This legality of the Christian faith was illustrated and enforced by the fact that when Paul’s case was heard and decided by the supreme court of appeal at Rome, he was set free and resumed his missionary labors, as these are recorded or referred to in the Pastoral Epistles One thing, however, is clear from a comparison of Philippians with 2 Timothy. There had been in the interval a complete change in the policy toward Christianity of the Roman government. This change was due to the great fire of Rome (July, 64). As part of the persecution which then broke out, orders were given for the imprisonment of the Christian leaders. Poppea, Tigellinus and their Jewish friends were not likely to forget the prisoner of two years before. At the time Paul was away from Rome, but steps were instantly taken for his arrest. The apostle was brought back to the city in the autumn or winter of 64…. That he had a trial at all, instead of the summary punishment of his brethren. witnesses to the importance attached by the government to a show of legality in the persecution of the leader (Workman, Persecution in the Early Church, 38). See PASTORAL EPISTLES; PAUL THE APOSTLE.

12. The Neronic Persecution:

The legal decisions which were favorable to the Christian faith were soon overturned on the occasion of the great fire in Rome, which occurred in July, 64. The public feeling of resentment broke out against the emperor to such a degree that, to avoid the stigma, just or unjust, of being himself guilty of setting the city on fire, he made the Christians the scapegoats which he thought he needed. Tacitus (Annals xv. 44) relates all that occurred at that time, and what he says is most interesting, as being one of the very earliest notices found in any profane author, both of the Christian faith, and of Christ Himself.

(1) Testimony of Tacitus.

What Tacitus says is that nothing that Nero could do, either in the way of gifts to the populace or in that of sacrifice the Roman deities, could make the people believe that he was innocent of causing the great fire which had consumed their dwellings. Hence, to relieve himself of this infamy he falsely accused the Christians of being guilty of the crime of setting the city on fire. Tacitus uses the strange expression the persons commonly called Christians who were hated for their enormities. This is an instance of the saying of all manner of evil against them falsely, for Christ’s sake. The Christians, whose lives were pure and virtuous and beneficent, were spoken of as being the offscouring of the earth.

(2) Reference in 1 Peter.

The First Epistle of Peter is one of the parts of the New Testament which seem to make direct reference to the Neronic persecution, and he uses words (1Pe 4:12 ff) which may be compared with the narrative of Tacitus: Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial among you, which cometh upon you to prove you, as though a strange thing happened unto you: but insomuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings, rejoice…. If ye are reproached for the name of Christ, blessed are ye; because the Spirit of glory and the Spirit of God resteth upon you. For let none of you suffer as a murderer, or a thief, or an evil-doer, or as a meddler in other men’s matters: but if a man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God in this name. For the time is come for judgment to begin at the house of God…. Wherefore let them also that suffer according to the will of God commit their souls in well-doing unto a faithful Creator.

(3) Tacitus’ Narrative.

How altogether apposite and suitable was this comforting exhortation to the case of those who suffered in the Neronic persecution. The description which Tacitus gives is as follows: Christus, the founder of that name, was put to death as a criminal by Pontius Pilate, procurator in the reign of Tiberius. But the pernicious superstition, repressed for a time, broke out again not only through Judea, where the mischief originated, but through the city of Rome also, whither all things horrible and disgraceful flow from all quarters as to a common sink, and where they are encouraged. Accordingly, first, those were seized who confessed they were Christians; next, on their information, a vast multitude were convicted, not so much on the charge of setting the city on fire, as of hating the human race. And in their deaths they were made the subject of sport, for they were covered with the skins of wild beasts and were worried to death by dogs, or nailed to crosses, or set fire to, and when day declined were burned to serve for nocturnal lights. Nero offered his own gardens for that spectacle, and exhibited circus games, indiscriminately mingling with the common people dressed as a charioteer, or else standing in his chariot. Whence a feeling of compassion arose toward the sufferers, though guilty and deserving to be made examples of by capital punishment, because they seemed not to be cut off for the public good, but to be victims to the ferocity of one man. See NERO.

(4) New Testament References.

Three of the books of the New Testament bear the marks of that most cruel persecution under Nero, the Second Epistle to Timothy, the First Epistle of Peter – already referred to – and the Revelation of John. In 2 Timothy, Paul speaks of his impending condemnation to death, and the terror inspired by the persecution causes all to forsake him when he is brought to public trial (2Ti 4:16).

The fiery trial is spoken of in 1 Peter, and Christians are exhorted to maintain their faith with patience; they are pleaded with to have their conversation honest (1Pe 2:12 the King James Version), so that all accusations directed against them may be seen to be untrue, and their sufferings shall then be, not for ill-doing, but only for the name of Christ (1Pe 3:14, 1Pe 3:16). This important epistle proves a general persecution (1Pe 1:6; 1Pe 4:12, 1Pe 4:16) in Asia Minor North of the Taurus (1Pe 1:1; note especially Bithynia) and elsewhere (1Pe 5:9). The Christians suffer ‘for the name,’ but not the name alone (1Pe 4:14). They are the objects of vile slanders (1Pe 2:12, 1Pe 2:15; 1Pe 3:14-16; 1Pe 4:4, 1Pe 4:15), as well as of considerable zeal on the part of officials (1Pe 5:8 (Greek 3:15)). As regards the slanders, the Christians should be crcumspect (1Pe 2:15, 1Pe 2:16; 1Pe 3:16, 1Pe 3:17; 1Pe 4:15). The persecution will be short, for the end of all things is at hand (1Pe 4:7, 1Pe 4:13; 1Pe 5:4) (Workman, Persecution in the Early Church, 354).

13. Persecution in Asia:

In Rev the apostle John is in Patmos for the word of God and the testimony of Jesus (Rev 1:9). Persecution has broken out among the Christians in the province of Asia. At Smyrna, there is suffering, imprisonment and prolonged tribulation; but the sufferers are cheered when they are told that if they are faithful unto death, Christ will give them the crown of life (Rev 2:10). At Pergamum, persecution has already resulted in Antipas, Christ’s faithful martyr, being slain (Rev 2:13). At Ephesus and at Thyatira the Christians are commended for their patience, evidently indicating that there had been persecution (Rev 2:2, Rev 2:19). At Philadelphia there has been the attempt made to cause the members of the church to deny Christ’s name (Rev 3:8); their patience is also commended, and the hour of temptation is spoken of, which comes to try all the world, but from which Christ promised to keep the faithful Christians in Philadelphia. Strangely enough, there is no distinct mention of persecution having taken place in Sardis or in Laodicea.

14. Rome as Persecutor:

As the book proceeds, evidences of persecution are multiplied. In Rev 6:9, the apostle sees under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held; and those souls are bidden to rest yet for a little season until their fellow-servants also and their brethren, who should be killed even as they were, should have fulfilled their course (Rev 6:11). The meaning is that there is not yet to be an end of suffering for Christ’s sake; persecution may continue to be as severe as ever. Compare Rev 20:4 I saw the souls of them that had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus, and for the word of God, and such as worshipped not the beast, for the persecution had raged against all classes indiscriminately, and Roman citizens who were true to Christ had suffered unto death. It is to these that reference is made in the words had been beheaded, decapitation being reserved as the most honorable form of execution, for Roman citizens only. So terrible does the persecution of Christians by the imperial authorities become, that Rome is drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus (Rev 17:6; Rev 16:6; see also Rev 18:24; Rev 19:2).

Paul’s martyrdom is implied in 2 Timothy, throughout the whole epistle, and especially in 2Ti 4:6, 2Ti 4:7, 2Ti 4:8. The martyrdom of Peter is also implied in Joh 21:18, Joh 21:19, and in 2Pe 1:14. The abiding. impression made by these times of persecution upon the mind of the apostle John is also seen in the defiance of the world found throughout his First Epistle (1Jo 2:17; 1Jo 5:19), and in the rejoicing over the fall of Babylon, the great persecuting power, as that fall is described in such passages as Rev 14:8; Rev 15:2, Rev 15:3; Rev 17:14; Rev 18:24.

Following immediately upon the close of the New Testament, there is another remarkable witness to the continuance of the Roman persecution against the Christian church. This is Pliny, proconsul of Bithynia.

15. Testimony of Pliny, 112 A.D.:

In 111 or 112 AD, he writes to the emperor Trajan a letter in which he describes the growth of the Christian faith. He goes on to say that many of all ages and of all ranks and even of both sexes are being called into danger, and will continue to be so. In fact the contagion of this superstition is not confined to the cities only, but has spread to the villages and country districts. He proceeds to narrate how the heathen temples had been deserted and the religious rites had been abandoned for so long a time: even the sacrificial food – that is, the flesh of the sacrificial victims – could scarcely find a purchaser.

But Pliny had endeavored to stem the tide of the advancing Christian faith, and he tells the emperor how he had succeeded in bringing back to the heathen worship many professing Christians. That is to say, he had used persecuting measures, and had succeeded in forcing some of the Christians to abandon their faith. He tells the methods he had used. The method I have observed toward those who have been brought before me as Christians is this. I asked them whether they were Christians. If they admitted it, I repeated the question a second and a third time, and threatened them with punishment. If they persisted I ordered them to be punished. For I did not doubt, whatever the nature of that which they confessed might be, that a contumacious and inflexible obstinacy ought to be punished. There were others also, possessed with the same infatuation, whom, because they were Roman citizens, I ordered to be sent to Rome. But this crime spreading, as is usually the case, while it was actually under legal prosecution, several cases occurred. An anonymous information was laid before me, containing the names of many persons. Those who denied that they were Christians, or that they had ever been so, repeated after me an invocation of the gods, and offered prayer, with wine and incense, to your statue, which I had ordered to be brought in for this very purpose, along with the statues of the gods, and they even reviled the name of Christ; whereas there is no forcing, it is said, those who are really Christians into any of these compliances: I thought it proper to discharge them. Others who were accused by a witness at first confessed themselves Christians, but afterward denied it. Some owned indeed that they had been Christians formerly, but had now, some for several years, and a few above 20 years ago, renounced it. They all worshipped your statue and the images of the gods…. I forbade the meeting of any assemblies, and therefore I judged it to be so much the more necessary to endeavor to extort the real truth by putting to the torture two female slaves, who were called deaconesses, yet I found nothing but an absurd and extravagant superstition.

In Trajan’s reply to Pliny he writes, They (the Christians) ought not to be searched for. If they are brought before you and convicted, they should be punished, but this should be done in such a way, that he who denies that he is a Christian, and when his statement is proved by his invoking our deities, such a person, although suspected for past conduct, must nevertheless be forgiven, because of his repentance.

These letters of Pliny and Trajan treat state-persecution as the standing procedure – and this not a generation after the death of the apostle John. The sufferings and tribulation predicted in Rev 2:10, and in many other passages, had indeed come to pass. Some of the Christians had denied the name of Christ and had worshipped the images of the emperor and of the idols, but multitudes of them had been faithful unto death, and had received the martyr’s crown of life.

16. 2nd and 3rd Centuries:

Speaking generally, persecution of greater or less severity was the normal method employed by the Roman empire against the Christian church during the 2nd and the 3rd centuries It may be said to have come to an end only about the end of the 3rd or the beginning of the 4th century, when the empire became nominally Christian. When the apostolic period is left, persecution becomes almost the normal state in which the church is found. And persecution, instead of abolishing the name of Christ, as the persecutors vainly imagined they had succeeded in doing, became the means of the growth of the Christian church and of its purity. Both of these important ends, and others too, were secured by the severity of the means employed by the persecuting power of the Roman empire.

Under Trajan’s successor, the emperor Hadrian, the lot of the Christians was full of uncertainty: persecution might break out at any moment. At the best Hadrian’s regime was only that of unauthorized toleration.

17. Best Emperors the Most Cruel Persecutors:

With the exception of such instances as those of Nero and Domitian, there is the surprising fact to notice, that it was not the worst emperors, but the best, who became the most violent persecutors. One reason probably was that the ability of those emperors led them to see that the religion of Christ is really a divisive factor in any kingdom in which civil government and pagan religion are indissolubly bound up together. The more that such a ruler was intent on preserving the unity of the empire, the more would be persecute the Christian faith. Hence, among the rulers who were persecutors, there are the names of Antoninus Pius. Marcus Aurelius the philosopher-emperor, and Septimius Severus (died at York, 211 Ad).

18. Causes of Persecution:

Persecution was no accident, which chanced to happen, but which might not have occurred at all. It was the necessary consequence of the principles embodied in the heathen Roman government, when these came into contact and into conflict with the essential principles of the Christian faith. The reasons for the persecution of the Christian church by the Roman empire were (1) political; (2) on account of the claim which the Christian faith makes, and which it cannot help making, to the exclusive allegiance of the heart and of the life. That loyalty to Christ which the martyrs displayed was believed by the authorities in the state to be incompatible with the duties of a Roman citizen. Patriotism demanded that every citizen should united in the worship of the emperor, but Christians refused to take pat in the worship on any terms, and so they continually lived under the shadow of a great hatred, which always slumbered, and might break out at any time. The claim which the Christian faith made to the absolute and exclusive loyalty of all who obeyed Christ was such that it admitted of no compromise with heathenism. To receive Christ into the pantheon as another divinity, as one of several – this was not the Christian faith. To every loyal follower of Christ compromise with other faiths was an impossibility. An accommodated Christianity would itself have been false to the only true God and Jesus Christ whom He had sent, and would never have conquered the world. To the heathen there were lords many and gods many, but to the Christians there was but one God the Father and one Lord Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the world (1Co 8:5, 1Co 8:6). The essential absoluteness of the Christian faith was its strength, but this was also the cause of its being hated.

By a correct instinct paganisms of all sorts discerned in the infant church their only rival. So, while the new Hercules was yet in the cradle, they sent their snakes to kill him. But Hercules lived to cleanse out the Augean stables (Workman, op. cit., 88).

19. 200 Years of Persecution:

For 200 years, to become a Christian meant the great renunciation, the joining a despised and persecuted sect, the swimming against the tide of popular prejudice, the coming under the ban of the Empire, the possibility at any moment of imprisonment and death under its most fearful forms. For 200 years he that would follow Christ must count the cost, and be prepared to pay the same with his liberty and life. For 200 years the mere profession of Christianity was itself a crime. Christianus sum was almost the one plea for which there was no forgiveness, in itself all that was necessary as a ‘title’ on the back of the condemned. He who made it was allowed neither to present apology, nor call in the aid of a pleader. ‘Public hatred,’ writes Tertullian, ‘asks but one thing, and that not investigation into the crimes charged, but simply the confession of the Christian name.’ For the name itself in periods of stress, not a few, meant the rack, the blazing shirt of pitch, the lion, the panther, or in the case of maidens an infamy worse than death (Workman, 103).

20. Persecution in the Army:

Service in the Roman army involved, for a Christian, increasing danger in the midst of an organized and aggressive heathenism. Hence, arose the persecution of the Christian soldier who refused compliance with the idolatrous ceremonies in which the army engaged, whether those ceremonies were concerned with the worship of the Roman deities or with that of Mithraism. The invincible saviour, as Mithra was called, had become, at the time when Tertullian and Origen wrote, the special deity of soldiers. Shrines in honor of Mithra were erected through the entire breadth of the Roman empire, from Dacia and Pannonia to the Cheviot Hills in Britain. And woe to the soldier who refused compliance with the religious sacrifices to which the legions gave their adhesion! The Christians in the Roman legions formed no inconsiderable proportion of the noble army of martyrs, it being easier for the persecuting authorities to detect a Christian in the ranks of the army than elsewhere.

21. Tertullian’s Apology:

In the 2nd and 3rd centuries, Christians were to be found everywhere, for Tertullian, in an oftentimes quoted passage in his Apology, writes, We live beside you in the world, making use of the same forum, market, bath, shop, inn, and all other places of trade. We sail with you, fight shoulder to shoulder, till the soil, and traffic with you; yet the very existence of Christian faith, and its profession, continued to bring the greatest risks. With the best will in the world, they remained a peculiar people, who must be prepared at any moment to meet the storm of hatred (Workman, 189). For them it remained true that in one way or another, hatred on the part of the world inevitably fell to the lot of those who walked in the footsteps of the Master; All that would live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution (2Ti 3:12).

22. The Third Race:

The strange title, the third race, probably invented by the heathen, but willingly accepted by the Christians without demur, showed with what a bitter spirit the heathen regarded the faith of Christ. The first race was indifferently called the Roman, Greek, or Gentile. The second race was the Jews; while the third race was the Christian. The cry in the circus of Carthage was Usque quo genus tertium? How long must we endure this third race?

23. Hatred Against Christians:

But one of the most powerful causes of the hatred entertained by the heathen against the Christians was, that though there were no citizens so loyal as they, yet in every case in which the laws and customs of the empire came into conflict with the will of God, their supreme rule was loyalty to Christ, they must obey God rather than man. To worship Caesar, to offer even one grain of incense on the shrine of Diana, no Christian would ever consent, not even. when this minimum of compliance would save life itself.

The Roman empire claimed to be a kingdom of universal sway, not only over the bodies and the property of all its subjects, but over their consciences and their souls. It demanded absolute obedience to its supreme lord, that is, to Caesar. This obedience the Christian could not render, for unlimited obedience of body, soul and spirit is due to God alone, the only Lord of the conscience. Hence, it was that there arose the antagonism of the government to Christianity, with persecution as the inevitable result.

These results, hatred and persecution, were, in such circumstances, inevitable; they were the outcome of the fundamental tenet of primitive Christianity, that the Christian ceased to be his own master, ceased to have his old environment, ceased to hold his old connections with the state; in everything he became the bond-servant of Jesus Christ, in everything owing supreme allegiance and fealty to the new empire and the Crucified Head. ‘We engage in these conflicts,’ said Tertullian, ‘as men whose very lives are not our own. We have no master but God’ (Workman, 195).

24. The Decian Persecution:

The persecution inaugurated by the emperor Decius in 250 AD was particularly severe. There was hardly a province in the empire where there were no martyrs; but there were also many who abandoned their faith and rushed to the magistrates to obtain their libelli, or certificates that they had offered heathen sacrifice. When the days of persecution were over, these persons usually came with eagerness to seek readmission to the church. It was in the Decian persecution that the great theologian Origen, who was then in his 68th year, suffered the cruel torture of the rack; and from the effects of what he then suffered he died at Tyre in 254.

25. Libelli:

Many libelli have been discovered in recent excavations in Egypt. In the The Expository Times for January, 1909, p. 185, Dr. George Milligan gives an example, and prints the Greek text of one of these recently discovered Egyptian libelli. These libelli are most interesting, illustrating as they do the account which Cyprian gives of the way in which some faint-hearted Christians during the Decian persecution obtained certificates – some of these certificates being true to fact, and others false – to the effect that they had sacrificed in the heathen manner. The one which Dr. Milligan gives is as follows: To those chosen to superintend the sacrifices at the village of Alexander Island, from Aurelius Diogenes, the son of Sarabus, of the village of Alexander Island, being about 72 years old, a scar on the right eyebrow. Not only have I always continued sacrificing to the gods, but now also in your presence, in accordance with the decrees, I have sacrificed and poured libations and tasted the offerings, and I request you to countersign my statement. May good fortune attend you. I, Aurelius Diogenes, have made this request.

(2nd Hand) I, Aurelius Syrus, as a participant, have certified Diogenes as sacrificing along with us.

(1st Hand) The first year of the Emperor Caesar Gaius Messius Quintus Trajan Decius Plus Felix Augustus, Epiph. 2 ( = June 25, 250 AD).

Under Valerian the persecution was again very severe, but his successor, Gallienus, issued an edict of toleration, in which he guaranteed freedom of worship to the Christians. Thus Christianity definitely became a religio licita, a lawful religion. This freedom from persecution continued until the reign of Diocletian.

26. The Edict of Milan:

The persecution of the Christian church by the empire of Rome came to an end in March, 313 AD, when Constantine issued the document known as the Edict of Milan, which assured to each individual freedom of religious belief. This document marks an era of the utmost importance in the history of the world. Official Roman persecution had done its worst, and had failed; it was ended now; the Galilean had conquered.

27. Results of Persecution:

The results of persecution were: (1) It raised up witnesses, true witnesses, for the Christian faith. Men and women and even children were among the martyrs whom no cruelties, however refined and protracted, could terrify into denial of their Lord. It is to a large extent owing to persecution that the Christian church possesses the testimony of men like Quadratus and Tertullian and Origen and Cyprian and many others. While those who had adopted the Christian faith in an external and formal manner only generally went back from their profession, the true Christian, as even the Roman proconsul Pliny testifies, could not be made to do this. The same stroke which crushed the straw – such is a saying of Augustine’s – separated the pure grain which the Lord had chosen.

(2) Persecution showed that the Christian faith is immortal even in this world. Of Christ’s kingdom there shall be no end. Hammer away, ye hostile bands, your hammers break, God’s altar stands. Pagan Rome, Babylon the Great, as it is called by the apostle John in the Apocalypse tried hard to destroy the church of Christ; Babylon was drunk with the blood of the saints. God allowed this tyranny to exist for 300 years, and the blood of His children was shed like water. Why was it necessary that the church should have so terrible and so prolonged an experience of suffering? It was in order to convince the world that though the kings of the earth gather themselves against the Lord and against His Christ, yet all that they can do is vain. God is in the midst of Zion; He shall help her, and that right early. The Christian church, as if suspended between heaven and earth, had no need of other help than that of the unseen but divine hand, which at every moment held it up and kept it from falling. Never was the church more free, never stronger, never more flourishing, never more extensive in its growth, than in the days of persecution.

And what became of the great persecuting power, the Roman empire? It fell before the barbarians. Rome is fallen in its ruins, and its idols are utterly abolished, while the barbarians who overwhelmed the empire have become the nominally Christian nations of modern Europe, and their descendants have carried the Christian faith to America and Australia and Africa and all over the world.

(3) Persecution became, to a large extent, an important means of preserving the true doctrines of the person and of the work of Christ. It was in the ages of persecution that Gnosticism died, though it died slowly. It was in the ages of persecution that Arianism was overthrown. At the Council of Nicea in 325 AD, among those who were present and took part in the discussion and in the decision of the council, there were those who bore in their bodies the branding-marks of Jesus, who had suffered pain and loss for Christ’s sake.

Persecution was followed by these important results, for God in His wisdom had seen fit to permit these evils to happen, in order to change them into permanent good; and thus the wrath of man was overruled to praise God, and to effect more ultimate good, than if the persecutions had not taken place at all. What, in a word, could be more divine than to curb and restrain and overrule evil itself and change it into good ? God lets iniquity do what it pleases, according to its own designs; but in permitting it to move on one side, rather than on another, He overrules it and makes it enter into the order of His providence. So He lets this fury against the Christian ith be kindled in the hearts of persecutors, so that they afflict the saints of the Most High. But the church remains safe, for persecution can work nothing but ultimate good in the hand of God. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. So said Tertullian, and what he said is true.

Persecution has permanently enriched the history of the church. It has given us the noble heritage of the testimony and the suffering of those whose lives would otherwise have been unrecorded. Their very names as well as their careers would have been unknown had not persecution dragged them into fame and chased them up to heaven.

Persecution made Christ very near and very precious to those who suffered. Many of the martyrs bore witness, even when in the midst of the most cruel torments, that they felt no pain, but that Christ was with them. Instances to this effect could be multiplied. Persecution made them feel how true Christ’s words were, that even as He was not of the world, so they also were not of it. If they had been of the world, the world would love its own, but because Christ had chosen them out of the world, therefore the world hated them. They were not greater than their Lord. If men had persecuted Jesus, they would also persecute His true disciples. But though they were persecuted, they were of good cheer, Christ had overcome the world; He was with them; He enabled them to be faithful unto death. He had promised them the crown of life.

Browning’s beautiful lines describe what was a common experience of the martyrs, how Christ in them and with them, quenched the power of fire, and made them more than conquerors:

I was some time in being burned,

But at the close a Hand came through

The fire above my head, and drew

My soul to Christ, whom now I see.

Sergius, a brother, writes for me

This testimony on the wall –

For me, I have forgot it all.

Fuente: International Standard Bible Encyclopedia

Persecution

Of Jesus

Gen 3:15; Psa 2:1-5; Psa 22:1-2; Psa 22:6-8; Psa 22:11-21; Psa 69:1-21; Psa 69:26; Psa 109:25; Isa 49:7; Isa 50:6; Isa 52:14; Isa 53:2-5; Isa 53:7-10; Mic 5:1; Mat 2:13; Mat 12:14; Mat 12:24; Mar 3:22; Luk 6:11; Luk 11:15; Mat 16:1; Mat 26:3-4; Mat 26:14-16; Mat 26:59; Mar 14:1; Mar 14:48; Mat 27:25-30; Mat 27:39-44; Mar 15; Joh 19; Mar 3:6; Mar 3:21; Luk 4:28-29; Luk 7:34; Mat 11:19; Luk 11:53-54; Luk 12:50; Mat 20:22; Luk 13:31; Luk 19:14; Luk 19:47; Mar 11:18; Luk 20:20; Mat 22:15; Mar 12:13; Luk 22:2-5; Luk 22:52-53; Luk 22:63-65; Mat 26:67; Mar 14:65; Luk 23:11; Luk 23:23; Joh 5:16; Joh 7:1; Joh 7:7; Joh 7:19-20; Joh 7:30; Joh 7:32; Joh 8:37; Joh 8:40; Joh 8:48; Joh 8:52; Joh 8:59; Joh 10:31; Joh 10:20; Joh 10:39; Joh 11:57; Joh 14:30; Joh 15:18; Joh 15:20-21; Joh 15:24-25; Joh 18:22-23; Joh 18:29-30; Act 2:23; Act 3:13-15; Act 4:27; Act 7:52; Act 13:27-29; Heb 12:2-3; 1Pe 4:1

Of the righteous:

– General references

Gen 49:23; Job 1:9; Job 2:4-5; Job 12:4-5; Psa 11:2; Psa 37:32; Psa 38:20; Psa 42:3; Psa 42:10; Psa 44:15-18; Psa 44:22; Psa 56:5; Psa 69:10-12; Psa 74:7-8; Psa 94:5; Psa 119:51; Psa 119:61; Psa 119:69; Psa 119:78; Psa 119:85-87; Psa 119:95; Psa 119:110; Psa 119:157; Psa 119:161; Pro 29:10; Pro 29:27; Isa 26:20; Isa 29:20-21; Isa 51:12-13; Isa 59:15; Jer 2:30; Jer 11:19; Jer 15:10; Jer 18:18; Jer 20:7-8; Jer 26:11-14; Jer 50:7; Amo 5:10; Hab 1:13; Mat 5:10-12; Mat 5:44; Luk 6:26-27; Mat 10:16-18; Mat 10:21-23; Mat 10:28; Mat 20:22-23; Mat 23:34-35; Mat 24:8-10; Mar 8:35; Luk 17:33; Mar 9:42; Mar 13:9; Mar 13:11-13; Luk 6:22-23; Luk 21:12-19; Joh 12:42; Joh 15:18-19; Joh 16:1-2; Joh 17:14; Act 4:16-20; Act 5:29; Act 5:40-42; Act 7:52; Act 8:4; Act 28:22; Rom 8:17; Rom 8:35-37; 1Co 4:9-13; 1Co 13:3; 2Co 4:8-12; 2Co 6:4-5; 2Co 6:8-10; 2Co 11:23-27; 2Co 12:10; Gal 4:29; Gal 6:12; Gal 6:17; Phi 1:12-14; Phi 1:28-29; Col 1:24; 1Th 1:6; 1Th 2:2; 1Th 2:14-15; 2Th 1:4; 2Ti 1:8; 2Ti 1:12; 2Ti 2:9-10; 2Ti 2:12; 2Ti 3:2-3; 2Ti 3:12; 2Ti 4:16-17; Heb 10:32-34; Heb 11:25-27; Heb 11:33-38; Heb 12:3-4; Heb 13:13; Jas 2:6; Jas 5:6; Jas 5:10; 1Pe 3:14; 1Pe 3:16-17; 1Pe 4:3-4; 1Pe 4:12-14; 1Pe 4:16; 1Pe 4:19; 1Jn 3:1; 1Jn 3:13; Rev 2:3; Rev 2:10; Rev 2:13; Rev 6:9-11; Rev 7:13-17; Rev 12:11; Rev 17:6; Rev 20:4

– A mode of divine chastisement

Lam 1:3

– Diffuses the gospel

Act 8:1; Act 8:4; Act 11:19-21; Phi 1:12-14

– Prayer for deliverance from

Psa 70:1-4; Psa 83; Psa 140:1; Psa 140:4; Psa 142:6

– Deliverance from

Psa 124:1-8; Psa 129:1-2

– Instances of persecution:

b Of Abel

Gen 4:8; Mat 23:35; 1Jn 3:12

b Of Lot

Gen 19:9

b Of Moses

Exo 2:15; Exo 17:4

b Of David

Psa 31:13; Psa 59:1-2

b Of prophets martyred by Jezebel

1Ki 18:4

b Of Gideon

Jdg 6:28-32

b Of Elijah

1Ki 18:10; 1Ki 19; 2Ki 1:9; 2Ki 2:23

b Of Micaiah

1Ki 22:26; 2Ch 18:26

b Of Elisha

2Ki 6:31

b Of Hanani

2Ch 16:10

b Of Zachariah

2Ch 24:21; Mat 23:35

b Of Job

Job 13:4-13; Job 16:1-4; Job 17:2; Job 19:1-5; Job 30:1-10

b Of Jeremiah

Jer 15:10; Jer 15:15; Jer 17:15-18; Jer 18:18-23; Jer 26; Jer 32:2; Jer 33:1; Jer 36:26; Jer 37; Jer 38:1-6

b Of Urijah

Jer 26:23

b Of prophets

Mat 21:35-36

b Of the three Hebrew children of the captivity

Dan 3:8-23

b Of Daniel

Dan 6

b Of the Jews

Ezr 4; Neh 4

b Of John the Baptist

Mat 14:3-12

b Of James

Act 12:2

b Of Simon

Mar 15:21

b Of the disciples

Joh 9:22; Joh 9:34; Joh 20:19

b Of Lazarus

Joh 12:10

b Of the apostles

Act 4:3-18; Act 5:18-42; Act 12:1-19; Rev 1:9

b Of Stephen

Act 6:9-15; Act 7

b Of Paul

Paul

b Of the church

Act 8:1; Act 9:1-14; Gal 1:13

b Of Timothy

Heb 13:23

b Of John

Rev 1:9

b Of Antipas

Rev 2:13

b Of the church of Smyrna

Rev 2:8-10

Fuente: Nave’s Topical Bible

Persecution

is any pain or affliction which a person designedly inflicts upon another; and, in a more restrained sense, the sufferings of Christians on account of their religion. The establishment of Christianity was opposed by the powers of the world, and occasioned several severe persecutions against Christians, during the reigns of several Roman emperors. Though the absurdities of polytheism were openly derided and exposed by the Apostles and their successors, yet it does not appear that any public laws were enacted against Christianity till the reign of Nero, A.D. 64, by which time it had acquired considerable stability and extent. As far the greater number of the first converts to Christianity were of the Jewish nation, one secondary cause for their being so long preserved from persecution may probably be deduced from their appearing to the Roman governors only as a sect of Jews, who had seceded from the rest of their brethren on account of some opinion, trifling in its importance, and perhaps difficult to be understood. Nor, when their brethren were fully discovered to have cast off the religion of the synagogue, did the Jews find it easy to infuse into the breasts of the Roman magistrates that rancour and malice which they themselves experienced. But the steady, and uniform opposition made by the Christians to Heathen superstition could not long pass unnoticed. Their open attacks upon Paganism made them extremely obnoxious to the populace, by whom they were represented as a society of atheists, who, by attacking the religious constitution of the empire, merited the severest animadversion of the civil magistrate. Horrid tales of their abominations were circulated throughout the empire; and the minds of the Pagans were, from all these circumstances, prepared to regard with pleasure or indifference every cruelty which could be inflicted upon this despised sect. Historians usually reckon ten general persecutions.

First general persecution.Nero selected the Christians as a grateful sacrifice to the Roman people, and endeavoured to transfer to this hated sect the guilt of which he was strongly suspected; that of having caused and enjoined the fire which had nearly desolated the city. (See Nero.) This persecution was not confined to Rome: the emperor issued edicts against the Christians throughout most of the provinces of the empire. He was far, however, from obtaining the object of his hopes and expectations; and the virtues of the Christians, their zeal for the truth, and their constancy in suffering, must have considerably contributed to make their tenets more generally known.

Second general persecution.From the death of Nero to the reign of Domitian, the Christians remained unmolested and daily increasing; but toward the close of the first century, they were again involved in all the horrors of persecution. In this persecution many eminent Christians suffered; but the death, of Domitian soon delivered them from this calamity.

Third general persecution.This persecution began in the third year of the Emperor Trajan, A.D. 100. Many things contributed toward it; as the laws of the empire, the emperor’s zeal for his religion, and aversion to Christianity, and the prejudices of the Pagans, supported by falsehoods and calumnies against the Christians. Under the plausible pretence of their holding illegal meetings and societies, they were severely persecuted by the governors and other officers; in which persecution great numbers fell by the rage of popular tumult, as well as by laws and processes. This persecution continued several years, with different degrees of severity in many parts of the empire; and was so much the more afflicting, because the Christians generally suffered under the notion of malefactors and traitors, and under an emperor famed for his singular justice and moderation. The most noted martyr in this persecution was Clement, bishop of Rome. After some time the fury of this persecution was abated, but did not cease during the whole reign of Trajan. In the eighth year of his successor Adrian, it broke out with new rage. This is by some called the fourth general persecution; but is more commonly considered as a revival or continuance of the third.

Fourth general persecution.This took place under Antoninus the philosopher; and at different places, with several intermissions, and different degrees of severity, it continued the greater part of his reign. Antoninus himself has been much excused as to this persecution. As the character of the virtuous Trajan, however, is sullied by the martyrdom of Ignatius, so the reign of the philosophic Marcus is for ever disgraced by the sacrifice of the venerable Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, the friend and companion of St. John. A few days previous to his death, he is said to have dreamed that his pillow was on fire. When urged by the proconsul to renounce Christ, he replied, Fourscore and six years have I served him, and he has never done me an injury: can I blaspheme my King and my Saviour? Several miracles are reported to have happened at his death. The flames, as if unwilling to injure his sacred person, are said to have arched over his head; and it is added, that at length, being despatched with a sword, a dove flew out of the wound; and that from the pile proceeded a most fragrant smell. It is obvious that the arching of the flames might be an accidental effect, which the enthusiastic veneration of his disciples might convert into a miracle; and as to the story of the dove, &c, Eusebius himself apparently did not credit it; since he has omitted it in his narrative of the transaction. Among many other victims of persecution in this philosophic reign, we must also record that of the excellent and learned Justin. But it was at Lyons and Vienne in Gaul, that the most shocking scenes were acted. Among many nameless sufferers, history has preserved from oblivion Pothinus, the respectable bishop of Lyons, who was then more than ninety years of age; Sanctus, a deacon of Vienne; Attalus, a native of Pergamus; Maturus, and Alexander; some of whom were devoured by wild beasts, and some of them tortured in an iron chair made red hot. Some females, also, and particularly Biblias and Blandina, reflected honour both upon their sex and religion by their constancy and courage.

Fifth general persecution.A considerable part of the reign of Severus proved so far favourable to the Christians, that no additions were made to the severe edicts already in force against them. For this lenity they were probably indebted to Proculus, a Christian, who, in a very extraordinary manner, cured the emperor of a dangerous distemper by the application of oil. But this degree of peace, precarious as it was, and frequently interrupted by the partial execution of severe laws, was terminated by an edict, A.D. 197, which prohibited every subject of the empire, under severe penalties, from embracing the Jewish or Christian faith. This law appears, upon a first view, designed merely to impede the farther progress of Christianity; but it incited the magistracy to enforce the laws of former emperors, which were still existing, against the Christians; and during seven years they were exposed to a rigorous persecution in Palestine, Egypt, the rest of Africa, Italy, Gaul, and other parts. In this persecution Leonidas, the father of Origen, and Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, suffered martyrdom. On this occasion Tertullian composed his Apology. The violence of Pagan intolerance was most severely felt in Egypt, and particularly at Alexandria.

Sixth general persecution.This persecution began with the reign of the Emperor Maximinus, A.D. 235, and seems to have arisen from that prince’s hatred to his predecessor, Alexander, in whose family many Christians had found shelter and patronage. Though this persecution was very severe in some places, yet we have the names of only a few martyrs. Origen at this time was very industrious in supporting the Christians under these fiery trials.

Seventh general persecution.This was the most dreadful persecution that ever had been known in the church. During the short reign of Decius, the Christians were exposed to greater calamities than any they had hitherto suffered. It has been said, and with some probability, that the Christians were involved in this persecution by their attachment to the family of the Emperor Philip. Considerable numbers were publicly destroyed; several purchased safety by bribes, or secured it by flight; and many deserted from the faith, and willingly consented to burn incense on the altars of the gods. The city of Alexandria, the great theatre of persecution, had even anticipated the edicts of the emperor, and had put to death a number of innocent persons, among whom were some women. The imperial edict for persecuting the Christians was published A.D. 249; and shortly after, Fabianus, bishop of Rome, with a number of his followers, was put to death. The venerable bishops of Jerusalem and Antioch died in prison, the most cruel tortures were employed, and the numbers that perished are by all parties confessed to have been very considerable.

Eighth general persecution.The Emperor Valerian, in the fourth year of his reign, A.D. 257, listening to the suggestions of Macrinus, a magician of Egypt, was prevailed upon to persecute the Christians, on pretence that by their wicked and execrable charms they hindered the prosperity of the emperor. Macrinus advised him to perform many impious rites, sacrifices, and incantations; to cut the throats of infants, &c; and edicts were published in all places against the Christians, who were exposed without protection to the common rage. We have the names of several martyrs, among whom were the famous St. Laurence, archdeacon of Rome, and the great St. Cyprian, bishop of Carthage.

Ninth general persecution.This persecution took place under the Emperor Aurelian, A.D. 274; but it was so small and inconsiderable, that it gave little interruption to the peace of the church.

Tenth general persecution.The tenth and last general persecution of the Christians began in the nineteenth year of the Emperor Diocletian, A.D. 303. The most violent promoters of it were Hierocles the philosopher, who wrote against the Christian religion, and Galerius, whom Diocletian had declared Caesar. This latter was excited not only by his own cruelty and superstition, but likewise by his mother, who was a zealous Pagan. Diocletian, contrary to his inclination was prevailed upon to authorize the persecution by his edicts. Accordingly, it began in the city of Nicomedia, whence it spread into other cities and provinces, and became at last universal. Great numbers of Christians suffered the severest tortures in this persecution, though the accounts given of it by succeeding historians are probably exaggerated. There is, however, sufficient of well authenticated facts to assure us amply of the cruel and intolerant disposition of the professors of Pagan philosophy. The human imagination was, indeed, almost exhausted in inventing a variety of tortures. Some were impaled alive; some had their limbs broken, and in that condition were left to expire. Some were roasted by slow fires; and some suspended by their feet with their heads downward, and, a fire being placed under them, were suffocated by the smoke. Some had melted lead poured down their throats, and the flesh of some was torn off with shells, and others had splinters of reeds thrust under the nails of their fingers and toes. The few who were not capitally punished had their limbs and their features mutilated. It would be endless to enumerate the victims, of superstition. The bishops of Nicomedia, of Tyre, of Sidon, of Emesa, several matrons and virgins of the purest character, and a nameless number of plebeians, arrived at immortality through the flames of martyrdom. At last it pleased God that the Emperor Constantine, who himself afterward became a Christian, openly declared for the Christians, and published the first law in favour of them. The death of Maximin, emperor of the east, soon after put a period to all their troubles; and this was the great epoch when Christianity triumphantly got possession of the thrones of princes.

The guilt of persecution has, however, been attached to professing Christians. Had men been guided solely by the spirit and the precepts of the Gospel, the conduct of its blessed Author, and the writings and example of his immediate disciples, we might have boldly affirmed that among Christians there could be no tendency to encroach upon freedom of discussion, and no approach to persecution. The Gospel, in every page of it, inculcates tenderness and mercy; it exhibits the most unwearied indulgence to the frailties and errors of men; and it represents charity as the badge of those who in sincerity profess it. In St. Paul’s inimitable description of this grace he has drawn a picture of mutual forbearance and kindness and toleration, upon which it is scarcely possible to dwell, without being raised superior to every contracted sentiment, and glowing with the most diffusive benevolence. In the churches which he planted he had often to counteract the efforts of teachers who had laboured to subvert the foundation which he had laid, to misrepresent his motives, and to inculcate doctrines which, through the inspiration that was imparted to him, he discerned to proceed from the most perverted views, and to be inconsistent with the great designs of the Gospel. These teachers he strenuously and conscientiously opposed; he endeavoured to show the great importance of those to whom he wrote being on their guard against them; and he evinced the most ardent zeal in resisting their insidious purposes: but he never, in the most distant manner, insinuated that they should be persecuted, adhering always to the maxim which he had laid down, that the weapons of a Christian’s warfare are not carnal but spiritual. He does, indeed, sometimes speak of heretics; and he even exhorts that, after expostulation with him, a heretic should be rejected, and not acknowledged to be a member of the church to which he had once belonged. But that precept of the Apostle has no reference to the persecution which it has sometimes been conceived to sanction, and which has been generally directed against men quite sincere in their belief, however erroneous that belief may be esteemed.

Upon a subject thus enforced by precept and example, it is not to be supposed that the first converts, deriving their notions of Christianity immediately from our Lord or his Apostles, could have any opinion different in theory, at least, from that which has been now established. Accordingly, we find that the primitive fathers, although, in many respects, they erred, unequivocally express themselves in favour of the most ample liberty as to religious sentiment, and highly disapprove of every attempt to control it. Passages from many of these writers might be quoted to establish that this was almost the universal sentiment till the age of Constantine. Lactantius in particular has, with great force and beauty, delivered his opinion against persecution: There is no need of compulsion and violence, because religion cannot be forced; and men must be made willing, not by stripes, but by arguments. Slaughter and piety are quite opposite to each other; nor can truth consist with violence, or justice with cruelty. They are convinced that nothing is more excellent than religion, and therefore think that it ought to be defended with force; but they are mistaken, both in the nature of religion, and in proper methods to support it; for religion is to be defended, not by murder, but by persuasion; not by cruelty, but by patience; not by wickedness, but by faith. If you attempt to defend religion by blood, and torments, and evil, this is not to defend, but to violate and pollute it; for there is nothing that should be more free than the choice of religion, in which, if consent be wanting, it becomes entirely void and ineffectual.

The general conduct of Christians during the first three centuries was in conformity with the admirable maxims now quoted. Eusebius has recorded that Polycarp, after in vain endeavouring to persuade Anicetus, who was bishop of Rome, to embrace his opinion as to some point with respect to which they differed, gave him, notwithstanding, the kiss of peace, while Anicetus communicated with the martyr; and Irenaeus mentions that although Polycarp was much offended with the Gnostic heretics, who abounded in his days, he converted numbers of them, not by the application of constraint or violence, but by the facts and arguments which he calmly submitted for their consideration. It must be admitted, however, that even during the second century some traces of persecution are to be found. Victor, one of the early pontiffs, because the Asiatic bishops differed from him about the rule for the observation of Easter, excommunicated them as guilty of heresy; and he acted in the same manner toward a person who held what he considered as erroneous notions respecting the trinity. This stretch of authority was, indeed, reprobated by the generality of Christians, and remonstrances against it were accordingly presented. There was, however, in this proceeding of Victor, too clear a proof that the church was beginning to deviate from the perfect charity by which it had been adorned, and too sure an indication that the example of one who held so high an office, when it was in harmony with the corruption or with the worst passions of our nature, would be extensively followed. But still there was, in the excommunication rashly pronounced by the pope, merely an exertion of ecclesiastical power, not interfering with the personal security, with the property, or with the lives of those against whom it was directed; and we may, notwithstanding this slight exception, consider the first three centuries as marked by the candour and the benevolence implied in the charity which judgeth not, and thinketh no evil.

It was after Christianity had been established as the religion of the empire, and after wealth and honour had been conferred on its ministers, that the monstrous evil of persecution acquired gigantic strength, and threw its blasting influence over the religion of the Gospel. The causes of this are apparent. Men exalted in the scale of society were eager to extend the power which had been intrusted to them; and they sought to do so by exacting from the people acquiescence in the peculiar interpretations of tenets and doctrines which they chose to publish as articles of faith. The moment that this was attempted, the foundation was laid for the most inflexible intolerance; because reluctance to submit was no longer regarded solely as a matter of conscience, but as interfering with the interest and the dominion of the ruling party. It was therefore proceeded against with all the eagerness which men so unequivocally display when the temporal blessings that gratify their ambition or add to their comfort are attempted to be wrested from them. To other dictates than those of the word of God the members of the church now listened; and opinions were viewed, not in reference to that word, but to the effect which they might produce upon the worldly advancement or prosperity of those by whom they were avowed. From the era, then, of the conversion of Constantine we may date, if not altogether the introduction, at least the decisive influence of persecution.

Fuente: Biblical and Theological Dictionary