A New Witness for God (Vol. 1-3). B. H. Roberts

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      CHAPTER II.

       Table of Contents

      THE EFFECT OF PAGAN PERSECUTION ON THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.

      A variety of causes have operated to produce the result stated in my second Thesis, among which I shall first consider those terrible persecutions with which the saints were afflicted in the first centuries of our era.

      Let it not be a matter of surprise that I class those persecutions as among the means through which the church was destroyed. The force of heathen rage was aimed at the leaders and strong men of the body religious; and being long-continued and relentlessly cruel, those most steadfast in their adherence to the church invariably became its victims. These being stricken down, it left none but weaklings to contend for the faith, and made possible those subsequent innovations in the religion of Jesus which a pagan public sentiment demanded, and which so completely changed both the spirit and form of the Christian religion as to subvert it utterly.

      Let me further ask that no one be surprised that violence is permitted to operate in such a case. The idea that the right is always victorious in this world; that truth is always triumphant and innocence always divinely protected, are old, fond fables with which well-meaning men have amused credulous multitudes; but the stern facts of history and actual experience in life correct the pleasing delusion. Do not misunderstand me. I believe in the ultimate victory of the right, the ultimate triumph of truth, the final immunity of innocence from violence. These—innocence, truth and the right—will be at the last more than conquerors; they will be successful in the war, but that does not prevent them from losing some battles. It should be remembered always that God has given to man his agency; and that fact implies that one man is as free to act wickedly as another is to do righteousness. Cain was as free to murder his brother as that brother was to worship God; and so the pagans and Jews were as free to persecute and murder the Christians as the Christians were to live virtuously and worship Christ as God. The agency of man would not be worth the name if it did not grant liberty to the wicked to fill the cup of their iniquity, as well as liberty to the virtuous to round out the measure of their righteousness. Such perfect liberty or agency God has given man; and it is only so variously modified as not to thwart his general purposes. Hence it comes that even when stealthy Murder in sight of his helpless victim meditates the crime, no voice to prevent the act "speaks through the blanket of the dark" crying, "Hold! hold!" Of course it follows that running parallel with this fact of man's liberty is the solemn truth of his full responsibility for the use he makes of it.

      In the light of these reflections, then, I say that after Christ, as before his day, the kingdom of heaven suffered violence and the violent took it by force.¹ How far that violence, as manifested in the persecutions of the first three Christian centuries, was effectual as a factor in causing the destruction of the church is now to engage our attention.

      At the outset, however, there is a difficulty I cannot pass without comment—the disagreement of eminent writers on the extent and severity of the persecutions endured by the Christians up to the accession of Constantine to the imperial throne of Rome. On the one hand infidel writers, such as Gibbon and Dodwell, have sought to minimize the suffering of the Christians under the persecutions, and on the other, Christian writers, such as Milner, Paley and Fox, have sought to magnify it. The motive on the part of both infidels and Christians is obvious. The more violent and extensive the persecutions, the more the martyrs, the more glorious the triumph for the church. While on the other hand, if the persecutions can be proven to be limited, the suffering made to appear trifling and the martyrs few in number, the church is robbed of so much of her glory. Doubtless both parties have gone to extremes in the contention. Unfortunately for the Christian side of the controversy, there is much reason for believing that the account of Christian suffering within the period named has been much exaggerated. Their chief authority—Eusebius—has thrown more or less suspicion upon the trustworthiness of all that he has written, by declaring in the opening chapter of his Ecclesiastical History and elsewhere that "Whatsoever, therefore, we deem likely to be advantageous to the proposed subject, we shall endeavor to reduce to a compact body by historical narration. For this purpose we have collected the materials that have been scattered by our predecessors, and culled, as from some intellectual meadows, the appropriate extracts from ancient authors."²

      On these passages Gibbon remarks: "The gravest of the ecclesiastical historians, Eusebius himself, indirectly confesses that he has related whatever might redound to the glory, and that he has suppressed all that could tend to the disgrace of religion. Such an acknowledgment will naturally excite a suspicion that a writer who has so openly violated one of the fundamental laws of history, has not paid a very strict regard to the observance of the other."³ Draper also refers to the same when, commenting upon the inaccuracies of early Christian writers, he says: "In historical compositions there was a want of fair dealing and truthfulness almost incredible to us; thus, Eusebius naively avows that in his history he shall omit whatever might tend to the discredit of the church, and magnify whatever might conduce to her glory."⁴

      But while it must be conceded that there is much reason for believing that the Christian fathers exaggerated both the extent and severity of those early persecutions, it remains clear that both the extent and severity of them were greater and more baneful to the church than infidel writers allow; and the truth of it may be proven independent of the testimonies of the Christian fathers. The proofs I refer to are the edicts themselves, considered in the light of the well-known cruelty of the Roman people, intensified by the malice of religious zeal aroused to suppress an obnoxious society whose doctrines were held to be destructive of the ancient religion of Rome, and a menace to the existence of the state itself.

      Passing by the persecutions inflicted upon the Christians by the Jews, an account of which is to be found in the New Testament, I call attention to the first great pagan persecution under the cruel edict of the Emperor Nero. For our information in respect to this persecution we are indebted not to any Christian writer, but to the judicious Tacitus, whom even "the most sceptical criticism is obliged to respect."⁵ Nero having set on fire the city of Rome, in order that he might witness a great conflagration, and wishing to divert suspicion from himself, first accused and then tried to compel the Christians to confess the great crime—and now Tacitus:

      "With this view he inflicted the most exquisite tortures on those men who, under the vulgar appellation of Christians, were already branded СКАЧАТЬ