Part 27

4. The pure and austere morals of the early Christians.

5. The union and discipline of the Christian republic, which gradually formed an independent and increasing state in the heart of the Roman Empire.

The early Christians of the mother church at Jerusalem subscribed to the Mosaic law, and the first fifteen bishops of Jerusalem were all circumcised Jews. But the Gentile church rejected the intolerable weight of Mosaic ceremonies, and at length refused to their more scrupulous brethren the same toleration which at first they had humbly solicited for their own practise. After the ruin of the temple of the city, and of the public religion of the Jews, the Nazarenes, as the Christian Jews of Jerusalem were called, retired to the little town of Pella, from whence they could make easy and frequent pilgrimages to the Holy City. When the Emperor Hadrian forbade the Jewish people from approaching the precincts of the city, the Nazarenes escaped from the common proscription by disavowing the Mosaic law. A small remnant, however, still combined the Mosaic ceremonies with the Christian faith, and existed, until the fourth century, under the name of Ebeonites.

The immortality of the soul had been held by a few sages of Greece and Rome, who were unwilling to confound themselves with the beasts of the field, or to suppose that a being for whose dignity they entertained the most sincere admiration could be limited to a spot of earth, and to a few years of duration. But reason could not justify the specious and noble principles of the disciples of Plato.

To the Christians alone the authority of Christ gave a certainty of a future life, and when the promise of eternal happiness was proposed to mankind on condition of adopting the faith, and of observing the precepts of the Gospel, it is no wonder that so advantageous an offer should have been accepted by great numbers of every religion, of every rank, and of every province in the Roman Empire. The immediate expectation of the second coming of Christ, and the reign of the Son of God with His saints for a thousand years, strengthened the ancient Christians against all trials and sufferings.

The supernatural gifts which even in this life were ascribed to the Christians above the rest of mankind must have conduced to their own comfort, and very frequently to the conviction of infidels. The gift of tongues, of vision, and of prophecy, the power of expelling demons, of healing the sick, and of raising the dead, were prodigies claimed by the Christian Church at the time of the apostles and their first disciples.

Repentance for their past sins, and the laudable desire of supporting the reputation of the society in which they were engaged, rendered the lives of the primitive Christians much purer and more austere than those of their pagan contemporaries or their degenerate successors. They were insistent in their condemnation of pleasure and luxury, and, in their search after purity, were induced to approve reluctantly that institution of marriage which they were compelled to tolerate. A state of celibacy was regarded as the nearest approach to the divine perfection, and there were in the primitive church a great number of persons devoted to the profession of perpetual chastity.

The government of the primitive church was based on the principles of freedom and equality. The societies which were instituted in the cities of the Roman Empire were united only by the ties of faith and charity. The want of discipline and human learning was supplied by the occasional assistance of the "prophets "--men or women who, as often as they felt the divine impulse, poured forth the effusions of the spirit in the assembly, of the faithful. In the course of time bishops and presbyters exercised solely the functions of legislation and spiritual guidance. A hundred years after the death of the apostles, the bishop, acting as the president of the presbyterial college, administered the sacrament and discipline of the Church, managed the public funds, and determined all such differences as the faithful were unwilling to expose before the tribunal of an idolatrous judge.

Every society formed within itself a separate and independent republic, and towards the end of the second century, realizing the advantages that might result from a closer union of their interests and designs, these little states adopted the useful institution of a provincial synod. The bishops of the various churches met in the capital of the province at stated periods, and issued their decrees or canons. The institution of synods was so well suited to private ambition and to public interest that it was received throughout the whole empire. A regular correspondence was established between the provincial councils, which mutually communicated and approved their respective proceedings, and the Catholic Church soon assumed the form and acquired the strength of a great federative republic.

The community of goods which for a short time had been adopted in the primitive church was gradually abolished, and a system of voluntary gifts was substituted. In the time of the Emperor Decius it was the opinion of the magistrates that the Christians of Rome were possessed of very considerable wealth, and several laws, enacted with the same design as our statutes of mortmain, forbade real estate being given or bequeathed to any corporate body, without special sanctions. The bishops distributed these revenues, exercised the right of exclusion or excommunication of recalcitrant members of the Church, and maintained the dignity of their office with ever increasing pomp and circumstance.

II.--The Days of Persecution

The persecution of Christians by the Roman emperors must at first sight seem strange, when one considers their inoffensive mode of faith and worship. When one remembers the scepticism that prevailed among the pagans, and the tolerant view of all religions which was characteristic of the Roman citizen in the early years of the empire, this harshness seems all the more remarkable. It can be explained partly by the misapprehension which existed in the mind of the pagan world as to the principles of the Christian faith, and partly by the organization of the sect. The Jews were allowed the exercise of their unsocial and exclusive faith. But the Jews were a nation; the Christians were a sect. Moreover, the Christians were regarded as apostates from the ancient faith of Moses, and, worshipping no visible god, were held to be atheists.

The Roman policy also viewed with the utmost jealousy and distrust any association among its subjects, and the secret and nocturnal meetings of the Christians appeared peculiarly dangerous in the eyes of the law.

They were oppressed by the Emperor Domitian. Trajan protected their meetings by requiring definite evidence of these illegal assemblies, and an informer who failed in his proofs was subject to a severe or capital penalty. But the edicts of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius protected the Church from the danger of popular clamour in times of disaster, declaring that the voice of the multitude should never be admitted as legal evidence to convict or to punish those unfortunate persons who had embraced the enthusiasm of the Christians.

The authority of Origen and Dionysius annihilates that formidable army of martyrs, whose relics, drawn for the most part from the catacombs of Rome, have replenished so many churches, and whose marvellous achievements have been the subject of so many volumes of holy romance.

The martyrdom of Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, on September 14, 258, was one of the most notable of that period. Under Marcus Antoninus, the Christians were treated harshly, but the tyrant Commodus protected them by his leniency. After a temporary period of persecution during the reign of Severus, the Christians enjoyed a calm from 211 to 249. The storms gathered again under Decius, and so vigorous was the persecution that the bishops of the most considerable cities were removed by exile or death.

III.--The Church under Constantine

From 284 to 303, during the reign of Diocletian, the Christian Church enjoyed peace and prosperity, but in the latter year Galerius persuaded the emperor to renew the persecution of the sect. An edict on February 24 enacted that all churches throughout the empire should be demolished, and the punishment of death was pronounced against all who should presume to hold any secret assemblies for the purposes of religious worship. Many suffered martyrdom under this cruel enactment. Churches everywhere were burnt, and sacred books destroyed. Three more edicts published before March 304 led to the imprisonment of all persons of the ecclesiastical order, compelled the magistrates to exercise torture to subvert the religion of their Christian prisoners, and made it the duty, as well as the interest, of the imperial officers to discover, to pursue, and to torment the most obnoxious among the faithful.

But after six years of persecution, the mind of Galerius, softened by salutary reflection, induced him to attempt some reparation. In the edict of toleration which he published on April 30, 311, he expresses the hope "that our indulgence will engage the Christians to offer up their prayers to the Deity whom they adore for our safety and prosperity, and for that of the Republic."

The triumph of the great Constantine established the security of the Christian Church from the attacks of the pagans. Converted in 306, Constantine, as soon as he had achieved the conquest of Italy, issued the Edict of Milan (313), declaring that the places of worship which had been confiscated should be restored to the Church without dispute, without delay, and without expense. Though himself never received by baptism into the Church, until his last moments, his powerful patronage of the Christians, and his edicts of toleration, removed all the temporal disadvantages which had hitherto retarded the progress of Christianity.

The faith of Christ became the national religion of the empire. The soldiers bore upon their helmets and upon their shields the sacred emblem of the Cross. All the machinery of government was employed to propagate the faith, not only within the empire, but beyond its borders. Confirmed in his new religion by the miraculous vision of the Cross, Constantine, who was the master of the world, consented to recognise the superiority of the ecclesiastical orders in all spiritual matters, while retaining himself the temporal power.

The persecution of heresy was carried out by Constantine with all the ardour of a convert. An edict confiscated the public property of the heretics to the use either of the revenue or the Catholic Church, and the penal regulations of Diocletian against the Christians were now employed against the schismatics. The Donatists, who maintained the apostolic succession of Donatus, primate of Carthage, as opposed to Cæcilian, were suppressed in Africa, and a general synod attempted to regulate the faith of the Church.

The subject of the nature of the divine Trinity had early given rise to discussion. Of the three main heretical views, that of Arius and his disciples was the most prevalent. He held in effect that the Son, by whom all things were made, though He had been begotten before all worlds, yet had not always existed. He shone only with the reflected light of His Almighty Father, and, like the sons of the Roman emperors, who were invested with the titles of Cæsar or Augustus. He governed the universe.

The Tritheists advocated a system which seemed to establish three independent deities, while the Sabellian theory allowed only to the man Jesus the inspiration of the divine wisdom. The consubstantiality of the Father and of the Son had been established by the Council of Nicæa in 325, but the East ranged itself for the most part under the banner of the Arian heresy. At first indifferent, Constantine at last persecuted the Arians, who later, under Constantius, were received into favour.

Constantinople, which for forty years was the stronghold of Arianism, was converted to the orthodox faith under Theodosius by Gregory Nazianzen.

IV.--The Conversion of the World

The pagan religion was finally destroyed about the year 390, and the faintest vestiges of it were not visible thirty years later. Its influence, however, might be observed in many of the ceremonies which were introduced into the Church, and the worship of martyrs and relics seemed to revive a system of polytheism by the worship of a hierarchy of saints. Among the most famous of the dignitaries of the Church at this period was the Archbishop of Constantinople, who was distinguished by the epithet of Chrysostom, or the Golden Mouth. He attempted to purify the eastern empire, excited the animosity of the Empress Eudoxia, and died in exile in 407.

The monastic system had been founded by Antony, an illiterate youth, in the year 305, by the establishment on Mount Cobyim, near the Red Sea, of a colony of ascetics, who renounced all the business and pleasures in life as the price of eternal happiness. A long series of hermits, monks, and anachorets propagated the system and, patronised by Athanasius, it spread to all parts of the world.