Miserable tionate zeal at the doors of his prison. In the morning, he had to walk some distance, and was violently heated by the exertion. A Christian soldier offered to procure him dry linen, apparently from mere courtesy, but, in reality, to obtain such precious relics, steeped in the "bloody sweat" of the martyr. Cyprian intimated that it was useless to seek remedy for inconveniences which, perhaps, that day would pass away for ever. After a short delay, the proconsul appeared. The examination was brief:-" Art thou Thascius Cyprian, the bishop of so many impious men? The most sacred Emperor commands thee to sacrifice." Cyprian answered, “I will not sacrifice." "Consider well," rejoined the proconsul. "Execute your orders," answered Cyprian; "the case admits of no consideration." the perse anity. Galerius consulted with his council, and then reluctantly (1) delivered his sentence. "Thascius Cyprian, thou hast lived long in thy impiety, and assembled around thee many men involved in the same wicked conspiracy. Thou hast shown thyself an enemy alike to the gods and the laws of the empire; the pious and sacred Emperors have in vain endeavoured to recal thee to the worship of thy ancestors. Since then thou hast been the chief author and leader of these most guilty practices, thou shalt be an example to those whom thou hast deluded to thy unlawful assemblies. Thou must expiate thy crime with thy blood." Cyprian said, "God be thanked (2).” The Bishop of Carthage was carried into a neighbouring field and beheaded. He maintained his serene composure to the last. It was remarkable that but a few days afterwards the proconsul died. Though he had been in bad health, this circumstance was not likely to be lost upon the Christians. Every where, indeed, the public mind was no doubt strongly teath of impressed with the remarkable fact, which the Christians would cutors of lose no opportunity of enforcing on the awe-struck attention, that Christi- their enemies appeared to be the enemies of Heaven. An early and a fearful fate appeared to be the inevitable lot of the persecutors of Christianity. Their profound and earnest conviction that the hand of Divine Providence was perpetually and visibly interposing in the affairs of men would not be so deeply imbued with the spirit of their Divine Master, as to suppress the language of triumph, or even of vengeance, when the enemies of their God and of themselves either suffered defeat and death, or, worse than an honourable death, a cruel and insulting captivity. The death of Decius, according to the Pagan account, was worthy of the old republic. He was environed by the Goths; his son was killed by an arrow; he (1) In the Acta, vix ægrè is the expression; it may however mean that he spoke with difficulty, on account of his bad health. (2) I have translated this sentence, as the Acts of Cyprian are remarkable for their simplicity, and total absence of later legendary ornament; and particularly for the circumstantial air of truth with which they do justice to the regularity of the whole proceeding. Compare the Life of Cyprian by the Deacon Pontius; the Acts, in Ruinart, p. 216; Cave's Lives of the Apostles, etc., art. Cyprian. cried aloud, that the loss of a single soldier was nothing to the glory of the empire; he renewed the battle, and fell valiantly. The Christian writers strip away all the more ennobling incidents. According to their account, having been decoyed by the enemy, or misled by a treacherous friend, into a marsh where he could neither fight nor fly, he perished tamely, and his unburied body was left to the beasts and carrion fowls (1). The captivity of Valerian, the mystery which hung over his death, allowed ample scope to the imagination of those whose national hatred of the barbarians would attribute the most unmanly ferocity to the Persian conqueror, and of those who would consider their God exalted by the most cruel and debasing sufferings inflicted on the oppressor of the church. Valerian, it was said, was forced to bend his back that the proud conqueror might mount his horse, as from a footstool; his skin was flayed off, according to one more modern account, while he was alive, stuffed, and exposed to the mockery of the Persian rabble. alone. A. D. 260. The luxurious and versatile Gallienus restored peace to the Gallienus church. The edict of Valerian was rescinded; the bishops resumed their public functions; the buildings were restored, and their property, which had been confiscated by the state, restored to the rightful owners (2). Aurelian. -275. The last transient collision of Christianity with the government before its final conflict under Dioclesian, took place, or was at least 1. D. 271 threatened, during the administration of the great Aurelian. the reign of Aurelian, occupied by warlike campaigns in every part of the world, left little time for attention to the internal police, or the religious interests, of the empire. The mother of Aurelian was priestess of the sun at Sirmium, and the Emperor built a temple to that deity, his tutelary god, at Rome. But the dangerous wars of Aurelian required the concurrent aid of all the deities who took an interest in the fate of Rome. The sacred ceremony of consulting the Sibylline books, in whose secret and mysterious leaves were written the destinies of Rome, took place at his command. The severe Emperor reproaches the senate for their want of faith in these mystic volumes, or of zeal in the public service, as though they had been infected by the principles of Christianity. But no hostile measures were taken against Christianity in the early part of his reign; and he was summoned to take upon himself the extraordinary office of arbiter in a Christian controversy. A new empire seemed rising in the East, under the warlike Queen of Palmyra. Zenobia extended her protection, with politic indifference, to Jew, to Pagan, and to Christian. It might almost appear that a kindred spiritual ambition animated her favourite, Paul of (1) Orat. Constant. apud Euseb. c. xxiv. Lac- (2) Euseb. vii. 13. ; x. 23. tant, de Mort. Persec, Paul of Samosata, the Bishop of Antioch, and that he aspired to found a Samosata. new religion, adapted to the kingdom of Palmyra, by blending together the elements of Paganism, of Judaism, and of Christianity. Ambitious, dissolute, and rapacious, according to the representation of his adversaries, Paul of Samosata had been advanced to the important see of Antioch; but the zealous vigilance of the neighbouring bishops soon discovered that Paul held opinions, as to the mere human nature of the Saviour, more nearly allied to Judaism than to the Christian creed. The pride, the wealth, the state of Paul, no less offended the feelings, and put to shame the more modest demeanour and humbler pretensions of former prelates. He had obtained, either from the Roman authorities or from Zenobia, a civil magistracy, and prided himself more on his title of ducenary than of Christian bishop. He passed through the streets environed by guards, and preceded and followed by multitudes of attendants and supplicants, whose petitions he received and read with the stately bearing of a public officer rather than the affability of a prelate. His conduct in the ecclesiastical assemblies was equally overbearing he sale on a throne, and while he indulged himself in every kind of theatric gesture, resented the silence of those who did not receive him with applause, or pay homage to his dignity. His magnificence disturbed the modest solemnity of the ordinary worship. Instead of the simpler music of the church, the hymns, in which the voices of the worshippers mingled in fervent, if less harmonious, unison, Paul organised a regular choir, in which the soft tones of female voices, in their more melting and artificial cadences, sometimes called to mind the voluptuous rites of Paganism, and could not be heard without shuddering by those accustomed to the more unadorned ritual (1). The Hosannas, sometimes introduced as a kind of salutation to the bishop, became, it was said, the chief part of the service, which was rather to the glory of Paul than of the Lord. This introduction of a new and effeminate ceremonial would of itself, with its rigid adversaries, have formed a ground for the charge of dissolute morals, against which may be fairly urged the avowed patronage of the severe Zenobia (2). But the pomp of Paul's expenditure did not interfere with the accumulation of considerable wealth, which he extorted from the timid zeal of his partisans ; and, it was said, by the venal administration of the judicial authority of his episcopate, perhaps of his civil magistracy. But Paul by no means stood alone; he had a powerful party among the ecclesiastical body, the chorepiscopi of the country districts, and the presbyters of the city. He set at defiance the synod of bishops, who pronounced a solemn sentence of excommunication (3); (1) ὧν καὶ ἄκουσας ἄν τις φρίξειε Such is the expression in the decree of excommmunication issued by the bishops. Euseb. vii. 30. (2) Compare Routh, Reliq. Sacr. ii. 505. (3) See the sentence in Eusebius, vii. 30., and in Routh, Reliquæ Sacræ, ii. 465., et seq. and secure under the protection of the Queen of Palmyra, if her ambition should succeed in wresting Syria, with its noble capital, from the power of Rome, and in maintaining her strong and influential position between the conflicting powers of Persia and the Empire, Paul might hope to share in her triumph, and establish his degenerate but splendid form of Christianity in the very seal of. its primitive Apostolic foundation. Paul had staked his success upon that of his warlike patroness; and on the fall of Zenobia, the bishops appealed to Aurelian to expel the rebel against their autho→ rity, and the partisan of the Palmyrenes, who had taken arms against the majesty of the empire, from his episcopal dignity at Antioch. Aurelian did not altogether refuse to interfere in this unprecedented cause, but, with laudable impartiality, declined any actual cognisance of the affair, and transferred the sentence from the personal enemies of Paul, the Bishops of Syria, to those of Rome and Italy. By their sentence, Paul was degraded from his episcopate. The sentiments of Aurelian changed towards Christianity near the close of his reign. The severity of his character, reckless of human blood, would not, if committed in the strife, have hesitated at any measures to subdue the rebellious spirit of his subjects. Sanguinary edicts were issued, though his death prevented their general promulgation; and in the fate of Aurelian the Christians discovered another instance of the Divine vengeance, which appeared to mark their enemies with the sign of inevitable and appalling destruction. Till the reign of Dioclesian, the churches reposed in undisturbed but enervating security. CHAPTER IX. THE PERSECUTION UNDER DIOCLESIAN. THE final contest between Paganism and Christianity drew near. Almost three hundred years had elapsed since the divine Author of the new religion had entered upon his mortal life in a small village in Palestine (1); and now, having gained so powerful an ascendancy over the civilised world, the Gospel was to undergo its last and most trying ordeal, before it should assume the reins of empire, and become the established religion of the Roman world. It was to sustain the deliberate and systematic attack of the temporal authority, arming, in almost every part of the empire, in defence of the ancient Polytheism. At this crisis, it is important to survey the (1) Dioclesian began his reign ▲, D. 284. The commencement of the persecution is dated ▲, oa A. D. 284. the Chris tians. Peace of state of Christianity, as well as the character of the sovereign, and of the government, which made this ultimate and most vigorous attempt to suppress the triumphant progress of the new faith. The last fifty years, with a short interval of menaced, probably of actual, persecution, during the reign of Aurelian, had passed in peace and security. The Christians had become not merely a public, but an imposing and influential, body; their separate existence had been recognised by the law of Gallienus; their churches had arisen in most of the cities of the empire; as yet, probably, with no great pretensions to architectural grandeur, though no doubt ornamented by the liberality of the worshippers, and furnished with vestments and chalices, lamps, and chandeliers of silver. The number of these buildings was constantly on the increase, or the crowding multitudes of proselytes demanded the extension of the narrow and humble walls. The Christians no longer declined, or refused to aspire to the honours of the state. They filled offices of distinction, and even of supreme authority, in the provinces, and in the army; they were exempted either by tacit connivance, or direct indulProgress gence, from the accustomed sacrifices. Among the more immediate of Chris attendants on the Emperor, two or three openly professed the tianity Christian faith; Prisca the wife, and Valeria, the daughter of Dioclesian, and the wife of Galerius, were suspected, if not avowed, partakers in the Christian mysteries (1). If it be impossible to form the most remote approximation to their relative numbers with that of the Pagan population; it is equally erroneous to estimate their strength and influence by numerical calculation. All political changes are wrought by a compact, organised, and disciplined minority. The mass of mankind are shown by experience, and appear fated, by the constitution of our nature, to follow any vigorous impulse from a determined and incessantly aggressive few. Relaxation of Christian morals. tian cha The long period of prosperity had produced in the Christian community its usual consequences, some relaxation of morals: but Christian charity had probably suffered more than Christian purity. Of Chris. The more flourishing and extensive the community, the more the rity. pride, perhaps the temporal advantages of superiority, predominated over the Christian motives, which led men to aspire to the supreme functions in the church. Sacerdotal domination began to exercise its awful powers, and the bishop to assume the language and the authority of the vicegerent of God. Feuds distracted the bosom of the peaceful communities, and disputes sometimes proceeded to open violence. Such is the melancholy confession of the Christians themselves, who, according to the spirit of the times, considered the dangers and the afflictions to which they were exposed in the light of divine judgments; and deplored, perhaps with (1) Euseb. Eccl. Hist. viii. 1. |