apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

THE GENUINENESS. 359
in the Ac/s of Perpdua and Felicitas (about a.d. 202),
that two of the
martyrs, Perpetua and Saturus, were allowed, while in prison, to write
an account of their sufferings, no regard being paid to the effect which
their narrative would be likely to have on their readers (§ 3 sq, 11 sq) ;
that
the deacons Tertius and Pomponius paid or bribed (constituerunt
pretio) the gaolers so as to procure the prisoners a few hours' relaxation
in some better part of the prison (§ 3) ;
and that the chief officer
admitted 'many brethren' to see the prisoners for their mutual refreshment
(§ 9; comp. § 16). In the Cyprianic correspondence again we
have evidence to the same effect. Cyprian writes freely to the martyrs
and confessors in prison, and the prisoners answer his letters— apparently
without any obstruction from their keepers ^ Yet the purport
of these letters is to inculcate an obstinate, though passive resistance
to Roman law in maintaining a form of religion for which it allowed no
standing ground. So it remains to the very last. What lesson does
the histor}' of Pamphilus teach us Pamphilus suffered incarceration
for two years. Then he was martyred. During his imprisonment he
was engaged
— in writing an elaborate work the Defence of Origen
—
in company with his friend Eusebius, who apparently was himself at
liberty. No one seems to have interfered in any way
kindred labours.
Unhappily for criticism, but happily for humanity, histor}-
with this or
is not
logically consistent. Men are not automata, which move on certain
rigid mechanical principles, but complex living souls with various
motives, impulses, passions, reluctances. The keepers of John Hus
at Constance were far more deeply and personally interested in preventing
his disseminating the opinions which had locked the prison
doors on him and for which he ultimately suffered, than the keepers of
Ignatius at Smyrna and Troas. Indeed it is not probable that the
human ' leopards who maltreated this ', early martyr, cared a straw
whether Ignatius made an additional convert or not. The Bohemian
prisoner too was guarded far more rigidly and treated far more cruelly
than the Antiochene. Yet John Hus found means to communicate
with his friends, enunciating his tenets with absolute freedom and
denouncing his judges without any reserve of language. Here is a passage
from one of his letters :
'Oh, if the Lord Jesus had said to the Council, "Let him that is without
the sin of simony among you condemn Pope John," me seemeth they
would have gone out one after another.... The great abomination is pride,
^
See also Vit. et Pass. Cypr. 15.