apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

14 EPISTLES OF S. IGNATIUS.
Pliny consults the emperor according
to his custom in difficult
matters. He had never himself been present, he writes, at judicial
proceedings against the Christians; therefore he was ignorant what
matters were usually made subjects of punishment or of investigation,
and to what extent. He did not know whether the bare name, even if
free from crime, was visited with punishment, or only the
crimes which
attached to the name. Meanwhile his method of procedure had been
this. When information was laid against persons as Christians, he
enquired whether they were so or not. If they confessed, he asked
them a second and third time, threatening them with punishment. If
they were obstinate, he ordered them to be put to death : for he did not
doubt that, whatever might be the nature of their confession, their persistence
and inflexible obstinacy deserved punishment. Those who
denied that they then were or had been Christians, he released when at
his dictation they had called upon the gods and made supplication to
the emperor's image with incense and wine, and had cursed Christ. It
is
said, he adds, that the Christians cannot be forced to do any of these
things. He reports these renegades as stating that the Christians had
given up their common evening meal in consequence of an edict issued
by him, in which in pursuance of the emperor's command he had
forbidden the existence of clubs.
The emperor's reply is still more emphatic by
its silence. He
answers that Pliny had acted rightly in his manner of conducting these
judicial proceedings against the Christians. No rule of universal apphcation,
he adds, can be laid down. The Christians are not to be
sought out, but, if accused and convicted, they must be punished. Yet
if a man denies himself to be a Christian and follows up his denial by
sacrificing to the gods, his repentance is to acquit him. An anonymous
accusation is not to be entertained. It is a precedent of the worst
kind and unworthy of Trajan's age.
All this is intelligible enough, if intended to convey instructions for
carrying out an existing law. But could any language more vague and
futile be conceived, if the emperor's purpose had been to inaugurate a
wholly new policy and to declare the Christian religion, which had
hitherto been recognized by the law, to be henceforward illegal Yet
Trajan was a man who not only knew his own mind, but could declare
it in plain soldierly language. Pliny, though he confesses his want of
personal experience in this matter, evidently supposes himself to be
acting on the same legal principles as his predecessors; and Trajan
not a word to undeceive him. He enunciates no new law. He
says
contents himself with saying that in the application of the law no