apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

i6 EPISTLES OF S. IGNATIUS.
Gallican father, we do not know. Possibly it may be an error. More
probably it is based on some facts known to Hilary, but since obliterated
by time from the permanent records of history. It is no answer
to this view to allege that Melito' by his silence exempts Vespasian
from the list of persecutors, for Melito equally exempts Trajan and
Antoninus Pius, though a fierce persecution raged in Bithynia under
the former, and though Polycarp and his fellow martyrs suffered in
Smyrna under the latter. Neither again is it of any avail to insist
that Tertullian in direct words exculpates this emperor from any share
in the sufferings of the Christians", for Tertullian not only expressly
exculpates M. Aurelius, but even ranks him among the protectors of
the Gospel, though the arenas of Vienne and Lyons were watered with
the blood of martyrs executed in this ^.
reign The fact is that no
systematic record was kept of the persecutions. The knowledge possessed
by each individual writer was accidental and fragmentary. And
it can hardly be pronounced less probable that a persecution under
Vespasian, which had escaped Eusebius, should have been known to
Hilary, than that a persecution under M. Aurelius, which was wholly
unknown to Tertullian, though it occurred within his own life-time,
should have been recorded for
the information of posterity, in extracts
from a contemporary record, by Eusebius who wrote a century and a
half after the occurrence.
In the second place, the difficulty of accounting for this period
of undisturbed peace — if such it was— on the hypothesis that Christianity
was all the while an unlawful religion, is not greater than meets
us again and again during the succeeding ages. During the second
century and the first half of the third it is allowed on all hands that
Christianity was prohibited by law. Yet the intervals between persecution
and persecution during this period are, as a rule, decidedly longer
than the intervals between Nero and Domitian, and between Domitian
and Trajan. The explanation
is the same in both cases. The law
the Christians. Fourthly, the assertion,
5, p. 2, 3.
systematic
unconsciousness that he is
begging the
with Decius the first foe of
question throughout. Secondly,' he that the first Flavins had persecuted the
'
writes, ' this father of the Church proceeds
Church in the manner of a Decius, contradicts
from the unhistorical assumption
the historical connexion, that is
that Christianity was already a religio to say, the political situation of Christendom
illicita in the Apostolic age. Thirdly,
generally before Trajan's time.'
with this fundamental error is connected
1
In Euseb. H. E. iv. 26, quoted
the fact that Nero, the partial persecutor above, p. 2, note 3.
of Christianity from the transient caprice
^
Apol. quoted above, note
of a despot, is placed on the same level
Euseb. H. £.v. I.