apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

was there, if
any one were disposed
IGNATIUS THE MARTYR. 17
to call it into action. But for
long periods it lay dormant. Only now and then the panic of a
populace, or the bigotry of a magistrate,
or the malice of some influential
personage, awoke it into activity. Sometimes it was enforced
against one or two individuals, sometimes against collective numbers.
But, as a rule, there was no disposition to deal hardly with the Christians,
who were for the most part peaceful and industrious citizens.
In this respect Christianity was on the same footing with other prohibited
religions. The unrecognized rites of Syria or Babylonia or
Egypt might be practised in the Roman Empire, even in the metropolis
itself, without molestation for long periods. It was only when some
accidental circumstance excited an alarm or awoke a prejudice, that
they were made to feel the perilous insecurity of their position.
It appears therefore that, as regards Trajan's attitude towards Christianity,
the view of the earliest Christian fathers was less \vide of the
truth than the view of recent modern critics. Still it was very far from
correct in itself. The good emperors, as a rule, were not more friendly
to Christianity than the bad. Their uprightness might exclude caprice ;
their humanity might mitigate extreme rigour. But, as straightforward,
patriotic, law-loving Roman statesmen, they were invited by the
responsibilities of their position to persecute. The Roman religion
was essentially political. The deification of the dead emperor, the
worship of the genius of the living emperor, were the direct logical
result of this political religious system. An arbitrary, unscrupulous
prince might disregard this system a
; patriotic Roman could not.
Hence the tragic fact that the persecutions of Trajan and M. Aurelius
were amongst the severest on record in the early Church. On the
other hand, the Christians had almost as much to hope, as to fear,
from the unscrupulousness of the bad emperors. If the caprice of a
Nero persecuted them, the caprice of a Commodus not only spared
but favoured them.
One other important consideration is suggested by the records of
this Bithynian persecution. It is generally supposed that the historian
of the early Church, in order to arrive at the truth with regard to the
extent of the persecutions, has only to make deductions for the exaggerations
of Christian writers. In other words, it is assumed that the
Christians forgot nothings but magnified a^erything. This assumption
however is shown to be altogether false by the history of the manner
in which the record of this Bithynian persecution has been preserved.
With the possible exception of the Neronian outbreak, it was the most
severe of all the persecutions, of which we have any knowledge, during
IGN. I. 2