Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

THE FIRST AGE OF THE MARTYR CHURCH.191we are now describing, thirty-five years after theAscension.It may be considered part of this first persecutionthat the two great Apostles - Peter, who hadfounded the Koman Church, and Paul, who afterits first foundation had helped to build it upwere condemned in the last year of Nero, and byhis deputies11 during his absence, to suffer as Christians,the one the death of a Roman citizen by thesword, and the other that of a slave by crucifixion.Thus the two great brethren by enduring togetherthe martyr's death, the highest mark of Christiancharity, sealed their joint foundation of ChristianRome, that like as the Rome which had gainedthe conquest of the world by the strong hand ofviolence, had been planted in the blood of onebrother shed by another, so the Rome which wasto be the centre of Christ's kingdom, and in thewords of S. Ignatius " preside over charity," shoulds th n tlove pourng forth their blood together for theseat of that Christian unity which binds the earthnone.But this persecution by Nero is not transitoryin its consequences. The emperor had judged thatChristians as such professed a religion not allowedby the Roman laws, and were guilty therein of acapital crime. This crime, if technically expressed,11 'O UavXos, (j-aprvpTia-as eVi rwv ovrus TOV K6ff(j.ovS. Clem. Rom. ad Cor. 5.