Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

THE FIRST AGE OF THE MARTYR CHURCH.237fulness. As it is, up to the time we are nowconsidering, there are no traces of a generasecution against the Christian name organised bythe emperor as head of the State. There are mberless local and individual persecutions startingup in this city and in that, and arising from thefundamental contrariety of Christian belief to theexisting heathen worship and the ordinary heathenlife. Such we have and no more. And so a greathost of martyrs in single combat won their crown.ut the emperor did not set himself to destroy aunity which he did not see.Now as to the character in Christians whichtheir condition in these hundred and thirty yearstended to produce, we can form a clear conclusion.Of the relative proportion of actual martyrs to thewhole mass of believers we can indeed have noccurate notion; but it is plain that all were liableto suffering as Christians in every various degreeup to that ultimate point of witnessing by death.Thus the acceptance of the Christian Faith itselfinvolved at least the spirit of confession, if notthat of martyrdom. A man lived for years, perhapsa whole generation, with the prospect ofsuffering, which it may be never came, or came asthe crown of a long period in which heroic virtueshad been called forth. Thus S. Ignatius had beenmore than forty years bishop of Antioch, and hadcarried his church hardly through the bad timesof Domitian, when he gained at last what he