§ I. PONTIFICATE OF ST. PETER (A.D. 33, June 29, A.D. 67).
1. In ascending to heaven, the Son of God left to His disciples the charge to continue His mission, and to preach the Gospel to all people. To fulfil their sublime calling, they had need of great strength and high intelligence; of nothing less than the fulness of the Holy Ghost, which, according to the promise of the Saviour, would instruct them in all things. Until their apostleship was confirmed by the coming of the Holy Spirit—the same which had descended upon Jesus, in the form of a dove, at the commencement of His public life—the apostles remained in the coenaculum,* or upper supper-room, “with Mary, mother of Jesus, and the holy women, persevering in prayer.” During these days of expectation, Peter, for the *Used frequently by the primitive Christians as an oratory and place of public worship.—A. B. PENTECOST. 29 first time assuming the authority with which he had been invested, “to feed the sheep and the lambs,” in virtue of his primacy, spoke, and explained the necessity of preserving the original number of the Apostolic College, and of filling the place of the traitor Judas by the election of a new apostle. The choice fell upon Matthias. Thus were filled the twelve thrones on which were to be seated the judges of the twelve tribes of Israel. Several days after, on the festival which commemorated the promulgation of the law on Mount Sinai, the Holy Spirit, in the form of tongues of fire, descended upon the assembled apostles and disciples, and communicated to them the intelligence and ardent zeal which were destined to renew the face of the earth. Since that moment this vivifying Spirit remains indissolubly united to the Church, His mystical spouse, and preserves within her the unity of love and of faith. Every period of ecclesiastical history presents to us the trace of His fecundating inspirations. His gifts were soon made manifest in the Apostles. These men, hitherto so slow to believe, so narrow in their views, so vacillating and timid, from this marvellous hour display an energy, a zeal, a courage, which faltered not until death. But it was the gift of languages which at first made the strongest impression upon the Jews and proselytes, who were assembled from all quarters of the globe to celebrate, at Jerusalem, the feast of Pentecost. Parthians and Medes, inhabitants of Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, Jews from Egypt and Rome, from Lybia, Crete, and Arabia, were amazed to hear, each in his own language, the words of the disciples. The voice of the Prince of the Apostles converted on this day to the faith three thousand men. Some days later, Peter—for from him emanated all the earliest acts of the rising Church—Peter, with a word, cured a man lame from his birth, on the steps of the temple. The people assembled in wondering crowds to see the prodigy. The Chief of the Apostles preached to the multitude the name of Jesus Christ, and five thousand of them were converted. The leaders of the Jews began to be alarmed at such a manifestation of power in works and in words. The priests and Sadducees commanded Peter and John to be seized and cast into prison; and the following day they were summoned before the Sanhedrim. In the presence of these judges Peter preached the divinity of Jesus Christ, and His resurrection from the dead. They commanded him never to pronounce this divine name before the people. “Judge for yourselves,” he replied, “if it be right to obey you rather than God. For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.” They were liberated. Every day augmented the number of believers who were converted to Jesus Christ by the preaching, not less than the miracles of the Apostles. The sick were placed in the streets, that, while Peter was passing, his shadow might fall upon them; and the people of the adjacent towns brought to Jerusalem the possessed and the sick of every description, and they returned healed. The rigorous measures of the synagogue were powerless to arrest the rapid progress of the Church. Peter was thrown into prison, but in the night he was delivered by an angel; the Apostles were beaten, but they rejoiced to bear this opprobrium for the name of Jesus Christ. Already the question of putting them to death had been agitated in the Sanhedrim, but one of its members, Gamaliel, prevented this crime.
2. The multitude of the believers were of one heart and one mind, and formed but one family, who held every thing in common. “There were no poor among them, because they who had lands or houses sold them, and brought the price to the Apostles for distribution among the needy.* They continued the religious exercises in common use with the Jews, frequenting the temple at the hours of prayer and sacrifice, where they were accustomed to assemble under Solomon’s porch. They also assembled in the cœnacles or oratories of the most commodious or spacious houses of the Christians, under the direction of the Apostles or of priests appointed by them. There they *Hæc erat angelica respublica nihil ducere proprium, hoc profuit primum germen nascens Ecclesia.—Chrysost., In Act Apost., 1. were instructed in the mysteries of faith and the maxims of Jesus Christ, persevering with fervor in prayer and in the communion of the breaking of bread; that is to say, in the reception of the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. After it they took, in common, their ordinary nourishment. These were the repasts afterwards called agape (charity and affection). The community of goods did not lead to an entire relinquishment of the right and possession of property—it was never imposed on any one as a duty, nor was it ever introduced into the other Churches. It is, therefore, a gross historic error to pretend that the spirit of the Gospel in the primitive Church was destructive of the rights of property. When Ananias and Sapphira sought to deceive the Apostles, in reserving for themselves a part of the sum which they had received for their goods, Peter said to them, “Why have you lied unto God? Were you not free to keep all for yourselves, and to enjoy it?” The sudden death with which they were smitten at the feet of the Prince of the Apostles demonstrated to the faithful that they could not, with impunity, deceive the ministers of the Lord. In exterior things, the Christians lived like the Jews, with whom certain pagan contemporary authors have confounded them. They still observed the ceremonies of the law, although, after their fulfilment in the person of Jesus Christ, they had, in their figurative character, ceased to be obligatory. This was an epoch of transition, which was not to close until after the ruin of Jerusalem, announced by the prophetic words of the Saviour, who had warned His own generation that they would witness the catastrophe.
3. The complaints of certain Hellenistic Jews, that is, of Greek origin, who represented that their widows were forgotten in the distribution of alms daily dispensed by the Apostles, gave occasion, about this time, to the election of seven deacons (A.D. 33). They were chosen by the faithful, and presented to the Apostles, who imposed hands on them. Stephen, Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolas, a proselyte of Antioch (Acts vi.), were charged with this ministry which consisted in providing food for the poor and the distribution of the alms. They also served at the administration of the Eucharist and preached the Gospel, as is proved by the example of St. Stephen, the most prominent among them. The numerous conversions which God wrought through his word, marked him as a subject for the fury of the priests. Accused by them of blasphemy, Stephen was dragged without the walls of Jerusalem and stoned. He died praying for his murderers, and was the first among those martyrs of the Church whose blood has not ceased to flow for the cause of God, and in vindication of the truth, during eighteen centuries. The immediate effect of the persecution which followed, and extended to all the Christian inhabitants of Jerusalem, was to disperse the faithful over the adjacent cities, and through them to found new churches in Palestine, Samaria, and even in Phoenicia, Syria, and Cyprus. The preaching and the miraculous cures of the Deacon Philip gained over to the Gospel a great number of Samaritans, who afterwards received the sacrament of Confirmation and the gifts of the Holy Spirit from the hands of Peter and John. A providential meeting of Philip with an Ethiopian eunuch—of great authority under the Queen Candace—who was returning from Jerusalem, led to his conversion and baptism. On his return to his country, he there propagated Christianity. About this time, Simon the Magician, proposing to purchase from the Apostles, for money, their power of communicating the gifts of the Holy Spirit, was repulsed with horror by St. Peter. Such was the first attempt to commit the abominable crime of simony, which has preserved the name of its author, and which consists in the sacrilegious desire to purchase spiritual gifts with material offerings. Simon, far from repenting his error, employed his imperfect knowledge of the truths of the Gospel to broach a heresy, the first which appeared in the Church. He claimed, as a principle, that as no actions are good in their nature, therefore works are of no avail for salvation; and that grace alone is sufficient to save men, without co-operation with it on their part. This was the germ of the heresy of Predestinarianism. His doctrine consisted in a sort of fusion of the elements of Christianity with the fables of pagan mythology. This was the germ of Gnosticism.
4. Among the persecutors of the faithful, who made himself most remarkable by his indefatigable activity, his passionate and almost ferocious zeal, was Saul, still young, born at Tarsus, in Cilicia, of Jewish parents, of the tribe of Benjamin, but Roman citizens. During the martyrdom of St. Stephen, Saul had charge of the garments of those who stoned the holy deacon. Since then he had not ceased to pursue the Christians; but the time was come when the wolf was to be changed into a lamb, the persecutor into an apostle. This young Cilician, of unprepossessing exterior,* was destined to preach the Gospel before kings and peoples. The classic culture which he had acquired in the flourishing schools of Tarsus, his native city, and his eloquence, which the celebrated Longinus has placed by the side of that of Demosthenes, Æschines, and Isocrates, served to prepare him to preach the name of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles. The knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures and traditions, which he gained at the feet of Gamaliel, eminently enabled him to expound the doctrines of Christianity to the Jews. By the sublimity of his talents, the energy of his will, the ardor of his character, he was called to propagate afar the Church of Christ, and to make known all the depth and the riches of the evangelic doctrine, by expounding it with marvellous clearness in face of the prejudices of Judaism and the errors of paganism. To stay the progress of the Gospel, Saul, in the years 35, 36, obtained letters from the grand council, or Sanhedrim, of the Jews, addressed to the chiefs of the synagogues in Palestine and Syria, which granted him full powers to bring in chains, to Jerusalem, all Christians on whom he could lay hands. He was on his way to Damascus, when, suddenly, on the road, he was enveloped by a supernatural light. Stricken and dazzled, he fell to the *Bossuet, Panégyrique de St. Paul. 34 GENERAL HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. ground, and heard a voice, saying, “Saul, why persecutest thou me?” On his asking, “Who art thou, Lord?” he received the answer, “I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest.” At the same moment he was ordered to proceed to Damascus, where he should learn what he must do. During his sojourn in that city, the disciple Ananias, warned by a heavenly vision, came to visit him; and, laying his hands upon him, restored his sight, which he had lost on the road to Damascus, and baptized him. Saul, entirely changed, began immediately to preach the name of Christ, of whom he had been the most ardent persecutor. He travelled over Arabia Petræa, either to preach to the Jews whom he found there, or to prepare himself, in retreat, for his apostolic mission. After three years, returning to Damascus, he was obliged to fly in the night, to escape the snares of the Jews, who would have killed him. He then made his first visit to Jerusalem, to see Peter, “to observe, to study him,” says St. Chrysostom, “as one greater, as well as older, than himself.” “To see him,” according to Bossuet, “in order to establish forever the principle, that however learned, however holy one may be, he must see Peter.” Saul, the persecutor, afterwards changed his name into that of Paul the Apostle, to express, in a way to be understood, the interior transformation which grace had wrought in him. He courageously preached the Gospel in the synagogues, but the murderous attempts of the angry Hellenists against him having soon obliged him to leave Jerusalem, he returned to Tarsus.
5. About this time (A.D. 35) the Apostle St. James was chosen by St. Peter, and raised to the dignity of Bishop of Jerusalem. His merit had obtained for him the surname of the Just. He was called the brother of the Lord, according to the genius of the Hebrew tongue, because, being the son of Alpheus and Mary, sister of the Blessed Virgin, he was related to Jesus Christ. Leaving the disciples of Jerusalem under the direction of this holy pastor, Peter began to travel over the towns of Judea, to visit the saints, for so the first Christians were often called, and confirm them in the faith. Miracles, then necessary to the propagation of the Gospel, accompanied his word. At Lydda, otherwise called Diospolis, he restored a paralytic to health, and all the inhabitants of this town and of the country of Sharon were converted to the Lord. At Joppa he recalled to life the widow Tabitha, and restored her to the saints, for whom she was a model; to the poor, of whom she was a benefactress. Meanwhile, the hour was come when the gates of the Church, hitherto open only to the Jews, were to be equally free for the entrance of pagans. Peter, who went about Palestine, employing the time which the persecution allowed in forming and enlarging the new churches, was prepared for this great event by a warning received in a vision, that he should no longer consider as unclean that which God had pronounced clean. At the same time, another vision directed a man who feared God, the centurion Cornelius, of Cæsarea, to send for the Chief of the Apostles at Joppa, where he had just recalled to life Tabitha, the widow. Peter obeyed the summons, and announced the Gospel to the centurion and his friends who shared his sentiments. While he explained the divine doctrine, his auditory, composed chiefly of pagans, received, all at once, the Holy Spirit; and the faithful, who came with Peter, heard them speak in languages which they had never learned. Peter, therefore, had no hesitation in baptizing men so evidently called of God. Thus the Church received these first fruits of the Gentiles into her bosom. It should be remarked, that to Peter alone, among the Apostles, God at first revealed the mystery of the union of the Jews and Gentiles in the same fold—a mystery the most difficult for the early disciples to believe, educated as they had been in the maxims of Judaism, and in a legal and absolute separation from other nations. The fact of the calling of the Gentiles was soon solemnly consecrated by the foundation of the apostolic see of Antioch, of which St. Peter was the first Bishop, and where the faithful were for the first time called Christians (Christiani). The Latin termination of this word gives reason to conclude that it was originally employed by Romans living at Antioch.
6. A second persecution, but at this time especially directed against the chiefs of the rising Church, was instigated by Herod Agrippa, grandson of Herod the Great, on whom the Emperor Claudius had conferred, at the same time, the royal dignity and that of governor of Judea. To prove himself a zealous Jew, and desirous to please the people, Herod Agrippa ordered the decapitation of St. James, son of Zebedee, and the imprisonment of Peter under a rigorous guard. The head of the Church, for whose deliverance the faithful continued in fervent prayer, was set at liberty during the night by an angel. He left Jerusalem immediately, and the sudden death of Agrippa, after which Judea became a Roman province, put an end to the persecution. In the interval, the Apostles separated, to go and preach the Gospel to all nations. Before their departure they composed a substantial abridgment of Christian doctrine, commonly called the Apostles’ Creed, the object of which was to secure unity of faith, as the primacy of St. Peter would maintain unity in government. The history of most of the Apostles, after their dispersion, is involved in nearly impenetrable obscurity. St. Luke, from this period, treats only of the acts of St. Paul, St. John, and St. James, of whom we have more precise information than of the others. Brief notices, which are often uncertain, are all that remain to us. St. Matthias went to preach the Gospel in Colchis; St. Jude, in Mesopotamia; St. Simon, in Lybia; St. Matthew, after having written his Gospel, at the request of the faithful in Judea, went into Ethiopia; St. Bartholomew, into the Greater Armenia; St. Thomas, to the Parthians, and even to India; St. Philip, after having evangelized Upper Asia, died at Hierapolis, in Phrygia; St. Andrew was sent to the Scythians, whence he passed into Greece and Epirus; James, son of Alpheus, remained at Jerusalem, of which he had been appointed Bishop; St. John preached in Asia Minor. According to the most probable opinions, the Blessed Virgin accompanied him in his apostolic journeys. An ancient and generally received tradition attests that she died at Jerusalem; and the belief of the Church is, that, after her death, she was, by a glorious assumption, taken up body and soul into heaven.* She died, so far as is known, at Jerusalem, about the year 45 or 47. St. Peter had, in the first place, fixed his see at Antioch, of which he was the first Bishop. After remaining there nearly seven years, he quitted it, to establish at Rome the future residence of the vicars of Christ. These two episcopates of St. Peter have been considered of such importance by the faithful, that, since the first ages of the Church, two solemn festivals have been established as memorials of them. In the interval between the foundation of these two sees, the holy Apostle preached the Gospel in Pontus, Galatia, Bithynia, Cappadocia, and Asia Minor, followed by Mark, Pancratius, Marcian, Rufus, and Apollinaris, future Bishops of Alexandria, Syracuse, and Capua. Mark, his disciple, was, however, sent by St. Peter to found the Church of Alexandria. The capital of Egypt thus received the faith, by this intermediary, from St. Peter, as Rome, the capital of the West, and Antioch, the capital of the East, were founded, also, by the great Apostle. Before leaving his master, St. Mark wrote his Gospel, at the request of the faithful at Rome, who desired to preserve the remembrance of the preaching of the head of the Apostles.
7. About the same time, St. Paul received at Antioch his consecration to the apostleship. To this consecration he appeals (Gal. i. 1) when he says that it is not by man, but by the grace of Jesus Christ, that he has been made an Apostle. Taking with him Barnabas and John Mark, they set out together on their first mission. They preached the Gospel at Salamina, capital of the Isle of Cyprus, first addressing themselves to the synagogues, to which their Jewish origin gave them free entrance. Called to Paphos by the proconsul, Sergius Paulus, Paul struck the impostor Elymas (Bar-jesus), who was in the city, with blindness, and gained the proconsul to the faith.* From Paphos these messengers of good tidings returned to the Asiatic continent, and from Perge, in Pamphylia, where Mark left them, they went to Antioch of Pisidia. There, and at Iconium, in Lycaonia, their word converted to the Gospel a multitude of Jews and pagans. Among the new disciples at Iconium was a young maiden, St. Thecla, whose memory antiquity has celebrated, and placed her name by the side of that of St. Stephen, because she was the first martyr of her sex who had the glory of suffering for the name of Jesus. Dragged before the pagan judges, who would have forced her to deny her faith, she courageously resisted the torture, and, by their order, was exposed to the beasts in the amphitheatre. But the lions came crouching to her feet, not daring to harm the body of the saintly virgin. The people, touched by this spectacle, demanded the release of St. Thecla, who ended her days in peace. She received, nevertheless, the title of martyr, in accordance with the usage of the early ages of the Church, when this name was given to all who had suffered for the Gospel from torments fatal in their nature, even though they had miraculously survived. At Lystra, where a word from St. Paul publicly restored to a lame man the use of his limbs, the two Apostles were supposed to be gods, and the people proposed to offer sacrifices to them, as to Jupiter and Mercury; but the same people suddenly changing their minds, under the influence of the Jews, pursued Paul with stones, and dragged him out of the city. They thought him dead, but the will of God preserved him for other combats and other triumphs. The Apostles departed the next day for Derbe, which also they evangelized. In another visit to the believers of *It is supposed by many that the Apostle changed his name from Saul to Paul in honor of this distinguished convert. This opinion is confirmed by the fact that he is constantly called Paul from this period.—A. B. Lystra, Antioch of Pisidia, and Iconium, they appointed pastors to these rising churches; and returning to Antioch, in Syria, closed their first mission.
8. Called to the apostleship in an extraordinary manner, St. Paul had received directly from God the understanding necessary for his work. But, in order to give to his instruction and discipline the exterior sanction of the truth, and a perfect accordance with the doctrine and conduct of the other Apostles, and urged, too, by a superior inspiration, he went to Jerusalem, the second time since his conversion, accompanied by Barnabas, and by Titus, whom he had brought from the darkness of paganism to the light of the Gospel. There he met St. Peter, who had just arrived, and SS. James and John. From this time the question of the positive obligation of the Mosaic law was agitated among them; and it was one of decided importance to the progress of the Christian society. No question, indeed, presented greater difficulties to the Jews—particularly to those who lived at Jerusalem, in view of the temple, and in the midst of the still subsisting sacrifices—than that of divesting themselves of the prejudices through which they regarded the exact observance of the law as the only means of justification and salvation. It was only with extreme difficulty they could conceive that faith in Jesus Christ was sufficient for the justification of the pagan converts, without submitting to circumcision and other legal prescriptions; and they refused to communicate with them so long as they failed to bear those marks of the law of servitude. St. Paul opposed these requirements with all his energy. The three Apostles, Peter, James, and John, held the same doctrine, recognizing him and Barnabas as their true colleagues, and decided that the two latter should be specially sent to preach to the pagans, while the former continued to evangelize the Jews. Soon after the return of Paul and Barnabas to Antioch, Peter joined them, and made no scruple to eat with the uncircumcised believers, until the arrival of some Christian Jews, sent by St. James. Fearing to scandalize these austere zealots for the law, who regarded the uncircumcised and their repasts as unclean, St. Peter withdrew himself from the table of the pagan converts. The agitation which this incident occasioned in the Church at Antioch showed the necessity of an authoritative decision on the part of the Apostles united at Jerusalem. Paul and Barnabas were sent thither as deputies. The five Apostles, Peter, James, John, Paul, and Barnabas, with the priests and faithful, constituted the first council, known as the Council of Jerusalem. St. Peter, in his quality of head of the Church, opened the assembly. He declared that in calling them to the faith, God had made no difference between the Jews and Gentiles. The Church of Jesus Christ was the prophetic mountain of Isaiah, where all nations of the earth were to meet in the unity of faith. St. Paul and St. James spoke in the same sense, and the final decision of the council reduced the obligations of the pagan converts to the following: 1st. To abstain from meats offered in sacrifice; 2d, from the flesh of strangled animals, and from blood; 3d, from fornication. The prohibition to participate in the meats of sacrifices was necessary to preserve the new Christians from relapsing into paganism. As to fornication, the moral sense of the pagans was so extinct that they looked upon it as an action of no consequence; and it was important that purity of manners should become a distinctive mark of the new law. The prohibition of strangulated flesh was sustained by the Church out of regard to the health of her children; that against blood had a higher origin. Blood, in the sacrifices, was the principal offering reserved for the Lord. So long as sacrifices continued to be offered in the temple of Jerusalem, it may readily be conceived that the Christians respectfully observed this prescription. To the Jewish mind abstinence from blood was a divine precept, obligatory on all men; it was therefore necessary, in order to lessen their repugnance to any kind of communication with the Gentiles, to impose, for the time, the same prohibition on all Christians. The decision of the council, preceded by these solemn words—”It has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us,” was sent to the Churches of Syria and Cilicia; and Paul, with Barnabas, returned to Antioch, while Peter took the way to Rome.
9. In a short time St. Paul began a second mission, accompanied by Silas only—Barnabas having separated from them because St. Paul refused to take John Mark with him. Barnabas, therefore, and John Mark embarked for the Isle of Cyprus; Paul and Silas went into Asia Minor. Providence having permitted this separation, that the Gospel might be preached in a greater number of places at the same time. A.D. 53 St. Paul first visited the Churches of Northern Syria, Cilicia, and Lycaonia. At Lystra he was joined by the young Timothy, who was the son of a Greek father and a Jewish mother, now a Christian. Conformably to the desire of St. Paul, Timothy, in order to obtain easier access to the Jews, was circumcised. The three heralds of the faith then travelled over Phrygia, Galatia, and Mysia. At Troas the physician and evangelist, Luke, joined them. A vision which St. Paul had in a dream, induced him to quit Asia and go into Macedonia. At Philippi, a seller of purple, named Lydia, was converted, with all her household. In this same city, on account of the cure of a slave who was possessed by an evil spirit, Paul and Silas, by order of the governor, after having been beaten with rods, were cast into prison, as seducers of the people, and as preachers of a new and not authorized religion. The joyful constancy of the Apostles, and the miracle which opened their dungeon in the night, so troubled the jailer, that, having been instructed by St. Paul, he believed in Jesus Christ, and received baptism, with all his family. The authorities of the city, alarmed at the precipitation with which they had maltreated a Roman citizen, for St. Paul enjoyed this title by birth, restored the prisoners to liberty with much respect, praying them, nevertheless, to depart. But the foundations of the Church were already laid in Philippi. The Apostles made a longer stay in the populous city of Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue, and formed among the Jews a church, which soon became flourishing. Meanwhile, the unbelieving Jews having sought, by calumnious charges, to extort from the pagan authorities the condemnation of the holy missionaries, they departed in the night for the neighboring city of Berea, where, among the Jewish inhabitants, they found greater sympathy. Pursued, even in this city, by the Jews of Thessalonica, Paul left Silas and Timothy, and, alone, sailed for Athens. This city, the centre of civilization, arts, and letters, now despoiled of her political importance, and reduced to be the mere slave of Rome, still governed her masters by her science and genius. The future consuls and Cæsars came to learn, in her schools, to think justly and to speak well. The eye encountered, everywhere, statues and temples raised in honor of the gods with pagan pomps and bloody sacrifices. One nameless altar in this capital of polytheism, dedicated to the Unknown God, furnished the Apostle a favorable subject for the commencement of his work. Led by Stoics and Epicureans before the Areopagus, the supreme tribunal in religious matters, St. Paul announced, in the presence of an astonished auditory, the one God Almighty, “in whom we live, and move, and have our being,” and who will judge the world by Him whom He has raised from among the dead. Some replied to him in mockery; “others, that they would hear him another time.” A few believed in Jesus Christ, among whom were Dionysius, member of the Areopagus, and an humble woman named Damaris. From Athens St. Paul went to the capital of Achaia, the voluptuous Corinth, where he dwelt with a converted Jew named Aquila, laboring with his own hands for his support as a tent-maker, and preaching in the synagogue. But here also the greater number of the Jews received his doctrine with such hostility, that at length he turned, with more success, towards the Greeks. He formed, in a short time, a community of believers, of whom Crispus, chief of the synagogue, was a member, which, during the year and a half it was under the direction of the Apostle, became one among the most flourishing and numerous. A second time the Jews carried their complaints before the proconsul Gallio, brother of the famous philosopher, Seneca; but he dismissed them, declaring that he would not interfere in a Jewish religious quarrel. During these proceedings, Silas and Timothy, returning from Macedonia, brought to St. Paul consoling accounts of the state of the Churches in that country. This was the occasion of the First, and, soon after, of the Second Epistle of St. Paul to the Thessalonians. The Apostle returned to Syria, and, after a brief sojourn at Jerusalem, proceeded to Antioch, having accomplished this second mission A.D. 56.
10. A third soon followed, which he began in Asia Minor. He paused three years at Ephesus, preaching the Gospel to the inhabitants and the numerous strangers attracted to this opulent city, by commercial relations and the magnificence of the Temple of Diana, which was reckoned among the wonders of the world. There was awakened the first suspicion that the reign of Christ menaced the worship, until then all-powerful, of the idols; and that the great Diana of the Ephesians might fall into dust before the Crucified. A tumult, excited by the goldsmith Demetrius, whose models of the temple of the great goddess might fall into discredit, endangered the life of the Apostle; but one of the magistrates of the city found means to tranquillize the people. During this sojourn at Ephesus, St. Paul wrote to the Christians of Galatia, to guard them against the false judaizing doctors, who taught the positive obligation of the Mosaic law. It was during this same interval that he sent Titus with his First Epistle to the Church at Corinth, then threatened with intestine dissensions. Feeling an ardent desire to see once more the faithful of Philippi, Thessalonica, and Berea, he went, in the year 59, by Troas into Macedonia, where he wrote his Second Epistle to the Corinthians. From this it appears that for the accomplishment of his mission he had suffered, chiefly from the Jews, the most barbarous treatment, and incurred dangers of which St. Luke makes no mention. It is probably at the same epoch that he sent his disciple Timothy, left by him at the head of the church in Ephesus, a First Epistle, containing instructions on his duty as Bishop. Having afterwards turned his apostolic zeal towards the churches of Greece, he sent by the deaconess Phoebe, who was going to Rome, his admirable Epistle to the faithful of that city, who were beginning to form a church. In the year 60, he hastened his return to Syria, with many others from the churches of Achaia and Macedonia, to be present at Jerusalem on the feast of Pentecost. At Miletus, having assembled the bishops and priests of Ephesus and the neighboring churches, he conjured them, in a touching discourse, to guard the flocks confided to their keeping; he warned them against the false doctors who would soon appear; and after praying with them, he departed, with a presentiment of the perils that awaited him. At Cæsarea, he saw the deacon Philip and his four daughters, who were endowed with the gift of prophecy. At Jerusalem he found none of the Apostles except St. James, Bishop of the city. The numerous members of the Church at Jerusalem, all composed of converted Jews, still held strongly to the observances of the Mosaic law. Many of them were hostile to St. Paul, and accused him, falsely, of having urged the Jews of the Diaspora to set aside the law and circumcision.* St. James advised him to remove this suspicion by undertaking a Jewish ceremony for four of the faithful, who now accomplished, in the temple, the vow of the Nazarite. St. Paul consented, but having been recognized by certain Jews of Asia Minor, they pointed him out to the fanatical fury of the people as a contemner of the law and profaner of the temple; and he would have been massacred, but for the intervention of the Roman tribune, Lysias. Conducted by Lysias himself before the Sanhedrim, at the head of which was seated the high-priest Ananias, a bitter enemy of the new faith, the sentence of death was prepared, when Paul reminded the Pharisees present in the assembly, that he had become an object of hatred to the Sadducees for having maintained the doctrine of the resurrection. The spirit of party, kindling at once the whole nature of the Pharisees, rendered them, for the moment, oblivious of their former animosity against him who had deserted their sect, and they declared that they found nothing in him worthy of chastisement. Lysias profited by this declaration to withdraw St. Paul from the rage of the Sadducees; but knowing that forty Zelotes (fanatical Jews) had sworn his death, he had him conveyed to Cæsarea, before Felix the governor, with a certificate of innocence. His enemies, and the high-priest with them, pursued him to that city. Felix, not daring to attack a Roman citizen, and hoping, also, that St. Paul would purchase his liberty, remanded him to a not strict confinement, where he passed two years. The implacable persecutors of the Apostle accused him before Portius Festus, the successor of Felix, and neglected nothing to procure his condemnation. St. Paul appealed from him to the emperor, and Portius accepted the appeal. Soon after these proceedings the young King Agrippa,* with Berenice his sister, wife, first of Herod, King of Chalcis, and later of Palemon, King of Pontus, having come to visit the new governor, Festus, and desirous to know the celebrated prisoner who was spoken of by all Judea, St. Paul was brought before them. The Apostle seized this occasion to preach the Gospel before the powerful of the earth. King Agrippa was a Jew. “Believest thou the prophets?” demanded St. Paul of the king. “I know that thou believest.” And Agrippa said to Paul: “Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.” “Would to God,” replied St. Paul, “that not only thou, but also all that hear me this day should become such as I am, except these bonds!” And the king rose up, and the governor, and Berenice, and they that sat with them, saying: “This man has done nothing that merits either death or the prison. He might have been set at liberty, if he had not appealed to Cæsar.” In the year 62, St. Paul *This Agrippa was a son of Herod Agrippa, deceased in A.D. 43 or 44. He was present with Titus at the siege of Jerusalem, and was the last king of the Jews. His fate, after the dispersion, is not known. He probably died during the reign of Domitian. set out, as a prisoner, for Rome, accompanied by St. Luke and Aristarchus. In consequence of a shipwreck on the coast of Malta, he was delayed three months on that island. On his arrival at Puteoli (Pozzuoli), he received a fraternal welcome from the Church which was already formed there; and finally, in the year 63, the eighth of the reign of Nero, he made his entry into the capital of the empire, in the midst of the Christian brethren who had hastened to meet him. Two years he lived at Rome, under a slight restraint, enjoying the permission to occupy a private lodging with the soldier who had charge of him, and to receive those who came to visit him; consequently he was free to preach the Gospel. Here ceases the narrative of the Acts of the Apostles by St. Luke. This monument of the primitive Church is the most precious of its history. The first conquests of the Gospel in the pagan world do not present a triumph, the import of which is limited to the times when they occurred. The position of the Church remains the same in all ages. She has always had fierce enemies to combat—Jews or Gentiles, heretics or unbelievers, philosophers or executioners. St. Paul, that sublime missionary, who, in passing, wins cities and kingdoms, is the model above every other for all the teachers, all the ministers of Jesus Christ. For them, as for him, their strength is in their own weakness; they triumph when they are vanquished.
11. During his captivity of two years at Rome, besides the short letter sent to Philemon by Onesimus, a fugitive and converted slave, whom he sent back to his master, St. Paul wrote the Epistle to the Ephesians, which is a true evangelical letter, addressed to the faithful in Asia Minor; the Epistle to the Colossians, and that to the Philippians, in which he sets forth, touching the resurrection of our Saviour, the principles of faith, the redemption of fallen man, and the calling of the Gentiles. At the same time, probably, he wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews, addressed to the Jews in Judea and Jerusalem. In this epistle, St. Paul explains how Christianity came forth from the Jewish religion, and how immeasurably superior the new law is to the ancient. The apostolic zeal of St. Peter and St. Paul, united in the same city, occasioned a rapid progress of the church at Rome. The teachings of Christianity had found their way even into the imperial court, so that St. Paul could write to the Philippians: “All the faithful salute you, especially those of Cæsar’s household.” At this epoch is placed the apocryphal interview of St. Paul with Seneca. The almost Christian maxims spread over the works of this philosopher, leave no doubt that he had at least known the morals of the Gospel. It was, apparently, to the good offices of influential friends and disciples that the Apostle owed his deliverance from imprisonment, in the beginning of the year 65. He availed himself of his liberty to undertake immediately new missions, of which, unfortunately, we have no precise information. There is, nevertheless, reason to believe that he executed the project of a visit to Spain, which he mentions in his Epistle to the Romans. This opinion is confirmed by the testimony of a contemporary author, Clement of Rome, who informs us, “that Paul was the herald of the Christian faith to the whole world, and penetrated even to the limits of the West.” The Apostle went also into the Island of Crete, accompanied by his disciple Titus, whom he left there as overseer of the newly-founded churches, with power to institute bishops and priests. He sent to him afterwards, from Nicopolis (Epirus), an instruction on the manner of directing the flock confided to his care. This is the Epistle to Titus, in the canonical Scriptures. From Nicopolis Paul went to Corinth, visited once more the churches of Troas and Miletus, and returned to Rome towards the end of the year 66.
12. The first general persecution of the Church had just begun, by order of Nero. The pretext was worthy of the tyrant. Disgusted with the simplicity of the ancient edifices of Rome; or, rather, by a barbarous caprice, being disposed to give a spectacle which might rival the taking of Troy, Nero commanded the city to be set on fire. Of the fourteen divisions which then composed it, four only escaped the flames. The emperor, to exculpate himself from the infamy of his own act, endeavored to fix it upon the Christians. He had them arrested and condemned to the most horrible torments. Some, covered with skins of wild beasts, were hunted, torn, and devoured by dogs, in imitation of a barbarous chase; others were crucified. Some were enveloped in resinous and other combustible matters, and fastened to posts along the streets, or in the alleys of the imperial gardens. In the evening they were set on fire, like torches destined to illumine the night. Nero, meanwhile, walked about his gardens, or drove himself in a car, by the light of these homicidal illuminations. St. Paul was arrested and brought before the tribunal of this crowned monster; but he spoke with such eloquence and courage, “that he escaped,” as he says himself, “from the fury of the lion.” Nero was satisfied with sending him to prison. At this time St. Peter was still free, in the midst of Rome, to yield to the ardor of his zeal, to fortify the Church, or extend the empire of faith, and, in the presence of Nero himself, to confound the sacrilegious audacity of Simon Magus. He celebrated the divine mysteries in the house of a Christian named Pudens. Tradition has regarded this house as the first church in Rome consecrated to divine worship by the Prince of the Apostles. Paul, meanwhile, detained in strict captivity, and in the near expectation of martyrdom, addressed a farewell epistle to his well-beloved disciple, Timothy (A.D. 67). He warned him to be on his guard against heretics, and, under this name, he seems to designate more especially the followers of Simon Magus and the Nicolaites. These last, availing themselves of an equivocal expression of the holy deacon Nicolas, pretended, upon this authority, to support a debauched sect, who admitted promiscuous intercourse and the most revolting excesses. We know not on what pretext they mingled the name of Nicolas with such scandals. Whatever it may be, St. Irenaeus informs us that these heretics taught the same errors as the Cerinthians, of whom we shall treat hereafter. St. John has refuted both, in the beginning of his Gospel. At length the conversion of one of the concubines of Nero by St. Peter, brought upon him the wrath of the tyrant. He was arrested and committed to the Mamertine prison, where he converted to the faith his two guards, Processus and Martinianus. Finally, St. Peter and St. Paul were summoned before the governor of Rome. They, together, confessed the faith to which they had consecrated their lives, and both were condemned to capital punishment. According to a tradition of the highest antiquity in the Church, the two Apostles prophesied, before their death, the approaching ruin of Jerusalem. St. Peter, after having been beaten with rods, was crucified, his head downwards, on Mount Janiculum, and buried in the Aurelian Way, near the Temple of Apollo, in the same spot which is now covered by the palace of the Vatican and the Church of St. Peter, whose grandeur yields in nothing to the most imposing ruins of the Rome of the Cæsars (June 29, A.D. 67). The same day, St. Paul, as a Roman citizen, was beheaded near the Fulvian waters, in a place now nearly desert, a short distance from the Basilica, entitled, St. Paul outside of the Walls.* The pontificate of St. Peter lasted thirty-three years, of which twenty-five were passed at Rome. None of his successors have reigned so long in the see of Rome. From this exceptional duration originated the celebrated sentence pronounced at each exaltation of the Roman pontiffs: Annos Petri non videbis—a wholesome reminder of the brevity of human things amid the most sublime grandeur here below.+
*The precise spot is marked by the handsome little church of the Three Fountains—delle tre Fontane—so called from a beautiful legend that the head of the Apostle, after being severed from the body, made three leaps, fountains springing up at each point of contact with the earth. Most visitors to the Eternal City have seen this church, and proved the existence of the fountains.—A. B.
+For all that regards the pontificate of St. Peter, see the “Origin of Christianity,” by Dr. Dellinger, from whom we have borrowed much in this chapter.
§ II. PONTIFICATE OF ST. LINUS (A.D. 67-78).
13. St. Linus, born at Volterra, in Tuscany, one of the disciples mentioned in the Second Epistle to Timothy (iv. 21), was the immediate successor of St. Peter. In the lifetime of the Prince of the Apostles, he had been appointed to aid him in the government of the Church. Under his pontificate an event, matured by the divine justice, and predicted forty years before by Jesus Christ, was consummated. Jerusalem had to expiate a deicide, and history furnishes no record of so terrible a chastisement as hers. By a design of Providence, this city was spared so long as she remained the cradle of Christianity; but when faith had extended her conquests; when, far from being useful for the propagation of the Gospel, the existence of Jerusalem was rather an injury to its progress, from the attachment of the Jewish converts to the Mosaic ceremonies which they saw practised in the temple, then the vengeance of God called the Roman legions around the walls of the holy city. The generation who had heard the threatenings of Jesus Christ had not passed away. St. Peter and St. Paul had foretold the near accomplishment of the prophecies, so that the ruin of Jerusalem was at once the punishment of the most horrible of crimes, a clear proof of the divinity of the Saviour and of the religion which He had founded, the final separation between Christianity and the law of Moses, and the seal of reprobation, impressed in characters of blood, upon the Jewish nation. From the year 66, the party of Zelotes, or Zealots, had taken up arms to shake off the Roman power. Some slight successes gained over Cestius Gallus, proconsul of Syria, exalted the hopes of the fanatics. Warned by the predictions of the Saviour, the Christians, on the contrary, retired to Pella, to avoid the disasters of the coming war. In fact, Nero, on hearing of the defeat of Cestius Gallus, appointed Vespasian to conduct the war against the Jews; and he, with his son Titus, seized immediately the fortresses of Palestine, and then slowly approached the territory of Jerusalem, counting on the intestine divisions of the enemy to attain his end. John of Guiscala, from the name of the fortress which he commanded in Galilee, escaped from it, and, followed by a numerous band, threw himself into Jerusalem, where he took the government into his own hands, and maltreated those who wished for peace. This served to produce internal dissensions in face of the enemy; and, as if to prolong the agony of Jerusalem, Vespasian, on hearing that the legions of Belgic Gaul had revolted against Nero, and proclaimed Galba emperor, resolved to abandon the Jewish war for the present, and, with his army, sailed for the shores of Italy, to hold himself prepared for events. This interruption of the war served only to augment the woes of Jerusalem and of all Judea. The parties of Simon and of John Guiscala fought against each other even within the city. Famine, earthquakes, the sinister lamentations of Jesus, son of Ananus, mysterious voices which issued from the inner temple, were presages of the ruin of this people. Vespasian, become emperor himself after the transient reigns of Galba, Otho, and Vitellius (A.D. 68), gave orders to his son Titus to pursue vigorously the siege of Jerusalem. An immense multitude of Jews were gathered within the city, for the festival of the Passover, when Titus invested it with a wall of circumvallation, which rendered all communication from without impossible. The city was surrounded by a triple girdle of walls, protected by deep valleys. But the Roman soldiers, encouraged by the presence of the son of their emperor, succeeded in scaling the first ramparts. Five days after the commencement of the siege, the second wall crumbled under their powerful machines. A Jewish author, Flavius Josephus, who was with the army of Titus, was sent to the besieged, and he used every means of persuasion which might incline them to surrender, but they drove him back with reproach and outrages. The famine, meanwhile, had become so fearful in this doomed city that the inhabitants had recourse to the most horrible expedients to procure a single morsel of food. They dragged the dead from their graves, in the wild hope of finding aliment. A woman, a mother, murdered her own infant, roasted and ate one-half of its body, and presented the remainder to the famished soldiers, whom the odor of this execrable meal had attracted to the spot. “It is my son,” she said; “be not more tender than a woman, nor more compassionate than a mother.” On hearing of it, Titus declared that the ruins of Jerusalem should bury the remembrance of such a crime. Among those who had succeeded in escaping from the city, one was found who had swallowed a number of small pieces of gold. A report of this discovery being bruited about the camp, the soldiers captured not less than two thousand fugitives, who were disembowelled, in order to search for the treasures they were supposed to contain. At length, on the fifth of July, A.D. 70, the third wall was carried by assault; but the besieged, more obstinate than ever, refused to yield, and took refuge in the temple. This magnificent edifice was built like a fortress, and completely defended by a square enclosure of impenetrable walls. Titus had commanded that, at all hazards, this monument should be preserved. But a soldier, lifted up on the shoulders of his comrades, “and instigated,” said Josephus, “by a supernatural impulse,” threw in a firebrand, thus kindling a conflagration that Titus strove in vain to extinguish. The Jews within the temple were all burned, or they perished by the sword. The conqueror passed a plough over the ruins of Jerusalem, and left only three towers standing—Phasael, Hippicus, and Mariamne. Eleven hundred thousand Jews, according to Josephus, lost their lives during the siege; ninety-seven thousand were sold as slaves; John of Guiscala was condemned to perpetual imprisonment; Simon, led to Rome in chains, served to adorn the triumph of Titus, and was then executed. Such was the end of the Hebrew nation. The temple, the sacrifices, the legal priesthood, the distinction of tribes—all disappeared before the sword of Titus, who proclaimed himself the instrument of divine vengeance, August 20, A.D. 70. The Christians, conducted by their Bishop, St. Simeon, successor of St. James, returned to inhabit the ruins of Jerusalem. Great numbers of Jews, enlightened at last by the terrible accomplishment of the prophecies, opened their hearts to the light of the faith.
14. After a pontificate of twelve years, St. Linus died at Rome. The most ancient monuments give him the title of martyr. We have already remarked that the usage of the primitive ages gave this title to those who had suffered for Jesus Christ, even when their persecutors had not pursued them to death. The Liber Pontificalis—Book of the Popes—attributes to St. Linus an ordinance which prohibits women from entering the assemblies of the faithful without a veil.
§ III. PONTIFICATE OF ST. CLETUS, OR ANACLETUS (A.D. 78-91).
15. The succession of the Popes here presents a historical difficulty which has been fruitful in controversies—Is St. Cletus different from St. Anacletus? Critics are divided on this question. The learned researches of the Rev. Fathers Lazzari and Pappenbrock have at length settled the question by adopting the identity of the two names in the person of the same pontiff. According to their opinion, which is now generally followed, Cletus, elected the successor of St. Linus, A.D. 78, was comprised in an order of exile against the Christians, enacted under Vespasian by the governor of Rome. During the reign of Titus, the pontiff, returning to his episcopal city, took the name of Anacletus, or terum Cletus.* Thus is reconciled the authority of the ancient Fathers and catalogues, who name this Pope sometimes Cletus—sometimes Anacletus. In the first year of his pontificate, a violent plague ravaged the city of Rome (A.D. 78). The Christians manifested their charity and devotion by their care of the infected, whom the pagans abandoned in the streets. There was not, at that time, any open persecution against the faithful, but the magistrates could readily find occasions and pretexts for exiling them, or delivering them to the executioner. In this manner St. Apollinaris, first bishop of Ravenna, suffered martyrdom, January 23, A.D. 79. Vespasian had no inclination to attach his name to bloody edicts of proscription. Of a character merciful and clement, he was but slightly moved by the charms of idolatry. His last words, on the approach of death, contained a jest upon the doctrine of the apotheosis: “Behold,” said he, “I am becoming a god!” (June 24, 79.) Titus, his son, the conqueror of Jerusalem, succeeded him, and, in too short a reign, merited the title of “The delight of the human race.”
16. The Gospel was now making itself heard in all countries. Gaul, that land which the arms of Cæsar had opened for the Apostles, received the messengers of good tidings in her principal cities. At Tours flourished St. Gatien; at Arles, St. Trophimus; at Narbonne, St. Paul; at Toulouse, St. Saturninus; at Paris, St. Dionysius; at Clermont, in Auvergne, St. Austremonius; at Limoges, St. Martial, &c. Although the origin of these rising churches may be enveloped in obscurity, the traditions of the people, and the formal testimony of St. Irenaeus and Tertullian, who mention, in their writings, the churches of Gaul existing in their time, which was the second century, do not allow us to refer to the third century the birth of Christianity in Gaul.* At the same time, St. Maternus founded the Church in Strasburg, and perhaps also that of Cologne; St. Clement, that of Metz; St. Eucherius, that of Treves; St. Crescentius, that of Mayence. According to the testimony of Tertullian, Christianity was already flourishing in Spain. Thus the Church, half a century after the ascension of the Saviour, had already won her title of Catholic, and had representatives throughout the world. To Titus succeeded his brother Domitian (September 13, A.D. 81), who made men almost regret the loss of Nero. He had all his cruelty, and united to it paroxysms of rage bordering on madness. His first act was to banish philosophers from all Italy. Under this name the Christians were included, and Pope St. Anacletus suffered martyrdom at Rome, A.D. 91. He had established twenty-five priests to fulfil the pastoral duty in the different quarters of Rome.
§ IV. PONTIFICATE OF ST. CLEMENT I. (A.D. 91-100).
17. St. Clement, the successor of St. Anacletus, was a Roman, and a disciple of St. Peter. St. Paul eulogizes him in his Epistle to the Philippians (iv. 3): “And I entreat thee also, my sincere companion, help those women that have labored with me in the Gospel, with Clement, and the rest of my fellow-laborers, whose names are in the book of life.” The first care of the new pontiff was to appoint at Rome seven notaries, whose duty was to collect the acts of the martyrs, and place them in the registers of the festivals of the Church. Hence arose the institution of the Apostolic Prothonotaries Participants, who were increased to the number of twelve by Sixtus V. The Church of Corinth was at this time troubled by a small number of its members, who, jealous of the reputation of certain virtuous priests, had deposed them. The case was referred to the judgment of St. Clement I., who addressed two letters to the Corinthians, which have been praised by all antiquity, and which, a century later, were still read publicly in assemblies of the faithful. A fragment only of the second epistle is extant. The first, which the erudite believed to be lost, was published almost entire in the last century, at Oxford, by Patricius Junius, a Scotchman, from an ancient manuscript in the Royal Library, that dates from the time of the first Council of Nice. The authenticity of this precious document is generally admitted. St. Clement there speaks with the authority which he held from the chair of St. Peter; he decides the question as supreme judge, and announces to the Corinthians that he sends to them five legates: Claudius, Ephebius, Valerius, Vitonius, and Fortunatus, who are charged to deliver this letter, and to use all means for the re-establishment of peace among them. In proportion as the Church enlarged the circle of her conquests, error, by a parallel movement, seemed to develop itself to hinder the progress of the Gospel. The heresies of this epoch arose, some from expiring Judaism, others from Paganism seeking to defend itself. After the ruin of Jerusalem, the Christians born Jews, who still held strongly to the forms of the Mosaic religion, were divided into three sects, viz.: the Ebionites, the Nazarenes, and the Cerinthians.
18. The Ebionites, sectaries of the Stoic Jew, Ebion, gave a predominance in their doctrine to Judaism. They regarded all the ceremonies of the law as obligatory, and pretended that Jesus Christ was merely a man, the son of Joseph and Mary. They treated St. Paul as an apostate, because this Apostle, on every page of his writings, demonstrates the divinity of the Saviour. For the same reason they rejected all the Gospels except that of St. Matthew, because there the testimony of the dogma which they denied seemed to them less precise. The Nazarenes, on the contrary, recognized the divinity of Jesus Christ, but they mingled in His history certain errors borrowed from an apocryphal gospel, which, to the exclusion of others, they had adopted. They maintained that the obligations of the Mosaic law were binding only on the Jewish converts. The doctrine of Cerinthus, a Jew of Antioch, partook of the errors of both the Ebionites and the Nazarenes. With the first, he maintained the indispensable obligation of all to submit to the law of Moses; with the second, he agreed that Jesus Christ was God, but only since His baptism by John in the waters of the Jordan. Up to that time He was nothing more than man, born, according to the Ebionites, of Joseph and Mary. At the moment of the Passion, the Christ, the Son of God, returned to His father; the man alone had suffered, died, and risen again. Pagan philosophy also sought to mingle itself with the verities of faith, to deprive them of their character of divine revelation. The Docetes, from the Greek word Dokeō, to appear, destroyed the humanity of Jesus Christ in pretending that He had never had more than the appearance of a body, and that all His life had been a sort of mysterious illusion, deceiving men by the phantom of a body. Menander, also, a disciple of Simon Magus, undertook to ally the doctrine of the Gospel with the Platonic system on the formation of the world. He taught that God, the supreme intelligence, had given being to a multitude of inferior genii, who had moulded the world and the human race. In his system, Jesus Christ is not God, but merely an envoy of the good genii. This idea was developed at a later period by the Gnostics, in their genealogies of Eons.* By the side of these teachers of impiety, Catholic writers consoled the Church by their zeal and talents. The Pastor, by Hermas, appeared about this time. Under the allegory of the sheep which the shepherd guides to more abundant pastures, the author describes the interior life of grace and holiness of the primitive Christians. St. John, at the age of more than ninety years, wrote his Gospel to refute Ebion and Cerinthus, in their attack upon the divinity of Jesus Christ and the reality of his human nature. His three epistles are equally intended to combat these heretics. 19. The second persecution burst forth suddenly in the midst of these pacific contests. Under the reign of Domitian, virtue had become an unpardonable crime—for this reason the Christians were entitled to the hatred of the tyrant. In the year 95, an imperial edict was sent into all the provinces, commanding the faithful to be treated as declared enemies of the state. The first victim at Rome was Flavius Clemens, first cousin to the emperor, and his colleague in the consulate. He had scarcely time to resign the fasces, the ensigns of his dignity, when, by order of Domitian, he was led to execution. Flavia Domitilla, his wife, was exiled for the same crime as her husband. Another Flavia Domitilla, mother of Flavius Clemens, was banished to the Isle of Pontia. She is honored as a martyr, with Saints Nereus and Achilleus, her eunuchs. St. John was then at Rome. He was plunged, near the Latin gate, into a caldron of boiling oil, from which, by the power of God, he escaped without the least injury. Domitian exiled him to the Island of Patmos, where he wrote the Apocalypse, according to a vision, in which the Saviour revealed the future to him under mysterious symbols. St. Andrew was martyred in Achaia. He suffered on a cross in the form of X, which, since then, bears the name of St. Andrew. The death of Domitian, A.D. 96, and the accession of Nerva to the throne, restored peace to the Church, and St. John to liberty. The Saint returned to Ephesus, where he continued to preside over the Christians of Asia. We may refer to this epoch the touching history, recounted by Clement of Alexandria, of a young man, who, on his departure for Rome, had been left by St. John in the care of a bishop of Asia, to be brought up and instructed in religion. On his return from Patmos, the Apostle heard that he had abandoned his faith and joined a band of malefactors. St. John, despite his extreme age, was conveyed to the mountain where the robbers had their cave. He pressed the miserable youth to his bosom, kissed his bloody hand, assured him of pardon, if he would only repent; and having brought about his reconciliation with the Church, with God and man, he conducted him back to Ephesus. The holy Apostle, careful to preserve the deposit of faith in its utmost purity, deposed a priest who was convicted of having published an apocryphal work on the Acts of St. Paul. Sentiments of the most tender charity overflowed his soul. “Love one another,” he often said to his disciples; “this precept contains all the law.” His whole life was an exemplification of this heavenly principle drawn from the heart of his divine Master. He died, in extreme old age, A.D. 100, the only one of the Apostles who did not suffer martyrdom. St. Peter and St. Paul had poured out their blood for Jesus Christ; St. James the Less, at Jerusalem, had been killed in a popular tumult; St. Bartholomew had been flayed alive in Armenia; St. Thomas had suffered martyrdom in India; St. Matthew, in Persia; St. Andrew, in Achaia; St. Jude, in Mesopotamia; St. Simon, in Lybia; St. Philip, in Phrygia; St. James the Greater was put to death by Herod Agrippa at Jerusalem; St. Matthias was martyred in Colchis. Thus, all the Apostles, save one, only laid the foundation of the Church in their own blood. Pope St. Clement I., spared in the persecution by Domitian, was exiled in the year of the accession of Trajan to the empire (A.D. 100). The Church honors him as a martyr, but history has not preserved the details of his death.
