09-CHAPTER 9. SUBJECT AND METHOD.

CHAPTER 9. SUBJECT AND METHOD. AN apology is due for my boldness in venturing to address such an audience on so difficult and so vexed a subject. But I may almost claim that the topic had been chosen for me by those who had for a time the right to direct my studies. In the task of exploration in Asia Minor the subject was forced on me: unless a large part of my materials and a large part of the history of the country were handed over to others, this subject must engage a great deal of my attention. If there had been at first some one in the circle of my own friends ready to take over my materials and to work them up, as there are still many who could do so with fuller know ledge than I possess, I should not be placed in the difficult position that I now occupy. Every word that I have to say springs ultimately from the desire to do as well as I could the work assigned to me in Asia Minor.

How closely the subject on which I venture to speak is involved in the investigation of the history of Asia Minor may be shown in a single sentence. Asia Minor, and especially the province of Asia, was during the century following A.D. 70, to use the words of Bishop Lightfoot, [Note: Ignatius and Polycarp, I., p. 424.] “the spiritual centre of Christianity." There the new religion spread most rapidly and affected the largest proportion of the whole population ; the conduct of the Asian communities during that period, their relations with the imperial government, with their pagan neighbours, and with other Christian communities, gave to a considerable extent the tone to the development and organization of their Church. To discuss the relation of the Asian communities to the Empire is practically to discuss the relation of the Church to the Empire. This page of history must be written as a whole.

1. ASPECT OF HISTORY HERE TREATED. The subject before us has many sides, of which one alone will here concern us. These lectures are historical, not theological. It is to a page in the history of society that I ask your attention, and not to a theory of the development of religious organization, or doctrine, or ritual.

I want to take Church history for the moment out of the theological domain, and to look at it from another point of view. When it is treated by writers whose interests are either theological or anti-theological, there is generally a tendency to treat controversies between sects, and struggles between opposing churches, too much as a matter of religious dogma. The diversities of opinion on points of doctrine, often sufficiently minute points, are related in great detail, by the theologians with the interest of love, by the anti-theologians with the interest of ridicule. But, to take an example from my own country, the historian of Scotland who described the differences of doctrine, often barely discernible by the naked eye, between our innumerable sects, and left the reader to infer that these were the sole, or even the chief, causes of division between the sects, would give a very inadequate picture of the facts. He must also describe and explain many social and political differences; e.g., he must not leave his readers ignorant of the fact that one church as a body took one political side, another as a body took the opposite side. So in earlier Church history, it has often been the case that differences of race or manners were the cause of division between churches and sects, and slight differences of doctrine or ritual were merely badges on the banners of armies already arrayed against each other. I do not maintain that this is the whole matter, nor even that it is the chief matter; but I do say that it is a side that deserves and will reward study, and that it does not always receive its fair share of attention. The schism between the Latin and Greek Churches in the ninth century, the schisms between the Greek and the Armenian and other Eastern Churches, are examples of religious movements which were even more important in their political than their theological aspect.

2. CONNEXION BETWEEN CHURCH HISTORY AND THE LIFE OF THE PERIOD.

I do not think that in this work I am venturing away from my proper subject viz., the study of the character and life of the Roman Empire, especially in the eastern provinces. It is possible to set too narrow bounds to the study of Roman life ; and any bounds are too narrow which exclude from that study what is probably its most important problem viz., its relations to the system of belief, morality, and society which, beginning in the eastern provinces, gradually spread over the whole Empire.

It must be confessed that this opinion as to the close connexion between Church history and the general history of the time is not generally held. They are generally considered to be unconnected with each other, and to belong to different fields of study. There has existed, and perhaps still exists, a widespread opinion that Christian writings (like Byzantine history) lie beyond the pale of what is called humane letters, and that the classical scholar has nothing to do with them. We are all only too prone to bound the realm of humane letters by the limits of our individual interests. Is it still necessary to plead that a classical scholar may justifiably spend some part of his time in reading such authors as Cyprian or Tertullian, as interpreters of the society in which they lived, or such authors as Basil of Cesareia or Gregory of Nazianzos, as aids in understanding the history of Roman Cappadocia? In becoming Christians, these writers did not cease to be men: they only gained that element of thoroughness, sincerity, and enthusiasm, the want of which is so unpleasant in later classical literature; and if they directed these qualities into different channels from those which are most natural now, every such direction of our common human nature must be studied and explained by the circumstances of its time. History only deepens in intensity and interest as we pass from the classical and come down towards the present time. The only reason why it sometimes appears less interesting is that the strands of life become more numerous as time goes on, and the effort to comprehend them separately, and bring them together in the mind to form the complicated thread of human history, grows more serious.

There are many interests of the most fascinating kind in the history of the Roman Empire, when we turn away from the battles and sieges, the murders and suicides, the crimes of one emperor and the lofty character of another in short, from all the great things of history. The machinery by which for the first time in human history there was constructed a great and stable empire, more permanent than the strong arm of the despot who held it together; the remarkable system by which such a splendid series of provincial administrators was produced and trained, administrators of whom one of the greatest scholars Cam bridge ever sent forth a scholar whom we all grudge to the politics that absorb him says that we can find among them examples occasionally of cruelty, occasionally of rapacity, but never of incompetence [Note: Waddington, "Pastes des Provinces Asiatiques," p. 18.]: that magnificent system is a fascinating study, but it is inferior in human interest to the study of social phenomena. The widest democracy of ancient times was a narrow oligarchy in comparison with our modern states. But the ideas which have realized themselves among us as the rights of the poorest and lowest classes were at work under the Roman Empire; and the central point in the study of Roman imperial society is the conflict of the new religion with the old. By a study of Roman imperial society, I do not, of course, mean superficial talk about Juvenal and the society he describes. What Juvenal considered to be society was merely the slowly dying governing caste of earlier Rome, the nobles who had conquered the world, who had long maintained their pre-eminence by absorbing into their number every person of vigour and power enough to raise him above the level of the lower class, but who at last paid the penalty that every privileged class seems always to pay, in corruption and gradual death. Tacitus and Juvenal paint the deathbed of pagan Rome; they have no eyes to see the growth of new Rome, with its universal citizenship, its universal Church (first of the Emperors, afterwards of Christ), its " alimentations," its care for the orphan and the foundling, its recognition of the duty of the State to see that every one of its members is fed. The Empire out raged the old republican tradition, that the provincial was naturally inferior to the Roman; [Note: On Horace s protest against this tendency of the Empire, of which he was vaguely conscious, see Mommsen s speech to the Berlin Academy on the anniversary of the two emperors, Frederick and William II., in Berlin Sitzungsber., January 24th, 1889. Horace, though an adherent of Octavian, never really abandoned his old republican view ; he admired Augustus as the restorer of old Rome, not as the maker of new Rome.] but this, which was its greatest crime in the eyes of Tacitus, is precisely what constitutes its importance in the history of the world. What we are in search of is the historian who will show us the state of things beyond the exclusive circle of aristocratic society, among the working classes and the thinking classes; who will discuss the relation between the Christian and his next-door neighbour who sacrificed to Rome and the emperor, and amused himself with the pageantry of Jupiter and Artemis. I want to be shown what the middle classes of the community were doing, and still more what they were thinking. I care little for the university scholar who immured himself in the university, and dabbled in elegant literature and gave showy lectures; but I want to see the man of high university training who went out to move the world. I get little for my purpose among the pagan writers; and I must go to the Christian writers, whom I find full of social enthusiasm, though expressed in strange and to me sometimes repellent forms. They weary me sometimes with doctrine, when I want humanity; but beneath their doctrine the man appears, and when they condescend to the affairs of the world, they are instinct with human feeling. The greatest of them often reach the level of thought where doctrine and life are fused as two aspects of the same thing.

Placed amid the uncongenial society of the Roman Empire, the Christian Church found itself necessarily in opposition to some parts of the Roman law and custom; negatively it refused to comply with them, positively it even enacted laws for itself which were in flat contradiction to the national laws (as when Callistus, Bishop of Rome, ordered about 220 A.D. that certain marriages should be legal, though the state considered them illegal). The Church was a party of reform and of opposition to the government policy, carried sometimes to the verge of revolutionary movement. Notable differences are found in this respect between the teaching of different periods and different individuals. The question as to the point where disobedience to the imperial law became justifiable, or as to how far the Imperial Government was right in trying to compel obedience and to maintain order, is a very difficult one. The usual answer that he who thinks as I think is right in disobeying, he who thinks otherwise is wrong, is completely satisfactory to few. We attempt to approach the question from the imperial point of view, and to follow where the evidence leads us.

3. THE AUTHORITIES: DATE.

What then is the evidence? The answer to this question is of primary importance in a subject where the date, the authorship, and the trustworthiness of many of the ancient authorities are all matters of dispute. A few words on these points are necessary as a preliminary. The criticism applied to one class of our authorities viz., the writings that give (or profess to give) the views of the Christians has been strict and severe ; it is very important that they should have been subjected to this minute examination, conducted with the learning, acuteness, and ingenuity which belong to German scholarship. But it is unfortunate that some scholars should so habituate themselves to this point of view as to become incapable of taking a wider historical survey of the situation as a whole.

There are some documents whose falseness to the period to which they profess to belong has been clearly demonstrated. All such documents have certain well-marked characteristics. Some purpose or intention of the writer is obvious in them; and above all, nothing, or next to nothing, for the historian s purpose can be inferred from them. They have no reality or life beneath the surface; or, to put it in another way, they have no background on which, by closer inspection and minuter study, other facts and figures can be seen to live and move. They attest some single fact in view of which they were composed; but they give no further evidence to aid the historian. The personages are mere lay figures: they have lived no life; they have no past and no historical surroundings. But there is another class of documents, whose spuriousness would cause a serious loss to the historian. Such documents suggest a real story under lying the superficial facts : the characters are living men, whose real experiences in the world have caused the facts which appear on the surface ; and from these facts we can work back to their past experiences, their surroundings, the world in which they moved. I know no case in which it has been demonstrated that such a document is spurious.

It is quite true that there are many grave and serious difficulties in documents of this type; but such difficulties occur in all historical documents. The historian has to accept them, though often he fails entirely to solve them. Not a year passes, hardly a month passes, in which the solution of some puzzle in classical antiquities is not attained through the discovery of new evidence; and each difficulty solved marks an advance in our knowledge and an increase in our powers. But many of them remain for the future to solve; with our present resources they must be accepted. These difficulties often take the form of apparent contradictions between authorities. It is a cheap solution to bring down the date of one authority by a century; but historians have found that this method of explanation raises far more difficulties than it solves, and it has been practically abandoned in almost all branches of history. In them the rule is for the critic to test the genuineness of documents so far as possible apart from his own theories on disputed points, and frame the theory on the basis of the documents. For example, Juvenal and Martial were contemporaries and acquaintances; but it is very hard to reconcile and to work into a consistent picture their allusions to the habits and manners of upper-class Roman society in reference to the formal visits of courtesy and the presents given by the host to his visitors (salntatio and sportula). Even if we take into account the slight difference of time, Martian’s writings being published at intervals from 86 to 101 A.D., whereas Juvenal s first book (the one chiefly in question) was published about 103 to 105, no theory of development that can be considered satisfactory has yet been offered. Moreover, Juvenal expressly claims to be describing the manners of the reign of Domitian, Si to 96, and to avoid as dangerous all references to the age of Trajan, in which he was writing. The attempt to solve this contradiction by bringing down the date of either authority a half-century or a whole century or more would only arouse ridicule; it certainly would not be thought worth serious refutation. In one branch of history alone do we find still in full vigour, unaffected by sounder methods of inquiry, the superficial and uncritical way of getting rid of such difficulties by tampering with the date of documents and moving them about like pieces on a chessboard. Oddly enough, it is among those to whom the name of critics has been specially applied that this uncritical method is still practiced, after it has passed out of credit in all other departments of inquiry. Many consequences of an unexpected kind have resulted indirectly from the practice of this method. For example, it is now generally acknowledged that the tendency of the Tubingen school of criticism was to date the documents and the facts of early Christian history decidedly too late and most recent critics have carried back the documents to an earlier date. But the question latent in their minds seems always to take the form, “How far back does clear and irrefragable evidence compel us to carry the documents?" They seem to start with the presumption of a late date in their minds, and thus always to have a certain bias, which hinders them from attaining the purely historical point of view. Evidence which formerly was weighed under the bias of a dominant theory seems to retain, even among those who have gradually come to abandon that theory, part of the weight derived from it. It is, as I believe, due to this bias that some German scholars are now gradually settling clown to an agreement in dating a number of important documents about midway between the traditional date and the date assigned by the earlier Tubingen school. To quote another example, similar in character, Neumann [Note: It is impossible to avoid frequent references to Neumann’s admirable work on "The Roman State and the Universal Church” (Part I, Leipzig-, 1890). It is an excellent collection of materials: much of what he says I agree with, and shall as far as possible avoids repeating; but his general view of the subject differs greatly from mine. As the book is widely known, I shall mention also some details in which his interpretation of the ancient authorities differs from that which is assumed in this book. ] has realized clearly and argued convincingly that the interpretation of Pliny s letter about the Christians which was almost universal in Germany is wrong, and that the letter marks not the beginning, but a stage in the further course of persecution. Yet certain theories [Note: These theories have affected his view throughout. The heroic dogmatism of his reference on p. 57 to the letter of Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans is a fair example: if the word "universal" (καθολικη), applied to the Church, occurs in it, the author cannot be Ignatius of Antioch. Where proof is defective, Neumann has not raised superior to the method of supplying the defect by increased boldness in assertion.] of the growth of church organization retain their hold on him, although they were elaborated by a long series of investigators, who were biased in their judgment by the misinterpretation of that cardinal document, which Neumann has more correctly estimated. He assumes the conclusions, after having overthrown one of the premises. With the question of date, that of authorship is to a certain extent bound up; so far as it is a separate question, it hardly concerns our purpose. For example, the question whether the Epistles attributed to St. John were written by the Apostle will not practically affect the historian’s estimate of their value, if once he is convinced that they are first-century productions.

4. THE AUTHORITIES: TRUSTWORTHINESS. With regard to the trustworthiness of the documents, some words also are needed. We have now for ever passed beyond that stage of historical investigation which consisted in comparing the statements of Christian documents with the Roman writers, and condemning the former in every point where they differed from the authoritative standard of the latter. We have now recognized, once and for all, that the value of the Christian documents for the historian lies in their difference from the Roman writers at least as much as in their agreement; that a contrast between the version of the same facts given by these two classes of documents was inseparable from their differing points of view, and, so far from disproving, is really the necessary condition for our admitting, the authenticity of the Christian documents. If they agreed, they would lose their value as historical authorities, and they could not possibly be genuine works of the period to which they claim to belong. In truth we are fortunate, amid the dearth of documentary evidence as to the actual facts of history in the period 50-170, to have so many presentations of the general tone of feeling and thought from very different points of view.

IX. Subject and Method. 183 In the Roman writers of the period of history in which our subject lies, we have in general the view of the opposition to the imperial rule ; even some writers who nominally take the side of the government are so hopelessly hedged in by the prejudices of the past, so dominated by the glories of republican Rome, so incapable of appreciating the higher elements of the imperial rule, so opposed in heart to those higher elements if they had understood them, that they present themselves as mere apologists of a rule with which they at heart are not in sympathy, and are really the most telling witnesses against the system which they believe themselves to be defending and extolling.

Few authors are more full of interest than the Roman writers of this period. Historical literature has never found a subject fuller of picturesque and striking incidents, of strong lights and deep shadows, of vivid contrast of individual characters, of enormous vices and of great virtues in the dramatis persona. Few writers also have shown greater power of telling their story in the way best suited to heighten its effect. No writer has surpassed, hardly any has equaled, Tacitus in power of adding effect to a narrative by the manner in which the incidents are grouped and the action described. What ever faults a purist may find with the style of the period, its practical effect as a literary instrument can with difficulty be paralleled in the whole range of literature. But their historical view is far from wide. It would not be easy to find a period in which literature was so entirely blind to the great movements that were going on around it. The Romans were destitute of the historical faculty, and of scientific insight or interest: they could make history, but they could not write it. The early emperors are remarkable figures in themselves, and still more remarkable as they are presented to us by Tacitus and Suetonius; and their individual influence and importance were of course great. But the permanent Imperial policy was distinct from them and greater than they were, and offers a more serious problem for the modern historian of the Roman Empire. We must determine what was the policy in reference to the prosperity and education of the population, the development of jurisprudence, the organized machinery of government, the training of the officials, the alimentary foundations for poor children, the attempts to cope with great social problems (such as the formally admitted duty of the State to feed its pauper population), the spreading of equal rights and equal citizenship over the whole civilized world, the making of a state religion to guarantee that citizenship. On such things as these depends our estimate of the Roman Imperial system; and on such points the Roman writers are practically silent. Among them we find philosophers who aired their rhetoric, rhetoricians who dabbled in moral philosophy, at best pessimists who disbelieved in the present and in the future of the Empire, who made heroes of Cato with his pedantry, of Brutus with his affectation, and Cicero with his superficiality, but who despaired entirely of the possibility of restoring their golden age. The historians are so occupied with the great events of history, the satirists so busy with the vices of upper-class society, the moralists with abstract theorizing, the poets with Greek mythology and with the maintenance of their footing in the atria of the rich and the favour of the Emperor and his freedmen, that they have neither time to write about the aims of imperial policy nor eyes to see them ; and we gather only indirectly from them some information which we can interpret by other authorities. Here we must trust to our second class of authorities, the inscriptions and the laws.

Lastly, we have the view taken by the adherents of that new religion which grew up within the Empire, formed itself in a great and powerful organization, and finally took into itself the Imperial Government, its policy, and its laws. As to them, we might with little exaggeration say in one sweeping sentence that, when we find any person who sets himself to do something with energy for the improvement of society, he is either an Emperor or a Christian.

5. RESULTS OF SEPARATING CHURCH HISTORY FROM IMPERIAL HISTORY.

It is safe to say that this last class of authorities has not yet been used as fully as it might be by the modern historians of the Empire, partly, indeed, from doubts with regard to the authenticity and value of the documents, but partly also from preoccupation with the other two classes of authorities. But if classical scholars have more to learn from the Christian writers than has been generally recognized, theologians also have something to learn from the evidence of classical history. The wide and accurate knowledge, and the grasp of the facts of Roman life, shown by the late Bishop Lightfoot and some other scholars whom I need not name, must not blind us to the comparative rarity of such depth of treatment as theirs.

1 86 The Church in the Roman Empire. In particular, I feel bound to say that in several of the modern German critics there has been a want of historical sense, and even a failure to grasp the facts of Roman life, which have seriously impaired the value of their work in early Church history, in spite of all their learning and ability. Perhaps the best way to explain my meaning, and to offer myself to criticism and correction if I am wrong, will be to quote a few typical examples.

Baur’s “Paul the Apostle of Jesus Christ," with its keen criticism of the historical incidents in St. Paul’s life, has been an epoch-making work in the subject. Let us take one specimen of the historical arguments which he uses. There is no more difficult problem for the historian than the relations in whom Romans and non-Romans stood to one another in provincial towns: a recent paper of Mommsen’s [Note: Ephemeris Epigraphica, vol. vii. 1892, p. 436ff.] will give some idea of the utter obscurity in which this subject is involved. But for Baur there is no obscurity. Utterly unconscious of the difficulty of the subject, he moves with perfect case and unhesitating confidence through the scene with the magistrates at Philippi; he knows exactly what the colonial magistrates would do and how they would behave; and he triumphantly disproves the authenticity of a document which might give one who possessed the historic sense a vivid picture of the provincial Roman magistrate suddenly realizing that he has treated a Roman like a mere native. Ignorance might be freely pardoned, but not such bold assumption of knowledge. But this example is perhaps antediluvian; let us see whether all is now changed for the better. I shall come down to a recent date, 1887, and to no mean theologian, Dr. Pfleiderer of the University of Berlin ; and shall select two examples bearing closely on my present subject and helping to make it clear.

1. In one single sentence he states the historical argument about the first epistle attributed to St. Peter. It presupposes that the persons to whom it was addressed were in a situation introduced by an act of Trajan, and therefore the epistle must be later than Trajan. These persons belonged to the provinces or countries of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia ; [Note: "Urchristenthum," p. 656: "Der Brief setzt voraus, dass die Kleinasiatischen Leser urn ihres Christennamens willen gerichtliche Verfolgungen zu bestehen hatten; solche Glaubensprozesse aber, bei welchen keine anderweitige Beschuldigung als eben das Christen-bekenntniss den Anklagepunkt bildete, sind erstmals von Trajan angeordnet worden, und zwar gerade für die Provinz Kleinasien, wo Plinius Statthalter war, der durch seine Anfrage in dieser Sache das kaiserliche Edikt veranlasste."] and Dr. Pfleiderer boldly sums up these countries as the Roman province of Asia Minor, declares that Pliny was governor of Asia Minor, and that Trajan, in reply to a question addressed to him by Pliny, issued an edict, ordering a persecution of the Christians in the province of Asia Minor. It would not be easy to unite more errors in a single short sentence, (1) There was no such Roman province as Asia Minor. (2) There was for the ancients no such geographical or political entity as Asia Minor. (3) Pliny was governor, not of all the districts mentioned in I. Peter, but of the one province of Bithynia-Pontus. He had no authority in Cappadocia or Galatia or Asia. Therefore, if Trajan s orders extended only to Pliny s province, Dr. Pfleiderer’s explanation fails to account for the facts with which he is dealing. (4) Trajan did not issue any edict about the Christians. In the sequel we shall see how far any unprejudiced reader of the original letters could hold that Trajan first instituted a persecution of the Christians.

2. Arguing that the Epistles of Ignatius are a forgery, Dr. Pfleiderer says that the tale of Ignatius journey as a prisoner to be exposed to beasts in Rome is an unhistorical fiction; for there is no analogy in the second century to this transportation of the criminal from the place of trial to the Roman amphitheatre. [Note: Pfleiderer, " Das Urchristenthum," p. 826 : "Diese ganze Reise des Verurtheilten nach Rom ist eine ungeschichtliche Fiktion ; denn so oft auch Christen zum Thierkampf verurtheilt wurden, so findet sich doch im zweiten Jahrhundert keine Analogic zu diesem Trans port aus dem Gerichtsort ins romische Amphitheater."] But it is a commonplace of history that the practice was usual. It was regulated by special enactments, a few of which are preserved to us. If among the small number of cases known to we of Christians exposed to wild beasts no parallel to Ignatius occurs, that is no argument against the general practice. Mommsen expressly argues that the words of the Apocalypse, that Rome was “drunk with the blood of the martyrs," must be understood as referring to those who were condemned in the Eastern provinces and sent to Rome for execution. [Note: See Provinces of the Roman Empire, vol. ii. p. 199, of the English Translation.]

I do not quote these faults from any desire to pick holes in the work of scholars greater than myself, but solely because they are examples of false method. The question as to the date of I. Peter is a historical question, and the necessary condition of understanding it properly is to accurately conceive the circumstances and position of those to whom it is addressed. What confidence can be placed in the judgment about the authenticity of a historical document pronounced by a critic who is so hopelessly at sea in regard to elementary facts about the condition of the provinces to which the document relates? But Dr. Pfleiderer cares for none of these things. Ingenious and highly abstract philosophic thought reveals to him the whole evolution of Christian history, and with that knowledge clear in his mind he decides with secure confidence on the authenticity and date of historical documents. In truth historical arguments are to him of little importance and of no interest. His historical argument about I. Peter is a mere patergon, a mere make weight thrown in for the sake of appearance and effect: unreasonable people demand historical arguments about historical documents, and it looks well to give them. The whole value of Dr. Pfleiderer s learned, ingenious, and able work lies in another direction; but for us, who require the theory to be founded on the document, not the document cut to fit the theory, its value is nil. The false method which has just been alluded to is far too common. In a subject of such difficulty as the history of the early Church, a subject about which the only point that is universally agreed on is its obscurity, not a few writers feel so confident in their own particular theory that they condemn as spurious every piece of evidence that disagrees with it. This condemnation is sometimes justified by a professed examination of the evidence a mere pretence, because conducted with mind already made up and strained in the outlook for reasons to support their conclusion; at other times the pretence of examination is discarded, and a document, in spite of the general presumption in its favour on other grounds, is rejected or relegated to a later date, simply and solely because its admission is fatal to the critic’s pet theory.

6. THE POINT OF VIEW. No one can be free from bias in this subject, and perhaps, therefore, it would be best to put you on your guard by stating briefly the general point of view from which these lectures are written. The Roman Empire and the Church represent to the historian two different attempts to cope with the existing problems of society. The former started from the idea first articulated by Tiberius Gracchus that every Roman citizen deserved to occupy a situation of decent comfort, and to benefit in some degree by the wealth and prosperity of the whole state. It soon appeared that this idea implied political reform, or rather revolution. Experience further showed that this revolution, and the changed relations to the subject countries which were introduced by it, demanded a new religion. A religion was needed, for to the ancients a union with out a religious bond to hold it together was inconceivable. Every society made its union binding on its members by religious obligations and common ritual. The family tie meant, not common blood, but communion in the same family cultus. Patriotism was another form of adherence to the national religion.

Further, this religion must be a new one; for no existing religion was wider than national; [Note: Apparent exceptions, such as the worship of Isis, need not be here discussed. The general principle will not be disputed by any.] and no ancient religion wished to proselytize or to take in new members. The object of each was to confine its benefits to a small circle of devotees, and to enlist the aid of the god whom it worshipped against all strangers, all foreigners, all enemies i.e., against all who were not within the privileged circle. But the new Empire transcended national distinctions and national religions. Roman citizenship included an ever growing proportion of the population in every land round the Mediterranean, till at last it embraced the whole Roman world. This new unity therefore required a new religion to consecrate it, and to create a common idea and a tic. Half with conscious aim, half driven on unconsciously by the tide of circumstances, the new empire set about creating a new religion. It showed extraordinary skill in constructing the new system out of the old with the least possible change, taking up the existing religions and giving them a place in its scheme. The Emperor represented the majesty, the wisdom, and the beneficent power of Rome: he was in many cases actually represented in different parts of the empire as an incarnation of the god worshipped in that district, the Zeus Larasios of Tralles, the Men of Juliopolis, the Zeus Olympios of the Greeks in general. Even where this final step was not taken, the imperial cultus was, in the Asian provinces generally, organized as the highest and most authoritative religion, and the emperor was named along with and before the special deity of the district. Christianity also created a religion for the Empire, transcending all distinctions of nationality; but, far from striving to preserve continuity between the past and the future, it comprehended the past in a universal condemnation, "dust and ashes, dead and done with." It cannot be denied that the Christians were in a historical view unfair to the old religions and blind to certain fine conceptions lurking in them; but it is equally certain that the Imperial state religion had no vitality and nothing of the religious character. The path of development for the empire lay in accepting the religion offered it to complete its organization. Down to the time of Hadrian there was a certain progress on the part of the Empire towards recognition of this necessity; after Hadrian the progress ended, but also after Hadrian the development of the imperial idea ended, until he found a successor in Constantino. This view [Note: I may quote what I said in the Expositor, December 1889, p. 402: “One of the most remarkable sides of the history of Rome is the growth of ideas which found their realization and completion in the Christian Empire. Universal citizenship, universal equality, universal religion, a universal Church, all were ideas which the Empire was slowly working out, but which it could not realize till it merged itself in Christianity."] has been the guide in my reading, and has perhaps caused some bias in choosing facts. But I am glad to be able to refer to the eloquent and weighty pages in which Mommsen last year showed [Note: On pp. 416 ff. of a remarkable review of Neumann, which appeared in the Historische Zeitschrift, vol. xxviii., pp. 389-429, under the title of " Der Religions frevel nach romischem Recht."] that Christianity was in reality not the enemy but the friend of the Empire, that the Empire grew far stronger when the Emperors became Christian, that the religious attitude of the earlier centuries was a source of weakness rather than of strength, and the endeavour of the fourth century to make the state religion an abstract monotheism tolerant of all creeds and sects was soon found impracticable. But when Mommsen implies that the emperors would gladly have tolerated Christianity, but were occasionally forced by popular feeling and popular clamour to depart from their proper policy and persecute Christianity, I think this is true, but not a complete account. Instances of mere weak yielding to popular feeling occur; but it is not the case that the weakest emperors are the persecutors. The difficulty then is, how is the persecution of Christians by the emperors to be explained? Lightfoot has urged that Christianity was a religio illicit a, and as such forbidden by immemorial law. This is true, but it docs not constitute a sufficient explanation of the persecution. The same prohibition applied to many other religions which practically were never interfered with. Growing toleration of non-Roman religions was inseparable from the growth of the imperial idea and the gradual merging of Roman citizenship in Imperial citizenship. The exclusiveness of Roman religion, which sprang from the pride of Roman citizenship, necessarily grew weaker along with it. The sense of this growing change was not perhaps consciously and distinctly present to the mind of any Emperor except Hadrian, who is said to have entertained the thought of building temples everywhere to the unseen god. [Note: See Scriptores Histories Augusta, xviii. (Alex. Severus), 43. ] But it must have been dimly felt by all the emperors, and it certainly lies at the bottom of the growing indifference to the spread of foreign rites among the Romans. To explain the proscription of one religion alone, amid otherwise universal tolerance, is our first object.

Few historical questions have suffered more from loose expression and loose thought than this. It is universally agreed (1) that originally Christians were regarded as a mere Jewish sect, that the Empire did not concern itself with questions of Jewish law, and that Christianity benefited by the freedom and even favour granted to the Jewish religion by the Roman Government; (2) that at a later period there was an absolute proscription of Christianity by the empire, and war to the knife, between these two powers. The question at what time the one treatment was changed for the other, or whether any intermediate treatment different from both was in force for a time, is a delicate one, in which precision in word and in thought is absolutely essential. Until Mommsen had introduced more exact ideas as to the terms and forms of Imperial procedure, such precision was very difficult to practice; and even now to attain it is “hard and rare." The beginning of the declared and inexpiable war between the Empire and the Christians has been assigned to very different dates by modern writers. Some make it the result of a supposed edict of Septimius Severus, but Neumann has shown conclusively that no proof exists that Severus issued any edict on the subject. It illustrates the looseness with which the legal and administrative aspects of this question are treated, that Dr. Harnack, [Note: Theologische Zeitschrift, 1890, No. 4, col. 87.] in reviewing Neumann, continues to speak of this edict, whose existence Neumann has disproved. There is no proof, and we may add no probability, that Severus did more than answer by rescript questions addressed to him by provincial governors. This is no mere question of words and names; it is a question of prime consequence in understanding the relation of the Empire and of Severus to the Church.

Others date the beginning of this war from the reign of Trajan; [Note: This was the prevailing idea in Germany, and in all scholarship that was dominated by German influence, till Neumann. A slight variety of it is stated by Overbeck, Studien zur Geschichte der altcii Kirche, p. 94, “Before Nerva it is only by accident through the personal mood of one or another Emperor that the Christian sect found itself at enmity with the state."] Neumann recently derives it from Domitian, and dates the supposed change in the attitude of the State to the Church precisely 95 A.D. Where shall we find a safe point from which to start our investigation? This cannot be a matter of doubt. If we were allowed our choice of a piece of evidence about the view held by the Imperial administration with regard to the Christians, probably those most conversant with Roman history would ask for a private report addressed to the Emperor for purely business reasons, with no thought of publication, by some experienced official, possessing a good acquaintance with the ordinary imperial procedure, and for the Emperor s reply to it. That we possess in Pliny’s Report addressed to Trajan from Bithynia, probably in the latter months of the year 112, and Trajan’s Rescript to Pliny.