by F. W. Farrar
CHAPTER LIV
_IN THE BURNING FIERY FURNACE_
???????? ?? ????????? ?? ?? ???? ??????? ???? ????????? ???? ????????.--1 Pet. iv. 12.
‘Christianus etiam extra carcerem sæculo renuntiavit, in carcere autem etiam carceri.’--TERT. _Ad Mart._ 2.
The prisoners, men and women alike, were hurried into promiscuousdungeons, in a suffocating confinement which was itself ananticipated death. Next day an edict was published by the Emperor,saying that the Christians were the incendiaries of Rome, and wouldbe set apart for exemplary punishment. He characterised the wholesect as public enemies, enemies of the gods, and of the human race,whom he should make it his duty as far as possible to exterminate.The edict was well received. It was at first supposed that itsallegations were true, and that the Emperor had really succeededin lifting from his rule the vast weight of indignation which hadthreatened to endanger it.
Next day, half suffocated and half starved, and altogether inmiserable plight, a number of the prisoners were put to the torture,to enforce confession and a betrayal of their accomplices. Tigellinuspersonally presided, and gloated over their torments. It had becomeknown that Linus was their leader, and he was the first to suffer.The old man remained nobly constant. Urged to confess his crime,he said, ‘I am a Christian; but to be a Christian is not a crime.’Charged with complicity in the deeds of darkness which wereattributed to Christians, he indignantly repudiated them, and saidthat the laws of Christians branded not only such deeds with infamy,but even those vices which the heathen regarded as indifferent orvenial. Bidden to give up the names of his fellow-Christians, he saidthat they were many, but that he would rather die than betray them.No added intensity of torment could wring from him anything further,and he was carried back to prison, a pitiable sufferer, dislocatedin every limb. Indeed, so nigh was he unto death, that the jailors,burdened by the crowded and horrible condition of the prisoners,accepted a bribe from the Christians to allow him to be removed. Hewas taken, by Pomponia’s kindness, into her own house, and there waslovingly tended many days. He lived to send a greeting to Timotheusby St. Paul some years later; but he was never again able to resumehis functions as the bishop of the little community. Stricken to theheart by the anguish of witnessing the apparent destruction of theChurch, and hopelessly maimed by torture, he was removed in secrecyto one of the country villas of Aulus Plautius, and after beinglong confined to his bed, he died no less a martyr of the Neronianpersecution than any of his brethren.
Others showed equal fortitude. Foiled and savage, Tigellinus noticedamong the prisoners a timid, shrinking boy, and ordered him to bestripped and laid upon the rack, confident that anything might bewrung from him. But the poor boy could only keep repeating,
‘I am a Christian! I am a Christian! but we are innocent. We do nowrong. The crimes you charge us with are false.’
‘Give up the names of your accomplices, jail-bird,’ said Tigellinus,striking him fiercely on the cheek.
‘I am no jail-bird,’ said the boy; ‘I am free-born. Oh, set me freefrom this anguish! I have done no wrong.’
‘You shall try another turn or two of the rack first, _crucisalus_,’said Tigellinus. ‘Confess, and you shall not only be set free, butrewarded.’
His limbs were stretched still further. A groan of agony burst fromhis lips, and the sweat stood in thick dews over the face which hadbecome pale as death; but he spoke not, and fainted. When they weretaken back to prison, the Christians did their utmost to tend andconsole the glorious young confessor.
‘How were you strengthened,’ they asked him, ‘to endure such pangs?’
‘When all was at the worst,’ he said, ‘it seemed to me that musicsounded in my ears, and a fair youth with wings stood by me who wipedthe perspiration from my forehead. And seeing him I felt that I couldhold out even to death.’
‘Try a woman this time,’ said Tigellinus.
The executioners seized the deaconess Phœbe, who, since she leftCenchreæ with the Epistle to the Romans, had stayed and workedin Rome; and with her they seized two other virgins who were alsodeaconesses.
But the constancy of womanhood also remained unshaken, and thePræfect began to fear that the attempt to secure evidence would failas completely as in his plot against Octavia. He stamped, and cursedthe Christians by all his gods, and raved impotently against theirbrutal obstinacy, as effort after effort failed. Then he ran hisexperienced eyes over the throng, and fixed them on one man whoseabject face seemed to promise good effects from the application ofterror. His name was Phygellus.
‘Seize that man,’ he said to the lictors.
‘Oh, do not torture me!’ exclaimed the wretch. ‘I am not--I am not,indeed, a Christian.’
The other Christians turned their eyes upon him with a look ofreproach, and he trembled; but he continued to asseverate, ‘I amnot a Christian.’
‘Then how came you to be arrested in the assembly of those vagabonds?’
‘They seduced me; they bewitched me; they are sorcerers.’
‘Then throw these grains of frankincense on the fire in honour ofJupiter, and worship the Genius of the Emperor.’
The man did as he was required, though the Christians murmured tohim--
‘Will you be an apostate? Will you deny the cross of Christ?’
‘Now then,’ said Tigellinus, ‘tell us the names of their ringleaders.’
Phygellus hesitated. He had been ready to save himself; but he hadnot contemplated the destruction of his fellows.
‘On to the rack with him!’ said Tigellinus.
The man was laid shrieking on the instrument of torture, but themoment the screw was turned, he cried,
‘I will confess; I will confess.’
‘Do the Christians kill infants, and eat their flesh?’
‘No.’
‘Do you persist in that?’
‘Yes.’
‘Try the rack again.’
‘Spare me! spare me!’ he cried. ‘If you torture me, I shall sayanything--any lie you ask me; but these stories about the Christiansare not true.’
‘Will you now tell us all you know, without any more torture?’
‘I will.’
‘Did the Christians set fire to Rome?’
‘I did not see them doing it; but they were always talking aboutChrist being manifested in flaming fire, and about the burning ofthe world.’
‘That will do. Now give us some names.’
‘There are hundreds--there are thousands of them,’ said the renegade.
‘Then it will be all the easier for you to tell us some of them.’
‘Must I?’ he pleaded. ‘They have done no harm.’
‘On to the rack with him,’ said Tigellinus, furiously. ‘He trifleswith us and wastes our time.’
‘No, no,’ moaned the coward; ‘I will tell you. There is Linus thebishop, and Cletus the presbyter, and Prisca, and Aquila.’
‘Who are they?’
They are Jewish tent-makers, and they live on the Aventine; but theyleft Rome recently. And Amplias, Claudia, Stachys, Apelles, of thehousehold of Narcissus; Persis, a freedwoman of Pomponia Græcina;Asyncritus, Patrobas, slaves of Flavius Clemens; and Nereus and hisdaughter Junia, manumitted by the centurion Pudens.’
‘We want more names still.’
‘There are Marcus, Felicitas, Phœbe, Helpis, in the house of AulusPlautius; and there are Tryphæna, Tryphosa, Stephanus, Crescens,Thallus, Herodion, and Artemas, of Cæsar’s household.’
‘None but slaves and freedmen?’
‘There is Aristobulus, the auctioneer, who has a house in the Subura.He and all his family are Christians. And Andronicus, and Junius--they are merchants who import goats’ hair from Cilicia, and arerelations of Paulus of Tarsus, whom they call an Apostle.’
‘Come, this is to the purpose,’ said Tigellinus, rubbing his hands.‘Are there any soldiers?’
‘Yes; Vitalis and Celsus, the Prætorians, and, I think, Pudens thecenturion, who has gone
to Britain and--’
He stopped suddenly, and his face assumed a look of terror. For thesoldier Urbanus who stood behind the chair of Tigellinus was one who,though not yet a Christian, had been among those who had been chainedto Paul, and had acquired a kindly feeling towards the persecutedbrethren. Fixing his eyes on the apostate, he made so menacing agesture with his hand on his dagger, that Phygellus began to stammer.
‘I do not know,’ he said, ‘the names of any more soldiers.’
‘Are there any persons of rank?’
Fortunately Phygellus had never found much favour among theChristians. Their leaders had not entrusted to him their secrets.He was unaware that Pomponia was a Christian, and had not heard ofthe conversion of Flavius Clemens and Domitilla. But he ventured athaphazard to mention Aliturus, whom he had seen in the tumult.
But Tigellinus knew that it was not yet time to interfere with such aman as Aliturus. He laughed aloud.
‘What!’ he said; ‘do you think that on the evidence of such scum asyou we are going to arrest the delight of the populace--the gayestand fairest pantomime in Rome? There, we have had enough of you.’
And, spurning him with his foot, he bade the lictors to keep him safetill more evidence was required.
There were a few others--chiefly neophytes and catechumens ofunformed character--who, either from indifference and insincerity,or to escape for the moment from the tormentors, gave evidencesufficient for the nefarious purpose of the Præfect. The consequencewas a wholesale series of arrests, till every prison in Rome wascrowded to deadliness with innocent confessors, who, while theydenied all crime, admitted themselves to be Christians, and wereready, if God so willed, to die for their faith.
Tigellinus savagely recommended to Nero that they should be executedin a mass.
‘Rome,’ he said, ‘is too crowded. As it is, Cæsar, you aremaintaining many thousands of the destitute, and among them hundredsof these Christians, whose lodgings have been burnt. Why not get ridof such criminal wretches?’
‘All the people hate them,’ said Poppæa, ‘as despisers of the gods,and all the Jews hate them. From Josephus, and the High Priest, andTiberius Alexander, the nephew of their great writer Philo, who onceheaded a deputation to the Emperor Gaius, I hear nothing of them butevil.’
‘Their arrest has made a wonderful difference already,’ saidTigellinus, ‘and has silenced many inconvenient rumours. Publishanother edict, Emperor, saying that you have now the amplest evidenceof their guilt, and that they shall be executed when you have decidedthe method of their death.’
‘I will reserve some of their ringleaders for more conspicuouspunishment,’ said Nero. ‘The common herd can be dealt withafterwards.’
‘We have got the man they call their bishop,’ said the Præfect. ‘Heis an artisan named Linus. He has been tortured, and is said to bedying. But we can strike a deadlier blow yet. My spies tell me thatone of the Twelve they call Apostles, whose name is John, is in Rome,and that another is on his way whose name is Peter. They were friendsof him whom they call Christus. We have lost sight of John for themoment; but we shall make sure of having them both soon.’
* * * * *
The Church in Rome was smitten to the very dust by the terrible blowwhich had befallen her, and it was necessary that the brethren shouldtake the utmost precautions, and meet only in the deepest secrecy.In this they were aided by Aliturus. He had a villa a short distancefrom Rome on the Salarian road, the grounds of which could beapproached by country paths known to few but shepherds and goatherds.To this villa he took the Apostle John for safety, and there hereceived from him such wise and loving instruction that he becamea catechumen. Meanwhile he freely used the wealth which he hadacquired, to alleviate the sufferings of the brethren. The visitingof those in prison was regarded as one of the primary duties ofthe Christian’s life, and no considerations of personal safety wereallowed to interfere with it. The Apostle went from prison to prisonbreaking bread, and entrusting to the officers of the Church, or tothose who had been longest in the faith, the money which was suppliedto him by Pomponia and by the actor. In this way he and others, whowere as yet unmolested, were enabled to minister to the necessitiesof the captives, and also to speak to them such words of hope as fellupon their souls like dew from heaven. It was inevitable that hisnoble and venerable figure should soon be recognised. The spies ofthe Præfect were everywhere, and, noticing the profound reverencewith which the Elder was received, they were soon able to identifyhim. He had prepared Aliturus to expect that if on any day he did notreturn to the villa it would be because he was lodged in prison. Theordinary dungeons were so full that the Apostle was confined in thewet and rocky vault of the Mamertine.
In that prison he was visited by Pomponia, who contributed by everymeans in her power to mitigate his hardships, and received hiscounsel and his apostolic blessing. She no longer hesitated to goin person to console the confessors. She found, indeed, that theyneeded but little consolation. The majority of them were in astate of spiritual exaltation which made their faces radiant andtransformed their hard fare into manna which was angels’ food. Theyturned their prisons into minsters, and the coarse pagan jailorsand German guards were amazed when they heard those abodes of miseryringing with sweet voices and the holy melodies of unknown songs. Ineach place of confinement they held their daily worship, conducted bypresbyter, or deacon, or reader, and broke with one another the breadof Holy Communion. They knew that death awaited them, but death wasto be a martyrdom, and they looked to it, not as a curse, but as acoronation. Pomponia, sharing all their feelings, found that it wasonly to their bodily wants that she had need to minister.
She did not shrink from personal danger: if arrested, she would haveat once avowed that she was a Christian. But her name had not beenmentioned by those who gave evidence. Having once been tried onthe charge of holding a foreign superstition and acquitted, it wascontrary to the principle of the Roman law that she should againbe accused. The deadly wrong which Nero’s wickedness had alreadyinflicted on Aulus Plautius had excited an indignation among all thebest elements of Roman society, which, though it was voiceless, hadmade itself felt; and among the populace Pomponia was half worshippedfor her abounding kindness and large-handed charities. Her visitingof the prisons was set down to the same strange but harmlesseccentricity which made her eschew jewels and wear robes of suchsombre hue.
One day, during a visit to the largest prison, she encounteredTigellinus, who was going his rounds with an escort of Prætorians toexult over the multitudes of his victims. He inspired such dread thatthe noblest senators cringed to him, and Pomponia had reason to knowthat he hated her with all the energy of wickedness which is reprovedby the spectacle of virtue.
He made her a low obeisance of mock respect, which she scarcelynoticed by the slightest inclination of her head.
‘The fair Pomponia is fond of prisons,’ he said, with a sneer, ‘butshe despises the poor Præfect of the Prætorians.’
‘Pomponia,’ she replied, ‘is not accustomed to the language ofinsincere and empty compliment. She despises none; but, if thePræfect desires her opinion, there are some of his humblest soldierswhom she respects more than him.’
Tigellinus cast on her a glance of savage hatred. He quailed beforeher queenly dignity of goodness, but could not bear to be foiled inthe hearing of his escort, whose smiles had scarcely been suppressed.
‘Let Pomponia take care that she does not herself become the denizenof a prison. Some have whispered that she is as much a Christian asthese whom she visits, and deserves the same fate.’
‘I deserve it,’ she says, ‘as much and as little as these do, fornone knows better than Tigellinus that they are perfectly innocent.’
Tigellinus lost all self-control. ‘Do you not know, woman,’ heexclaimed[*17] hoarsely, ‘that your life is in my power?’
‘Man!’ she answered, with the calmest disdain, ‘you are addressingthe wife of Aulus Plautius. My life is not in your
power, but in thepower of Him who gave it. I leave you, and shall continue to tendthese hapless prisoners.’
She passed by him and he dared not meet her glance. To beardTigellinus required a courage of which scarcely one person wascapable. But Pomponia thought it her duty to attempt a yet moredangerous effort, and, if possible, to have an appeal made to theEmperor on behalf of the doomed Christians. She went to Senecain his retirement. She found him anxious and miserable, fullof disappointment and self-disgust. He did not respond to herentreaties. ‘I have no sympathy,’ he said, ‘with the Christians.They are only a sect of the Jews, and I should like to see theirwhole superstition eradicated.’
‘You call it their superstition,’ said Pomponia. ‘Is it more of asuperstition than the worship of what you have called “our ignoblecrowd of gods”?’
‘Perhaps not,’ said Seneca. ‘But the popular religion is one thing,and philosophy is another.’
‘Would you, then, be content to see the mass of the pagan populationunjustly tortured, unjustly slain, because their religion is anoxious superstition?’
‘They do not render themselves amenable to the laws.’
‘Nor do these poor Christians. I know their tenets. Their moralteaching again and again reminds me of your own, which it sometimesresembles almost to verbal identity.’
‘I have heard,’ said Seneca, ‘that their Paulus of Tarsus hasgenius and style; but it is to me incredible. What can he know ofphilosophy?’
‘Pardon me, dear friend,’ replied Pomponia, ‘he knows a philosophyfar diviner than that of the Porch, far nobler than that of theGarden or the Lyceum. It is a philosophy which may not puff up thepride of intellect, but can sway the motives of the life. You mayperhaps find in Rome--though I doubt it--ten philosophers who livepurely and simply, but I could find you many hundreds of Christians.’
‘Men of the common herd,’ he said, in a tone of some disdain.
‘Are they not our fellow-men? Did not one God make them and us? DidHe mean only a handful to be blessed, and the rest to perish? Haveyou no pity for them? Have not you yourself said, “Man is a sacredthing to man”?’
‘Why should I waste my life in an unavailing pity? Pity is a weaknesswhich the true philosopher should suppress.’
‘Ah!’ replied Pomponia, ‘I see the secret why Stoicism fails. Ittalks of following nature, and it flings away its sweetest elements.’
‘I could do nothing for you, Pomponia, even if I would,’ said Seneca,wearily; ‘I live a daily death.’
‘A daily death?’ she replied--‘in this splendid palace, with everyresource of wealth, with slaves, with villas, with books, withgardens, with boundless fame, with a wife faithful and beloved,with a host of friends?’
‘What avail such things,’ said Seneca, ‘with the sword of Damoclestrembling over my neck? My only safety is the life which I describein my little tragedy of “Thyestes”--a life which causes neitherjealousy nor fear, and where one does not dread to drink poison ingolden goblets.[99] If I am alive at this moment, I believe I owe itto the fact that my freed man Cleonicus, whom Nero bribed to poisonme, failed to do so because I only eat fruits from the tree, anddrink nothing but running water.[100] Yet I am wretched. SometimesI all but accept the view that, after all, men are no better than alaughing-stock of the gods, whatever gods there be.’
‘And are you so miserable, Seneca,’ she said, ‘and so hopeless? Comewith me to the prisons of the poor Christians, and I will show youmen who are poor and yet happy; ground to the dust by daily hatredand cruelty, in hunger, and nakedness, and prison, and yet happy;with torture and the vilest deaths immediately awaiting them, andyet happy. Shall I tell you how Paulus of Tarsus describes himselfand them? “We are troubled on every side,” he wrote to Corinth, “yetnot distressed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but notforsaken; cast down, but not destroyed.”’
‘That is very eloquent,’ said Seneca. ‘I should like to read morethat this Christian has written.’
‘You shall,’ she answered; ‘and you will find in his letterssomething better than eloquence of style. But will you despise, willyou do nothing to assist, the men and women whose faith enables themnot only to _write_ thus, but thus to live?’
Seneca sighed deeply. ‘My power with the Emperor is gone, and I ammenaced with death and confiscation. But I am rich still, Pomponia.Take the sum of gold in this purse. It may at least help to relievethe sufferings of these poor creatures, perhaps even to secure bybribes the escape of some of them. It is all that I can do.’
Pomponia did not refuse it, and bade him a kindly farewell. Butshe never visited the philosopher without feeling, in spite of heraffection for him and her gratitude to him, how ineffectual were hishalf-truths, how vain the pomp of declamatory epigram in which theywere enshrined. The same ineffectualness, having its roots in aninsincerity so insincere as to be habitual and unconscious, markedthe whole of the contemporary morality. It ended, and was understoodto end, in self-deceiving words.
But, having failed with Seneca, Pomponia hardly knew what to do. Tothe Emperor himself she would not go. His mere presence, since hisfoul murder of her young Aulus, made her tremble with loathing asthough she stood before an incarnate demon. His leering sensuouslooks, his slothful obesity, his face deformed by an eczema causedby gluttony, intemperance, and uncleanness, filled her with suchrepulsion that she could not speak to him. But she had sometimesmet Poppæa in her least guilty days, when she was the wife of RufiusCrispinus, and she hoped that there might remain some spot in theheart of the lovely Empress which was not wholly callous to theappeal of pity.
To her surprise she found Poppæa bathed in tears, and gently askedher why she wept. There was something about Pomponia which seemed atonce to awaken confidence. She had that temperament which in moderntimes would be called magnetic, and she always called out thebest feelings of those with whom she spoke. The haughty, beautiful,triumphant wife of Nero would not have dreamed of suffering any oneto be admitted to her in a moment of sorrow and weakness, exceptthe wife of Aulus Plautius. To others she never appeared except indresses such as the world could not parallel, surrounded by luxury,and breathing of the most delicate perfumes. But as Pomponia enteredshe did not even attempt to remove the stain of tears from herglowing cheeks, or to arrange the disordered tresses of her gleaminghair.
‘Pomponia is welcome,’ she said. ‘She does not often deign to visitthe poor Empress. She should have been a vestal virgin, and movedabout surrounded by sanctities. But we wicked people have our sorrowstoo. I was thinking of my boy Rufius. I love him more than anythingon earth, and Nero hates to see him, and will not let him visit me.The poor boy might just as well have no mother.’
Pomponia paused before she spoke, and had to gulp down a choking sob.‘I can sympathise with you, Empress. My son Aulus was a little olderthan your charming Rufius. He was manly; he was beautiful; he gavepromise of all his father’s virtues.’
‘I know, I know,’ said Poppæa, turning away her face, on which rose,in spite of herself, a burning blush. ‘He offended Nero in some way,and he is dead.’
‘He offended him not,’ said Pomponia. ‘How could an innocent lad likemy Aulus have been guilty of treason? Let us speak no more of him.There are those for whom death is more merciful than life, and I didnot come here to bewail my own bereavements.’
‘I pleaded for your boy, Pomponia--indeed, I did. I deigned toprostrate myself before Nero that he would not injure him, that hewould not have him slain. Would you believe that I--I, the Empress,--have fears lest something evil should be done to my young Rufius?’
‘May Heaven protect his youth!’ said Pomponia. ‘If it will be anycomfort to you I will see him, and ask him to our palace. My husbandis kind to all the young, and will love him for the sake of his ownlost boy. And I will take your messages to him.’
‘Thanks, Pomponia, thanks,’ said the Empress. ‘Nowhere could he bebetter than in your virtuous home. But why have you sought me--youto whom the Palace is justly hateful?�
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‘I come,’ answered Pomponia, ‘to plead for your pity. There is nota prison in Rome which is not full of innocent men and women, calledChristians. They are charged with having set fire to Rome, and withmany other atrocities. Empress, they are innocent! Will you not useyour influence for them? If you have ever done evil--forgive me,Poppæa, but I know not the language of falsehood, or of flattery--will you not now try to do a great deed of good?’
‘Your kindness deceives you,’ answered the Empress. ‘From all that Ihave heard they thoroughly deserve their fate.’
‘Your mind has been poisoned against them by their enemies the Jews.Believe me, Poppæa--for I know them well--their lives are almost theonly beautiful lives spent in this wicked city.’
‘Anything I could say for them would be in vain, Pomponia. I am notas you are--would that I were!--but let me tell you what no otherliving being should hear from me. Since our child Claudia died, Iam no longer all-powerful with Nero. I can stimulate his course inevil--a touch will do that; but I cannot turn him from any wrong onwhich he and Tigellinus have agreed.’
Seeing that her efforts were useless, Pomponia left her, and wouldhave kissed her hand; but the Empress kissed her on the cheek, andsaid, ‘Oh, Pomponia, deign to be the friend of the hapless Poppæa.The work of her ambitious guilty dreams is already crumbling intoruins. She needs to have one friend who is not wicked.’
* * * * *
In times so oppressive the Christians who were still free could notforego the duty and support of common prayer and Holy Communion,however great might be the risk. Accustomed to hatred andpersecution, they were also accustomed to precautions and secretsigns, and by ways of communicating with each other unobserved andunexpected they made it known that on the next Sunday, deep in thenight, they would meet in a secluded vineyard at the back of thevilla of Aliturus, and that Peter of Bethsaida, the Apostle ofChrist, had arrived in Rome, and would be present.
By far routes, under the curtain of darkness, they met in thevineyard, a deeply sorrowing and diminished band. But they feltreasonably secure. Aliturus was beloved by his slaves, to whom he wasalways generous, and he had trusted those in whom he most confidedto watch on every side, and give signals by waving a torch at theslightest approach of danger. He himself went to the assembly, and,though as a catechumen he could not receive the holy mysteries, hejoined in the prayers, and received the blessing of Peter, as hehad received the blessing of John. Nothing could have been morecomforting than the brief words of the great Apostle. His gray hairadded to the venerable aspect of his advancing years; but his eyewas undimmed, his cheek still ruddy with the long years of the windsof Galilee, and holy courage shone in his weather-beaten features.There was a certain fire and force in all he said which gave itan impressiveness beyond that which was contained in the wordsthemselves. Plain and practical as was ‘the pilot of the GalileanLake,’ there hung about him a reflection of something which elevatedhim above himself--as though the sunlight of Gennesareth still playedaround him, and the glory of Hermon shone upon his face. Everywhereamong the good he commanded the deep reverence which his simplicitydid not seek; and everywhere among the evil, he inspired the awewhich his humble manliness might seem to deprecate. He told theChristians that he had hastened his journey to Rome, when he hadheard at Corinth the frightful perils with which his beloved brethrenwere surrounded. Were they suffering as Christians? Then happy werethey! Had not Jesus said, ‘Ye shall be hated of all men for my name’ssake; but he that endureth to the end shall be saved’? Only let themgive no ground for the enemy to blaspheme. ‘It is the will of God,brethren,’ he said--and every syllable came home to their heartsin the deep stillness--‘that by well-doing ye put to silence theignorance of foolish men; as free, yet not using your freedom as apretext for vice, but as the servants of God. Christ suffered for us;let us be ready to suffer for Him. Be united, then, brethren; havecompassion one for another in this dread crisis; be not afraid oftheir faces; be not afraid of their words; be not afraid of theirterror; neither be troubled, but sanctify the Lord God, and the peacewhich passeth understanding shall stand sentry over your hearts.’
The Apostle ceased, and Cletus, who during the desperate illnessof Linus was the leading presbyter, told the brethren that, frominformation which had reached him, a fresh edict would be immediatelyproclaimed, which declared Christianity to be an unlawful religion,and threatened with the worst forms of death any one who wasconvicted of it. Under these circumstances they could not find asecurer place of meeting than the present, but they were surroundedby spies, and in spite of all caution must be prepared for the worst.And John the Beloved, from the vault of the Tullianum, had sent themhis blessing, and messages of peace.
