Onesimus: Memoirs of a Disciple of St. Paul

by Edwin Abbott Abbott

§ 5. HOW I CAME TO PHILOCHRISTUS, A DISCIPLE OF THE LORD IN BRITAIN.

About the seventh year of the Emperor Vespasianus, it pleased the Lord, in a manner altogether unexpected and marvellous, to reveal to me the names of my parents. There was a certain Philochristus, a Jew by birth but not one of the Jewish faction, a man of some learning, who had studied Greek letters at Alexandria; and he had been a disciple of the Lord Jesus, having himself seen the Lord in the flesh. This man I had met many years ago at Antioch, and, being drawn to him by his love of truth and the simplicity of his nature, I had recounted to him the story of my life, telling him the place and exact time wherein I had been found as a child at Pergamus, and withal showing him (for so the Lord would have it) the very token that had been hung round the neck of my brother Chrestus, which I then wore. About this time therefore I received a letter from Philochristus (who was then in Britain or Londinium), telling me that he had found my former nurse, one Stratonice, who had come to Britain as a slave in the household of Pomponia the wife of Aulus Plautius the legate, and who now belonged to the saints that were in Londinium. This Stratonice, it seemed, had chanced to speak to Philochristus about her former mistress, how her twin sons were taken from her by the guile of some runaway slave, she being then in Asia, in the last year of the Emperor Tiberius (mentioning the exact year when my brother and I had been found); and when Philochristus further questioned her whether any sign or token had been on the children, she replied that one bore round his neck just such a token, and with the same inscription, as I had shown to Philochristus. She added that the slave, who had been persuaded thereto by one that desired to make a way to an inheritance through our death, had confessed his guilt three or four years after the deed, and that my mother (whose name was Euelpis the daughter of Nicomachus, an Athenian by birth) had, since that time, made continual search for us, at Pergamus and elsewhere, even till the day of her death, which had happened in the first year of the Emperor Vespasianus; but my father (whose name was Clinias the son of Aristodemus, also an Athenian by birth) had died many years before.

Ever since I had spoken with the priest of Asclepius at Pergamus, I had been assured in my mind that my mother had not willingly deserted us; yet even now it was joy to know for certain that foul practice, and not our mother’s fault, had cast my brother Chrestus and me upon the world; and great desire seized me to have some speech with my old nurse, Stratonice, concerning my parents before she died. So finding an occasion when I could conveniently leave Colossæ, I journeyed to Britain to Philochristus, meaning to return in a short space. But after I had satisfied my heart’s desire, learning all the story of the goodness and love and sorrow of my beloved mother from Stratonice (who lived but three months after my coming to Britain) Philochristus persuaded me to tarry with him yet longer, first for a few months, and then for a year; and, in fine, a door being opened to me of the Lord, I labored with him in the Church of Londinium for the space of seven years, in peace and great joy. For I was drawn toward the old man more than I can describe, because he wholly was given to the Lord Jesus and abhorred vain quarrels and disputations and (which was not so in all the saints) he added to his love of Christ such a love of letters and learning that (next to my beloved master Paulus) he, more than any other, seemed to join together that which is best both in the Jews and in the Greeks.

From the lips of this my beloved teacher I received the tradition of the words and deeds of the Lord pure and uncorrupted; and it was no small strength and refreshment to hear the very sayings of Christ himself from one whose love of truth appeared in this saying of his, a saying often repeated in his doctrine, that “he loved to think of the Lord Jesus as Son of man, and also as Son of God; but he loved no less to think of him as the Eternal Truth, whom no lie could serve nor please.” Moreover, because he discerned the divine nature to consist not so much in the performance of fleshly wonders as in the working of spiritual works, for this cause he never was led to magnify (as I had heard some magnify) the mighty acts of Jesus in the healing of the diseases of the body; but he spoke the more of his divine power in casting down mountains of sin, and in the uprooting of error, and in satisfying the hungry soul with bread, and in cleansing the spotted soul from all the defilements of Satan. Therefore in all his discourses, without any straining after new and convenient traditions, and without any fear and avoidance of old traditions as being not convenient, he spoke of the Lord Jesus as being verily a man in all points, sin only excepted; subject, as men are subject, to birth and pain and death; but, none the less, as being the Beginning and the Goal of human life, the Eternal Love of God, spiritually begotten of God before the foundation of the world. In this doctrine I rejoiced, and this doctrine I strove to teach; and it was a great delight that here were no Greek factions nor Jewish factions, nor disputations about traditions, or prophecies, or aught else; but all was peace and harmony, as if in some haven, shut in and sheltered by the hills, wherein the mariner, resting from long tossing on the deeps, can scarce hear the roaring of the sea without.

But after seven years had thus passed away in peace it being now the second year of the Emperor Domitianus, it came to pass that new troubles fell upon the Church; and, the Bishop of Berœa having borne witness for the Lord with his blood in a tumult in that city, I was called to the charge of the flock there; and the voice of the Lord bade me go. So bidding farewell to the beloved Elder Philochristus with much sorrow, well knowing that I should not again behold him in the flesh, I set forth with his blessing upon my journey, intending first to go to Rome and there to tarry some days, and so to Berœa.

§ 6. OF THE CHURCH IN ROME, AND OF THE NEW GOSPELS.

When I came to Rome I was well received of the brethren, and I tarried there two months, observing the manner of their worship, and the teaching of the catechumens and the discourses of the elders to the faithful. But I seemed at first to be listening to a new Gospel; so great a change had fallen on the Church since I had last tarried in the great city, about fifteen years before. This appeared, not only in their worship, but also in the pictures and sculptures wherewith they had begun to adorn the tombs of those that fell asleep in the Lord; for in these I perceived that those very beliefs whereof I had written to Artemidorus as being currently reported among the faithful but not yet added to the Tradition, were now accepted by all. For example, when I entered into one of the places where the congregations commonly assemble themselves for worship—these are quarries, after the manner of galleries, hewn out of the rock under the earth beneath the city, commonly called catacombs, and used for entombments by the faithful—I perceived there the figure of a certain prophet, with a scroll in his hand, pointing to a Woman which bare a child in her arms, and above the child was a star; and I questioned my companions whether this was the Lord Jesus, the Son of the Virgin Mother, and they said “Yes,” but when I went on to speak of the Virgin as the Spiritual Sion, which is the Church of God, then they said, “Nay, but it sheweth the mother of our Lord according to the flesh, according to the saying of the prophet, ‘Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.’” Then asking concerning the star, I said that I supposed that it represented the brightness of the Messiah, even as it was written in the Scriptures that “a star should come out of Jacob.” To this they assented, “but,” added one, “it is also well-known that a star, visible to the eyes of men, did verily shine forth in the days of Herod, being seen of many nations, and especially in the East, insomuch that then was fulfilled the saying of the Psalms that the kings of Arabia and Saba should bring gifts.” “Are these things then,” said I, “contained in the Traditions of the Acts of the Lord?” Then he that had spoken replied, “No, not in the Tradition, but in a certain supplement which is now beginning everywhere to be read in all the churches, and it is said to have been put forth by the interpreters and disciples of one of the Apostles:” but another correcting him, said that one of the Apostles himself had written it, not indeed Petrus nor Jacobus who were unlearned men ignorant of letters, but in all likelihood Mattheus, as having been in earlier days a tax-gatherer and therefore ready with his pen.

Going on a little further I saw on the walls another picture of men supping at a table, and the food two fishes and some loaves. When I asked what this meant, they told me that it signified the banquet of the kingdom of God wherein all the faithful partake of the body of the Lord who, said they, is our Bread of Life, and also our true ΙΧΘΥΣ; and “of the two fishes,” said they, “the one denoteth Baptism, whereby the faithful enter into Christ, and the other the Lord’s Supper, whereby they are made partakers of the Lord’s body, so that they remain in him and he in them.” “And is this also,” I asked, “in the Tradition?” “Neither in the Tradition,” said they, “nor in the Supplement, but it is a symbol.” Then I took courage to speak concerning that other parable of a banquet, wherein I had been wont to teach how the Twelve had been bidden by the Lord Jesus to minister both of the Bread of Life and of the Fishes, asking them whether they interpreted this also spiritually and not according to the letter, even as they interpreted that other story of the ΙΧΘΥΣ. But hereat their countenances changed, and they said, “Nay, but this story is written according to the letter in the Tradition of the Gospel.” Then I told them how Philochristus the Elder had related to me that the Lord Jesus himself, in speaking of these matters, had rebuked his disciples because they understood him not, saying unto them, that when he spoke of leaven, and of bread, he spoke not of earthly bread or leaven, but of spiritual leaven and spiritual bread. But they replied that “it was not so written in the Tradition now, and that Philochristus (albeit to be reverenced as a faithful disciple of the Lord) was not to be too much trusted as a remembrancer of the Tradition, because he had lived now many years apart from the rest of the saints, not having experience of that which had been from year to year newly revealed to the Church, so that he knew naught save what he himself had heard and seen of the Lord Jesus, and this in all likelihood faintly and imperfectly remembered by him, as being well-stricken in years, not much less than fourscore and ten.” It came into my mind that to be thus all alone, remembering and teaching the words of Christ which he himself had heard (apart from controversies and colors and glosses of those who were disputing rather than remembering) was perhaps rather a help than a harm to Philochristus. However at that time I said no more.

On the morrow, coming somewhat late into the congregation in the midst of their worship, I heard them singing a psalm which, because there arose hence a question afterwards between myself and the brethren, I will here set down; and as near as I can remember, the words were these:—

1.