Then follow the stern, unalterable words which attach the penalty of death to any person who persisted in claiming the name of Christian.
But extenuating circumstances, such as youth, may be taken into account, if the magistrate please to do so.
Any approach to repentance, accompanied with compliance with the law of the Empire, in the matter of offering incense on the pagan altars, is to be accepted, and the offender at once is to be pardoned.
The magistrate is by no means to search for Christians; but if a formal accusation be made by an open accuser, then inquiry must follow; and if the accused recognizes the justice of the charge, and declines to recant, then death must follow.
The accusation of an anonymous person, however, must never be received; the Emperor adding his strongest condemnation of all anonymous denunciations. “This kind of thing does not,” writes Trajan, “belong to our age and time.”
Tertullian (closing years of second century) quotes and sharply criticizes Trajan’s “rescript.” He writes somewhat as follows: “What a contradictory pronouncement it is. The Emperor forbids the Christians should be searched for—he therefore looks on them surely as innocent persons; and then he directs that if any are brought before the tribunal, they must be punished with death as though they were guilty ones! In the same breath he spares them and rages against them. He stultifies himself; for if Christians are to be condemned as Christians, why are they not to be searched for? If, on the other hand, they are to be considered as innocent persons and in consequence not to be searched for, why not acquit them at once when they appear before the tribunal?... You condemn an accused Christian, yet you forbid him to be inquired after. So punishment is inflicted, not because he is guilty, but because he has been discovered,—though anything which might bring him to light is forbidden.” (Apology 2.)
The brilliant and eloquent Latin Father, with the acuteness of a trained and skilful lawyer, lays bare the illogical character of the imperial rescript. The truth was that after carefully weighing the facts laid before him by Pliny, the Emperor clearly recognized that such an organization—so far-reaching, so numerous and powerful, was contrary to the established principles of Roman government. The Christian sect must be discouraged, and if possible suppressed; but Trajan saw at the same time that the spirit of the Christians, their teaching and practice, were absolutely innocent, even morally excellent; so he shrank from logically carrying out the severe measures devised by the Roman government in such cases. In other words, his really noble and generous nature prevented him sanctioning the wholesale destruction which a strictly logical interpretation of the Roman law would have brought upon a very numerous body of his subjects.
But in spite of the evident goodwill of the great Emperor and his eminent lieutenant, the sword of persecution was left hanging over the heads of the Christian sect suspended by a very slender cord. How often the slender cord snapped is told in the tragic story of the Christians in the pagan empire during the two hundred years which followed the correspondence between Pliny and Trajan.