VIII
WHAT THE RELIGION OF JESUS OFFERED IN RETURN FOR THE HARDSHIPS CHRISTIANS HAD TO ENDURE IN THE EARLY CENTURIES
Such was the life of a Christian for nearly two hundred and fifty years after the deaths of Peter and Paul at Rome.
For all, as we have urged, even for the majority who were disciples of the gentler, less exacting school of teaching, but who generally accepted the yoke and burden of Christ, the life must have been very hard and difficult, at times even full of danger; while for some, i.e., for the disciples of the school of “Rigourists,” so hard—so austere—so full of nameless perils, that men now can scarcely credit that any could really have lived so difficult, so painful a life—could have listened to and striven in real earnest to obey such rules as the great Rigourist master, Tertullian, laid down for the faithful; as, for instance:
“Fast—because rigid fasting is a preparation for martyrdom; tortures will have no material to work on; your dry skins will better resist the iron claws; your blood, already exhausted, will flow less freely.”[85]
“Women, shun the marriage bond. To what purpose will you bear children, seeing you are longing to be taken out of this sinful world, and you are desirous to send your children before you[86] (to glory).”
“Ye women (take heed how you adorn yourselves), for I know not how the wrist that is accustomed to the (gemmed) bracelet will endure the roughness of the chain. I know not how the leg that has rejoiced in the golden anklet will endure the harsh restraint of the iron fetters. I fear the neck hung round with a chain of pearls and emeralds will leave scanty room for the sword of the executioner.” “Dear sisters, let us meditate on hardships, then when they come to us we shall not feel them; let us give up luxuries and we shall not regret them; for Christians now, remember, pass their time not in gold, but in iron. At this moment are the angels weaving for you robes of martyrdom.”[87]
But in return for all this, Christianity offered much—in truth, a splendid guerdon for the life of sacrifice. In the first place, the Christian was delivered from the dread spectre which constantly haunted the life of the pagan—the fear of death. Throughout life, sleeping and waking, to the pagan of all ranks and orders, death was an enemy. What the men of the pagan Empire in the early Christian centuries felt in respect of the great universal foe—what they thought of it—is well shown in the epitaphs on the pagan tombs of the first, second, and third centuries.[88]
Complete freedom from this ever-present dread was the immediate reward received by the believer: so far was death from being an enemy, that to the Christian it appeared as the best and most longed for friend. Again and again the Church was compelled to restrain rather than to encourage candidates for martyrdom. From Paul, who wrote how “he desired to depart and be with Christ, which was far better” (Phil. i. 23); from Ignatius, whose passionate desire for a martyr’s death appears and reappears, in his Letter to the Romans, in such words as “it is good for me to die for Jesus Christ, rather than to reign over the farthest bounds of the earth”; “Suffer me to receive the pure light when I come thither, then I shall be a man indeed”; “Let me be an imitator of the passion of my God” (To the Romans, vi.); from the thousand epitaphs in the catacomb tombs, which we can still read, we gather this knowledge—the absolute freedom of the Christian from that fear of death which weighed so heavily upon all pagan society.
The very expressions used by the disciples of the first centuries when speaking of the dread enemy,[89] bear curious witness to the new relation of the believer to the ancient foe of man; they spoke of death as “a passage into life”—as “a sleep.” The spot where the dead were laid was now termed “a cemetery”—“a place of sleeping”; burial was called “depositio”—the body laid up as it were in trust.