The fourth great persecution took place under Antoninus the Philosopher, and, with different degrees of severity in different places, continued throughout the whole of his reign. In this persecution perished the famous Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, said to have been the friend and companion of St. John. Thus the poor Christians fared no better under a philosophic emperor than under the “moderate” and “virtuous” Trajan. Indeed, we have at this moment shoals of “philosophers” in France and England who, for absurdity and hard-heartedness, throw churchmen entirely into the shade. Parson Malthus’s divinity may have been bad enough; we aver it was not worse than his philosophy. Many of the unfortunate sufferers in this philosopher’s reign were devoured by wild beasts; others were tortured to death in an iron chair, made red-hot for the purpose. Even women were not spared. The names of two are preserved—Biblia and Blandina—whose sufferings and heroic courage contrast nobly with the cowardly cruelty of the philosophic scoundrel-emperor who gave his sanction to their death. Singularly enough, France, the “eldest daughter of the church,” was the scene of the worse persecutions which took place in this reign, when false philosophy versus real Christianity was the order of the day; and, singularly enough, France is now the country where, par excellence, real Christianity is taking the field in right earnest against both philosophism and false Christianity. What France failed to do in the first and second centuries, and failed again to do in the eighteenth, she is now labouring to accomplish for all the world in the middle of the nineteenth.
CHAPTER XII. PROGRESS OF PROPAGANDA TO THE TENTH PERSECUTION.
Seven Years’ Persecution of Equalitarian Innovators—Seventh Great Persecution—Christians charged with Sorcery in Eighth Persecution—Tortures of Ninth and Tenth Persecutions—Pretended Conversion of Constantine—Lives of Early Christians Exemplars to the Pagan World.
The persecutions under the “moderate” Trajan and the “philosophic” Antoninus had no effect, as we have seen, in stopping the progress of Christianity. On the contrary, they but served to extend it, by causing the multitude to interest themselves more in examining a religion which excited so much alarm amongst those orders of men who, from their power and riches, they could not but regard as their natural oppressors. The discreet conduct and humane character of the early Christians was another, indeed, the chief cause of their success. Those pagans who had relations with them in private life, and who had thereby opportunities of judging them as men and citizens, could not be brought to regard with horror a religion which had produced such characters, nor to sympathise with the atrocious spirit which consigned them to the fate of malefactors. Up to the reign of Severus, then, Christianity went on conquering and to conquer, in despite of edicts and persecutions.
It was in this reign that the fifth great persecution took place. In the early part of it no additions were made to the severe edicts already in force against them; and history preserves but few cases of their suffering from the application of the old. This was partly owing to the greater caution imposed upon them by the laws against illegal meetings and societies passed under Trajan and Antoninus, and partly, it is said, to the interest at court of a celebrated Christian, named Proculus, who, by an extraordinary application of his medical art, had cured the emperor of a dangerous distemper. This precarious lenity, however, did not endure long. After having been partially interrupted by an occasional execution of the old laws in force, it was effectually terminated by an edict of Severus (A.D. 197), which prohibited every subject of the empire, under severe penalties, from embracing the Jewish or Christian faith.