Section 3. Nature and Extent of Persecutions.
Terrors of persecution.
Words can hardly be found strong enough to express the many and varied tortures which were inflicted on the Christians of the Primitive Church by their heathen countrymen. Death itself seemed too slight a punishment in the eyes of these cruel persecutors, unless it was preceded and accompanied by the most painful and trying circumstances. It was by crucifixion, and devouring beasts, and lingering fiery torments that the great multitude of those early martyrs received their crown. Racked and scorched, lacerated and torn limb from limb, agonized in body, mocked at and insulted, they were objects of pity even to the heathen themselves. Persecuting malice spared neither sex nor age, station nor character; the old man and the tender child, the patrician and the slave, the bishop and his flock, all shed their blood for Him Who had died for them, rather than deny their Lord.
We have no possible means of estimating the number of this vast "cloud of witnesses," but authentic accounts have come down to us which prove that some places were almost depopulated by the multitude of martyrdoms; and when we remember the length of time over which the persecutions extended, the blood-thirsty rage of the persecutors, and the firm perseverance with which the immensely large majority of Christians kept the Faith to the end, we may form some idea as to the "multitude" of this noble army of martyrs "which no man could number."
Persecution did not check the growth of the Church,
So widely did the Church spread during the age of persecution, in the face of all the fierce opposition of her enemies, that it was found at times to be impossible to carry out in their fulness the cruel laws against Christians, on account of the numbers of those who were ready to brave all for the sake of Christ. As has been often said, "The blood of the martyrs was the seed of the Church."
nor revive decaying heathenism,
Paganism was gradually dying away in the Roman world, notwithstanding all the craft and power of Satan, whilst no number of martyrdoms seemed to check the growth of the Body of Christ. Vain and short-sighted, indeed, was the boast of the Emperor Dioclesian during the last and most bitter of all the persecutions, that he had blotted out the very name of Christian. No sooner had the conversion of Constantine brought rest to the Church, than she rose again from her seeming ruins, ready and able to spread more and more through "the kingdoms of this world," that they might "become the kingdoms of Christ."
and thus helped to prove the Divine origin of the Church.
We may well believe that no institution of human appointment could have stood firm against such terrible and reiterated shocks. Nothing less than a Divine Foundation, and a strength not of this world could have borne the Church through the ages of persecution, not only without loss of all vital principle, but even with actual invigoration and extension of it.