“I am sorry, my dear boy, that it is not in my power to tell you now. But you shall know it sometime.”
“Do you promise me?”
“Yes, most solemnly. God bless you!”
A Lamb with a Milk-can, found in the Catacomb of SS. Peter and Marcellin.
CHAPTER XI.
A TALK WITH THE READER.
From the very compressed form in which the early history of the Church is generally studied, and from the unchronological arrangement of the saints’ biographies, as we usually read them, we may easily be led to an erroneous idea of the state of our first Christian ancestors. This may happen in two different ways.
We may come to imagine, that during the first three centuries the Church was suffering unrespited, under active persecution; that the faithful worshipped in fear and trembling, and almost lived in the catacombs; that bare existence, with scarcely an opportunity for outward development or inward organization, none for splendor, was all that religion could enjoy; that, in fine, it was a period of conflict and of tribulation, without an interval of peace or consolation. On the other hand, we may suppose, that those three centuries were divided into epochs by ten distinct persecutions, some of longer and some of shorter duration, but definitely separated from one another by breathing times of complete rest.