For no greater change can be conceived for man to accept, than to pass from the life which a Pomponia Græcina or a Callista would lead in her Roman or her Grecian home, into the life of a Lucina burying martyred apostles, or the death of a Callista, in a dungeon of the third century; between the prosperous Cæcilius in the midst of the wealth and luxury of Carthage, and the Cyprian who, after ten years of apostolic labour, uttered his Deo gratias upon the Proprætor’s sentence of death. Nor must we take only as samples those who were conspicuous for their work as Christians, even though it were accompanied by sufferings. We must take rather the staple of the common Christian life in its opposition to the discarded heathendom—the life of charity, of poverty, of chastity pursued by those of humblest position, over against the hatred, the avarice, the impurity out of which they came. The acceptance of such a law as the Christian law, founded upon such a belief as the Christian belief, is in any one case the result of a power quite beyond man, whatever his learning, eloquence, or persuasiveness from any natural gift may be, to bring about in his fellow-men. What, then, was that power shown in instances innumerable—shown when the acceptance of Christ crucified as the exemplar of life involved the risk of losing life, and all which made life naturally sweet or even tolerable, involved a living crucifixion? The state of virginity, confession of any kind, and finally martyrdom, made the highest point of this life; but we must look upon the great mass of the Christian people as that which produced such fruits. The Martyrs, whatever their number, were no doubt relatively few in comparison with those who were not martyred. They were “the first-fruits of the threshing-floor which the world would offer to the Redeemer;” how numerous must have been the grains of wheat out of which they were chosen? They were “the new leaven and the salt of humanity, which by the offering of their bodies and the pouring out their blood would sanctify the whole mass;”[195] but how great was the spiritual power which had descended into that mass? Surely Chrysostom had good reason when he selected the creation of the Christian people as that one miracle of Christ which no heathen gainsayer could deny.
What we find, then, as an ultimate fact in the historical conversion of the heathen world, is this internal action of the Holy Spirit in the preaching of the Apostles and their successors, by which the Christian people was formed in spite of the world around them; in spite of seductions from the pride of life, the desire of the eyes, the terrible empire of sensuous beauty; in spite of terrors which involved every suffering as well us every privation of lawful enjoyments.
All that vast development of doctrine, worship, and government, which we have been endeavouring to trace out, has been from first to last originated, accompanied, and maintained by the action of the Holy Spirit upon each individual heart. Here at last is the power which we seek in vain to detect as lodged in any natural gift possessed by the preacher. The heart is that sanctuary of liberty which no human power can invade: the heart’s free acceptance of the belief offered to it is the result which no human power can win. If the Church’s one Episcopate has thrown the net of Christ over the whole empire, and into regions more or less barbarous beyond it; if the Church’s one doctrine has grown out into palpable form, scattering the gods of heathendom with the demons who lurked under their masks, and uplifting the strong personality of the divine Triad, in spite of pantheism, to universal adoration; if the Church’s one worship has come forth from the catacombs into the light of day, and the celebration over a martyr’s body in an obscure vault to a celebration in lordly temple, rich with marble and precious stones; the one adequate cause for all is the manifestation of spirit and of power, the cross set up in the heart of man before it was applied to living members of the body: it is a process inexplicable save upon the supposition of divine power. That world which by wisdom knew not God, which philosophy had failed to convert, was converted in a great proportion of its subjects by the foolishness of God which was wiser than men, and the weakness of God which was stronger than men. A crucified God was the palmary test of this foolishness and weakness; the army of martyrs was its witness; the empire’s recognition of the Church’s freedom in doctrine, worship, and government, was the victory which it gained.
Those who lived in the midst of this great movement fully recognised its wonderful character. Thus Clement of Alexandria, in his address to the Greeks, exclaimed: “The power of God casting its beams upon the earth with incredible rapidity and most attractive kindness has filled everything with the seed of salvation. For the Lord could not have brought about so great a work in so small a time without a divine goodwill and affection; despicable in appearance, worshipped in deed; purifier, Saviour, propitious, the Divine Word, the most manifest truly God, equal to the Lord of the universe, for He was His Son, ‘and the Word was in God.’ Nor was He disbelieved when first announced; nor when He took upon Him human form and fashioned Himself after the flesh, and acted the saving drama of the manhood, was He ignored. For He was a lawful combatant and a fellow-combatant with His creature; and when swifter than the sun He dawned upon us at the Father’s will. He was communicated most speedily to all men, and with the utmost ease caused God to shine upon us; showing whence He was Himself, and who He was by what He taught and by what He did; bearer to us of the treaty and the reconciliation, our Saviour Word, a fountain of life and of peace, poured over the whole face of the earth; through whom the world has become a very sea of blessings.”[196]
No less were eye-witnesses struck with the impotence of philosophy in comparison with the doctrine of the cross. Thus the same Clement in another place says: “The heaven-taught wisdom is that alone which is with us, from which spring all the sources of wisdom; such, I mean, as lead to the truth. For certainly when the Lord who was to teach us came to men He had innumerable pointers of His way, to announce, to prepare, to precede Him, from the very foundation of the world. They pre-signified Him by action and by word, they prophesied His coming, the where and the when, and His signs. From afar off the Law provides for Him, and Prophecy; then His precursor declares His presence; then the heralds teaching the power of His appearance signify it. [But philosophers[197]] pleased their own only, and not all these, for Socrates pleased Plato, and Plato Xenocrates, and Aristotle Theophrastus, and Zeno Cleanthes. They persuaded those only who embraced their own sect. But the word of our Teacher did not remain in Judea alone, as philosophy did in Greece. It was poured over the whole world, persuading from nation to nation, village to village, city to city, whole houses of Greeks at once and of barbarians, and each one of the hearers by himself, and bringing over to the truth not a few of the philosophers themselves. Now, as for the Greek philosophy, if any one in authority offers it hindrance, forthwith it disappears; whereas our doctrine, from its very first announcement, has been thwarted by kings and tyrants, and magistrates, and governors, with all their satellites and men innumerable, who make war upon us, and do their utmost to cut us off. For all which it flourishes the more. For it does not die out like a human doctrine, nor fade away like a weak gift, since no gift of God is weak; but it continues unhindered, having the prophecy that it shall be persecuted to the end.”[198]
If such was the marvel of conversion, viewed in itself, it is well also to listen to another eye-witness of the consequences which this change of life brought with it. The heathen objected that Christians ought to be thankful for the sufferings which they wanted. Tertullian replied:
“Well, it is quite true that it is our desire to suffer, but it is in the way that the soldier longs for war. No one indeed suffers willingly, since suffering necessarily implies fear and danger. Yet the man who objected to the conflict both fights with all his strength, and, when victorious, he rejoices in the battle, because he reaps from it glory and spoil. It is our battle to be summoned to your tribunals, that there, under fear of execution, we may battle for the truth. But the day is won when the object of the struggle is gained. This victory of ours gives us the glory of pleasing God, and the spoil of life eternal. But we are overcome—yes, when we have obtained our wishes. Therefore we conquer in dying: we go forth victorious at the very time we are subdued. Call us, if you like, Sarmenticii and Semaxii, because, bound to a half-axle stake, we are burnt in a circle heap of faggots. This is the attitude in which we conquer; it is our victory-robe; it is for us a sort of triumphal car. Naturally enough, therefore, we do not please the vanquished; on account of this, indeed, we are counted a desperate, reckless race. But the very desperation and recklessness you object to in us, among yourselves lift high the standard of virtue in the cause of glory and of fame. Mucius, of his own will, left his right hand on the altar: what sublimity of mind! Empedocles gave his whole body at Catana to the fires of Etna: what mental resolution! A certain foundress of Carthage gave herself away in second marriage to the funeral pile: what a noble witness of her chastity! Regulus, not wishing that his one life should count for the lives of many enemies, endured these crosses over all his frame: how brave a man, even in captivity a conqueror! Anaxarchus, when he was being beaten to death by a barley-pounder, cried out, ‘Beat on, beat on at the case of Anaxarchus; no stroke falls on Anaxarchus himself.’ O magnanimity of the philosopher, who even in such an end had jokes upon his lips! I omit all reference to those who with their own sword, or with any other milder form of death, have bargained for glory. Nay, see how even torture-contests are crowned by you. The Athenian courtezan, having wearied out the executioner, at last bit off her tongue, and spat it in the face of the raging tyrant, that she might at the same time spit away her power of speech, nor be longer able to confess her fellow-conspirators, if, even overcome, that might be her inclination. Zeno, the eleatic, when he was asked by Dionysius what good philosophy did, on answering that it gave contempt of death, was, all unquailing, given over to the tyrant’s scourge, and sealed his opinion even to the death. We all know how the Spartan lash, applied with the utmost cruelty, under the very eyes of friends encouraging, confers on those who bear it honour proportionate to the blood which the young man shed. O glory legitimate because it is human, for whose sake it is reckoned neither reckless fool-hardiness nor desperate obstinacy to despise death itself and all sorts of savage treatment, for whose sake you may, for your native place, for the empire, for friendship, endure all you are forbidden to do for God! And you cast statues in honour of persons such as these, and you put inscriptions upon images, and cut out epitaphs on tombs, that their names may never perish. In so far as you can by your monuments, you yourselves afford a sort of resurrection to the dead. Yet he who expects the true resurrection from God is insane if for God he suffers. But go zealously on, good presidents; you will stand higher with the people if you sacrifice the Christians at their wish. Kill us, torture us, condemn us, grind us to dust; your injustice is the proof that we are innocent. Therefore it is of God’s permitting (not of your mere will) that we thus suffer. For but very lately, in condemning a Christian woman to infamy rather than to the lion, you made confession that a taint on our purity is considered among us something more terrible than any punishment and any death. Nor does your cruelty, however exquisite, avail you; it is rather a temptation to us. The oftener we are mown down by you, the more in number we grow; the blood of Christians is seed. Many of your writers exhort to the courageous bearing of pain and death, as Cicero in the Tusculans, as Seneca in his Chances, as Diogenes, Pyrrhus, Callinicus. And yet their words do not find so many disciples as Christians do, teachers not by words, but by their deeds. That very obstinacy you rail against is the preceptress; for who that contemplates it is not excited to inquire what is at the bottom of it? Who, after inquiry, does not embrace our doctrines? and when he has embraced them, desires not to suffer that he may become partaker of the fulness of God’s grace, that he may obtain from God complete forgiveness by giving in exchange his blood? For that secures the remission of all offences. On this account it is that we return thanks on the very spot for your sentences. As the divine and human are ever opposed to each other, when we are condemned by you we are acquitted by the Highest.”[199]
Origen, in replying to the attacks of a very subtle and able Platonic philosopher of the second century, appeals again and again to the divine power shown forth in the conversion of so many, and among them of those who had previously been the slaves of sin. Heathen philosophy could boast of two converts, Phædo and Polemo; on which he says, “We assert that the whole habitable world contains evidence of the works of Jesus, in the existence of those churches of God which have been founded through Him by those who have been converted from the practice of innumerable sins. And the name of Jesus can still remove distractions from the minds of men, and expel demons, and also take away diseases, and produce a marvellous meekness of spirit and complete change of character, and a humanity, and goodness, and gentleness in those individuals who do not feign themselves to be Christians for the sake of subsistence or the supply of any mortal wants, but who have honestly accepted the doctrine concerning God and Christ and the judgment to come.”
Celsus, unable to resist the miracles which Jesus is recorded to have performed, had on several occasions spoken of them slanderously as works of sorcery, to which Origen had severally replied. But he also pointed out how far greater a divine power is manifested in healing the maladies of the soul than in raising the daughter of Jairus, or the son of the widow of Nain, or Lazarus four days dead; for indeed these miracles were the symbols of the greater things which our Lord promised to do by His Apostles. “I would say that, agreeably to the promise of Jesus, His disciples performed even greater works than these miracles of Jesus, which were perceptible only to the senses. For the eyes of those who are blind in soul are ever opened, and the ears of those who were deaf to virtuous words listen readily to the doctrine of God and of the blessed life with Him; and many too who were lame in the feet of the ‘inner man,’ as Scripture calls it, having now been healed by the word, do not simply leap, but leap as the hart, which is an animal hostile to serpents, and stronger than all the poison of vipers. And these lame who have been healed received from Jesus power to trample with those feet in which they were formerly lame upon the serpents and scorpions of wickedness, and generally upon all the power of the enemy; and though they tread upon it, they sustain no injury, for they also have become stronger than the poison of all evil and of demons.”
On this point he dwells further. The Jew introduced by Celsus argued that our Lord was a man. Origen replied: “I do not know whether a man who had the courage to spread throughout the entire world His doctrine of religious worship and teaching could accomplish what He wished without the divine assistance, and could rise superior to all who withstood the progress of His doctrine—kings and rulers, and the Roman Senate and governors in all places, and the common people. And how could the nature of a man possessed of no inherent excellence convert so vast a multitude? For it would not be wonderful if it were only the wise who were so converted; but it is the most irrational of men and those devoted to their passions, and who, by reason of their irrationality, change with the greater difficulty so as to adopt a more temperate course of life. And yet it is because Christ was the power of God and the wisdom of the Father that He accomplished and still accomplishes such results, although neither the Jews nor Greeks who disbelieved His word will so admit. And, therefore, we shall not cease to believe in God, according to the precepts of Jesus Christ, and to seek to convert those who are blind on the subject of religion, although it is they who are truly blind themselves that charge us with blindness; and they, whether Jews or Greeks, who lead astray those that follow them, accuse us of seducing men—a good seduction, truly, that they may become temperate instead of dissolute, or at least may make advances to temperance; may become just instead of unjust, or at least may tend to become so; prudent instead of foolish, or be on the way to become such; and instead of cowardice, meanness, and timidity, may exhibit the virtues of fortitude and courage, especially displayed in the struggles undergone for the sake of their religion towards God, the Creator of all things.”