Church and State as Seen in the Formation of Christendom

by T. W. Allies

3. As to the power exercised by miracles over the minds of men, the victory over idolatry and the whole heathen life, which was the reflection of that idolatry, could not have been accomplished—all other powers remaining in the Church—without this one. In fact, a diabolic spiritual power, termed by our Lord “the strong man armed,” being, as the result of the Fall, in possession of his captive, could only be cast out by One stronger than he, the Son of God Incarnate. The series of miracles wrought by His disciples were the arms which He used. His name alone when invoked by them is attested in numberless instances to have had a supernatural effect.

As to the power exercised by martyrdom, the whole history is full of that victory over idolatry and the heathen life which was accomplished by the suffering of our Lord’s disciples in His name and in community with Him. Over and above the effect which the voluntary endurance of suffering for conscience’ sake has upon the minds of men, martyrdom merited the propagation of the faith as if our Lord’s Passion required to be repeated in His members for the growth of His Body. Such is the fact expressed by St. Paul in the words, “I rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ in my flesh for His Body, which is the Church.” And, again, “As the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so also by Christ doth our comfort abound.” In this martyrdom threw a light upon the divine government of the world; and as the reversibility of guilt had formed the history of fallen man, so the reversibility of merit formed the history of man redeemed. Thus over against the abyss of judgment lies the abyss of grace, the treasure-house of the Church, of which the King of martyrs holds the key. That treasure-house is the communion of saints. The power of martyrdom is one of its great exhibitions. Its source is the Incarnation of the Son. Taking the mass of sufferings undergone by the mystical Body of Christ in the process of its growth, there is nothing in the web of human guilt, how intricate soever it may be, from the beginning to the end of the world, which has not its counterpart in the reversibility of merit, all derived from the Passion of the Incarnate Son.

4. As to the perpetuity of the miraculous power, the same reason exists through the whole course of the Church’s preaching for the signs in her following them that believe. The promise is most clearly recorded at the conclusion of St. Mark’s Gospel, without limit of time or place. The performance in this first age, when she had to meet all the tyranny of rulers and all the rage of unbelievers, is recorded also. The promise clearly extends to the whole time over which the command relating to it extends: “Go ye unto the whole world, and preach the gospel to every creature.”

As to the perpetuity of martyrdom, it is clear, to use St. Paul’s expression, that what is wanting of the sufferings of Christ will not be made up until His Body is completed “in the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.”

In all these respects the two great powers of miracle and martyrdom, united in their origin, seem to run into and complete each other. The witness of God and the witness of man concur in the formation of the kingdom of His Son.

It may also be noted that all those who reject God as Creator, Judge, and Remunerator proclaim as a first principle that a miracle is impossible, while they have the same dislike to martyrdom as the great adversary is said to have for holy water.

I have now, then, answered the question which I put above—How came the Roman Emperor to allow to Christians the liberty to render to God the things of God, that is, to believe, to worship, and to be governed according to the law of Christ? It was done by an internal action of the Holy Spirit, forming by a process of individual conversion in the minds of an innumerable multitude a certain type of Christian character, an image in each one of the Founder of the line; and at the same time by an external action of the same Holy Spirit co-operating in this conversion “with signs following.” Never before were the divine and the human societies pitted against each other in so absolute a conflict. Perhaps it is even the only period as yet in the 1850 years of Christian life in which the Battle of the Standards, of poverty, affliction, and contempt on the one side, of the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life on the other, has been completely carried out—completely in that the representation on each side embraced the whole society. For if any would not be poor, afflicted, and despised in those times, either they could not become Christians, or becoming so in times of comparative peace, they were speedily scattered by the winnowing flail of persecution. But on the other side, the combative heathenism from Tiberius to Maxentius was pre-eminently corrupt. It should be added, that in the 1850 years, never has there been so astonishing a result as the advance of the Christian Church, from those who met in the upper room on the Day of Pentecost to those who received from Constantine perfect civil freedom to believe that doctrine, to exercise that worship, to be governed by that Episcopate, which formed together the greatest conceivable contradiction to the heathen world of Augustus. It was the result of ten generations, sanctified by suffering and multiplied by martyrdom.

There is another point of view also in which this period should be regarded. What did these champions of conscience do for that very civil order of things to which in their character of Christians they had so often to refuse obedience, and to say simply, in the words of their first leader, “We ought to obey God rather than men”?

They conferred upon all future generations of men an inestimable benefit, for they established the doctrine that the individual man has rights which the collective society of men may not violate. They overthrew the autocracy of the State, which had crushed out the heart of humanity.

During those ages, after the conversion of the original Roman commonwealth into the Cæsarean empire, there was no guarantee of civil liberty. From the city which only refused fire and water to its guiltiest citizens, the Empire had grown into a power wherein a charge of majestas justified the application of every torment to the accused; and the charge of majestas was ever at hand in the case of a Christian. If Augustus, though he slaughtered without mercy when his interests were concerned, studied to give his rule the aspect of moderation, the emperors his successors became more and more uncontrolled. Not only had they legislative power, but the imprisonment and the execution of any obnoxious person was entirely in their hands. In this long period of 284 years, Christians without number suffered loss of goods, confinement in loathsome dungeons, separation from their families, and finally death itself under torment and insult, because they would worship Christ as God, because they would not swear by the genius of the Emperor, because they would not burn a few grains of incense on the altar of an idol, because one who had dedicated herself to God would not marry, because a soldier would not carry out an impious command, for any of the innumerable reasons for which they were offensive to the world, which the world called “their hatred of the human race,” that being the phrase of the day for the Kulturkampf.