In the primitive Church voluntary collections[62] were regularly made for the poor, the aged, the sick, the brethren in bonds, and for the burial of the dead. All fraud and deceit was abhorred, and all usury forbidden. Many gave all their goods to feed the poor. "Our charity dispenses more in the streets," says Tertullian to the heathen, "than your religion in your temples." He upbraids them for offering to the gods only the worn-out and useless, such as is given to dogs. "How monstrous is it," exclaims the Alexandrian Clement, "to live in luxury while so many are in want." "As you would receive, show mercy," says Chrysostom; "make God your debtor that you may receive again with usury." The Church at Antioch, he tells us, maintained three thousand widows and virgins, besides the sick and the poor. Under the persecuting Decius the widows and the infirm under the care of the Church at Rome were fifteen hundred. "Behold the treasures of the Church," said St. Lawrence pointing to the aged and poor, when the heathen prefect came to confiscate its wealth. The Church in Carthage sent a sum equal to four thousand dollars to ransom Christian captives in Numidia. St. Ambrose sold the sacred vessels of the Church of Milan to rescue prisoners from the Goths, esteeming it their truest consecration to the service of God. "Better clothe the Christ," says living temples of Jerome, "than adorn the temples of stone." "God has no need of plates and dishes," said Acacius, Bishop of Amida, and he ransomed therewith a number of poor captives. For a similar purpose Paulinus of Nola sold the treasures of his beautiful church, and, it is said, even sold himself into African slavery. The Christian traveller was hospitably entertained by the faithful; and before the close of the fourth century asylums were provided for the sick, aged, and infirm. During the Decian persecution, when the streets of Carthage were strewn with the dying and the dead, the Christians, with the scars of recent torture and imprisonment upon them, exhibited the nobility of a gospel revenge in their care for their fever-smitten persecutors, and seemed to seek the martyrdom of Christian charity, even more glorious than that they had escaped. In the plague of Alexandria, six hundred parabolani periled their lives to succour the dying and bury the dead. Julian urged the pagan priests to imitate the virtues of the lowly Christians.
Christianity also gave a new sanctity to human life. The exposure of infants was a fearfully prevalent pagan practice, which even Plato and Aristotle permitted. We have had evidences of the tender charity of the Christians in rescuing these foundlings from death, or from a fate more dreadful still—a life of infamy. Christianity also emphatically affirmed the Almighty's "canon 'gainst self-slaughter," which crime the pagans had even exalted into a virtue. It taught that a patient endurance of suffering, like Job's, exhibited a loftier courage than Cato's renunciation of life.
We have thus seen from the testimony of the Catacombs, the immense superiority, in all the elements of true dignity and excellence, of primitive Christianity to the corrupt civilization by which it was surrounded. It ennobled the character and purified the morals of mankind. It raised society from the ineffable slough into which it had fallen, imparted tenderness and fidelity to the domestic relations of life, and enshrined marriage in a sanctity before unknown. Notwithstanding the corruptions by which it became infected in the days of its power and pride, even the worst form of Christianity was infinitely preferable to the abominations of paganism. It gave a sacredness before unconceived to human life. It averted the sword from the throat of the gladiator, and, plucking helpless infancy from exposure to untimely death, nourished it in Christian homes. It threw the ægis of its protection over the slave and the oppressed, raising them from the condition of beasts to the dignity of men and the fellowship of saints. With an unwearied and passionate charity it yearned over the suffering and the sorrowing everywhere, and created a vast and comprehensive organization for their relief, of which the world had before no example and had formed no conception. It was a holy Vestal, ministering at the altar of humanity, witnessing ever of the Divine, and keeping the sacred fire burning, not for Rome, but for the world. Its winsome gladness and purity, in an era of unspeakable pollution and sadness, revived the sinking heart of mankind, and made possible a Golden Age in the future transcending far that which poets pictured in the past. It blotted out cruel laws, like those of Draco, written in blood, and led back Justice, long banished, to the judgment seat. It ameliorated the rigours of the penal code, and, as experience has shown, lessened the amount of crime. It created an art purer and loftier than that of paganism; and a literature rivaling in elegance of form, and surpassing in nobleness of spirit, the sublimest productions of the classic muse. Instead of the sensual conceptions of heathenism, polluting the soul, it supplied images of purity, tenderness, and pathos, which fascinated the imagination and hallowed the heart. It taught the sanctity of suffering and of weakness, and the supreme majesty of gentleness and truth.
Note.—The entire subject of Christian evidences from the Catacombs, which has been so cursorily glanced at in the foregoing pages, is treated with great fullness of detail and copious pictorial illustration in a work by the writer, "The Catacombs of Rome, and their Testimony Relative to Primitive Christianity." Cr. 8vo, 560 pp., 136 engravings. New York: Phillips & Hunt. Price $2.50. It discusses at length the structure, origin, and history of the Catacombs; their art and symbolism; their epigraphy as illustrative of the theology, ministry, rites, and institutions of the primitive Church, and Christian Life and Character in the early ages. The gradual corruption of doctrine and practice and introduction of Romanist errors, as the cultus of Mary, the primacy of Peter, prayers of the dead, the invocation of saints, the notion of purgatory, the celibacy of the clergy rite of monastic orders, and other allied subjects are fully treated.
FOOTNOTES:
[57] See Lactantius, De Mortibus Persecutorum, Passim; Eusebius Hist. Ecclec. viii, 17; ix. 9, 10; Tertullian ad Scap., c. 3.
[58] Valeria quoque per varias provincias quindecim mensibus plebeio cultu pervagata.... Ita illis pudicitia et conditio exitio fuit. Lactantius De Mart. Persec. Cap. 51.
[59] Even the sanguine imagination of Tertullian cannot conceive the possibility of this event "Sed et Cæsares credidissent super Christo," he exclaims, "si aut Cæsares non essent seculo necessario, aut si et Christiani potuissent esse Cæsares." Apol., c. 21.
[60] Literally, "They are no more because they never were." Eusebius applies, the promises of Scripture concerning the restoration of the exiled Jews from Babylon (Psa. lxxx; xcviii;) to the condition of Christianity in his day. The above citations are given in his very words.
[61] While yet alive, Domitian was called, "our Lord and God"—Dominus et Deus noster.