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How did the disciples of the Church regard the Roman State which was
their persecutor? From the very beginning there were two schools of
thought. The Apocalypse speaks of the Roman power in language of
unmeasured abhorrence. It is the beast, the great harlot, drunk with
the blood of the saints, destined for its crimes to a fearful
chastisement.
But in St. Paul there is discoverable a certain pride in the Empire of
which he is a citizen, and a faith that its stability and the order it
secures are to be, under God, a powerful means of Christian propaganda.
The authority which, in some instances, it misuses, is none the less
divine in its origin; and whoever resists it resists thereby God Who is
its author. To the Christian the prince " is God's minister. . . for
good. . . an avenger to execute wrath upon him that doth evil."
Obedience, loyalty, the payment of tribute are then obligations in
conscience (Rom. xiii, 1-7). Nor does the teaching change when, a few
years later, Nero's edicts have destroyed the Christian's legal
security. It is still his duty to pray "for Kings and for all that are
in high station " (I Tim. ii, 2), "to be subject to princes and powers,
to obey at a word, to be ready to every good work" (Titus iii, 1-2).
The contemporary writings of St. Peter (I Peter ii, 13-15) are inspired
by the same ideals, "Be ye subject to every human creature for God's
sake: whether it be the king as excelling, or to governors as sent by
him for the punishment of evildoers and the praise of the good. . . .
Fear God. Honour the King." Such, in the first generation of
Christianity, was the Church's general commentary on Our Lord's own
direction to "render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's."
This theory of the lawfulness of authority, of the State's right to
loyal obedience, and of the Christian's political duties as obliging
him in conscience, the persecutions by no means destroyed. It is
repeated faithfully in the writers of every generation from Nero to
Constantine, and, a rooted tradition by the time of that emperor's
conversion, it supplied one of the foundations upon which he and his
successors were able to build their untraditional novelty of a
State-directed Christianity. The epistle of St. Clement of Rome gives a
noteworthy testimony to the theory, in the prayer it contains for "our
masters and those who govern us on earth " since " Thou, O Lord, has
given them sovereign power" and " knowing the glory and honour with
which Thou has endowed them, grant us to be submissive and never to
rebel against Thy will. . . . Give to them O Lord health, peace,
harmony and security, that they may exercise without harm the authority
Thou has confided to them."
The martyrs, too -- St. Polycarp for example -- pray for the emperors
in whose name they suffer and for those who are the agents of the
imperial power in their death. This religious concern for the welfare
of the State is so known an element of the Christian mind that the
Apologists can point to it in disproof of the charge that Christianity
is a danger to the State; and Tertullian lightly invites the
magistrates, "Come good governors, put this soul to the torture while
it prays to God for the emperor." Christians, the same bitter spirit
insists, have a greater interest than Pagans in the Empire's welfare
for it is, in God's providence, the one barrier against all-destroying
anarchy and chaos. Nor, he notes, has a Christian ever been found among
all the hundred leaders of sedition and revolt.
The Church, then, by no means saw in the Empire a thing evil in its
nature, a thing therefore to be destroyed. Nor was there ever any
Christian policy in the matter of the persecutions except the heroic
policy of patient Endurance and prayer for the persecutor until the
providence of God should send quieter times.
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