History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene Christianity. A. D. 100-325

In the Roman Catacombs we find inscriptions where the departed are requested to pray for

their living relatives and friends.

The veneration thus shown for the persons of the martyrs was transferred in smaller measure

to their remains. The church of Smyrna counted the bones of Polycarp more precious than gold or

diamonds.

71

0

 The remains of Ignatius were held in equal veneration by the Christians at Antioch.

The friends of Cyprian gathered his blood in handkerchiefs, and built a chapel over his tomb.

A veneration frequently excessive was paid, not only to the deceased martyrs, but also the

surviving confessors. It was made the special duty of the deacons to visit and minister to them in

prison. The heathen Lucian in his satire, "De morte Peregrini," describes the unwearied care of the

Christians for their imprisoned brethren; the heaps of presents brought to them; and the testimonies

of sympathy even by messengers from great distances; but all, of course, in Lucian’s view, out of

mere good-natured enthusiasm. Tertullian the Montanist censures the excessive attention of the

Catholics to their confessors. The libelli pacis, as they were called—intercessions of the confessors

for the fallen—commonly procured restoration to the fellowship of the church. Their voice had

peculiar weight in the choice of bishops, and their sanction not rarely overbalanced the authority

of the clergy. Cyprian is nowhere more eloquent than in the praise of their heroism. His letters to

the imprisoned confessors in Carthage are full of glorification, in a style somewhat offensive to

our evangelical ideas. Yet after all, he protests against the abuse of their privileges, from which he

had himself to suffer, and earnestly exhorts them to a holy walk; that the honor they have gained

may not prove a snare to them, and through pride and carelessness be lost. He always represents

the crown of the confessor and the martyr as a free gift of the grace of God, and sees the real essence

of it rather in the inward disposition than in the outward act. Commodian conceived the whole idea

of martyrdom in its true breadth, when he extended it to all those who, without shedding their blood,

endured to the end in love, humility, and patience, and in all Christian virtue.

CHAPTER III.

LITERARY CONTEST OF CHRISTIANITY WITH JUDAISM AND HEATHENISM.

§ 28. Literature.

I. Sources.

Tacitus (Consul 97, d. about 117): Annal. xv. 44. Comp. his picture of the Jews, Hist. v. 1–5.

Plinius (d. about 114): Ep. x. 96, 97.

Celsus (flourished about 150): 

            

. Preserved in fragments in Origen’s Refutation (8 books 

    

      

); reconstructed, translated and explained by Theodor Keim: Celsus’ Wahres Wort, Aelteste

wissenschaftliche Streitschrift, antiker Weltanschauung gegen das Christenthum, Zürich 1873

(293 pages).

Lucian (d. about 180): 

                            

 c. 11–16; and 

              

 I. 30; II. 4, 11.

Porphyrius (about 300): 

                     

. Only fragments preserved, and collected by Holstein, Rom.

1630. His most important works are lost. Those that remain are ed. by A. Nauck, 1860.

II. Works.

71

It is worthy of note, however, that some of the startling phenomena related in the Martyrium Polycarpi by the congregation

of Smyrna are omitted in the narrative of Eusebius (IV. 15), and may be a later interpolation.

56

Philip Schaff

History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene

Christianity. A.D. 100-325.

---

Nath. Lardner: Collection of Ancient Jewish and Heathen Testimonies to the Truth of the Christian

Religion (Lond. 1727–’57) in the VI. and VII. vols. of his Works, ed. by Kippis, London, 1838.

Very valuable.

Mosheim: introduction to his Germ. translation of Origen against Celsus. Hamb. 1745.

Bindemann: 

Celsus und seine Schriften gegen die Christen

, in Illgen’s "Zeitschr. für hist. Theol." Leipz. 1842.

N. 2, p. 58–146.

Ad. Planck: 

Lukian u. das Christenthum

, in the "Studien u. Kritiken," 1851. N. 4; translated in the

"Bibliotheca Sacra," Andover, 1852.

F. Chr. Baur: 

Das Christenthum der 3 ersten Jahrh

. Tüb. secd. ed. 1860 (and 1863) pp. 370–430.

Neander: General History of the Christian Religion and Church; Engl. trans. by Torrey, vol. I.,

157–178. (12th Boston ed.)

Richard von der Alm: 

Die Urtheile heidnischer und jüdischer Schriftsteller der vier ersten Jahrh. ueber Jesus und die ersten Christen

.

Leipz. 1865. (An infidel book.)

H. Kellner (R.C.): 

Hellenismus und Christenthum oder die geistige Reaction des antiken Heidenthums gegen das Christenthum

.

Köln 1866 (454 pp.)

B. Aubé: 

De l’ Apologétique chrétienne au II

e

 siécle. St. Justin, philosophe et martyr

, 2nd ed. Paris 1875. By the same:

Histoire des Persecutions de l’église

. The second part, also under the title

La polémique païenne à la fin du II

e

 siécle

.

Paris 1878.

E. Renan: Marc-Aurèle (Paris 1882), pp. 345 (

Celse et Lucien

), 379 sqq. (

Nouvelles apologies

).

J. W. Farrar: Seekers after God. London, 1869, new ed. 1877. (Essays on Seneca, Epictetus, and

Marcus Aurelius, compared with Christianity.)

Comp. the Lit. quoted in § 12, especially Uhlhorn and Keim (1881), and the monographs on Justin

M., Tertullian, Origen, and other Apologists, which are noticed in sections treating of these

writers.

§ 29. Literary Opposition to Christianity.

Besides the external conflict, which we have considered in the second chapter, Christianity was

called to pass through an equally important intellectual and literary struggle with the ancient world;

and from this also it came forth victorious, and conscious of being the perfect religion for man. We

shall see in this chapter, that most of the objections of modern infidelity against Christianity were

anticipated by its earliest literary opponents, and ably and successfully refuted by the ancient

apologists for the wants of the church in that age. Both unbelief and faith, like human nature and

divine grace, are essentially the same in all ages and among all nations, but vary in form, and hence

every age, as it produces its own phase of opposition, must frame its own mode of defense.

The Christian religion found at first as little favor with the representatives of literature and

art as with princes and statesmen. In the secular literature of the latter part of the first century and

the beginning of the second, we find little more than ignorant, careless and hostile allusions to

Christianity as a new form of superstition which then began to attract the attention of the Roman

government. In this point of view also Christ’s kingdom was not of the world, and was compelled

to force its way through the greatest difficulties; yet it proved at last the mother of an intellectual

and moral culture far in advance of the Graeco-Roman, capable of endless progress, and full of the

vigor of perpetual youth.

57

Philip Schaff

History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene

Christianity. A.D. 100-325.

---