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

on a larger scale: "One soweth, and another reapeth. I sent you to reap that whereon ye have not

labored: others have labored, and ye are entered into their labor" (John 4:38).

Christianity once established was its own best missionary. It grew naturally from within. It

attracted people by its very presence. It was a light shining in darkness and illuminating the darkness.

And while there were no professional missionaries devoting their whole life to this specific work,

every congregation was a missionary society, and every Christian believer a missionary, inflamed

by the love of Christ to convert his fellow-men. The example had been set by Jerusalem and Antioch,

and by those brethren who, after the martyrdom of Stephen, "were scattered abroad and went about

preaching the Word."

5

Justin Martyr was converted by a venerable old man whom he met "walking

on the shore of the sea." Every Christian laborer, says Tertullian, "both finds out God and manifests

him, though Plato affirms that it is not easy to discover the Creator, and difficult when he is found

to make him known to all." Celsus scoffingly remarks that fuller, and workers in wool and leather,

rustic and ignorant persons, were the most zealous propagators of Christianity, and brought it first

to women and children. Women and slaves introduced it into the home-circle, it is the glory of the

gospel that it is preached to the poor and by the poor to make them rich. Origen informs us that the

city churches sent their missionaries to the villages. The seed grew up while men slept, and brought

forth fruit, first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear. Every Christian told his

neighbor, the laborer to his fellow-laborer, the slave to his fellow-slave, the servant to his master

and mistress, the story of his conversion, as a mariner tells the story of the rescue from shipwreck.

The gospel was propagated chiefly by living preaching and by personal intercourse; to a

considerable extent also through the sacred Scriptures, which were early propagated and translated

into various tongues, the Latin (North African and Italian), the Syriac (the Curetonian and the

Peshito), and the Egyptian (in three dialects, the Memphitic, the Thebaic, and the Bashmuric).

Communication among the different parts of the Roman empire from Damascus to Britain was

comparatively easy and safe. The highways built for commerce and for the Roman legions, served

also the messengers of peace and the silent conquests of the cross. Commerce itself at that time, as

well as now, was a powerful agency in carrying the gospel and the seeds of Christian civilization

to the remotest parts of the Roman empire.

The particular mode, as well as the precise time, of the introduction of Christianity into the

several countries during this period is for the most part uncertain, and we know not much more

than the fact itself. No doubt much more was done by the apostles and their immediate disciples,

than the New Testament informs us of. But on the other hand the mediaeval tradition assigns an

apostolic origin to many national and local churches which cannot have arisen before the second

or third century. Even Joseph of Arimathaea, Nicodemus, Dionysius the Areopagite, Lazarus,

Martha and Mary were turned by the legend into missionaries to foreign lands.

§ 7. Extent of Christianity in the Roman Empire.

Justin Martyr says, about the middle of the second century: "There is no people, Greek or

barbarian, or of any other race, by whatsoever appellation or manners they may be distinguished,

however ignorant of arts or agriculture, whether they dwell in tents or wander about in covered

5

11:19.

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

Christianity. A.D. 100-325.

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wagons—among whom prayers and thanksgivings are not offered in the name of the crucified Jesus

to the Father and Creator of all things." Half a century later, Tertullian addresses the heathen

defiantly: "We are but of yesterday, and yet we already fill your cities, islands, camps, your palace,

senate and forum; we have left to you only your temples."

6

 These, and similar passages of Irenaeus

and Arnobius, are evidently rhetorical exaggerations. Origen is more cautious and moderate in his

statements. But it may be fairly asserted, that about the end of the third century the name of Christ

was known, revered, and persecuted in every province and every city of the empire. Maximian, in

one of his edicts, says that "almost all" had abandoned the worship of their ancestors for the new

sect.

In the absence of statistics, the number of the Christians must be purely a matter of

conjecture. In all probability it amounted at the close of the third and the beginning of the fourth

century to nearly one-tenth or one-twelfth of the subjects of Rome, that is to about ten millions of

souls.

But the fact, that the Christians were a closely united body, fresh, vigorous, hopeful, and

daily increasing, while the heathen were for the most part a loose aggregation, daily diminishing,

made the true prospective strength of the church much greater.

The propagation of Christianity among the barbarians in the provinces of Asia and the

north-west of Europe beyond the Roman empire, was at first, of course, too remote from the current

of history to be of any great immediate importance. But it prepared the way for the civilization of

those regions, and their subsequent position in the world.

Notes.

Gibbon and Friedländer (III. 531) estimate the number of Christians at the accession of

Constantine (306) probably too low at one-twentieth; Matter and Robertson too high at one-fifth

of his subjects. Some older writers, misled by the hyperbolical statements of the early Apologists,

even represent the Christians as having at least equalled if not exceeded the number of the heathen

worshippers in the empire. In this case common prudence would have dictated a policy of toleration

long before Constantine. Mosheim, in his Hist. Commentaries, etc. (Murdock’s translation I. p.

274 sqq.) discusses at length the number of Christians in the second century without arriving at

definite conclusions. Chastel estimates the number at the time of Constantine at 1/15 in the West,

1/10 in the East, 1/12 on an average (

Hist. de la destruct. du paganisme,

 p. 36). According to Chrysostom,

the Christian population of Antioch in his day (380) was about 100,000, or one-half of the whole.

§ 8. Christianity in Asia.

Asia was the cradle of Christianity, as it was of humanity and civilization. The apostles

themselves had spread the new religion over Palestine, Syria, and Asia Minor. According to the

younger Pliny, under Trajan, the temples of the gods in Asia Minor were almost forsaken, and

animals of sacrifice found hardly any purchasers. In the second century Christianity penetrated to

Edessa in Mesopotamia, and some distance into Persia, Media, Bactria, and Parthia; and in the

third, into Armenia and Arabia. Paul himself had, indeed, spent three years in Arabia, but probably

6

ola vobis relinqitimus templa."Apol.c. 37. Long before Tertullian the heathen Pliny, in his famous letter to Trajan (Epp. x.

97) had spoken of "desolata templa" and "sacra solemnia diu intermissa, " in consequence of the spread of the Christian superstition

throughout the cities and villages of Asia Minor.

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Philip Schaff

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

Christianity. A.D. 100-325.

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