Page:The early Christians in Rome (1911).djvu/219

 Perpetually were the Christians haled before the magistrate. They had stern searching questions to answer; easily was the capital crime of professing the unlawful cult daily brought home to them. They were asked: Were they willing to renounce it, and in place of it adore the gods of the pagans? Would they throw a few grains of incense, as a token of their recantation, on the altars of Rome and Augustus? If they would do this very little thing, as it seemed, at once they were released; but if they refused, then death, in some form or other, was their speedy and inevitable doom.

Hermas tells us a good deal of what was happening in the Roman congregations in the matter of persecution for the Name's sake. The harrying of Christians, when the author of the Shepherd was writing, must have been continuous, for he sadly speaks of those who were frequently yielding to pressure. Apostasy in the Christian ranks was, alas! not an unknown scandal. Some, he tells us, simply renounced their faith; others, terrified, went further and publicly blasphemed the Name. Some were positively base enough to betray and denounce their brethren in the Faith.

But, on the other hand, Hermas tells us how the Church numbered many martyrs. All, he says, were not on a level even here, for some trembled at first and flinched, and only witnessed a good confession at the last, probably when about to cense the idol altar. There were some though, said our writer, whose heart never for an instant failed them.

Yet, on the whole, this stern though kindly censor of the Christian Church was not dissatisfied with the life generally led by the congregations of believers in Jesus; he seems to recognise to the full the sorely tempted lives—tempted not only by the imminent danger which the confession of the Name entailed—though he dwells mostly on this ever-present peril—but also by the smaller lures with which all human existence is inextricably bound up: business matters, society obligations, the old jealousy and envy which ever exist between the rich and the poor.

"Le livre d'Hermas," observes Duchesne, "est un vaste examen de conscience de l'Église Romaine." The writer spares none in his severe yet kindly criticism; the priests and