Page:The early Christians in Rome (1911).djvu/233

 men, should set an example of loyalty and obedience; was he to degrade his proud order by worshipping an unknown Crucified offender in defiance of the wishes and commands of the Emperor and the imperial government?

A yet more moving appeal was very often made to the brave Christians of both sexes by an eloquent magistrate to show some pity for those they loved,—for their aged father and mother; for husband or wife or helpless children. Were they by their fatal obstinacy to bring bereavement and disgrace, shame and poverty, on these unoffending ones?

Then behind all these specious arguments the Roman judge would show the pale confessor standing before him the awful tortures—the cruel death which surely awaited the one who refused, with what seemed a sullen and inexplicable obstinacy, to obey the laws of an immemorial Empire, when after all obedience was so easy.

And many did yield—of this there is no doubt. The number of martyrs who resisted unto death no doubt is very great, much greater than the cold and passionless critic chooses to acknowledge, but the number of those who did yield was no doubt considerable.

It was indeed a title to honour for a magistrate of Rome publicly to win over one or more of these confessors of the New Religion, to succeed in persuading some well-known Christian to scatter on the altar of the deified Emperor, or of the popular image of Mars the Avenger, or of Diana, or of the yet greater Jupiter, a few grains of incense typifying his return to the ancient pagan cult—or better still, to extract a few reluctant words in which the adored Christ was renounced and abandoned.

Such a judicial victory was ever a signal triumph for the Roman pagan judge. It would speedily bear its fruits and rally to the drooping standard of paganism a number of men and women pondering, doubting, hesitating on the threshold of Christianity; a threshold with such an example of recantation before them, which they would surely never cross!

And these scenes during the long years of active persecution were acted again and again. The war between the religion of Christ and the old idol-cult so dear to Rome and her subject millions was indeed a protracted and deadly combat, and,