Page:The early Christians in Rome (1911).djvu/77

 patient martyrs to witness a good confession for the Name's sake. It was that burning, that living faith in the great sacrifice of their loving Master—the faith which in the end vanquished even pagan Rome—the faith which comes from no books or arguments, no preaching and no persuasion—from no learning however profound and sacred—from no human arsenal, however furnished with truth and righteousness.

It was that strong and deathless faith which is the gift of God alone, and which in a double portion was the gift of the Holy Ghost to the sorely tried Church in the heroic age of Christianity.

After the death of Nero, during the very brief reigns of Galba Otho and Vitellius, probably the persecution of Christians, owing to the disturbed state of Rome and the Empire, languished. When, however, the Flavian House in the person of Vespasian was firmly placed in power, the policy of the government of Nero, which held that the Christians were a sect the tendency of whose beliefs and practice was hostile to the very foundations and established principles of the Roman government, was strictly adhered to, and possibly even developed.

The followers of the sect were deemed outlaws, and the name of a Christian was treated as a crime.

There is a famous passage in Sulpicius Severus (fourth century) which most modern scholars consider to have been an extract from a lost book of Tacitus. It is an account of a Council of War held after the storming of Jerusalem, 70. In this Council, Titus the son and heir of Vespasian—the hero of the great campaign which closed with the fall of Jerusalem—is reported to have expressed the opinion that the Temple ought to be destroyed in order that the religion of the Jews and of the Christians might be more completely rooted up; for these religions, though opposed to each other, had yet the same origin. The Christians had sprung from the Jews, and when the root was torn up the stem issuing from the root would easily be destroyed. There is no doubt but that this report of Titus' speech at the Council of War is an historical