66 island"the island of Patmos.2 There, says Irenaeus, he saw his vision in the last years of Domitian's reign, and thence, according to an ancient and very credible tradition, he was released on the accession of Nerva, and passed forth to Ephesus. In the lurid symbolism of his vision, as in the vivid Rome in touches which illuminate his letters to the the Aposeven churches," we can read the bitter- calypse. ness of the sufferings which fell upon the Church, especially where the "worship of the Wild Beast" prevailed and the "throne of Satan" was most firmly established-that is, where the cult of "Rome and Augustus" was most highly developed under the influence of the man who, with mind more than half unhinged, loved to style himself "Lord and God." If the scourge lay heavy upon the provinces, as at Pergamus where Antipas suffered, what of the seat of empire? She is Babylon, mother of harlots and of every abomination, "drunken with the blood of the saints and of the martyrs of Jesus ":5 over her the seer pronounced a doom like that pronounced by Ezekiel over Tyre, wherein righteous indignation struggles with the arresting charm of her manifold. greatness. 6 But the end was not yet. Rome as a pagan city was doomed indeed; and the arch-tyrant's days were numbered. But the struggle between the world and the Church in Rome was not ended, though with Nerva and Trajan it assumed a new aspect. With the death of Domitian, Christianity ceased to suffer from the personal atrocities of the head of the State: though the precedents set by Nero and Domitian influenced, no doubt, the attitude of official Rome towards the new faith, in more ways than one, not least in stripping Christianity once for all of the protection afforded at first by prevailing confusion of the new sect with the privileged Jewish religion.1 Misconception remained of the worst kind, in dark, unfounded calumnies, but on that point there was no longer misconception. The worship of God in Christ, and that of Rome in the emperor, stood face to face in naked antagonism.2 The Roman Church of the first century is associated with the names of the three greatest Apostles Rome - St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. John. St. John simply passes across the scene, Apostles. St. Peter and St. Paul left their martyr relics to be the Church's most precious treasure. and the Founded by unnamed evangelists, how early we cannot say revived, almost certainly, after the temporary uprooting by Claudius, under the influence of a group of leaders, among whom Prisca and Aquila hold an honoured place, the Church received its final seal of Catholicity by the joint "foundation" of St. Peter and St. Paul. St. Peter's period of activity fell, most probably, after St. Paul's first liberation in 62, and Mark, St. Peter's traditional companion, may have been there as his forerunner, when from Rome he sends salutations to Philemon.3 When 1 See below, chap. xii., p. 224. 2 On Emperor-worship, see further below, chap. xii., p. 225. St. Paul came back from his last journeys and joined the senior Apostle in the Eternal City, he came once more as a prisoner, and was incarcerated with St. Peter in the grim Mamertine prison on the slope of the Capitoline Hill. The trend of tradition makes both Apostles suffer in the last year of Nero's reign: though some would now put St. Peter's martyrdom a dozen years later a theory which might help to account for the greater impression his name has left on the local Church. The story of their martyrdom has already been told. Of the progress made by Christianity in the city during the episcopates of Linus, Cletus, and Clement, no detailed statistics remain. It is not till a century and a half after Clement's death that we have a precise list of presbyters, deacons, sub- deacons, acolytes, exorcists, readers, and door-keepers, and a mention of the fifteen hundred widows and destitutes supported by the Church. But the catacombs bear witness to her swift conquests among Rome's best blood. And, in the light of her subsequent history and of the part she has played in the Christianisation of Europe, we feel that St. Luke was wholly justified in the conclusion he chose for his story. He sets out to sketch the spread of the witness in ever-widening circles from Jerusalem to the uttermost part of the earth. When his hero, St. Paul, had at last attained the goal of his yearnings, and set foot in the city which summarised and symbolised the entire civilised world, the story of the Church's beginnings was com 1 Cornelius of Rome. Letter in Euseb., H. E., vi. 43 (Harnack, ii. 247). 2 Lightfoot, Clem., vol. i., p. 29 sqq. plete. Rome now contained within her walls the one man of that age who had grasped in all its fullness the universal message and the Catholic mission of the Church, the unearthly Empire. "The kingdom. of the world" was now on the way to "become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ."1 1 Rev. xi. 15. CHAPTER XII THE CHURCH AND THE WORLD HE relations which were to be between the Church THE Relations and the world will be found already outlined in the acts and utterances of Christ as recorded in the Gospels. 'I I pray not that Thou shouldest take them out of the world," He had said on the night of His betrayal, "but that Thou shouldest of Church keep them from the evil." Though the and world word "kingdom" was ever in His mouth, forecast He had declined to head a popular move- by Christ. ment designed to place Him on an earthly throne;2 and before Pilate He had testified, "My kingdom is not of this world."3 4 church founded. Yet it was clearly His intention to establish a living organised society, a visible church; and such a body must have definite relations of one sort or A visible another with its civil and political environment. Christ's teaching in this matter resolves itself into a modified recognition of existent authority-a recognition modified, that is, by the simultaneous recognition of the paramount claim of God. It is summed up in the memorable phrase, "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's." 5 1 John xvii. 15. 2 John vi. 15. 4 Matt. xvi. 18; cf. xxviii. 19, 20. 3 John xviii. 36. 5 Matt. xxii. 21. |