I Life of a Christian in the Early Days
There is no shadow of doubt but that in a comparatively short space of time the religion of Jesus was accepted by great numbers of the dwellers in the various provinces of the Roman Empire. This fact is abundantly testified to by contemporary writers, Christian and pagan.
The only other widely professed religion with which we can compare it—Mahommedanism—owed its rapid progress and the extraordinary numbers of its proselytes mainly to the sword of the conquerors. Christianity, on the other hand, possessed no army to enforce its tenets. It was not even the heritage of a people or a nation. The Jews, to whom in the first days of its existence it might have belonged, were very soon to be reckoned among its deadliest foes.
One powerful factor which influenced the reception of the new religion has been rarely dwelt upon, but it deserves more than a merely passing notice.
The news of the religion of Jesus, as by many channels it reached the slave, often a highly educated slave, the freedman, the merchant, the small trader, the soldier of the legions, the lawyer, the Roman patrician, the women of the varied classes and orders in the great Empire,—the news came of something that had quite recently happened; and not only recently, but in a well-known city of the Empire. It was a wonderful story, firmly and strongly attested by many eye-witnesses, and it appealed at once to the hearts of all sorts and conditions of men.
It differed curiously from all other religions of which the pagans of the Empire had ever heard. These other religions were very ancient; their cradle, so to speak, belonged to far-back days—pre-historical days, as men would now call them. This new religion really belonged to their own time. Its founder had talked with men quite recently. He had lived in a city they knew a good deal about.
There was no dim mist about its origin; no old legends had gathered round it—legends which few, if any, believed.
The story of the religion of Jesus, told so simply, so convincingly, in the four Gospels, had a strange attraction; it went home to the hearts of a vast multitude; it rang true and real.
We know that very soon after the date of the events of the Gospel story the numbers of the men and women who accepted it were great. From the pagan Empire we have the testimony of Tacitus, the most eminent of Roman historians. Writing some fifty years after the first persecution under Nero, A.D. 64, he describes the Christians at the time of that first persecution as “a vast multitude” (ingens multitudo).40
Still more in detail the younger Pliny, the Governor of Bithynia, writing to the Emperor Trajan circa A.D. 112–13 for instructions how to deal with the Christians, relates that the new religion had spread so widely in his province, not merely in the cities but in the villages and country districts generally, that the temples were almost deserted.41 It is, of course, possible that the new faith had found especial favour in Bithynia; but such a formal and detailed representation from an official of the highest rank and reputation to the Emperor of what was happening in his own province, is a sure indication of the enormous strides which Christianity had generally made in the Empire when the echoes of apostles and apostolic men were still ringing in the ears of their disciples. S. John’s death only preceded Pliny’s letter to Trajan42 by at most twenty years.
Among contemporary Christian writers we find similar testimony to the vast numbers of Christians in very early times. To take a few conspicuous examples:
Clement, bishop of Rome circa A.D. 95, writing to the Church at Corinth, speaks of “the great multitude of Christians” who suffered in the persecution of Nero, A.D. 64.43
Hermas, in his book termed the Shepherd, shows us that in the reign of the Emperor Hadrian, circa A.D. 130–40, there was resident a large number of Christians in the capital, many of them well-to-do and wealthy citizens.
Soter, bishop of Rome, writing to the Church of Corinth,44 shortly after A.D. 165, refers to the Christians as superior in numbers to the Jews, no doubt especially alluding to the Roman congregation mentioned.
In the Acts of the Martyrdom of Justin, circa A.D. 165, an undoubtedly genuine piece, Rusticus the Roman prefect asks Justin where the Christians assembled. In reply, Justin said, “Where each one chooses and can; for do you imagine that we all meet in the very same place?”
Irenæus in a very striking passage,45 written circa A.D. 180, alludes to the size and importance of the Roman congregation. His words are as follows:
“Since, however, it would be most tedious in such a volume as this to reckon up the (Episcopal) succession of all the Churches, we confound all those who assemble in unauthorized meetings by indicating the tradition handed down from the apostles of the most great, the very ancient, and universally known Church organized by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul.”
The statements of Tertullian circa A.D. 195–200 are well known and are often quoted; and though they are probably exaggerated, still such assertions, although they are rhetorical rather than simple statistics, would never have been advanced by such a learned and weighty writer if the numbers of the Christians of his time (the latter years of the second century) had not, in many cities and countries, been very great.
In the works of Tertullian we come across such statements as the following:
“The grievance (of the pagan government) is that the State is filled with Christians; that they are in the fields, in the citadels, in blocks of houses (which fill up the cities). It grieves (does the government), as over some calamity, that both sexes indifferently, all ages, every condition, even persons of high rank, are passing over to the Christian ranks.”46
And again: “We are not Indian Brahmins who dwell in forests and exile themselves from the common life of men.... We company with you in the world, forsaking neither the life of the Forum, nor the Bath, nor Workshop, nor Inn, nor Market-place, nor any Mart of commerce. We sail with you, fight with you, till the ground with you, even we share in the various arts.”47
About fifty years after Tertullian’s writing just quoted, Cornelius, bishop of Rome, A.D. 251, in an Epistle addressed to Fabius, bishop of Antioch,48 gives some official statistics of the Roman Church in his days.49 Cornelius particularizes the classes of the various officials, together with the numbers of persons in distress who were on the lists of the Church receiving charitable relief. Scholars and experts, basing their calculations upon these official statistics, variously estimate the numbers of Christians in the city of Rome at from 30,000 to 50,000, the latter calculation on the whole being probably nearest to the truth.
Lastly, in this little sketch of the vast numbers of disciples who at a very early date had joined the Christian community, the changeless testimony of the Roman catacombs must be cited. Much will be found written in this work regarding these enormous cemeteries of the Christian dead. It is absolutely certain that in the second half of the first century these catacombs were already begun.
The words of the eminent German scholar Harnack may well be quoted here: “The number, the size, and the extent of the Roman catacombs... is so great that even from them we may infer the size of the Roman Church, its steady growth, its adherents from distinguished families, its spread all over Rome.”50
The foregoing contemporary witnesses, including the testimony of the Church to the size and numbers of the Christian congregation, speak of the Roman Christians with two notable exceptions—the pagan Pliny and the Christian Tertullian. The others, including Clement of Rome, Hermas, Justin Martyr, Soter, Irenæus, Cornelius, are specially writing of Rome and the Christian portion of its population.
But, as has been already remarked, what was written of Rome in a greater or less degree applies to other great centres of population in the Empire, notably to such centres as Antioch and Ephesus, Alexandria and Carthage.