p. 501 | PRIMITIVE PERSECUTIONS by Elder I. E. Kimball

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jun 18, 1894

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 20, No. 32.

PRIMITIVE PERSECUTIONS.

By Elder I. E. Kimball

[This is article 7 in the series on the Early Apostasy. It is of interest studied by itself.]

Conversion of Constantine.

THE church, weakened, almost subdued, by apostasy, was also beset by the Roman sword, with the avowed design of her enemies to wholly break her allegiance to God and sweep her out of existence, as though Satan with dire malignity would cast down to the ground and stamp out the hated followers of Christ.

The first onslaught, under Nero, A.D. 64, is described by Tacitus, a heathen historian: "Vast multitudes were convicted, not so much on the charge of making the conflagration [the burning of Rome] as of hating the human race." Persecutions followed under Domitian, A.D. 95, Trajan, 98-117, Hadrian, 117-138, Marcus Aurelius, 161-180. In this emperor's reign wars, earthquakes, and inundations, famine and pestilence, so swept the empire that it never recovered, well fulfilling Christ's word in Matt. 24: 6-8. The hated Christians, for impiety in not rendering allegiance to the gods, were held to be the cause of the great disasters.

Under Septimius Severus there was persecution, A.D. 193-211, also in the reigns of Caracalla and Decius. In the reign of Maximinus, 235-238, earthquakes and calamities were rife, and, as usual, set down to the Christians' account. Then followed Decius, 249-251, when all Christians were required to appear before the magistrate in a given time and abjure Christ and sacrifice. He would, if it were possible, have extirpated Christianity. Again, under Gallus, 251-253, pestilence, drought, and famine were experienced. As usual, the cry was raised, "The Christians to the lions." Persecution continued under Valerian, 253-260, Aurelian, 274, and Diocletian. Maximian was after a time associated in the government, and became a fiery persecutor, when thousands upon thousands were put to death.

We have in the times of Diocletian and his associates in the government, Maximian and Galerius, the period known as the Era of the Martyrs. In his time a learned French writer, Monsieur Godeau, computes the number put to death in one month as seventeen thousand, and that during the continuance of it, in the one province of Egypt, not less than one hundred and fifty thousand died by the violence of their persecutors, and five times that number through the fatigues of banishment and working the public mines, to which they were condemned. How many the lives sacrificed over the entire empire we cannot conceive.

But Christianity would not down in this way; it rather revived the church than otherwise. Satan now offers the kingdom of this world, upon the same condition as once before, to Christ in the wilderness. Soon the church, which asserted her liberty before the drawn sword, became a servile taskmaster to her vices and lordly paramours.

The conversion of Constantine marks a decided era in Catholicism. An edict, signed by Galerius, Constantine, and Licinius, A.D. 311, proclaimed toleration in matters of religion. Again, the edict of Milan, 312, gave unrestricted liberty. The sacred rights of conscience are herein asserted as the reason for such liberty.

Constantine marched down from France to Italy against Maxentius. The expedition involved all his future destiny. In extreme anxiety he earnestly meditated the aid of deity, and sought by the patronage of the gods to make his expedition successful. He had ever claimed the sun for his invincible deity. Now, above the blazing sun of noon, while standing before his army, as he told Eusebius, he sees a luminous cross, and over it written, "In hoc signo vinces," "In this sign thou shalt conquer." Policy, conquest, and universal dominion filled his thoughts. He was by turn boor, robber, murderer, and madman during his whole life. We cannot for a moment allow that God thus visited him to stimulate for conquest and glut his reeking sword. He bowed the knee for aid to the Christian's God. It is asserted that his conflict with Licinius assumed a religious phase as a struggle between the rival religions, Paganism and Catholicism. Fifty men eminent for piety carried the Labarum, or Standard of the Cross, and a multitude of priests thronged his train. Out of the blood and dust of battle Constantine came forth victorious, A.D. 323. And this is generally specified as the final step in his conversion. The great sword of Constantine achieved the final conquest of the Roman Empire to the church Catholic.

The briefest possible summary of the times shows Constantine "bishop in externals;" the clergy now the principal disturbers of the empire; orthodoxy and heterodoxy now settled by fathers and councils; bishops exalted as "ruler and governor, . . . your king and potentate, and . . . earthly god;" "Chorepiscopi," or country bishops, subjected to the metropolitans.

The laity were unwarrantably divided into the Faithful, the Catechumens, Kneelers, and Hearers. Sermons, if acceptable to the Hearers, were applauded vociferously. Bishops were empowered by the government to hear and decide all ecclesiastical, and, according to Eusebius and Sozomen, civil cases of adjudicature. If before the civil magistrate either party deferred to the bishop, or desired him instead, thus it must be, and this must be final, without the appeal that otherwise would bring it before the emperor.

At the first Constantine forbade the heathen to interfere with the Christians. Soon his edicts began to interfere with the heathen. Private sacrifices were forbidden. Some of the heathen temples were demolished. All his decrees favoring Christianity were restricted to the Catholic Church. According to Eusebius, he prohibited the worshiping of idols in cities and towns, commanded that no statues of the gods be erected, or sacrifices offered. Thus he prohibited religious opinions and punished the abettors. None can conceive how Constantine's edicts were in any sense more equitable than the heathen emperors before him had been, for if he had the right to erect a standard and make heathen, Christian, and Jew bow thereto, the former emperors had the same privilege, and were justified in erecting their standard and interfering with the Christians. In his views the religious opinions of heathen, Jew, and certain Christians were erroneous; but Diocletian believed, on the other hand, the Christian to be in the wrong. Each had a right to his opinion, but neither had the right to enforce his religious dictum upon anybody else. Thus Constantine no more sanctioned religious liberty than did his predecessors.

In a letter to Mithridates, bishop of Rome, he said he had so great reverence for the Catholic Church that he would not have him suffer in any place any schism or difference to exist. "The privileges granted on religious grounds [said he] are to be conferred only on followers of the Catholic law. It is our pleasure that heretics and schismatics be not merely debarred from the aforesaid privileges, but, furthermore, bound and subject to diverse charges."

The Jew even more than the heathen suffered the full blunt of imperial censure. A council, about the time of his accession, solemnly prohibited clergy and laity from eating with the Jews.

Lastly, the imperious sovereign opened his quiver against heretical Christians. Thus begins an edict:—

Hear ye now, O ye Novatians, Valentinians, Marcionites, and Montanists! Hear ye all who have embraced heresies of your own, . . . O ye enemies of truth! Ye adversaries of life! Ye counselors of destruction! Inasmuch as it is no longer possible to endure the pest of your destructiveness, we make proclamation by this edict that no one of you venture to take part in your wonted assemblies. To this end we command all your edifices wherein ye hold your meetings to be confiscated. And this determination of ours proceeds to such a length that we forbid not only your public assemblages, but your private gatherings, whether they be in houses or in any other place in your possession. As many of you as seek a true and spiritual worship, do ye come to the Catholic Church and obtain communion with its holiness, and to the Catholic Church we have directed your chapels, if chapels they can be called, to be delivered without delay. And all other places to you belonging we have commanded to be appropriated to the public treasury.

Thus Constantine, still Pontifex Maximus to the heathen, became lord also of the Church catholic, a fitting prototype of the pontiffs of after times.