The History of Christianity, John S. C. Abbott [ebook reader browser .txt] 📗

There were four royal capitals. Rome was abandoned as the metropolitan centre. Diocletian was still the ruling spirit over all those kingdoms which his sagacity had formed. He chose for his own capital Nicomedia, on the Asiatic coast of the Sea of Marmora. Though he spent his life in the camp, he endeavored to invest his capital with splendor which should outvie all the ancient glories of Rome.

Diocletian was a shrewd man. Being aware how much the masses were influenced by outward show, he robed himself in garments of satin and gold. He wore a diadem of most exquisite pearls. Even his shoes were studded with glittering gems. All who approached him were compelled to prostrate themselves, and address him with the titles of deity. Gradually this extraordinary man became supreme emperor. The other three kings were crowded into the position of merely governors of subordinate provinces.

Diocletian resolved to uphold paganism, and consecrated all the energies of his vigorous mind to the extirpation of Christianity. We need not enter into the details of this persecution, its scourgings and its bloody enormities: such details are harrowing to the soul. We have already given examples sufficient to show what persecution was under the Roman emperors. The heroism with which many young persons of both sexes braved death, from love to Christ, is ennobling to humanity.

A decree was passed ordering every soldier in the army to join in idolatrous worship. The penalty for refusal was a terrible scourging, and to be driven from the ranks. There were many Christian soldiers in the army. With wonderful fortitude they met their fate.

Diocletian issued a decree that every church should be burned, that every copy of the Scriptures should be consigned to the flames, and that every Christian, of whatever rank, sex, or age, should be tortured, and thus compelled to renounce Christianity. No pen can describe the horrors of this persecution, the dismay with which it crushed all Christian hearts, or the fortitude with which the disciples of Jesus bore the scourgings, fire, and death.

We might fill pages with narratives of individual cases of suffering and of heroism. How little do we in this nineteenth century appreciate the blessing of being permitted to worship God according to the dictates of our consciences, with none to molest or make afraid!

While Diocletian was thus persecuting the Christians, he was also struggling with almost superhuman energy to hold together the crumbling elements of the Roman empire, assailed at every point by the barbarians. Nations die slowly: their groans are deep, their convulsions awful. For several centuries, Rome was writhing in death’s agonies.

In the twenty-first year of his reign, and the fifty-ninth of his age, Diocletian, enfeebled by sickness, and exhausted by the cares of empire, resolved to abdicate his throne. At the same time, he compelled Maximian to abdicate at Milan. It was his design to re-organize the Roman empire into two kingdoms, instead of four. This was the origin of the division of the Roman world into the Eastern and Western empires. The morning sun rose upon the Oriental realms of Galerius: its evening rays fell upon the Occidental kingdom of Constantius.

The ceremony of abdicating the empire of the world by Diocletian was very imposing. About three miles from the city of Nicomedia there is a spacious plain, which was selected for the pageant. Upon a lofty throne, Diocletian, pale and emaciate, announced to the immense multitude assembled his resignation of the diadem. Then, laying aside his imperial robes, he entered a closed chariot, and repaired to a rural retreat which he had selected at Salona, on the Grecian shore of the Adriatic Sea. It was the 1st of May, A.D. 305.

Accustomed for many years to luxury, he surrounded himself in a magnificent castle with the highest appliances of wealth and grandeur. With the eye of an artist he had selected the spot. From the portico there was a view of wondrous beauty. The wide panorama spread out before him an enchanting landscape of the cloud-capped mountains of Greece, with towering Olympus, the blue waters of the Mediterranean, and the green, luxuriant, and Eden-like islands of the Adriatic.

Ten acres were covered by the splendid palace he had here constructed. It was built of freestone, and flanked by sixteen towers. The principal entrance was appropriately named “the Golden Gate.” Gorgeous temples were reared in honor of the pagan gods, whom Diocletian ostentatiously adored. The surrounding grounds were embellished in the highest style of landscape-gardening. The saloons and banqueting-halls were filled with exquisite paintings and statuary.

But even here, in the most lovely retreat which nature and art could create, man’s doom of sorrow pursued the emperor. The keenest of domestic griefs pierced his heart, darkening the splendors of his saloons, and blighting the flowers of his arbors and parterres.

Bitterly had Diocletian persecuted the Christians. He had made every effort to infuse new vigor into pagan worship. Was this his earthly punishment? We know not: we simply know that for long years he wandered woe-stricken, consumed by remorse, through those magnificent saloons, into which one ray of joy never penetrated. The dread future was before him. Pagan as he assumed to be, he had no faith in paganism: he upheld the institution simply as a means of overawing the populace.

There is a marked difference between Christianity and all forms of idolatry. The intellectual men of olden time—Cicero, Plato, Aristotle—despised the popular religion: they regarded it merely as an instrument to intimidate the ignorant masses.

But, with Christianity, the ablest men, the profoundest thinkers, are its most earnest advocates. The presidents of our colleges, the most prominent men at the bar, the most distinguished of our statesmen, our ablest scientific men, our most heroic generals, are men who revere Christianity; who seek its guidance through life, and its support in death.

The death of Diocletian is shrouded in mystery. Some say he was poisoned. Some affirm, that, tortured by remorse, he committed suicide. We simply know that he died with no beam of hope illuminating the gloom of his dying-bed. He passed away to the judgment-seat of Christ, there to answer for persecuting Christ’s disciples with cruelty never surpassed.

Such was the condition of the world at the commencement of the fourth century.

In the first century of the Christian era, we have mainly a series of execrable emperors, who, by their extravagance and their crimes, were sowing the seeds for the dissolution of the empire.

In the second century, Christianity begins slowly to make itself felt. We have some very good emperors, but with no power to stem the torrent of corruption at full flood. One after another they are swept away by poison and the dagger. Corruption rolls on in resistless surges. Christianity, earnest, active, and heroic, then in its infancy, could do very little to stay such billows in their impetuous career. It could only work upon individual hearts. But thus it gradually spread its life, giving leaven through the mass.

The third century dawns upon us, black with clouds and storms. Apocalyptic vials of woe are emptied upon the world. There is dread among the nations. Death on the pale horse stalks through Europe. The fetlocks of the horse are red with blood. Rome, the Babylon of that day, drunk with sensuality and oppression, falls in convulsions,—shrieks and struggles and dies. It was needful that such a Rome, the tyrant and oppressor of humanity, should die. In prophetic vision we can see this Babylon descending to the realms of woe:—