[Sidenote: Church government modified also for a time.]
A temporary modification in the government of the { 65} Church was also brought about by these times of suffering. Bishops, under the pressure of persecution, were sometimes forced to leave their flocks, or were first tortured and then banished, and their places had to be filled as far as they could be by the presbyters, with the advice of the distant Bishop; whilst at Rome, in the middle of the third century, there was a year's vacancy in the see after the martyrdom of Fabian, on account of the impossibility of bringing neighbouring Bishops into the midst of a storm which was raging with especial fury against the rulers of the Church.
[1] St. John was a martyr in will, though not in deed, being miraculously preserved from injury in the caldron of boiling oil, into which he was plunged by order of Nero or Domitian.
[2] From Dr. Steere's "Account of the Persecutions of the Early Church under the Roman Emperors."
[Sidenote: Persecution arrested by conversion of Constantine.]
[Sidenote: Outward triumph of the Church.]
The conversion of the Emperor Constantine to the Faith worked a great change in the condition of the Christian Church. Even so early as the year 312, when the appearance to him of the luminous Cross in the sky was followed by victory over his enemies, Constantine began to issue edicts of toleration in favour of the Christians; and from the time of his sole supremacy, A.D. 324, Christianity and not Paganism became the acknowledged religion of the Roman empire.
Section 1. _The altered Outward Circumstances of the Church._
[Sidenote: Consequent change in discipline and ritual.]
Such a change in the outward circumstances of the Church could not but produce a corresponding alteration in its discipline and mode of worship. The Kingdom of God on earth became a great power visible to the eyes of men, no longer hid like the leaven, but overshadowing the earth like the mustard-tree; and the power and influence of Imperial Rome were employed { 67} in spreading the Faith instead of seeking to exterminate it. Christians were not now forced to shun the notice of their fellow-men; banished Priests and Bishops came back to their flocks; heathen temples were converted into Churches, and new Churches were built with great splendour. The vast resources of Roman wealth and refinement were employed to render the Worship of Almighty God costly and magnificent, and the ritual of the Church was probably more fully developed and brought more into harmony with the prophetic vision of St. John than circumstances had ever before allowed.