But before such a goal be reached, many a martyr's crown has yet to be won, and more than barbarian lawlessness and cruelty have to be overcome.
CHAPTER XII. THE THIRD AGE OF THE MARTYR CHURCH.
"Rex pacificus magnificatus est, cujus vultum desiderat universa terra."
The third century is that during which the Christian Church was making its way into every relation of life, and taking possession of human society. During this period it advances into full light, and becomes a manifest power. In the second century Celsus had attacked it as disclosed only to the yearning hearts of slaves, and fostered by the devotion of the weaker sex. At the distance of three generations Origen answered him, but the religion which he defended already stood avowed alike before the inquiring gaze of philosophers, the corrupt crowds of cities, and the jealous fear of rulers. Even in Rome, the sceptered head of idolatry, whose nobles the great political traditions of their city, and whose populace their sensual life, having its root in a false worship, made the most difficult to convert, the hated faith is known to have had public churches by the time of Alexander Severus, two hundred years after its first rise.(269) And much more everywhere else it had planted its foot openly on the soil of the empire. It is time, then, to view the Church as an institution offering the strongest contrast to the empire itself, to the barbarism which surrounded the empire, and to the sectarianism which was everywhere aspiring to counter-work and supplant that entire body of truth on some portion of which nevertheless it was all the time feeding.
1. And first the empire during this century presents itself to us in a most unwonted aspect.
