Asa H. Craig, (Asa Hollister), 1847-1934
Martyrdom is the fiery ordeal through which the power of God in Christianity is gloriously made manifest. It is proof of the wondrous stability of the Church, the undying, the imperishable and immortal faith that is the base of its foundation. It is not the passion of blind fanaticism, or heretical fidelity to imagination, but is the genuine testimony of the glorification of the Christian Church. It is God’s testimony to the world that even persecution and death cannot raise a barrier against His Holy Word. It is evidence of the all-consoling truth that the gates of hell shall never prevail against it.
While the Roman emperors sought to destroy the Christian religion by the sword and persecution, the sophists and philosophers, its enemies, sought by arguments to confute the teachings of Christ, just as the unbelievers of the present day seek to play upon the passions of men and proclaim that religion is the result of imagination, and cannot be, and yet no persecution of fire or sword, no power of sophistry and cunning, could prevail against the everlasting truth.
The literary talents of eminent pagans were employed to prejudice the world against Christianity. They were to testify against the divinity of Christ, against his power of salvation and against the resurrection. They were to represent him as a man incapable of divine power, incapable of performing miracles and incapable of being the Son of God.
Of the production of these eminent writers, three were so cunningly devised that many were persuaded against the faith, and the spread of Christianity seemed at a standstill, but from the slow power of recovery there arose a more perfect union between God and man. The power of discernment between sophistry and truth grew plainer and plainer until the foundation of the Church was made to endure forever.
The first great work against Christ was by the philosopher Celsus, who, in the year 150, wrote a tirade of malignant abuse, not in the language of base antagonism, but in that of subtle craftiness. He represented as having discovered the foundation of Christ’s authority and his power of performing miracles. It was represented as an educational treatise based upon a careful study and analysis of the conditions, and while to Christians it was an exposition of malicious calumnies, yet the frankness of rebutting testimony had more the appearance of truth than a willful design against our Blessed Savior.
This was, perhaps, the most logical interpretation ever prepared by pagan opposition. It was eloquent in appeal, manly in demonstration and dangerously subtle in its discussion. Christ was represented as a skillful conjurer, a powerful magician, a wily exponent of heresies, and of suspicious origin. He described his manner of travels and teachings as beneath the dignity of a Divinity; He went about with a miserable company of poverty-stricken publicans and fishermen, performing, by the art of witchcraft, fictitious miracles, and finally dying by the hand of the executioner.
He logically demonstrated the impossibility of a Divine being coming from poverty and associating himself with the vilest element of society. He described the followers of Christ as a class of people living upon the excitement of the day, without moral principles, a class of heretics, dregs of society, and proselytes made in the most shameless manner. That Christ worked upon the ignorance and superstitions, and being associated with poverty and wretchedness, his followers must be composed of criminals and vicious people He discussed the absurdity of the declaration that Christ’s religion would be known of all nations of the earth, and in God’s own time would subdue paganism and establish this new creed.
This author, in his book, “The Word of Truth,” asserts that the moral law of Christians is neither holy nor new, consisting of fables and absurdities, opposing every rational principle, and calculated to captivate simple and stupid people. The object of the book was to generate prejudice and destroy conversions, which were rapidly swelling the ranks of the Christians.
While it represented Christ as of suspicious origin, yet it portrayed him as being possessed of a mythical god, who had fallen into disfavor, and now sought to direct his powers of craft and to assist him in the development of startling revelations. From this source his followers were deceived as to his origin, his power, and his divine attributes.
And while it seems a sacrilege to associate Christ with the sophistry of pagan invention, yet in the persecution of Christian faith we find the logic of enemies as powerful as bodily crucifixion. The persecution of Nero destroyed the body, while the logic of Celsus poisoned the mind with the seeds of prejudice, irreverence, and idolatry. While one wrought physical pain, the other destroyed Christian influence, the hope of salvation and the soul of man.
Failing to accomplish the destruction of faith by the logic of argument and absurdities, another writer, Lucian, appears some years later and adopts a new line of defense. He is witty and sarcastic, and where the old calumnies and misrepresentations fail to impress, he creates attention by ridicule and witty utterances. He describes the Christians as harmless and good-hearted blockheads, ready to become the victim of every charlatan; that their enthusiasm was due to a simpleness of mind; born without reason and fit subjects for impostors and false demonstration. This frivolous scoffer makes levity of their martyrdom, ascribing the cause to blind fanaticism, but in his recognition of their love for one another he unintentionally contributes to the beautiful testimony of the virtue of Christianity and the abiding faith of
its followers. Where argument could not prevail ridicule found lodgment, and Lucian deterred many from embracing Christianity.
The attempt to destroy the teachings of Christ by vindictive and malicious declarations having failed, and the crafty cunning of wit and sarcasm having lost its power, a new plan is presented by the enemies of Christ. They see the nakedness of the religion of mystical gods; therefore, it is proposed to reorganize the pagan faith by making it purer and more acceptable to the people, and all the philosophers were again called to publish a system more in harmony with the advancement of Christianity. It must be something new, pleasant, and enticing. The old objections must be stricken out, the number of gods diminished and some form of a Christ instituted to represent more than the Christians’ Christ.
Comparison was now the question under discussion, and in this comparison superiority for the pagan was always rendered. As an illustration, we find one character in particular who is set up as a demigod, who was born in a miraculous manner, who passed his youth in holy retirement, preached a sublime doctrine, worked miracles, and ended his life in a mysterious manner.
Also, we find the philosopher Pythagoras as idolized and invested with all the attributes of a divine being. He was described as a supernatural hero, who appeared on earth in human form, who prophesied coming events, wrought miracles and founded common justice to all men. Pythagoras was proclaimed greater than Christ, and Christians were exhorted to follow him. It was pointed out that he possessed everything possible with Christ, that he was superior in birth, in the following of men, and in his departure from earth.
Had Christ contained the divinity of Pythagoras he would have saved himself from crucifixion. The one fell a victim of execution; the other, by his own miraculous power, ascended to heaven. Thus failed all the skillful contrivances to deceive the people in the worship of the true God. Their crafty plays upon the imagination and their artful and ingenious testimony of falsehood was of no avail. The Church of God was founded upon the rock of Peter, and all sophistry of pagan philosophy and all the persecution of Roman tyrants could not prevail against it.
The first system of religion, or rather doctrine, outside of pagan mythology and its reorganization, which seriously threatened the existence of the Church, was the heresy of Gnosis, one of the so-called philosophers in the first ages of Christianity. This self-ordained philosopher evolved a new doctrine which he termed a true philosophical interpretation of the Christian religion. He claimed a deeper wisdom than all the disciples of Christ, and strove to explain the existence of God and his creations, to explain Christ and his mission, to demonstrate the difference between mind and matter, and lastly, to explain the soul and its relation to God.
These were great questions, but in his broad assurances and boldness of declaration he won admiration, then expressions of belief, in his great exposition of infinite knowledge. This Gnostic doctrine combined Oriental theology and Greek philosophy with the doctrine of Christianity. They held that all natures, intelligible, intellectual, and material, are derived from Deity by successive emanations, which they call Eons, or divine spirits. They represent the Supreme Being as Bythos, who stands at the head of all creation in a world of spirits. With him it is either a principle of good or evil. From Bythos emanates the world of spirits, called Eons, who assist in governing the universe. The god, Demiurgus, is the author of the body and Bythos the producer of the soul. As the soul is of divine origin and the body of earthy matter, the uniting of two opposite elements is unnatural, and a union of contradictory elements is the source of evil. The Eon, Christ, was sent to communicate with the souls of men and inform them of a higher life, and to seek to overcome the evils of body, and be prepared to rise in its Kne of progression.
Much of this part of the belief is a doctrine of today, where the soul is a progressive spirit going on and on in a successive series of improvement until it reaches its future perfection.
According to Gnostics this Eon, Christ, united with the man, Jesus, where he could better communicate with the souls of men and teach them the path to the highest plane of spirit life. They teach that not all Eons are capable of even spirit life, but as they represent all life they remain as a germ in all matter which, under proper conditions, is brought into real existence. As the egg requires heat to produce life, so in all matter the germ of production is ever ready for future existence.
The Gnostics divide men into three classes: The Spiritual, Physical and Material. The Spiritual are those capable of sustaining the greatest knowledge, the Physical pertains alone to faith, and the Material, which, under the present Eon, must fall into space and wait for another creation.
To divide these classes into doctrines of faith, the Spiritual are the real Gnostics, the highest order of worldly spiritual attainment; the Physical is the Catholic, and founded on faith; while the Material is the unprepared Spirit, or Pagan.
They also divide their doctrine into two other divisions — one, the esoteric, or secret; the other, exoteric, or public. These are taken from Pagan mysteries and described somewhat in mythological language. The secret, is the conscience, the soul speaking to the body, the motive power of the brain, the spirit Eon. The public, is the declaration of the body, the call for life, the mind speaking to matter, the worldly thought.
The Gnostics claim this heresy was taught by Christ and his Apostles, and to sustain their doctrine they destroyed portions of the Holy Bible and rebuilt it to meet their wants. While Gnosticism claims to be the real Christianity, yet it is in utter contradiction to it. It is a positive negation, for its teachings are simply a system of progressions from the germ to the highest plane of spirit life. Besides this, they teach that the highest Eons control the Mind, Reason, Power, Truth, and Life; that they are continually speaking to the souls of men, warning, entreating, consoling, and instructing.
Thus, we find that the enemies of Christ’s Church are continually, even to the present day, devising creeds and isms to defeat the real truth of God. Satan is ever ready to tear down, and even under the cloak of religion, seeks to build up a new church and a new dogma of worship. It is a continual warring upon the real faith of Christ and the martyrdom of the Holy Catholic Church.
From the birth of Christianity to the present time there has been a constant resistance, constant sacrifice, .and constant application to faith. Men have laid down their lives to sustain it, and the Church has continually fought to maintain it, and both have been constant martyrs, and will be, from the days of their existence to the end of time.
IN a review of the persecution of the Catholic Church we I are indebted to history for the facts concerning it, and, although, in this volume, it is impossible to give a minute description of the long line of persecutions, yet we can give some of the prominent features, leaving the reader to ponder in his mind what must have been the awful situation during the first establishment of the Church, and during many periods of agony in the history of our Christian Era.
Our established period of time dates with the birth of Christ, and is the beginning of the Christian era. Previous to this time religion was divided into two principal classes — the Pagan mythology, and the old Jewish worship. The Jews had been God’s chosen people, but in their rejection of Christ a new religion was ordained, a new Church established, and a new doctrine of faith was preached to the people.
Christ came into the world to set an example, to teach repentance, to practice humility, to destroy idolatry, and to bear persecution. He found the world without faith in God, hope in immortality, or charity to mankind. It was a strange combination of intelligence, ignorance, superstition, and barbarism. The people were intelligent in the pursuits of life, but ignorant in the knowledge of Divinity. They were superstitious in all the movements of nature, and brutal and barbaric to those who opposed them.
They regarded Christ as a man, and God as the manifestation of many gods. They worshiped a deity, but believed the spirit of that deity lived in their idols, and was capable of exercising pleasure, wrath, or punishment. They loved their gods with the devotion of blind fanaticism, and when the new light of Christianity blazed forth in the glory of Christ, they were jealous lest they should lose their gods, and the power they supposed watched over them would be removed forever.
It was this fear that first raised their enmity against Christianity, and as they saw its zeal and influence, they ought to crush it out, first by a series of slow persecutions, then by confiscation and pillage, then by fire, death, and crucifixion. Those persecutions were most terrible to contemplate. In the confiscation of property they destroyed their churches, deprived them of the liberty of worship, burned the emblems of Christ and his crucifixion, and publicly denounced them as heretics, offenders of the gods, and declared their religion as dangerous to government, dangerous to the people, and should be suppressed.
The weak often yielded to these persecutions and renounced Christ, but the faithful stood firm and unmoved, permitting the confiscation of their homes without murmur or complaint, viewing the destruction of their churches with calmness, and even smiling as they lay down their lives for the cause of Christianity. Beyond these mortal trials came the visions of reward, the triumph of truth, and the establishment of the rock of salvation. Although they could not realize how the hand of God was purifying his church by winnowing, through affliction and distress, the weak and wavering, yet they felt that the love of faith was a blessing far greater than the pain of persecution.
From our knowledge of to-day we see that these enemies of Christ’s Church were but instruments in God’s hand to establish a permanent religion, a permanent gospel of Christ’s love and devotion, a permanent instrument for receiving God’s word, and a permanent faith for the deliverance of man from the pagan World. We now see the necessity of persecution, confiscation, slavery, and even the call to die a martyr’s death. It was to convince the world that the faith of Christianity was stronger than all the torments devised by man. It was to establish a true religion and implant Christ’s salvation in the hearts of all mankind.
The pagan world was made to feel that in this new Christianity there was something greater and grander than the worship of idols. It was made to see that there was a reality in religion, a reality in the profession of this faith, when men would suffer the pain of persecution, of confiscation, of fire, of mutilation of body, and of death.
These pagans could not understand how Christians could suffer and not forsake the cross of their faith. It was a new order of things to them. While life to this people was the greatest of all desires, and for which they would sacrifice all pleasure, all possessions and all their gods, yet here was an abiding faith against which all the persecutions of hell could not prevail. The martyr’s blood was but the cementing of faith eternal. Like Christ, they gave their lives that the foundation of faith and redemption might be established forever.
To do this required God’s persecution through the hands of his enemies, that the whole world might see the glories of His Church established by His only begotten Son, and to endure forever. These measures may seem harsh and unnatural, but we know that it is only by trouble and misfortune that we find our real friends, and see the departure of those who smile only when life’s success is with us. So, too, is it true in the proof of faith. The love of God in our hearts is manifest when we enter the field of persecution. If it is there it is proved beyond question, and at the same time, if there is a lack of faith, that, too, is an open proof. God weighed His disciples, and in weighing through the persecutions of the body found the dividing line between the weak and the strong.
In persecution, not only were there simple Christians who fell by the wayside, but even priests and bishops renounced their faith and returned to the Pagan gods, and even gave sacrifices to them; but be it to the great glory of the earnestness of early Christianity, few renounced their faith, thus leaving a purified church, without spot or blemish. Like a cleansing fire it cast out the dross, leaving only the rock of endurance. It had cast out the impure elements, which would antagonize the true spirit of Christianity and become dangerous in the examples to be placed before the world.
Upon a small monument over the grave of the author’s only sister is inscribed the following epitaph:
Hard at times seem the ways of God,
When He takes to Himself what He has given;
When we lay our idols under the sod.
Leaving naught but a thought of heaven.
Yes, hard at times seem the ways of God when we meet
affliction, when our loved ones die, when our supposed friends
drop behind us, when we are vilified, persecuted with false-
hood, and unjustly judged. But in all this persecution, let
us remember that, like the radiant light cast by the crucifixion
of Christ and his Apostle Peter, and by the establishment of
His Church upon the rock of immortality, the faith in God
can never fall. Remember that, although we may become
martyrs to worldly persecution, yet the everlasting lines of
the poet can never die.
“Truth crushed to earth shall rise again.
The eternal years of God are hers;
But Error, wounded, writhes with pain.
And dies among his worshipers.’*
RETROSPECT.
Few, excepting those who have made a study of the origin and progress of the Catholic religion, realize the terrible persecution which the Christians suffered in the early days of the Church. When we contemplate the deep intensity and the wicked determination of the enemies of Christianity to crush it out of existence and destroy the religion of Christ, we can only wonder how one single soul could withstand the awful cruelty, the awful test of faith which the pagan world, without mercy or compassion, forced Christians to bear. Frenzied with madness at their inability to compel them to renounce their Savior, they decreed the direst punishment which blood-thirsty monarchs could invent. Not content with the confiscation of property and imprisonment, these martyrs to Christ’s Church were tortured beyond description. No pen can picture the awful cruelties which were imposed upon them. Taken from dark prisons reeking with vilest filth almost to suffocation, with stones for pillows, threatened with starvation, without water to quench their burning thirst, scourged with whips until the body dropped from exhaustion, tortured with fire, with rack, with all the devilish ingenuity which a monarch could devise, and then, in contrast to this wretched and all-consuming pain, offered freedom of life, the sweets of plenty, the promotion of place, the society of equals, and all the favors of life, and beauty, and indulgence. With woe, misery, and death on one side, and apparent happiness and plenty on the other, is it not, indeed, a miracle that one follower of Christ could still be found? Although the Christians suffered the tortures of a thousand deaths, and knew the unspeakable agony they must endure, yet without a word of malice or reproach, without complaint they would turn away from the proffered feast of plenty and face the hideous penalties of persecution, suffering themselves to be devoured by beasts, tom limb from, limb by racing horses, burned at the stake by a slow fire and enduring the horrors of a lingering death, to be crucified head downward or racked with the awful devices for torment and pain.
Who can say that this sustaining faith is not a miracle of God? Christ suffered the indignities of persecution and died as an emblem of true faith, as a martyr to the establishment of His Church, and as an example that the eternal fruits of devotion can never die. He set the example of persecution, of humility, of devotion to God’s love, and in the bitterness of pain and death, he exemplified the great principle of forbearance. “Father, forgive, they know not what they do/’ He asked of his followers nothing he would not o himself. He asked them to be faithful even unto the end, to yield not to temptation, but remain an example of Christian faith; that it is not of earth we live, but in the expectation and promise of eternal life.
The idolatrous world was in a desperate condition, and it required desperate measures to redeem it. The influence of the mythical gods had permeated every crack and crevice of the social and moral structure of man. God was an outcast among the people He had loved. He had once deluged the world that those who loved Him not might be removed from the face of the earth. He had saved His chosen people at various times, and He had promised them a Messiah, but when Christ came they received him not, and to prove to the idolatrous world that Christ was indeed sent by God, that he should establish a new Church, that redemption through the blood of Christ shall be the necessity for future generations, he allowed this persecution to prove to the world that the Christian’s faith was stronger than persecution, stronger than life, and stronger than the temptations of Satan.
To punish his enemies without furnishing proof of devotion was to inflict a chastisement without giving the evidence of a better life. He must first establish his Church and in the devotion of its followers prove its divinity, prove its power of endurance, its love to mankind, its forgiveness of evil, and its absolution of sin.
Rome had quenched the fire of truth, and debauchery of mind and body was the ruling passion of her people. They reveled in the vices of corruption, drank the wine of passion, and worshiped the idols of mythical gods. They erected statues to Venus, the god of beauty; to Vulcan, the god of fire; to Anemoi, the god of wind; to Juno, the queen of all the gods; to Mars and Neptune, and Minerva and Fortuna. They erected altars to all the gods and burned incense to their glory and offered sacrifices to appease their wrath. If any disaster overtook them, they flew to their gods and offered up petitions of grief. They consulted them in every transaction of life. They bowed before them and supplicated for divine aid. They were schooled in idolatry and were lost beyond exhortation. They had no faith beyond the faith that their myriads of gods could control destiny.
Had Christ come in all the pomp and ceremony of a royal king, had he been clothed in purple robes of greatness, the Jews might have received him as the promised Messiah, but to be born in a manger, to come as a lowly child, to be great only in his love for all mankind, was humiliating to their proud spirits. They had pictured him as a being full of the power of vengeance who would destroy their enemies, a leader of conquests, and a king of kings. They had suffered trials and tribulations in the expectation of a strong deliverance, but when Christ appeared as a man without fame or fortune, without the evidence of royal nobility, and without the apparent power of a conquering hero, they rebelled and sought to persecute. They refused his doctrine of faith, of forbearance, and of love. They denied his divinity, and with the pagan world sought to nullify his mission, destroy his teachings, as well as his plan of salvation.
In view of this reception, it became imperative to establish a new church, a new gospel of repentance, and a new foundation from which the teachings of Christ might be proclaimed to the whole world. On this foundation he authorized his disciples to go into the world and preach repentance. Thus, was established the Church of Christ. He had no creed but the Word of God. He was sent to preach repentance, to teach compassion, to love thy neighbor as thyself, to bear no vengeance or malice, to teach purity of mind and body, to bear persecution, and through the fullness of love redeem man from the depths of sin which then prevailed.
It was the commencement of a new life of atonement, and though it was his wish to avoid draining the cup of bitterness, yet as it was his father’s will, he would give up his life for the redemption of man. He came in lowly birth to teach the people that in the sight of God no favor attaches to either position or wealth, no inequality exists but such as is caused by the blight of sin, that there are no ties but the ties of faith, no hope but the hope of immortality, and no resurrection but by the power of Christ. He died, but through his death there arose the bright sun of understanding. Its rays fell upon the hearts of ignorance and superstition. The eyes of mankind were opened to the beauties of Christianity. They saw the wonderful exposition of faith, love and devotion. They saw the God of the Universe, in all the glory of his greatness, pleading through Christ, our Redeemer, for the salvation of all men. It was a new revelation of the existence of eternal life. The old theory of Mythology was being exposed by the existence, or presence, of the Son of God. An idolatrous world was for the first time listening to the teachings of repentance, of true worship, of Christianity. It was indeed a revelation- — a mysterious future laid open by explanation, by instruction, and by admonition. It was no longer the speculation of philosophy, but the reality of presence, of seeing, and hearing. Christ taught, and his words fell upon the soil of willing hearts, and the thoughts grew and spread as a great tree, sending forth its beauties of expression, its light of redemption, and its glorious salvation.
But it has been a constant battle of persecution from the time Christ came into this life until the present day. At times it has been a persecution by fire and sword, of life and death, and of confiscation and ruin. At others it has been a persecution of liberty, of equal rights, and of despotic oppression. Governments have raised the strong arm of power against it. Catholics have been denied place and preferment. They have been driven from commonwealths, branded as heretics, ostracized from society, and publicly outraged because of their religion. Philosophers of Reason have denied their worship, ridiculed their observances, denounced their institutions as relics of barbarism, their faith as ignorance, and their cross as the fanatic’s emblem of misguided hope. All these, and more, has the Catholic Church suffered at the hands of persons of supposed enlightenment.
The Pope has been stripped of his temporal powers. The land of his nativity has been absorbed by the power of the State, and while the head of the Church stands to-day as the greatest diplomat of all Europe or America, yet in the rights of nations the Vatican is shorn of its power to govern, except as it touches the heart, the mind, and the conscience. The Pope is the great exponent of peace, friendship, and good will to all nations. His blessings are spread over all lands, over all nations, and into all hearts. His labors are for the development of Christianity, for the betterment of mankind, and for the advancement of peace, harmony, and prosperity.