An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine

Far more of course than such general reverence was the honour that they showed to the bodies of the Saints. They ascribed virtue to their martyred tabernacles, and treasured, as something supernatural, their blood, their ashes, and their bones. When St. Cyprian was beheaded, his brethren brought napkins to soak up his blood. "Only the harder portion of the holy relics remained," say the Acts of St. Ignatius, who was exposed to the beasts in the amphitheatre, "which were conveyed to Antioch, and deposited in linen, bequeathed, by the grace that was in the Martyr, to that holy Church as a priceless treasure." The Jews attempted to deprive the brethren of St. Polycarp's body, "lest, leaving the Crucified, they begin to worship him," say his Acts; "ignorant," they continue, "that we can never leave Christ;" and they add, "We, having taken up his bones which were more costly than precious stones, and refined more than gold, deposited them where was fitting; and there when we meet together, as we can, the Lord will grant us to celebrate with joy and gladness the birthday of his martyrdom." On one occasion in Palestine, the Imperial authorities disinterred the bodies and cast them into the sea, "lest as their opinion went," says Eusebius, "there should be those who in their sepulchres and monuments might think them gods, and treat them with divine worship."

Julian, who had been a Christian, and knew the Christian history more intimately than a mere infidel would know it, traces the superstition, as he considers it, to the very lifetime of St. John, that is, as early as there were Martyrs to honour; makes the honour paid them contemporaneous with the worship paid to our Lord, and equally distinct and formal; and, moreover, declares that first it was secret, which for various reasons it was likely to have been. "Neither Paul," he says, "nor Matthew, nor Luke, nor Mark, dared to call Jesus God; but honest John, having perceived that a great multitude had been caught by this disease in many of the Greek and Italian cities, and hearing, I suppose, that the monuments of Peter and Paul were, secretly indeed, but still hearing that they were honoured, first dared to say it." "Who can feel fitting abomination?" he says elsewhere; "you have filled all places with tombs and monuments, though it has been nowhere told you to tumble down at tombs or to honour them … If Jesus said that they were full of uncleanness, why do ye invoke God at them?" The tone of Faustus the Manichæan is the same. "Ye have turned," he says to St. Augustine, "the idols" of the heathen "into your Martyrs, whom ye honour (colitis) with similar prayers (votis)." [Note 3]

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It is remarkable that the attention of both Christians and their opponents turned from the relics of the Martyrs to their persons. Basilides at least, who was founder of one of the most impious Gnostic sects, spoke of them with disrespect; he considered that their sufferings were the penalty of secret sins or evil desires, or transgressions committed in another body, and a sign of divine favour only because they were allowed to connect them with the cause of Christ [Note 4]. On the other hand, it was the doctrine of the Church that Martyrdom was meritorious, that it had a certain supernatural efficacy in it, and that the blood of the Saints received from the grace of the One Redeemer a certain expiatory power. Martyrdom stood in the place of Baptism, where the Sacrament had not been administered. It exempted the soul from all preparatory waiting, and gained its immediate admittance into glory. "All crimes are pardoned for the sake of this work," says Tertullian.

And in proportion to the near approach of the martyrs to their Almighty Judge, was their high dignity and power. St. Dionysius speaks of their reigning with Christ; Origen even conjectures that "as we are redeemed by the precious blood of Jesus, so some are redeemed by the precious blood of the Martyrs." St. Cyprian seems to explain his meaning when he says, "We believe that the merits of Martyrs and the works of the just avail much with the Judge," that is, for those who were lapsed, "when, after the end of this age and the world, Christ's people shall stand before His judgment-seat." Accordingly they were considered to intercede for the Church militant in their state of glory, and for individuals whom they had known. St. Potamiæna of Alexandria, in the first years of the third century, when taken out for execution, promised to obtain after her departure the salvation of the officer who led her out; and did appear to him, according to Eusebius, on the third day, and prophesied his own speedy martyrdom. And St. Theodosia in Palestine came to certain confessors who were in bonds, "to request them," as Eusebius tells us, "to remember her when they came to the Lord's Presence." Tertullian, when a Montanist, betrays the existence of the doctrine in the Catholic body by protesting against it [Note 5].

Next to the prerogatives of bodily suffering or Martyrdom came, in the estimation of the early Church, the prerogatives of bodily, as well as moral, purity or Virginity; another form of the general principle which I am here illustrating. "The first reward," says St. Cyprian to the Virgins, "is for the Martyrs an hundredfold; the second, sixtyfold, is for yourselves." [Note 6] Their state and its merit is recognized by a consensus of the Ante-nicene writers; of whom Athenagoras distinctly connects Virginity with the privilege of divine communion: "You will find many of our people," he says to the Emperor Marcus, "both men and women, grown old in their single state, in hope thereby of a closer union with God." [Note 7]

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Among the numerous authorities which might be cited, I will confine myself to a work, elaborate in itself, and important from its author. St. Methodius was a Bishop and Martyr of the latter years of the Ante-nicene period, and is celebrated as the most variously endowed divine of his day. His learning, elegance in composition, and eloquence, are all commemorated [Note 8]. The work in question, the Convivium Virginum, is a conference in which ten Virgins successively take part, in praise of the state of life to which they have themselves been specially called. I do not wish to deny that there are portions of it which strangely grate upon the feelings of an age, which is formed on principles of which marriage is the centre. But here we are concerned with its doctrine. Of the speakers in this Colloquy, three at least are real persons prior to St. Methodius's time; of these Thecla, whom tradition associates with St. Paul, is one, and Marcella, who in the Roman Breviary is considered to be St. Martha's servant, and who is said to have been the woman who exclaimed, "Blessed is the womb that bare Thee," &c., is described as a still older servant of Christ. The latter opens the discourse, and her subject is the gradual development of the doctrine of Virginity in the Divine Dispensations; Theophila, who follows, enlarges on the sanctity of Matrimony, with which the special glory of the higher state does not interfere; Thalia discourses on the mystical union which exists between Christ and His Church, and on the seventh chapter of the first Epistle to the Corinthians; Theopatra on the merit of Virginity; Thallusa exhorts to a watchful guardianship of the gift; Agatha shows the necessity of other virtues and good works, in order to the real praise of their peculiar profession; Procilla extols Virginity as the special instrument of becoming a spouse of Christ; Thecla treats of it as the great combatant in the warfare between heaven and hell, good and evil; Tysiana with reference to the Resurrection; and Domnina allegorizes Jothan's parable in Judges ix. Virtue, who has been introduced as the principal personage in the representation from the first, closes the discussion with an exhortation to inward purity, and they answer her by an hymn to our Lord as the Spouse of His Saints.

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3. Act. Procons. 5. Ruinart, Act. Mart. pp. 22, 44. Euseb. Hist. viii. 6. Julian. ap. Cyr. pp. 327, 335. August. c. Faust. xx. 4.

4. Clem. Strom. iv. 12.

5. Tertull. Apol. fin. Euseb. Hist. vi. 42. Orig. ad Martyr. 50. Ruinart, Act. Mart. pp. 122, 323.

6. De Hab. Virg. 12.

7. Athenag. Leg. 33.

8. Lumper, Hist. t. 13, p. 439.