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Martyrs and saints of the first twelve centrueis
Martyrs and saints of the first twelve centrueis Author:Elizabeth Rundle Charles Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. THE PERSECUTIONS OF THE FIRST CENTURYt The first pagan or imperial persecution has left us no definite names of martyrs, except those of the A... more »postles Peter and Paul. Those living torches in the gardens of Nero on the Vatican flash on the pagan world, as they would have wished, not their own names, but the name of Jesus only, and the existence of His Church. The seal which that persecution set on the Church may no doubt be read in the Apocalypse, written a few years afterwards : the ' souls under the altar,' ' the white-robed multitudes who came out of great tribulation and washed their robes and made them white, not in those rivers of their own blood, but in the blood of the Lamb,'' the armies of heaven on white horses riding after the Crucified, conquering and to conquer.' A flood of light is thrown on the Apocalypse by connecting it with that first persecution. Within the imperial eternal city a new city was being silently built, Imperial indeed and Eternal, the City of God. Beside this corrupt and degraded civilisation, which was 'corrupting the whole earth,' a new ideal of purity, not dreamt of before, was dawning. The ' Bride, spotless and radiant, ' clothed in fine linen, pure and white,' was in the world . Every martyr in the arena, every strong young life yielded up to death rather than sin, proclaimed this new 1 The two festivals in our Calendar belonging to this century are St. John ante Port. Lat. and St. Nicomede. purity, not merely passive but saving, this new love, not only patient but passionate, which had come into the world. Most expressive is the fact that no new individual name has come down to us from that first persecution of Nero, but to the world and to the Church a new Apocalypse of Christ, the Lamb that was slain,...« less