Excerpt from St. Polycarp: Bishop of Smyrna The Letter of the Smyrnaeans embodies the fullest and not the least affecting contemporary narrative of an early martyrdom. The faith, constancy, ' and courtesy of the aged Bishop are a striking illustration of the power work ing in the Roman world since Pentecost, and gradually subduing it. With the exception of the obvious inter polation or misreading of the dove in Chap. Xvi. There is nothing of the grotesquely marvellous which disfigures some later stories. The placing of the martyrdom under Antoninus Pius furnishes an illustration of the fact that the reigns of good emperors were not good times for the Church. The period between ad. 98 and 180, covering the generally beneficent reigns of Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius, includes famous persecutions. The accession of the brutal Commodus brought relief. Solong as Christianity was not a Religio Licita it was always open to a zealous or hostile magis trate to put unrepealed edicts in force. Bishop Lightfoot dates the martyrdom of Publius Bishop of Athens (euseb. Hist. Ecc. Iv. And of Ptolemaeus and Lucius (justin, ii. As well as that of Polycarp and his com panions, in the reign of Antoninus Pius. The second of these cases supplies a striking illustration of the state of things normally obtaining in the empire. Arrest might come at any moment, without organized and general persecution. The form of procedure indicates that later reigns saw no abrogation of the principle formulated under Trajan, that the bare confession of Christianity was held to be a capital offence irrespectively of any moral offences included in an accusation. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.