It is premature to speak of a ' rigorist party ' even in tlie days of Marcus Aurelius, when Chris- tian soldiers were serving freely in the legions, but from the remonstrances and taunts of the pagan patriot Celsus (170-185), which we overhear in the pages of Origen (c. Cels. viii. 73 f.), it is fairly obvious that he had met Christians who were already holding back from military .service. He gives no hint as to their reasons. All that con- cerns him is the fact, and he deplores it as a lover of the Empire. He cannot understand these con- scientious objectors. Their attitude is all the woise because it professes to be religious. To him it is part and parcel of the pusillanimity which characterizes these skulking, contemptible, super- stitious sectarians. Celsus was an earnest Epi- curean, as Lucretius had been before him, but he is as devoted to the Empire as the poet had been indifferent, and he endeavours to overcome the apathy of Cliristians. He quotes from Homer's Iliad (ii. 205) to base a sound principle of govern- ment ancl order ; there must be one strong royal hand. Then he turns to Christians and tells them, 'if everybody were to do as you do {i.e. abstain from military service and loyal, patriotic .self- sacrifice], there would be nothing to prevent tlie king from being left quite alone and forlorn, and the atl'airs of this earth would fall into the hands of the wildest and most lawless barbarians.' At the same time this antipathy to the army was by no means universal among Christians, for, as we learn from the stories of the 12th legion (see above, p. 663) and of the Acta Patdi, which probaldy wei'e put into shape during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, soldiers belonging to the Church not only served in the legions but were occasionally persecuted.
6. The problem first raised. — The next half- century, however, i.e. from the end of the 2nd cent, to the middle of the 3rd, was to witness a slight change, or rather an oscillation of feeling, and the first to voice it was the very Tertullian who had formerly appealed to the army as proving the existence and spread of Christianity within the Empire. Both he and Origen after him are the protagonists of the extreme section in the Church
which now frankly disavowed the military pro- fession. Kroude declares that he and Hurrell were told by their oldest brother that they might begin to think for themselves, if they saw Newman and Keble disagreeing. Did the divergence of opinion between contemporary leaders like Tertullian and Clement set the rank and file thinking for themselves on the question of war? Perhaps it did. At any rate, scattered cases occur of Chris- tians either refusing to join the army or throw- ing down their arms for conscientious reasons. Wliether these incidents were due to the literary propaganda of the two paialist writers, and if so how far, we cannot tell ; in one case, at; least, the recalcitrant recruit declares that no one had in- stigated him.* The point is that a certain feeling of dislike to the army was in the air, among some circles of Christians, and it is important to notice the reasons put forward by this serious fraction of the early Church.
Lord Acton said that he would never write in the Rambler upon unworthy conciliation or viru- lent controversy. Tertullian in his day wrote of both, especially of what he considered the former. He came to regard all the State service, military and civil, as an unworthy combination of faitli and idolatry ; public work was too equivocal ; neither an ofhcial nor an officer could keep his jiosition without compromising his Christian religion, and Tertullian had no patience with any one, clerical or lay, who asserted that these professions were compatible with a true faith. It is significant that several of the 'pacifist' writers, from Tatian onwards, were or became eccentric and heretical. So it was in Tertullian's case. After writing his Apology, he had gradually identified himself with an extreme position on various points, which finally drew him over to sympathy with the Montanists. Theologically, the change did not make him much less orthodox ; in fact, his great contributions to the doctrines of Christology and the Trinity, which date from this later period, are unspoiled by Montanist aberrations. It was not so, however, in the field of ethics. His opposition to what he considered the laxity of the Catholic Church made him an ultra-puritan, and the idea of a Christian serving in the army now became anathema to him.
He gave sweeping and brilliant expression to this view in two tracts, de Corona t and de Idolotatria. They are specimens of his special pleading at its best. — or at its worst. A noble spirit; of devotion to Clirist is blended with a fanatically anti-social bias, and a number of the arguments are not only scornful but quite fantastic. The de Corona was written after news had reached Carthage of an incident involving a Christian soldier. When Septiniius Severus died at York in 211, during his campaign in Britain, the emperors Caracalla and Geta sig- nalized the new reign by presenting the troops at Lambesa in N. Africa with a largesse, or donativum. Each legionary received this, coming forward for the money with the usual crown of laurel on his head, a ceremonial badge of respect for the State deities of the army and the empire. One soldier, however, violated the etiquette of the proceedings. He carried the crown in his hand, and was promptly arrested for this breach of discipline. He explained that as a Christian he could not wear a crown, and, abjuring military service, was im- prisoned before being executed. Apparently this was quite an exceptional case. His action was blamed as rash and irlle by his fellow-Christians, within and without the army. But