former of its right to the shelter of the imperial aegis and rendered it liable to the religious and patriotic tax of the Caesar-worship which Domitian’s claim now emphasised. The growth of the new faith and the deepening need of the imperial cultus as a national bond of loyalty made a collision between the church and the State inevitable ; and, although no literary record exists of the opening movement in the campaign, the correspondence of Trajan and Pliny is now recognised pretty generally to presuppose an earlier stage in the policy of the empire towards Christianity—a stage most probably associated with the later years of Domitian (cf. Neumann’s der Rom. Staat u. die allgemeine Kirche bis auf Diocletian, 1890, i. pp. 7 f. 11-15). Then the conflict became more than sporadic (οἱ πολλοὶ ἐπὶ Δομετιανοῦ διωγμοί, Mart. Ign. 1). Domitian not only permitted but encouraged and enforced the payment of divine honours to himself; compliance with the rites of the Caesar cultus was made the convenient test of loyalty for Christians who had hitherto been arraigned for the most part upon criminal charges (flagitia cohaerentia nomini) such as anarchy ; confession of the Name of Christ now involved a refusal to give the emperor the name of deus or divus, and, as John put it, all who refused to worship the image of the beast or to be marked by his name were liable to death. The religious recusant was naturally suspected of lése majesté. When his religious susceptibilities were outraged by the quasi-deification of the emperor, his protest was viewed as a veiled pretext for rebellion, as well as an assertion of ἀθεότης or sacrilege (cf. for Domitian’s reign, Lightfoot’s Clem. Rom. i. pp. 104- 115). But whether obstinatio or ἀθεότης or matestas, the crime was visited with the same penalties.
This conflict of loyalties is the business of the Apocalypse. At
1 The connexion of the Apocalypse with this Domitianic phase is also worked out by A. Matthaei (Preussische Fahrb. 1905, 402-479) from the Roman standpoint. He argue: (477 f.) that the first θηρίον of ch. xiii. is the imperial cultus itself, while the second symbolises the provincial authorities especially in Asia Minor. Ramsay (Seven Letters, p. 97) partly agrees with the latter identification, taking the θηρίον of xiii. 11 f. to mean “ the Province of Asia in its double aspect of civil and religious administration,” but the probability (see notes) is that the writer is thinking of the Asiatic priests of the imperial cultus, who may have played a part like that of the Buddhist and Taoist priests during the Boxer rising in China, or like that of the officials of the Russian Church in the recent campaign against the Milkist sectaries, It is noticeable that there is no Christian antithesis, in the way of priesthood, to Satan’s embodiment in the priesthood of the imperial cultus (xiii. rz f.), whereas the latter in the sense of false prophet is implicitly contrasted with the true prophetic order of Christianity, as are the official ὑμνῳδοί of the cultus at Pergamos and else- where with the singers of hymns to God and Jesus in the Apocalypse.
3i2 INTRODUCTION
the first shock of persecution in Asia Minor over the principle of the imperial cultus, John grasped with moral power the truth that this was not a local skirmish but a matter of life or death to the church. The issue between ΚΥΡΙΟΣ ΙΗΟΟΥΣ and ΚΥΡΙΟΣ KAICAP was to be neither compromised nor confused; the worship of the emperor, even as a form of patriotism, and the adoration of Jesus as the Christ of God were incompatible. The State did not realise this until afterwards, when the dimensions and irrepressible vigour of the Christian movement revealed it as a menace to the older civilisation of the empire. As yet the Nazarene faith was little more than one of the numerous Oriental weeds which had to be rooted out as im- moral, anti-social, and unpatriotic; it was mainly notable for its tenacity of life. The State did not dream as yet of regarding these atheists and anarchists as a rival power. It was contemptuous. rather than distrustful of the new faith. That this sect within a sect, or rather this struggimg offshoot of the Jewish superstition,. would outlive the empire which treated it as the legions treated the daisies on their line of march, must have seemed then the infatuation of a narrow-minded fanatic. History, by justifying this expectation. has proved that it was more than a magnificent reach of the religious instinct, that it was in fact what men have agreed to label rather than define as “inspired”. It is true that the messianic and apocalyptic traditions, with which the prophet worked, tended to foreshorten his view of the campaign. The host of martyrs were not crowded into a brief interval, and the triumph of the church over the empire came in a very different way from what the prophet or any of his contemporaries imagined. But the Apocalypse pene- trated to the heart of the issue. The resolve which it knit and the hope which it kindled were substantially the faith which nerved the later church, from Ignatius and Polycarp onwards. What ‘“ faithful- ness to death” (cf. ii. 10) involved may be illustrated from {Πε normal procedure of the pro-consul in Bithynia, where Pliny, as he tells us, had people brought before him who were accused, some- times anonymously and sometimes erroneously, of being Christians. They included persons of both sexes, all ages, and varying health. After being thrice warned, those who still adhered to their confes- sion of faith were, in consequence of the cognitio or preliminary investigation, either imprisoned and killed (if provincials, cf. Apoc. ii. 13) or deported to Rome (if Roman citizens, cf. Apoc. xvii. 6, Ignatius, etc.). Others, however, were not so loyal to their Lord.1. When an.