CHAPTER LIV IN THE BURNING FIERY FURNACE

Ἀγαπητοὶ μὴ ξενίζεσθε τῇ ἐν ὑμῖν πυρώσει πρὸς πειρασμὸν ὑμὶν γινομένῃ.—1 Pet. iv. 12.

‘Christianus etiam extra carcerem sæculo renuntiavit, in carcere autem etiam carceri.’—Tert. Ad Mart. 2.

The prisoners, men and women alike, were hurried into promiscuous dungeons, in a suffocating confinement which was itself an anticipated death. Next day an edict was published by the Emperor, saying that the Christians were the incendiaries of Rome, and would be set apart for exemplary punishment. He characterised the whole sect as public enemies, enemies of the gods, and of the human race, whom he should make it his duty as far as possible to exterminate. The edict was well received. It was at first supposed that its allegations were true, and that the Emperor had really succeeded in lifting from his rule the vast weight of indignation which had threatened to endanger it.

Next day, half suffocated and half starved, and altogether in miserable plight, a number of the prisoners were put to the torture, to enforce confession and a betrayal of their accomplices. Tigellinus personally presided, and gloated over their torments. It had become known that Linus was their leader, and he was the first to suffer. The old man remained nobly constant. Urged to confess his crime, he said, ‘I am a Christian; but to be a Christian is not a crime.’ Charged with complicity in the deeds of darkness which were attributed to Christians, he indignantly repudiated them, and said that the laws of Christians branded not only such deeds with infamy, but even those vices which the heathen regarded as indifferent or venial. Bidden to give up the names of his fellow-Christians, he said that they were many, but that he would rather die than betray them. No added intensity of torment could wring from him anything further, and he was carried back to prison, a pitiable sufferer, dislocated in every limb. Indeed, so nigh was he unto death, that the jailors, burdened by the crowded and horrible condition of the prisoners, accepted a bribe from the Christians to allow him to be removed. He was taken, by Pomponia’s kindness, into her own house, and there was lovingly tended many days. He lived to send a greeting to Timotheus by St. Paul some years later; but he was never again able to resume his functions as the bishop of the little community. Stricken to the heart by the anguish of witnessing the apparent destruction of the Church, and hopelessly maimed by torture, he was removed in secrecy to one of the country villas of Aulus Plautius, and after being long confined to his bed, he died no less a martyr of the Neronian persecution than any of his brethren.

Others showed equal fortitude. Foiled and savage, Tigellinus noticed among the prisoners a timid, shrinking boy, and ordered him to be stripped and laid upon the rack, confident that anything might be wrung from him. But the poor boy could only keep repeating,

‘I am a Christian! I am a Christian! but we are innocent. We do no wrong. The crimes you charge us with are false.’

‘Give up the names of your accomplices, jail-bird,’ said Tigellinus, striking him fiercely on the cheek.

‘I am no jail-bird,’ said the boy; ‘I am free-born. Oh, set me free from this anguish! I have done no wrong.’

‘You shall try another turn or two of the rack first, crucisalus,’ said Tigellinus. ‘Confess, and you shall not only be set free, but rewarded.’

His limbs were stretched still further. A groan of agony burst from his lips, and the sweat stood in thick dews over the face which had become pale as death; but he spoke not, and fainted. When they were taken back to prison, the Christians did their utmost to tend and console the glorious young confessor.

‘How were you strengthened,’ they asked him, ‘to endure such pangs?’

‘When all was at the worst,’ he said, ‘it seemed to me that music sounded in my ears, and a fair youth with wings stood by me who wiped the perspiration from my forehead. And seeing him I felt that I could hold out even to death.’

‘Try a woman this time,’ said Tigellinus.

The executioners seized the deaconess Phœbe, who, since she left Cenchreæ with the Epistle to the Romans, had stayed and worked in Rome; and with her they seized two other virgins who were also deaconesses.

But the constancy of womanhood also remained unshaken, and the Præfect began to fear that the attempt to secure evidence would fail as completely as in his plot against Octavia. He stamped, and cursed the Christians by all his gods, and raved impotently against their brutal obstinacy, as effort after effort failed. Then he ran his experienced eyes over the throng, and fixed them on one man whose abject face seemed to promise good effects from the application of terror. His name was Phygellus.

‘Seize that man,’ he said to the lictors.

‘Oh, do not torture me!’ exclaimed the wretch. ‘I am not—I am not, indeed, a Christian.’

The other Christians turned their eyes upon him with a look of reproach, and he trembled; but he continued to asseverate, ‘I am not a Christian.’

‘Then how came you to be arrested in the assembly of those vagabonds?’

‘They seduced me; they bewitched me; they are sorcerers.’

‘Then throw these grains of frankincense on the fire in honour of Jupiter, and worship the Genius of the Emperor.’

The man did as he was required, though the Christians murmured to him—

‘Will you be an apostate? Will you deny the cross of Christ?’

‘Now then,’ said Tigellinus, ‘tell us the names of their ringleaders.’

Phygellus hesitated. He had been ready to save himself; but he had not contemplated the destruction of his fellows.

‘On to the rack with him!’ said Tigellinus.

The man was laid shrieking on the instrument of torture, but the moment the screw was turned, he cried,

‘I will confess; I will confess.’

‘Do the Christians kill infants, and eat their flesh?’

‘No.’

‘Do you persist in that?’

‘Yes.’

‘Try the rack again.’

‘Spare me! spare me!’ he cried. ‘If you torture me, I shall say anything—any lie you ask me; but these stories about the Christians are not true.’

‘Will you now tell us all you know, without any more torture?’

‘I will.’

‘Did the Christians set fire to Rome?’

‘I did not see them doing it; but they were always talking about Christ being manifested in flaming fire, and about the burning of the world.’

‘That will do. Now give us some names.’

‘There are hundreds—there are thousands of them,’ said the renegade.

‘Then it will be all the easier for you to tell us some of them.’

‘Must I?’ he pleaded. ‘They have done no harm.’

‘On to the rack with him,’ said Tigellinus, furiously. ‘He trifles with us and wastes our time.’

‘No, no,’ moaned the coward; ‘I will tell you. There is Linus the bishop, and Cletus the presbyter, and Prisca, and Aquila.’

‘Who are they?’

They are Jewish tent-makers, and they live on the Aventine; but they left Rome recently. And Amplias, Claudia, Stachys, Apelles, of the household of Narcissus; Persis, a freedwoman of Pomponia Græcina; Asyncritus, Patrobas, slaves of Flavius Clemens; and Nereus and his daughter Junia, manumitted by the centurion Pudens.’

‘We want more names still.’

‘There are Marcus, Felicitas, Phœbe, Helpis, in the house of Aulus Plautius; and there are Tryphæna, Tryphosa, Stephanus, Crescens, Thallus, Herodion, and Artemas, of Cæsar’s household.’

‘None but slaves and freedmen?’

‘There is Aristobulus, the auctioneer, who has a house in the Subura. He and all his family are Christians. And Andronicus, and Junius—they are merchants who import goats’ hair from Cilicia, and are relations of Paulus of Tarsus, whom they call an Apostle.’

‘Come, this is to the purpose,’ said Tigellinus, rubbing his hands. ‘Are there any soldiers?’

‘Yes; Vitalis and Celsus, the Prætorians, and, I think, Pudens the centurion, who has gone to Britain and—’

He stopped suddenly, and his face assumed a look of terror. For the soldier Urbanus who stood behind the chair of Tigellinus was one who, though not yet a Christian, had been among those who had been chained to Paul, and had acquired a kindly feeling towards the persecuted brethren. Fixing his eyes on the apostate, he made so menacing a gesture with his hand on his dagger, that Phygellus began to stammer.

‘I do not know,’ he said, ‘the names of any more soldiers.’

‘Are there any persons of rank?’

Fortunately Phygellus had never found much favour among the Christians. Their leaders had not entrusted to him their secrets. He was unaware that Pomponia was a Christian, and had not heard of the conversion of Flavius Clemens and Domitilla. But he ventured at haphazard to mention Aliturus, whom he had seen in the tumult.

But Tigellinus knew that it was not yet time to interfere with such a man as Aliturus. He laughed aloud.

‘What!’ he said; ‘do you think that on the evidence of such scum as you we are going to arrest the delight of the populace—the gayest and fairest pantomime in Rome? There, we have had enough of you.’

And, spurning him with his foot, he bade the lictors to keep him safe till more evidence was required.

There were a few others—chiefly neophytes and catechumens of unformed character—who, either from indifference and insincerity, or to escape for the moment from the tormentors, gave evidence sufficient for the nefarious purpose of the Præfect. The consequence was a wholesale series of arrests, till every prison in Rome was crowded to deadliness with innocent confessors, who, while they denied all crime, admitted themselves to be Christians, and were ready, if God so willed, to die for their faith.

Tigellinus savagely recommended to Nero that they should be executed in a mass.

‘Rome,’ he said, ‘is too crowded. As it is, Cæsar, you are maintaining many thousands of the destitute, and among them hundreds of these Christians, whose lodgings have been burnt. Why not get rid of such criminal wretches?’

‘All the people hate them,’ said Poppæa, ‘as despisers of the gods, and all the Jews hate them. From Josephus, and the High Priest, and Tiberius Alexander, the nephew of their great writer Philo, who once headed a deputation to the Emperor Gaius, I hear nothing of them but evil.’

‘Their arrest has made a wonderful difference already,’ said Tigellinus, ‘and has silenced many inconvenient rumours. Publish another edict, Emperor, saying that you have now the amplest evidence of their guilt, and that they shall be executed when you have decided the method of their death.’

‘I will reserve some of their ringleaders for more conspicuous punishment,’ said Nero. ‘The common herd can be dealt with afterwards.’

‘We have got the man they call their bishop,’ said the Præfect. ‘He is an artisan named Linus. He has been tortured, and is said to be dying. But we can strike a deadlier blow yet. My spies tell me that one of the Twelve they call Apostles, whose name is John, is in Rome, and that another is on his way whose name is Peter. They were friends of him whom they call Christus. We have lost sight of John for the moment; but we shall make sure of having them both soon.’

The Church in Rome was smitten to the very dust by the terrible blow which had befallen her, and it was necessary that the brethren should take the utmost precautions, and meet only in the deepest secrecy. In this they were aided by Aliturus. He had a villa a short distance from Rome on the Salarian road, the grounds of which could be approached by country paths known to few but shepherds and goatherds. To this villa he took the Apostle John for safety, and there he received from him such wise and loving instruction that he became a catechumen. Meanwhile he freely used the wealth which he had acquired, to alleviate the sufferings of the brethren. The visiting of those in prison was regarded as one of the primary duties of the Christian’s life, and no considerations of personal safety were allowed to interfere with it. The Apostle went from prison to prison breaking bread, and entrusting to the officers of the Church, or to those who had been longest in the faith, the money which was supplied to him by Pomponia and by the actor. In this way he and others, who were as yet unmolested, were enabled to minister to the necessities of the captives, and also to speak to them such words of hope as fell upon their souls like dew from heaven. It was inevitable that his noble and venerable figure should soon be recognised. The spies of the Præfect were everywhere, and, noticing the profound reverence with which the Elder was received, they were soon able to identify him. He had prepared Aliturus to expect that if on any day he did not return to the villa it would be because he was lodged in prison. The ordinary dungeons were so full that the Apostle was confined in the wet and rocky vault of the Mamertine.

In that prison he was visited by Pomponia, who contributed by every means in her power to mitigate his hardships, and received his counsel and his apostolic blessing. She no longer hesitated to go in person to console the confessors. She found, indeed, that they needed but little consolation. The majority of them were in a state of spiritual exaltation which made their faces radiant and transformed their hard fare into manna which was angels’ food. They turned their prisons into minsters, and the coarse pagan jailors and German guards were amazed when they heard those abodes of misery ringing with sweet voices and the holy melodies of unknown songs. In each place of confinement they held their daily worship, conducted by presbyter, or deacon, or reader, and broke with one another the bread of Holy Communion. They knew that death awaited them, but death was to be a martyrdom, and they looked to it, not as a curse, but as a coronation. Pomponia, sharing all their feelings, found that it was only to their bodily wants that she had need to minister.

She did not shrink from personal danger: if arrested, she would have at once avowed that she was a Christian. But her name had not been mentioned by those who gave evidence. Having once been tried on the charge of holding a foreign superstition and acquitted, it was contrary to the principle of the Roman law that she should again be accused. The deadly wrong which Nero’s wickedness had already inflicted on Aulus Plautius had excited an indignation among all the best elements of Roman society, which, though it was voiceless, had made itself felt; and among the populace Pomponia was half worshipped for her abounding kindness and large-handed charities. Her visiting of the prisons was set down to the same strange but harmless eccentricity which made her eschew jewels and wear robes of such sombre hue.

One day, during a visit to the largest prison, she encountered Tigellinus, who was going his rounds with an escort of Prætorians to exult over the multitudes of his victims. He inspired such dread that the noblest senators cringed to him, and Pomponia had reason to know that he hated her with all the energy of wickedness which is reproved by the spectacle of virtue.

He made her a low obeisance of mock respect, which she scarcely noticed by the slightest inclination of her head.

‘The fair Pomponia is fond of prisons,’ he said, with a sneer, ‘but she despises the poor Præfect of the Prætorians.’

‘Pomponia,’ she replied, ‘is not accustomed to the language of insincere and empty compliment. She despises none; but, if the Præfect desires her opinion, there are some of his humblest soldiers whom she respects more than him.’

Tigellinus cast on her a glance of savage hatred. He quailed before her queenly dignity of goodness, but could not bear to be foiled in the hearing of his escort, whose smiles had scarcely been suppressed.

‘Let Pomponia take care that she does not herself become the denizen of a prison. Some have whispered that she is as much a Christian as these whom she visits, and deserves the same fate.’

‘I deserve it,’ she says, ‘as much and as little as these do, for none knows better than Tigellinus that they are perfectly innocent.’

Tigellinus lost all self-control. ‘Do you not know, woman,’ he exclaimedT17 hoarsely, ‘that your life is in my power?’

‘Man!’ she answered, with the calmest disdain, ‘you are addressing the wife of Aulus Plautius. My life is not in your power, but in the power of Him who gave it. I leave you, and shall continue to tend these hapless prisoners.’

She passed by him and he dared not meet her glance. To beard Tigellinus required a courage of which scarcely one person was capable. But Pomponia thought it her duty to attempt a yet more dangerous effort, and, if possible, to have an appeal made to the Emperor on behalf of the doomed Christians. She went to Seneca in his retirement. She found him anxious and miserable, full of disappointment and self-disgust. He did not respond to her entreaties. ‘I have no sympathy,’ he said, ‘with the Christians. They are only a sect of the Jews, and I should like to see their whole superstition eradicated.’

‘You call it their superstition,’ said Pomponia. ‘Is it more of a superstition than the worship of what you have called “our ignoble crowd of gods”?’

‘Perhaps not,’ said Seneca. ‘But the popular religion is one thing, and philosophy is another.’

‘Would you, then, be content to see the mass of the pagan population unjustly tortured, unjustly slain, because their religion is a noxious superstition?’

‘They do not render themselves amenable to the laws.’

‘Nor do these poor Christians. I know their tenets. Their moral teaching again and again reminds me of your own, which it sometimes resembles almost to verbal identity.’

‘I have heard,’ said Seneca, ‘that their Paulus of Tarsus has genius and style; but it is to me incredible. What can he know of philosophy?’

‘Pardon me, dear friend,’ replied Pomponia, ‘he knows a philosophy far diviner than that of the Porch, far nobler than that of the Garden or the Lyceum. It is a philosophy which may not puff up the pride of intellect, but can sway the motives of the life. You may perhaps find in Rome—though I doubt it—ten philosophers who live purely and simply, but I could find you many hundreds of Christians.’

‘Men of the common herd,’ he said, in a tone of some disdain.

‘Are they not our fellow-men? Did not one God make them and us? Did He mean only a handful to be blessed, and the rest to perish? Have you no pity for them? Have not you yourself said, “Man is a sacred thing to man”?’

‘Why should I waste my life in an unavailing pity? Pity is a weakness which the true philosopher should suppress.’

‘Ah!’ replied Pomponia, ‘I see the secret why Stoicism fails. It talks of following nature, and it flings away its sweetest elements.’

‘I could do nothing for you, Pomponia, even if I would,’ said Seneca, wearily; ‘I live a daily death.’

‘A daily death?’ she replied—‘in this splendid palace, with every resource of wealth, with slaves, with villas, with books, with gardens, with boundless fame, with a wife faithful and beloved, with a host of friends?’

‘What avail such things,’ said Seneca, ‘with the sword of Damocles trembling over my neck? My only safety is the life which I describe in my little tragedy of “Thyestes”—a life which causes neither jealousy nor fear, and where one does not dread to drink poison in golden goblets.99 If I am alive at this moment, I believe I owe it to the fact that my freed man Cleonicus, whom Nero bribed to poison me, failed to do so because I only eat fruits from the tree, and drink nothing but running water.100 Yet I am wretched. Sometimes I all but accept the view that, after all, men are no better than a laughing-stock of the gods, whatever gods there be.’

‘And are you so miserable, Seneca,’ she said, ‘and so hopeless? Come with me to the prisons of the poor Christians, and I will show you men who are poor and yet happy; ground to the dust by daily hatred and cruelty, in hunger, and nakedness, and prison, and yet happy; with torture and the vilest deaths immediately awaiting them, and yet happy. Shall I tell you how Paulus of Tarsus describes himself and them? “We are troubled on every side,” he wrote to Corinth, “yet not distressed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed.”’

‘That is very eloquent,’ said Seneca. ‘I should like to read more that this Christian has written.’

‘You shall,’ she answered; ‘and you will find in his letters something better than eloquence of style. But will you despise, will you do nothing to assist, the men and women whose faith enables them not only to write thus, but thus to live?’

Seneca sighed deeply. ‘My power with the Emperor is gone, and I am menaced with death and confiscation. But I am rich still, Pomponia. Take the sum of gold in this purse. It may at least help to relieve the sufferings of these poor creatures, perhaps even to secure by bribes the escape of some of them. It is all that I can do.’

Pomponia did not refuse it, and bade him a kindly farewell. But she never visited the philosopher without feeling, in spite of her affection for him and her gratitude to him, how ineffectual were his half-truths, how vain the pomp of declamatory epigram in which they were enshrined. The same ineffectualness, having its roots in an insincerity so insincere as to be habitual and unconscious, marked the whole of the contemporary morality. It ended, and was understood to end, in self-deceiving words.

But, having failed with Seneca, Pomponia hardly knew what to do. To the Emperor himself she would not go. His mere presence, since his foul murder of her young Aulus, made her tremble with loathing as though she stood before an incarnate demon. His leering sensuous looks, his slothful obesity, his face deformed by an eczema caused by gluttony, intemperance, and uncleanness, filled her with such repulsion that she could not speak to him. But she had sometimes met Poppæa in her least guilty days, when she was the wife of Rufius Crispinus, and she hoped that there might remain some spot in the heart of the lovely Empress which was not wholly callous to the appeal of pity.

To her surprise she found Poppæa bathed in tears, and gently asked her why she wept. There was something about Pomponia which seemed at once to awaken confidence. She had that temperament which in modern times would be called magnetic, and she always called out the best feelings of those with whom she spoke. The haughty, beautiful, triumphant wife of Nero would not have dreamed of suffering any one to be admitted to her in a moment of sorrow and weakness, except the wife of Aulus Plautius. To others she never appeared except in dresses such as the world could not parallel, surrounded by luxury, and breathing of the most delicate perfumes. But as Pomponia entered she did not even attempt to remove the stain of tears from her glowing cheeks, or to arrange the disordered tresses of her gleaming hair.

‘Pomponia is welcome,’ she said. ‘She does not often deign to visit the poor Empress. She should have been a vestal virgin, and moved about surrounded by sanctities. But we wicked people have our sorrows too. I was thinking of my boy Rufius. I love him more than anything on earth, and Nero hates to see him, and will not let him visit me. The poor boy might just as well have no mother.’

Pomponia paused before she spoke, and had to gulp down a choking sob. ‘I can sympathise with you, Empress. My son Aulus was a little older than your charming Rufius. He was manly; he was beautiful; he gave promise of all his father’s virtues.’

‘I know, I know,’ said Poppæa, turning away her face, on which rose, in spite of herself, a burning blush. ‘He offended Nero in some way, and he is dead.’

‘He offended him not,’ said Pomponia. ‘How could an innocent lad like my Aulus have been guilty of treason? Let us speak no more of him. There are those for whom death is more merciful than life, and I did not come here to bewail my own bereavements.’

‘I pleaded for your boy, Pomponia—indeed, I did. I deigned to prostrate myself before Nero that he would not injure him, that he would not have him slain. Would you believe that I—I, the Empress,—have fears lest something evil should be done to my young Rufius?’

‘May Heaven protect his youth!’ said Pomponia. ‘If it will be any comfort to you I will see him, and ask him to our palace. My husband is kind to all the young, and will love him for the sake of his own lost boy. And I will take your messages to him.’

‘Thanks, Pomponia, thanks,’ said the Empress. ‘Nowhere could he be better than in your virtuous home. But why have you sought me—you to whom the Palace is justly hateful?’

‘I come,’ answered Pomponia, ‘to plead for your pity. There is not a prison in Rome which is not full of innocent men and women, called Christians. They are charged with having set fire to Rome, and with many other atrocities. Empress, they are innocent! Will you not use your influence for them? If you have ever done evil—forgive me, Poppæa, but I know not the language of falsehood, or of flattery—will you not now try to do a great deed of good?’

‘Your kindness deceives you,’ answered the Empress. ‘From all that I have heard they thoroughly deserve their fate.’

‘Your mind has been poisoned against them by their enemies the Jews. Believe me, Poppæa—for I know them well—their lives are almost the only beautiful lives spent in this wicked city.’

‘Anything I could say for them would be in vain, Pomponia. I am not as you are—would that I were!—but let me tell you what no other living being should hear from me. Since our child Claudia died, I am no longer all-powerful with Nero. I can stimulate his course in evil—a touch will do that; but I cannot turn him from any wrong on which he and Tigellinus have agreed.’

Seeing that her efforts were useless, Pomponia left her, and would have kissed her hand; but the Empress kissed her on the cheek, and said, ‘Oh, Pomponia, deign to be the friend of the hapless Poppæa. The work of her ambitious guilty dreams is already crumbling into ruins. She needs to have one friend who is not wicked.’

In times so oppressive the Christians who were still free could not forego the duty and support of common prayer and Holy Communion, however great might be the risk. Accustomed to hatred and persecution, they were also accustomed to precautions and secret signs, and by ways of communicating with each other unobserved and unexpected they made it known that on the next Sunday, deep in the night, they would meet in a secluded vineyard at the back of the villa of Aliturus, and that Peter of Bethsaida, the Apostle of Christ, had arrived in Rome, and would be present.

By far routes, under the curtain of darkness, they met in the vineyard, a deeply sorrowing and diminished band. But they felt reasonably secure. Aliturus was beloved by his slaves, to whom he was always generous, and he had trusted those in whom he most confided to watch on every side, and give signals by waving a torch at the slightest approach of danger. He himself went to the assembly, and, though as a catechumen he could not receive the holy mysteries, he joined in the prayers, and received the blessing of Peter, as he had received the blessing of John. Nothing could have been more comforting than the brief words of the great Apostle. His gray hair added to the venerable aspect of his advancing years; but his eye was undimmed, his cheek still ruddy with the long years of the winds of Galilee, and holy courage shone in his weather-beaten features. There was a certain fire and force in all he said which gave it an impressiveness beyond that which was contained in the words themselves. Plain and practical as was ‘the pilot of the Galilean Lake,’ there hung about him a reflection of something which elevated him above himself—as though the sunlight of Gennesareth still played around him, and the glory of Hermon shone upon his face. Everywhere among the good he commanded the deep reverence which his simplicity did not seek; and everywhere among the evil, he inspired the awe which his humble manliness might seem to deprecate. He told the Christians that he had hastened his journey to Rome, when he had heard at Corinth the frightful perils with which his beloved brethren were surrounded. Were they suffering as Christians? Then happy were they! Had not Jesus said, ‘Ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake; but he that endureth to the end shall be saved’? Only let them give no ground for the enemy to blaspheme. ‘It is the will of God, brethren,’ he said—and every syllable came home to their hearts in the deep stillness—‘that by well-doing ye put to silence the ignorance of foolish men; as free, yet not using your freedom as a pretext for vice, but as the servants of God. Christ suffered for us; let us be ready to suffer for Him. Be united, then, brethren; have compassion one for another in this dread crisis; be not afraid of their faces; be not afraid of their words; be not afraid of their terror; neither be troubled, but sanctify the Lord God, and the peace which passeth understanding shall stand sentry over your hearts.’

The Apostle ceased, and Cletus, who during the desperate illness of Linus was the leading presbyter, told the brethren that, from information which had reached him, a fresh edict would be immediately proclaimed, which declared Christianity to be an unlawful religion, and threatened with the worst forms of death any one who was convicted of it. Under these circumstances they could not find a securer place of meeting than the present, but they were surrounded by spies, and in spite of all caution must be prepared for the worst. And John the Beloved, from the vault of the Tullianum, had sent them his blessing, and messages of peace.