What about Christianity now?.. Christians openly declared their desire to get out of state control in their religious beliefs, in their religious life. They declared that a person subject to state power in other respects is free from subordination to this authority in the religious sphere. This idea of the essential difference between civil (pagan) and religious (Christian) activity, the thought of their non-identity, was the principle by which the young Church of Christ was guided. The faith of Christians did not tear them away from their obligations to the state, but this was as long as the laws of the state and the authority of the state did not dare to interfere in the affairs of their faith and confession. Therefore, Christians, both by their lives and by the voice of apologists, demanded from the state freedom of conscience, the freedom to express their religiosity regardless of the prescriptions of the state. They wanted to live in this respect without state control, but the state authorities did not recognize this and did not want to admit it. The apologist of the second century, Tertullian, declares before the Roman government that every man is a free being, "everyone can dispose of himself, just as man is free to act in matters of religion." Tertullian says: "Natural law, universal law, requires that everyone should be allowed to worship whom he wants. The religion of one can be neither harmful nor beneficial to another.'" To force free people to make sacrifices means to commit a flagrant injustice, to commit unheard-of violence. What folly it is to compel a man to render honours to the Deity, which he should have done for his own benefit! Is he not justified in saying: I do not want Jupiter to favor me! Why are you interfering here? Let Janus be angry with me, let him turn his face to me as he pleases!" * The same Tertullian says: "What evil does my religion bring to another? It is contrary to religion to force a religion that is voluntarily accepted, and not by coercion, because every sacrifice requires the consent of the heart. And if you compel us to offer sacrifices, yet no honour of your gods is achieved, because they cannot find any pleasure in forced sacrifices, which would mean that they love violence." At the same time, Tertullian combines the demand that the Roman government should renounce those rights in matters of religious conviction which it had hitherto arrogated to itself: "Let the one therefore worship the true God, and others Jupiter, the one to raise his hands to heaven and the other to the altar, the one to sacrifice themselves to God, and the other goats. Beware lest you show some kind of impiety, when you take away the freedom of worship and the choice of divinity, when you do not allow me to worship the God whom I want, and compel me to worship such a god whom I do not want. What kind of God would demand forcible honors for himself? And man will not want them." In these words, Tertullian clearly expresses the idea that Christianity decidedly does not recognize the right of the pagan state to sanction in matters of religion, an idea that went against all the traditions of Rome. With all the strength of steadfastness in convictions, another great apologist of antiquity, Origen, develops the same idea in the third century. He openly declares himself a warrior of the new supreme Christian principle, in opposition to the established principle to which the Roman state adhered." "We are dealing," he says, "with two laws. One is a law of nature, the culprit of which is God, the other is a written law, which is given from the state (cities). If they agree with each other, they must be observed equally. But if the natural, divine law commands us that which is at variance with the legislation of the country, then this latter, the legislation of the country, should be ignored; and, disregarding the will of human legislators, to obey only the will of God, whatever dangers and labors may be associated with it, even if it were necessary to suffer death and shame. We, Christians, recognizing the natural law (or, what is the same thing, the law of conscience) as the supreme divine law, we strive to observe it and reject the impious laws. A Christian apologist of the beginning of the fourth century, as if summing up the demands made by Christians in the era of persecution, said: "There is nothing freer than religion, and it is completely destroyed as soon as the sacrificer is forced to do so"*****

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* Origenis. Contra Celsum. V, 37.

**Лактанций. Божеств, установления, V, 20.

*** Тертуллиан. Апология, гл. 28.

**** Он же. Послание к Скапуле, гл. 2.

***** Он же. Апология, гл. 24.

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Тогда как в древности над всем царила государственная власть, ее авторитет высился над всеми другими авторитетами, в христианстве и христианах эта власть встречает врага, готового лишить ее собственных прав, возобладать и возвыситься над нею. Оставить без противодействия такое явление, как христианство, значило бы для Рима, при подобном положении дел, открыто отказаться от своих вековых прав. Но это было неестественно. Каждый шаг в развитии народного сознания достигается посредством продолжительной борьбы; поэтому римское правительство, если оно хорошо сознавало требования и стремления христианства, необходимо должно было преследовать христиан. Гонение должно было являться как противодействие консервативного начала новому началу, совершенно доселе чуждому для духа человеческого.

Это зависело ни от чего другого, как именно от того, что более проницательные государи понимали ту великость требований, какие предъявлялись христианством правительству римскому, понимали, что христианство требовало ни много, ни мало как полного коренного изменения идей, легших в основу всемирной Империи*. Не забудем и того, что первый эдикт (Миланский) Константина Великого, которым узаконялось положение христианства в Римской империи, вполне отвечал тем требованиям и стремлениям, какие высказывали апологеты ввиду гонений на христиан, гонений, которыми государство хотело заставить христиан отказаться от их религиозного идеала и подчиниться языческому государственному идеалу. В этом случае государство делало уступку тем требованиям, какие выставлялись христианством, знак, что государство понимало, из за чего была вековая борьба между христианством и римским правительством.

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* Кроме Неандера эту мысль встречаем у Маассена в брошюре: Uber die Griinde des Kampfes zwisch. dem heindnischrom. Staat und dem Christenthum. S. 7. Wien.

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Итак, несоответствие воззрений, заявленных христианством, принципам, принадлежащим римскому государству, — это несоответствие должно было условливать со стороны Рима гонение на последователей христианства. И вот кровь мучеников льется, но недаром льется эта кровь: ею покупается дражайшее из всех прав человеческих — право свободного христианского убеждения.