the Beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth that they should make an image to the Beast. And it was

given him to give breath to the statue of the Beast, that the statue of the Beast should both speak and cause

that as many as should not worship the statue of the Beast should be killed." The last statement is familiar

to us; it is not directly attested for the Flavian period by pagan authorities, but it is proved by numerous

Christian authorities , and corroborated by known historical facts, and by the interpretation which Trajan

stated about twenty-five years later of the principles of Imperial procedure in this department. It is simply

that straightforward enunciation of the rule as to the kind of trial that should be given to those who were

accused of Christianity. The accused were required to prove their loyalty by performing an act of religious

worship of the statue of the Emperor, which (as Pliny mentioned to Trajan) was brought into court in

readiness for the test: if they performed the ritual, they were acquitted and dismissed: if they refused to

perform it, they were condemned to death. No other proof was sought; no investigation was made; no

accusation of any specific crime or misdeed was made, as had been the case in the persecution of Nero,

which is described by Tacitus. That short and simple procedure was legal, prescribed by Imperial

instructions, and complete.

No scholar now doubts that the account given in these words of the Apocalypse represents quite

accurately the procedure in the Flavian persecution. Criticism for a time attempted to discredit the

unanimous Christian testimony, because it was unsupported by direct pagan testimony; and signally failed.

The attempt is abandoned now.

Quite correct also is the statement that "the Province" ordered the inhabitants of Asia to make a statue in

honour of the Beast. The Commune ordered the construction of statues of the Imperial gods, and especially

the statue of the Divine Augustus in the temple at Pergamum.

But the other statements in this remarkable passage are entirely uncorroborated: not even indirect evidence

supports them. It is nowhere said or hinted, except in this passage, that the State cultus in Asia, the most

civilised and educated part of the Empire, recommended itself by tricks and pseudo-miracles, such as

bringing down fire from heaven or making the Imperial image speak. With regard to these statements we are

reduced to mere general presumptions and estimate of probabilities.

Are we then to discredit them as inventions, or as mere repetitions of traditional apocalyptic ideas and

images, not really applicable to this case? By no means. This is the one contemporary account that has been

preserved of the Flavian procedure: the one solitary account of the methods practised then by the Commune

in recommending and establishing the State religion. It is thoroughly uncritical to accept from it two details,

which are known from other sources to be true, and to dismiss the rest as untru e, because they are neither

corroborated nor contradicted by other authorities. This account stands alone: there is no other authority: it

is corroborated indirectly in the main facts. The accessory details, therefore, are probably true: they are not

entirely unlikely, though it is rather a shock to us to find that such conduct is attributed to the Commune in

that highly civilised age--highly civilised in many respects, but in some both decadent and barbarous.

It must, also, be remembered that the people o f the Province Asia were not all equally educated and

civilised: many of them had no Greek education, but were sunk in ignorance and the grossest Oriental

superstition. There is no good reason apparent why this contemporary account should be disbelieved; and

we must accept it.

The attempt was made under the authority of the Commune, by one or more of its delegates in charge of the

various temples and the ritual practised at them, to impress the populace with the might of the Imperial

divinity by showing signs and miracles, by causing fire to burst forth without apparent cause, and declaring

that it came down from heaven, and by causing speech to seem to issue from the statue in the temple. The

writer accepts those signs as having really occurred: the monster was permitted by God to perform those

marvels, and to delude men for a time. None of the details which this contemporary account mentions is

incredible or even improbable. A Roman Proconsul in Cyprus had a Magian as his friend and teacher in

science: the Magian probably showed him the sign of spontaneous fire bursting forth at his orders. In a