“I shall not be here long. Your Uncle Marios and Centurion Da cius asked me to talk to you. They are comrades from my days as a soldier and know we are friends.”
‘Surely they don’t expect you to convert me to your faith?” Rather the opposite,” Theognis assured him. “Many times since the Ascension of our Lord it has been best for Christians to remain in hiding. This is one of them.”
“But many of your people seem to want to be tortured, sir. I know governors who have tried to keep them from denouncing the Emperor and Rome, but to no avail.”
Apostle Paul explicitly
“Alas, we are only human and more often moved by emotions than reason,” Theognis admitted. “Christ himself ordered us to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s. He was never disobedient to civil authority, though the priests of that day sought to make it appear that he was, so they could destroy him when he threatened their hold over the common people. And the Apostle Paul explicitly commanded us to be obedient to authority.”
“I heard a sermon on his teachings in Antioch, when I accompanied Empress Prisca and Lady Valeria to one of your churches. But I don’t remember much, except that it concerned armor and breastplates.”
“The breastplates of righteousness and the armor of God?”
“Yes. That was it.”
“The passage is from Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus, written while he was in prison. He came near to being killed there, when the silversmiths joined against him because many people who listened to his preaching turned away from the worship of Artemis and stopped buying the images they made and sold.”
“Some people claim we Romans are only persecuting Christians in order to seize their possessions.”
“The charge contains a great deal of truth, I am sure,” Theognis said. “You asked just now why it is that some of us seem to court death while others, like myself, compromise their principles in order to stay alive.”
“I was not censuring you, sir,” Constantine protested.
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