ingdom of {121} God was to come, and the
great overthrow, whatever it should prove to be, was to be effected.
This at least was certain; and meanwhile the Roman empire represented
the divine principle of authority and order, and must be obeyed.

St. Paul no doubt had, more than any other apostle, a real feeling for
the empire and the city of which he was a citizen. Moreover, he saw in
the organization of the empire a great framework and vehicle for the
establishment and spread of the catholic church. And hitherto
certainly (at least, since the fatal moment of Pilate's weakness) the
Church had continually experienced the assistance of the imperial
authorities. It was a misused _spiritual_ authority, before which the
protest had to be made, 'We must obey God rather than man[9].' It was
the Jewish authorities who persecuted the Church. It was the Jewish
king who put James to death. At Paphos, Thessalonica, Corinth,
Ephesus, the imperial authorities had been more or less friendly, and
even at Philippi they had been reduced to an attitude of apology by the
bare mention of Roman citizenship. St. Paul's experiences, therefore,
had prepared him to 'appeal unto Caesar,' and to expect justice {122}
and freedom for himself and his cause. Even the beginnings of the
experience of imperial hostility and persecution did not quash or even
weaken this attitude in St. Peter[10]. St. Peter and St. Paul idealize
the empire almost as if it could do no wrong, and the righteous had
nothing to fear from it. Of course, when this expectation had been
rudely shattered--when the imperial authority had come chiefly to mean
the persecution of the saints--an opposite sort of idealism takes
place, and Rome appears as the great 'beast' of violence in the
Apocalypse of John. Both idealizations represent truth--the truth of
what the State is meant to be on the one side, and of what it may
become on the other. But after considerable experience of persecution,
Clement of Rome is still full of admiration for the divine order of the
imperial rule, and recognizes the duty of obedience to his 'rulers and
governors upon earth,' side by side with the duty of obedience to
'God's almighty and most excellent name'; and as it is God who has
given the rulers their authority, he prays for grace to submit to them,
and offers rich prayer for their welfare and that of the empire. And
the spirit lived on in the Christian {123} church through all the
persecuti