Labour the Light — R.B. Banfield

The discussion of prayer is so great that it requires the Father to reveal it, His firstborn Word to teach it, and the Spirit to enable us to think and speak rightly of so great a subject.ORIGEN They think the Christians the cause of every public disaster, of every affliction with which the people are visited. If the Tiber rises as high as the city walls, if the Nile does not send its waters up over the fields, if the heavens give no rain, if there is an earthquake, if there is famine or pestilence, straightway the cry is, 'Away with the Christians to the lion!' What! Shall you give such multitudes to a single beast? TERTULLIAN It is a bad world, Donatus, an incredibly bad world. But I have discovered in the midst of it a quiet and good people who have learned the great secret of life. They have found a joy and wisdom which is a thousand times better than any of the pleasures of our sinful life. They are despised and persecuted, but they care not. They are masters of their souls. They have overcome the world. These people, Donatus, are Christians ... and I am one of them.CYPRIAN The Roman Empire of the Third Century A.D. began to fracture, with arguments over leadership, economic failure, and increased threats from their enemies. Emperors came and went, from the deranged teenager known as Elagabalus, to the intimidating veteran general Maximus Thrax, to friends of Christianity in the young Severus Alexander and Philip the Arab. Almost every general made a claim to the throne, for over fifty years, while the Persians gained power in the east, and the Gothic tribes became restless in the north. As Christianity continued to spread throughout the Roman Empire and beyond, it faced pressures from outside and within. In Roman Carthage (Northern Africa) the lawyer Tertullian defied what he saw as hypocrisy in Christian leadership. The rich man Cyprian gave away his riches and became his city's bishop, to lead them through both a plague and opposition from rival bishops. In Italy, Hippolytus wrote volumes against the Gnostic heretics who were claiming to be the true faith.