Throwback Thursday: And They Sing
Note: This was originally published May 19, 2019. ~ Ed.
“What to do?” asked Pliny the Younger, Roman Governor of Pontus and Bithynia in the year 112 A.D. He wrote a quick letter to the Emperor Trajan in Rome, asking for advice. By all accounts Trajan was a good and just Caesar. So surely he would know how best to investigate, try, and pardon or punish these… “Christians.” I would be glad to release them, Pliny wrote, if only they would “offer prayer with incense and wine to the statues of the gods and of the Emperor and curse Christ—but none of those who are really Christians, it is said, can be forced to do it.”