Development Resulting from Persecution

For the most part, persecution had a purifying effect on Christianity. It has been said that a person will die for something they know to be true. If the second and third century Christians knew they were going to die, they had to know what they were dying for was absolutely true. This pressure brought about the need to canonize Scripture. After all, no one wanted to risk death over something considered to be a spurious writing. The church grew phenomenally during this period. It grew to the point that Tertullian wrote, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” Despite the fact that many people denied their faith, the vast majority did not.