adds: "The same emperor
being addressed by other brethren in Asia, honored the Commune
of Asia with the following rescript." This rescript, which is
in the next chapter of Eusebius (E.H. iv. 13) is in the sole
name of Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus Armenius,
though Eusebius had just before said that he was going to give
us a rescript of Antoninus Pius. There are some material
variations between the two copies of the rescript besides the
difference in the title, which difference makes it impossible
to say whether the forger intended to assign this rescript to
Pius or to M. Antoninus.

The author of the Alexandrine Chronicum says that Marcus, being
moved by the entreaties of Melito and other heads of the
church, wrote an Epistle to the Commune of Asia in which he
forbade the Christians to be troubled on account of their
religion. Valesius supposes this to be the letter or rescript
which is contained in Eusebius (iv. 13), and to be the answer
to the Apology of Melito, of which I shall soon give the
substance. But Marcus certainly did not write this letter which
is in Eusebius, and we know not what answer he made to Melito.

In the time of M. Antoninus the opposition between the old and the new
belief was still stronger, and the adherents of the heathen religion
urged those in authority to a more regular resistance to the invasions
of the Christian faith. Melito in his Apology to M. Antoninus represents
the Christians of Asia as persecuted under new imperial orders.
Shameless informers, he says, men who were greedy after the property of
others, used these orders as a means of robbing those who were doing no
harm. He doubts if a just emperor could have ordered anything so unjust;
and if the last order was really not from the emperor, the Christians
entreat him not to give them up to their enemies.[A] We conclude from
this that there were at least imperial rescripts or constitutions of M.
Antoninus which were made the foundation of these persecutions. The fact
of being a Christian was now a crime and punished, unless the accused
denied their religion. Then come the persecutions at Smyrna, which some
modern critics place in A.D. 167, ten years before the persecution of
Lyon. The governors of the provinces under M. Antoninus might have found
enough even in Trajan's rescript to warrant them in punishing
Christians, and the fanaticism of the