im. iii. 12. Cyprian touches upon the same subject in his
Treatise on the "Vanity of Idols," c. 2.

[167:1] The Christians were familiar with the idea of the conflagration
of the world, and there is much plausibility in the conjecture that, as
they gazed on the burning city, they may have given utterance to
expressions which were misunderstood, and which awakened suspicion.
"Some," says Dean Milman, "in the first instance, apprehended and
examined, may have made acknowledgments before a passionate and
astonished tribunal, which would lead to the conclusion that, in the
hour of general destruction, they had some trust, some security, denied
to the rest of mankind; and this exemption from common misery, if it
would not mark them out in some dark manner, as the authors of the
conflagration, at all events would convict them of that hatred of the
human race so often advanced against the Jews."--_Milman's History of
Christianity,_ ii. 37, 38.

[167:2] Tacitus, "Annal." xv. 44.

[167:3] Heb. xii. 4.

[167:4] Heb. x. 25.

[168:1] 1 Pet. iv. 12.

[168:2] 1 Pet. iv. 17.

[168:3] Tertullian, "Ad Nationes," i. 7.

[168:4] See "De Mortibus Persecutorum," c. 2, and Sulpitius Severus,
lib. ii. p. 139; Edit. Leyden, 1635.

[168:5] Dan. ix. 27.

[169:1] Matt. xxiv. 2, 15, 16, 34; Mark xiii. 2, 14, 30; Luke xxi. 6,
20, 21, 24, 32.

[169:2] See Euseb. iii. 31.

[169:3] Acts xvii. 7.

[169:4] Euseb. iii. 20.

[169:5] Matt. xiii. 55. See Greswell's "Dissertations," ii. 114, 121,
122.

[170:1] Matt, xxvii. 57; Mark xv. 43.

[170:2] Acts xiii. 7.

[170:3] Phil. iv. 22.

[170:4] Dio Cassius, lxvii. 14.

[170:5] Euseb. iii. 18.

[171:1] Rev. i. 9.

[171:2] Tertullian, "De Praescrip. Haeret." c. 36.

[171:3] See Mosheim, Cent. i. part i. ch. 5.

[171:4] According to Baronius ("Annal." ad. an. 92, 98) John was six
years in Patmos, or from A.D. 92 to A.D. 98. Other writers think that he
was set at liberty some time before the death of Domitian, or about A.D.
95. According to this reckoning, had he been six years in exile, he must
have been banished A.D. 89. This conclusion derives some countenance
from the "Chronicon" of Eusebius, which represents the tyrant in the
eighth and ninth years of his reign, or about A.D. 89, as proscribing
and putting to death very many of his subjects. If the visions of the
Apocalypse were vouchsafed to John in A.D. 89, the interval between
their revelation and the establishment of the