, I am aware, may be started by
some persons. If the Roman Government, to which all the world was then
subject, was so mild and gentle, and protected all men in the profession
of their several religious tenets, and the practice of all their
peculiar rites, whence comes it to pass that there are in the Epistles
so many exhortations to the Christians to patience and constancy, and so
many arguments of consolation suggested to them, as a suffering body of
men? [Here follow some passages as in Paley.] To this I answer: 1. That
the account St. Luke has given in the Acts of the Apostles of the
behaviour of the Roman officers out of Judaea, and in it, is confirmed
not only by the account I have given of the genius and nature of the
Roman Government, but also by the testimony of the most ancient
Christian writers. The Romans did afterwards depart from these moderate
maxims; but it is certain that they were governed by them as long as the
history of the Acts of the Apostles reaches. Tertullian and divers
others do affirm that Nero was the first Emperor that persecuted the
Christians; nor did he begin to disturb them till after Paul had left
Rome the first time he was there (when he was sent thither by Festus),
and, therefore, not until he was become an enemy to all mankind. And I
think that, according to the account which Tacitus has given of Nero's
inhumane treatment of the Christians at Rome, in the tenth year of his
reign, what he did then was not owing to their having different
principles in religion from the Romans, but proceeded from a desire he
had to throw off from himself the odium of a vile action--namely,
setting fire to the city--which he was generally charged with. And
Sulpicius Severus, a Christian historian of the fourth century, says the
same thing" ("Credibility of the Gospel History," vol. i., pages
416-420). Lardner, however, allows that the Jews persecuted the
Christians where they could although they were unable to slay them. They
probably persecuted them much in the same fashion that the Christians
have persecuted Freethinkers during the present century.

But Paley adduces further the evidence of Clement, Hermas, Polycarp,
Ignatius, and a circular letter of the Church of Smyrna, to prove the
sufferings of the eye-witnesses ("Evidences," pages 52-55). When we pass
into writings of this description in later times, there is, indeed,
plenty of evidence--in fact, a good deal too much, for they testify to
such ma