uld worship according to his own
convictions ... a forced religion is no religion at all.... Men say that
the Christians are the cause of every public disaster. If the Tiber
rises as high as the city walls, if the Nile does not rise over the
fields, if the heavens give no rain, if there be an earthquake, if a
famine or pestilence, straightway they cry, Away with the Christians to
the lion.... But go zealously on, ye good governors, you will stand
higher with the people if you kill us, torture us, condemn us, grind us
to the dust; your injustice is the proof that we are innocent. God
permits us to suffer. Your cruelty avails you nothing.... The oftener
you mow us down the more in number we grow; the blood of Christians is
seed. What you call our obstinacy is an instructor. For who that sees it
does not inquire for what we suffer? Who that inquires does not embrace
our doctrines? Who that embraces them is not ready to give his blood for
the fulness of God's grace?"

Another writer has said: "The church in this period appears poor in
earthly possessions and honors, but rich in heavenly grace, in
world-conquering faith and love and hope; unpopular, even outlawed,
hated and persecuted, yet far more vigorous and expansive than the
philosophies of Greece, or the empire of Rome; composed chiefly of
persons of the lower social ranks, yet attracting the noblest and
deepest minds of the age, and bearing in her bosom the hope of the
world; conquering by apparent defeat and growing on the blood of her
martyrs; great in deeds, greater in sufferings, greatest in death for
the honor of Christ and the benefit of generations to come."

This triumph of early Christianity over Paganism was a theme worthy of
the song. "Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our
God, and the power of his Christ." Even before the death of the
apostles, according to the younger Pliny, the temples of the gods in
Asia Minor were almost forsaken. No wonder, then, that even the
inhabitants of heaven were called upon to rejoice at so great a victory
attained by the followers of the Lamb. But the same voice also says,
"Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is
come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath
but a short time." This represents the violence of the Pagan party upon
its defeat, being exasperated to the exercise of greater opposition and
cruelty wherever the means and the power were still