whole train, and with the
populace on their side, have endeavoured with their whole might to
exterminate it, yet doth it flourish more and more." (Clem. AI. Strora.
lib. vi. ad fin.) Origen, who follows Tertullian at the distance of only
thirty years, delivers nearly the same account: "In every part of the
world," says he, "throughout all Greece, and in all other nations, there
are innumerable and immense multitudes, who, having left the laws of
their country, and those whom they esteemed gods, have given themselves
up to the law of Moses, and the religion of Christ: and this
not without the bitterest resentment from the idolaters, by whom they
were frequently put to torture, and sometimes to death: and it is
wonderful to observe how, in so short a time, the religion has
increased, amidst punishment and death, and every kind of torture."
(Orig. in Cels. lib. i.) In another passage, Origen draws the following
candid comparison between the state of Christianity in his time and the
condition of its more primitive ages: "By the good providence of God,
the Christian religion has so flourished and increased continually that
it is now preached freely without molestation, although there were a
thousand obstacles to the spreading of the doctrine of Jesus in the
world. But as it was the will of God that the Gentiles should have the
benefit of it, all the counsels of men against the Christians were
defeated: and by how much the more emperors and governors of provinces,
and the people everywhere strove to depress them, so much the more have
they increased and prevailed exceedingly." (Orig. cont. Cels. lib vii.)

It is well known that, within less than eighty years after this, the
Roman empire became Christian under Constantine: and it is probable that
Constantine declared himself on the side of the Christians because they
were the powerful party: for Arnobius, who wrote immediately before
Constantine's accession, speaks of "the whole world as filled with
Christ's doctrine, of its diffusion throughout all countries, of an
innumerable body of Christians in distant provinces, of the strange
revolution of opinion of men of the greatest genius,--orators,
grammarians, rhetoricians, lawyers, physicians having come over to the
institution, and that also in the face of threats, executions and
tortures." (Arnob. in Genres, 1. i. pp. 27, 9, 24, 42, 41. edit. Lug.
Bat. 1650.)

And not more than twenty years after Constantine's entire possessi