distrust any association
among its subjects; and that the privileges of private corporations,
though formed for the most harmless or beneficial purposes, were
bestowed with a very sparing hand. The religious assemblies of the
Christians who had separated themselves from the public worship,
appeared of a much less innocent nature; they were illegal in their
principle, and in their consequences might become dangerous; nor were
the emperors conscious that they violated the laws of justice, when,
for the peace of society, they prohibited those secret and sometimes
nocturnal meetings. The pious disobedience of the Christians made their
conduct, or perhaps their designs, appear in a much more serious and
criminal light; and the Roman princes, who might perhaps have suffered
themselves to be disarmed by a ready submission, deeming their honor
concerned in the execution of their commands, sometimes attempted, by
rigorous punishments, to subdue this independent spirit, which boldly
acknowledged an authority superior to that of the magistrate. The extent
and duration of this spiritual conspiracy seemed to render it everyday
more deserving of his animadversion. We have already seen that the
active and successful zeal of the Christians had insensibly diffused
them through every province and almost every city of the empire. The new
converts seemed to renounce their family and country, that they might
connect themselves in an indissoluble band of union with a peculiar
society, which every where assumed a different character from the rest
of mankind. Their gloomy and austere aspect, their abhorrence of the
common business and pleasures of life, and their frequent predictions of
impending calamities, inspired the Pagans with the apprehension of some
danger, which would arise from the new sect, the more alarming as it was
the more obscure. "Whatever," says Pliny, "may be the principle of their
conduct, their inflexible obstinacy appeared deserving of punishment."

The precautions with which the disciples of Christ performed the offices
of religion were at first dictated by fear and necessity; but they were
continued from choice. By imitating the awful secrecy which reigned in
the Eleusinian mysteries, the Christians had flattered themselves that
they should render their sacred institutions more respectable in the
eyes of the Pagan world. But the event, as it often happens to
the operations of subtile policy, deceived their wishes and th