s
of their own times. It is not improbable that some of those persons
who were raised to the dignities of the empire, might have imbibed the
prejudices of the populace, and that the cruel disposition of others
might occasionally be stimulated by motives of avarice or of personal
resentment. But it is certain, and we may appeal to the grateful
confessions of the first Christians, that the greatest part of those
magistrates who exercised in the provinces the authority of the emperor,
or of the senate, and to whose hands alone the jurisdiction of life and
death was intrusted, behaved like men of polished manners and liberal
education, who respected the rules of justice, and who were conversant
with the precepts of philosophy. They frequently declined the odious
task of persecution, dismissed the charge with contempt, or suggested
to the accused Christian some legal evasion, by which he might elude the
severity of the laws. Whenever they were invested with a discretionary
power, they used it much less for the oppression, than for the relief
and benefit of the afflicted church. They were far from condemning all
the Christians who were accused before their tribunal, and very far
from punishing with death all those who were convicted of an obstinate
adherence to the new superstition. Contenting themselves, for the most
part, with the milder chastisements of imprisonment, exile, or slavery
in the mines, they left the unhappy victims of their justice some reason
to hope, that a prosperous event, the accession, the marriage, or the
triumph of an emperor, might speedily restore them, by a general pardon,
to their former state. The martyrs, devoted to immediate execution
by the Roman magistrates, appear to have been selected from the most
opposite extremes. They were either bishops and presbyters, the persons
the most distinguished among the Christians by their rank and influence,
and whose example might strike terror into the whole sect; or else they
were the meanest and most abject among them, particularly those of the
servile condition, whose lives were esteemed of little value, and
whose sufferings were viewed by the ancients with too careless an
indifference. The learned Origen, who, from his experience as well as
reading, was intimately acquainted with the history of the Christians,
declares, in the most express terms, that the number of martyrs was very
inconsiderable. His authority would alone be sufficient to annihilate
tha