ith which they had professed; and
who confirmed the sincerity of their abjuration, by the legal acts of
burning incense or of offering sacrifices. Some of these apostates had
yielded on the first menace or exhortation of the magistrate; whilst
the patience of others had been subdued by the length and repetition
of tortures. The affrighted countenances of some betrayed their inward
remorse, while others advanced with confidence and alacrity to the
altars of the gods. But the disguise which fear had imposed, subsisted
no longer than the present danger. As soon as the severity of the
persecution was abated, the doors of the churches were assailed by
the returning multitude of penitents who detested their idolatrous
submission, and who solicited with equal ardor, but with various
success, their readmission into the society of Christians.

IV. Notwithstanding the general rules established for the conviction
and punishment of the Christians, the fate of those sectaries, in an
extensive and arbitrary government, must still in a great measure, have
depended on their own behavior, the circumstances of the times, and
the temper of their supreme as well as subordinate rulers. Zeal might
sometimes provoke, and prudence might sometimes avert or assuage, the
superstitious fury of the Pagans. A variety of motives might dispose the
provincial governors either to enforce or to relax the execution of the
laws; and of these motives the most forcible was their regard not only
for the public edicts, but for the secret intentions of the emperor,
a glance from whose eye was sufficient to kindle or to extinguish
the flames of persecution. As often as any occasional severities were
exercised in the different parts of the empire, the primitive Christians
lamented and perhaps magnified their own sufferings; but the celebrated
number of ten persecutions has been determined by the ecclesiastical
writers of the fifth century, who possessed a more distinct view of the
prosperous or adverse fortunes of the church, from the age of Nero to
that of Diocletian. The ingenious parallels of the ten plagues of Egypt,
and of the ten horns of the Apocalypse, first suggested this calculation
to their minds; and in their application of the faith of prophecy to the
truth of history, they were careful to select those reigns which were
indeed the most hostile to the Christian cause. But these transient
persecutions served only to revive the zeal and to restore the
d