ndy. See an excellent
Dissertation in xxxvith volume of the Bibliotheque Raisonnee,
p. 427-454.]

[Footnote 144a: M. Guizot criticizes Gibbon's account of this incident.
He supposes that Maximilian was not "produced by his father as a
recruit," but was obliged to appear by the law, which compelled the sons
of soldiers to serve at 21 years old. Was not this a law of Constantine?
Neither does this circumstance appear in the acts. His father had
clearly expected him to serve, as he had bought him a new dress for the
occasion; yet he refused to force the conscience of his son. and when
Maximilian was condemned to death, the father returned home in joy,
blessing God for having bestowed upon him such a son.--M.]

[Footnote 145: See the Acta Sincera, p. 299. The accounts of his
martyrdom and that of Marcellus, bear every mark of truth and
authenticity.]

[Footnote 146: Acta Sincera, p. 302. * Note: M. Guizot here justly
observes, that it was the necessity of sacrificing to the gods, which
induced Marcellus to act in this manner.--M.]

After the success of the Persian war had raised the hopes and the
reputation of Galerius, he passed a winter with Diocletian in the palace
of Nicomedia; and the fate of Christianity became the object of their
secret consultations. [147] The experienced emperor was still inclined
to pursue measures of lenity; and though he readily consented to exclude
the Christians from holding any employments in the household or the
army, he urged in the strongest terms the danger as well as cruelty
of shedding the blood of those deluded fanatics. Galerius at length
extorted [147a] from him the permission of summoning a council, composed
of a few persons the most distinguished in the civil and military
departments of the state.

The important question was agitated in their presence, and those
ambitious courtiers easily discerned, that it was incumbent on them to
second, by their eloquence, the importunate violence of the Caesar. It
may be presumed, that they insisted on every topic which might
interest the pride, the piety, or the fears, of their sovereign in the
destruction of Christianity. Perhaps they represented, that the glorious
work of the deliverance of the empire was left imperfect, as long as an
independent people was permitted to subsist and multiply in the heart
of the provinces. The Christians, (it might specially be alleged,)
renouncing the gods and the institutions of Rome, had constituted a