representations of these primitive martyrdoms was occasioned by a very
natural mistake. The ecclesiastical writers of the fourth and fifth
centuries ascribed to the magistrates of Rome the same degree of
implacable and unrelenting zeal which filled their own breasts against
the heretics, or the idolaters of their own time.... 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 entrusted, 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. (Tertullian, in his epistle to the Governor of Africa, mentions
several remarkable instances of lenity and forbearance which had
happened within his own knowledge.)... 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.... The general assertion of
Origen may be explained and confirmed by the particular testimony of his
friend Dionysius, who, in the immense city of Alexandria, and under the
rigorous persecution of Decius, reckons only ten men and seven women who
suffered for the profession of the Christian name" ("Decline and Fall,"
vol. ii., pp. 224-226. See throughout chap. xvi.). Gibbon calculates the
whole number of martyrs of the Early Church at "somewhat less than two
thousand persons;" and remarks caustically that the "Christians, in the
course of their intestine dissensions, have inflicted far greater
severities on each other than they had experienced from the zeal of
infidels" (pp. 273, 274). Supposing, however, that the most exaggerated