Pliny's, goes also to another point, viz, that the deaths of these men
were martyrdom in the strictest sense, that is to say, were so
voluntary, that it was in their power, at the time of pronouncing the
sentence, to have averted the execution, by consenting to join in
heathen sacrifices.

The constancy, and by consequence the sufferings, of the Christians of
this period, is also referred to by Epictetus, who imputes their
intrepidity to madness, or to a kind of fashion or habit; and about
fifty years afterwards, by Marcus Aurelius, who ascribes it to
obstinacy. "Is it possible (Epictetus asks) that a man may arrive at
this temper, and become indifferent to those things from madness or from
habit, as the Galileans?" "Let this preparation of the mind (to die)
arise from its own judgment, and not from obstinacy like the
Christians." (Epict. I. iv. C. 7.) (Marc. Aur. Med. 1. xi. c. 3.)





CHAPTER III.

There is satisfactory evidence that many, professing to be original
witnesses of the Christian miracles, passed there lives in labours,
dangers, and sufferings, voluntarily undergone in attestation of the
accounts which they delivered, and solely in consequence of their belief
of those accounts; and that they also submitted, from the same motives,
to new rules of conduct.

Of the primitive condition of Christianity, a distant only and general