this that there were at least imperial rescripts or constitutions of M.
Antoninus which were made the foundation of these persecutions. The fact
of being a Christian was now a crime and punished, unless the accused
denied their religion. Then come the persecutions at Smyrna, which some
modern critics place in A.D. 167, ten years before the persecution of
Lyon. The governors of the provinces under M. Antoninus might have found
enough even in Trajan's rescript to warrant them in punishing
Christians, and the fanaticism of the people would drive them to
persecution, even if they were unwilling. But besides the fact of the
Christians rejecting all the heathen ceremonies, we must not forget that
they plainly maintain that all the heathen religions were false. The
Christians thus declared war against the heathen rites, and it is hardly
necessary to observe that this was a declaration of hostility against
the Roman government, which tolerated all the various forms of
superstition that existed in the empire, and could not consistently
tolerate another religion, which declared that all the rest were false
and all the splendid ceremonies of the empire only a worship of devils.

[A] Eusebius, iv. 26; and Routh's Reliquiae Sacrae, vol. I, and
the notes. The interpretation of this Fragment is not easy.
Mosheim misunderstood one passage so far as to affirm that
Marcus promised rewards to those who denounced the Christians;
an interpretation which is entirely false. Melito calls the
Christian religion "our philosophy," which began among
barbarians (the Jews), and flourished among the Roman subjects
in the time of Augustus, to the great advantage of the empire,
for from that time the power of the Romans grew great and
glorious. He says that the emperor has and will have as the
successor to Augustus' power the good wishes of men, if he will
protect that philosophy which grew up with the empire and began