without asking the emperor's advice. The real purpose of the rescript is
that Christians must be punished if they persisted in their belief, and
would not prove their renunciation of it by acknowledging the heathen
religion.

In the time of M. Antoninus the opposition between the old and the new
belief was still stronger, and the adherents of the heathen religion
urged those in authority to a more regular resistance to the invasions of
the Christian faith. Melito in his Apology to M. Antoninus represents the
Christians of Asia as persecuted under new imperial orders. Shameless
informers, he says, men who were greedy after the property of others,
used these orders as a means of robbing those who were doing no harm. He
doubts if a just emperor could have ordered anything so unjust; and if
the last order was really not from the emperor, the Christians entreat
him not to give them up to their enemies. We conclude from 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 maintained
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