declared that all the rest were false and all the splendid ceremonies of
the empire only a worship of devils.

If we had a true ecclesiastical history, we should know how the Roman
emperors attempted to check the new religion; how they enforced their
principle of finally punishing Christians, simply as Christians, which
Justin in his Apology affirms that they did, and I have no doubt that he
tells the truth; how far popular clamor and riots went in this matter,
and how far many fanatical and ignorant Christians--for there were many
such--contributed to excite the fanaticism on the other side and to
imbitter the quarrel between the Roman government and the new religion.
Our extant ecclesiastical histories are manifestly falsified, and what
truth they contain is grossly exaggerated; but the fact is certain that
in the time of M. Antoninus the heathen populations were in open
hostility to the Christians, and that under Antoninus' rule men were put
to death because they were Christians. Eusebius, in the preface to his
fifth book, remarks that in the seventeenth year of Antoninus' reign, in
some parts of the world, the persecution of the Christians became more
violent, and that it proceeded from the populace in the cities; and he
adds, in his usual style of exaggeration, that we may infer from what
took place in a single nation that myriads of martyrs were made in the
habitable earth. The nation which he alludes to is Gallia; and he then
proceeds to give the letter of the churches of Vienna and Lugdunum. It is
probable that he has assigned the true cause of the persecutions, the
fanaticism of the populace, and that both governors and emperor had a
great deal of trouble with these disturbances. How far Marcus was
cognizant of these cruel proceedings we do not know, for the historical
records of his reign are very defective. He did not make the rule against
the Christians, for Trajan did that; and if we admit that he would have
been willing to let the Christians alone, we cannot affirm that it was in