The actual extent of the persecution was confined to an occasional extortion of money from the christians by the underlings of office; and at length the viceroy, despairing of success in the attempt to prevail upon the governors of the cities to renew the persecution, ceased to urge them further on that head.
Whilst the christians were going on in the public exercise of their religion and the missionaries in the discharge of their ministerial functions, an unexpected trouble befel them from a conspiracy against the life of the Emperor by a sect of pagans known by the appellation of Tao-yen, which fortunately was discovered in time and stifled by the arrest of the conspirators. But, as the governors of cities had taken occasion from the conspiracy to publish ordinances requiring rigorous search to be made for the guilty, and proscribing afresh every form of religious worship prohibited by law, in some parts of the province extortions of money were made from the christians to a much greater extent than before. In other parts, the greatest cruelties were resorted to in order to induce them to renounce the faith. In the towns of Lo-tche-hien and Tchoung-kiang-hien the christians particularly distinguished themselves by their heroic constancy. Men, women and children, almost without exception, boldly came forward and declared their willingness to die rather than forsake their religion; for which they were subjected to insults, injuries, stripes and the confiscation of their property. At Lo-tche-hien the emissaries of government, unable to shake their perseverance, left the women and children, and took before the governor the men who bad been most active in encouraging the faithful by their exhortations. Here, neither caresses nor torments were omitted to induce them to abjure their religion. But seeing that all efforts were vain, and especially that their constancy under torture only tended to add a greater lustre to religion, he determined to send them to the metropolis in the hope of procuring their condemnation, either to death or banishment. That nothing might be omitted to ensure the attainment of his object, he even made a point of appearing against them in person. As, however, no express orders had been issued
