CHAPTER XII.
PROGRESS OF PROPAGANDA TO THE TENTH PERSECUTION.
Seven Years' Persecution of Equalitarian Innovators—Seventh Great Persecution—Christians
charged with Sorcery in Eighth Persecution—Tortures of Ninth
and Tenth Persecutions—Pretended Conversion of Constantine—Lives of
Early Christians Exemplars to the Pagan World.
The persecutions under the "moderate" Trajan and the "philosophic" Antoninus had no effect, as we have seen, in stopping the progress of Christianity. On the contrary, they but served to extend it, by causing the multitude to interest themselves more in examining a religion which excited so much alarm amongst those orders of men who, from their power and riches, they could not but regard as their natural oppressors. The discreet conduct and humane character of the early Christians was another, indeed, the chief cause of their success. Those pagans who had relations with them in private life, and who had thereby opportunities of judging them as men and citizens, could not be brought to regard with horror a religion which had produced such characters, nor to sympathise with the atrocious spirit which consigned them to the fate of malefactors. Up to the reign of Severus, then, Christianity went on conquering and to conquer, in despite of edicts and persecutions.
It was in this reign that the fifth great persecution took place. In the early part of it no additions were made to the severe edicts already in force against them; and history preserves but few cases of their suffering from the application of the old. This was partly owing to the greater caution imposed upon them by the laws against illegal meetings and societies passed under Trajan and Antoninus, and partly, it is said, to the interest at court of a celebrated Christian, named Proculus, who, by an extraordinary application of his medical art, had cured the emperor of a dangerous distemper. This precarious lenity, however, did not endure long. After having been partially interrupted by an occasional execution of the old laws in force, it was effectually terminated by an edict of Severus (A.D. 197), which prohibited every subject of the empire, under severe penalties, from embracing the Jewish or Christian faith.
This edict would appear, at first sight, designed only to prevent the further growth of Christianity; but as, in one of its clauses, it urged the magistracy to enforce the law's of former emperors, still in force, it gave rise to a frightful proscription. For seven years the Christians were exposed to all manner of persecution and prosecution, not only in Rome and Italy, but in Gaul, Greece, Asia Minor, Palestine, Syria, Egypt and the rest of Africa. Amongst the celebrated martyrs in this persecution fell Leonidas, the father of Origen, and Irenæus,
