ticles without fear or molestation, provided always that they preserve a due respect to the established laws and government."[1]
The second, of which Constantine was the author, known as the Edict of Milan, was to a similar effect, and based toleration on the Emperor's care for the peace and happiness of his subjects and on the hope of appeasing the Deity whose seat is in heaven.
The relations between the Roman government and the Christians raised the general question of persecution and freedom of conscience. A State, with an official religion, but perfectly tolerant of all creeds and cults, finds that a society had arisen in its midst which is uncompromisingly hostile to all creeds but its own and which, if it had the power, would suppress all but its own. The government, in self-defence, decides to check the dissemination of these subversive ideas and makes the profession of that creed a crime, not on account of its particular tenets, but on account of the social consequences of those tenets. The members of the society cannot without violating their consciences and incurring damnation abandon their exclusive doctrine. The principle of freedom of conscience is asserted as superior to all obligations to the State, and the State, con-
- ↑ This is Gibbon's translation.
