176 THE DECLINE AND FALL CHAP, provinces the authority of the emperor or of the ■ ___ senate, and to whose liands alone the jurisdiction of Hfe and death was intrusted, behaved hke men of poHshed manners and hberal educations, who respected the rules of justice, and who were conversant with the precepts of |)hilosophy. They frequently declined the odious task of persecution, dismissed the charge with contempt, or suggested to the accused christian some legal evasion, by which he might elude the severity of the laws*. Whenever they were invested with a dis- cretionary powTr^, they used it much less for the op- pression, than for the relief and benefit of the afflicted church. They were far from condemning all tlie christians who were accused before their tribunal, and very far from punishing with death all those who were convicted of an obstinate adhei'ence to the new super- stition. Contenting themselves, for the most part, with the milder chastisements of imprisonment, exile, or slavery in the mines ^, they left the unhappy victims of their justice some reason to hope, that a prosperous event, the accession, the marriage, or the triumph of an emperor, might speedily restore them by a general Inconsider- pardon to their former state. The martyrs devoted her of mar- to immediate execution by the Roman magistrates, ap- ^y^^- pear to have been selected from the most opposite extremes. They were either bishops and presbyters, the persons the most distinguished among the chris- tians by their rank and influence, and whose example might strike terror into the whole sect*; or else they " Tertullian, in his epistle to the governor of Africa, mentions several remarkable instances of lenity and forbearance, vyhich had happened within his kncvi'ledge. y Neque enim in universum aliquid quod quasi certam formam habeat, constitui potest : an expression of Trajan, which gave a very great latitude to the governors of provinces. ^ In metalladamnamur, in insulas relegamur. Tertullian. Apolog. c. 12. The mines of Numidia contained nine bishops, with a proportionable num- ber of their clergy and people, to whom Cyprian addressed a pious epistle nf praise and comfort. See Cyprian. Epistol. 76, 77.
- 'J hough we cannot receive with entire confidence either the epistles
or the acts of Ignatius, (they may be found in the second volume of the Apostolic Fathers,) yet we may quote that bishop of Antioch as one of these eiemplaiy martyrs. He was sent in chains to Rome as a public
