episcopate of Noah (163–179) many Christians fell away from the faith under pressure of a persecution of a singularly dastardly kind—the kidnapping or "capture" of their daughters. This consisted (and consists still in the same lands) in the carrying off of Christian girls from their families as either concubines or slaves. Then, once let some sort of confession of Zoroastrianism—or of Islam—be procured from the victim, and how can the "convert" be thereafter abandoned to "a false faith"? Few of such captives can find the strength for a life-long confession of their Lord—a confession none the less meritorious for being absolutely unknown. But some such hidden saints have existed, and do still exist.
This, however, was not a State persecution, such as the Church in the West had to endure repeatedly during the same period; it arose from the weakness, not from the malevolence, of the Government, which would not take trouble or run a risk for the sake of doing right by so unimportant a person as a mere ray at. When the agent of persecution is specified at all, it is always the Mobeds, or members of the Magian clan.[1] Persecution ordered by the Government, and carried out by its agents, is not encountered till the days of the Sassanids; and even then, not until the conversion of Constantine—and the adoption of Christianity as the official faith of the Roman Empire—had made all Christians in the rival kingdom politically suspect. Syrian historians state emphatically that there was no formal persecution in the East until its day was over in the West.[2]
Thus Adiabene became a haven of comparative safety for Christians during persecutions over the border, and many took refuge there and made it
