[23]. Eusebius Eccl. Hist., Bk. viii, Ch. viii.
[24]. Eusebius Eccl. Hist., Bk. viii, Ch. ix.
[25]. "Decline and Fall," Vol. i, p. 481. Gibbon claims, however, that "notwithstanding the severity of this law, the virtuous courage of many of the pagans in concealing their friends or relatives, affords an honorable proof, that the rage of superstition had not extinguished in their minds the sentiments of nature and humanity."—Ibid.
[26]. Schlegel, quoted by Murdock, see note Mosheim's Eccl. Hist., Cent. iv, Bk. ii. Ch. i.
[27]. "Decline and Fall," Vol. i, ch. xvi, p. 477. Gibbon undertakes to modify what he has here written by saying that the policy of a well-ordered government must sometimes have interposed in behalf of the oppressed Christians. "This wants proof," says Milman in a footnote on the remark, "the edict of Diocletian was executed in all its rigor during the rest of the reign;" and gives reference to Eusebius Eccl. Hist., Bk. viii, ch. xiii.
[28]. See Milner's Church History, Vol. ii, cent. iv, ch. ii, I also give the following in evidence of the severity of the persecution of the Christians in the early centuries of our era; and since it is taken from the funeral oration pronounced by Libanius over the body of his friend, the Emperor Julian, commonly called the apostate—because in manhood he renounced that Christianity which had been forced on him in childhood, and attempted to restore the ancient religion of Rome—it is of the same character of evidence as that already found in the statements of Tacitus and Pliny—it is the testimony of one unfriendly to Christianity, who could have no motive for exaggerating the sufferings of the Christians. Referring to the mildness of the methods of persecution adopted by Julian against the Christians, Labanius says: "They who adhered to corrupt religion [he means the Christians] were in great terrors [on his accession to the throne] and expected that their eyes would be plucked out, that their heads would be cut off, and that rivers of their blood would flow from the multitude of slaughters. They apprehended their new master would invent new kinds of torment, in comparison of which mutilation, sword, fire, drowning, being buried alive, would appear slight pains. For the preceding emperors had employed against them all these kinds of punishments."
CHAPTER III.
THE EFFECT OF PEACE, WEALTH AND LUXURY ON CHRISTIANITY.
Disastrous as the persecutions of the early Christian centuries were, still more mischievous to the church were those periods of tranquility which intervened between the outbursts of rage that prompted them. Peace may have her victories, no less renowned than those of war; and so, too, she has her calamities, and they are not less destructive than those of war. War may destroy nations, but ease and luxury mankind corrupt—the body and the mind. Especially is peace dangerous to the church. Prosperity relaxes the reins of discipline; people feel less and less the need of a sustaining providence; but in adversity the spirit of man feels after God, and he is correspondingly more devoted to the service of religion.