No human record preserves the names or assigns the numbers of all those who sacrificed their lives for the sake of their Master in these ten persecutions, and in the intervals of comparative peace which lay between them; in all of which it needed but the execution of the empire's existing laws to imperil any Christian life. A persecution meant that the sovereign power called upon the several governors of provinces and magistrates in cities to execute the law. Thus the period from the Crucifixion in the year 29, to the Edict of Toleration in 313, a space of 284 years, bears one character. It is that of opposition by the great world-empire to the free propagation of the religion of Christ. Not only is every human motive which can have force upon the mind of man set against this propagation, but at constantly recurring times men and women and children give up the joys of home, the security of civilised life, wealth, peace, social happiness, in order to maintain and profess their belief in a crucified man as Son of God and Saviour of the world. To this end a great multitude during ten generations sacrifice life itself, and that often not by simple death, but under torments the most severe and prolonged which the ingenuity of savage enemies can invent. Martyrdom was the ripe fruit of the Christian mind carried to its highest degree of excellence; the imitation of a crucified Lord in finished perfection. The martyr expressed in his own soul and body the truth uttered concerning his Lord, that "though He was a Son, yet learnt He obedience through the things that He suffered." The martyrs were the choice soldiers and champions of the great army of faith which arose upon the earth between Augustus and Constantine. It was by the sufferings of these three hundred years that the Church won, over against the persistent enmity of the Civil Power, the inestimable right of liberty in her faith, her worship, and her government.