A few months passed and Diocletian published a second edict ordering the arrest of all bishops and clergy who refused to surrender their “holy books” to the civil officers. Then, in the following year, came a third, offering freedom to all in prison if they consented to sacrifice, and instructing magistrates to use every possible means to compel the obstinate to abandon their faith. These edicts provoked a frenzy of persecution, and Gaul and Britain alone enjoyed comparative immunity. Constantius could not, indeed, entirely disregard an order which bore the joint names of the two Augusti, but he took care that there was no over-zealousness, and, according to a well-known passage of Lactantius, he allowed the meeting-places of the Christians, the buildings of wood and stone which could easily be restored, to be torn down, but preserved in safety the true temple of God, viz., the bodies of His worshippers.[13] Elsewhere the persecution may be traced from province to province and from city to city in the mournful and poignant documents known as the _Passions of the Martyrs_. Naturally it varied in intensity according to local conditions and according to the personal predilections of the magistrates. Where the populace was fiercely anti-Christian or where the pagan priests were zealous, there the Christians suffered severely. Their churches would be razed to the ground and the prisons would be full. Some of the weaker brethren would recant; others would hide themselves or quit the district; others again would suffer martyrdom. In more fortunate districts, where public opinion was with the Christians, the churches might not be destroyed, though they stood empty and silent. ----- Footnote 13: _Verum autem Dei templum, quod est in hominibus, incolume servavit._ (_De Mort. Persec._, c. 15). -----