Thus the Church already took more than one step toward empire. Through politeness, without doubt, but only as a very legitimate consequence of his principles, Meliton does not allow that an emperor can give an unjust order. It was easy to believe that certain emperors had not been absolutely opposed to Christianity. It is pleasant to relate that Tiberius had proposed to place Jesus in the rank of the gods: it was the senate which objected. The decided preference of Christianity for power where it hopes for favors is already very transparent. It is shown, contrary to all truth, that Hadrian and Antonine sought to repair the evil done by Nero and Domitian. Tertullian and his generation say the same thing of Marcus Aurelius. Tertullian doubted, it is true, whether one could be at the same time a Cæsar and a Christian; but this incompatibility a century later struck no one, and Constantine proved that Meliton of Sardis was a very sagacious man when he discerned so well--a century and a half in advance, seeing through the proconsular persecutions--the possibility of a Christian Empire. The hatred of Christianity and of the empire was that of men who must one day love them. Under the Severi, the language of the Church remained plaintive and tender, as it had been under the Antonines. The apologists affixed a species of legitimism, a pretension that the Church had always from the first saluted the emperor. "There were never among us," said Tertullian, "partisans of Cassius, partisans of Albinus, partisans of Niger." Foolish illusion! Certainly the revolt of Avidius Cassius against Marcus Aurelius was a political crime, and the Christians did well not to be involved in it. As for Severus, Albinus, and Niger, it was success that decided between them; and the Church had no other merit in attaching itself to Severus than that of seeing clearly who would be the strongest. This pretended worship of legitimacy was in truth only the worship of a fixed fact. The principle of St. Paul bore fruit: "All power comes from God: he who holds the sword holds it from God for good."