“Then, again,” resumed Calpurnius, “we all know what a frightful crime some of them committed last night, in tearing down a supreme edict of the imperial deities; and even suppose (which the gods avert) that they carried their treasons still further, and attempted their sacred lives, they believe that they have only to go to one of those priests, own the crime, and ask for pardon; and, if he gives it, they consider themselves as perfectly guiltless.” “Fearful!” joined in the chorus. “Such a doctrine,” said Scaurus, “is incompatible with the safety of the state. A man who thinks he can be pardoned by another man of every crime, is capable of committing any.” “And that, no doubt,” observed Fulvius, “is the cause of this new and terrible edict against them. After what Calpurnius has told us about these desperate men, nothing can be too severe against them.” Fulvius had been keenly eyeing Sebastian, who had entered during the conversation; and now pointedly addressed him. “And you, no doubt, think so too, Sebastian; do you not?” “I think,” he calmly replied, “that if the Christians be such as Calpurnius describes them, infamous sorcerers, they deserve to be exterminated from the face of the earth. But even so, I would gladly give them one chance of escape.” “And what is that?” sneeringly asked Fulvius. “That no one should be allowed to join in destroying them, who could not prove himself freer from crime than they. I would have no one raise his hand against them, who cannot show that he has never been an adulterer, an extortioner, a deceiver, a drunkard, a bad husband, father, or child, a profligate, or a thief. For with being any of these, no one charges the poor Christians.”[144] Fulvius winced under the catalogue of vices, and still more under the indignant, but serene, glance of Sebastian. But at the word “thief,” he fairly leapt. Had the soldier seen him pick up the scarf in Fabius’s house? Be it so or not, the dislike he had taken to Sebastian, at their first meeting, had ripened into hatred at their second; and hatred in that heart was only written in blood. He had only intensity now to add to that feeling. Sebastian went out; and his thoughts got vent in familiar words of prayer. “How long, O Lord! how long? What hopes can we entertain of the conversion of many to the truth, still less of the conversion of this great empire, so long as we find even honest and learned men believing at once every calumny spoken against us; treasuring up, from age to age, every fable and fiction about us; and refusing even to inquire into our doctrines, because they have made up their minds that they are false and contemptible?”