that this emperor intended to build temples in honour of Christ, but was dissuaded by the priests, who urged that all the other temples would be deserted. He venerated in his private oratory the statues of Apollonius of Tyana, Abraham, Orpheus, and Christ. He decreed that the provincial governors should not be appointed till the people had the opportunity of declaring any crime they had committed, borrowing this rule avowedly from the procedure of the Jews and Christians in electing their clergy; he ordered the precept “Do not unto others what you would not that they should do unto you” to be engraven on the palace and other public buildings, and he decided a dispute concerning a piece of ground which the Christians had occupied, and which the owners of certain eating-houses claimed, in favour of the former, on the ground that the worship of a god should be most considered.(866) Philip the Arab, who reigned during the last five years of the period we are considering, was so favourable to the Christians that he was believed, though on no trustworthy evidence, to have been baptised. We have now reviewed the history of the persecutions to the year A.D. 249, or about two hundred years after the planting of Christianity in Rome. We have seen that, although during that period much suffering was occasionally endured, and much heroism displayed, by the Christians, there was, with the very doubtful exception of the Neronian persecution, no single attempt made to suppress Christianity throughout the Empire. Local persecutions of great severity had taken place at Smyrna and Lyons, under Marcus Aurelius; in Africa and some Asiatic provinces, under Severus; popular tumults, arising in the excitement of the public games, or produced by some earthquake or inundation, or by some calumnious accusation, were not unfrequent; but there was at no time that continuous, organised, and universal persecution by which, in later periods, ecclesiastical tribunals have again and again suppressed opinions repugnant to their own; and there was no part of the Empire in which whole generations did not pass away absolutely undisturbed. No martyr had fallen in Gaul or in great part of Asia Minor till Marcus Aurelius. In Italy, after the death of Nero, with the exception of some slight troubles under Domitian and Maximinus, probably due to causes altogether distinct from religion, there were, during the whole period we are considering, only a few isolated instances of martyrdom. The bishops, as the leaders of the Church, were the special objects of hostility, and several in different parts of the world had fallen; but it is extremely questionable whether any Roman bishop perished after the apostolic age, till Fabianus was martyred under Decius.(867) If Christianity was not formally authorised, it was, like many other religions in a similar position, generally acquiesced in, and, during a great part of the time we have reviewed, its