The Decian persecution, which broke out in A.D. 249, and was probably begun in hopes of restoring the Empire to its ancient discipline, and eliminating from it all extraneous and unpatriotic influences,(876) is the first example of a deliberate attempt, supported by the whole machinery of provincial government, and extending over the entire surface of the Empire, to extirpate Christianity from the world. It would be difficult to find language too strong to paint its horrors. The ferocious instincts of the populace, that were long repressed, burst out anew, and they were not only permitted, but encouraged by the rulers. Far worse than the deaths which menaced those who shrank from the idolatrous sacrifices, were the hideous and prolonged tortures by which the magistrates often sought to subdue the constancy of the martyr, the nameless outrages that were sometimes inflicted on the Christian virgin.(877) The Church, enervated by a long peace, and deeply infected with the vices of the age, tottered beneath the blow. It had long since arrived at the period when men were Christians not by conviction, but through family relationship; when the more opulent Christians vied in luxury with the Pagans among whom they mixed, and when even the bishops were, in many instances, worldly aspirants after civil offices. It is not, therefore, surprising that the defection was very large. The Pagans marked with triumphant ridicule, and the Fathers with a burning indignation, the thousands who thronged to the altars at the very commencement of persecution, the sudden collapse of the most illustrious churches, the eagerness with which the offer of provincial governors to furnish certificates of apostasy, without exacting a compliance with the conditions which those certificates attested, was accepted by multitudes.(878) The question whether those who abandoned the faith should afterwards be readmitted to communion, became the chief question that divided the Novatians, and one of the questions that divided the Montanists from the Catholics, while the pretensions of the confessors to furnish indulgences, remitting the penances imposed by the bishops, led to a conflict which contributed very largely to establish the undisputed ascendancy of the episcopacy. But the Decian persecution, though it exhibits the Church in a somewhat less noble attitude than the persecutions which preceded and which followed it, was adorned by many examples of extreme courage and devotion, displayed in not a few cases by those who were physically among the frailest of mankind. It was of a kind eminently fitted to crush the Church. Had it taken place at an earlier period, had it been continued for a long succession of years, Christianity, without a miracle, must have perished. But the Decian persecution fell upon a Church which had existed for two centuries, and it lasted less than two years.(879) Its intensity varied much in different provinces.