Notwithstanding the great knowledge and critical acumen displayed in this chapter, few persons, I imagine, can rise from its perusal without a feeling both of repulsion and dissatisfaction. The complete absence of all sympathy with the heroic courage manifested by the martyrs, and the frigid and, in truth, most unphilosophical severity with which the historian has weighed the words and actions of men engaged in the agonies of a deadly struggle, must repel every generous nature, while the persistence with which he estimates persecutions by the number of deaths rather than by the amount of suffering, diverts the mind from the really distinctive atrocities of the Pagan persecutions. He has observed, that while the anger of the persecutors was at all times especially directed against the bishops, we know from Eusebius that only nine bishops were put to death in the entire Diocletian persecution, and that the particular enumeration, which the historian made on the spot, of all the martyrs who perished during this persecution in Palestine, which was under the government of Galerius, and was therefore exposed to the full fury of the storm, shows the entire number to have been ninety-two. Starting from this fact, Gibbon, by a well-known process of calculation, has estimated the probable number of martyrs in the whole Empire, during the Diocletian persecution, at about two thousand, which happens to be the number of persons burnt by the Spanish Inquisition during the presidency of Torquemada alone,(909) and about one twenty-fifth of the number who are said to have suffered for their religion in the Netherlands in the reign of Charles V.(910) But although, if measured by the number of martyrs, the persecutions inflicted by Pagans were less terrible than those inflicted by Christians, there is one aspect in which the former appear by far the more atrocious, and a truthful historian should suffer no false delicacy to prevent him from unflinchingly stating it. The conduct of the provincial governors, even when they were compelled by the Imperial edicts to persecute, was often conspicuously merciful. The Christian records contain several examples of rulers who refused to search out the Christians, who discountenanced or even punished their accusers, who suggested ingenious evasions of the law, who tried by earnest and patient kindness to overcome what they regarded as insane obstinacy, and who, when their efforts had proved vain, mitigated by their own authority the sentence they were compelled to pronounce. It was only on very rare occasions that any, except conspicuous leaders of the Church, and sometimes persons of a servile condition, were in danger; the time that was conceded them before their trials gave them great facilities for escaping, and, even when condemned, Christian women had usually full permission to visit them in their prisons, and to console them by their charity. But, on the other hand, Christian writings, which