Why was this? Surely it did not arise from any vicious principle inherent in the Christian religion itself. "If we seriously consider the purity of the Christian religion," remarks Gibbon, in the opening paragraph of his great treatise on the "_Conduct of the Roman Government Toward the Christians_," "the sanctity of its moral precepts, and the {LVI} innocence as well as the austere lives of the greater number of those who, during the first ages, embraced the faith of the gospel, we should naturally suppose that so benevolent a doctrine would have been received with due reverence even by the unbelieving world; that the learned and polite, however they might deride the miracles, would have esteemed the virtues of the new sect; and that the magistrates, instead of persecuting, would have protected an order of men who yielded the most passive obedience to the laws, though they declined the active cares of war and government. If, on the other hand, we recollect the universal tolerance of polytheism, as it was invariably maintained by the faith of the people, the incredulity of philosophers, and the policy of the Roman senate and emperors, we are at a loss to discover what new offense the Christians had committed, what new provocation could exasperate the mild indifference of antiquity, and what new motives could urge the Roman princes, who beheld without concern a thousand forms of religion subsisting in peace under their gentle sway, to inflict a severe punishment upon any part of their subjects who had chosen for themselves a singular but an inoffensive mode of faith and worship." [48] What, then, I again ask, was the cause of the singular departure from the enlightened policy of the empire in granting religious toleration and even large religious freedom to its subjects? I am sure that modern Christians will scarcely be satisfied with the various causes assigned for this strange conduct on the part of the Roman emperors who persecuted the Christians. These causes, or at least the principal ones, are conceded by both infidel and Christian authorities to be: First, the Christians were a sect and not a nation, and were open to the charge that they had deserted the faith of their forefathers, a thing inexplicable to the Roman mind. It could be claimed on the part of the Christians, of course, that this was not true; that so far were they from deserting the faith of their fathers, that their present Christian faith was but the complement of their fathers' faith, the fulfillment alike of its prophecies and symbols--in a word, the gospel was the fulfillment of the law. This, however, was a refinement of explanation to which the haughty Romans could not be expected to give attention.