Christianity in that day was confounded with a multitude of debased and foreign superstitions; and the Emperor in his judicial capacity, if he ever encountered Christians at all, was far more likely to encounter those who were unworthy of the name, than to become acquainted with the meek, unworldly, retiring virtues of the calmest, the holiest, and the best. When we have given their due weight to considerations such as these we shall be ready to pardon Marcus Aurelius for having, in this matter, acted ignorantly, and to admit that in persecuting Christianity he may most honestly have thought that he was doing God service. The very sincerity of his belief, the conscientiousness of his rule, the intensity of his philanthrophy, the grandeur of his own philosophical tenets, all conspired to make him a worse enemy of the Church than a brutal Commodus or a disgusting Heliogabalus. And yet that there was not in him the least _propensity_ to persecute; that these persecutions were for the most part spontaneous and accidental; that they were in no measure due to his direct instigation, or in special accordance with his desire, is clear from the fact that the martyrdoms took place in Gaul and Asia Minor, _not in Rome_. There must have been hundreds of Christians in Rome, and under the very eye of the Emperor; nay, there were even multitudes of Christians in his own army; yet we never hear of his having molested any of them. Melito, Bishop of Sardis, in addressing the Emperor, expresses a doubt as to whether he was really aware of the manner in which his Christian subjects were treated. Justin Martyr, in his _Apology_, addresses him in terms of perfect confidence and deep respect. In short he was in this matter "blameless, but unfortunate." It is painful to think that the venerable Polycarp, and the thoughtful Justin may have forfeited their lives for their principles, not only in the reign of so good a man, but even by virtue of his authority; but we must be very uncharitable or very unimaginative if we cannot readily believe that, though they had received the crown of martyrdom from his hands, the redeemed spirits of those great martyrs would have been the first to welcome this holiest of the heathen into the presence of a Saviour whose Church he persecuted, but to whose indwelling Spirit his virtues were due? whom ignorantly and unconsciously he worshipped, and whom had he ever heard of Him and known Him, he would have loved in his heart and glorified by the consistency of his noble and stainless life.