They were faithful in discharging their commission, and many received their testimony and obeyed the gospel. Satan, however, working in the hearts of the disobedient, stirred them up to anger against the saints of God, and they were persecuted, imprisoned, and slain. All the apostles, save John, sealed their testimony with their blood, and thousands of their followers were put to death. Edicts the most cruel and heartless were formulated against them by the Roman emperors, and executed with relentless vindictiveness, until the saints of God were well nigh destroyed.[O] [Footnote O: See Outlines of Ecclesiastical History, part II., "The apostasy."] Meantime heresies crept into the churches; false teachers arose teaching perverse doctrines to draw away disciples after them; the Gospel was perverted, the laws thereof were transgressed, the ordinances were changed, the covenant was broken, until scarcely a vestige of the gospel as delivered to men by the Son of God and his authorized servants remained. After the sword, the prison, the rack, and the flame in the hands of a powerful, pagan government, together with apostate influences and false teachers had done what they could to break down or corrupt the church of Christ, then another evil, more dangerous than all that had gone before was brought to bear upon it. A Roman Emperor, Constantine, was converted to the "Christian religion"--yet by that time, 313 A. D., no more like the religion of Christ than dim, misty twilight is like the glorious light of the noon-day sun. He soon loaded the bishops with new honors, dignities and powers. The churches were made wealthy, and luxurious living succeeded the simplicity in the manner of life characteristic of earlier times among the followers of Christ. This luxury, ever more dangerous than storms or quicksands, poverty or chains, proved more disastrous to the church, more fruitful in its corruptions of the Gospel than the storms of persecution which had beaten upon it from its inception. Through these combined evils that I have very briefly enumerated, the gospel was corrupted, the authority of God, the priesthood, was taken from among men; and then followed long ages of spiritual darkness and wickedness. At last, however, the time came to usher in the dispensation of the fullness of times, in which all things in Christ, both things which are in heaven and things which are in earth, are to be gathered in one, and the work of the Father pertaining to the salvation of this creation, the earth, and those who inhabit it, is to be consummated. To open up this work a prophet was raised up in the person of Joseph Smith, and to him the Lord revealed his purposes; telling him also that the creeds of men were an abomination in his sight; that men were drawing near to him with their lips but their hearts were far from him; that they taught for doctrine the commandments of men, "having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof."[P]