1. _Cause of Pagan Opposition to Christianity_. "The whole body of Christians unanimously refused to hold any communion with the gods of Rome, of the empire, and of mankind. It was in vain that the oppressed believer asserted the inalienable rights of conscience and private judgment. Though his situation might excite the pity, his arguments could never reach the understanding, either of the philosophic or of the believing part of the pagan world. To their apprehensions, it was no less a matter of surprise that any individuals should entertain scruples against complying with the established mode of worship, than if they had conceived a sudden abhorrence to the manners, the dress, or the language of their native country. The surprise of the pagans was soon succeeded by resentment; and the most pious of men were exposed to the unjust but dangerous imputation of impiety. Malice and prejudice concurred in representing the Christians as a society of atheists, who, by the most daring attack on the religious constitution of the empire, had merited the severest animadversion of the civil magistrate. They had separated themselves (they gloried in the confession) from every mode of superstition which was received in any part of the globe by the various temper of polytheism; but it was not altogether so evident what deity or what form of worship they had substituted to the gods and temples of antiquity. The pure and sublime idea which they entertained of the Supreme Being escaped the gross conception of the pagan multitude, who were at a loss to discover a spiritual and solitary God, that was neither represented under any corporeal figures or visible symbol, nor was adored with the accustomed pomp of libations and festivals, of altars and sacrifices." (Gibbon, "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," chap. XVI.) 2. _As to the Number of Persecutions by the Romans_. "The Romans are said to have pursued the Christians with the utmost violence in ten persecutions, but this number is not verified by the ancient history of the church. For if, by these persecutions, such only are meant as were singularly severe and universal throughout the empire, then it is certain that these amount not to the number above mentioned. And, if we take the provincial and less remarkable persecutions into the account, they far exceed it. In the fifth century, certain Christians (were) led by some passages of the holy scriptures and by one especially in the Revelations (Rev. 17:14), to imagine that the church was to suffer ten calamities of a most grievous nature. To this notion, therefore, they endeavored, though not all in the same way, to accommodate the language of history, even against the testimony of those ancient records, from whence alone history can speak with authority." (Mosheim, "Ecclesiastical History," Cent. I, Part I; ch. 5:4.)