In this persecution under Trajan, and in another which ensued under his successor Adrian, it is as well known as anything in history that the great bulk of the martyrs suffered for the _political_ and not the _spiritual_ dogmas they upheld, and that in the eye of public opinion they passed not so much for blasphemers and atheists (names given to them to please the superstitious rabble), but as seditious disturbers of the peace, enemies of the emperor, malefactors towards society, and traitors to the imperial government. The fourth great persecution took place under Antoninus the Philosopher, and, with different degrees of severity in different places, continued throughout the whole of his reign. In this persecution perished the famous Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, said to have been the friend and companion of St. John. Thus the poor Christians fared no better under a philosophic emperor than under the “moderate” and “virtuous” Trajan. Indeed, we have at this moment shoals of “philosophers” in France and England who, for absurdity and hard-heartedness, throw churchmen entirely into the shade. Parson Malthus’s divinity may have been bad enough; we aver it was not worse than his philosophy. Many of the unfortunate sufferers in this philosopher’s reign were devoured by wild beasts; others were tortured to death in an iron chair, made red-hot for the purpose. Even women were not spared. The names of two are preserved--Biblia and Blandina--whose sufferings and heroic courage contrast nobly with the cowardly cruelty of the philosophic scoundrel-emperor who gave his sanction to their death. Singularly enough, France, the “eldest daughter of the church,” was the scene of the worse persecutions which took place in this reign, when false philosophy _versus_ real Christianity was the order of the day; and, singularly enough, France is now the country where, _par excellence_, real Christianity is taking the field in right earnest against both philosophism and false Christianity. What France failed to do in the first and second centuries, and failed again to do in the eighteenth, she is now labouring to accomplish for all the world in the middle of the nineteenth. [Illustration: Decoration] CHAPTER XII. PROGRESS OF PROPAGANDA TO THE TENTH PERSECUTION. Seven Years’ Persecution of Equalitarian Innovators--Seventh Great Persecution--Christians charged with Sorcery in Eighth Persecution--Tortures of Ninth and Tenth Persecutions--Pretended Conversion of Constantine--Lives of Early Christians Exemplars to the Pagan World.