"Wherefore, since this your pernicious wickedness is no longer to be presume to meet together. And we have given orders that all those places where you are wont to hold assemblies should be taken away. Yea, our concern for this matter is such that we not only forbid you to assemble in any public place, but we likewise forbid all assemblies of your foolish superstition in private houses, and in all private places whatever. All of you, therefore, who have any sincere love of truth, come to the Catholic church. And that this remedy may have its full effect, we ordain that all your superstitious conventicles, I mean oratories of all heretics, if it be fit to call such houses oratories, be forthwith taken away, and without any opposition delivered to the Catholic church: and that the rest of your places be adjudged to the public."[A] [Footnote A: Lardner Works, vol. iv. p. 36.] "Thus the dens of heretics were laid open by the imperial edict," exultantly exclaims Eusebius, the Christian bishop, "and the wild beasts, the ring leaders of their impiety, were scattered."[A] And thus the paganized Christian Church launched upon that career of persecution of heretics within the Church, as well as upon the policy of persecuting those of a different religion; a policy that has filled the world with religious wars and deeds of cruelty which would better become the reign of a Nero than Christian rulers of Christian nations. It is a terrible arraignment which Gibbon draws against apostate Christendom in the concluding paragraph of his review of the persecutions which had been endured by the followers of Christ in the Christian centuries preceding Constantine. He says: [Footnote A: Life of Constantine, Eusebius, p. 66.]