The primitive Christians had certainly no cause of complaint against the Romans; the Jews, from whom they at that time began to separate themselves, were their only enemies. Every one knows the implacable hatred all sectaries bore to those who quit their sect. There doubtless were several tumults in the synagogues in Rome. Suetonius, in his life of Claudius, has these words, _Judæos impulsore Christo assidue tumultuantes Roma expulit_. He is wrong in saying that it was at the instigation of Christ they raised commotions in Rome; but he could not be acquainted with all the circumstances relating to a people who were held in such contempt in Rome as the Jews were; and, however mistaken he may have been in this particular, yet he is right as to the occasion of these commotions. Suetonius wrote in the reign of Adrian in the second century, when the Christians were not distinguished from the Jews by the Romans; therefore this passage of Suetonius is a proof that the Romans, so far from oppressing the primitive Christians, chastised the Jews who persecuted them, being desirous that the Jewish synagogue in Rome should show the same indulgence to its dissenting brethren as it received itself from the Roman Senate; and we find from Dion Cassius and Ulpian, that the Jews who were thus banished from Rome returned soon after, and even attained to several honors and dignities, notwithstanding the laws which excluded them therefrom.[19] Can it be believed, that after the destruction of Jerusalem, the emperors would have loaded the Jews with their favors, and have persecuted and put to death the Christians, whom they looked upon as a sect of the Jews? Nero is said to have been a great persecutor of the Christians. But Tacitus tells us that they were accused of having set fire to the city of Rome, and were thereupon given up to the resentment of the populace. But had religion anything to do with this charge? No, certainly. We might as well say that the Chinese, whom the Dutch murdered a few years ago in Batavia, were slaughtered on account of their religion. And nothing but a strong desire to deceive ourselves can possibly make us attribute to persecution the sufferings of a few half-Jews and half-Christians under Nero.[20] Several Christians afterwards suffered martyrdom; it is not easy to say on what particular account they were condemned, but I can venture to assert that none suffered under the first Cæsars merely on the account of religion, for they tolerated all beliefs; therefore, why should they seek out and persecute an obscure people, who had a worship peculiar to themselves, at the time they licensed all others?