That there were persecutions, is doubtless; but if they had been as violent as represented, it is hardly probable that Tertullian, who wrote with so much energy against the established religion, would have been suffered to die peaceably in his bed. It is certain that none of the emperors ever read his “Apology,” as an obscure work composed in Africa can hardly be supposed to have come into the hands of the governors of the world; but then, it might have been shown to their proconsuls in Africa, and have drawn down their resentment upon the author; nevertheless, we do not find that he suffered martyrdom. Origen taught the Christian religion publicly in Alexandria, and yet was not put to death for it. And this very Origen himself, who spoke with so much freedom both to the heathens and the Christians, and who, while he taught Jesus to the one, denied the triple Godhead to the other, expressly acknowledges, in his third book against Celsus, that “There were very few who suffered martyrdom, and those at a great distance of time from one another; notwithstanding,” says he, “that the Christians leave nothing undone to make their religion generally embraced, running from city to city, and from town to town, to make converts.” It must be confessed that these continual peregrinations might readily give cause to the priests, who were their enemies, to accuse them of a design to raise disturbances; and yet we find that these missions were tolerated even among the Egyptians, who have ever been a turbulent, factious, and mean people, and who tore a Roman to death for having killed a cat; in a word, a nation at all times contemptible, whatever may have been said to the contrary by the admirers of pyramids.[26]