This book contained among others a chapter called the Book of Revelations and therein were to be found certain references and certain prophecies about and anent a city built on “seven mountains.” That Rome was built on seven hills had been a commonly known fact ever since the days of Romulus. It is true that the anonymous author of this curious chapter carefully called the city of his abomination Babylon. But it took no great degree of perspicacity on the part of the imperial magistrate to understand what was meant when he read these pleasant references to the “Mother of Harlots” and the “Abomination of the Earth,” the town that was drunk with the blood of the saints and the martyrs, foredoomed to become the habitation of all devils, the home of every foul spirit, the cage of every unclean and hateful bird, and more expressions of a similar and slightly uncomplimentary nature. Such sentences might have been explained away as the ravings of a poor fanatic, blinded by pity and rage as he thought of his many friends who had been killed during the last fifty years. But they were part of the solemn services of the Church. Week after week they were repeated in those places where the Christians came together and it was no more than natural that outsiders should think that they represented the true sentiments of all Christians towards the mighty city on the Tiber. I do not mean to imply that the Christians may not have had excellent reason to feel the way they did, but we can hardly blame Diocletian because he failed to share their enthusiasm. But that was not all. The Romans were becoming increasingly familiar with an expression which the world thus far had never heard. That was the word “heretics.” Originally the name “heretic” was given only to those people who had “chosen” to believe certain doctrines, or, as we would say, a “sect.” But gradually the meaning had narrowed down to those who had chosen to believe certain doctrines which were not held “correct” or “sound” or “true” or “orthodox” by the duly established authorities of the Church and which therefore, to use the language of the Apostles, were “heretical, unsound, false and eternally wrong.” The few Romans who still clung to the ancient faith were technically free from the charge of heresy because they had remained outside of the fold of the Church and therefore could not, strictly speaking, be held to account for their private opinions. All the same, it did not flatter the imperial pride to read in certain parts of the New Testament that “heresy was as terrible an evil as adultery, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, wrath, strife, murder, sedition and drunkenness” and a few other things which common decency prevents me from repeating on this page.