mitable resolution. At length tyranny became
weary of its barren office, and the Church obtained peace. In A.D. 311,
Galerius, languishing under a loathsome disease, and perhaps hoping that
he might be relieved by the God of the Christians, granted them
toleration. Maximin subsequently renewed the attacks upon them; but at
his death, which occurred in A.D. 313, the edict in favour of the
Church, which Constantine and his colleague Licinius had already
published, became law throughout the empire.

It is often alleged that the Church, before the conversion of
Constantine, passed through ten persecutions; but the statement gives a
very incorrect idea of its actual suffering. It would be more accurate
to say that, for between two and three hundred years, the faithful were
under the ban of imperial proscription. During all this period they were
liable to be pounced upon at any moment by bigoted, domineering, or
greedy magistrates. There were not, indeed, ten persecutions conducted
with the systematic and sanguinary violence exhibited in the times of
Diocletian or of Decius; but there were perhaps provinces of the empire
where almost every year for upwards of two centuries some Christians
suffered for the faith. [307:1] The friends of the confessors and the
martyrs were not slow to acknowledge the hand of Providence, as they
traced the history of the emperors by whom the Church was favoured or
oppressed. It was remarked that the disciples were not worn out by the
barbarities of a continuous line of persecutors; for an unscrupulous
tyrant was often succeeded on the throne by an equitable or an indulgent
sovereign. Thus, the Christians had every now and then a breathing-time
during which their hopes were revived and their numbers recruited. It
was observed, too, that the princes, of whose cruelty they had reason to
complain, generally ended their career under very distressing
circumstances. An ecclesiastical writer who is supposed to have
flourished towards the commencement of the fourth century has discussed
this subject in a special treatise, in which he has left behind him a
very striking account of "The Deaths of the Persecutors." [308:1] Their
history certainly furnishes a most significant commentary on the Divine
announcement that "the Lord is known by the judgment which he
executeth." [308:2] Nero, the first hostile emperor, perished
ignominiously by his own hand. Domitian, the next persecutor, was
assassinated. Marcus A