the most intolerable hardships the
condition of those perverse individuals who should still reject the
religion of nature, of Rome, and of their ancestors. Persons of
a liberal birth were declared incapable of holding any honors or
employments; slaves were forever deprived of the hopes of freedom, and
the whole body of the people were put out of the protection of the law.
The judges were authorized to hear and to determine every action that
was brought against a Christian. But the Christians were not permitted
to complain of any injury which they themselves had suffered; and thus
those unfortunate sectaries were exposed to the severity, while they
were excluded from the benefits, of public justice. This new species of
martyrdom, so painful and lingering, so obscure and ignominious, was,
perhaps, the most proper to weary the constancy of the faithful: nor can
it be doubted that the passions and interest of mankind were disposed on
this occasion to second the designs of the emperors. But the policy of a
well-ordered government must sometimes have interposed in behalf of
the oppressed Christians; * nor was it possible for the Roman princes
entirely to remove the apprehension of punishment, or to connive at
every act of fraud and violence, without exposing their own authority
and the rest of their subjects to the most alarming dangers.

This edict was scarcely exhibited to the public view, in the most
conspicuous place of Nicomedia, before it was torn down by the hands
of a Christian, who expressed at the same time, by the bitterest
invectives, his contempt as well as abhorrence for such impious and
tyrannical governors. His offence, according to the mildest laws,
amounted to treason, and deserved death. And if it be true that he was
a person of rank and education, those circumstances could serve only to
aggravate his guilt. He was burnt, or rather roasted, by a slow fire;
and his executioners, zealous to revenge the personal insult which had
been offered to the emperors, exhausted every refinement of cruelty,
without being able to subdue his patience, or to alter the steady and
insulting smile which in his dying agonies he still preserved in his
countenance. The Christians, though they confessed that his conduct
had not been strictly conformable to the laws of prudence, admired the
divine fervor of his zeal; and the excessive commendations which they
lavished on the memory of their hero and martyr, contributed to fix a
de