he peace of the church interrupted, till the
increasing numbers of proselytes seem at length to have attracted the
attention, and to have alienated the mind of Severus. With the design of
restraining the progress of Christianity, he published an edict, which,
though it was designed to affect only the new converts, could not be
carried into strict execution, without exposing to danger and punishment
the most zealous of their teachers and missionaries. In this mitigated
persecution we may still discover the indulgent spirit of Rome and of
Polytheism, which so readily admitted every excuse in favor of those who
practised the religious ceremonies of their fathers.

But the laws which Severus had enacted soon expired with the authority
of that emperor; and the Christians, after this accidental tempest,
enjoyed a calm of thirty-eight years. Till this period they had usually
held their assemblies in private houses and sequestered places. They
were now permitted to erect and consecrate convenient edifices for the
purpose of religious worship; to purchase lands, even at Rome itself,
for the use of the community; and to conduct the elections of their
ecclesiastical ministers in so public, but at the same time in so
exemplary a manner, as to deserve the respectful attention of the
Gentiles. This long repose of the church was accompanied with dignity.
The reigns of those princes who derived their extraction from the
Asiatic provinces, proved the most favorable to the Christians; the
eminent persons of the sect, instead of being reduced to implore the
protection of a slave or concubine, were admitted into the palace in the
honorable characters of priests and philosophers; and their mysterious
doctrines, which were already diffused among the people, insensibly
attracted the curiosity of their sovereign. When the empress Mammaea
passed through Antioch, she expressed a desire of conversing with the
celebrated Origen, the fame of whose piety and learning was spread over
the East. Origen obeyed so flattering an invitation, and though he
could not expect to succeed in the conversion of an artful and ambitious
woman, she listened with pleasure to his eloquent exhortations, and
honorably dismissed him to his retirement in Palestine. The sentiments
of Mammaea were adopted by her son Alexander, and the philosophic
devotion of that emperor was marked by a singular but injudicious regard
for the Christian religion. In his domestic chapel he plac