regarded with disfavor, because their
promulgation necessarily involves the disadvantage of official adherents
of prevailing systems, as well as the causing of that most disagreeable
form of mental irritation which follows upon the breaking in upon the
inertia of long-established prejudices.

Christianity was calculated to arouse determined opposition both from
the political and also the religious forces of the empire. It was looked
upon as a menace to the state and a dishonor to the gods. Rome was
extremely tolerant of new religions, and its policy was to allow the
people of its widely diversified conquests to retain their traditional
forms and objects of worship; but the Roman deities must not know
disrespect, and the most fair-minded emperors could comprehend no
reason, except a treasonable one, why subjects should scruple to render
obedience to the statutes commanding that divine honors should be paid
to their imperial selves. But the very genius of Christianity
necessitated absolute intolerance of other religious cults. The
worshippers of Cybele or Isis had not the least objection to paying
their devotions to Vesta on the way to their own favorite temple; the
women who besought Mars for the victory of their husbands, absent with
the legions, freely offered incense before the statue of the emperor who
sent forth those legions; but, for the Christians, to give Christ a
place among the national deities was to do Him the greatest dishonor and
to commit mortal sin, and to burn a handful of incense before the statue
of the emperor was wicked idolatry and entailed the forfeiture of
eternal salvation. Their missionary zeal compelled them to manifest the
contempt in which they held the pagan gods, and thus the Christians laid
themselves open to the charge of atheism as well as to that of treason.
As Gibbon says: "By embracing the faith of the Gospel the Christians
incurred the supposed guilt of an unnatural and unpardonable offence.
They dissolved the sacred ties of custom and education, violated the
religious institutions of their country, and presumptuously despised
whatever their fathers had believed as true, or had reverenced as
sacred." And inasmuch as the religion of the state was a part of the
constitution of the state, their resolute rejection of it marked them,
in the eyes of the rulers, as enemies of the state.

As the history of martyrdom is in almost every instance written by the
friends of the sufferers, the m