t, which boldly
acknowledged an authority superior to that of the magistrate. The extent
and duration of this spiritual conspiracy seemed to render it everyday
more deserving of his animadversion. We have already seen that the
active and successful zeal of the Christians had insensibly diffused
them through every province and almost every city of the empire. The new
converts seemed to renounce their family and country, that they might
connect themselves in an indissoluble band of union with a peculiar
society, which every where assumed a different character from the rest
of mankind. Their gloomy and austere aspect, their abhorrence of the
common business and pleasures of life, and their frequent predictions of
impending calamities, [16] inspired the Pagans with the apprehension of
some danger, which would arise from the new sect, the more alarming as
it was the more obscure. "Whatever," says Pliny, "may be the principle
of their conduct, their inflexible obstinacy appeared deserving of
punishment." [17]

[Footnote 14: The emperor Trajan refused to incorporate a company of
150 firemen, for the use of the city of Nicomedia. He disliked all
associations. See Plin. Epist. x. 42, 43.]

[Footnote 15: The proconsul Pliny had published a general edict against
unlawful meetings. The prudence of the Christians suspended their
Agapae; but it was impossible for them to omit the exercise of public
worship.]

[Footnote 16: As the prophecies of the Antichrist, approaching
conflagration, &c., provoked those Pagans whom they did not convert,
they were mentioned with caution and reserve; and the Montanists were
censured for disclosing too freely the dangerous secret. See Mosheim,
413.]

[Footnote 17: Neque enim dubitabam, quodcunque esset quod faterentur,
(such are the words of Pliny,) pervicacian certe et inflexibilem
obstinationem lebere puniri.]

The precautions with which the disciples of Christ performed the offices
of religion were at first dictated by fear and necessity; but they were
continued from choice. By imitating the awful secrecy which reigned in
the Eleusinian mysteries, the Christians had flattered themselves that
they should render their sacred institutions more respectable in the
eyes of the Pagan world. [18] But the event, as it often happens to
the operations of subtile policy, deceived their wishes and their
expectations. It was concluded, that they only concealed what they
would have blushed to disclose. The