Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 2.djvu/222

 secution. 204 THE DECLINE AND FALL CHAP, but they served to alienate the mind of the emperors, ^^^' to justify the severity of Galerius, who dismissed a great number of christian officers from their employ- ments; and to authorise the opinion, that a sect of enthusiasts, which avowed principles so repugnant to the puVdic safety, must either remain useless, or would soon become dangerous subjects of the empire. Galerius After the success of the Persian war had raised the l)?odaiaT 'lopss and the reputation of Galerius, he passed a to begin a winter with Diocletian in the palace of Nicomedia ; genera ^per- ^^ J the fate of Christianity became the object of their secret consultations'. The experienced emperor was still inclined to pursue measures of lenity ; and though he readily consented to exclude the christians from holding any employments in the household or the army, he urged in the strongest terms the danger as well as cruelty of shedding the blood of those deluded fanatics. Galerius at length extorted from him the permission of summoning a council, composed of a few persons the most distinguished in the civil and military departments of the state. The important question was agitated in their presence ; and those ambitious courtiers easily discerned, that it was incumbent on them to second, by their eloquence, the importunate violence of the Caesar. It may be presumed, that they insisted on every topic which might interest the pride, the piety, or the fears, of their sovereign in the de- struction of Christianity. Perhaps they represented, that the glorious work of the deliverance of the empire was left imperfect, as long as an independent people was permitted to subsist and multiply in the heart of the provinces. The christians, (it might speciously be alleged,) renouncing the gods and the institutions of Rome, had constituted a distinct republic, which might yet be suppressed before it had acquired any military force : but which was already governed by its own ' De M.P, c. 11. Lactantius (or whoes'er was the author of this little treatise) was, at that time, an inhabitant of IVicomeilia ; t)ut it seems diffi- cult to conceive how he could acquire so accurate a knowledge of what passed in the imperial cabinet.