Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 2.djvu/243

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. ^2^25 were some governors who, from a real or affected cle- CHAP. menc}', had preserved their hands unstained with the '__ blood of the faithful'', it is reasonable to believe, that the country which had given birth to Christianity pro- duced at least the sixteenth part of the martyrs who suffered death within the dominions of Galerius and Maximin; the whole might consequently amount to about fifteen hundred, a number which, if it is equally divided between the ten years of the persecution, will allow an annual consumption of one hundred and fifty martyrs. Allotting the same proportion to the pro- vinces of Italy, Africa, and perhaps Spain, where, at the end of two or three years, the rigour of the penal laws was either suspended or abolished, the multitude of christians in the Roman empire on whom a capital punishment was inflicted by a judicial sentence, will be reduced to somewhat less than two thousand persons. Since it cannot be doubted that the christians were more numerous, and their enemies more exasperated, in the time of Diocletian than they had ever been in any former persecution ; this probable and moderate computation may teach us to estimate the number of primitive saints and martyrs who sacrificed their lives for the important purpose of introducing Christianity into the world. We shall conclude this chapter by a melancholy Conclusion, truth, which obtrudes itself on the reluctant mind ; that even admitting, without hesitation or enquiry, all that history has recorded, or devotion has feigned, on the subject of martyrdoms, it must still be acknow- ledged, that the christians, in the course of their intes- tine dissensions, have inflicted far greater severities on each other, than they had experienced from the zeal of infidels. During the ages of ignorance which followed tained forty-eight provinces. As the ancient distinctions of nations were long since abolished, the Romans distributed the provinces according to a general proportion of their extent and opulence. aliquos gloriantes, quia administratio sua, in hac parte, fuerit inrruenta. I^ctanl. Institut. Divin. v. H. VOL. II. Q
 * Ut gloriari possint nullum se innocentium peremisse ; nam et ipse audivi