Page:Friedrich Engels - The Revolutionary Act - tr. Henry Kuhn (1922).pdf/41

 they did not at that time have judges well drilled as to the "reputation of a person," such as Herr Koller's anti-Socialist law presupposes, the Christians were simply forbidden to seek their rights in a court of law. But this exceptional law, too, remained ineffective. In defiance, the Christians tore it from the walls, yea, it is said that at Nikomedia they fired the emperor's palace over his head. Then the latter revenged himself by means of a great persecution of Christians in the year 303 A. D. This was the last persecution of its kind. It was so effective that, seventeen years later, the army was composed largely of Christians, and that the next autocratic ruler of the entire Roman empire, Constantine, called "the Great" by the clericals, proclaimed Christianity as the religion of the State.

London, March 6, 1895.