Page:Toleration and other essays.djvu/62

38 is very difficult to discover the precise grounds on which they were condemned; but I venture to think that none of them were put to death on religious  grounds under the earlier emperors. All religious were tolerated, and there is no reason to suppose  that the Romans would seek out and persecute certain  obscure men, with a peculiar cult, at a time  when they permitted all other religions.

Titus, Trajan, the Antonines, and Decius were not barbarians. How can we suppose that they deprived the Christians alone of a liberty which the  whole empire enjoyed? How could they venture to charge the Christians with their secret mysteries  when the mysteries of Isis, Mithra, and the Syrian  goddess, all alien to the Roman cult, were freely  permitted? There must have been other reasons for persecution. Possibly certain special animosities, supported by reasons of State, led to the shedding  of Christian blood.

For instance, when St. Lawrence refused to give to the Roman prefect, Cornelius Secularis, the money of the Christians which he held, the prefect  and emperor would naturally be irritated. They did not know that St. Lawrence had distributed the  money to the poor, and done a charitable and holy  act. They regarded him as rebellious, and had him put to death.